"What's with the kid? What does he want?" That is what so many people were asking in those days when Bobby Fischer was balking before and during the world chess championship in Iceland. I couldn't answer the questions then -- or even now. But there are things that happened in those hectic weeks that reveal something of the man.
There were no long-range plans for me to serve as Bobby's second in Iceland. At the time the subject came up he had already missed the opening ceremonies in Reykjavik and nearly everyone was pessimistic about the chances of his appearing at the championship. I received a message to phone Dr. Anthony Saidy, a chess friend of Bobby's and son of the co-author of Finian's Rainbow. I guessed that Fischer might be holed up with the Saidys, and he was -- he came to the telephone. I tried to convince him to go to Iceland, but he was noncommittal. "What about you? Can you come?" he asked. I told him I was committed to covering the event on cable TV. "You haven't signed anything, have you?" I had not.
That night I drove to the Saidys in Douglaston, Long Island. Tony, an international chess master, let me in and disappeared upstairs to find out if Bobby would see me. When Tony came down, I went up. Bobby and I talked for a couple of hours while a TV in the room played loudly. Bobby interrupted at one point to ask, "Do you hear a noise?" Certainly none but the TV. "Listen," he said, flicking off the set. Five yards from where we sat the gears of a digital clock were turning. The movement from minute to minute produced a click. Fischer was keenly aware of it. To me the sound was only audible with conscious effort. Bobby declared he needed a new, silent alarm clock. I told him I would get him one the following day.
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