Authors: Frank Brady
Since Sabena Airlines was one of the show’s sponsors, it was agreed that two round-trip tickets would be given to Bobby as a promotional gift. Without his knowledge, and much to his delight, at the end of the broadcast he was given the tickets to Russia, with a stopover in Belgium, Sabena’s home country. So ebullient was he over finally being able to get to the country of his dreams,
he tripped with youthful awkwardness on the microphone wire while making his exit from the stage, but managed to keep his balance. At the show’s conclusion the FBI immediately phoned their contact in Moscow to make sure Bobby’s activities were monitored while he was behind the Iron Curtain.
Someone at the Manhattan Chess Club asked Bobby what he’d do if he were invited to a state dinner while in Moscow, where he’d have to wear a tie; Bobby had never been seen wearing one. “
If I have to wear a tie, I won’t go,” he answered honestly.
It was the first time he’d been in an airplane. Bobby and Joan had a three-day stopover in Brussels and visited Expo 58, one of the greatest international fairs of all time (“
The eighth wonder of the world,” Bobby wrote to Jack Collins, describing the 335-foot Atomium monument whose nine steep spheres formed the shape of a cell of an iron crystal). While the Belgians were sampling Coca-Cola for the first time, Bobby, avoiding Joan’s watchful eye, drank too many bottles of Belgian beer and the next day experienced his first hangover.
Nevertheless, he played some seven-minute games—which he won—with the tall and elegant Count Alberic O’Kelly de Galway, an international grandmaster. Bobby also ate as much soft ice cream—another first at the fair—as he could consume. After a few days of fun and education in Brussels, the Fischers were ready to leave, but not before a minor fracas occurred. When checking in, Bobby had rudely voiced objections to the hotel staff over the accommodations they were to have (he didn’t want to share a room with his sister), and as they were checking out he was severely criticized by the management, who’d given up the room as a complimentary gesture and were short of space due to the fair. The self-confident fifteen-year-old paid no heed to their discontent and discourteously stormed out.
Before boarding the plane to Russia, Bobby plugged cotton into his ears to reduce the pressure (which had bothered him on the trip from New York
to Brussels) and also to block out engine noise so that he could quietly work out variations on his pocket chess set.
Met at the Moscow airport by Lev Abramov, the head of the chess section of the USSR, and by a guide from Intourist, Joan and Bobby were ushered to
Moscow’s finest hotel, the National. It was an apt choice, since one of the Bolshevik leaders who worked out of there after the Revolution of 1917 was Vladimir Lenin, an active chess player who fostered a continuing interest in the game among the Russian people.
The Fischers enjoyed the amenities of a relatively opulent suite, with two bedrooms and an unobstructed view—across Mokhovaya Street—of the Kremlin, Red Square, and the splendor of the towers of St. Basil’s. As part of the celebrity treatment, Bobby was also given a car, driver, and interpreter. Three months before, the Russians had feted another young American: twenty-three-year old Van Cliburn, who’d won the Soviet Union’s International Tchaikovsky piano competition and, in so doing, helped momentarily temper the Cold War rivalry of the two countries. Bobby didn’t expect to earn the same acclaim, nor did he think he’d melt any diplomatic ice. Nonetheless, Regina thought he should be afforded equal respect and attention. Although many chess players believed that Bobby could emerge as America’s answer to the Sputnik, Regina was thinking in more practical terms: She’d read that Van Cliburn had called his mother in Texas each night while he was in Moscow and as a perk wasn’t charged for the international telephone call. “
Call me,” she wrote to Bobby. “It’s on the house.” He didn’t.
His respect for the Soviet players, from what he knew of their games, was immense, and at first, the reality of being in Russia was like being in chess heaven. He wanted to see how the game was taught and played at the state-supported Pioneer Palaces. He wanted to read and purchase Russian chess literature and visit the clubs and parks where chess was played. But mostly he wanted to duel with the best in the world.
His mission was to play as many masters as possible and to emulate the Soviets’ training regimen for the Yugoslav tournament. Fortune, however, seemed to have other plans.
There was no way that the Soviet chess regime would allow an American to observe their training methods or to share in their chess secrets—especially when the very same players Fischer hoped to train with would be
competing against him in a few weeks. The Soviet chess establishment thought of Bobby as a
novinka
—a novelty—but, also, someone ultimately to be feared. They certainly weren’t going to aid his attempt to defeat them at their own national pastime.
An itinerary and schedule were established for the Fischers, which included a tour of the city, a sightseeing introduction to the buildings and galleries of the Kremlin, and a visit to the Bolshoi Ballet, the Moscow Circus, and various museums. For Bobby, it was a chance to gorge himself on Russian history and culture. He had little interest, though, in such figures as Ivan the Terrible or Peter the Great or Joseph Stalin or Leo Tolstoy or Alexander Pushkin. He’d come to Moscow to play chess, to cross pawns with a serious Russian tournament player. And every spare minute he spent there he wanted to be engaged in chess, hopefully playing with the highest-rated masters in the country. Moscow was the city where the great tournament of 1925 had been played; where Alekhine had become a grandmaster; where most of the world’s top masters played, learned, and lived; where the World Championship had been held only a few months prior. For Bobby, Moscow was the Elysium of chess, and his head was spinning with the possibilities.
Spurning Abramov’s offer of an introduction to the city, Bobby asked to be brought immediately to the Tsentralny Shakhmatny Klub, the Moscow Central Chess Club, said to be one of the finest in the world. Virtually all of the strongest players in Moscow belonged to the club, which had been opened in 1956 and boasted a library reported to consist of ten thousand chess books and over one hundred thousand index cards of opening variations. Bobby simply couldn’t wait until he saw it all.
Upon arriving at the club’s headquarters on Gogolsky Boulevard, Bobby was first introduced to two young Soviet masters, both in their early twenties: Evgeni Vasukov and Alexander Nikitin. He began playing speed chess in rotation with both, in a hallway on the first floor of the club, and won every game. Lev Khariton, a Soviet master, then a teenager, remembered that a crowd gathered.
Everyone wanted to see the American wunderkind. “There was a certain loneliness about him hunched above the board,” said Khariton.
“When can I play Botvinnik [the World Champion]?” Bobby asked, using a tone that was almost a demand. “And Smyslov [Botvinnik’s most recent
challenger]?” He was told that because it was summer, both men were at their dachas, quite a distance from Moscow, and unavailable. It may have been true.
“Then what about Keres?”
“Keres is not in the country.”
Abramov later claimed that he’d contacted several grandmasters but had made little progress in finding an opponent of the caliber that Fischer was insisting on. True or not, Abramov was becoming more than annoyed by Bobby’s brashness and frequent distemper. Bobby begrudgingly met the weight lifters and Olympians he was introduced to, but he seemed bored by it all. The Russians began calling him
Malchick
or “Little Boy.” Although it was an affectionate term, to a teenager it could be considered an insult. Bobby didn’t like the implication.
Finally, Tigran Petrosian was, on a semi-official basis, summoned to the club. He was an international grandmaster, known as a colorless player but he was almost scientifically precise, and one of the great defensive competitors of all time. He was also an extraordinarily powerful speed player. Bobby knew of him, of course, having played over his games from the Amsterdam tournament of 1956 and also from seeing him from afar at the USA-USSR match in New York four years earlier. Before he arrived, Fischer wanted to know how much money he’d receive for playing Petrosian. “
None. You are our guest,” Abramov frostily replied, “and we don’t pay fees to guests.”
The games were played in a small, high-ceilinged room at the end of the hallway, probably to limit the number of spectators, which had grown to several dozen while Bobby was playing the younger men. The contest with the Russian grandmaster was not a formal match, but consisted of speed games, and Petrosian won the majority.
Many years later, Bobby indicated that during those speed games Petrosian’s style of play had bored him “to death,” and that was why he’d wound up losing more than he won.
When the Soviet Union had agreed to invite Bobby to Moscow, and generously pay all expenses for him and his sister, he was granted a visa that was good for only twenty days. Regina, though, wanted him to stay in Europe until the Interzonal in Portorož began, and because of a lack of funds she was trying to get both his visa and his guest status extended. She wanted him to have a European experience and sharpen his use of foreign languages,
which she kept insisting was so vital for his education. Plus, she knew that he wanted to play chess against the better Soviet players as training before he entered the Interzonal. It wasn’t to happen, however.
When Bobby discovered that he wasn’t going to play any formal games, but simply speed chess, he went into a not-so-silent rage. He felt that he wasn’t being respected. Wasn’t he the reigning United States Champion? Hadn’t he played “The Game of the Century,” one of the most brilliant chess encounters ever? Hadn’t he played a former World Champion, Dr. Max Euwe, just a year earlier? Wasn’t he the prodigy predicted to become World Champion in two years?
A certain monarchic attitude seized him: How could they possibly refuse
him
, the Prince of Chess? This was no trivial setback, no mere snub; it was, to Bobby, the greatest insult he could imagine. He reacted to that insult, from his point of view, proportionately. It seemed obvious to him that the reason the top players wouldn’t meet him was because, on some level, they were frightened of him.
He likened himself to his hero Paul Morphy, who for the same reason, on his first trip to Europe in 1858 exactly one hundred years before, was denied a match with the Englishman Howard Staunton, then considered the world’s greatest player. Chess historians and critics believed that twenty-one-year-old Morphy would have easily beaten Staunton. And fifteen-year-old Fischer firmly believed that if he were given a chance to meet Mikhail Botvinnik, the World Champion, the Soviet player would be defeated.
As the reality set in that Bobby would not soon—not in the next several days, at least—be meeting the giants of Russian chess and triumphing over them, and that while in the Soviet Union he’d receive no financial reward for his playing, the Soviets ceased to be his heroes; rather, they became his betrayers, never to be forgiven. He made a comment in English, not caring that the interpreter could hear and understand it—something to the effect that
he was fed up “with these Russian pigs.” She reported it, although years later Abramov said that the interpreter confused the word “pork” for “pigs” and that Bobby was referring to the food he was eating at a restaurant.
Certainly, Bobby didn’t help himself with a postcard he sent to Collins: “
I don’t like Russian hospitality and the people themselves. It seems they don’t like me either.” Before the postcard was delivered to New York, it was
read by Russian censors, and Bobby’s intemperate response found its way into the Soviet press. Fischer’s request for an extended visa was denied, and what would be his lifelong, not-so-private war with the Soviet Union had commenced.
Bobby’s situation aside, it was becoming difficult at that time for
any
United States citizen to remain in Moscow.
In mid-July, one hundred thousand irate Soviet citizens, inflamed by the government-controlled press, besieged the American embassy on Tchaikovsky Street, demanding that the United States withdraw its troops from Lebanon. Windows were broken, and outside the building an effigy of President Eisenhower was burned.
The situation was serious enough that Gerhardt Fischer, Bobby’s father of record, feared Joan and Bobby might be in great danger. Using his South American name of Gerardo Fischer, he wrote in German to Regina from Chile voicing his worries. He fretted that the children might have been kidnapped because no one had heard from them. He asked Regina what she was going to do to get Joan and Bobby out of the country. He said that if he didn’t hear soon, he’d try to do what he could, but he also added—somewhat mysteriously—that he didn’t want to get into trouble himself.
Just as Regina was beginning to panic, she received a cable from the Yugoslavian chess officials stating that they would not only receive Bobby and Joan as early guests before the Interzonal, but they’d also set up training matches for Bobby with top players. For her part, Joan Fischer, who’d gotten into some spats with her brother over his behavior while in Moscow, accompanied him to Belgrade but left after two days to spend the rest of the summer with friends in England. Fifteen-year-old Bobby was, thus, left to fend for himself—but not for long. He was surrounded by chess officials, players, journalists, and the merely curious, and within hours of touching down in Yugoslavia he was at the board playing, analyzing, and talking chess.
Bobby’s training match opponent in his first formal game on European soil was Milan Matulovic, a twenty-three-year-old master who would become infamous in the chess world for sometimes touching a piece, moving it, and then—realizing it was either a blunder or a weak move—returning the piece to its original square, saying,
“J’adoube,”
or “I adjust,” and moving it to another square or moving another piece altogether. The
“j’adoube”
statement is the customary announcement when a player wishes to center or adjust one of his or his opponent’s pieces, but according to the Laws of Chess this must be done
before
touching the piece, or the mover risks yielding a forfeit. French players would often say,
“Pièce touchée, pièce jouée”
(“if you touch a piece, you move it”). Matulovic
“j’adoubed”
his pieces
after the fact
so often that years later he earned the nickname “J’adoubovic.” In contrast, Bobby was strictly observant of this rule and said
“j’adoube”
first whenever he touched a piece to straighten it. Once he was even heard to say it, with a smile on his face, when he casually jostled someone at a tournament.