Searching for Bobby Fischer (19 page)

After leaving Cooper, Josh and I strolled down the dusty main road with our rolled official-sized tournament chessboard and brown bag filled with Staunton pieces, searching for Cornelius. The midday sun was so bright it was hard to see even with sunglasses. We stopped at every bar along the way, but no one knew where he was. We asked the Conch Island Woman, who sat on a crumbling wall next to her rusty little table, which was set up on the street. Her hot jars of conch and green pepper were marinating in the sun, the delicious smells carrying down the Queen’s Highway. She fanned mosquitoes off her legs and shook her head; she hadn’t seen him. Josh was whimpering about the burning street and stopped to dip his feet in every puddle. I was getting angry. I wanted my son to play chess today and couldn’t let go of the idea. I kept thinking about Susan Polgar and her two little sisters in Hungary getting better and better, and about the chess tournament in Florida. How could Cornelius have forgotten about the match? By now Josh was hoping we wouldn’t find him. The tide was beginning to come in and the afternoon fishing off Brown’s dock figured to be terrific. I asked a couple of drunks if there were other chess players on Bimini, and they directed us to a man who worked in the tiny insurance office. “He’s better than Cornelius,” said the guys, who were sharing a bottle. But when we found the man sweltering over his application forms, he explained that his game was checkers.

Sometime after lunch we finally found Cornelius sipping a beer at Ozzie Brown’s bar. I was so pleased to see him that our three-hour search was forgotten. I had no idea how good a player the Bahamian was, but he had weight lifter’s arms and an inscrutable, dangerous face, and it made me nervous to think of Josh playing him. I had arranged the match with conviction, but now I asked myself why I was pitting my little kid against this dope-smuggling thug. In the moment of excitement and dread I always feel just before Josh plays, Cornelius assumed his place in the pantheon of champions beside Smyslov, Tal, Botvinnik and Karpov. The Bahamian even yawned in the world-weary manner of an old champion patronizing a beginner.

*    *    *

THE CHAMPIONSHIP OF
Bimini was played in a breezy room paneled in dark, varnished wood with large open windows looking out onto the picturesque harbor. This place was filled with ghosts. On the walls there were scores of yellowing photographs I had first admired with my father—photos of tremendous marlin that had been caught in these waters in the thirties and forties by Ernest Hemingway and other all-star anglers I had read about in fishing books.

“Are you ready?” Cornelius asked Josh. He was as dusty as the road and smelled of twenty years of beer. He wore a thick gold chain with a shark tooth on his neck, the mark of coolies in the Bahamian drug trade, who more often than not carry their entire worldly wealth on their hands and neck.

Josh asked me, “If I do good, will you buy me a vanilla shake at Bob Smith’s?” Then he pushed his center pawn two squares, and Cornelius did the same, picking up his pawn between fingers burdened with heavy gold rings. Josh anchored the center with pawns and a bishop, and Cornelius pushed his pawn on the bishop file and developed his knight. On the fourth move, Cornelius prematurely brought out his queen. Perhaps it was a variation popular among Bimini bone fishermen of the sixties or a try for a fast win against a kid, but it was a mistake. If Josh played properly, Cornelius would be behind in the development of his pieces, and the queen might be vulnerable to an attack. All my son had to do was bring out his knights and bishops to their natural squares, but he looked indecisive and fidgety. Maybe Cornelius was a master and there was a deep threat hidden in this early queen move. But Josh had played games against dozens of masters and half a dozen grandmasters; usually the development of their pieces was slow, and their attacks built gradually and were unstoppable. Park players made crazy, unpredictable moves which often lost but sometimes could beat you quickly. What was behind this queen move? He was trying to size up Cornelius and at the same time trying to get used to analyzing a position after six weeks away from the game. After thinking for several minutes he brought his queen out to the third rank. “Oh, wow,” Cornelius said beneath his breath, as if he had never expected such a dangerous move from a little guy. Now the position looked balanced and neat, with the queens on opposite
sides of the board. Josh had matched the Bahamian’s unsound threat with an unsound one of his own.

Cornelius pushed a pawn two squares. His center looked very powerful, protected now on the diagonal by the queen, and I could tell that Josh wasn’t sure what to do. Hesitantly he took a pawn. The Bahamian smirked. He was quietly taunting and lulling his opponent and Josh had fallen for the bait. Now Cornelius pushed a pawn to the fifth rank, forking Josh’s queen and bishop. My son’s cheeks flushed; he was playing like a beginner. After the inevitable exchange Josh had traded his bishop for three pawns, with his queen sitting in the center of the board and his pieces undeveloped.

I could barely contain myself; this was the result of his long layoff. Josh had forgotten to develop his pieces and had fallen into a beginner’s trap. Instead of analyzing he was thinking about barracudas and ice cream. How many times had I told him, “You can’t play without trying your hardest. You’ve got to concentrate.”

On the street a native passed and hailed Cornelius. “How you doin’ against the little fella?”

“All right, all right.”

Now Josh moved a knight to the edge of the board. How could he do this? When he was six Pandolfini had taught him that “a knight on the rim is very dim.” Placed there, the knight can attack fewer squares than in the center of the board and is more easily trapped. Josh’s position was a mess.

Cornelius pushed a pawn and Josh developed his other knight. Cornelius pushed another pawn. He was making quiet moves and seemed to be waiting for another blunder, but his passive play was allowing my son counterplay. Josh moved the first knight toward the center of the board. All of a sudden his position didn’t look so bad; there had been a point to the knight on the rim after all. Now he had two strong knights in the center flanking an attacking queen.

The Bahamian scowled and considered the position. Finally he brought his knight back next to his king, which freed the queen to defend along the diagonal. On the next move he was planning to shift the knight to the other side of the board, where it would be more useful. But the move was a disaster. Josh immediately checked Cornelius with his queenside knight, forcing him to bring
his king out to the second rank. Falling behind had somehow focused Josh and he was finding the moves easily. Now he checked with the other knight, and when the Bahamian pushed the king again, Josh moved the first knight for a discovered check from the queen. Cornelius was out on his feet, no longer bothering even to find the best escape squares. On the next move, with a big smile Josh forked the king and the queen with his queenside knight, and it was all over.

They played two more games, which Josh won easily. He was into the flow of playing again, attacking weak squares, developing his pieces, playing smartly and opportunistically, the way he had learned from Pandolfini. As they played on, Cornelius grew increasingly restless and sullen. By now it had dawned on him that Josh was not winning by luck. The Bahamian wanted to put this match behind him and be the champion of Bimini again.

I should have been delighted that my son was winning, but I wasn’t satisfied. When Cornelius was thinking, Josh looked out the window instead of studying the board. I thought of Alekhine, who had once said that a chess player’s world must be only the chess position in front of him. Even here on Bimini, beside the deep blue water of the Gulf Stream, with the sexy rhythms of a reggae band drifting in from the bar, Alekhine would have bent over the pieces for hours without letting his eye wander, a timeless, contemplative chess machine. Josh was winning, yet I focused more on his missed opportunities. He might have won more quickly and elegantly; his game lacked the crystal clarity of Capablanca’s; his combinations were predictable. It annoyed me that he tapped his leg to the music and that his eyes drifted from the position to the photographs of gamefish on the wall. Josh crushed Cornelius, but it didn’t mean anything; the Bahamian was a patzer who hung pieces.

17

LOSING IT

I
n the fall of 1985, Josh transferred from the Little Red School House to the Dalton School. But in the first few weeks of the fall term he was homesick for his old school and friends, and his unhappiness was so large and persistent that we thought we had made the wrong choice. As if to prove his point, he lacked all enthusiasm for chess, and his play was poor after the summer’s layoff in Bimini. When his chess friends came over to visit and challenged him to a game, he looked pained and suggested Monopoly or something else—anything else. It was distressing when Joshua’s friend Ben Rosen asked me, “Why doesn’t Josh like chess anymore?”

The first lesson with Pandolfini in the beginning of September was disastrous. They had arranged to meet on a Sunday morning at the Manhattan Chess Club, but when Josh arrived, Bruce was still working with another student.

While we waited, a spindly little boy came over and asked Josh to play blitz. “I’m gonna crush you,” he said. Josh shrugged, and they began to play. The kid was seven and moved his pieces instantly, as my son had been inclined to do at that age, seemingly without thinking. Josh was rusty and unsure of himself and moved slower and slower as the game became more complicated. When he ran out of time, the other boy had used up barely two minutes oh his clock. They played two more games and Josh lost each of them. He couldn’t move as fast as the other boy, and when he tried to, he blundered.

It was the first time that my son had ever felt soundly defeated by a child younger than himself. Among his peers, he had always been the best player. When he lost, he viewed it as an accident, a momentary lapse, and usually his opponent would savor a win against him as an unexpected stroke of fortune.

At eight, Joshua’s chess career had gone topsy-turvy. In the nationals he had lost the most important game of his life to David Arnett, and now a little boy, shorter and younger, had beaten him almost without effort. My son wasn’t feeling like such a great player anymore. During the lesson that followed, he had trouble listening to Bruce. The chess problems were too hard, and he couldn’t figure them out. It was Sunday and he wanted to be at home on the sofa with his little sister, watching cartoons on television. “Look at the board, Josh,” Bruce snapped. “Why are you looking out the window?”

Jeff Sarwer, the boy who had beaten Josh that morning, was considered a genius by the regulars at the Manhattan Chess Club. Some of the old-timers who had watched Bobby play as a child referred to Jeff as a young Fischer. They had said the same thing about Josh two years before, when at six he had first played his witty, tactical games at the club, but by now this was old news. Joel Benjamin, himself once a brilliant prodigy, said that Jeff Sarwer was the strongest player for his age that he had ever seen, and Vitaly Zaltzman, his teacher at the time, touted him as the best for his age in the world.

Jeff and his nine-year-old sister, Julia, didn’t go to school. They were tutored by their father, a Canadian citizen, and spent most of their day at the Manhattan Chess Club playing and studying with various masters. Sometimes little Jeff would be snapping off five-minute games against club regulars at midnight and then would be there the next morning eagerly challenging members as they sleepily wandered in. He considered himself different from other chess kids. Chess was his life; the others were dabblers. “None of them can beat me,” he said with a disconcerting, hard-edged condescension. “I play like a master and they don’t know what they’re doing.” He didn’t spend time with other chess children, preferring the company of strong adult players. As if to further distance himself
from his peers, many of whom dressed with preppy casualness and were taxied to the club by maids, he wore scuffed sandals and the same grimy running suit day after day and had the hair shaved off his head. For adults and children alike, playing against this pencil-thin child was a disconcerting experience. As he formulated ingenious attacks, one could not help wondering about the extraordinary mechanism computing away beneath his shiny bald scalp.

During the following year Jeff Sarwer was the subject of much discussion in the New York children’s chess world. The parents of some of the top players argued that their kids would show just as much promise if they too studied the game forty or fifty hours a week, but that regardless of talent, it was wrong to keep a child out of school. Some parents felt that since Jeff didn’t attend school, he shouldn’t be allowed to participate in scholastic tournaments. But many regulars at the Manhattan Chess Club sympathized with Mike Sarwer’s ambition for his son. Some of them were openly bitter that their parents had not gotten behind them as young players, and they championed Jeff’s eccentric life-style as a kind of homage to the game. He was seen as the ultimate chess experiment: a child with exceptional aptitude who would have unlimited time and the best teachers in order to grow to his full potential.

IN SEPTEMBER
,
PANDOLFINI
was late delivering two instructional books he was writing, including one on Bobby Fischer’s games that later became a best seller among chess books. His editor was calling him every day, and Bruce was having trouble completing the manuscripts. Like many writers, he was anxious about the quality of his work. In addition, in his capacity as executive director of the Manhattan Chess Club he had to deal with pressing financial and organizational problems. He was expected to start fall chess programs at four secondary schools, and the parents of his students, back from summer vacations, were eagerly calling to schedule lessons. Each morning his answering machine was flashing with fifteen or twenty urgent demands. Desperate to finish his books, Pandolfini stopped returning phone calls, including Joshua’s and mine. He wasn’t sleeping, he had stomachaches and he couldn’t eat. He had no time for chess lessons. During a two-week period he canceled
three sessions in a row, and my son decided that his teacher didn’t like him anymore.