Collins, a diminutively proportioned man whose stunted legs had left him unable to walk, was propelled in a wheelchair along the crowded New York City street by a black manservant named Odell. The man was so strong that, in the days before handicap ramps, he could lift Collins and the chair all at once—up and down the stairs of homes or restaurants. Odell never talked much, but he was friendly and fiercely loyal to Collins, and from the time he met Bobby he’d felt a deep affection for the young boy.
Walking next to Collins was his slightly younger sister, Ethel, a plump but pretty registered nurse who was almost always by his side. She adored her brother and gave up everything—even marriage—to care for him. Although Jack and Ethel had just met Bobby that summer, they were fast becoming parental substitutes for him.
The Fellini-esque quartet spoke in an arcane language and made references to people with feudal titles who lived centuries ago. As they walked the long Brooklyn block from Lenox Road and Bedford Avenue to sometimes clamorous Flatbush Avenue, they attracted the curiosity of passersby. But they were unembarrassed, involved in a world of their own, one that bridged many continents and thousands of years and was inhabited by kings and courtiers, rajahs and princes. The group’s destination was the Silver Moon Chinese restaurant.
“Pawn to queen bishop four,” responded Collins in a basso profundo that could be heard across the street.
Just as an accomplished musician can read a score and hear the music in his head, a master chess player with a strong memory can read the record of a game and see it in his mind’s eye. Composer Antonio Salieri was moved to tears of joy by reading some of Mozart’s scores before they were performed. In the same way, some chess players can be emotionally stirred by mentally replaying a brilliant game by a great master.
In this case, Fischer was not only visualizing a game without benefit of board, pieces, or printed score; he was creating it, composing it as a motion picture in his mind. As he and Collins strolled down Flatbush Avenue, they were playing what is called “blindfold chess,” a form of the game practiced throughout the ages. There are accounts dating back to A.D. 800 of nomadic Arabs playing a kind of boardless and sightless chess while riding on camels. For many chess players—and especially for those people who don’t know the game—witnessing two players competing without sight of a board can evoke astonishment. The uncanny feats of memory on display can seem almost mystical.
Collins was more than well schooled in strategic theory. He was the coauthor of the then latest edition of the modern bible of chess, Modern Chess Openings, which contained thousands of variations, positions, analyses, and recommendations. Bobby, who was becoming Collins’s pupil, had been studying past and present chess games for years and had begun to dip into Collins’s library of hundreds of books and periodicals.
It was humid, threatening to drizzle. Earlier in the year Fischer had become the U.S. Junior Champion at a tournament in Philadelphia, and he’d just returned from the U.S. Open Championship in Oklahoma City, the youngest player, at thirteen, ever to compete in the event. Collins was a former New York State Champion, a veteran tournament player, and a renowned teacher of the game. He was forty-four years old.
The odd couple continued to play their invisible game. Bobby mentally controlled the white pieces, Collins the black. As the contest seesawed, each player acted the role of predator and prey.
Bobby had always been short for his age, and still only stood five-four, but he was just beginning to stretch out of his clothes and sprout up. By the time he was eighteen, he’d reach a height of six-two. He had bright hazel eyes and a shiny, toothy smile with a slight gap between his two front teeth. His beaming grin was that of a happy child who wanted to be liked, or at least to be engaging. On this night he wore a polo shirt, brown corduroy slacks—even though it was August—and battered black-and-white, $5 sneakers. His voice was slightly nasal, perhaps because he needed to have his tonsils and adenoids removed. His hair was a tufted brown crew cut, as if his mother, Regina, or his sister, Joan, had clipped it one day and a comb hadn’t touched it since. Bobby looked more like a farm boy from Kansas than a kid from the streets of Brooklyn.
He usually stayed a few steps ahead of Collins and the others, wanting to go faster but grudgingly slowing up to announce his moves or to receive his teacher’s reply. Bobby’s answer to Collins’s move was always instantaneous, his response bursting from somewhere deep in his unconscious as he visualized bishops speeding along the diagonals, knights catapulting over pieces and pawns, and rooks seizing crucial squares. Occasionally, he’d split his mental gymnastics, leaving his imaginary board to swing a fantasy baseball bat and knock an invisible ball into the left-field stands of the Ebbets Field in his mind. Even more than a chess champion, young Bobby Fischer wanted to be Duke Snider, the legendary Brooklyn Dodgers baseball player.
It was astonishing that Fischer, at thirteen, could excel at blindfold chess. Many seasoned players fail to master it. The boy didn’t prefer to play without sight of the board; it was just that he wanted to be involved in the game every spare minute, and the twenty-minute walk to the Silver Moon from the Collins home was just too long to go without a game. He didn’t seem to be distracted or annoyed by the honking traffic or the cacophony of music and voices spilling out onto the avenue.
Even at this young age, Bobby had already played thousands of games, many in a form called “speed chess” or “blitz.” Instead of the usual one to two hours, speed chess often takes only ten minutes to complete; five minutes or less if the players want to challenge themselves even more. Sometimes the rule is that each move must be completed in no more than a second. In such cases, there’s virtually no time to reflect, to engage in that familiar inner dialogue: If I move my bishop here, and he moves his knight there, then maybe I should move my queen there—no, that won’t work! Then he’d take my pawn. So instead I’d better move … Bobby’s years of playing intense speed games helped lead to his ability to instantly comprehend the relationships of the pieces on the board.
Walking down that Brooklyn street, Fischer and Collins exchanged knowing glances as they played. It was as if they were engaged in a secret ritual. As they approached the restaurant, each felt an unspoken pressure to finish the contest, but there wasn’t enough time. Just as they drew up to the front entrance, when some twenty-five moves had been made, Collins offered Bobby a draw. It was intended as a gentlemanly gesture, but Bobby looked hurt, almost insulted. To him a tie was equivalent to a loss, and he judged his position to be superior. He wanted to fight. Nevertheless, in deference to his mentor, he grudgingly agreed to a draw. He almost sang out his response: “Okaaay.” Then his mind immediately shifted to what awaited: his favorite Chinese meal of Egg Drop Soup, Chicken Chop Suey, pistachio ice cream, and inevitably, a large glass of milk.
Regina Wender Fischer, Bobby’s mother, was born in Switzerland and moved with her family to the United States when she was just two years old. In her late teens—already graduated from college—she traveled to Germany to visit her brother, who was stationed there as a sailor in the U.S. Navy. In Berlin she was hired by the American geneticist Hermann J. Muller (who later won a Nobel Prize in physiology), to act as his secretary and governess for his child. Muller and Regina had met when she took courses at the University of Berlin, and they respected each other: She admired his brilliance and humanism, and he valued her because she knew German, could take shorthand, and was a speed typist. Also, she was bright enough to understand and accurately type his complex chemical and genetic ruminations. Muller encouraged her to study medicine and to follow him to Russia when he received research appointments both in Leningrad and Moscow—she ultimately remained in touch with him for more than fifty years. She became a student at the First Moscow Medical Institute from 1933 to 1938.