Endgame
Page 1
More Praise for
ENDGAME
“Bobby Fischer began life as a lonely prodigy and ended it as a hate-spewing enigma, and in between became America’s greatest chess player, a man renowned both for his unmatched brilliance and social clumsiness. In Endgame, Frank Brady masterfully chronicles the full breadth of Fischer’s life, producing a narrative driven by staggering detail and profound insight into the psyche of a troubled genius.”
—Wayne Coffey, New York Times bestselling author of The Boys of Winter
“The teenage prodigy, the eccentric champion, the irascible anti-Semite, the genius, the pathetic paranoid—these and other Bobby Fischers strut and fret their hour upon celebrity’s stage.… Informed, thorough, sympathetic, and surpassingly sad.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A definitive and finely detailed chronicle of one of the most fascinating and eccentric Americans of the twentieth century, written by one of the few men with the expertise, knowledge, and writing ability to pull it off in a manner deserving of the subject.”
—Michael Weinreb, author of The Kings of New York
“I have been following Bobby Fischer my whole life, but I learned something new on nearly every page of this wonderful book. Frank Brady is the perfect biographer for Bobby Fischer, and Endgame tells the full and fair story of Fischer’s astonishing rise and heartbreaking fall.”
—Christopher Chabris, coauthor of The Invisible Gorilla
“Fischer is America’s greatest antihero. This fascinating biography is filled with hope, Cold War intrigue, the fulfillment of genius, and an explosive fall from grace that is both deeply moving and, ultimately, profoundly sad.”
—Jeremy Silman, author of The Amateur’s Mind
Copyright © 2011 by Frank Brady
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brady, Frank, 1934–
Endgame : Bobby Fischer’s remarkable rise and fall—from America’s brightest prodigy to the
edge of madness / by Frank Brady.
p. cm.
1. Fischer, Bobby, 1943–2008. 2. Chess players—United States—Biography. 3. Chess—
Collection of games. I. Title
GV1439.F5B68 2010
794.1092—dc22
[B]
2010033840
eISBN: 978-0-307-46392-0
Jacket design by David Tran
Jacket photograph © Stephen Green—Armytage/Sports Illustrated/Getty Images
v3.1
To Maxine,
always my talisman
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Author’s Note
Epigraph
1: Loneliness to Passion
2: Childhood Obsession
3: Out of the Head of Zeus
4: The American Wunderkind
5: The Cold War Gladiator
6: The New Fischer
7: Einstein’s Theory
8: Legends Clash
9: The Candidate
10: The Champion
11: The Wilderness Years
12: Fischer-Spassky Redux
13: Crossing Borders
14: Arrest and Rescue
15: Living and Dying in Iceland
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
AUTHOR’S NOTE
AS SOMEONE WHO knew Bobby Fischer from the time he was quite young, I’ve been asked hundreds of times, “What was Bobby Fischer really like?” This book is an attempt to answer that question. But a warning to those who turn these pages: Paradoxes abound. Bobby was secretive, yet candid; generous, yet parsimonious; naive, yet well informed; cruel, yet kind; religious, yet heretical. His games were filled with charm and beauty and significance. His outrageous pronouncements were filled with cruelty and prejudice and hate. And though for a period of decades he poured most of his energy and passion into a quest for chess excellence, he was not the idiot savant often portrayed by the press.
As Virginia Woolf observed in her one attempt at writing a life story, that of artist Roger Fry: “A biography is considered complete if it merely accounts for six or seven selves, whereas a person may well have as many as one thousand.” Many lives, and then second and even third acts, constitute the drama of Bobby Fischer, but my attempt here was to delineate just one of Fischer’s kaleidoscopic personalities—that of a genius, an inwardly tortured warrior—and within that framework to capture his shifting identities and roles. The renowned psychologist Alfred Binet noted that if we could look inside the mind of a chess player we would see there “a whole world of feelings, images, ideas, emotions and passions.” And so it was with Bobby: His head was not merely filled with chess bytes, phantom computer connections on a grid of sixty-four squares, but with poetry and song and lyricism.
I ask forgiveness for my occasional speculations in this book, but Fischer’s motivations beg to be understood; and when conjecture is used, I inform the reader of my doing so. To vivify Bobby’s extraordinary life I sometimes use the techniques of the novelist: elaboration of setting, magnification of detail, fragments of dialogue, and revelation of interior states. But always my use of those devices is based on my research, recollection, and study of the man. I want readers—whether they play chess or not—to feel as though they’re sitting next to Bobby, on his side of the chessboard, or in the privacy of his home, experiencing the rush of his triumphs, the pain of his defeats, and the venom of his anger.
I’ve been following Bobby Fischer’s life story from the first time we met—at a chess tournament when he was a child and I was a teen—all the way to his grave in the remote and windswept countryside of Iceland. Over the years we played hundreds of games together, dined in Greenwich Village restaurants, traveled to tournaments, attended dinner parties, and walked the streets of Manhattan for hours on end. He was light-years ahead of me in chess ability, but despite the yawning gap that separated us, we found ways to bond. I knew his family and had many talks about Bobby with his mother.
Though Bobby and I were friends, with a tempestuous relationship that remained on for years and eventually was off, I was also a privileged official witness to his greatness. As a director of one of the first rated tournaments he played in as a child, I noted his steadfastness. As an arbiter when he accomplished his historic 11–0 clean sweep at the 1963–64 U.S. Championship tournament, I stood by his board and observed his pride of accomplishment. And as the initial arbiter for Bobby when he was banned from traveling to Cuba for the Havana International Tournament and forced to play remotely by Teletype entry, I spent hours alone with him in a closed room of the Marshall Chess Club, watching how his deep concentration was being compromised by fatigue.
Although Endgame includes many incidents to which I was an eyewitness or in which I participated, the book is not in any way my memoir, and I’ve tried to remain invisible as much as possible. Through original research, analysis of documents and letters heretofore untapped, and hundreds of interviews over the years with people who knew or had a different perspective on Bobby, I’ve tried to capture the story of how he not only transformed himself, but also how, through a mysterious alchemy, he affected the image and status of chess in the minds of millions. And also how, unexpectedly, he saw his life become intertwined with the Cold War.
Mainly as a result of Bobby’s charisma and his widely publicized contretemps, his winning
the World Championship created more furor and attention—and more awareness of the game by the general public—than any other chess event in history. Bobby had an uneasy relationship with his extraordinary celebrity and ultimately grew to despise it. It was the public’s intrusive gaze that caused him, in later years, to lead a determinedly reclusive, almost hermetic life.
For this book, I obtained access to portions of the KGB and FBI files on Bobby and his mother; the files not only provided me with insights but also with specific information that corrects previously published versions of Bobby’s life (including my own).
In the course of researching Endgame, I came across an autobiographical essay—never published—that Bobby wrote when he was in his teens, rough-hewn for sure, but introspective nevertheless, which in many ways gave the “story behind the story” of his life at that time, especially how he viewed his ascent and how he was treated by various chess organizations. Information that I found in this essay helped to rectify existing misconceptions. In addition, I obtained access to the personal archives of his chess mentor, Jack Collins, and of Bobby’s mother, Regina Fischer. These invaluable troves of letters, photos, and clippings have been an important source for this book. Reading a letter from Bobby to Jack Collins, written decades ago, is almost like bringing Bobby back to life.
Whether one admires or despises Bobby Fischer—and it’s quite easy to do both simultaneously, as these pages will show—I hope that his story proves that while he was a deeply troubled soul, he was also a serious and great artist, one who had a passion to know.
We may not—and perhaps should not—forgive Bobby Fischer’s twisted political and antireligious assaults, but we should never forget his sheer brilliance on the chessboard. After reading this biography, I would suggest that the reader look to, and study, his games—the true testament to who he was, and his ultimate legacy.
There was a boy, a chessplayer once, who revealed that his gift consisted partly in a clear inner vision of potential moves of each piece as objects with flashing or moving tails of colored light. He saw a live possible pattern of potential moves and selected them according to which ones made the pattern strongest, the tensions greatest. His mistakes were made when he selected not the toughest, but the most beautiful lines of light.
From The Virgin in the Garden, by A. S. Byatt
1
Loneliness to Passion
I CAN’T BREATHE! I can’t breathe!” Bobby Fischer’s screams were muffled by the black hood tied tightly around his head. He felt as if he were suffocating, near death. He shook his head furiously to loosen the covering.
Two Japanese security guards were holding him down on the floor of the brightly lit cell, one sitting on his back and pinning his arms to his sides, the other holding his legs—Lilliputians atop the fallen Gulliver. Bobby’s lungs were being compressed, and he couldn’t get enough air. His right arm felt as if it had been broken from the scuffle that had happened moments before; he was bleeding from the mouth.
So this is how I’ll die, he thought. Will anyone ever know the truth about how I was murdered?
He pondered in the darkness, incredulous that a supposedly revoked passport had turned him into a prisoner. The scenario had evolved rapidly. It was July 13, 2004. After spending three months in Japan, he was about to embark for the Philippines. He’d arrived at Tokyo’s Narita Airport about two hours before his flight. At the ticket counter, an immigration officer had routinely checked his passport, entering the number: Z7792702. A discreet bell sounded and a red light began to flash slowly. “Please take a seat, Mr. Fischer, until we can check this out.”
Bobby was concerned but not yet frightened. He’d been traveling for twelve years between Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Germany, the Philippines, Japan, Austria, and other countries, clearing customs and crossing borders without incident. Extra pages had to be added to his passport because there was no room left to stamp the dates of his entries and exits, but this task had already been completed at the American embassy in Bern, Switzerland, in November 2003.
His worry was that the U.S. government might finally have caught up with him. He’d violated State Department economic sanctions against Yugoslavia by playing a $5 million chess match against Boris Spassky in Sveti Stefan, Montenegro, in 1992, and an arrest warrant had been issued at that time. If he went back to the United States, he’d have to stand trial, and the penalty, if he was convicted, would be anywhere from ten years in prison to $250,000 in fines, or both. A friend had called the State Department in the late 1990s and asked if Bobby could return home. “Of course he can,” said the spokesperson, “but as soon as he lands at JFK, we’ll nail him.” As a man without a country, Bobby eventually chose to settle in Hungary, and he had never heard another word from the American government. With twelve years having passed, he figured that as long as he stayed away from the United States, he’d be safe.
He sat where he was told, but fear began to take hold. Eventually, an immigration official asked Bobby to accompany him downstairs. “But I’ll miss my flight.” “We know that” was the peremptory reply. Escorted by security guards down a long, dark, and narrow hallway, Bobby demanded to know what was going on. “We just want to talk to you,” the official said. “Talk about what?” Bobby demanded. “We just talk” was the answer. Bobby stopped and refused to move. A translator was called in to make sure there was no confusion. Bobby spoke to him in English and Spanish. More security guards arrived, until approximately fifteen men surrounded the former chess champion in a grim, silent circle.
Finally, another official appeared and showed Bobby an arrest warrant, stating that he was traveling on an invalid passport and that he was under arrest. Bobby insisted that his passport was perfectly legal and had two and a half years to go before it expired. “You may call a representative of the U.S. embassy to assist you,” he was told. Bobby shook his head. “The U.S. embassy is the problem, not the solution,” he muttered. His fear was that a State Department representative might show up at the airport with a court order and try to have him extradited back to the United States to stand trial. He wanted to call one of his Japanese chess friends for help, but Immigration denied him access to a phone.
Bobby turned and started to walk away. He was blocked by a guard. Another guard tried to handcuff him, and he started twisting and turning to thwart the process. Several of the guards began hitting him with batons and pummeling him with their fists. He fought back, kicking and screaming, and he managed to bite one of the guards on the arm. Eventually, he went down. A half dozen guards hoisted him into the air and began carrying him by his arms and legs. Bobby continued squirming to get loose as the guards struggled to take him to an unknown destination. He kicked frantically, almost yanking his hands free. It was then that they put the black hood over his head.
Since Bobby knew that his passport was valid, what was going on? His comments about Jews and the crimes of the United States had stirred things up, but as an American citizen wasn’t he protected by the First Amendment? Anyway, how could his opinions have anything to do with his passport?
Maybe it was the taxes. Ever since his unsuccessful 1976 suit against Life magazine and one of its writers for violation of a contract, he’d been so disgusted with the jurisprudence system that he refused to pay any taxes.
Gasping for air, Bobby tried to enter a Zen state to clear his mind. He stopped resisting and his body became relaxed. The guards noticed the change. They released his arms and legs, stood up, ceremoniously removed the hood, then left the cell. They’d taken his shoes, his belt, his wallet, and—much to his dismay—the buffalo-leather passport case that he’d bought in Vienna years back. But he was alive … at least for the moment.
When he looked up, he saw a nondescript man with a video camera quietly filming him through the bars. After a few minutes the man vanished. Bobby spit out a piece of a tooth that had been chipped, either from one of the punches or when he was thrown to the floor. He put the remnants in his pocket.
> Lying on the cold cement floor, he felt his arm throb with pain. What was the next move and who would make it? He drifted off to sleep.
Forty-eight years earlier, August 1956
Visualizing his white pawn two squares in front of his king on an imaginary chessboard, thirteen-year-old Bobby Fischer announced his first move to his opponent, Jack Collins: “Pawn to king four.” Bobby was using a form of chess notation that described the movement of the pieces to various squares. As he spoke, he made a slight, unconscious movement of his head, an almost imperceptible nod, as if pushing the unseen pawn forward.
Collins, a diminutively proportioned man whose stunted legs had left him unable to walk, was propelled in a wheelchair along the crowded New York City street by a black manservant named Odell. The man was so strong that, in the days before handicap ramps, he could lift Collins and the chair all at once—up and down the stairs of homes or restaurants. Odell never talked much, but he was friendly and fiercely loyal to Collins, and from the time he met Bobby he’d felt a deep affection for the young boy.
Walking next to Collins was his slightly younger sister, Ethel, a plump but pretty registered nurse who was almost always by his side. She adored her brother and gave up everything—even marriage—to care for him. Although Jack and Ethel had just met Bobby that summer, they were fast becoming parental substitutes for him.
The Fellini-esque quartet spoke in an arcane language and made references to people with feudal titles who lived centuries ago. As they walked the long Brooklyn block from Lenox Road and Bedford Avenue to sometimes clamorous Flatbush Avenue, they attracted the curiosity of passersby. But they were unembarrassed, involved in a world of their own, one that bridged many continents and thousands of years and was inhabited by kings and courtiers, rajahs and princes. The group’s destination was the Silver Moon Chinese restaurant.