Searching for Bobby Fischer

by Fred Waitzkin

  A brilliant Russian emigré grandmaster sat with Joel and two other masters at a nearby table, demonstrating an original opening variation he’d just used in a game. He talked theatrically with sweeping gestures, as if he were lecturing at Moscow University. Soon Joel began shuffling the pieces, trying to decide if there was a line he liked better. The men took turns, and the chess pieces skidded and darted as if they were on ball bearings. The four men had been playing chess for two days, but they couldn’t stop. Their eyes flashed and blinked, looking for new combinations and possibilities. No one seemed to mind, or even to notice, the plaster falling off the walls or the slop underfoot.

  6

  TRAINING FOR MOSCOW

  During the summer of 1984, before the first Karpov-Kasparov championship marathon, Josh and I had our own titanic struggle. We were away from New York, and I was his only available opponent. I was planning to leave for Moscow in September to write about the match and to visit Russian chess schools with Josh, so I wanted him to be in top playing form. But he greeted my daily suggestions for games with a preference for fishing or spearing crabs. I was a persistent nag and occasionally justified myself by playing through testy dialogues that might have taken place between Chris Evert and her father when she was a young girl and didn’t want to practice. But after hundreds of games that he didn’t want to play, Josh fell into a state of sullen torpor. Time and again his king stood languidly on the back rank, indifferent to the march of my passed pawns.

  By the time we had received our visas for the Soviet Union, I had lost all confidence in Joshua’s ability to play chess at all. A visit to Washington Square Park confirmed my fears. Josh took on all comers while looking at the pigeons and squirrels. He lost his pieces with a melancholy smile, as if thinking, What does the loss of a bishop mean in the larger scheme of things?

  I was feeling nervous about the trip to the Soviet Union for a variety of reasons. Josh had never been away from his mother before, and after the past summer he and I were angry at one another. In the days before we left, Bonnie reminded me so often to take care of him that I was beginning to doubt that I could. How was I going to interview Russian grandmasters and at the same time keep track of his toy cars and make sure he was drinking enough milk? Besides covering the championship match for Chess Life, Bruce Pandolfini, who was going to travel with us, and I were planning to meet Russian chess teachers and to arrange games between Josh and talented Russian children. But our player was suffering from ennui. Russian chess educators would be scrutinizing my kid while he looked out the window.

  AS THE DC-8 shook and roared down the runway to begin the first leg of our flight, Josh looked up from his Snoopy book and announced, “Off to Russia.” He had no idea where Russia was; it might have been Philadelphia. At the time, he didn’t seem to understand the difference between a country and a city.

  Bruce suggested a game on his pocket set. Josh shrugged; he wasn’t interested. Soon the stewardess gave him a puzzle book in which numbered dots created figures, and he immediately tried to talk Pandolfini into tracing dots with him.

  I began to read a chapter of David Shipler’s book about the Soviet Union, Russia: Broken Idols, Solemn Dreams,* dealing with what he perceived to be the illusion of collectivism throughout the society. I had trouble concentrating; it was difficult to relate Shipler’s drab Russian factories and schools to my fantasy of Russia. Like many other Americans’, my impressions of the Soviet Union had been manufactured from such diverse sources as Tolstoy’s novels, James Bond movies and endless foreboding articles in the New York Times. Russia was catchwords such as “Cold War,” “Raskolnikov,” “vodka,” “Kremlin,” “Bolshoi,” “KGB,” “Anna Karenina,” “Iron Curtain,” “gulag.” I was half expecting to see forests of missiles and peasants driving horse-drawn sleighs.

  IN THE WEEKS preceding our departure I had spoken to Russian defectors with harrowing stories and sad, urgent requests that I try to track down relatives and friends. In certain instances I would have to make these contacts surreptitously from phone booths on the street because the hotel phone would be bugged, and use a code name for the American defector so that I didn’t compromise his mother or girlfriend. I got the impression that a third of the Soviet population must be employed to listen in on phone calls or to open mail. Although very poor, some of these men had brought expensive gifts for me to smuggle to their relatives and friends—presents conveying the fatuous message that life in the United States was all leisure and luxury: fancy tape recorders, radios, cameras, digital watches, pens with digital watches, computers. Had a customs man searched through my underwear he might have decided that I was a secret agent for Crazy Eddie. There was something sad and distasteful about my baggage of high-tech trinkets.

  I WAS ASKED by one Soviet defector to try to locate a Jewish friend, Soviet chess champion Boris Gulko. I was told that Gulko would be willing to discuss the politics of Soviet chess, as well as the problems of Jewish chess players in the Soviet Union. It was rumored that Gulko and his wife, a Soviet women’s champion, were being held under house arrest. “To find Gulko, you’ll need to contact a man I know who is a well-known grandmaster, an expert in the endgame,” said the Russian American, who gave me a name and a Moscow phone number. “He is also a KGB agent, but don’t worry, he is totally corrupt. The first day you meet him, give him a present worth fifteen or twenty dollars—a digital watch, maybe. Don’t expect him to speak candidly at first. Most likely he’ll seem apathetic. But I know this man, and you’ll have aroused his curiosity. He will suggest dinner. During this meal present him with pornographic books and magazines; then the chances are he will arrange for you to meet Gulko.”

  In case this approach didn’t work, the man gave me the name of a second grandmaster to bribe with a few digital pens; he wouldn’t be as expensive. He cautioned that I must never mention the name of the second grandmaster to the KGB grandmaster because they were enemies.

  LEV ALBURT, A top Soviet grandmaster who defected to the United States in 1979 and became the highest-rated player here the following year, described the politics of Soviet chess to me. Alburt is an engaging conversationalist who, like the great European players of the nineteenth century, combines his genius for the royal game with aristocratic taste and manners. He is a charming, urbane man with an appetite for fine food, history and world politics as well as for chess. From across the room he could pass for a youthful Charles Boyer.

  “In the Soviet Union,” Alburt said, “chess is supported by the government, and since Stalin’s time they have used victories in international chess tournaments to propagandize the notion that the best minds flourish under the Communist system.” Alburt speaks so quietly that I found myself leaning closer to him. Talking about Soviet chess with him was at once intimate and unsettling—a little like falling into a John le Carré novel. “They will go to great lengths to get the most from their players,” he continued. “For example, sometimes during my matches I was wired and tested for blood pressure, heart rate, galvanic skin response and other things. I was given amphetamines and tranquilizers on the days of important tournaments. Perhaps you don’t realize that when Karpov plays in a big tournament he has the help of forty, sometimes fifty, aides. They do everything from analyzing positions and performing physical therapy to providing sophisticated psychological profiles of opponents. Karpov has a doctor on hand to regulate his medications. During the match against Korchnoi he was so exhausted that they had to give him high dosages of amphetamines, which saved him in the end. Karpov has used hypnotists to try to distract his opponents. He has the use of a computer in Moscow that can calculate endgame positions more accurately than any grandmaster who ever lived. Without the advantages of his political connections, I doubt that Karpov would be a stronger player than, say, Joel Benjamin.”

  Alburt’s conversational style is at the same time eloquent and understated. While he talks he occasionally puts his hand on your shoulder or arm in the manner of a reassuring older relati
ve. When he senses that his remarks have caused surprise, he lifts an eyebrow, then continues in a quiet melodious voice. “In the Soviet Union I was often asked to draw games in important international tournaments, and even famous players such as Tal and Bronstein were occasionally asked to lose games. When they organize a tournament in the Soviet Union, they have a plan. If they want to make a new grandmaster, they will tell the stronger players that they must lose to him. Occasionally you can refuse, but it depends on who’s asking. If it’s someone important, you can be punished severely and lose your source of income. Being asked to draw and lose games is so natural on the lowest level that when you play in an international tournament and an official says, ‘You must lose; the prestige of the Soviet Union is at stake,’ you have already learned to obey. To refuse would be a hard crime against the state.”

  For the past several months, the upcoming championship match in Moscow had dominated the daily conversation of chess players in New York City, but when the subject was raised with Alburt, he seemed sad and slightly bored. “Today Kasparov would be the favorite,” he said, “but changes could take place in the highest reaches of the Soviet government that would make the match a fiction. For years, Karpov had a benefactor in the government. Through his connection with this man, Karpov gained more political power and material privileges than any other Soviet chess player in history. Then, during the time of the Korchnoi match, he became a favorite of Brezhnev. But after Brezhnev’s death, Andropov removed Karpov’s patron from his high government position and sent him to Hungary on the pretext that he was a homosexual. This weakened Karpov’s position, even though he was still world champion.

  “At about the same time, Andropov brought in a man named Aliev, who rapidly became one of the most powerful men in the Soviet Union. He was Kasparov’s benefactor, and Kasparov became as powerful as Karpov—maybe even more so. Now, with Andropov’s death and Chernenko’s coming to power, nobody knows what will happen. Kasparov, who is half-Jewish and, half-Armenian, is not the ideal Soviet hero. If Aliev were to lose his job in the Politburo before September tenth, I would bet ten to one that Kasparov will lose the match.”

  THIS CYNICAL VIEW of the Soviet chess establishment was titillating but hard to believe. It sounded more like a description of a covert CIA operation than like my kid’s favorite game. Vitaly Zaltzman, Igor Ivanov, Lev Alburt and Victor Korchnoi all told the same extravagant story: “Karpov would have Kasparov poisoned if he could get away with it.” “Watch to see if Kasparov becomes ill.” “Karpov will use germ warfare. They’ll do anything.” “When Russian chess players travel abroad they carry out espionage assignments.” “They play by their own rules.” “Chess is entirely political in the Soviet Union.” But was it true? Many American chess players, like Joel Benjamin, whom Alburt admires, dismissed his observations and those of other Russian defectors as influenced by political bias and personal bitterness. “I always take Lev with a grain of salt,” Benjamin said.

  Traveling to Moscow to watch the world championship and perhaps to track down Boris Gulko and other dissidents, using watches and pornographic books as bait, had seemed like a great adventure before we left New York. But now, flying through the night with my seven-year-old son asleep on Pandolfini’s shoulder while I read David Shipler’s accounts of KGB agents setting up journalists, our plans seemed naïve, even stupid. I’d been warned not to bring books critical of the Soviet Union into the country and so I decided to leave Shipler’s book in Helsinki, although it seemed like a sneaky way to begin the trip.

  Six hours later, as the plane approached Finland, Bruce and Josh were playing chess. “Josh, you’ve hung your knight. You’re not concentrating,” Bruce said with an edge of impatience as I tried to doze. “Why aren’t you looking at the board, Tiger?” Joshua’s bad moves felt like little stings.

  THE TERMINAL IN Helsinki was cheerful and attractive. In front of the duty-free shops little boys wearing penny loafers skated across slick floors, and fashionable ladies in high heels clicked past carrying clear plastic bags crammed with reindeer skins, vodka and mohair shawls. There were elegant well-lighted delis with hams, fat sausages and smoked fish, and a kiosk where boys ogled toy trucks and Eastern European men furtively glanced through girlie magazines selling for four times their price in the States. I considered buying a few magazines for the KGB grandmaster who might lead us to Boris Gulko but decided not to.

  As we walked toward Immigration at a distant end of the airport, Bruce and I joked about crossing the Iron Curtain, but we were both a little nervous. Apparently all those years of bad television movies in which the good guys got shot down a few feet from freedom had left a mark. “What’s the Iron Curtain?” Josh asked.

  “Shh.”

  “Is it tall? Will we see it from the plane?”

  “Shh.”

  At the far end of the airport the terminal was quiet. While we sat waiting for our flight to Moscow, Josh played with his miniature racing cars, and his little imitations of their sounds seemed brassy and inappropriate. I turned to Bruce to whisper something, then stopped myself. Josh began to tell a joke and Bruce barked at him, “No more, Josh, not until we get there.” Like everyone else at this end of the terminal, we were uneasy and humorless.

  * New York: Times Books, 1983.

  7

  THE HALL OF COLUMNS

  The world championship stirred the passion and patriotic pride of millions of Soviet chess players and fans. Throughout September 3, the first day of the match, there were television programs and updates about it. Taxi drivers in austere black Volgas waiting outside our hotel and old ladies sweeping majestic subways with Mother Hubbard brooms talked about Karpov and Kasparov.

  Early in the morning, Pandolfini, Josh and I took a taxi from the Cosmos Hotel to the Central Chess Club to pick up our press credentials. Behind heavy, ornate wooden doors we climbed wide staircases flanked by rows of austere portraits of great Russian players. This sprawling building had the worn, formal look of a state assembly that had seen better days. The rugs were colorless and the furniture was old and musty. There were scores of dusty offices devoted to chess management, but it was impossible to guess exactly what happened in them. Many of the offices were empty; others were occupied by a few men who seemed to sit idly at desks or to look out windows. In the halls were chess tables but no pieces were set up. We had expected rooms with rows of chess players such as we would find at the Manhattan Chess Club. Although Josh was exhausted by jet lag, he was looking forward to his first game in Russia, but in this whole large building not a single game was in progress.

  A GROUP OF fifty or sixty journalists waited on line in the hall outside one of the offices to get their press passes. Everyone was caught up in the excitement of the match, which was being touted in chess circles as one of the greatest of the century. But some writers were apprehensive; stories were circulating that the Russians were being difficult about allowing newsmen into the Hall of Columns. Someone said that Harold Schonberg and Robert Byrne from the New York Times hadn’t come because they had been denied visas (eventually Schonberg did arrive). A Russian chess writer came out of the room livid; for some reason he had been refused credentials. “What am I to do?” he asked us in English. “I’m suppose to write about the match but I can’t get in.”

  One European journalist, who was also an international chess master, came out of the room wearing his plastic press identification and recognized Bruce from the photograph above his column in Chess Life. He introduced himself and said that he looked forward to playing chess with Bruce in the evenings after the championship match had adjourned for the day. Pandolfini nodded and smiled thinly.

  By the time it was our turn we had been standing on line for an hour and a half and Josh was asleep in a chair. I guided him into an office where several men sat behind a long table. Josh opened his eyes and whimpered that he was thirsty. At the far end of the room there was a Polaroid camera mounted on a pedestal. The first sophisticated piece of equipm
ent we had seen in the Soviet Union was American-made.

  Pandolfini and I pronounced our names, and a man who spoke no English thumbed through a list. After a few minutes he smiled and shook his head; we were not on the list. He shrugged and gestured for the next man to enter. I tried to explain that we were journalists and that we had written ahead for press credentials, but again he pointed to the list and invited me to look. It was a simple problem: we were not on the list and would not be able to attend the match.

  Next on line was a tall, dashingly handsome middle-aged man from Yugoslavia, Dimitrije Bjelica, who I later learned is a television celebrity and the most widely read chess journalist in Eastern Europe. He was on the list, and the Russians treated him like Karpov. Bjelica began handing out copies of his newest book to the men working in the office. Feeling helpless and foolish, I pulled a letter of reference from my passport case and said, “Random House. Big book publisher.” I gestured widely with my arms, picked up a bulging folder from a desk, trying to demonstrate that I had come to write a book. Again the bureaucrat pointed to the list of names and shook his head.

  Bjelica was the last of the journalists waiting for credentials. Posing for his Polaroid snapshot, he looked suntanned and ecstatic, like a movie star with the cameras rolling. Soon the photographer was taking the camera off its tripod. The Russian office workers were winding down from their morning’s work, joking and chatting with Bjelica, who titillated them with tidbits about Fischer, whom he had known since Bobby was a teenager. “Maybe Thursday you will be on the list,” the photographer said to us in broken English and raised an eyebrow. Bjelica reached into his briefcase for his new book on Bobby, including previously unpublished speed games, and the Russians ogled it as if it were a girlie magazine.