The Stars' Tennis Balls

by Stephen Fry

  ‘I shouldn’t have lost like that yesterday,’ he said, without offering any of his usual polite greetings. ‘You trapped me. It was pathetic.’

  ‘Dear me,’ said Babe straightening the white pieces in front of him. ‘Did we get out of bed the wrong side this morning?’

  ‘Let’s just play,’ said Ned moodily, inwardly praying that Babe’s king pawn would advance but staring instead at the c-pawn, as if hoping for an English opening or deferred Queen’s Indian.

  With a shrug, Babe played e-4 and Ned instantly replied by pushing his own king’s pawn forward to meet it. Babe moved his knight out to f-3 and Ned moved a hand to his queen’s knight, as if resigned to an Italian or Spanish game. Then he dropped the hand back with a resentful tut and started to think. He took five minutes over his second move, the dull, seemingly ultra-defensive and amateurish d-6 that marks the French Defence. Babe continued to rattle out his pieces in the standard way and Ned haltingly replied. His heart beat faster and faster as each move repeated the pattern that he had planned the night before, developing into the very line of the Winawer that he had prepared. A moment came when Babe had to play with extreme accuracy to avoid a trap that Ned knew would cost him the loss of an active pawn. Babe stopped himself from playing the quick and obvious move and Ned, his head down, could sense in his field of peripheral vision, that Babe’s head had turned up to look at him. Ned did not shift, but continued to frown over the board, not revealing anything when Babe, avoiding the mistake, played the only correct move possible. Ned had not banked everything on a cheap tactical trap as he might have done two weeks earlier. In fact, he would have been disappointed if Babe had fallen for it. He knew that his position was good, and that was all that counted.

  After an hour of fraught and completely silent play, Babe found himself a pawn down and having to marshal unconnected pieces to avoid all manner of tactical horrors. When a position is won, dozens of attacking combinations, traps and spellbinding sacrifices present themselves to the player on the winning side. Ned was busy considering a spectacular sacrifice of his queen that he believed would force a checkmate in five or six moves, when Babe knocked over his king and gave a rich, low chuckle.

  ‘Outplayed from pillar to post, you devious son of a mountain whore.’

  ‘You resign?’

  ‘Of course I resign, you dastardly bog and vice versa. My position is so full of holes it’s a wonder the board doesn’t fall to the floor. You planned this, didn’t you, boy? From the first petulant pout of the lip to the last maddening stutter. Oh, you’re wicked. Wicked as whisky.’

  Ned looked up anxiously. ‘But the chess, it wasn’t all tricks and psychology was it? I mean, the pure chess was good too.’

  ‘Lad, there is no such thing as pure chess. There’s good chess and there’s bad. Good chess takes in the breath of your opponent and the dip of his head as much as depth of his mind and the placing of his knights. Good chess cares about the way you move a piece just as much as the square you move it to. Did you know you played a Smyslov Screw just now? You did, you know. A real life Smyslov Screw.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Vasilly Smyslov, world champion from the Soviet Union. I saw him play, as it happens. A master of the endgame and as wily a fox as you’d care to be matched against. He had a way of setting a piece when he made a move and screwing it into the square, pressing down on it and slowly twisting it as though to fix it there for ever. Put the fear of God into his opponents, that simple little trick. You did the same just now when you moved your rook to the seventh. But more than that, you understand the greatest chess secret of all. The best move you can ever play in chess is not the best move. No, the best move you can ever play is the move your opponent least wants you to play. And that you did time after time. You knew that I hate the turgid tactical hell of the French, didn’t you? I never told you, but you sensed it. Oh my God boy, I could hug you I’m so proud.’

  Ned saw that tears were falling down Babe’s face.

  ‘It’s all thanks to you,’ he said.

  ‘Fuff to that! What is it, nine . . . no, eight and a half weeks since you first pushed a pawn in my direction. Look at you, look at what you can do with those sixteen pieces of cheap wood. Did you ever know your mind could think so deep and play so mean? Did you? Did you? Tell the Babe you’ve amazed yourself!’

  ‘Babe, I’ve amazed myself,’ said Ned. ‘I don’t know how I did it. I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it. It’s you. You did it for me.’

  ‘I did nothing. Nothing at all, but let you understand the power of your own mind. There isn’t a player in the world who could call you a patzer or a rabbit now. The great ones will beat you, for sure, but you’ll never disgrace yourself over a checkerboard, not if you live as long as me. This calls for a marvellous toast to be drunk.’

  Ned laughed. ‘I’ll whistle for Rolf, shall I?’

  ‘You think I’m joking. Reach into your mind and draw out your favourite drink. What is it? Are you a whisky man like myself, or does your Harrovian favour the great deep wines of Bordeaux? Is it maybe the gossiping fizz of champagnes fit only for tarts and scoundrels that pleases you? Myself, I’m hankering for the salt oil of a Bunnahabhain, that mysterious Other of the Islay malts. I’ve its queer squat bottle in my hand now and I’m snagging my nails on the lead about its bung . . . hey now! What have I said to upset you?’

  Tears were dropping from Ned’s chin onto the chessboard.

  ‘It’s nothing, nothing . . . only you see I’ve never really had a chance to drink anything. My favourite drink is . . . used to be . . . just a glass of cold milk.’

  A memory of Oliver Delft opening the refrigerator door crashed into Ned’s mind and he gave a gulping sob.

  ‘Tss!’ Babe hushed him urgently. ‘Don’t let your distress be seen. I’m sorry Thomas, truly sorry. I had no idea in the world. My stupid tongue, it fancies itself to have a pleasing way with it. The women used to think me a seducer with words and sometimes I play up to the memory of that. It’s my one last vanity in this place of ruined minds and in my vulgar haste I took you to a place you have forgotten to visit. But never mind that now. The day will come when you’ll be pleased to go back there.’

  ‘No!’ said Ned forcefully. ‘I mustn’t. I absolutely mustn’t. There are things in my past that I still don’t understand properly and Dr Mallo says . . .’

  ‘Dr Mallo says! Take comfort in knowing that this is a man who is capable of saying, “It’s checkmate in four unless I’m much mistaken.” Dr Mallo, he don’t know shit from sugar and you can’t pretend it isn’t so. He has a soul of pus and the mind of a rotted turd. He is a failure and not a word he says can come near to you.’

  ‘He’s a failure? Then what does that make us?’ choked Ned. ‘What on earth does that make us?’

  ‘Well that’s something we must decide for ourselves, Thomas. Now, Rolf is walking by, heave a giant sneeze into your handkerchief as if you’d caught a mote of dust in the sunlight.’

  The last words that Ned said to Babe that afternoon were, ‘Will you teach me, Babe? Teach me everything you know. Just as you did with chess. Teach me all the science and poetry and philosophy you can. Teach me history and geography. Teach me music and art and mathematics. Will you? You know so much and I know so little. I was supposed to have gone to Oxford, but . . .’

  ‘Well, you were saved that at least,’ Babe had replied, ‘so there’s hope yet. Yes, I’ll teach you, Thomas. We shall tread the wide path of philosophy as we trod the narrow path of chess and who knows what we shall discover about ourselves as we go along the way?’

  *

  Babe, who was allowed to spend as much time as he liked in the sun-room or out on the lawn, watched Ned being led back through the glazed partition and smiled to himself.

  A wickedly enchanting game of chess the lad played there.

  Babe was not quite possessed of a God complex, but the mind he had kept so assiduously alive was yearning to do something, to
mould and to create. He had always known that he was born to teach: the life of action and ideals had done nothing for him but lead him to this place. In the outside world he had denied his real vocation and was being offered now a chance to redeem himself in one last act of dedication. Dedication this time not to the poor, the dispossessed, the conquered and the subjugated masses, but dedication to the life of the mind and the power of human will.

  Before Ned had walked into the sun-room two months earlier Babe had been almost ready to give up his tenacious grip on the world, almost ready to quit the inner fortress he had so carefully constructed and so faithfully inhabited all those years. Ned was not to know it, but the games of chess they had played together had been Babe’s salvation. Whatever they might have done for Ned, they had done more for Babe.

  Babe’s brain was a freak of God’s and God deserved better than to have that freak die with the old man that housed it. His prodigious and flawlessly complete memory was the gift that had first marked him out. A memory without energy, will and purpose is of no value however, and those qualities Babe had too and in terrifying superabundance. Without them, his brain, no matter what its speed and power, could never have survived the appalling regime of drugs, isolation and electric convulsions to which it had been subjected for so many years.

  Babe’s brain and memory were, after all, a simple matter of genetic fortune and he took no pride in them whatsoever: he had come to discover that it was his will and his will alone that marked him out from common men and will – unlike cerebral proficiency – could be taught, passed on and made to live for ever.

  With the exception of the Universal British Cyclopaedia (Ed. F. S. Dorrington) the only books to which the staff allowed Ned access were in Swedish, German and Danish. While Dorrington’s work on everything from Aahhotep to Zwingler seemed perfectly acceptable to Ned, Babe had other ideas. He had taken the book from Ned, opened a page at random and snorted with contempt.

  ‘Look at that,’ he said, stabbing down an angry finger. ‘Will you just look at the two Grays?’

  Ned peered over Babe’s shoulder and saw that there were two entries under the name Gray, the first for a George Gray which began ‘Professional champion player of Queensland who, at only 17 years of age created a sensation in the billiard world with his exceptional hazard play . . .’ and a second shorter entry for a Thomas Gray, ‘English poet buried in Stoke Poges.’

  ‘And here’s this,’ Babe continued, flipping back a page, ‘“Grappa, Mountain of Italy, scene of fierce fighting between the Italians and the Austro-Germans in the Great War.” Not a mention of that heavenly and disgusting drink that makes the place immortal! No, no, no, this won’t do. I’m taking it off your hands. We start you on Swedish and German books right away.’

  ‘But, Babe, I can’t read Swedish or German . . .’

  ‘Can you name me a great book that you know well? We’ll see if they have it in either language.’

  Ned shuffled uncomfortably. ‘A great book?’

  ‘A novel, tell me at least that you’ve read a novel before now.’

  ‘We did The Mayor of Casterbridge at school. And Lord of the Flies.’

  ‘Of course you did, you poor lamb. Treasure Island, did you ever read that? I know for a fact they have it here in German.’

  ‘Oh yes!’ said Ned enthusiastically. ‘I must have read it at least six times.’

  ‘Only six times? And what was wrong with it? The book’s a masterpiece.’

  ‘But, how will I understand a word of it? The only German I know is Sprechen Sie Englisch and Achtung, Schweinhund.’

  ‘We shall read it together. You’ll amaze yourself.’

  *

  The weeks passed and, with painful slowness at first, they passed through the pages of Treasure Island. After A Christmas Carol, The Scarlet Letter and The Count of Monte Cristo, Ned found himself able to absorb at a faster rate and shape more sentences of his own. After a while he began reading by himself, getting through German books in his room faster than he had read in his own language when a boy. Swedish followed, then Latin, French, Spanish and Italian.

  ‘Fluency equals necessity times confidence over time,’ Babe liked to say. ‘If a five-year-old can speak a language, it cannot be beyond a fifty-year-old.’

  ‘But a five-year-old can run around for hours, tumbling and falling over without getting tired,’ Ned might often complain, ‘it doesn’t follow that a fifty-year-old can do the same.’

  ‘Bolshy talk. I’ll have none of it.’

  Sometimes, in the summer months, Babe and Ned walked on the lawn together, speaking low in Swedish (it was a game they enjoyed, not letting any of the staff know that Ned had learnt the language of the place and could now understand the staff when they spoke in front of him) and Babe would encourage Ned to talk of his past.

  ‘Charlie Maddstone. You don’t say? Never served under him myself, but I had friends who did. And he turned to politics? Now that was a mistake for a man like that. He was born a hundred years too late that one.’

  The relief for Ned to be able to talk about his life was enormous and he felt himself thriving. His appetite for knowledge grew and it was not long before he and Babe were talking about ideas that Ned had never considered in all his life.

  ‘We’re conquering time, do you see, Ned?’ Babe called him by his real name now, when they were beyond the ears of the staff. ‘What do all people in the real world, the world outside this wicked island, regard as the most precious commodity known to them? Time. Time, the old enemy, they call it. What do you hear again and again? “If only I had more time.” “Had we but world enough and time.” “There’s never enough time.” “I never had the time to learn music, to enjoy life, to find out the names of the stars in the sky, the plants of the earth, the birds of the air. I never had time to teach myself Italian.” “There’s no time to think.” “How can I possibly find the time to do that?” “I never found the time to tell her how much I loved her.”

  ‘And all we have, you and I, is that very thing, time, and if we look on this as the most magnificent gift afforded to mankind, then we can see that in this place we are one with Augustine in his cell and Montaigne in his tower. We are the chosen, the privileged. We have what the richest man on earth most covets and can never buy. We have what Henri Bergson saw as God’s chief instrument of torture and madness. Time. Oceans of time in which to be and to become.’

  There were days when Ned, remembering this speech, endorsed it and praised Fate for his captivity and the freedom over time it gave him. At other moments, the more he knew, the more he balked and fretted.

  ‘Do you understand why you are here, Babe?’ he asked once.

  ‘Pooh, Ned, it’s so simple. I am here because I am mad. We are all here because we are mad. Was that not explained to you when you arrived?’

  ‘No, seriously. You’re not mad and I know that I am not, although that is entirely thanks to you. Don’t you trust me enough yet to tell me about yourself? You’ve never even told me your real name.’

  They had been walking around the lawn and Babe stopped now and tugged at his beard. ‘I sprang from an impoverished branch of the grand and ancient Scottish family of Fraser and was christened Simon. As the youngest of six the nickname of Babe has always stayed with me. I was hired fresh from university because of this memory of mine,’ he said, staring out over the lawn and towards the bald and distant hills. ‘Things stick in the deep brain-pan with which God saw fit to curse me. In those days they stuck even faster and firmer. Intelligence and purpose had nothing to do with it. I remembered the time of every Derby winner as well as I remembered the postulates of Spinoza or the categorical imperatives of Kant. There was a cold war on and a man like me was a useful asset. But I had a conscience, Ned and the day came when I went to see a writer friend of mine. I told him I wanted to collaborate on a book. A great book, to be published in America, for they would never have let it see the light of day in Britain. A book that would blow the whist
le on every dirty trick, every hypocritical evasion and every filthy lie that ever came out of the west in its squalid battle for supremacy over its perceived enemy. I’m not a traitor, Ned, nor never would be. I loved England. I loved it too well to let it sink lower than the level of a dung-beetle in its pursuit of lost grandeur. Well, it turned out that the writer friend was no friend at all and the long and the short of it is that I found myself here. This is a place they use if it suits them. When someone is a threat, you understand. The Soviets have their psychiatric prisons and so, as you have found, do we. Ours are a better kept secret, that is the only difference that I have ever been able to make out.’

  Ned thought for a while. ‘I suppose I had imagined something like that,’ he said at length. ‘That’s why I wanted to hear it from you. If you are here for that reason then it follows that I must be here for that reason too. Only, you know why you are here and I do not. Some – I don’t know – some conspiracy brought me here and I need to understand what it was.’

  ‘We are merely the stars’ tennis balls, Ned, struck and banded which way please them.’

  ‘You don’t believe that. You believe in will. You told me so.’

  ‘Like anyone with a sliver of honesty in them I believe what I find I believe when I wake up each morning. Sometimes I can only think we are determined by the writing in our genes, sometimes it seems to me that we are made or unmade by our upbringings. On better days, it is true that I hope with some conviction that we and we alone make ourselves everything that we are.’

  ‘Nature, Nurture or Nietzsche in fact.’

  ‘Ha!’ Babe clapped Ned in the back. ‘It’s coming on, the creature is coming on,’ he boomed to the wide uncomprehending lawn. ‘Listen,’ he said, tucking his arm in Ned’s, ‘if you want to understand your own situation, can you not apply some of the logic it has cost me so much brain blood to teach you? Take out Occam’s Razor and cut away the irrelevant and the obfuscatory. Set down only what you know. Did I never tell you about Zeno?’