Searching for Bobby Fischer (17 page)

What are we doing? I would ask myself. Why is Joshua’s chess so important to me? It is a question that nags all chess parents. Unlike the tennis prodigy, the great young chess player has no pot of gold on the horizon. At tournaments parents clasp their trembling hands, root as if it were life or death for their kid and dream the lusty dream of their child’s immutable, unmatchable genius. Breathless and flushed from rooting and worrying, they say to one another, “This world is much too narrow,” or “There’s too much emphasis on winning,” or “I don’t like how much time we’re putting into this.” Everyone nods, and listening to all this doubting one would think that the parents were about to wrench their kids out of the children’s chess circuit. But at the next tournament there they are again, commiserating with one another about the craziness of so much misspent passion.

*
In 1987 the Dalton School won the national championship in both the primary and elementary divisions. In 1988 the school won both divisions a second time and in addition won the national junior high school championship, competing with a team consisting primarily of fourth-, fifth- and sixth-grade players.

15

PLAYING FOR THE TITLE

U
nlike chess in parks, in coffee shops or in many clubs and adult tournaments across the United States, the National Elementary Chess Championship (consisting of a primary division, grades K–3, and an elementary division, grades 4–6) is a well-organized and attractively staged event. Enthusiasts in cities like Syracuse, Charlotte, Pulaski and Terre Haute bid against other interested groups for the right to hold the tournament. Directors plan for a year ahead to ensure a smooth operation, with playing conditions far better than in most master-level tournaments. At considerable expense, more than six hundred children and their parents travel to the event from all across the country, and they are treated with decorum and respect.

At the nationals, players compete against one another for seven rounds over the course of two grueling days. To become a national champion you must win all seven games, or at the very least score six wins and a draw. The competition is fierce, and no matter how good you are, it takes luck to win. One sleepy game, a brief lapse of concentration, the careless touch of a wrong piece, and it’s wait till next year—unless you’re too old to compete in the tournament next year.

In recent years, organizers of the championship have taken pains to protect against mishaps and protests. In the primary division, parents are not allowed in the playing room, which reduces the possibility of cheating or emotional scenes. The top games are televised into lobbies and waiting rooms, where the parents can
watch their kids, assisted by the expert commentary of chess masters—often the teachers of the players on the screen—who study the moves with the seriousness of NASA scientists scanning their monitors at the moment of lift-off. Often teachers of other players watch the televised games to scout the competition for their own students. Newspaper reporters and television crews do interviews between rounds. Invariably, the proud teachers and parents of the winning children are asked, “Is your kid the next Bobby Fischer?”

The pomp and circumstance of the nationals greatly heightens the importance of games between children, and naturally it makes both them and their parents nervous. Parents are both excited and burdened by winning and losing, results which seem to portend the future. Such intensity plays havoc with one’s perspective—immortality itself may seem like the prize—and even the weakest players and their parents dream of winning.

IN THE
1985 National Primary Championship, held in Charlotte, North Carolina, Josh was the number-one seeded player. It is both exhilarating and frightening for a child to be considered the one to beat, to know that the coaches of other top players are concocting deep traps to beat you; that until you lose and get knocked off the first board, all your games are televised and scrutinized by coaches, parents and other players. For these reasons, Josh was nervous in Charlotte; in addition he was disappointed because two hours before our flight Bruce had called to say that a publishing deadline made it impossible for him to be there.

Nevertheless, Josh played well. In the first six rounds, he scored five wins and a draw, and going into the last round he was tied for first place with three other children. If he won his final game he would at the very least tie for the championship. In the deciding round he played against David Arnett, a gifted player from Dalton who would later become his best friend.

While they played I sat on the lawn outside the junior college where the tournament was being held. The game was televised in the lobby of the building, and about a hundred people were watching the screen, but I didn’t want to see it. I leaned against a tree near some other parents whose children weren’t competing for top
places. They were in a gay mood, laughing easily and exchanging plans for the summer. I envied them for being able to appreciate this pleasant, breezy afternoon and wished I could be more casual, less single-minded. But one more win and Josh would be national champion. I felt misshapen by tension and by my desire for my son to win. I tried to respond pleasantly to passersby, but I could feel my heart racing in my chest as though I had just run a mile. The consequences of losing were vague and unspecific but seemed immense, like impending doom or grief. Yet at the same time I was certain that this couldn’t happen, and I tried not to allow myself to fantasize about our victory, our ecstatic joy and high fives, the long-distance calls I would make to my New York friends with the incredible news; such thoughts were bad luck. Before the game I had walked around the same blocks, past the same trees that I had walked before Josh’s wins in the earlier rounds. I reminded myself not to drink water until after the game, another ritual of support. While he played, I played against my superstitions.

The game lasted only twenty minutes. I would have guessed that they were still in the opening when David came out of the building with a toothy smile. I asked if he had won. He nodded yes and said something about Josh’s having fallen for a trap. Then Josh appeared, his face looking washed-out. He was attempting to be casual and trying not to cry, but he looked defeated, as if some of his life had been taken away. I put my arm around him, gave him a kiss and said that it didn’t matter. Later I realized that I repeated this a few times as if it were a question, until he nodded yes, it didn’t matter.

But it wasn’t true and we both knew it. We were both wondering how he could have lost. He had been so sure of himself. He didn’t believe that any child his own age could beat him when he was trying his hardest. What could have gone wrong? The great players are supposed to win the big ones; he had heard this on television dozens of times during basketball and baseball games. Did it mean that he wasn’t a great one? “Maybe I just don’t have it,” he mumbled. “Sure you do,” I said. “It was only one game.” He had fallen for a trap that he had studied several times with Pandolfini. Why? Did he have a lousy memory? Josh had always worried about his
memory. He didn’t seem to be able to learn the openings as quickly as some of the other top players. An eight-year-old doesn’t feel like a child at such a moment; he feels like a loser. You’re not supposed to be careless when you’re playing for the national championship, he reminded himself. During his lessons, Bruce had told him many times, “Tiger, one careless move could cost you the nationals. Take your time and think.” Josh kept shaking his head. He should have taken a few more minutes and found the right move. Now he wouldn’t be able to get the game out of his mind for a long time.

IN THE SUMMER
, after we get out of town for a few weeks into clear air and sunlight and away from the pace of lessons and tournaments, the justification for being a chess parent tends to desert me altogether, even though the motivation persists against all logic. While we swim and fish, I wince when I recall the pandemonium of our New York lives. I worry that my ambition for Josh will outstrip his desire to play. I worry about the tyranny of his heady national ranking. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if he could just play chess the way he plays football and basketball, without being concerned about his rating, or about what little kid in California is catching up with him, or about not being national champion? I wonder about the payoff or penalty down the road for a little boy who feels like a failure when he is less than number one. When was I ever number one in the country at
anything
? I’ve never even
known
anyone who was number one at anything besides my son—and yet this is the standard by which he judges himself.

ONE DAY AT
the beginning of that summer, Josh said, “Everyone tries to beat me. I’m expected to win, and when I lose it’s a big deal.” He’d been feeling down-in-the-dumps since losing at the nationals.

For the most part, my son doesn’t talk about his feelings, but on this day he wanted to. “Sometimes I wish I could give it up for a while,” he said.

“For how long?” I asked.

“Maybe for two weeks.”

“You can,” I answered, although it sounded as if he meant two years or forever. “Don’t pick up a chess set. Forget about it.” It was good that summer was here. Maybe we could both forget about the game for a while.

There was a moment of silence between us, and then I took a deep breath and asked the question whose answer I dreaded: did he sometimes think about giving up the game entirely?

Joshua’s eyes became misty. “How could I do that?” he said in a trembling voice. “Chess is my life.”

16

THE CHAMPIONSHIP OF BIMINI

A
ll my life I have had enormous passion for games and sports, so much so that all else has often seemed banal. The sport that I am best at is fishing. I have good eyes and, for some reason, an animal sense for where to drop my baits. I’ve never been particularly handy at picking up the newest knots or had motivation to stay abreast of fashionable techniques of the sport, but usually if there are fish around, I can catch them.

My father introduced me to fishing when I was six or seven years old. We fished together for flounder and eel off docks and out of runabouts on Long Island Sound; then when I was thirteen he began taking the family on winter fishing trips to Bimini, a tiny sun-scorched island fifty miles east of Miami. By coincidence, it was the same year that I read Hemingway’s
Old Man and the Sea
in
Life
, and I came to the Gulf Stream armed with notions about the heroism of killing large fish that you think of as your brothers. In those days the fish off Bimini were plentiful, and hooking blue marlin, sailfish, dolphin, wahoo, barracuda and tuna became more important than anything else in my life—more important even than practicing my one-hand push shot and my throw from short to first.

I was thirteen when I landed my first marlin. I will never forget the sight of that enormous blue beast bursting out of the ocean toward the clouds, nor will I forget the smile on my father’s face as I posed for a photograph beside the two-hundred-pound fish at the Big Game Club’s weigh-in station. His pride was immeasurable. He caught the eye of admiring tourists and Bahamian dock-hands,
and his expression seemed to be saying, What a future my boy has.

Spurred on by my father and by Hemingway, during my teenage years I was out on the water at every opportunity, more often than not trolling the oil-slicked waters of Manhasset Bay after school for baby bass, or bottom fishing with sandworms for sea robins and eels. It didn’t matter that the catch was modest; even murky Long Island Sound seemed filled with adventure and mystery, with makos and marlin finning out behind the next wave. I voraciously read books on the pioneers of angling and envisioned my place among them: the Waitzkin kid alongside Zane Grey, Lou Marron, Kip Farrington, Mike Lerner, George Lyon and other rich, gray-haired men who had trolled away large portions of their lives on oceans with exotic names. I knew the weights, lengths and girths of record gamefish caught on various line strengths more accurately than I knew the batting averages of Yankee players. I looked forward to the day I would open
Sports Illustrated
to the section that celebrates teenage sporting achievements and view myself holding a heavy bent-butt fishing rod next to an angry-looking broad-shouldered blue marlin hanging from a scale.

As an adult, I bought a small fishing boat, and Bonnie and I have lived frugally through the winters to fish in the summers in the Bahamas. Between marlin strikes there is time for daydreaming, and as I gripped the steering wheel and watched my handsewn mullet and horse ballyhoo baits skip and slide across the wake, I often would recall my father’s excitement and happiness fishing these same waters thirty years before. He rarely fished himself, preferring instead that my brother and I handle the rods. While we pulled in our fish, he stood behind us and rooted like any Little League father, as if we were accomplishing life’s great deeds. Sometimes I felt as if I were reeling in his love.

IN RECENT YEARS
I have fished the waters off Bimini with my son. Josh seems to have inherited my love for the water and for fishing. Most mornings before we go out in the boat to troll for sailfish and marlin, he walks to his favorite fishing spots along the shore or off a crumbling dock. He carries a bucket with his bait and a knife
inside, his little fishing rod slung over his shoulder, and if I do not intervene, he casts his bait all day without noticing the sweltering sun and the mosquitoes.

In the seventies and eighties the island has become distinguished more for its burgeoning marijuana and cocaine trade than for its marlin fishing, which has gradually declined until catching one is now a rare event. While we pull baits across the glassy calm waters in front of Bimini Harbor, Josh reads
The Hardy Boys
and pesters me to take him into shallow water where jacks and barracuda are abundant, and instead of daydreaming about the coming NFL season or marlin fishing with my father, I find myself thinking about chess games Josh has played. I wince at close losses and feel thrilled all over again at wins against surprised adults in Washington Square. I love to talk about the game with him, particularly about what he thinks of different opponents—who’s improving, who’s overrated, psychological tactics, the kids he hates to play.