The Incredible Ubu and “Toiletgate”

The Incredible Ubu and “Toiletgate”
By Fernando Arrabal
The Incredible One scheduled a poor farce entitled “The Reunification Match” (between the mighty and esteemed chess masters Topalov and Kramnik). This vaudeville “feted the ceremony of confusion,” perhaps in tribute to my book, “Arrabal célébrant la cérémonie de la confusion”? The scene was set in “his” city of Elista, the seat of his government and the capital of Kalmykia. During the meeting, urinary strife triumphed over chessboard competitions, rites, and festivities. Despite its undeniable acuity, this duel will not be recorded in the history of the Noble Game, but will be bequeathed complete with sack, ropes, and videos to the domain of bathroom humor under the rubric of “Toiletgate.” Right amid the Conspiracy of Imbeciles and its home-cooked casseroles.
The Incredible One has just been re-elected President of the World Chess Federation (la FIDE). He will be receiving for the game – as well as his own personal games – a sum approaching ten million dollars. Yet he will stint on the required Candidate’s Tournament, as the world’s tenth ranked player, Israel’s International Grandmaster Boris Gelfand – a voice in the wilderness – charges. Russia’s International Grandmaster Oleg Korneev adds that only a minuscule portion of this jackpot and pork will trickle down to professional chess players.
Until quite recently, The Incredible One (President of Kalmykia) and the World Chess Federation had not tasted wine, until doctors instructed him that long hours spent at very high altitudes aboard planes, increasingly exposed him to radiation. A glass of wine of good quality helps to “dissolve the radioactive knots (sic),” the journalist Yuri Vasilyev writes in his “Kirsan the Incredible.” In his book’s introduction, Vasilyev informs us that Kirsan “works for almost 24 hours a day, in average he sleeps for four hours; he has at least three or four air flights a week and manages to do damn lots of things.”