Being out of the hospital perked up Bobby’s spirits for a while, and he began to feel better, even going to a movie with Sverrisson’s twenty-year-old son, a professional soccer player. At Christmastime, when all of Reykjavik is festooned with lights and takes on the ambience of a Currier and Ives painting and there are days and days of celebrations, Miyoko came and stayed with Bobby at the apartment for two weeks. On January 10, 2008, she flew back to Tokyo, losing a day with the time difference. Soon, she received a call from Sverrisson that Bobby had grown substantially more ill. By the time a new reservation could be arranged and she could make her way back to Iceland, Bobby had been taken to the hospital by Sverrisson in the car. He died there, peacefully, on January 17. Like the number of squares on a chessboard—an irony that nevertheless cannot be pressed too far—he was sixty-four.
Epilogue
BORIS SPASSKY WAS STUNNED. Long concerned about Bobby’s illness, he’d kept in close contact. Then, shockingly, he learned that Bobby had died. Momentarily unable to express his sense of loss, Spassky e-mailed Einar Einarsson: “My brother is dead.”
In those four words he showed how deeply he felt about Bobby, although the world already knew. He’d told people that he “loved” Bobby Fischer … as a brother. At the 1992 match he publicly stated that he was ready to fight “and I want to fight, but on the other hand I would like Bobby to win because I believe that Bobby must come back to chess.” When Bobby was incarcerated in Japan, Spassky had been serious when he announced that he was willing to be imprisoned with him (and a chessboard). Spassky’s respect for his nemesis bordered on adulation and possibly even fear. He once said: “It’s not if you win or lose against Bobby Fischer; it’s if you survive.” But there was true camaraderie between them that went beyond just chess and that Spassky was always quick to express. He felt they sensed each other’s frayed loneliness as past champions, a nostalgia to which few could relate.
Only three weeks before Bobby’s death Spassky had sent his old friend a lighthearted message, telling him to obey his doctors, and that when he “escaped” from the hospital, he should get in touch.
Spassky had been informed that Bobby’s condition was serious, but he wasn’t aware that it was grave. Icelandic tradition discourages a person’s illness from being discussed outside of family or intimate friends, but because of Spassky’s solicitous comments about his longtime opponent, Einarsson considered him a part of Bobby’s “family” and had let him know his friend’s condition was worsening. Spassky wrote: “I have a brother’s feeling toward Bobby. He is a good friend.”
In the last days of Bobby’s life he was becoming more frail and could hardly speak, nor could he keep down any food. His lips were always dry. Either the forty-eight-year-old Gardar Sverrisson—who wasn’t well himself—or his wife Kristin, a nurse, would stay with Bobby at his apartment all through the night, watching out for him when he slept and attending to his needs when he woke.
Bobby had told Sverrisson that he would like to be buried in the small country graveyard close to the town of Selfoss, about an hour’s drive from Reykjavik, in a rural farmland community called Laugardaelir. The cemetery was reported to be at least a thousand years old, established about the time that Eric the Red left for Greenland and the Althingi—Iceland’s parliament (the first in Europe)—was formed; ironically this is the same governmental body that gave Bobby his citizenship in 2005.
An unpretentious Lutheran church—a chapel, really—that looks like a set for an Ingmar Bergman drama and can seat only about fifty parishioners, guards the site of the cemetery. Bobby had felt the peaceful atmosphere of the surroundings when he’d visited Sverrisson’s wife’s parents, who live in Selfoss, and Bobby and his friend Gardar took long walks among the ancient rocks and paths in the area. In a memorial article in the Iceland Review, writer Sara Blask summed up Bobby’s feelings about what he wanted after his death: “Fischer just wanted to be buried like a normal human being—not a chessplayer, just as a person.”
It took a long time for Bobby to admit to himself that he was dying, but when he came to accept it, he made it clear to Sverrisson that he wanted no fanfare, no media circus, no lavish funeral, and he wanted it to be private. Desiring control until the end, he was particularly emphatic that none of his “enemies” attend his funeraclass="underline" those who he felt exploited him or with whom he’d established feuds. Above all, he stressed that there were to be no reporters, television cameras, or gaping tourists.
Sverrisson arranged the funeral and carried it out with strict observance of Bobby’s last directives. He knew that the other members of the RJF Committee, who’d worked so tirelessly for Bobby, would be deeply hurt if they couldn’t pay their last respects by attending a ceremonial funeral, but he was nothing if not a loyal friend to Bobby, and he’d spent years protecting him and carrying out his wishes. This last service performed for his friend would cause Sverrisson years of enmity from certain members of the RJF Committee and others who felt close to Bobby during his Icelandic years. Russell Targ, Bobby’s brother-in-law, was particularly irritated since he’d flown from California to attend the funeral, only to find that he’d missed it by hours. The U.S. Chess Federation sent a communiqué to the Icelandic Chess Federation asking about the disposition of Bobby’s body, presumably wanting to bring him back to the United States, a move that Bobby would have detested. Especially at his death, Sverrisson believed it was his duty to fully comply with Bobby’s requests. His friend would be buried where, when, and how he wanted.
It took several days to arrange the details: The grave had to be dug—not an easy task in the frozen volcanic earth of Iceland’s winter; a priest had to be secured; documents had to be approved before the morgue released the body; yet everything had to wait for Miyoko to arrive from Japan. Four days after his death, at eight p.m. a hearse carrying Bobby’s body took the hour’s drive to Selfoss and then to the graveyard. The funeral procession was without pomp and circumstance, exactly as Bobby had wished, and as the hearse drove into Laugadaelir, the long and biting winds of winter awaited the remains of the world’s greatest chess player. It had snowed all morning, and now it was dark and raining. Sverrisson, his wife and two children, and Miyoko had traveled to Selfoss the night before to ensure that the arrangements were in order.
Father Jacob Rolland, a diminutive Catholic priest, originally from France, who also had the distinction of overseeing the burial of Haldor Laxness (Iceland’s only Nobel Prize winner—for literature—and a convert to Catholicism), said a few words of blessing, reportedly likening Bobby’s burial to that of Mozart’s, before the coffin was lowered into the grave. “Like him, he was buried with few present, and he had an intelligence like him that could see what others could not begin to understand.” There was no dirge, no incense, no requiem. Even the wide expanse of stars normally visible in the unpolluted sky was hidden behind rain clouds on that gloomy night. The ceremony took just twelve minutes, and then the freezing mourners departed. A white wooden cross was hastily erected on the grave mound with a placard that read:
Robert James Fischer
F. 9 mars 1943
D. 17 januar 2008
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