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Outrage. That's the first thing Anatoly feels when he learns Garry has been sent to prison.
"World champion in custody! World champion bites police officer! What a complete idiot off the chessboard! What is he doing! Who does he think he is!" — the headlines multiply before Anatoly's mind, and his entire being is flooded with anger.
This is unacceptable.
And even if in his worst moments Karpov in his imagination did even more terrible things to him, especially when, like now, he couldn’t sleep, “but I am allowed to do this,” Anatoly retorted to himself with satisfaction, “I have complete carte blanche after all the antics of the younger one, who seemed to have taken over the baton of insults from Korchnoi.”
This is unacceptable. This is not how a country should treat its champion, especially one who once — how ironic, Garry! — so desperately wanted to compete under its flag.
Anatoly imagined himself entering the prison cell and seeing him.
Now his hair, too, is streaked with gray — the coal cloud has become cotton wool — and now his title has the prefix "former". But his eyes still blaze with fire.
He imagined holding that gaze again, not showing the full whirlwind of emotions overwhelming him. Oh, Karpov had always been a good actor when it came to hiding his emotions.
Garry, the whole world is a prison when all you do is look for keys.
Anatoly can't sleep — as usual, and he formulates, formulates what Garry will never hear, and even if he hears, he will never understand — and there is nothing new in this either.
He desperately wants reality to dissolve, for everything to disappear except the face opposite him and the chessboard. For time to reverse, for their hair to become black again, their bodies thin.
There was always too much Kasparov. He filled the entire space with his booming voice and sweeping gestures. Garry was the south, Anatoly — the north. They are opposites even now, when Garry is a prisoner and Anatoly is free. When Garry is a rebel and Anatoly is a deputy.
Anatoly will never admit, even to himself, that he really wanted them to be on the same side. He and that insufferable, loud, narcissistic boy.
He never got the visit: he was not allowed into Garry's cell.
Karpov once again finds success eludes him when visiting Kasparov.
Another non-existent newspaper headline materializes in Anatoly’s mind, but his face remains impassive.
He leaves Garry a chess magazine, along with advice Kasparov will never follow, a request Kasparov will never fulfill.
The advice to return to where he started — to the board, two colors, 64 squares and an infinite number of variations.
A request to stop destroying and finally direct your irrepressible energy towards creation.
You've destroyed too much already — even the championship cycle of your supposedly beloved game. You've destroyed me too, so-
Anatoly remembers when he began to see Garry as more than just an impulsive boy. He began to see him as a man-
He began to see parts of himself in Garry.
Garry bit off pieces of Anatoly, bit off with each chess game, bit off and made parts of himself. "Chess Frankenstein, well, it sounds quite like a Jewish last name," Anatoly chuckled to himself, "like a surname that Garry was forced to give up". Inside, Karpov allowed himself to insultingly mock and ridicule, especially those who mocked him too much.
Each of their games was another lesson for Garry, of course, and for Anatoly as well, but for Kasparov even more so.
For Garry, these were lessons in skill and restraint. For Anatoly, they were lessons in humility.
As Koichnoy once wrote, Anatoly will learn humility.
Karpov was never burry, but he always swallowed the letter r in Korchnoi's surname, turning the catchy and bold surname — practically a shot, a spit — into a mush — Koichnoy — the way a child might pronounce it.
Accept the fact that one day you will lose, that your head (the head of a defeated dragon who was once — one title ago — a glorious knight) will fly from your shoulders, like the head of your great predecessor. And will you become great at that very moment?
###
Upon receiving a chess magazine, Garry, who has mastered everything in chess except humility, acknowledges, without even a hint of mockery, that of all his admirers, of all the eyes widening in amazement and mouths open in admiration, of all the supporters who shouted louder than ever that he was right,
only Anatoly remains. His beloved enemy.
###
Dawn. On the other side of Moscow, Anatoly closes his eyes when reality outside begins to take on color. Finally, at six in the morning, sleep overtook him, just as it had once done during an unlimited challenge.