Mortal Games

by Waitzkin, Fred;

  After the fifth Karpov match, Kasparov’s life became a fast-paced global migration. Even when he settled in Moscow for a “lengthy” two- or three-week stay, he leaned to the West, making phone calls abroad to prepare for the next trip. For friends in any of the many cities he frequented, Garry was always arriving from some distant place or about to leave for another. He was on the road for three, four or five weeks, visiting scores of cities, shouldering a busy schedule of appointments the same day he stepped off an intercontinental flight. In his hotel room, he hefted his huge suitcase onto the bed with a prideful expression perhaps born of his recent international self-reliance—more and more often, he took these long trips alone. He sniffed the air in his room, deciding if he would stay here the next time he visited this city, and before racing off for a power breakfast, he sent his jackets and shirts to the cleaner and studied the detailed itinerary which was waiting on the desk, freshly faxed from Page’s assistant, Antonia Bryson. If time permitted, he would call Andrew in the London office, or if Andrew was not in, check with Antonia, an empathetic woman and virtuoso juggler of intercontinental scheduling, to inquire why there was, God forbid, a two-hour break in his day without appointments or if there was a more direct route to Barcelona the following Wednesday.

  His schedule was grueling, relentless and, to a large degree, self-imposed. “It is my duty,” he said in the spring of 1991, referring to the endless string of chess exhibitions, goodwill speeches, meetings with politicians about promoting the game in their countries (and more and more press conferences and speeches about the politics of the Soviet Union), as if there were a book of rules about being a responsible world champion and someone above were rating his performance. In fact, it was Kasparov himself who was, in effect, writing the first primer for the modern world chess champion. In the past, with the exception of a short period in Bobby Fischer’s life, world chess champions had not been highly visible in the West. When known at all here by the general public, they were usually regarded as brilliant eccentrics existing in their own world of dry calculations. Kasparov wanted to smash this caricature. He had said, time and again, that it was his duty as world champion to transform chess at the highest level into a full-blown professional sport, and to accomplish that he needed to make the game come alive for a large Western public. He was frequently on European television, and in the States he appeared on such shows as Larry King Live, Tonight with Jay Leno and Late Night with David Letterman, to spread the word of chess and anticommunism.

  During a more recent trip to New York, Kasparov explained his nonstop schedule less piously. “I have to make a living,” he insisted, like a traveling salesman. His main products were chess, political enlightenment in the Soviet Union, and, of course, Kasparov himself. If he didn’t show up with his wares, no one would buy. Growing more urbane and understated since becoming a regular commuter to the States, and also as he approached the venerable age of thirty, Kasparov was apt to complain about the incessant traveling, the cramped seats, the crumpled clothes, the layers of jet lag. I didn’t believe this new, sophisticated traveler talk. He loved the life. For his days to have meaning, Kasparov must make bold, even potentially historic moves.

  The goings and comings were emotionally alive for Garry. The first meetings in town with old friends were little celebrations. There was a warm hug, an eager trading of news. Garry had been renewed by his travels and the initial flood of great expectations for his newest ventures. It was great to see him. These appealing moments of camaraderie were perhaps the best part of a trip for Garry.

  When he flew into New York, I sometimes picked him up at the airport. Before he spotted me, I could see him through the heavy glass window, struggling through customs with his immense suitcase in one hand, briefcase in the other. Kasparov was aglow with the excitement of the hunt. He greeted me smiling, eager to speak of this or that, and soon we were practically running to my car while he toted the seventy-pound valise. During the ride to New York, he listed the rich and famous people he would see in the next three days. Bill Buckley, Bill Bradley, Donald Trump, Henry Kissinger, Ted Field, Warren Buffett. Had I heard that assemblyman Richard Brodsky was pushing a bill through the New York state legislature to make chess part of the curriculum in the public schools? Chess would surely sweep across the land. Communism would fall. Always these trips began on a note of tremendous optimism.

  Of course, it was not simply duty and money that kept Garry running. There was escaping the malaise of Moscow, the thrill of the race to distant places, and the almost sexual promise of meeting strangers with stimulating ideas, lecturing to newspaper editors, bantering with television talk show hosts, making business deals, moving on to distant chess exhibitions, where at the press conference he would invariably shock the mayor and the organizer with his strong political views. The enfant terrible with the graying hair, leaving a trail of editorials behind him, stirring pots in continent after continent.

  Garry rarely deviated from his long-range schedule. If he told me that we would meet for breakfast on a given day three months later at the Regency Hotel, he would be there. Just as predictably, however, he would arrive at our table a half-hour late, harried, looking at his watch, in mid-sentence about what we had talked about twelve weeks before, promising me that there was plenty of time for my journalistic questions, urging me to relax while we ate smoked salmon and speed-talked politics, because he was not yet in the mood for chess talk. “Please relax, Fred,” he pleaded while he threw down his food. He was already late for a meeting with a multimillionaire who he hoped would support one of the humanitarian causes Kasparov sponsored in Russia. During his trips, Garry was frequently in a condition of ecstatic chaos.

  One afternoon, a couple of months after the match, we were seated in his living room at the Regency Hotel, several hours before he and Masha were scheduled to fly back to Moscow. We were working on an article for The European, while Lev Alburt leafed through a magazine and drummed his fingers, waiting for a chance to discuss political ideas with Kasparov for an article he had in mind. Garry was expected at The Wall Street Journal in forty-five minutes, and from there the limousine would drive him and Masha to JFK. He would have to be very sharp to get it all done, but he was inspired by the challenge. Garry loved to propel himself out of New York with a brilliant last-minute flurry.

  The phone rang. “Oh my God,” said Kasparov. There was a Spanish television crew downstairs in the lobby. He had completely forgotten the appointment. Kasparov was in the midst of playing a game against a television audience in Spain. A film crew found him, wherever he was in the world, to televise each move and his comments about the progress of the game. “Masha, find my pocket set!” he called to his wife, who was in the bedroom, packing. During the previous hectic week of travel and appointments, he hadn’t taken a minute to consider his move. And to make matters worse, Kasparov had a bad position with the black pieces. He hadn’t taken this exhibition seriously. He had been led to understand that an audience of amateurs would decide each move, to play against him by consensus. Kasparov could win such a game in his sleep. But this audience was playing very professional moves, and Kasparov suspected that there was a committee of grandmasters working in the wings. “Masha, bring my set.” She couldn’t find the set. “Oh shit, oh shit.” He looked up at the ceiling recalling the last move played against him. What to do? He moved the pieces in his head. His position was dire. Masha ran into the room with the pieces. Garry quickly set up the position. Then he noticed my alarmed expression. “Garry, we need to fax our article to London in four hours or we won’t make the deadline.”

  This week’s move by the studio audience was a deep positional sacrifice of a pawn, a move worthy of Karpov. “What amateur would play such a move?” he said to Alburt, who coughed and nodded, as if this moment held historical significance. Which it did. The world champion was on the verge of losing to a television audience of amateurs. “Ridiculous,” said Masha. But actually, the idea of losing to beginners made G
arry and Masha giddy. It was so ridiculous.

  What to play? Garry stared at the set. “I can sacrifice the piece for the attack, and maybe die quickly, or just continue with this complicated position, where I am worse, and torture myself for a few more weeks. Unbelievable.” Alburt coughed. “Don’t worry, Fred. We will finish in the limousine.” The phone rang again. Kasparov answered impatiently, raised an incredulous eyebrow. A knock on the door. The film crew carried the camera and gear into the room. “It is a great idea, but I won’t participate,” said Garry into the receiver. On the phone from Madrid, a journalist wanted Kasparov to take part in a political demonstration against apartheid rule in South Africa. “It’s a great idea, Ricardo, a great demonstration, but I won’t participate. No, I understand what’s happening in South Africa, but what’s happening in my country is also important, and I have to play a little chess, too. . . . You don’t understand . . . I don’t like Nelson Mandela . . . Ricardo, please. Chess yes. Politics no. For now I will only do politics in my own country. I’m interested in chess projects. That’s it. I’m a human being, too, and there’s only twenty-four hours in a day.”

  By now the crew was set up in the living room and Kasparov was seated in the lights, neatening his tie, composing his face. “Unbelievable,” he muttered. “Maybe if I had some time, I could save it.”

  “Which move will you make?” I asked, seconds before they turned on the flood lights.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  Some weeks in advance of the 1992 National High School Scholastic Championship in Kentucky, Garry called my house from Europe to say that he would meet Josh, Bonnie and me in Lexington. There would be a thousand teenagers competing in the event, which Kasparov saw as a splendid opportunity to promote chess in the United States. He would give interviews and pose for photographs with the players. Besides being treasured souvenirs, many of the photographs would find their way into local newspapers across the country. In addition, Garry would bring a suitcase filled with his colorful handmade chess sets for very young children. If he discovered a market during this trip, Garry planned to set up a factory mostly employing Armenian refugees.

  The trip was a divided experience for him. When he first entered the playing hall, the atmosphere was electric. For the teenagers, the world champion’s beaming athletic presence suddenly invested their pieces with great importance. As one might have guessed, all the young chess players wanted their photographs taken with Kasparov. The line for snapshots with him curled through the maze of halls, past the restrooms and around several large conference rooms. The champion began with great energy, shaking hands with each student, the electronic flash catching his broad ambitious smile. Then Garry invited a little discussion about the student’s chess life. If he presented one of Kasparov’s books or the tournament program, Garry wrote a short personal message and autographed it.

  Hours passed, and he repeated this routine, again and again. He hadn’t considered how long it would take personally to greet five or six hundred students and to pose affably for photographs. After several hundred smiles and greetings, he wanted to stop. But it was impossible. There were hundreds more lined up for photographs. Kasparov had become Santa Claus at Macy’s. By now, a secondary line had formed to the side, where kids waited until Garry was free for a few seconds and could scribble his autograph. He began to recognize repeaters on this line. He realized that half of the scraps of paper with his name would end up in the trash. He tried to check his querulousness. By the evening, he looked tortured. His smile was a grimace and he could no longer bear to speak with the kids. “No more photographs,” he whispered hoarsely to an assistant to the organizer, and when the man looked stricken (the winners of trophies had been promised a photo with the champion after the awards ceremony), Kasparov relented. He reminded himself that during the following week, his picture with smiling kids and chess trophies would be in newspapers all over America. But Garry felt appalled at being handled, posed, flashed, forced to stand in place for ten hours.

  In his hotel room after dinner, Garry pushed himself to be decorous, as he pulled a chess stacking toy for toddlers, colorful children’s chess pieces, and a hand-crafted pocket set out of his suitcase and showed them off to several of the coaches. Everyone admired them, although the men, all chess lovers, were dumbstruck at finding themselves being solicited by the world champion, and had difficulty focusing on the sets themselves. What exactly was he proposing? Should they order a few sets, or were these chess wares already destined for Bloomingdales? As Andrew Page had pointed out, Kasparov was too proud to make his sales pitch clear. It was a tough weekend for the chess salesman. Kasparov left Lexington, Kentucky, with praise for the craftsmanship of his samples, but no concrete sales. Nothing specific with which to go back to Moscow to open a factory.

  On the short plane ride from Lexington to Cincinnati, he and I chatted about Bill Clinton and the smart, tough economic strategies of Ross Perot. Though it was six months before the election and Clinton was behind Bush in the polls, Kasparov predicted that the Arkansas governor would be the next U.S. president, although his own choice would have been Bill Bradley. While we talked, he would lean over me every two or three minutes to look out the window, and I assumed that he was curious about the flat, Midwest farm country. Kasparov was much more chipper than one might have expected after the fiasco of the day before. He believed that his appearance in Lexington would be a publicity boon to U.S. chess, and he was already looking forward to key meetings the following day somewhere in Europe.

  After climbing out of the small plane, we waited for my son. “Hey, Josh, what state are we in?” Garry asked. “Ohio. We’re in Cincinnati, Ohio,” Josh answered in a what-kind-of-question-is-that tone of voice. He knew that Garry was a whiz at geography, but “Cincinnati” was plastered over airport signs in every direction. “You know, Josh,” Garry replied, “we never flew north of the Ohio River. If that’s true, we must still be in Kentucky.” In the terminal, we asked, and, indeed, the Cincinnati airport was located in Kentucky.

  While we waited for our connecting flights, Garry watched Josh and several younger children from The Dalton School’s team play a variety of chess called “bughouse,” in which four players split into teams and play adjacent games, with team members passing captured pieces to one another to augment their attacks. The games are hilarious and completely chaotic, with players slapping down extra queens and rooks. Kasparov had never seen bughouse before, and he was delighted by the intensity and joy with which the kids played. Some people stopped to take Kasparov’s picture and he didn’t mind at all. His expression was mellow and satisfied.

  After twenty minutes or so, his flight to New York was announced. Waving goodbye to the kids, and giving Bonnie a hug and a box of chocolate-covered cherries the organizer had left in his room, he hefted the large valise, heavier even than usual for all the handmade wooden chess sets, and then turned around with a smile to say, you see, I’m off again. A half-dozen of us watched him struggling with his luggage down the long corridor to continue his selling trip in New York and several European countries.

  10

  LINARES

  When Karpov and Kasparov squared off for their eighth-round game in the Linares International in the south of Spain, Kasparov was a full point behind the leader, Soviet grandmaster Alexander Beliavsky, and Karpov had already lost three games and was completely out of contention. Apparently, the marathon world championship had taken something from both of them. Karpov did not look like the same man. His face was washed out. His hair was stringy, unkempt. He had the look of someone who had been under great stress for a long time. Staring up at the leaders, Garry had become tense and distracted. “I cant get the Speelman game out of my mind,” he said, an hour before playing Karpov. “If I had won that game . . .”

  In the fifth round, he had mishandled a completely winning position against the British grandmaster, and had had to settle for a draw. He had played very uneven chess through the first seven ro
unds. In the first round on February 22 against twenty-one-year-old Vassily Ivanchuk, Garry had been overwhelmed. “It was the worst game of my career,” he said. Ivanchuk had dominated Kasparov from start to finish. For hours afterwards, on television monitors in the playing hall of the Hotel Anibal and in the pressroom, a computerized animation replayed the deadly flowing progress of Ivanchuk’s pieces picking apart the world champion’s position, again and again this utter annihilation. Four rounds later, Ivanchuk had eked out a win against Karpov. It was the first time that one man had ever beaten both Ks in one tournament, and though Ivanchuk went into the eighth round trailing Beliavsky by half a point, journalists in Linares were fawning over the introverted Ukrainian. Along with original ideas in the openings, he was demonstrating a Kasparov-like feel for imbalanced positions, and, when it was called for, he defended ferociously. As the tournament continued, chess writers began to speculate that the next world champion was likely to be Ivanchuk, and that it could happen as early as 1993.

  In round seven, Kasparov had taken out his frustration on sixteen-year-old Gata Kamsky, who was having a terrible tournament. Garry crushed the teenager in twenty-two moves, spurring players to wonder if Rustam would continue to claim that the world champion was terrified of his son. But the lost opportunity against Speelman kept working at Kasparov. “An amateur could have won that game,” he said, showing the position to Josh, who had traveled with me to Spain. With an incredulous expression on his face, Garry demonstrated a half-dozen winning plans that for some reason he had failed to employ. It is Kasparov’s manner to look back at his mistakes in utter disbelief, as though they were the work of another man. “Unbelievable,” he muttered.