Endgame: Chapters 1–2

“We know that” was the peremptory reply.

The Fellini-esque quartet spoke in an arcane language and made references to people with feudal titles who lived centuries ago.

Also, she was bright enough to understand and accurately type his complex chemical and genetic ruminations.

The psychiatrist’s bizarre report stated that Regina had a “stilted (paranoid) personality, querulous, but not psychotic.”

Regina’s flexibility and desperation led her to a surprising gamut of jobs. She was a welder, schoolteacher, riveter, farm worker, toxicologist’s assistant, and stenographer, all throughout the early and mid-1940s.

To keep rambunctious Bobby occupied—in today’s parlance he might be referred to as hyperactive—Regina bought books such as 50 Peppy Picture Puzzles for Girls and Boys, and Pencil Puzzles: Sharpen Your Pencil, Sharpen Your Wits, which contained mazes, picture puzzles, and word games.

It’s impossible to say with certainty whether Bobby actually won the first game he played, but it’s likely he did, given his propensity for solving puzzles quickly and the fact that his first opponent was his sister, who didn’t particularly take to chess.

As soon as she enrolled in the Prospect Heights School for Nursing, the peripatetic Fischer family, citizens of nowhere, moved once again—its tenth transit in six years—to a $52-a-month two-bedroom flat at 560 Lincoln Place in Brooklyn.

The problem with Bobby was a social one: From a very early age he followed his own rhythms, which were often antithetical to how other children developed.

It’s also possible that Regina didn’t know who Bobby’s father was if she was having an affair with Nemenyi around the time the Mexican assignation with Gerhardt Fischer occurred.

Years later, a friend’s offhand mention that Bobby probably had every expectation of winning his first game against a chess master elicited a strident rebuke: “Of course not!”

No one had the temerity to disagree.

The tableau of a little boy engaged in mental combat with a judge, doctor, or college professor some eight or ten times his age was often greeted with mirth and wonder.

“Fish!” they’d bleat, using the chess player’s derisive term for a really weak player, whenever Bobby made an obvious blunder.

The epithet hurt even more because of its similarity to his own name.

A group of Nigro’s protégés won the first match with a score of 5–3; the score of the second match has been lost or forgotten.

Auspiciously, Bobby won his first game and drew his second against ten-year-old Raymond Sussman, the son of a dentist, Dr. Harold Sussman, a nationally rated master from Brooklyn.

Dr. Sussman was also an amateur photographer, and he captured some portraits of Bobby that worked their way into the Fischer oeuvre years later.

Years later Bobby could not remember how strong Schonberg was or how many games the two played, but one could tell by the inflection in his voice that he was affected by the experience, not so much by the playing of the games, but by the encounter with a family member, however distant.

Nigro felt they wouldn’t tolerate Bobby’s sometimes languorous tempo, so he’d be forced to quicken his play and therefore his thinking.

So many peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, bowls of cereal, and plates of spaghetti were consumed while Bobby was replaying and analyzing games that the crumbs and leavings of his food became encrusted in the crenellated battlements of his rooks, the crosses of his kings, the crowns of his queens, and the creases in the miters of his bishops.

They remained there, tucked into his memory, deep within a cave of abstract thoughts: information and ideas about pawns and squares to be used, discarded, or ignored—all in perfect cadence and synchronicity.

The boy—and then the man—had one salient cognitive goal, although he didn’t express it openly: He wanted to understand.

He enjoyed playing over what are called miniature games, short encounters of usually twenty moves or less, as if they were musical exercises, works of art unto themselves, usually with only one pervasive idea.

When his sister Joanie or mother Geenie—as they were known by their friends—would come home in the late afternoon or early evening, they’d sometimes find Bobby in the dusk of the apartment, unaware or not caring that the lamps were unlit, staring at the board and lost in a reverie of tactics or strategies.

She had great difficulty coping with his imperiousness: “I want to play chess!” he’d demand, with all the pomposity of a crown prince talking to a servant.

And off he’d go to his chessboard, without his mother’s permission, leaving his school assignments in abeyance.

Much to Bobby’s consternation, Regina insisted that he have a psychological evaluation to determine whether something could or should be done to temper his relentless preoccupation with the game.

Her son’s resistance to schoolwork was a mild disorder that many children go through, but his study of chess, an intellectual activity, was supplanting it.

Perhaps, he added, she could fashion some of his schoolwork as a sort of game, which might pique his interest.

It has become painfully obvious to their opponents that the Russians bring to the chessboard all the fervor, skill and manifest devotion to their cause that Foreign Minister Molotov brings to the diplomatic conference.

On the stage, in front of a velvet curtain, were two flags: the Stars and Stripes and the unmistakable and portentous crimson Soviet banner with its hammer and sickle.

Eventually, after some speech making about the contribution of chess toward a possible détente between the Soviet Union and the United States, play got under way.

Aside from the games themselves, which he followed assiduously, Bobby noticed other things: chess players congregating in all the corridors and public rooms of the hotel discussing and analyzing the games, chess books and portable sets at the ready, and many people leaving observation posts only briefly to buy tuna fish and ham-and-cheese sandwiches at a small newsstand in the lobby.

As the games became more complex, the spectators, many of whom followed each game with their tiny pocket sets or leather chess wallets, discussed the vagaries of the positions in whispers.

Hans Kmoch, the ultra-formal bow-tied referee, would stare angrily out at the audience and issue a stern, Viennese-accented "Quiet, please!” Stung by the rebuke, the spectators would look momentarily embarrassed and quiet down for a few minutes.

The scene at the outdoor chess tables in Washington Square Park was a mélange of urban vitality and color.

In contrast to the subdued, almost meditative pairings at the Brooklyn Chess Club, the park’s contests were waged by a fast-talking and disparate group of chess hustlers, Village bohemians, and tournament-strength players who enjoyed competing in the open air, sometimes from sunup to sundown.

As a result of his participation in the tournament, Bobby for the first time saw his name published in a major newspaper, a harbinger of the vast publicity he’d attract for the rest of his life.

The Times extolled: “Many in the crowd of 400 onlookers seemed to think the best show was given by Bobby Fischer. Despite competition from his more mature and experienced adversaries, he was unbeaten until yesterday, when he came within 15 players of the championship.”