Carl Ja­cobs

The on­go­ing bat­tle over Bob­by Fis­ch­er's mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar es­tate now ex­pos­es to pub­lic view the se­cret love-life of the late ec­cen­tric world chess cham­pi­on. Re­cent­ly, the Ice­land Supreme Court recog­nised the le­gal­i­ty of Fis­ch­er's con­tro­ver­sial mar­riage to Japan­ese IM Miyoko Watai which, it was ex­pect­ed, would have set­tled the is­sue. The rul­ing cer­tain­ly elim­i­nates any claims that Fis­ch­er's close friends and sup­port­ers may want to make. The mat­ter, how­ev­er, is far from over as a counter-claim has been filed in the pro­bate court of Reyk­jav­ic on be­half of Fis­ch­er's love-child, Jinky, the daugh­ter he fa­thered with his live-in part­ner in Baguio City, Phillip­pines, nine years ago.

Mar­i­lyn Young, Fis­ch­er's Phillip­pino lover, says through her lawyer Samuel Es­ti­mo, "it is well that Miyoko has been de­clared as the law­ful wife of Bob­by, but I am still seek­ing jus­tice for Jinky, the daugh­ter I had with him." In sup­port of her claim, Young sub­mit­ted Jinky's birth cer­tifi­cate, fam­i­ly pho­tographs, bank re­mit­tances of Fis­ch­er's fi­nan­cial sup­port and the af­fi­davit of GM Eu­gene Torre, Asia's first grand­mas­ter and long-time con­fi­dant and chief sec­ond to the chess leg­end in his re­turn match with GM Boris Spassky in the for­mer Yu­goslavia in 1992. If Jinky suc­ceeds in her claim she would, un­der Ice­landic law, in­her­it two thirds of Fis­ch­er's es­tate, while his law­ful wife would re­ceive one third. The 64-year-old chess ge­nius who died in Ice­land of kid­ney fail­ure two years ago left a sub­stan­tial for­tune in­clud­ing TT $11.5 mil­lion in bank ac­counts and a num­ber of gold coins. "Bob­by will turn in his grave if the in­her­i­tance of his daugh­ter Jinky is not award­ed by the Ice­landic court," GM Torre said. "I had seen with my two eyes how Bob­by lov­ing­ly took care of his daugh­ter dur­ing her in­fant days in Baguio."

The vet­er­an grand­mas­ter, to­geth­er with Young, her daugh­ter and lawyer Es­ti­mo are now in Lon­don for the shoot­ing of a BBC-HBO doc­u­men­tary on the life of Fis­ch­er. "We will be pro­ceed­ing to Ice­land af­ter the shoot to fol­low-up the claim of Jinky," Young said. Miyoko Matai, act­ing pres­i­dent and gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Japan Chess As­so­ci­a­tion, first met Fis­ch­er in Tokyo in 1973 af­ter cor­re­spond­ing with him for sev­er­al years. The two even­tu­al­ly be­came lovers and, in Jan­u­ary 2000, set­tled down to a qui­et life in Matai's home in down­town Ka­ma­ta, Tokyo. How­ev­er, their do­mes­tic har­mo­ny was sud­den­ly shat­tered when the chess leg­end was ar­rest­ed at the Nari­ta In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port for al­leged­ly try­ing to trav­el with an in­valid US pass­port. The sit­u­a­tion grew more des­per­ate for the cou­ple when the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment is­sued an im­me­di­ate or­der to de­port him to the US where he was want­ed for vi­o­lat­ing in­ter­na­tion­al sanc­tions im­posed on the for­mer Yu­goslavia. The charge arose from Fis­ch­er's re­turn match with Boris Spassky which took place in Bel­grade in 1972.

Watai, who lat­er be­came Japan Women's Chess Cham­pi­on, launched a fran­tic cam­paign to free Fis­ch­er, seek­ing sup­port from chess fans around the world. The Com­mit­tee to Free Bob­by Fis­ch­er, which she formed with oth­er ad­mir­ers of the Amer­i­can chess gi­ant, took ag­gres­sive le­gal ac­tion to stop his de­por­ta­tion. It was then that the two de­cid­ed to mar­ry, hop­ing that their le­gal union would help the US fugi­tive to gain a per­ma­nent visa in Japan and so avoid the im­pend­ing de­por­ta­tion. The ex­tra­di­tion case dragged on for nine months dur­ing which time the ex-chess cham­pi­on agreed to pub­licly recog­nise his mar­riage to Watai with whom he had lived in com­mon law for sev­er­al years. John Bosnitch, a Cana­di­an jour­nal­ist and civ­il rights ac­tivist, who rep­re­sent­ed Fis­ch­er in the ex­tra­di­tion mat­ter, wit­nessed the union, signed the cer­tifi­cate and du­ly reg­is­tered the event. "The fact that the US had il­le­gal­ly seized Bob­by's pass­port was ini­tial­ly an im­pede­ment," said Bosnitch. "But af­ter we ar­gued that the il­le­gal seizure vi­o­lat­ed his hu­man right to mar­ry, the Japan­ese au­thor­i­ties not on­ly is­sued a cer­tifi­cate but al­so reg­is­tered the mar­riage."

Fis­ch­er's plight al­so won the sym­pa­thy of the op­po­si­tion So­cial De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty of Japan whose leader, Mizuho Fukushi­ma, per­son­al­ly and suc­cess­ful­ly lob­bied the Ice­landic par­lia­ment by satel­lite link to grant cit­i­zen­ship to the im­pris­oned chess ti­tan. The au­thor­i­ties in Reyk­jav­ic read­i­ly re­spond­ed, grant­i­ng Fis­ch­er both cit­i­zen­ship and refuge in the Nordic state. They were grate­ful no doubt for the world-wide promi­nence which Fis­ch­er had brought to their city by choos­ing it as the venue for his 1972 epic du­el against world cham­pi­on Boris Spassky, the match in which he de­liv­ered the fi­nal coup de grace to the age-old Russ­ian hege­mo­ny over the roy­al game. The un­pre­dictable ge­nius who had turned the chess world up­side down end­ed his days qui­et­ly in the scenic town of Self­oss, 60 kilo­me­tres south of Reyk­javik. As he grew old­er, Fis­ch­er's mysogin­is­tic views on women ap­par­ent­ly mel­lowed. In af­fairs of the heart he demon­strat­ed a car­ing and con­cern out of char­ac­ter with the iras­ci­bil­i­ty and sin­gle-mind­ed ag­gres­sion that marked his spec­tac­u­lar chess ca­reer. "Still," said his Japan­ese wid­ow, "He didn't like women wear­ing lip­stick and high heel shoes and colour­ing their hair."