Grandmaster (11 page)

I looked back at him. There was still time to get up and walk out of this coffee shop and not listen to this. But I found myself asking: “Who is Stanwick?”

“Nelson Stanwick. I still see him in tournaments from time to time. He’s just a shadow of what he was. The truth is I don’t think he ever fully recovered.”

I knew I was opening a door to something I didn’t want to hear about, but I had to know. “Stop messing with my head,” I told the big man. “Just tell me what happened.”

“Sure,” Liszt said, and I got the feeling he was enjoying this. “Why not? That’s why we’re here. But first I’m going to get another latte. They charge so much and the cups are so small. You want something?”

I shook my head and watched him lumber to the counter. I knew I shouldn’t be listening to my father’s enemy tell tales about him. But at the same time, I was responsible for bringing him here, and I needed to know what the risks were. It seemed to me that a man who openly admitted that he didn’t like my father could be depended on to tell me the full truth, ugly though it might be.

He sat back down with a second latte, and the chair groaned. “So,” he said, “Morris Pratzer. I first saw him on the circuit back in the seventies. Bobby Fischer had won the title and American chess surged. The first big tournaments for kids with real prize money were held here in New York, at a hotel called the McAlpin. There were a dozen of us who were rising stars. Your dad came late to the table, but it didn’t matter—the chess gods had given him something the rest of us didn’t have.”

“How good was he?” I asked. “He told me last night he never could have been a Fischer or a Morphy.”

Liszt shrugged. “Probably Fischer and Morphy didn’t think they could be Fischer or Morphy either. Who knows how good he could have been? In certain tournaments, in certain games, he played with a touch of genius. The rest of us were in awe … and jealous as hell.”

“I hear he almost won a U.S. Open,” I said.

“He was young but he dominated,” the burly grandmaster said. “He won lots of tournaments, and he was beginning to be recognized internationally, but he was not a happy camper. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a lonely kid. He had no girlfriends. No pals. He didn’t hang out with the rest of us. When he got to be about fifteen, and the tournament pressures mounted, it grew much worse. He would talk to himself. At first we thought maybe he was a schizophrenic, but it wasn’t that. It was an outlet for him, a way to handle the pressure. I once roomed with him at an international in Madrid, and he kept me awake half the night with his gobbledygook. I finally told him to shut the hell up, and I was tempted to stuff a sock in his mouth. He didn’t only talk to himself. He also talked to his opponents, the way he just did to Voorhees.”

“Why didn’t the refs disqualify him?”

“Sometimes they did. He got lots of warnings, and a bad reputation. But when he was warned and managed to choke it back, it was like putting dynamite in a bottle. He wouldn’t sleep, he wouldn’t eat, his heart would start racing, he would puke his guts out between rounds, and doctors had to be called to calm him down. I saw him do some things you wouldn’t believe. He lost a match in Cincinnati, and instead of knocking over his king he bit it in half. I think he cracked a couple of teeth.” It was true—two of my father’s molars had given him lots of problems over the years, and he had recently had expensive implants. “In Montreal, I saw him kick over a table and nearly break his opponent’s legs. In San Francisco, he blundered badly and had to be wrestled off the hotel roof by the police. I think he would have thrown himself off.”

With a sinking heart, I remembered the open window in our suite. “What happened to Stanwick?”

“That was a one-off tournament in Texas. An oil billionaire put up thirty thousand dollars for first place. Your father was undefeated till the last round, but he was really in bad shape. He was talking to himself and to opponents, he wasn’t eating or sleeping, and then in his final game against Stanwick he threatened to kill him.”

“It couldn’t have been a real threat,” I said. “My dad says chess is war.”

“Chess is war, but it was a real threat,” Liszt told me.

“How can you be sure?”

“Because when the ref heard it and disqualified Morris, he dove over the table and started choking poor Stanwick! I know because I was just two boards down. A bunch of us tried to pull him off, but it was like he was possessed. He was shrieking and frothing at the mouth, and he had the strength of five men. When we finally wrestled him off, Stanwick was unconscious. His neck was badly sprained—another few seconds and your father would have broken it, and Stanwick might very well have been paralyzed for life.”

I winced.

“They took Stanwick out of that tournament room completely immobilized on a backboard,” Liszt said, “with a cervical collar, like a player after a football injury. The hall was silent. I’ve played in chess tournaments my whole life and I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“What happened to my dad?”

“While we were trying to save Stanwick, Morris ran back to his hotel room. The police went looking for him, but he had barricaded himself in. They broke down the door and found the room destroyed. Thousands and thousands of dollars’ worth of damage. Mirrors cracked, windows broken—”

“Okay,” I said. “That’s enough.”

I tried to stand, but Liszt leaned across the table and held me. “You need to hear this. He tried to kill himself. He locked himself in the bathroom and tried to hang himself with his belt. They cut him down and saved his life and took him to a hospital. I heard they were thinking of prosecuting him for assault, and I would have testified against him, but they decided he was insane and he ended up in the loony bin. And I guess you know the rest of the story.”

He let me go and I sat there in the coffee shop, imagining my father choking some poor kid, and then all alone in a hotel bathroom, trying to hang himself.

“Get him out of here,” Liszt whispered. “If you love him, go home. I’m seeing familiar signs. He’s started talking to himself again. He’s taking his pulse all the time. His heart is racing. History will repeat itself.”

I swallowed but didn’t say anything.

He finished his latte and crumpled the cup in a giant paw of a hand. “I never cared for your father. But you seem like a nice kid. He has a lot to be thankful for. So hear this warning loud and clear. If your dad stays at this tournament and somehow keeps winning, it’s likely our paths will cross near the end. I know all his weaknesses. I need this prize money. Chess is war—I’ll do whatever I need to do to win.”

18

They don’t normally let you back into a chess tournament’s playing area once you’ve finished your game and left. I told the monitor at the door that my father was sick and I needed to see him right away. I think she could see how worried I was, and her face softened. She waved me through and whispered: “Please be quiet and quick.”

My first impulse was to rip Dad out of there, march him to our car, and hightail it back to New Jersey while he was still relatively sane and healthy. But as I walked past the long tables of silent, concentrating chess players, I felt my resolve slipping.

I could see my dad now, up on the grandmasters’ platform—arms folded, eyes on the board—looking calm and under control and not about to strangle anyone or leap out a window. Was he really in imminent danger of falling apart? What could I possibly say to get him to resign a tight game against a master? I felt myself slowing down with each step and realized I didn’t have the nerve to make a big scene by insisting that he leave right now.

A game ended near me, and as the two players stood and shook hands I saw that one of them was Dr. Chisolm. I guessed from his tight, angry face that he had just lost. He marched to the scorer’s table, and then headed out. “Dr. Chisolm,” I called, following him, but he was already out the door and stalking toward the elevator with long and furious strides, as if he had lost a patient on the operating table and needed to run twenty laps or punch a heavy bag to let out his frustration.

I hurried after him and caught his arm. “Dr. Chisolm. I need to talk to you.”

“Not now,” he muttered. “Damn it, I should have won that one. Give me some space, Daniel.” He tried to yank free, but I held on tight.

“Please,” I said. “It’s about my dad.”

He stopped trying to pull away. “What’s wrong?”

“He may need a doctor.”

“Is he sick?”

I didn’t have a sensible answer to that question. “Kind of. Or at least I think he will be.”

“You think he will be?” Dr. Chisolm repeated, looking a little mystified, and then he led me through the common area to a quiet corner, near a marble fountain. The cascading water masked our words. “What’s going on?”

I looked back at him and remembered the previous night at the steak restaurant when he had insulted my dad. Now I was thinking of trusting him with my father’s deepest secret. I hesitated and pulled away from him, but I had no place to go and no one else to tell. I was surprised to feel hot tears squeezing out of my eyes and running down my cheeks. I hadn’t cried in years, and I was deeply embarrassed, but I just couldn’t stop. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I—I just don’t know what to do.”

Dr. Chisolm sat me down on a bench and put his hand on my shoulder. All his anger at his chess loss seemed suddenly gone, and he looked reassuring and focused and even gentle. “Talk to me, Daniel. Anything you say will remain between us, in the strictest confidence. The more you tell me, the more I can help.”

I didn’t tell him everything, but I told him a lot. He listened silently till I was done, and then he said, “You absolutely did the right thing to tell me this. Has your father ever had a heart attack?”

“No,” I answered.

“Chest pains? Shortness of breath?”

“Not that I know of. But he takes pills for high blood pressure. And he checks his pressure once a day.”

“So do I,” Dr. Chisolm said.

“He hasn’t eaten much of anything at this tournament,” I said. “Last night he barely touched his steak, and he didn’t have any breakfast. And I don’t think he’s sleeping at all either.”

“Your father’s still a relatively young man,” Dr. Chisolm pointed out. “He’s a bit overweight, but he’s aware of his past problems, and it sounds like he’s monitoring himself. He should be able to handle a three-day chess tournament. I’ll keep an eye on him, but I think he’s going to be fine, so you should relax and give yourself a break. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

He produced a handkerchief from a pocket and handed it to me. As I dabbed at my eyes he went on speaking in a soft, calm voice, staring off beyond me at the water splashing down into the fountain. “It sounds like the guy you just talked to was a jerk, digging up mud from thirty years ago that could only scare you. I’m not a psychologist, but your dad wouldn’t be here unless he felt he could handle this. Sometimes it can be a very healthy thing to face one’s old demons. Now,” he said, “give me back my handkerchief and try to buck up, because here comes the grandmaster.”

I saw that my dad had just walked out of the tournament hall and was standing next to Liu’s mom, chatting with her and looking around. He spotted me, waved, and headed right over. I just had time to slip the handkerchief back into Dr. Chisolm’s hand.

“Hey, Daniel,” Dad said, “how’d the game go?”

“I won,” I told him. “What about you?”

“It was essentially a drawn position, but Voorhees got greedy and overplayed it, and I made him pay.”

As we talked, I noticed that Dr. Chisolm was taking a long, careful look at my father.

My dad, in turn, was studying me. “What’s wrong?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your eyes are red. You don’t look so good.”

I shrugged. “Allergies.”

“Since when do you have allergies?”

“It’s probably all the dust in the carpets,” Dr. Chisolm suggested, helping me out. “Makes my eyes red and puffy, too.”

“Daniel, if you want to pass on that fancy French dinner, we have another offer,” my father told me. “Your new friend and her mom want us to go with them to some karaoke place they know. It sounds like it might be fun and relaxing.”

I glanced at Dr. Chisolm, who gave me a slight nod—fun and relaxing was what my father needed. “Let’s do it,” I said. I rubbed my eyes, which were still damp, and saw my dad watching me closely. “The tournament jitters must be getting to me a little,” I said, turning things around so that I had an excuse Dad would understand.

“They get to everyone,” he noted. “You just have to keep cool and gut it out. Take it from an old hand, if you let the pressure get to you, you can explode. Right, Sam?”

“Let’s hope nobody explodes this weekend,” Dr. Chisolm replied, and he looked just a little worried.

19

Dad was in his bedroom, and I was in our suite’s living room watching a basketball game when my cell phone rang. I saw that it was my mom, and realized that in the whirlwind of the chess tournament I hadn’t called her even once. I grabbed it quickly. “Hi, Mom.”

“So you remember who I am?” she asked.

“Sorry. It’s been a little crazy. How are things there?”

“Unchanged. Quiet. Except for your sister, who is always talking. She may be the first person to wear out a new cell phone in one week. Tell me about the chess tournament. Has it been crazy in a good way?”

I found myself telling her about everything except what I knew she was most interested in. “The room is incredible. We were upgraded to a suite. I’m talking to you looking out a window at the Hudson River and New Jersey. If you wave your hand I can probably see you. Oh, and our team was in first place after round one. We went out for a big steak dinner last night to celebrate. And, Mom, I just won a game.”

“Congratulations,” she said. “It sounds like you’re living the high life. So, how’s your father?”

I didn’t know what to say. I was afraid of worrying her for nothing, but I also didn’t want to hide the situation from her. Should I tell her about George Liszt’s warnings, or trust Dr. Chisolm’s reassurances? “He’s in the next room,” I finally mumbled. “Do you want me to put him on?”