Mortal Games

by Waitzkin, Fred;

  “I think that he said this thing because of a disease that infects some ex–world champions. Botvinnik was feeling pushed aside. He was suffering from feeling unimportant, from feeling outside of the spotlight. And also he was jealous about the money that Fischer and Spassky earned. When Botvinnik was world champion, the money was peanuts. And now I think that Spassky feels the same thing. People don’t care about him anymore, so he tries to build his ego by attacking my character or my playing style, or Karpov’s. Probably he’s jealous that we are earning three million dollars in this match. I think he feels left behind by the world changing around him. He says these crazy things to be noticed for a moment or two.”

  I said to Garry that from watching him and Karpov on the stage, it appeared that they were becoming more friendly. “No, I haven’t changed my mind about Karpov,” he replied. “But you have to realize that he is the only serious opponent for me. I am talking chess with the number two in the world. I wouldn’t go to a restaurant with him, but who else can I really talk with about these games? Spassky? Who else can Karpov talk with? Karpov is the man who understands chess at the same level as I do.”

  We were already seated at the table for dinner when Andrew Page arrived at the Kasparov mansion. Page quickly asked Garry what had happened last night, and Kasparov became red in the face while trying to push out the words. “I offered him a draw in a winning position, so what?” The game was eating him up. No one would be able to enjoy this meal. But I was the bearer of good news. I told Garry that I had spoken with Lein, and that he and Geller had determined that the final position was probably unwinnable and that his draw offer to Karpov was perfectly appropriate. Garry grimaced a little. “But unfortunately their analysis is incorrect,” he said. “While I looked at it with Karpov, it became clear to me that I was much better at the end, maybe winning.”

  Although Kasparov concentrated much more effectively on chess in Lyon than in New York, his Soviet political life still percolated. After several weeks, the wives of Kasparov’s trainers came from Moscow. At the Kasparov mansion, big meals were accompanied by stories of food shortages at home and of friends collecting paper, books and wood to burn in order to survive the long winter in case Moscow ran out of fuel oil. The wives spoke nervously to their husbands about economic collapse and political repressions that were surely coming. During the middle of December, political and business friends and associates of Garry’s visited Lyon on a charter arranged by Andrew Page. They watched games, hoped for a word with Kasparov and spent long nights in their hotel talking about deteriorating conditions at home.

  One visitor, Zhelnin Vadim, was a member of Kasparov’s political party, Democratic Russia, which had about 25,000 members. “There are two main movements in the party,” he explained. “In one, the approach is to have a party that will have the broadest possible appeal. In the second approach, mine and Kasparov’s, the party must conform strictly to the principles of liberalism and anticommunism.” Vadim conceded that this schism might ultimately hamper the effectiveness of the party, but argued that it would be wrong for the anticommunist faction to compromise. “It is clear that Kasparov’s growing involvement in politics is a concern to Gorbachev, because Kasparov is so popular in his country, but mainly because he is so visible in the West.” At the time, intellectuals in the Soviet Union understood that Gorbachev’s main pillar of strength was his outside popularity. Sakharov and Kasparov were the two Soviets who had most consistently and visibly attacked the regime in the Western media, and after Sakharov’s death Kasparov’s, opposition was even more conspicuous. In the first months of 1991, friends of Kasparov, such as his political mentor, Vladimir Bukovsky, warned Garry that his relentless criticizing of Gorbachev was not without risk.

  “Right now, we all fear that there will be repressions coming soon, and no one knows what form they will take,” Vadim continued. “Will there be the elimination of undesirable forces, Stalin’s type of repression, killing people indiscriminately, or something more hidden? Some members of our party believe they will use hooligans to attack all real and perceived enemies. Soon it may be illegal for political parties such as ours to meet.”

  During the last weeks of the match, Kasparov looked forward to Vladimir Bukovsky’s visit. A biologist by profession, Bukovsky had written chillingly about his years spent in Soviet concentration camps because of his political views, in the book To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter. After gaining his release in 1976, Bukovsky had settled in Great Britain and had given up his profession to organize anticommunist movements. In the early eighties, he had founded Resistance International, an umbrella organization of anticommunist resistance movements worldwide, and later he had established an organization of freedom fighters, with branches within each of the Soviet Republics. In July, Bukovsky, along with Vaclav Havel, had organized a conference in Prague to address the problems of achieving a transition from communism to democracy in the Soviet Union. Kasparov had interrupted his training in Spain to attend for four or five days, and had been elected to the executive board, with some objections. Several members of the conference had complained that Kasparov had been a member of the Communist Party for years. Bukovsky had responded that Garry had broken with the regime in 1989, long before it became fashionable and even safe, before Yeltsin and the prominent historian Yuri Afanasyev had done the same, and had become one of the world’s most effective critics of Soviet Communism. Bukovsky had said to friends that after spending years in the gulag with his life hanging by a thread, he had gained a sixth sense about who can be trusted. He trusted Garry.

  During each of Bukovsky’s several days in Lyon, he visited Kasparov in the late afternoon. The two of them would walk slowly off from the imposing mansion into the deep shadows of the Parc de la Tête d’Or. They spoke of the likelihood of civil war and what might be done about the present disarray of the anticommunist movement at home. During these walks, Kasparov looked solemn and much older than his years, his head inclined towards the graying Bukovsky, his hands clasped behind his back, like a president taking in the point of view of a trusted advisor. Bukovsky urged Kasparov not to return to Moscow after the match. He considered it dangerous, although only moderately so. He gauged that it would be politically imprudent for Gorbachev to kill the world chess champion, but Bukovsky predicted that after George Bush attacked Hussein in the Gulf, Gorbachev would take advantage of this “news cover” to rain harsh repressions upon all Soviet dissidents. Besides, he argued, Kasparov could do more for the cause speaking out in the West. “We can do more sitting here, trying to break through the barrier of the Western press,” he told Kasparov. But Garry was determined to go back to Moscow after defeating Karpov. When they returned to the mansion, Kasparov would immediately begin preparing for the next game.

  “Gorbachev is a good tactician and a lousy strategist,” Bukovsky said one night, employing chess parlance to convey the idea that Gorbachev had bought himself time in power by clever maneuvers, but that he did not foresee the long-term consequences of his actions. “Mind you, he has been very cruel. He has used one nation to stir up another. Many people have died as the result of his tactics.” Bukovsky argued that it was Gorbachev’s repeated ploy to instigate ethnic conflict in the republics and then to rush in with troops to save the day. “In practice, Gorbachev has said that these stupid people are children who can’t live without central power.

  “Garry is very quick. I was amazed how fast he learned,” said Bukovsky. “And because he is a chess player, you don’t have to tell him much. You tell him two moves and he tells you the rest. He sees the whole field. But in truth, though he was a member of the Party when we started exchanging views, he had already arrived at similar conclusions about the system.

  “Two years ago, we would meet and Garry would say, yes, yes, we have to do something. But our discussions were theoretical. I didn’t feel that he was someone who would pull off his jacket and start working. But after the massacre in Baku, he was completely changed. I
t shocked him. It traumatized him. This spring he was speaking a new language. “The main enemy is Gorbachev,” he told me. ‘We have to finish off Gorbachev.’ He was obsessed.

  Asked about the likelihood of Kasparov’s becoming a political leader, Bukovsky was uncertain. He characterized the world champion as an original thinker, with a strong grasp of Soviet and world affairs. “He has enormous potential, but Garry is overcommitted,” said Bukovsky. “Now he seems to want a career in politics, but who knows in five or ten years? He might burn out before then. He wants the changes to come fast and they don’t come fast. You have to be patient. Otherwise, you are easily traumatized. Also, if politics in the Soviet Union becomes direct and simple like in the West, Garry will become bored with it. I would never enter politics in the United States. I would rather collect garbage.”

  On December 20, several hours before Kasparov played a tense adjourned position one afternoon, news shows carried stories about the abrupt resignation of Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze. In the foreign minister’s parting remarks, he warned that the Soviet Union was heading toward dictatorship. By and large, the Western media interpreted Shevardnadze to mean that forces from the right might soon topple the Gorbachev regime. Kasparov and Bukovsky dismissed that view. “It is perfectly clear to anyone who knows Soviet politics from the inside that Shevardnadze did not mean that there was danger from the right wing,” Kasparov said, a couple of hours after drawing the game. “He meant that the danger was Gorbachev. It was Gorbachev who was the potential dictator. Shevardnadze has a good name in the West and he doesn’t want to lose his reputation. He has given this warning that Gorbachev’s government is preparing for war against its own nations.”

  “He was smart enough not to point to Gorbachev and say, you are the bloody dictator, because then it would be his last day,” added Bukovsky. “Oh, a plane crash, a car crash, but he spelled out his message for everyone in the Soviet Union.”

  I asked Garry if he had mulled over the meaning of Shevardnadze’s remarks while playing out the tough endgame against Karpov. “No,” he answered.

  “It never came to mind?”

  “No.”

  In New York, such important news from home would have nagged at Kasparov’s moves and made the match itself seem trivial. He would have been impatient to make calls to political allies in Moscow to discuss the new crisis. “In New York, I would begin to study chess, and I would say to myself, ‘Mistake, mistake, you will be punished for it. Politics is everybody’.” But in New York, Garry had frightened himself with his blunders and distracted chess, with his depression and inner chaos. He had tasted defeat. During the practice sessions and games in Lyon, he was focused purely on chess.

  Early on in Kasparov’s career and in his earlier matches against Karpov, he had been a big favorite among both players and fans. But now there was a decided drift. Karpov had many fans in the Lyon audience. After years of enduring crucial defeats against Kasparov, the old world champion had taken on a noble cast. He had become like George Foreman, old and with a potbelly, but still throwing leather, someone with whom a middle-aged patzer might identify. A few years before, grandmasters had been thrilled by Kasparov’s attacking style and intimidating energy, but players had become turned off by his aloofness, his unwillingness to compromise, by his appetite for the spotlight and his ability to win despite innumerable distractions—perhaps this was the biggest offense of all. It was belittling and even confusing for a grandmaster who had devoted his life to the game to watch Kasparov duel effectively against the number two in the world while maintaining his war of words against Gorbachev in interviews and articles in the Western press. Toward the end of the match, grandmasters were yawning over Kasparov’s most brilliant attacks. One strong GM spent his evenings sitting in the snack area sipping espresso. His cultivated look of boredom expressed the complaint of most titled players in Lyon—we are fed up with this champion who is likely to hold the crown for the next twenty years. I asked this grandmaster about a particularly inventive Kasparov combination, and he answered curtly, “So what?”

  Following game 19, the grandmasters in Lyon were giddy with the talk of scandal. Even grandmaster Bachar Kouatly, the organizer of the Lyon half of the match, could not resist engaging in gossip. “If it is true it is terrible,” he said within earshot of Boris Spassky, who, before the start of game 20, was once again surrounded by journalists and players, holding his nose. “It stinks,” he said. “It’s terrible for chess when the players leave such a suspicion.”

  In the Kasparov house it was Masha who was most hurt by the surge of distaste for her husband. “Everyone roots against us,” she said, referring to Kouatly and a group of GMs from the GMA who sat beside him during the games. “When we come into the theater you can see hate in their eyes.”

  By the morning of game 20, the talk of scandal, the glee and gossiping of other players had become fuel for Kasparov’s rage. Garry was unapproachable. His trainers didn’t want to be near him. Andrew Page and a friend came for breakfast, and left after ten minutes. But Klara and her son were conspiratorial in their silence. Klara moved through the house moody and sullen. She was pleased by her son’s fury, protective of it. She was certain that Garry would win.

  It was hardly a game. Garry attacked like a hurricane. By move twenty it was clear that Karpov was getting blown off the board. No one watching was sure exactly where he had gone wrong. There must have been some terrible move. But Karpov hardly seemed a factor at all. The game had barely started and Kasparov’s bishops, knights, rooks and queen were bearing down upon Karpov’s king. Before playing the decisive combination, Kasparov rushed back on stage with his tie loosened, looking like a street fighter. When Garry unleashed his queen sacrifice, Karpov’s face went to jelly—he never saw it coming. But by then his position was so riddled that if Kasparov hadn’t won with this combination, he would have won with another. From the opening moves, the result of this game had seemed inevitable. With game 20, the match was essentially over. Karpov would have to win three of the remaining four to take back the title.

  In the pressroom, while answering questions, Spassky’s face was covered with sweat. A reporter asked, “What sense would it make to prearrange the draw in game nineteen and then win this one with a blitzkrieg?”

  “Now I don’t know what to think,” Spassky managed. Two days later, when the former world champion was again questioned about game 19, he admitted that he must have been wrong.

  Kasparov elected to take a time-out following game 20. Typically, the loser of a game in a world championship decides to take the time off, but after his powerful win, Kasparov was elated and felt that he needed to regain his equilibrium.

  After a three-day break, the twenty-first game was played on December 19. It was a titanic struggle, with the initiative seized and then lost again and again. Late in the middle game, Kasparov was losing ground. With his king under attack, and his pieces in disarray, many thought that he would lose. Kasparov defended tenaciously, trading queens to stop the mating threat, but giving himself an inferior endgame. He was able to negate Karpov’s advantage in the ending by maximizing the potential of his few pieces and finding unusual ways to attack. In the later games of the match, Garry was confident of his ability to save difficult endgame positions. It pleased him to outplay Karpov at his own specialty. After the drawn twenty-first game, Karpov called for a time-out.

  On Saturday, December 22, I came to Kasparov’s house, looking forward to the usual late lunch, but everyone had already finished eating. Marsha offered to make me something, but I told her not to bother. Garry had spent the day reading Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. It was his favorite novel and he had read it five or six times. He read passages of it aloud to Masha, while Beethoven played from the stereo. Garry was happy to have some time away from chess. He and Masha snuggled on the sofa, and after a time he stood and waved his arms in a silly imitation of a symphony conductor. All of Garry’s trainers but Shakarov were
off with their wives, and the big house felt hollow and chilly. In the bleak afternoon light, the living-room furniture seemed particularly unappealing: a frail seventeenth-century chair slid beneath a modern writing desk, a shiny new Scandinavian leather sofa beside an ornate eighteenth-century clock, paintings of different periods and moods clashing. The high-ceilinged room was a mismatch of pricey things put together at the last minute by the organizer, hoping to impress a difficult world champion.

  “So maybe I’ll win it next Wednesday,” Garry said, and then at my surprise explained that the organizer had called that morning to ask if he would accept a technical time-out on Christmas, so that the staff could have the holiday off. It would mean nearly a week off between games. I was not thrilled by the news. Of late, there had been more time-outs than games. I had already explored Lyon and had eaten too many Salade Lyonnaise lunches with Manny Topol. I envisioned more winter mornings sitting in my little hotel room, staring at the green curtains, pining for Christmas in New York with my family. I was feeling homesick. It was difficult to say this to Garry, but I did, and then he didn’t know how to respond. For some reason, I chose to prolong the awkwardness of the moment. I said something more about missing my kids. The vein in Garry’s forehead swelled. I was changing the rules. Fred’s melancholia was not on the agenda. After a minute, Garry replied that Bob Burkett (who had organized the New York half of the match for Ted Field) had flown into Lyon that morning from Los Angeles, only to discover that the game had been canceled. After dropping in to say hello, he had immediately flown back to Los Angeles, a twelve-thousand-mile error. Garry laughed at this and I could feel my jaw tightening. What was the point exactly? If Bob Burkett could take it without complaining, I should be able to? We all have to be warriors?