by Frank Brady
In late May of 1993, the Polgars, the royal chess family of Hungary, visited Bobby—Laszlo, the father, and his two precocious daughters, Judit, sixteen, and Sofia, nineteen. Both girls were chess prodigies. (The oldest daughter, Zsuzsa, twenty-three—a grandmaster—was in Peru at a tournament.) Bobby welcomed their arrival since he was starved for companionship.
Soon after they left, though, he began to feel very hemmed in by circumstances. His funds were getting a bit crimped since he was fearful of traveling to Switzerland to draw money from his account—and if he tried to have the Swiss bank wire money to a bank in Magyarkanizsa, he’d once again be violating the sanctions. Not having many people to interact with or much to do was making him feel lonely and bored. (“I have no friends here; only Gliga and the bodyguards,” he wrote to Zita.) Somehow, he had to extricate himself from Yugoslavia.
Without naming the country he wanted to go to, he sought legal advice from an attorney in Los Angeles and without mentioning names, should the phones be tapped, he had an English-speaking attorney in Magyarkanizsa take down the information. The country that Bobby had in mind to go to was the Philippines, although other than Torre he told no one of his intended destination. Getting there would be complicated.
If Bobby managed to get to Hungary without being arrested, he could fly directly to the Philippines. If traveling there directly appeared too risky, he could rent a small private plane somewhere in Hungary, or even Yugoslavia, and fly to Greece or Egypt and then to Manila. Another possibility was taking a boat or a tramp steamer, but that might be too prolonged. Bobby worried that his funds in the Union Bank of Switzerland might be sequestered, so he wanted to get the money out of there as soon as possible.
Ultimately, Bobby felt that traveling to the Philippines—as much as he wanted to go—was a risk he wasn’t prepared to take at that particular time, and in any event, he learned that his UBS funds couldn’t be sequestered. While he was still pondering what to do, he received some shocking news.
Zita had taken the bus from Budapest to visit him, and she had an announcement to make: She was pregnant, and not by Bobby. One can only imagine Bobby’s shock, anger, and sadness at hearing this. He couldn’t understand or accept that the passion he felt for Zita wasn’t reciprocal. His proposal of marriage was categorically refused. A bitter argument raged through the night. “He was rough,” Zita said. “His behavior was very, very bad.… he hurt those that I love.” Finally, as dawn approached, Bobby went to sleep and Zita awoke a few hours later. She left a good-bye note indicating that her affair had nothing to do with why she didn’t want to marry him. The fact was, she just didn’t love him.
When Bobby awoke, he wrote a letter of apology to her, but she didn’t answer.
When Zsuzsa Polgar returned to Budapest, her family made a second visit to Magyarkanizsa, specifically so that she could meet Bobby. Accompanying the family in Zsuzsa’s VW Passat was Janos Kubat. Describing her first impressions of Bobby Fischer, Zsuzsa recalled: “I was surprised to see how tall and big he was. He was slightly overweight, though I wouldn’t call him fat, and he seemed to have enormous hands and feet. He was very friendly and open with me right away, and had a lot of questions including about my recent trip to Peru.”
Zsuzsa questioned Bobby about why he was staying in Magyarkanizsa—an ancient town, small and colorless—when he could be living in Budapest, the Paris of Eastern Europe, a city with many restaurants (including ones that featured his favorite Japanese cuisine), movie theaters, bookshops, thermal baths, concerts, and libraries. She added that there he could socialize with some of the great Hungarian players he knew—men such as Benko, Lilienthal, Portisch, and Szabo.
Bobby listened closely to what Zsuzsa was saying. He realized that if he was in Budapest he could continue to pursue Zita much more easily. He saw his quest for her in chess terms: “I have been in lost positions before … worse than this, and I won!” Laszlo Polgar invited Bobby to stay with his family anytime at his country home. That left only one question to ponder: Would he be stopped at the crossing into Hungary and turned over to the U.S. authorities?
The Polgars, thinking of everything, had taken a chance on their way across the border and asked the guards that very question. They were assured that Bobby wouldn’t have any trouble entering Hungary. He was somewhat skeptical, however, and wrote apprehensively to his friend Miyoko Watai in Japan: “I think the Hungarians may arrest me as soon as I cross the border.”
Realizing that his next move might ruin his life, Bobby, whose life on the chessboard had always been about preparation and calculation, decided that people in desperate positions must take desperate chances. Two weeks later, Bobby, Eugene Torre, and the two bodyguards drove in a rented car to the border of Hungary, were asked for their passports, and without further delay were allowed to pass. If the guards recognized Bobby and knew he was a wanted fugitive, they gave no evidence of it.
Entering the sparkling city of Budapest, Fischer checked into one of the most romantic and elegant hotels in the city, the Gellért, right on the Danube, and had lunch on the terrace. Bobby couldn’t wait to slip into the Gellért’s thermal bath; he felt he was in paradise. Even the bell captain made him feel at home. When the man carried Bobby’s luggage to his room, he suddenly recognized the reclusive champion and challenged him to a game.
13
Crossing Borders
YOU DON’T NEED BODYGUARDS in Budapest,” Benko told Bobby. “Only the Russian Mafia have bodyguards here.” Benko was concerned that Bobby’s two barrel-chested Serbian bodyguards, both with necks like wrestlers and carrying automatic pistols, would bring even more attention to Bobby than if he made his way through the city by himself. Bobby wasn’t quite ready to give them up, however. Not only did they protect him, but he used them to run errands, serve as chauffeurs and occasional dinner companions, and be available to do whatever else he wanted at any hour. Primarily, of course, their job was to keep him safe. He thought he needed protection from the U.S. government, which just might have him assassinated instead of extraditing him and bringing him home for a costly and unpopular trial. He was worried about Israel as well. Because of his statements finding fault with Jews, he believed that either the Mossad or an inflamed pro-Israeli patriot might also try to kill him. And he’d always thought that the Soviets wanted him dead, because of the international embarrassment over the 1972 match, and his accusations of Russian cheating. To protect himself, he bought a heavy coat made of horse leather that weighed more than thirty pounds; he hoped it would be thick enough to deflect a knife attack. It’s also likely that he wore a bulletproof vest.
All of these fears, tinged with paranoia, seemed to Bobby to justify constant concern for his life. Though some thought his fears were imaginary, he responded to physical threats just as he did threats on the board. He wanted to be prepared for any eventuality—an attack from any direction—so that it could be thwarted. His continual fear of being arrested, killed, accosted, or insulted fatigued him, and that may be one of the reasons he slept ten or twelve hours every night. He was ever fearful of what lay in the shadows, and that ever-present dread, combined with his constant tilting at windmills, exhausted him.
As soon as he was settled at the Hotel Gellért, Bobby was invited to spend part of the summer with the Polgars at their country compound at Nagymaros, about thirty-five miles north of Budapest, in the verdant Danube Bend section of the Slavic Hills of Hungary. As he and his two bodyguards drove along the banks of the Danube, Bobby noticed that the river wasn’t the color he’d thought it would be. Unlike “The Blue Danube” of Strauss’s waltz, this deep water was mud brown.
Bobby and his guards were given a small cottage at Nagymaros, but he ate all of his meals and spent most of his time at the large family house. All of the sisters played chess with him, but acceding to his preference, they played Fischer Random. Invented by Bobby, this was a variation on the standard game. The pawns are placed in their normal positions at the beginning of the game
. The pieces remain in the back row and are placed randomly, on squares that are different from where they normally reside. Thus players who’ve spent years studying chess openings don’t have much advantage: Memory and book learning (except as they concern endings) aren’t as important. Imagination and ingenuity become more essential. As it happened, eighteen-year-old Sofia, the middle of the Polgar daughters, beat Bobby three straight. Zsuzsa played him “countless games” and never revealed the results other than to say she did “all right.” She observed that Bobby’s ability as an analyst was awesome.
Laszlo Polgar was a man who didn’t mince words. When Bobby denied the very existence of Auschwitz, refusing to acknowledge that more than one million people had been murdered there, Laszlo told him about relatives who’d been exterminated in concentration camps. “Bobby,” he said, frowning, “do you really think my family disappeared by some magic trick?” Bobby had nothing to back up his claim and could only refer to various Holocaust denial books.
It seems in keeping with Bobby’s beliefs and personality that even though he was a guest, he had the audacity to voice his anti-Semitic views in the Jewish household of the Polgars’. Zsuzsa recalled: “I tried to convince him in the beginning about the realities, telling him the facts, but soon I realized that it was impossible to convince him, and I tried to change the topic.” Judit was more outspoken: “He was an extremely great player, but crazy: a sick-psycho.” And her father agreed: “He was schizophrenic.”
Despite Bobby’s insensitivity and bullheadedness, the Polgars were gracious hosts and continued to entertain and care for him. Eventually, Bobby shifted his monologues from hatred of the Jews to chess. He became angry, however, when Laszlo showed him a book published in 1910 by the Croatian writer Izidor Gross. The book described a variation of chess that seemed to be the forerunner of Fischer Random, with the exact same rules. Muttering something about Gross being Jewish, Bobby went on to change the rules of his variation to make it different from Gross’s.
One day that summer the family went on an outing to the Visegrád water park. They invited Bobby to join them, along with his bodyguards. After taking the ferry across the river to reach the park, Bobby was soon in his element: swimming, and lounging in the hot tubs. He even went on the giant water slide, and wound up trying it over and over again. “He was like a big kid,” Zsuzsa fondly remembered.
Laszlo kept a watchful eye on Bobby’s behavior toward the three sisters. Bobby favored Zsuzsa, but she stated afterward that she wasn’t aware of his growing affection. Laszlo was, and he didn’t like it.
After three and a half weeks, Magyar Television somehow learned that Bobby was staying at Nagymaros and sent a camera crew to film him. Crew members hid in the woods at a distance of about fifty yards and filmed him using a telescopic lens. When someone became aware of their presence, there was panic. Bobby was a fugitive, and he obviously didn’t want the world to know where he was hiding. He sent his bodyguards after the cameramen, and they wrenched the cassettes out of the cameras: No one was going to argue with the two bruisers. Bobby then asked Polgar for a hammer, sat on the stone floor of the living room, and ceremoniously and with increasing anger smashed the cassettes to pieces.
The Polgars had offered Bobby friendship and a respite, but it was now clear that the press was aware of his specific whereabouts. He departed from Nagymaros immediately, returned to Budapest, packed his bags, and left the Gellért in short order. Accompanied by his bodyguards, who were now doubling as porters, he checked into the Hotel Rege, at the foot of the Buda Hills, across the street from Benko’s apartment and about fifteen minutes by bus from the city’s center. Then, taking his friend’s advice, he permanently dismissed his bodyguards as being too obvious and therefore potentially dangerous.
The Budapest that Bobby roamed through in 1993 was a rapidly changing city. No longer under the thumb of the Soviets, the city (and all of Hungary) had rid itself of the Iron Curtain in 1989 and had opened its border to Austria. Many businesses had been privatized, and only a small percentage were still connected to Russia. Among the people, there was a sense of vibrancy and freedom. It could be felt just walking down the Váci Utca, the city’s principal mall street, with shops of all kinds selling wares. People were smiling, and staying out late enjoying themselves.
When Bobby determined, or at least believed, that he was no longer being followed or pursued, he began to freely wander the city, taking trams and buses to various destinations. Though many people undoubtedly recognized him, they almost never approached. Indeed, he always felt he was an alien and never a true resident of Budapest. Even after living there for years, he referred to himself as a “tourist.”
He continued to visit the Polgars in Budapest, and on days that he wasn’t playing chess or Ping-Pong with them, he’d be at the home of eighty-two-year-old Andrei Lilienthal and his wife, Olga, who was thirty years younger. The Lilienthals were genial hosts and they adored Bobby, and he greatly respected Lilienthal, a man who had once defeated former World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik. The old grandmaster had many tales to tell, and listening to him was like reading a book of chess history.
Although Olga was almost the same age as Bobby, she treated him in a motherly way—for example, by preparing the foods she knew he preferred. He spoke to Olga in Russian, and she’d later tell people that his command of the language was “pretty good.” All throughout the years that he lived in Budapest, Bobby studied Russian almost every day, and he used Olga to correct his grammar and pronunciation. In his library, he collected various Russian-English dictionaries and, also, books on Russian grammar and conversation. Lilienthal and Bobby talked in German.
When Bobby aired his views regarding the Jews, Lilienthal stopped him: “Bobby,” he said, “did you know that I, in fact, am a Jew?” Bobby smiled and replied, “You are a good man, a good person, so you are not a Jew.” It was becoming apparent that, although Bobby’s rhetoric was clearly anti-Semitic, he tended to use the word “Jew” as a general pejorative. Anyone—whether Jewish or not—who was “bad,” in Bobby’s opinion, was a Jew. Anyone who was “good”—such as Lilienthal—whether Jewish or not, was not a Jew. “I reserve the right to generalize,” Bobby wrote about his penchant for stereotyping.
After dinner almost every night, when he was at the Lilienthals’ home, Bobby would watch a wide range of Russian television broadcasting—concerts, news, films—which he preferred to the Hungarian and American programming that was available. Such viewing also helped increase his understanding of the language. And then Bobby and Lilienthal would repair to the study and analyze games far into the night. They never played.
Since the Lilienthals were supportive of Bobby, he reciprocated with gifts: a television satellite dish, a vacuum cleaner, leather goods that he’d buy on trips to Vienna, and special gifts for birthdays and other holidays. His relationship with the Lilienthals wasn’t unlike the one he’d had with Jack and Ethel Collins: Together, the three created a family atmosphere that was consistently supportive, involved chess, and hopefully would last for years.
After four years of interacting affectionately with the Lilienthals, however, two incidents severed the bond. Andrei had surreptitiously taken a photograph of Bobby at a New Year’s Eve dinner party and sent it to Shakhmatny Bulletin, the Russian chess magazine. They published the picture and as an honorarium sent Lilienthal $200. Bobby was furious when he saw the issue and became more incensed when he learned that Lilienthal had been paid for the photo.
Bobby continually talked about the royalties he was owed for the Russian-language edition of My 60 Memorable Games, and Lilienthal sent a letter to Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the current president of FIDE, and signed Bobby’s name to it (without his knowledge), asking for a meeting. At one of his press conferences in Yugoslavia, Bobby had said, just to open discussions about how much was owed him, that the Russian publishers would have to pay $100,000, but that it was possible he really was owed “millions.” Ilyumzhinov was also the president of th
e Russian Republic of Kalmykia, on the northwest shores of the Caspian Sea. An extraordinarily wealthy man with a passion for chess, he wanted to pay Bobby some of the royalties that were due him. He relayed a message to Lilienthal that he’d deliver the $100,000 in American cash to Bobby personally.
A meeting was arranged—a dinner at the Lilienthals’. It had been eighteen years since Bobby had broken off relations with FIDE, when he forfeited his match with Karpov, and therefore Bobby was not prone to be friendly, although Ilyumzhinov had had nothing to do with the organization at the time of the Karpov debacle. Speaking excellent English, Ilyumzhinov greeted Bobby and handed him a suitcase of money. Bobby sat there and resolutely counted every dollar. The dinner that followed was lively and cordial: Bobby showed Ilyumzhinov how Fischer Random was played, and he plied the president with questions about Russian politics. Ilyumzhinov recalled: “I was struck by how Fischer was up on everything that was happening in our country. He named our politicians and members of the government, and asked who I thought would win the elections.”
Offers of possible reconciliation between Bobby and FIDE were made that evening, and Ilyumzhinov suggested that Bobby move to Kalmykia, where he’d be given free land and a new house could be built to his specifications. The federation president gave Bobby a deed for more than an acre of land in Elista, his capital city. Bobby thanked the president and asked about Kalmykia’s medical care program but did not accept Ilyumzhinov’s offer to live in Elista. Ilyumzhinov also offered to put up millions for another Fischer-Spassky match, but all Bobby would say was “I am only interested in Fischer Random.” Somehow, in the course of the conversation, Bobby learned that the letter that had been sent to Ilyumzhinov had his forged name on it. The evening was getting late, and Ilyumzhinov began to make motions to go, but before doing so, he asked Bobby to pose with him for a photograph. “No,” said Bobby ungraciously, silently fuming over what he regarded as two betrayals by Lilienthal (the photo and the forgery), “the $100,000 that you gave me doesn’t include a photograph.” Ilyumzhinov, the spurned suitor, left in a huff, and Bobby, the resentful friend, exited just behind him—with the money. Bobby always held that it was easier to forgive an enemy than a friend. He never saw the Lilienthals again.