He’d insisted that all questions be submitted to him in advance, and he sifted through the cards searching for those he chose to answer. Spassky, looking uncomfortable, sat on Bobby’s right, and Vasiljevic, smoking a meerschaum pipe and appearing relaxed, was on his left. After a few minutes of awkward suspense, Bobby looked up and read aloud a reporter’s name, his affiliation, and the first question. “Let’s start with some impudent questions from The New York Times,” Bobby said impudently:
Roger Cohen: Why, after turning down so many offers to make a comeback, did you accept this one?
Bobby Fischer: That’s not quite true. As I recall, for example, Karpov in 1975 was the one who refused to play me under my conditions, which were basically the same conditions that we are going to play now.
Roger Cohen: If you beat Spassky, will you go on to challenge Kasparov for the World Championship?
Bobby Fischer: This is a typical question from Mr. Roger Cohen from The New York Times. Can he read what it says here?
(Fischer then turned and pointed to the banner behind the dais that said “World Championship Match.” The audience applauded.)
Traditionally, with rare exceptions, members of the media don’t applaud at press conferences, since it would be considered an endorsement of what the speaker is saying, rather than just reporting the information being given. Although a large number of reporters had been interested in attending Bobby Fischer’s controversial press conference, journalists were forced to pay $1,000 for accreditation at Sveti Stefan. As a result, many chose not to cover the match—at least, not from the “inside.” There were only about thirty journalists present in the room that day, although there were more than a hundred people in attendance. The applause very likely came from the non-journalists in the crowd, who may have been handpicked claques for their anti-American and pro-Bobby leanings.
Bobby kept reading Cohen’s follow-up questions and not directly answering them, just making comments such as “We’ll see” or “Pass on,” until he read Cohen’s final question: “Are you worried by U.S. government threats over your defiance of the sanctions?”
Bobby Fischer: One second here. [He then removed a letter from his briefcase and held it up.] This is the order to provide information of illegal activities, from the Department of the Treasury in Washington, D.C., August 21, 1992. So this is my reply to their order not to defend my title here. [He then spat on the letter, and applause broke out.] That is my answer.
Vasiljevic, also applauding, looked at him approvingly and smiled; Bobby leaned back in his chair, swiveled back and forth, and smugly basked, Mussolini-like, in his courtiers’ adulation.
Bobby Fischer’s spit was sprayed around the world. His anti-Americanism was lambasted on the editorial pages of the Daily News (“Fischer Pawns His Honor”) and The New York Times (“Bosnia’s Tragedy and Bobby’s”) and reported in newspapers, magazines, and television broadcasts on almost every continent. The consensus reaction was that Bobby’s expectoration reeked of callousness regarding the carnage taking place in Bosnia, and was a clear flouting of, if not international law, then at least moral norms. Bobby’s bizarre act was likened to such other symbols of anti-American defiance as Ezra Pound’s “Heil Hitler” salute, Jane Fonda’s pose on a North Vietnamese tank, and even Tokyo Rose’s propaganda broadcasts during World War II.
One of the most surprising criticisms of Bobby’s statements came from Bobby’s close friend and former teacher Jack Collins, the Yoda of American chess. “I am bored and disgusted with him,” said Collins. And then, mentioning the adulation that Bobby was receiving in Yugoslavia, Collins added, “They make so much out of a goof like him.” Another close friend, William Lombardy, disagreed, however: “Yes, Fischer betrayed chess and everybody. But he’s still magic, and can do a lot for the game. Bobby and Boris are finally cashing in. I don’t begrudge them that.”
Bobby continued making outrageous—or at least controversial—statements as he answered more of the reporters’ questions. When asked about his views on Communism, he said, “Soviet Communism is basically a mask for Bolshevism which is a mask for Judaism.” Denying that he was an anti-Semite, Fischer pointed out with a smirk that Arabs were Semites, too: “And I am definitely not anti-Arab, okay?” Calling Kasparov and Karpov “crooks” for what he considered their unethical collaboration, he also included Korchnoi on his hate list: “They have absolutely destroyed chess by their immoral, unethical pre-arranged games. These guys are the lowest dogs around.”
Although she sat in the audience at the press conference, Zita didn’t answer any questions, at least publicly. Later, in a semi-off-the-record interview she gave to a Yugoslavian journalist, she claimed that she was not planning to marry Bobby, but that she was attracted to his honesty. She added, “I like geniuses or crazy people,” not saying which category, if either, Bobby fit into.
Bobby walked rapidly to the board, sat in his chair at precisely 3:30 p.m. on September 2, 1992, stretched his right arm across, and shook Spassky’s hand. He was dressed in a blue suit and wore a red-and-white tie, giving him a certain patriotic look. And if there was any doubt about his nationality, a small American flag could be seen on his side of the table, facing the audience; Spassky, who’d become a French citizen, had the tricolors of France next to him. Lothar Schmid, the arbiter who’d directed the 1972 match between the two grandmasters, was once again present, and he started the clock. And as Schmid depressed the button, a wave of nostalgia rolled over everyone watching. Twenty years had passed since the last Fischer-Spassky showdown, but each of the three main players seemed approximately the same—excepting some gray hairs, additional furrows, and extra girth around the middle. Laugardalshöll had morphed into the Hotel Maestral. Iceland had become Yugoslavia. Bobby was still Fischer. Boris was still Spassky. The game was still chess.
Within a few minutes, Bobby donned a wide-brimmed brown leather visor, the rationale for which was so that his opponent couldn’t see what he was looking at. When it was his move, he pulled the visor way down and often rested his chin on his chest, almost as if he were a poker player secreting his cards.
Twenty years of rust aside, Bobby played as masterfully as he had in 1972: aggressive, relentless, brilliant, attacking on one side of the board and then the other. There were sacrifices of pieces on both players’ parts.
Chess players the world over were following the game through faxes and telephone contact, and their collective question was answered at Fischer’s fiftieth move. Spassky resigned. Grandmaster Yasser Seirawan wrote: “Yes, indeed, Bobby is back! A flawlessly handled game. Precise to the last moment.” News outlets that, just the day prior, had criticized Fischer for his political incorrectness now had to admit that he was more than correct on the board: “Playing forcefully, the American chess genius seems to be in top form.” But to paraphrase Aristotle, one chess game does not a champion make.
During the second game, Bobby seemed as if he was feeling his strength … until he again made his fiftieth move and this time made an atrocious error, converting the game, which he might have won, into a drawn position. In some respects he repeated the error of his ways in the third game as welclass="underline" letting a potential—or at least a possible—win slip through his grasp and drift into a draw. Bobby’s comment at the end of the game was revealing in its honesty. “This was maybe an off-day for me. I hope it was an off-day for me. I was in trouble.” A scintilla of doubt had begun to insinuate itself. If the third game proved not to be just an “off-day” for him, it might be an indication that his long time away from the board was punishing him and hampering his ability to emerge as the old Bobby Fischer. The fourth and fifth games almost proved to him that he was experiencing some decline, or an accumulation of rust: He lost both.