Mortal Games

by Waitzkin, Fred;

  There was also irritating news from abroad. Garry pointed to an article and photograph in a French newspaper, and shook his head in disbelief. “Do you see what I tell you, Fred?” The photograph showed demonstrators in Moscow: the article reported that 300,000 people had rallied against Gorbachev, a carefully-organized group of Yeltsin’s supporters. Garry’s mother and several friends had called from Moscow to say that over a million had turned out. Kasparov reflected bitterly that it was typical for the Western press to censor or soften examples of Gorbachev’s waning popularity. “Yeltsin will replace him soon. Definitely,” said Garry. “He has enormous popular support. Maybe higher than Mr. Bush has in America.”

  To win the Linares tournament, Garry had to beat Yusupov in the last round and Timman had to beat Ivanchuk. He would still tie for first, and hold on to his ten-year tournament record of first-place finishes, if he won while Timman and Ivanchuk drew. If Ivanchuk won, it was all over. Kasparov, who held strong reservations about Timman’s play, went into the last round feeling pessimistic. While Garry played his game, he constantly monitored the other. Ivanchuk went for broke, attacked and didn’t mind Timman taking a few of his pawns. They quickly achieved a wild unbalanced position which could have gone either way. And then, with Ivanchuk pressing hard, Timman wisely agreed to a draw.

  At this point, Kasparov’s position against Yusupov was at best equal. Garry looked at his docile army and made a classic wide-eyed face, Kasparov, how could you abandon me in this strongest tournament in the history of chess? Karpov came by and looked for a long, pleased minute. It was one of the only times in this tournament that Karpov had paused in front of Garry’s board. For the most part, living in this small hotel, each of these perpetual antagonists had pretended that the other did not exist. Passing in the hall or on the stairs, they didn’t say hello or nod. Then, on move thirty-three, Garry sacrificed a knight, straining to make gold out of straw, but Yusupov defended carefully, refusing to allow Garry a leg up. After nearly each move, Yusupov cast a sweet smile of assurance at his new bride, Nadia, who sat in the audience, nervously wringing her hands.

  After forty moves, they agreed to a draw. And Garry let out a long breath. The burden of the winning record was off his shoulders. DiMaggio must have felt this way when he went 0 for 4 after hitting in fifty-six games straight. During the postmortem, all the tension was out of Garry. He seemed to yield to the softness of Yusupov’s disposition. He smiled a little while they moved the pieces, and nodded yes when Yusupov explained his thinking. I suspected that Garry was a little pleased for Yusupov, whom he respected greatly, but when we walked back to the room, Garry remarked, “It’s a pity, the first time I’ve lost since 1981.” Of course, he hadn’t lost. He had finished second instead of first, but to Kasparov that was losing.

  “I don’t think it’s so terrible,” I said. “I mean, there’s something human about it, and you seem okay. You don’t seem as down as I thought you would be.”

  “Maybe it shows that my luck is turning the wrong way,” he answered.

  At the awards ceremony, Ivanchuk was absorbed in a deep calculation, and seemed confused when they asked him to come on stage. Having played so fantastically, at the outer reach of his imagination, ideas were still coursing through him, and impositions of the outside world were unsettling. On stage, he quieted himself, rocking from leg to leg, and then he looked to the sky and began moving his lips.

  For some reason, Kasparov’s regular table was occupied and we found ourselves eating our last dinner in Linares closer to Karpov, Ivanchuk and the Kamskys. Gata had finished in last place with only two and a half points, but father and son looked happy. The hated King Kasparov had lost. Also, they had analyzed the cause of Gata’s poor performance, and in interviews with various chess magazines, the Kamskys would explain that Gata had played badly in Linares because Garry Kasparov had poisoned his food. Before the first course was served, while Garry was out of the room to answer a phone call, Rustam Kamsky rose from his table and offered a toast. “Ivanchuk is the world champion. This tournament is the real world championship. Kasparov is finished. Kasparov is finished.” Shakarov raised a finger to his lips and whispered to me, “Don’t tell this to Garry.”

  Garry looked content. The tournament was over and he had made a discovery. He could lose and still feel alive. He seemed to revel in this unspoken, unexpected idea. He felt terrific. He looked around the room, drinking in the scene. It was great not to have to battle against Ivanchuk or Karpov tomorrow. He slouched at the table and nodded his head, not so bad, life’s not so bad. After a time, Dimitri Bjelica came over and asked Garry a couple of questions. But Dimitri didn’t seem very interested in Garry’s answers, and soon he interrupted to describe an interview with Fischer in 1971. After he left our table, Garry reflected, “That was the most important time in his life, and now he lives to re-create it. He is always sitting at Karpov’s elbow or mine, asking questions, but he doesn’t really care what we say. He is in the past with Bobby. He reminds me of a man I met in Reykjavik, Iceland, a few years ago. He was Bobby Fischer’s driver during the championship in 1972 and they became close. Every time I would say something to this man, he would bring up Bobby. He couldn’t listen. He wasn’t living in the moment. It occurred to me that this man was completely safe. The Fischer relationship was the single important moment in his life, and now he and Bobby were protected by time.”

  An hour later, Garry and I were standing outside with his bags. It was raining lightly. “It’s a colorful group, don’t you think?” he said, gesturing toward the hotel. “Even Kamsky. The father is a character. The chess world is better for him being there.” It was ten-thirty at night when a small sedan pulled up in front of the hotel. Garry shook hands warmly and climbed into the back seat. We would meet in New York in four weeks, he reminded me, dinner at Shun Lee Palace. He yawned. Garry would sleep like a baby in the back seat. In four hours, they would arrive in Madrid. Tomorrow morning, Kasparov had a press conference and a television show. He waved through the window, happy to be on the road again.

  EPILOGUE

  On June 9, 1991, three days before Boris Yeltsin would become Russia’s first democratically elected president, Garry Kasparov, dressed in blue jeans and a sports shirt, stood on a platform about to address a cheering crowd assembled in Moscow’s Manezhnaya Square. “Citizens of Moscow,” he began, and then for the first time appreciated the immensity of his audience. There were at least 250,000 people spread out in front of him, acres of people, swaying with the anticipation of democracy, wealth and good times—no more Gorbachev, no more food lines. Kasparov’s face went white. For three or four seconds, he could not recall his words, and then he burst into a flabbergasted smile. Look where I am. This boy from Baku. A wood pusher. The champion began to speak, at first hesitantly, but soon the words were pouring out of him: “This is the final stand against communism. It is a moment when we all must be united. Our opponents will do anything to win.”

  The crowd loved him. “On June twelfth, we will close a shameful page in our history and we will go onto the same road with all civilized people.” There was thunderous applause and cheering, political banners waving. The Kremlin rocked with the chant, “Yeltsin, Yeltsin, Yeltsin.” Garry was charismatic, a political rising star.

  Three days later, Masha, Garry and I walked from their little apartment to the neighborhood polling place, a technical school which was dank and in need of repair, like all of Moscow. People standing on line ahead of us were in festive spirits. Nearly everyone was voting for Yeltsin. In New York I had seen Garry use his celebrity to go to the front of the line, for example, when he needed to pick up a visa at the Spanish embassy. But not here, not today. Waiting his turn on election day had symbolic importance to him. When it was his turn to vote, he showed his passport to prove his citizenship like all the others on line, though the lady in charge tittered over Kasparov, whom she recognized immediately. Garry was very proud this day, but also cautious, as though recallin
g winning positions that he had failed to win because of overconfidence. “June twelfth is an historic date because communism has lost, but democracy hasn’t yet won.”

  We walked back to their apartment past a little lake that must once have been lovely but now was littered and slimed with motor oil. Garry was pensive. He kicked at the water’s edge. “It’s nice here,” he said, not noticing the bottles and cans. He was somewhere else. He threw a rock into the lake. “I have a story for you,” he said. “It’s about my father.” The word caught in his throat. Garry almost never referred to his father, and whenever I asked him what he remembered of his father, he would brush me off: “It was too long ago,” or “too painful.”

  “It’s a classic tale,” he said looking for a way to begin. “It’s about three friends, all Jews, all the same age. They lived next to one another in Baku. They were really great friends. David Zaferman, Bob Korsh and my father Kim Weinstein. While growing up, they were always together. All three attended the engineering institute in Baku. When one of them did his apprenticeship in Western Siberia, the other two came along. They loved the company of one another. Eventually they all married and still they remained friends, visiting one another, talking politics. They hated the Soviet system, but probably my father was the most forthright. He would criticize the system in public and was forced to change jobs several times because of his politics. He really hated the communism. He was always arguing with my grandfather about it. One time his strong views almost cost the marriage. My mother had an opportunity for advancement in her work but to be promoted she had to join the party. My father told her, ‘If you join the Communist Party, we are divorced.’ In 1965, my father wrote in his diary that in twenty-five years, there would be no more communism in the Soviet Union. His two friends said that he was crazy,” Garry nodded his head deliberately. “He was wrong by one year.

  “My father died in January, 1971, when I was seven. That year his two friends brought flowers to my father’s grave on his birthday, then again on the second of May, a day when people do this in my country, and once again the following January on the date of my father’s death. Then in 1972, David Zaferman decided to emigrate with his family to Israel. Before he left he asked Bob to bring flowers to the cemetery for him. Bob took this as a sacred responsibility. Always, on these days there were two pots of flowers on my father’s grave, and sometimes I came to the cemetery in the early morning and saw Bob Korsh there.

  “After the genocide in Baku, we lost track of our friends. People were scattered to the wind. Not only Armenians. There was also a Jewish exodus from Baku. Jews tried to get to Israel. Baku was a dangerous place to live. My mother and I often thought of the graves of my father and of my grandfather. Who would care for them? Probably they would be desecrated. In Baku, everything was fouled.

  “A few days ago, I was at my mother’s and one of the bodyguards said, ‘There is an old guy looking for you.’ My mother had an intuition that it was Bob Korsh. A few minutes later, they found him wandering on another floor in the building and brought him to us. Bob said to my mother, ‘I wanted always to live in my native city. But I’m old now and the city is empty.’ Bob was a lost person, like many refugees from Baku who are now in Moscow. ‘Klara, when they started the riots and murder, I began to cross out the names of my friends and relatives from my address book,’ he said. ‘One day this past April, I opened the book and I didn’t find any more names. They were all crossed out. Then I understood I would leave Baku, Klara.’

  “A very short story,” said Garry. “One day he opened the book and there were no more names. ‘Please, if you go back there put two pots of flowers on Kim’s grave,’ Bob said to us, but we won’t go back there. This will be the first year there will be no flowers. The first year of no communism.”

  As we walked from the lake, Garry was crying. He opened his wallet and stole a look at a photograph of his father, whom he barely remembered.

  No names in the book. What a time this past year and a little more had been for him. He had lost his home and managed to hang onto the world championship. He had predicted the fall of communism and then had become a player in that very drama. For Garry, June was an ending and a beginning. Masha was pregnant. Such a happy idea. Such lows and highs. Perhaps a son would drive away some of the sadness. “But a little girl would be fine,” he insisted. “The most important thing is for it to be healthy.” We came back to their apartment. We ate and then talked for hours. We were interrupted by a phone call from an official of the Kenyan Chess Federation. The man had been calling all week and had finally reached Garry. “Come to Kenya,” he said. “You’ll go on safari.” The idea seemed outrageously funny to all of us.

  Earlier that week, I had visited Arkady Murashov, at the time a People’s Deputy, who would later become Moscow’s Commissioner of Police. “Garry is one of the brightest political figures in the Soviet Union,” Arkady had said to me. “He gains respect among intellectuals here by the day. His one drawback is time. If he were to give up his chess life, he could do anything he wanted in Soviet politics.” In June of 1991, it appeared to many that Kasparov was poised to do just that. In the weeks after Linares, Kasparov did little studying. He was inflamed with Yeltsin’s election. At the beginning of June, he had met with Yeltsin once again to discuss George Bush’s reticence to accept the democratic movement, and Garry had described the lobbying effort of Gorbachev’s people in Washington. Perhaps Kasparov would be part of Yeltsin’s new government.

  I suggested this possibility several days after the election, when Murashov joined us for lunch. “Now we have to build a new opposition to Yeltsin,” Garry said, much to my surprise. “Yeltsin is the state. And the state is always the state. Oh, yes, Yeltsin was an important step towards democracy. But, when you listen closely to his speeches, he still uses some of the old communist rhetoric, and he has made compromises with the communists. Of course, we need an opposition to him. Here we don’t have democratic traditions. We need this to keep Yeltsin honest, and to force him to move quickly toward democratic changes.”

  Garry had decided to oppose Yeltsin even before the votes were counted. With Gorbachev down but not yet out, Garry already craved a new battle. In fairness, other leading Moscow democrats argued that an opposition to Yeltsin was essential for nurturing this fledgling democracy; nevertheless it was in Garry’s nature to seek the boldest alternative, to be at the forefront of the movement. Garry had little patience for negotiation and compromise. Several months earlier, when Democratic Russia, the political movement that he had helped to create, adopted a cautious middle-of-the-road platform, Kasparov promptly resigned. The plodding labor of tearing down the apparat and building a new government was inimical to his personality. Being a People’s Deputy or Yeltsin’s Secretary of something would be a slow death. But whether Garry would actually start an opposition to Yeltsin was another question entirely. I had learned long ago that for Kasparov the idea was more intriguing than the execution. He gained energy and momentum from new ideas. When propositions felt stale or fell back into the mainstream, he lost interest without remorse. Kasparov leaped from slow-moving trains. His enemies considered his wanderlust irresponsible and even immoral. Those who loved Kasparov knew him to be a Prospero, who needed to play new and original moves in order to play at all.

  “What do you think Gorbachev will do?” I asked.

  “I would prefer to have him out of the country. I think the perfect choice for him would be to join the faculty at Harvard,” he said, trying to keep a straight face. “He could write a book, ‘How I Killed Communism in the Soviet Union.’ Some publisher will give him a six- or eight-million-dollar advance. I’m sure it would rise to the top of the best-seller list in The New York Times Book Review.”

  * * *

  On August 19, when the coup took place, Garry was resting and studying chess in Malibu in a lavish rented house that had once been owned by Madonna. “It felt confusing and very uncomfortable hearing about this so-called coup fr
om southern California,” he reflected sometime later. “If I had been at home, I would have been with all of my friends in the Russian White House. But actually I could be more useful in California.” During those momentous days, Garry spoke constantly with journalists and appeared on U.S. television. “I’ve never trusted the American press,” he said. “The New York Times, the networks—ideology and preconceptions dominate their coverage. The American assessment of the coup was simply astounding. Everyone was convinced that perestroika was finished and we were back in the cold war.”

  On the second day of the coup, Garry was a guest on Larry King Live, along with Jeane Kirkpatrick and a Russian defector. “The defector, who had not been in Moscow for a long time, believed that the coup would fail but that it would be a lengthy process. Jeane Kirkpatrick said it would take forty-eight weeks. I said that the coup would be defeated in forty-eight hours.” Jeane Kirkpatrick and Larry King both responded as though Kasparov did not have a realistic grasp of the situation. “I told them that Russian officers would not shoot democrats; even the KGB would not go against the people. I said the same thing on the Tonight Show to Jay Leno and on Good Morning America.”

  On August 23, Kasparov published an article in the Wall Street Journal suggesting that Gorbachev was himself behind the coup, a view that has gained acceptance among Moscow intellectuals. “I believe that Gorbachev was in favor of this military takeover. He definitely knew about it in advance,” Garry said in September during a visit to New York, “but he wanted to be like Pontius Pilate in Master and Margarita, to keep his hands clean while it took place. So he took a little vacation in his dacha while men he had promoted to power did the dirty work. Obviously he was never in danger. His worldwide system of communication was never broken. He was never arrested. What kind of coup is that? If you follow the story, for the first two days Gorbachev was relaxed, swimming on the beach. He only became nervous on the third day when it became clear that the coup was failing. If the coup had succeeded, he would have come back and assumed absolute power.