But where was Bobby Fischer? The clucks and whispers spread throughout the halclass="underline" “He isn’t coming!” “He has to come … even his sister is here!” “He wouldn’t do this to Spassky!” “He still has to collect his check!” “He’s already back in Brooklyn!” “He won’t come!”
After an hour had passed with no sign of the champion and with revelers already deep into their goblets of Viking’s Blood, Dr. Euwe lumbered up onto the stage, while the orchestra played the anthem of FIDE: “Gens Una Sumus.” Then suddenly, wearing a maroon corduroy suit that he’d had custom made in Reykjavik, Bobby appeared. Without waiting for the music to stop, he walked to the head table and sat. Spassky was two seats away, and eventually Bobby stretched his hand across and they shook. Euwe called Fischer to the stage, draped a large laurel wreath over his shoulders, and proclaimed him Champion of the World. Then he presented him with a gold medal and a certificate. The coronation was over in a blink.
Examining the medal, Bobby whispered to Euwe, “But my name is not on it.” Euwe smiled and replied, “We didn’t know if you were going to be the winner!” Without speaking further, Bobby returned to his table. Euwe continued to talk and mentioned that the rules would have to be changed for future World Championships, in large part because of Bobby Fischer, who’d brought so much attention to the game.
As Euwe continued with his remarks, Bobby appeared bored and lonely, perhaps because more than a thousand people were looking up regularly to stare at him. But even those who knew him well seemed afraid to approach. Two burly Icelanders, the size of restaurant refrigerators—both chess players—sat guard near his table, and whenever anyone came near Bobby to get an autograph, or a kiss, or just to offer their felicitations, they were not so gently steered away.
At his seat Bobby studied the stage from the audience’s perspective, seeing it as they must have seen it for two months, when they’d watched the combatants in profile. He was lost in a reverie, and one can only guess at his thoughts. Did he mentally replay some of his games with Spassky? Did he consider lines that he should have pursued—weigh whether he could have performed better? Did he admonish himself for all of the disquiet he’d caused—all of the disputes over money and cameras and lighting?
Some yearning for the comfort of old habits must have seized him, because, finally, he pulled out his leather pocket chess set and started going over the last game of the match. Spassky had moved to the seat next to him and was listening to Bobby’s analysis. The dialogue seemed natural, almost as if they were still playing. “I should have played here as my sealed move,” said Spassky, moving a little plastic piece and trying to demonstrate how he might have held on to the game. “It wouldn’t have made any difference,” Bobby responded. He then showed the Russian all of the variations he’d worked out during the adjournment. Soon, grandmasters Efim Geller and Robert Byrne jumped into the fray. There was a blur of hands as the four men made moves on a chess set hardly larger than an index card. At that moment Offenbach’s “Les oiseaux dans la charmille” filtered down from the stage. But the chess players seemed not to notice.
Eventually, Fischer was given his two prize checks, one from the Icelandic Chess Federation and the other from James Slater, the millionaire whose eleventh-hour financial offer had saved the match. Bobby’s winnings came to $153,240. He was also given a collector’s item, a huge leather-bound, slipcased book on the history of Iceland. Guthmundur Thorarinsson privately complained—but not to Bobby—that the Icelandic Chess Federation had lost $50,000 on the match, because there was no money from television or film rights.
When Bobby had had enough of the party, he slipped out the back door with his friend, the Argentinean player Miguel Quinteros, and went off into the night to frolic with Icelandic girls whom they hoped to pick up. So anxious was he to leave the party, he forgot to take his commemorative Icelandic book, and it was never found.
Just before Spassky left Reykjavik, Bobby had delivered to the Russian at his hotel an amiable letter and a gift-wrapped camera as a token of friendship. Spassky seemed to have no animosity for the man who’d defeated him, although he knew he was going to face difficult times when he returned home to Moscow. His last comment about Bobby was “Fischer is a man of art, but he is a rare human being in the everyday life of this century. I like Fischer and I think I understand him.”
Mayor Lindsay’s limousine was waiting for Bobby when he touched down in New York. Bobby’s retinue included his bodyguard Saemi Palsson and Palsson’s wife, as well as Quinteros. “It’s great to be back in America” was Fischer’s only comment to the waiting reporters. The mayor had offered Bobby a ticker-tape parade down the “Canyon of Heroes” on Broadway in lower Manhattan, a rare honor given in the past to such luminaries as Charles Lindbergh, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the Apollo astronauts, but Bobby wasn’t much excited by the idea. Friends and advisors reminded him that if he accepted, he’d be the only chess player ever to have a ticker-tape parade, and probably there’d never be another chess player receiving the distinction. He was unmoved: “No, I don’t want it,” he decided. He would, however, agree to a “small” ceremony on the steps of City Hall.
He received hundreds of congratulatory letters and telegrams, but the one that he was most proud of was as follows:
Dear Bobby,
Your convincing victory at Reykjavik is eloquent witness to your complete mastery of the world’s most difficult and challenging game. The Championship you have won is a great personal triumph for you and I am pleased to join countless of your fellow-citizens in extending my heartiest congratulations and best wishes.
Sincerely yours,
Richard Nixon
The “small” ceremony turned out to be “Bobby Fischer Day” in New York City. More than one thousand well-wishers gathered at the steps of City Hall as Mayor Lindsay awarded Bobby with a gold medal (and not the key to the city as has been incorrectly reported) and proclaimed him “the grandest master of them all.” Many of Bobby’s friends were there, such as Jack and Ethel Collins, Edmar Mednis, Paul Marshall (Bobby’s lawyer) and his wife Betty, and Sam Sloan. This time Bobby gave a speech: “I want to deny a vicious rumor that’s been going around. I think it was started by Moscow. It is not true that Henry Kissinger phoned me during the night to tell me the moves.” The audience roared. “I never thought I’d see the day when chess would be all over the front pages here, but confined only to one paragraph in Pravda.” That day, Bobby was not the old curmudgeonly Bobby: He was gracious, humorous, and willing to sign countless autographs. The New York Times in a mammoth editorial summed up what he’d managed to achieve:
Fischer has done more, however, than simply win the world title he has so long, even obsessively, considered his right. He has transformed the image and status of chess in the minds of millions, suddenly multiplying manifold both the audience for chess as a sport and the number of people actually playing the game.… From a wider perspective, the Fischer-Spassky match has a unique political importance.… The result was an atmosphere that, for all its tenseness, contributed to improving the broader ambience of Soviet-American relations.