Endgame (47 page)

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 the 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.

When Bobby finally started writing a book on how he’d been cheated by various publishers, he dedicated it to: “
The old Jewish scoundrel Andrei Lilienthal whose forgery of my name on his letter to FIDE was the straw that broke the camel’s back [to write an anti-Semitic tract].”

Eventually, Bobby lost as friends not only the Lilienthals, but also the Polgars. Sofia Polgar was invited to give a simultaneous exhibition at the American embassy of Budapest, and Bobby was furious that she’d even consider it, claiming that his enemies—that is, the U.S. government and, therefore, the American embassy—must be considered the Polgars’ enemies as well. Bobby quarreled not only with Sofia but with the entire Polgar family about the exhibition.
Incredulous, Bobby asked Sofia: “How can you even talk to those people?” She went ahead anyway and performed well. The Polgars stopped all contact with Bobby after that, and he with them.

All while he was attempting to establish a life in Budapest, and yet alienating everyone around him, Bobby was also trying to win over Zita. It was a campaign fated to end badly. In the nearly eight years that he lived in Hungary, he only managed to convince her to see him a few times—once when she attended his fiftieth birthday party in Bulgaria. That time, he again proposed marriage, even though she was happily ensconced with her boyfriend and had a child. “It’s out of the question,” she told him. “Then what about your sister Lilla?” he asked.
When Zita told her mother what he’d said, that Bobby was looking for a breeder, Mrs. Rajcsanyi was horrified.

Zita’s theory about Bobby was that he was dominated by an idée fixe of reproducing himself, much as Henry VIII quested after a son. She felt that the obsession driving Bobby was
I must get married, I must have a child, I cannot die without an offspring, or else my genius will vanish forever
. Fischer began collecting photos of other Hungarian girls he’d like to meet, and he recruited his new friend and assistant Janos Rigo—an international master and chess organizer—to serve as a matchmaker. The girls had to have certain characteristics or else he didn’t even want to meet them. They must be: (1) blond and blue-eyed, (2) young, (3) beautiful, and (4) a serious chessplayer. When Rigo would bring photos to him, Bobby almost always rejected
the women as not having all or enough of those qualities. Finally, Bobby placed the following advertisement in several Hungarian newspapers (his description of himself is revealing, as is the fact that he didn’t risk narrowing the pool of candidates by sticking with all four of his requirements):

He gave Rigo’s address for replies, and there were some responses, but none met his perfectionist standards, and ultimately, he nixed them all.

Bobby continued reading anti-Semitic literature as well as neo-Nazi tracts and getting into heated arguments about the evilness of the Jews with virtually everyone he met.
Once, when coming home late at night from an event, with Rigo serving as his driver, he refused to allow a Jewish chess player to enter the car until the man was willing to proclaim that the Holocaust didn’t happen.

Some of the many hate books Bobby read while in Budapest were
The Myth of the Six Million
by David Hoggan;
On the Jews and Their Lies
by Martin Luther, written in 1543; and
Jewish Ritual Murder
by Arnold S. Leese. He also read an account of Nazi general Ernst Kaltenbrunner, a leader of the SS who ended up being found guilty at the Nuremberg trials and executed. While in prison and awaiting judgment, Kaltenbrunner wrote a letter to his family and Bobby was affected by it. Here are excerpts of what Kaltenbrunner wrote:

When Bobby discovered that Kaltenbrunner’s son was still alive, living in Vienna, he visited him to discuss whether the concentration camps did or didn’t exist. If they
did
exist, he wanted to know whether the entire Holocaust story was blown out of proportion, and the account of millions being exterminated a myth. Bobby was disappointed when he met the executed SS leader’s son. The younger Kaltenbrunner was an avowed liberal and had no interest in discussing his father, the camps, or anything else concerning Nazism or anti-Semitism. But he
was
a chess player!
To Kaltenbrunner the fact that the great Bobby Fischer was gracing his home—for whatever reason—was equivalent to having the president of a country stop in to pay a visit. When Bobby left, Kaltenbrunner affixed an engraved plaque to the chair in which Bobby sat:
IN THIS CHAIR SAT THE WORLD’S CHESS CHAMPION, ROBERT J. FISCHER
.

In the summer of 1993, an American feature film called
Searching for Bobby Fischer
was released to stellar reviews. Originally titled
Innocent Moves
, the film was retitled before final release, with producers deciding to mimic the title of the book on which the film was based. Using Bobby’s name, they thought, would have more promotional power.
Searching for Bobby Fischer
was the true story of a young boy, Josh Waitzkin, who showed incredible talent for the game, and how he became successful at the board, at first despite his parents’ doubts and then with the encouragement of his parents and his extraordinary chess teacher, Bruce Pandolfini, played in the film by Ben Kingsley. It was one of the most respectful and sensitive films ever made about chess. The character of Bobby is not in the film, but he is seen in documentary footage. What he accomplished in Iceland inspired the film, which discusses the so-called Fischer Boom of increased chess activity, post-1972.
The film grossed more than $7 million and was nominated for an Academy Award. Bobby was indignant and then irate when he heard about it, proclaiming the film a misappropriation of his name and, therefore, an invasion of his privacy. When the final box office receipts were tallied, the producers were disappointed, citing the ambiguous title of the film as the
cause for relatively low attendance, and on hindsight they wished that they hadn’t used Bobby’s name.