It worked. Opinion swung toward the American challenger for the first time. The match was back on.
On 7 July, lots were drawn. Again Fischer was late, leaving the Russian to sweat it out once more. When the American arrived at the playing hall, according to Darrach “bursting out of the cab in a glitter-green slubbed silk suit with wide pointy shoulders,” he at first failed to notice Spassky. The world champion “stood staring at the broad green back, his smile crumpled and his tan two shades lighter. Big and vital and overdressed, Fischer looked every inch the arrogant superstar. In a sweater that had lost its casual flair, Spassky looked like a guy who had asked for an autograph and been told to buzz off.” The Moscow evening paper Vecherniaia Moskva recorded the draw:
Spassky did what even a chess beginner would do: he squeezed a pawn in each hand, made several loops around the stage with them, then approached his rival and stretched his hands in front of him. Fischer pointed at the hand containing the black pawn.
Spassky would start with the white pieces.
There is now an interval in the drama, a breathing space for the harried actors. The first game has been rescheduled at the Soviets’ request (or ultimatum) for 11 July. Spassky relaxes over a salmon fishing expedition. Gudmundur Thorarinsson rests. Paul Marshall returns to his less troublesome clients in New York. Lothar Schmid has to fly back to Germany briefly to tend to his son, who has fallen off a bicycle while pedaling downhill and is suffering from a head injury. Fischer can slip into his routine of sleeping by day and bowling and eating U.S. steaks by night at the Keflavik military base.
12. RAGE RULES
Ajax, heavy with rage.
When the curtain goes up again, Fischer is in the playing hall. But a new character is on stage and in frustrated turmoiclass="underline" Chester Fox, an ambitious, young, would-be filmmaker with bushy sideburns, tightly curled red hair, and dressed to impress in a wide-lapeled trench coat. He speaks some Russian. When he smokes in times of trouble (from this point, almost continuously), he forgets to puff and the cigarette burns until it melts the filter between his fingers. Fox is agitated. “Tell me, do I look like a rapist?” he asks a journalist. “Am I in here to rape somebody? All I want to do is make a deal.” Fox’s lawyer, Richard Stein, does his best to curb his client’s outbursts.
Although of limited experience, Fox had been granted exclusive rights to film and to photography inside the sports hall by the Icelandic Chess Federation. The deal was for Fischer and Spassky to receive 30 percent each of the revenue, with the other 40 percent being split evenly between the ICF and Fox. Fox was recommended by Paul Marshall, who claims that he could not find another filmmaker interested in the job. Aspects of the deal bewildered Thorarinsson. The Icelander was surprised that a one-man business was apparently the sole contender for the contract.
We got no money up front. It became clear later that they had a special agreement with Chester Fox behind our backs, and probably Fox paid the Americans something to secure the agreement without our knowledge.
For Fox it was potentially a big break. With the unprecedented international interest, with TV stations hungry for pictures, having the monopoly must have seemed like having the key to the bank.
When the drawing of lots had taken place, Fischer had raised no complaints about the arrangements in the hall. The British chess master Harry Golombek, a vice president of FIDE who stood in for Euwe, complimented the Icelanders on “the best playing conditions in the history of chess” closed-circuit television throughout, 15,000 square feet of red carpet, 1,000 green chairs at ground level, 6,000 feet of curtaining to keep out the daylight.
Nervous officials waited in the hall night after night for a Fischer visit, but he kept deferring an inspection. When he eventually showed up, some forty hours before the first game, only the thirty-two pieces and a familiar swivel chair, especially flown in from New York, met his approval. The hand-carved lead-weighted chess set was made by an English company, John Jacques & Son. As for the leather-bound chair, it was designed by Charles Eames, originally for use in the lobby of the Time-Life Building in New York, and had been found at a shop on 600 Madison Avenue. The Michigan manufacturer of the chair Herman Miller had given the Icelandic organizers a $50 discount as “a token of our friendship and respect” for the Icelandic people. The official price was $524.
No matter what they had heard about the challenger, the naturally courteous Icelandic officials must have been disconcerted by what followed. The table, the chessboard, the lighting, the proximity of the seating to the stage, and the cloth-swathed towers in which the cameras were hidden—all were declared unsatisfactory. The $1,200 custom-built mahogany table should have its legs shortened, the sumptuous chessboard changed, the front rows of seats removed, the camera towers pushed right back to a point where filming would be nigh impracticable, the lighting brighter—no, less bright; no, brighter than that. Above the board was a four-meter-by-four-meter fluorescent fixture containing many bulbs. The Swedish-trained lighting engineer Dadi Agustsson was patient and sympathetic.
I liked Fischer. He learned very quickly. If I gave him one explanation about the lighting, I would not have to explain it again. Of course he was difficult, but he was not unfair. He just wanted the lighting a certain way, and it was quite clear what he wanted. He wanted it to be such that he didn’t notice it—not too hot, he didn’t want shadow, he didn’t want glare. Spassky wasn’t interested. I’ll always remember what Spassky told me. He said he used to study chess in his mother’s kitchen with a tiny table lamp. After that he never thought about lighting. “Leave it to Fischer,” he said.
It was nearly three A.M. before Fischer got around to looking at the chessboard. “There are just too many spots in the stone. It needs to be clear.” At the request of Thorarinsson, Gunnar Magnusson had designed the table and board. The table was a rich mahogany with a matte varnish. There were two lower ledges for water. The chessboard itself was green-and-white marble. One of the nation’s best masons, Thorsteinn Bjornsson, had worked the stone. The factory had never made a chess set before—they specialized, among other things, in tombstones. Icelandic officials now yanked Bjornsson out of bed at six and told him he had thirty-six hours to make another board. “What do you mean, another board,” he shouted. “We made three already. What’s wrong? Is he crazy?” Later, Bjornsson had his men cut the two-and-a-quarter-inch squares, binding them together with crushed marble and transparent glue.
As for the camera positions, once Fischer had gone, the Icelandic officials and Cramer thought that they could find a compromise behind his back—a little shift away of the towers and one row of seats removed. Cramer checked his notes to see if there was anything else his boy might object to. “I’ve been through it all,” he said. “As far as I can see, the only thing left is the air.”
Six minutes after the scheduled start of the first game, Fischer appeared to the applause of the audience. At last, the championship was under way, and with a game that left grandmasters openmouthed.
Spassky played the opening and middle game with great caution and the first two hours were devoid of thrills. The queens came off at move eleven, a pair of knights at move sixteen, a pair of bishops at move eighteen, a pair of rooks at move nineteen, the two other rooks at move twenty-three, and the two other knights at move twenty-eight. That left six pawns and a bishop each. Most players would agree to a draw immediately upon reaching such a lifeless, evenly balanced position. There was no scent of victory for either side. There seemed to be no possibility of stirring up the position. Fischer had plenty of time to make his moves and was ahead of Spassky on the clock.