Searching for Bobby Fischer (31 page)

The next round began immediately. Josh played a girl with a respectable rating but beat her using less than five minutes on his clock. Under different circumstances, playing so quickly would have been an indication that he wasn’t concentrating, but after that first game he needed to prove to himself that he could win easily,
and he knew he couldn’t play another slow, close game and have anything left for the evening rounds. By the seventh or eighth move the girl was rattled by the quickness of his responses, as if he had planned the whole game before they even sat down. He attacked her directly, with no positional subtleties, going for the neck. On the screen she looked defeated, holding her head between her hands, and she was checkmated in eighteen moves.

Josh shook her hand, turned and walked out of the room. When I met him in the hall, his eyes were hollow and bloodshot, and he said that he wanted to take a nap. There were nearly two and a half hours before the next round.

The third game was against a talented young player from Charlotte who played through an intricate modern opening but faltered in the middle game. The fourth game was against the highest-rated player on the Hunter College Elementary School chess team, Dalton’s arch-rival. He made a mistake, and it was an easy win for Josh.

After the first day, half a dozen children had 4–0 records, including Josh and Jeff Sarwer, but Morgan had drawn his fourth-round game, which in all likelihood put him out of the running. At dinner his round face was gray and droopy, and he didn’t have a smile in him. A simple oversight had cost him a rook, and he had been lucky to draw the game. Kalev dealt with his own disappointment by analyzing the game again and again, as if logic and identifying Morgan’s tactical error might change the result. It was difficult for me to be excited about Joshua’s chances for winning and at the same time to express regret for Morgan, and it was hard for Kalev to be enthusiastic for Josh. At the nationals heavy emotions frequently clang against one another. I said to Kalev that if Morgan won his last games, he still had a chance to tie. “That won’t happen,” Kalev said flatly. “Someone will win all seven.”

SEVERAL OF JOSHUA
’
S
friends from his previous school, The Little Red School House, had come to Charlotte with their fathers. None of these kids had studied chess seriously, but they were excited about playing in the nationals and hanging out with Josh. Although they had known him since he was a toddler, they had little feel for
his chess life. Occasionally they had watched him beat their fathers at chess, which always seemed like an aberration, and they knew that sometimes he couldn’t attend weekend baseball games because he was playing in a tournament. For kids, such unseen events don’t have much significance; they hardly seemed to notice his shelves of trophies. But here was their friend seeded first among this rapacious army of chess children and methodically winning his games. Still, when Jevon, Ben or Jeffery asked him between rounds to play baseball or video games or to go swimming and he refused, they were puzzled. Why? Josh had always been up for anything. “I’m playing a chess tournament,” he pointed out with a certain edge to his voice.

Josh was rationing himself more like a man than like a nine-year-old. He knew he had to rest between rounds and to review his openings; he knew that chlorine in the pool would irritate his eyes. When it was nine o’clock and his friends were clamoring around the video machines, he was climbing into bed without any urging from his parents. Win or lose, he was giving this tournament his best shot.

BETWEEN ROUNDS
,
PANDOLFINI
was calming and encouraging to Josh, reminding him of key ideas in his openings and traps to watch out for, but during the games he was distant and apparently uninterested. While his pupil played, Bruce occasionally walked through the lobby, glanced at the position on the screen, chatted with a few parents and then returned to his room to work on a manuscript. Sometimes he didn’t come back for an hour. He was unanimated when Josh was winning and smiled faintly when he was struggling. Despite the fact that they had worked together for three years, this was the first time Bruce had ever come to one of Josh’s tournaments, and it was no accident.

On Saturday night we talked until three
A.M
., and in his gentle manner Bruce explained that he was put off by much of what he saw here: the single-minded emphasis on winning, the tacky one-upmanship of parents, the pain endured by young losers. Watching the nationals had brought back what he hadn’t liked about being a tournament player; simply put, that one’s self-worth as a human
being became linked to winning or losing, and that friendships were frequently strained by competition over the board. He was also uncomfortable with the role of coach. Teaching Josh rook-and-pawn endings in our living room was one thing, but plotting the demise of another player, particularly a young one, was something else. He spoke elliptically of opening an institute for creative thinking, using chess as a tool to stimulate the problem-solving potential of children. While he spoke I recalled his fantasy of playing tournaments in elaborate disguises, without personal risk.

But at this moment I found Bruce’s distaste and feigned neutrality annoying, even though I realized that he was bracing himself for disappointment and also carving a way out both for himself and for Josh. Of course it was true that my son would be miserable if he did poorly, and that Bruce would worry about where he had gone wrong as a teacher, but tomorrow we had a chance to win. Like it or not, such an event has its bloody side. There cannot be ecstatic winners without miserable losers, but this weekend wasn’t the time for agonizing about it. Josh and I wouldn’t have been in Charlotte if it hadn’t been for Pandolfini’s artful lessons and his insistence over the past three years that my son could be a great player. Bruce had made Josh, and now he could only bear to peek through one eye.

In the first two rounds on Sunday, Josh played against Gottfried from New York and Goloboy from Massachusetts, each among the strongest for his age in the country, and won both games without much difficulty. Still, in the game against Goloboy, a sleepy-looking little kid with phenomenal talent (the following spring, at the age of eight, he became the youngest player in U.S. history to win an official tournament game against a master), Josh made a strategic mistake, abandoning a potential mating attack for an endgame with a pawn advantage. In the past, when feeling nervous or playing poorly, he had used the endgame as a crutch. He had such confidence in this phase of play that even with inferior positions he would trade off pieces, playing to win in the endgame. He was like a tennis player trying to cover three quarters of the court with his forehand. Against strong players this was a surefire recipe for losing, and Bruce had hoped that he had broken Josh of the habit.

*    *    *

JEFF SARWER HAD
also won his sixth-round game. He and Josh had the only perfect scores and would play each other in the final round. Morgan had won his fifth- and sixth-round games, and if Josh and Jeff drew their game and Morgan won, there would be a three-way tie for the championship. Having calculated the tie-breaks, however, I knew that Josh, who was higher-seeded than either of them, would win the first-place trophy if he drew Jeff. Josh had also figured this out, although I knew he would be playing to win.

For months, Pandolfini had said that if they met, Jeff would be Joshua’s toughest competition. They had similar attacking styles, and both played the endgame with a sophistication rare even among chess prodigies. Bruce had said that if Josh played Jeff it would be like playing against himself.

Who would have the psychological edge? Jeff believed that no other child was in his class. Josh believed in himself but had learned that losing was part of the game. Jeff had humiliated Josh in the fall, Josh had returned the favor in the early winter, and the kids hadn’t played again in the intervening five months.

Five hundred and fifty kids had come to Charlotte for this tournament and had slept in nice beds, but according to several parents, Jeff and his sister and father slept in their car. There was something spartan and foreboding about their habits; Jeff and his dad shaved their heads and wore sandals on outrageously dirty bare feet. No one ever saw them eat;
did
they eat?

When Jeff wasn’t playing chess, he sat on the ground against a wall beside his sister and father, hugging his grimy legs. He rarely spoke, and never to the other chess children, whom he enjoyed describing as “ugly putzes.” If Josh said hello, Jeff would nod once without a trace of a smile. “I’m not like other children,” he had once told me.

The Sarwers had come to Charlotte to win, but Jeff’s older sister Julia, a beautiful girl with delicate features, long, curly brown hair and a gypsy style of dressing, had lost one of her early-round games, and her father had shouted at her in front of parents and children, “You have no talent. You don’t deserve to be a chess player. Why
do I bother with you?” While Julia cried, he continued to berate her.

It was easy to judge the Sarwers, but perhaps not altogether fair. The majority of parents at the tournament were affluent, and their children weren’t really dedicated to the game. Many of them would leave Charlotte saying that too much importance was placed on chess, there was too much tension and other things in life were more important. Quickly, the sedatives for loss would take the shape of middle-class alternatives, at least until the tournaments began again in September. The kids would return to school and to their video games, play sports, take piano lessons and go to summer camps, but the Sarwers would be back at the Manhattan Chess Club ten or twelve hours a day, practicing opening variations and getting ready for Maya Chiburdanidze (the women’s world champion) and Gary Kasparov. For better or worse, chess was their life; how could the heavens not be on their side? While I walked with Josh to the tournament room for the seventh round, these thoughts plagued me. The gods above were buzzing back and forth, having already made the decision. I wasn’t at all happy about this storybook ending. Maybe my mother and Pandolfini were right: kids shouldn’t have to endure such tensions. Neither should their fathers.

“Daddy, I’m scared,” Josh said at the door. He had never said this to me before a chess game. “My stomach hurts. I don’t feel like playing.” I handed him his blue pencil, the same one he had used to score the moves in each of his first six games, the magic pencil. “Your stomach ache will go away when you start to play,” I said, my voice sounding hollow, and I gave him a kiss on the cheek. I wasn’t sure that it would go away; I knew mine wouldn’t.

One of the tournament directors closed the door. I had forgotten to remind Josh that Jeff is a great attacking player, and not to get into an endgame without a significant advantage because Jeff played the endgame as well as he did. Of course, Josh had been told all this before, but not having reminded him at the door made me feel useless. At least I had sharpened his blue pencil.

Downstairs a hundred people were crowded in front of the television as if for the kickoff of the Super Bowl. Bonnie was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the monitor, cradling our daughter
on her knees. In the group were the fathers of the other children whom Josh had beaten, as well as the parents of Josh’s neighborhood friends. Jeff Sarwer’s father nodded stiffly once, just like his son. Pandolfini was nowhere to be seen.

Everyone seemed to be looking forward to this moment, but to me it was a leap into chaos. This game between two children was about fatherhood, life choices, happiness and failure. It had become too large, no longer just chess; I had allowed it to become too large. If we lost, everyone would say, “Forget it, it’s only a game,” which would make me feel crazy. If it was only a game, why had we done all this work? Chess players have never been good at explaining why they have spent their lives moving pieces. For the last couple of years Josh and I had been struggling to climb a mountain which only grew higher. The better he played, the better he needed to play. Sometimes I’d pull him along kicking; other times I’d feel disgusted with myself and hold back, and then he’d begin to pull me. Why? After three years of living this life with him, I still didn’t know why. Maybe I never would. If Josh lost this last game, I hoped that I would be able to control myself and be a decent daddy.

JEFF HAD THE
white pieces, which is normally an advantage because white moves first, but more so now, because Josh had done considerable opening preparation with white for the nationals, and not nearly as much with black. Jeff played the f4 variation of the King’s Indian, a line that Josh had never seen before. It was a sharp opening, with four of Jeff’s central pawns moving forward like a phalanx. If Josh made a mistake, the game would be over before it began. Jeff was moving as fast as my son had moved against the girl in the second round. His face was cocky; he was sending messages.

“It’s very complicated,” said FIDE Master John Litvinchuk, who was analyzing for the parents. Three or four other masters in the room seemed to agree without speaking. After a dozen moves, the position was riddled with ambiguities and potential advantages, but the kids were playing too fast for the analysts to be certain who was ahead. It was Jeff who was pushing the pace, playing as if he had rehearsed this game a hundred times; Josh was riding a run-away
horse, trying to think his way through unfamiliar terrain but gradually becoming drawn into a blitz game that didn’t allow time for reflection. Maybe it was nine-year-old machismo, to show that he could play just as fast; more likely, he was too flustered by Jeff’s cocksure moves to take his time. When he had played this way in the seventh round the previous year, he had snatched a pawn without considering the consequences and had been forced to resign seven moves later.

There was nothing so dramatic now, but it was becoming clear that Jeff’s position was better. His advancing pawns had forced Josh to pull his knight back to its original square. Jeff was fashioning little attacks and Josh was dodging and retreating. His position looked cramped, while Jeff’s pieces were moving ahead. In each of the first six games of the tournament, it was my son who had been the aggressor, but now he was defending; his opponent’s speed and confidence were intimidating, and Josh began to slump a little at the board. He wasn’t making large mistakes, but Jeff’s moves were just a little better, and they were adding up, just the way Steinitz had taught in
The Modern Chess Instructor
. He was beating Josh positionally, pushing him back, taking space, placing his pieces in the right squares from which to attack. Twenty moves into the game he was able to pry two of Josh’s pawns apart so that they could no longer defend each other. My son’s face looked strained, and he began to bite on the neck of his T-shirt. Now his isolated pawns had to be defended by other pieces, which was a considerable disadvantage. They would be vulnerable later, and the pieces defending them would be unable to attack. Then Josh attempted a maneuver that might give him an open file, a little room in which to operate, and if Jeff defended inaccurately he would lose a bishop. But the plan was unsound, and after several pieces were exchanged, Josh was down a pawn.