Endgame

by Frank Brady

  Many people who haven’t been formally educated awaken later in life with a desire to progress and deepen their view of the world, to go back to school or self-educate themselves. Bobby joined their ranks out of an essential self-awareness. “Larry Evans once said,” Bobby commented, “that I didn’t know anything about life; all I knew was chess, and he was right!” In a somewhat different mood, Bobby also said at one point that he felt like giving up chess from time to time, “but what else would I do?”

  Bobby’s lack of traditional institutional education was well known and continually reported in the press, but what wasn’t common knowledge was that after he won the World Championship at age twenty-nine, he began a systemized regimen of study outside chess. History, government, religion, politics, and current events became his greatest interests, and during the thirty-three-year interval from his first Reykjavik stay to his second he spent most of his spare time reading and amassing knowledge.

  Several Icelanders indicated that there was nothing he couldn’t discuss in depth. He could talk about such subjects as the French Revolution and the Siberian gulags, the philosophy of Nietzsche, and the discourses of Disraeli.

  After spending close to two hours eating and reading at Anestu Grösum, and finishing off two helpings of skyr with redundant whipped cream, Bobby would invariably walk to Bókin. It was a book lover’s dream and delightfully eccentric: A stuffed monkey doll with spectacles sat outside the store with a book in its lap; there were thousands of used books, mainly in Icelandic but a great portion in English, German, and Danish, some on subjects so arcane that only a few could understand or appreciate them, such as the mating habits of the puffin—the national bird—or an analysis of the inscriptions on the churches of Heidelberg. The aisles of bookshelves meandered all over the store, and in the center of the room there was a huge hillock of books more than five feet tall, haphazardly thrown there and cascading to the floor because there was simply no room to put them anywhere else. There were fewer than a dozen chess books for sale.

  Each day Bobby collected his mail at the store, kept for him behind the counter. He’d say a few words to the store’s owner, Bragi Kristjonsson, and head to his spot at the store’s farthest reaches, at the end of one of the not quite three-foot-wide corridors, with low stacks of books and old copies of National Geographic lining the edges of the aisle. Perhaps as a gesture of respect toward his famous customer, Bragi placed a battered chair at the end of the corridor, and Bobby sat there next to a small window that looked out at a tattoo parlor (which he disapproved of) across the street, reading and dreaming—and sometimes even falling asleep—often to closing time. It was his home. “It’s good to be free,” he wrote to a friend.

  The greatest portion of Bobby’s reading was devoted to history, everything from The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire to The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich; he pored over books on battles from ancient Greece to World War II and conspiracy theories such as Hitler’s Secret Bankers: How Switzerland Profited from Nazi Germany, as well as anti-Semitic tracts such as Jewish Ritual Murder. It’s possible that he was trying to find his own place in history through his voracious reading, but it was more likely a search for understanding, an attempt to comprehend his complicated gestalt—“the whole catastrophe,” as the fictional Zorba the Greek perceptively described himself.

  Just as Fischer was becoming settled in Iceland, hardly before he had a chance to unpack his bags (which held few possessions: only what clothes and books he owned in Japan), an impending match with his friend Pal Benko was suddenly announced by Janos Kubat, the man who’d helped arrange the Fischer-Spassky match in 1992. Kubat issued the announcement to RIA, the Russian News Agency, and said the match would take place in the town of Magyarkanizsa on the border of Hungary and Serbia, where Bobby had lived for several months in 1992. Kubat claimed that a financial sponsor had been found and that the venue was already chosen. There was only one problem: Bobby knew nothing of the match. He’d had a falling-out with Kubat in August of 1993 over a moral issue, according to Bobby, and they weren’t on speaking terms. Most important, he had no intention of leaving Iceland, because of the threat of extradition to the United States.

  Two weeks after being greeted as a hero in Iceland, and after stating that he just wanted to live in peace, Bobby found that his troubles weren’t over. He received a letter dated April 7, 2005, from the Union Bank of Switzerland to the effect that the institution was closing his account. UBS was holding some $3 million of his assets, originally deposited there in 1992, and wanted to know to which bank in Iceland Bobby wished his investments transferred.

  Bobby had no intention of placing his money in an Icelandic bank (despite being able to receive a potentially higher interest rate there) and demanded to know what was going on. While he and the bank were exchanging intransigent letters, he gave an interview to Morgunbladid in which he said: “Possibly a third party has had something to do with this as a part of further attacks against me. In fact, I don’t know what the directors of UBS are thinking but it seems quite clear that the bank is afraid to keep me as a customer. This is absolutely vicious, illegal and unfair of the UBS.” He threatened a lawsuit. The third party he presumed responsible was the United States government.

  Bobby turned to Einar Einarsson for advice. Not only was Einarsson a member of the Icelandic committee that had helped secure Bobby’s release from imprisonment, he’d also been a leading banker before introducing the Visa credit card to Iceland. Careful and methodical, Einarsson began to coach Bobby through an exchange of long, technical e-mails with UBS. Bobby was impatient. He didn’t have a chess tournament to discharge his competitive energy, so he vented his anger at the Swiss bank, which he insisted was run by Jews. This was a different kind of opponent, though, and Bobby hadn’t mastered the techniques of dueling with international financial institutions. So he lost. Eventually, UBS liquidated all of his assets and transferred them to Landsbanki in Reykjavik. Bobby claimed that he lost a sizable amount in the transaction.

  In retrospect, it seems quite clear what UBS was doing. Many of its fifty-two thousand accounts were offshore holdings, secretly deposited—many without names, just numbers—as tax havens for American citizens. In Bobby’s case, he was broadcasting, some might say boasting—without cover—that he had $3 million at UBS (he may have even given his account number over the air), and since he’d paid no income tax on it, or on any of his other income since 1977, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service was making its displeasure known to UBS.

  Within a few years after Bobby’s dispute with the UBS, thousands of American tax evaders, most millionaires like Bobby, came forth to avoid prosecution, and others who continued to hide their money at UBS were being pursued and arrested for income tax evasion. UBS wasn’t conspiring against Bobby: They just wanted to get rid of one of their most public and foolish clients.

  Since Iceland’s interest rate at that time was higher than Switzerland’s, it’s curious why Bobby didn’t want the transfer. Some have speculated that he was somehow prescient or had insider or special knowledge that the Icelandic banks would fail (as they did in 2008, in the country’s economic collapse). A more likely explanation is that he really didn’t see himself staying in Iceland forever. Perhaps he was hoping to gain citizenship in yet another country when the time was right.

  The bank battle was an unpleasant interlude, but it didn’t interrupt what was becoming the key portion of most of Bobby’s days: reading. As the study of chess had been compulsive when he was a boy, so now his mind was captivated by deep, serious study of history, philosophy, and other topics. Prowling the aisles at Bókin, he was sometimes brought up short by the absence of a book he wanted, in which case he’d have the store order it for him. He was continually buying books, usually two or three a day, keeping most, discarding a few, and giving others to friends.

  In ambience, although not in content, Bókin reminded him of Dr. Albrecht Buschke’s chess bookstore in Greenwich Village, the one he’d
visited as a child and as a young man. The books at Buschke’s were slapdashedly scattered, but the disarray was nothing compared to the confusion of Bókin. Bobby seriously asked Bragi to hire him to confront and organize “the pile,” because he thought there had to be books there, hidden deep within, that would be of interest to him, and also because he just couldn’t stand the mess. Finally, he said he’d work for nothing. “But where would we put them?” was Bragi’s refusal.

  Bobby’s aisle was a totally secure spot. With his back to the wall, gangster style, he could see anyone coming down the long, narrow corridor, and if he sensed that the person was an autograph seeker—or worse, a reporter—he would either scowl or feign total absorption in what he was reading and not respond if spoken to. Those ploys proved as effective as hanging a Do Not Disturb sign around his neck.

  Often, if he noticed that the time was nearing six o’clock, he’d dash off to Yggdrasil, a health food store—the name refers to the mythological Tree of Life—deliberately arriving there just one minute before closing time. He’d then shop at his leisure, much to the discontent of the shop workers who wanted to quit for the day. By arriving as late as he did, he avoided the stares of other shoppers.

  Checking out at the counter one day, he noticed a brand of candy bars called Rapunzel; there were two types available, chocolate-covered halvah and coconut. “Does this come from Israel?” he asked suspiciously. When told that the candy came from Germany—“You know, the fairy tale and the Brothers Grimm,” the clerk said—Bobby was reassured and bought a few bars, his anti-Semitic sensibilities appeased.

  Although he was often recognized in the street, few Icelanders intruded on his privacy. Foreigners weren’t always so considerate, though, and he usually lashed out at anyone audacious enough to address him. There was one exception, noteworthy because it was so abnormal for him. An American tourist—a chess player—approached Bobby one day and invited him to dinner. After checking the man’s passport to make sure he was who he said, and informally interrogating him to make sure he wasn’t a reporter, Bobby atypically agreed to dine with the stranger. They went to one of Reykjavik’s most expensive and elegant restaurants and were said to have a long conversation, mainly about politics.

  Months passed placidly until Bobby had been living in Iceland for about a year. When Helgi Olafsson, a grandmaster, asked him how he liked living in the country, Bobby answered in his typical Calvin Coolidge style: “Good.” But his sanctuary at Bókin began to become known, and stories appeared in the press about his going there, together with interviews of the store’s proprietor, Bragi. A Russian television crew showed up to try to interview Fischer, and he fled. Eventually he tired of the reporters waiting to ambush him outside the bookstore, and he changed his routine. He began to frequent the Reykjavik Public Library, only a few blocks farther from where he lived. The library became the focal point of his life.

  On the building’s fifth floor, within a few feet of the tall cases of books on history and politics, he’d tuck himself away for hours at a table beside a window. In contrast to the unattractive side street outside the window of Bókin, the library’s window provided a view of the fishing trawlers docked in the bay, and the mountains just beyond the water. For all of the days and months that Bobby went to the library, his new routine never leaked to the press. All of the librarians knew who Bobby was, but they never revealed his presence.

  Right down the block from the library was an inexpensive Thai restaurant, Krua Thai, where Bobby began dining at least two or three times a week. Not on the normal tourist route, it was clean and cozy, with dark-painted walls, a giant silver-sequined elephant and other decorations from Thailand, and dim lighting, which his eyes preferred. Bobby liked the fish dishes with vegetables and rice. He also liked the owner, an intelligent, vivacious Thai woman named Sonja, and insisted that only she wait on him. “Where’s the lady?” he’d demand as soon as he entered, knowing that she’d bring his favorite food and drink without his needing to order. There was only one item he absolutely refused to partake of: Icelandic bottled water. He said it made him sick. He drank only beer or tea. After he’d been going to Krua Thai for about a year, Sonja gently asked if he’d pose for a photo with her. He refused.

  Bobby told no one, not even his closest friends, about Krua Thai, since, although he was lonely, he often preferred to dine alone; like Thomas Jefferson in the White House, he enjoyed his own company, the opportunity to read or to contemplate books, ideas, and memories. Paradoxically, it was when he was with others that he felt an uncomfortable solitude.

  Bobby was conflicted about his intense desire for privacy, and his need—from his earliest days of childhood—for attention. He demanded constant reassurances of adoration, or at least notice. One day in downtown Reykjavik, he was asked for directions by some American tourists. “Gee, they didn’t know who I was,” he said disappointedly to Einarsson. “And they were Americans!” Another time, just to give himself a change from the city, he took a bus alone to a small fishing village named Grindavík near the famous Blue Lagoon, an outdoor thermal pool that he liked to bathe in. He stayed at an inn there for a few days. The waitress in the restaurant was friendly, especially since he was one of the only customers. “Are you famous?” she asked, possibly sensing Bobby’s fame, or maybe because she’d seen his photo in Morgunbladid or some other periodical. “Perhaps,” Bobby answered coyly. “What are you famous for?” she asked. More coyness: “A board game.” The girl thought for a moment and then it came to her: “You’re Mr. Bingo!” Bobby was mortified that she couldn’t identify him.

  Bobby still ate at Anestu Grösum, but he established a new regimen of taking a long walk around the City Pond, watching children feed ducks, geese, and the lovely whooping swans entwining their necks, and finally working his way to the library. Typically, his walks had no destination: To him they were akin to meditation—a chance to think without thinking—and he rambled about even during the bitterly cold winters. Most of the parks had benches, and if the weather was pleasant, he’d sit, read, think, and just be, an activity not atypical of many men entering late life.

  Some Icelanders said that they spotted Bobby late at night, walking ghostlike down the deserted and windswept streets near the Old Harbor—like Charles Dickens prowling the docks of London—lost in thought, slightly limping but walking rapidly, as alone as if he’d been roaming the desolate, lava-strewn fields of Iceland’s interior. Bobby’s nocturnal perambulations were an echo of the late night walks he used to take when he lived in New York or Pasadena, and a continuation of the pattern he’d begun in childhood, staying up until the early morning studying chess, and then sleeping until noon or later.

  It’s possible that, at this point in his life, a year and a half after landing at Keflavik as a freed man, Bobby began feeling that Iceland was his personal Devil’s Island: once there, never to leave. David Oddsson believed that Fischer felt “trapped” in Iceland in general, and Reykjavik in particular. “I’m a city person,” Oddsson said of himself. “I spend most of my time in Reykjavik. But if I could never go out to the country, that’s precisely where I’d want to go. I would feel trapped in Reykjavik, as Fischer probably feels trapped in Iceland.” Gardar Sverrisson said that, to Bobby, Iceland was a “prison.”

  By the time Fischer was completing his second year as an Icelandic citizen, he’d begun to grumble about the country and its people. He missed Europe and friends there, but he didn’t dare leave his ocean-bound haven for fear that he might be captured and extradited. Interpol, the international police organization, had him flagged to be arrested at any one of 368 airports throughout the world.

  Finding a permanent place to live in Reykjavik was difficult. Bobby’s first apartment, a furnished sublet he rented for six months, had been ideal: It was downtown, had a bit of a view and a terrace, and he could walk quickly to stores and restaurants. Since Bobby ate every meal out—he never cooked—it was important that he live within minutes of a variety of dining establ
ishments. “Eating was very important to him,” Zsuzsa Polgar said in describing his life in Hungary. It always was, wherever he lived, and quiet meals with foods he enjoyed seemed to be even more important in Iceland.

  When the owner of Bobby’s apartment returned from her work abroad, as planned, she notified Bobby that he needed to vacate. Although he realized that he had to move, he didn’t want to give up his comfortable residence. Einarsson managed to convince the owner to let Bobby stay an additional six months, but it was obvious that he’d need to arrange a permanent home after that. Einarsson and Sverrisson began escorting Bobby to various condominium apartments, looking for a place for him to buy. As was typical of him, he approached the purchase of his first apartment as he would a chess game: Before he made a move, everything had to be perfect. It was no surprise then that, initially, there was something wrong with every place he saw: One apartment was too close to the church and he was afraid that the morning bells would wake him; another had too many windows facing the street and he feared for his privacy; a third was too “high”—it was on the ninth floor—and he didn’t want to rely on an elevator. A fourth apartment at first looked ideal, but Bobby detected something “wrong with the air.” He claimed that it hurt his lungs to breathe there. While inspecting a fifth apartment, a plane flew overhead, and he immediately vetoed it as being “too noisy.” Finally, he thought that one apartment had “possibilities,” but his two friends quickly tried to talk him out of buying it because it was right below a tawdry sex shop. That didn’t seem to bother Bobby, since the shop opened late in the afternoon, and therefore it would be quiet in the mornings. Einarsson and Sverrisson pointed out, though, that the apartment was in extremely poor condition and would need repairs amounting to tens of thousands of dollars. Bobby grimaced and agreed not to buy it.