The primary theme of the film now, which working title is “My Friend Bobby,” is in his opinion, quite contrary to the ideas that were proposed in the year 2005 concerning a possible news program for Icelandic television of the U.S. organized kidnapping and imprisonment of Mr. Fischer in Japan, his being granted Icelandic citizenship and release from prison.
For this reason, it is absolutely against his wishes that parties in Iceland and elsewhere should provide financial subsidy for the production of this film or should show it once completed.
Bobby had already stopped talking to Saemi and taking calls from Gudmundsson, and he began referring to his ex-bodyguard as a “Judas” for trying to make a film that was more about Saemi than about Bobby’s travails. Bobby wanted the film to be a polemic, not a biography—and he certainly didn’t want it to be about his bodyguard. Almost to a man, members of the RJF Committee broke off any further contact with Saemi Palsson. As it turned out, the film was a box office dud, bringing in only $40,000; it did make additional revenue from DVD sales and television licensing.
Then Bobby’s royal displeasure was directed at another Icelander, Gudmundur Thorarinsson. “I never received the full amount from the gate receipts from 1972,” Bobby suddenly accused Thorarinsson at a party at his house. “I want to see the books. Where are the books?” Bobby demanded. Thorarinsson gasped quietly and explained that Bobby had received his full share of the gate receipts in 1972, that he didn’t have the account books at home, but that he’d look for them at the offices of the Icelandic Chess Federation, where he’d been president in 1972 and had been instrumental in initiating the World Championship match. After more than thirty years there was little hope that the records still existed. Bobby was unsatisfied with the answer. The books were never found and Bobby never talked to Thorarinsson again.
Bobby had been using different forms of fallacious logic to accuse and attack whole classes of people, such as the Jews. Now he used his spurious logic against benevolent Icelanders. His illogical syllogism went something like this:
Saemi cheated and betrayed me.
Saemi is an Icelander.
Therefore all Icelanders are cheaters and betrayers.
A litany of attacks, suspicions, and far-fetched offenses began erupting in the RJFers’ direction after the Saemi incident, and few from the group escaped Bobby’s wrath. Even key stalwarts felt his sting: Helgi Olaffson for not tolerating Bobby’s anti-Semitic enmity, and for asking too many questions about the “old chess” (“He must be writing a book”); David Oddsson for reasons unknown, even to Oddsson himself; and, surprisingly, Gardar Sverrisson, his closest friend, spokesman, and neighbor, because Gardar didn’t inform him about a silly and harmless photograph of Bobby’s shoes that appeared in Morgunbladid. Gardar got off relatively unscathed—Bobby’s snit against him lasted only twenty-four hours. The rest of the group became persona non grata.
By the fall of 2007, Bobby’s disillusionment with Iceland was fixed. He called it a “God-forsaken country” and referred to Icelanders as “special but only in the negative sense.” If his Icelandic benefactors knew of his expressions of ingratitude (“I don’t owe these [people] anything!” he spitefully proclaimed), they didn’t discuss them publicly, a characteristic of many Scandinavians. Those who directly experienced his thanklessness were saddened but stoic. “Well, that’s Bobby,” one Icelander observed. “We have to take him as he is.” It was as if he were a changeling, a troubled child not so secretly adopted by the Icelanders, but with love and without foreboding.
“You are truth. You are love. You are bliss. You are freedom.”
Bobby was reading The Rajneesh Bible, a work by the charismatic and controversial guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Like Bobby, Bhagwan had also had trouble with the United States Immigration Department, and was arrested and made to leave the country. Bobby identified with him in that respect and especially valued one of his dicta: “Never obey anyone’s command unless it is coming from within you.”
Bhagwan’s philosophy had attracted Bobby ever since he began exploring it during his eight years in Hungary. Although Bobby never practiced meditation, an essential part of Bhagwan’s belief system, he became deeply interested in the qualities of the ideal—or “realized”—self being described by Bhagwan. Bobby didn’t appear to much consider Bhagwan’s endorsement of such qualities as love, celebration, and humor. Rather, what seemed to appeal was the idea of the individual rising to a higher plateau. Fischer thought of himself as a warrior in all things, not just chess—and living in Iceland, free of incarceration, he made no exceptions. “I am always on the attack,” he proudly divulged while he was there—and he wasn’t talking about a board game. There was little time for humor or celebration in a time of war. He was poised for battle against the chess establishment, the Union Bank of Switzerland, the Jews, the United States, Japan, Icelanders in general, the media, processed foods, Coca-Cola, noise, pollution, nuclear energy, and circumcision.
Bobby thought of himself as being totally aware and equated himself with Bhagwan’s concept of the Nietzschean “Superman” who transcends the constraints of society. “I am a genius,” he said shortly after arriving back in Iceland, not pontifically but sincerely. “Not just a chess genius but a genius in other things as well.”
Bobby’s attempt to find some deeper, perhaps religious meaning to his life took a wide and twisted path. At first, as a child, there was Judaism, of which he never really felt a part; then Fundamentalism, until he became disillusioned with the leaders of the Worldwide Church of God. Anti-Semitism also became a quasi religion—or certainly a profound belief—for him, and one that he never really abandoned. At one point of his life he embraced atheism, although not for long. He was intrigued with the cult of Rajneesh himself, rather than the guru’s practices. Finally, near the end of his life, he began to explore Catholicism.
A contradiction in terms, an oxymoron? A Catholic Bobby Fischer?
Something was missing in the life of Bobby Fischer, a chasm that needed to be filled. Delving through books, he discovered the writings of Catholic theologians, and he became intrigued with the religion. Gardar Sverrisson, his closest friend in Reykjavik, was Catholic (one of the few: 95 percent of Icelanders are Lutheran), and Bobby began to ask him questions about the liturgy, the adoration of saints, the theological mysteries, and other aspects of the religion. Gardar answered what he could, but he was no theologian. Eventually, Bobby brought him a copy of Basic Catechism: Creed, Sacraments, Morality, Prayer, so that Gardar could be more informed when they had discussions.
It’s not certain whether Bobby was baptized in the Roman Catholic religion in the traditional manner, which entails the pouring of—or immersion in—water, the anointing of sacred chrism (special oil), and a solemn blessing by a priest performing the sacrament, but it’s unlikely. Einarsson and Skulasson both concluded that Bobby, despite his late-life deliberations on the topic, was not a strong believer in the Catholic Church and that he hadn’t converted to the faith. But there are three forms of baptism: by water (the usual way), by fire (as in martyrdom), and by spirit (in that the recipient desires to be baptized). If Bobby did wish to become Catholic, it’s possible that aspiration was sufficient for him to have been accepted into the Church, at least by less conservative clergy. According to Gardar Sverrisson, Bobby talked with him about the transformation of society by creating harmony with one another, and then professed that he thought “the only hope for the world is through Catholicism.”