The Grandmaster
“Vilhjálmsson takes Hallssonar’s c6 rook, in what could prove to be Vilhjálmsson’s breaking of the stalemate. I would not be surprised if we saw a resignation from Hallsonnar in the coming moves.”
The match, broadcast on Icelandic AM radio, has a projected viewership of two-hundred and thirty. Both players are relative equals in ability— Vilhjálmsson, the elder of the two, holding a 2448 rating, and Hallsonar holding a 2433. Inside the Laugardalshöll arena, the match has a live audience of 38.
“Hallsonar moves his knight to f5, undoubtedly an attempt to take one last go at Vilhjálmsson’s king.”
One person stands up from the audience and walks towards the exit.
“But what’s this? Oh my! Vilhjálmsson has just touched his king! By rule he must now move the king! This is a blunder unheard of from such a senior player! Vilhjálmsson will now have to move his king to either g8 or h8, both of which would surely result in his being checkmated the next move, or the following. Vilhjálmsson moves his king to g8, and Hallsonar moves in for the checkmate with a queen to g7. The two men are shaking hands now—it does appear that Vilhjálmsson is quite perturbed by his blunder.”
There is tepid applause from the audience gathered in Laugardalshöll arena. Most of the crowd files out towards the exits.
“Well, that concludes this broadcast of chess on Útvarp Saga AM. Tune in next week when Gunnar Arsaelsson will be facing off against Þór Hjálmarsson in what hopes to be the most anticipated match of the year! I’m Einnar Jónsson, and we’ll . . . oh. . . I’m just receiving word that we are receiving a call from none other than the great Johnny Fleischman! Mr. Fleischman, are you on with us?”
“Uh, yes, this is John Fleischman.”
“Yes! Mr. Fleischman, so good to have you on the broadcast with us. I received word that you noticed a pattern by which Vilhjálmsson may have actually won the match, even after his costly blunder?”
“Yes.”
“Well, would you mind sharing it with us, Mr. Fleischman?”
“Yes, well uh, no, I don’t mind . . . it’s really quite dull. If Vil-hall-sen, was that his name? Vilhallsen? Well, if he had moved his king to h8 instead of g8 Hallsoner would’ve naturally moved his knight to e7 to set up the checkmate the next move, but Vilhallsen could then move his rook to g2, placing Hallsoner in check.”
“I see. Mr. Fleischman, wouldn’t that simply put Hallsonar in check for one move, and Vilhjálmsson would just be sacrificing his rook?”
“Yes, well, no I mean . . . I suppose that’s how it might seem to an amateur. If Halsoner takes the rook, the other rook advances to e2, placing him in check the next move, and then to f2 the following move, placing him in checkmate. No . . . if Hallsoner had any sense at all he would not take the rook, and would instead move his king to h1, as his only viable option. But this would not save his ass either, as Villhallsen places him in check with his bishop to d5, which is taken by Hallsoner’s rook, and Villhallsen would then be able to move the uninhibited queen to c1, achieving checkmate two moves after that.”
“That is . . . wow, that is quite a brilliant observation Mr. Fleischman, thank you for taking the time to call in and enlighten us. Mr. Fleischman, would you like to share with the audience where you are calling us from? . . . Mr. Fleischman? Did we lose you? Mr. Fleischman?”
About sixty kilometers southeast from Reykjavík, John Fleischman hangs up the phone. With a sigh, the elderly man places the phone back onto the receiver, and with a great deal of effort raises himself from his armchair. He makes the walk across his living room to his desk, lowering himself into his desk chair patiently and gingerly. Finally falling into the creaky wooden chair, his body makes a tremendous thud that almost echoes in the silence of the room. Once settled, he flips his tape recorder back on. Fleischman stares at the tape scrolling, watching the right side of the tape gain volume, and the left recede towards the conclusion. Like anything else, it is a game of strategy, with thousands of possibilities in how to get to the endgame. Fleischman begins from where he left off.
“Today the Jews made another attempt on my life. But I outsmarted them, yet again.”
#
The town of Selfoss has a population of approximately 6,000 people, making it the largest town in Southern Iceland. There’s a library. There’s a nine-hole golf course. There’s a bed and breakfast. There’s a single bridge across the Ölfusá. The area is isolated from other urban centers, and devoid of major topographical features apart from the river. If one were to open a door by the edge of the town and look out, there would be nothing to see apart from rolling moss and sky until the horizon merges the two and the earth’s curvature blocks the rest of the world from Selfoss.
Around twelve o’clock today, Bragi Karlsson knocks on the door of a one-story home. Karlsson is not from Selfoss. Driving down here, he always avoids looking out at the barren horizon. He finds the sparse landscapes outside of Reykjavík to provoke a specific anxiety within him, one he can’t quite articulate. It’s best for him to listen to the radio and to try and keep his eyes on the road. Now arrived, he is holding a tall bag of groceries, watching his breath turning to steam as he waits. He knocks again. After waiting a few more moments, Karlsson tries the doorknob, and finding it unlocked, lets himself into the home.
The smell of the home is striking. The air smells like a combination of curdling milk and weak air freshener sprayed to cover up the smell without removing the source. Karlsson always took several moments to acclimate to the poor smell of the home, but on this trip, he perceives the stench to be worse than usual.
“Johnny?” Karlsson calls, standing in the entryway. “Johnny, I brought you some groceries.”
Karlsson stands in the silence for some time, observing the ringing in his ears, growing increasingly uncomfortable.
“Johnny? Are you home? I thought that because your car’s here . . .”
Still silence. Karlsson walks towards the bedroom, pushing open the ajar door. Standing by the window is John Fleischman, arms crossed, staring out across the plain leading away from Selfoss, not reacting in any way when Karlsson enters the room.
“Johnny, how are you? I got you groceries.”
Fleischman remains transfixed on the plain beyond the window.
“Johnny . . . there isn’t anyone coming.”
“I know that.”
“Then what’re you looking for?”
Fleischman says nothing.
“Johnny, how about a game? I brought you some food from the store, I can make you some lunch. Okay?”
Fleischman says nothing.
Karlsson sighs and moves back into the kitchen with his bag of groceries. But Karlsson stalls on his next move, sighing, seeing that there is nowhere to put down his bag. Scattered across every inch of counter space in Fleischman’s house are hundreds of newspapers, stacked several inches high. Some of them recent, some of them as old as two years, Karlsson discovers from a quick investigation. Finding a stable enough stack, Karlsson gently places the bag of groceries down on the counter, testing the structural integrity of the newspapers for a moment. Deeming the bag relatively safe, he opens the refrigerator door. The inside of the fridge is largely barren, apart from two moldy peaches, the sight of which ignites great curiosity in Karlsson due to it being the middle of winter in Iceland. Karlsson unloads the milk, eggs, yogurt, bread, and sliced turkey into the fridge. Karlsson then fetches two slices of bread, two slices of turkey, and assembles a sandwich. He searches the fridge door for mayo to no avail. Then, after opening every cabinet for a plate in vain, Karlsson opts to wrap the sandwich in a sheet of newspaper, carefully folding the paper as one would around a present, taking a moment to admire its squareness, and turns to bring the turkey package back to Fleischman.
When Karlsson does indeed turn back towards the living room, he finds that Fleischman has moved himself into his armchair, and set up the chessboard completely. Karlsson motions to the package in his hand, suppressing his pride for his ingenuity in a situation with so few possible solutions. Fleischman looks at the package in overt disappointment, annoyed that Karlsson would take such preposterous liberties with his good newspaper. Sheepishly, Karlsson places the sandwich by Fleischman, and, pulling up an Ottoman to sit on, takes his place on the black side of the chessboard.
e4.
A standard opening. Too standard. Johnny does not usually go with a King’s Gambit, so no need to brace for it, Karlsson thinks.
e5.
Bc4.
Fleischman moves his piece immediately and purposefully, then proceeds to gaze out the window, contemplating the plain surrounding Selfoss from his chair. The Italian game. The knight would come out next. Karlsson smiles to himself, pleased that he was one step ahead of the Grandmaster, rightfully assuming that he would not lead with a Gambit.
“So, Johnny, done anything interesting since I’ve last seen you?”
Fleischman does not turn his gaze from the window. “Why do you always ask me that?” he responds, sounding quite annoyed, but not annoyed enough to pay Karlsson any real attention. “I don’t like talking during a game.”
“It’s just me, Johnny. The game doesn’t have to be serious.”
Fleischman says nothing, continuing to contemplate the skyline.
d7.
Fleischman does not even look at the chessboard as he reaches across and grabs his queen, so accustomed is he with the geometry of the board.
Qf3.
This is a confounding move, something that Karlsson surmises he’s never seen before. My God, did he invent a new opening? Karlsson thinks, why would he bring his queen out so early? Karlsson looks up at Fleischman, trying to ascertain what Fleischman is strategizing, but Fleischman is a blank, uninterested slate. It seems as if whatever Karlsson’s next move would be has absolutely no bearing on Fleischman’s. As if Fleischman is not even playing Karlsson at all. Karlsson opts to play it safe, and reinforces his frontline pawn.
Nc6.
Qf7.
Checkmate.
Karlsson is stunned, staring at the board, contemplating the impossibility of it, searching fruitlessly for some way he could break the checkmate. Fleischman continues to stare out the window, much more preoccupied with whatever he hoped to find on the horizon than the concluded game.
“The four-move checkmate,” Karlsson stammers, “It’s a parlor trick . . . a child’s game.”
“Well, you play like a child,” Fleischman says, rolling his eyes.
“How did you know that I wouldn’t see it? If I had moved my pawn correctly I could have easily stopped it.”
“But you didn’t.”
“How did you know I wouldn’t?”
Fleischman says nothing, incredibly bored by the conversation.
“How, Johnny?”
Fleischman looks over to Karlsson from the window for the first time all game, looking quite annoyed at Karlsson for disrupting his search beyond the window. Karlsson is immediately ashamed of himself for asking so much of the Grandmaster. He knows that he’s lucky enough to be able to share these games with him in any capacity. He looks back at Fleischman. There’s something else in Fleischman’s expression beyond anger. What is it? His eyes are wide. He looks scared, desperate, almost like he is wanting for something, although Fleischman would never ask Karlsson for anything. What does he want?
“How about another game?” Karlsson finally asks.
Fleischman turns his head and looks back out the window. He lets out a sigh.
“Fine.”
#
Karlsson lasts ten moves the next game. Then eight. And then seventeen the game after that, a personal record for him. All the while Fleischman never extends more than a passing glance over in the board’s direction. It isn’t fair. The two men are playing completely different games. Karlsson is trying to speak to Fleischman in a language that only Fleischman understands. Eventually, Karlsson begins to feel guilty by Fleischman’s overt boredom. He wonders if there is anything the Grandmaster may wish to do apart from playing chess, but he is also wary as to what that might be.
“Do you want to get dinner in town, Johnny? There’s a cute pub that I tried the last time I visited you.”
“I drove you to drink last time, eh?” Fleischman says, finally turning from the window, cracking a wry smile.
Karlsson nearly giggles from delight at Fleischman showing any sign of good humor. “Possibly. But you didn’t beat me so badly today.”
“Maybe not as badly Bragi, but still quite badly.”
Karlsson laughs uproariously at this. Fleischman appears pleased by the reception his joke receives.
“How about it then? Would you like to go?”
The smile recedes from Fleischman’s face.
“Uh, I, uh, don’t think so. I don’t drink, you know.”
“Sure, but the food is quite good there!”
“I’m not hungry.”
“We could go somewhere else? Or just go for a walk? It’s still light enough out.”
Fleischman says nothing, folding his arms, and returning his gaze back towards the window. Karlsson grows anxious, feeling as if he has lost him, just as he fought so hard to get him back.
“You know they . . . they won’t let me out . . . it’s safer in here,” Fleischman mumbles.
Karlsson shifts uncomfortably in his seat, refusing to jump at the bait, now avoiding Fleischman’s eye contact. But Karlsson can feel the piercing gaze of Fleischman’s gaze, feeling the intensity of his attention, the attention that Karlsson’s sought all afternoon, that he suddenly wants no part of.
“They block my calls too. They won’t even let me talk to my sister when I call her.”
Karlsson nervously laughs, not saying anything, bracing himself for what has become an at least once-a-visit ritual anytime he comes to see the Grandmaster.
“It’s true, you know,” Flesichman says, focussing his attention to Karlsson, seeming the most alert that he’s been all night. “They tap my phone lines. I’ve tried to call her. Really I have, but they block the line.”
Fleischman stares wide-eyed at Karlsson. Karlsson averts his eyes from Fleischman entirely, instead contemplating the darkening plane beyond the window of the living room. Karlsson has found that sometimes if you don’t reply to comments like these, Fleischman may drop the subject. But Fleischman’s gaze continues to burn into him unrelentingly.
“I, uh, don’t know about all that Johnny,” Karlsson finally manages, surprising himself at his vocalized disagreement.
Fleischman begins turning red, sitting up on the edge of his chair, completely animated.
“Damnit Bragi! Are you calling me a liar? You know why they block my calls to my sister. They’re trying to stop me from getting all the damn money I’m owed back. They cheated me out of the rights to my book, and now they’re making money off of my name. Go ahead, look in any bookstore, they’re still printing it. And I don’t make a dime from a single one of those. How is that fair? How is it okay for the Jews running Learning International to be making money off of my name? How?”
Karlsson is stunned. He is used to rants of this nature, but none so impassioned and prolonged. He has never seen Fleischman this animated before, and finds himself at a loss for how to calm him.
“And how do you think I ended up here in this icy shithole anyways?” Fleischman continues uninhibited, “Do you know of a single other person who was arrested for holding a chess match in Yugoslavia? Do you? Maybe there is, but I’ve never heard of anyone, as far as I’m aware I am the only person that’s ever happened to. Tell me if there is, but I don’t think there’s anyone else. Same thing happened to Michael Jackson. He leads a completely clean life, never hurt a fly, and then he says ‘don’t Jew me,’ in a song, and bam! All of a sudden he has these bullshit child rape charges brought against him. Why the hell would Michael Jackson rape a kid? Do you know how much pussy that guy is swimming in? You can’t say anything about them, or they’ll do what they did to him. Christ, they’re in charge of everything . . . the Government, Wall Street, the tech industry, the nuclear industry . . . the, the hotel industry. And they’re all just taking credit for other people’s work. That’s the problem with them. They don’t like to work. That’s why they couldn’t stand Hitler’s concentration camps, you know. The gas chambers were all baloney. There was a big sign at the entrance that said ‘Arbeit macht frei,’ and that means work makes you free, only they didn’t want to work. That’s the problem with Jews. They don’t like work. They’re parasites. And they’ve been parasites for thousands of years—”
“Enough, Johnny!” Karlsson yells over the Grandmaster, now quite red in the face as well, his lower lip trembling from a mixture of anxiety and anger.
Fleischman looks startled, genuinely shocked to see Karlsson yell at him. Both men’s ears ring in the silence following Karlsson’s yell.
“There were gas chambers in Hitler’s concentration camps,” Karlsson says calmly and softly, “And the Jewish people do not control the United States government, Johnny,” Karlsson says softly. “Nor are they, nor anyone, ripping you off on your book. You still receive royalty checks for the book, I saw them in your mail. You know that. You just do not have sole control over the copyright. That’s from the agreement you made with Learning International when you wrote the book.”
Fleischman sits fuming, clenching his fist.
“And sure, Johnny, you would be more popular if you could stop saying such horrible things about Jewish people, but that’s not why you are here.”
“Then why am I here? Huh? Answer me that—”
“Because you held a chess match in Belgrade that violated economic sanctions the United Nations levied against Yugoslavia during—”
“Just like the Jews to be controlling the International Economy—”
“Sanctions the United Nations put in place to try and stop the genocide in Yugoslavia. There wasn’t some sort of made up law that got your passport revoked. When the government sent you a cease and desist letter, giving you a chance to stop, you spat on it, on television, with the whole world watching. That is why you are here, Johnny.”
Fleischman fidgets in the armchair, completely red in the face, opening his mouth to speak, and then closing it. He grumbles a soft “yes,” several times, chuckling, and shaking his head. He finally speaks.
“You’re a debater, I’m not into debating. This is no good for me . . . all you guys, in college, you learn debating, how to superficially win an argument . . . I am not into that, I didn’t go to college you know, I had to teach myself everything. Better that way, I think, I’m the only person I know who can think for himself.”
“Johnny, I am not debating you! I am just trying to tell you the truth! I am just trying to tell the most brilliant man I have ever met to think rationally about a single thing outside of chess.”
Fleischman turns towards the chess board, like a newborn looking up at a mobile in its crib.
“And Johnny . . . you are a Jewish man! Your mother was Jewish, so was your father, you come from a Jewish family. Why do you say and believe such terrible things?”
Fleischman’s perplexion turns to anger. He grabs the black Queen off the board, clenching it in his fist. He stands up, pointing towards the door.
“Get out of my house you damn rat! And don’t you ever come back here again!”
Karlsson sighs, looking at Fleischman, hoping to find anything other than rage in his eyes, but is unsuccessful. He walks towards the door and grabs his coat off of the rack, pausing there. Karlsson, despite his anger, and feeling the heat from the Grandmaster’s glare on his back, couldn’t help but feel melancholy above all else. He turns to Fleischman to speak.
“Johnny . . . You are allowed to make calls to the United States. I know that you are. If you say that the number is blocked . . . then either you are lying to me, or your sister would have to be the one blocking the number.”
Fleischman says nothing, not softening his glare, nor his finger pointed firmly at the door.
Karlsson sighs again.
“Goodbye, Johnny.”
Karlsson opens the door and walks out, letting in a gust of sub-freezing Icelandic wind.
Fleischman hears the car start in the driveway.
Karlsson begins the long journey back to Reykjavík.
Fleischman stands in place, taking stock of his slowing heartbeat, the relaxing of his eyebrows, and the now brisk temperature inside the room.
Fleischman walks over to the radio, turning it on just as the clock chimes seven.
“Welcome to tonight’s weekly chess showcase on Útvarp Saga FM, today’s matchup will be between . . . “
Fleischman walks over the chess set, calmly placing the ivory pieces back into their velvet compartments in the box, taking a moment to appreciate his rare chessboard, and the incredible geography of the Nordic-designed pieces. A gift from nearly twenty years ago. One of the very few things he took with him when he was granted asylum in Iceland.
“. . .last week, Halssonar pulled off an unlikely, if somewhat controversial win over Vilhjálmsson, when Vilhjálmsson made a costly blunder by . . .”
Fleischman walks back towards the bedroom window, looking out across the plains of Selfoss, indistinguishable now from the nighttime sky.
Fleischman pulls himself away from the window, feeling his hourly ritual less necessary now than usual.
Fleischman stands idly in the doorway to the bedroom for a moment.
“ . . . his opponent, Þór Hjálmarsson, is a promising up and comer, who has beaten his last three consecutive opponents, each of them outranking himself . . . “
Fleischman moves to his desk, pulling back his chair with some difficulty, and then lowering himself into the chair with a thud that echoes around the room.
“. . . and with a pawn to e4 we are underway in this week’s match! . . .”
Fleischman flips the tape recorder on, watching the right side of the tape gain volume, and the left recede closer and closer towards the conclusion.
“Bragi Karlsson came to visit me today . . . we played several games of chess at his behest, all of which were a complete bore to me, myself being so much his superior at the game. Games with Bragi are not much more than the equivalent of an athlete going for a walk, or a Professor reading to his children.”
Fleischman watches the right side of the tape recede, its volume very narrow now.
“But he’s a good man. He truly is. It is very kind of him to take the time to come visit me. Most would not do so. I suppose I could have been more polite to him . . . and he’s not so bad of a player either, I give him a harder time than he deserves. One day he may even be a very good one.”
Fleischman looks towards the window, pausing his gaze on the fading light settling on the barren horizon.
“Unfortunately, he remains blind to the great Jewish conspiracy, and continues to believe, in the face of all facts to the contrary, that they are not a murderous, thieving, lying, backstabbing people.”