The Tournament

by John Clarke

  Sackville-West and Stephen-Woolf play in long dresses and cardigans. They speak only to people to whom they have been formally introduced, which was a bit trying for the umpire today, ignored for two sets and then instructed to ‘sit down you ridiculous little thing. If we want anything, we’ll ring.’ Their play is imperious and they sometimes behave as if their opponents aren’t there.

  ‘We assume there is some opposition,’ explained Sackville-West. ‘A view confirmed on this occasion by the fact that so many of the balls we hit were in fact returned.’

  ‘We’re not idiots,’ added Stephen-Woolf. ‘There was manifestly some human agency involved.’

  With their peculiar bird-like movements, they presented a commendable spectacle. Their understanding of one another was practically psychic in the third set, when Richardson, serving superbly, was shut out by a refusal to acknowledge that it was happening. The faster the serves got, the faster the returns came back.

  Day 30

  * * *

  Stead v. Smith • Sartre and Camus v. Magritte and Dali • Nijinsky and Pavlova v. Bankhead and partner • Shostakovich and Prokofiev v. Cocteau and Picasso

  * * *

  Schwarztag.

  Rosa Luxemburg is dead.

  Her body was found in an industrial estate at dawn this morning. She had been shot at close range. This tragedy, on top of the murder of Karl Liebknecht, the suicide of Walter Benjamin and the disappearance of Osip Mandelstam, has thrown the future of the tournament into serious doubt. WTO organisers had undertaken to provide assurances by tonight that there would be no further incidents of this kind. No such undertaking has been received.

  All flags are flying at half-mast. The tournament has expressed its ‘profound sorrow’ to Ms Luxemburg’s family and has issued a statement: ‘A decision will be made tonight or early tomorrow concerning the schedule for the remaining matches.’

  There has been some criticism of the WTO’s handling of this issue. Auden, for example, said he had a feeling this might happen and it is not yet clear what, if anything, tournament management did to prevent it.

  ‘We’re running a tennis tournament,’ said one official. ‘We’re not responsible for everything that happens to individual competitors.’

  ‘Nobody said you were,’ replied Auden. ‘The question is, who is responsible for the death of Luxemburg?’

  ‘Not us.’

  ‘Then who?’ asked Auden.

  ‘The players are responsible for themselves. They’re all capable adults.’

  ‘Is Rosa Luxemburg to blame for her own death?’ Auden persisted. ‘Did she shoot herself six times in the back of the head from a distance of two metres?’

  ‘We don’t know what precisely happened to player Luxemburg,’ said the official.

  ‘Why don’t you know? You’re the WTO.’

  ‘Perhaps, out of respect,’ said the official, ‘we should not engage in speculation about what is a tragic matter.’

  ‘It is quite clear she was killed by her own people,’ said Auden. ‘Not by herself. Not by people who did not know who she was. It’s not a mystery. By doing nothing, the tournament is complicit in her murder.’

  ‘I thought you were going to America,’ said the official.

  ‘I do not wish to go to the America you come from,’ said Auden,

  ‘You do not realise you will go to the limestone I come from.

  Where I arrive, you will be free to talk rubbish.

  When you return, I will be prevented from talking sense.

  In your new empire, strength will shoot craps with paranoia.

  In my old age, memory will change hats with impunity.

  You would like nothing more than to see me wish upon a star.

  I would like to see you fired into another galaxy.

  Unless you are very careful, your utopia will run out of gas.

  Unless I am much mistaken, my dinner will be in the oven.’

  ‘You are obtuse,’ said the official. ‘And you go on too much.’

  ‘Tennis makes nothing happen,’ Auden went on,

  ‘Indifferent in a month,

  Rankings are just a lot of bumpf.

  Obsession with winning and making a packet,

  Rebounds from every tennis racquet.’

  Arthur Miller, still in the doubles with Chekhov and looking at a great future in the game, was also resolute. ‘Unwilling or unable to control the German or Russian federations, the WTO must broker an arrangement which allows the tournament to continue. It must do this by tomorrow and to the satisfaction of the players.’

  ‘And,’ agreed Mary McCarthy, ‘we don’t just want some sordid deal between imposters and criminals. Countries like my own must ensure that they don’t appease Germany and Russia for the moment but create a bigger problem later on.’

  ‘And if they negotiate in only their own interest,’ insisted Miller, ‘what difference will exist between them and the system they are replacing?’

  In their rescheduled match, Christina Stead played like a woman who loved her tennis for a set and a half, until Smith’s languid rhythm began to work like a slow-acting opiate to dull the sharpness of the Australian’s attack. The match was stopped briefly while a young black man was removed from a tree just outside the fence at Court 4, where he seemed to be hanging to get a better view.

  ‘I’ll be back,’ said Smith, and left the court.

  ‘Where are you going, Ms Smith?’ asked Charles Darwin.

  ‘Black man hanging from a tree,’ she said. ‘I’m going to need some medicine.’

  ‘It had better be legal,’ said Darwin.

  ‘Black man hanging from a tree legal?’

  ‘I’m advising you not to take anything which is not prescribed.’

  ‘’Taint nobody’s business if I do,’ wailed Smith. ‘Feel that heat. Ain’t that some heat?’

  The dead man was cut down and play restarted after about twenty minutes. It was by this stage a joyless affair, however, and neither woman seemed much interested in the result. Smith went on to win but later complained of illness and was taken to the American hospital.

  The men’s doubles match between Sartre–Camus and Magritte–Dali had already started when the Luxemburg story broke. The umpire had to call the players together and tell them the news.

  ‘All right,’ said Sartre. ‘Let’s start again.’

  ‘Play has been called off. It’s not a question of starting again. Mr Camus, please stop bouncing the ball. Have some consideration for the dead.’

  ‘The dead?’ said Camus. ‘The dead are dead. Let’s have some fun.’

  ‘Camus is right,’ said JPS. ‘Although I forget why.’

  ‘What do your opponents think?’ asked the umpire.

  The group looked around and saw Magritte facing the other way with a view of the Algarve where his head should be and Dali sitting upside down with a cigarette-holder running down his leg.

  ‘I believe they support the mood of the meeting,’ said Camus.

  ‘I disagree,’ said the umpire. ‘And I will suspend play forthwith.’

  ‘Play is already suspended,’ said Magritte. ‘I suspended it years ago.’

  ‘That is absurd.’

  ‘Have you ever seen play more suspended?’ asked Magritte, who was now a metre above the ground and there were twelve of him.

  ‘I suspend play immediately,’ insisted the umpire.

  ‘Good on you,’ called Magritte, ‘they’ll all be doing it now.’

  ‘This is completely meaningless,’ said the umpire.

  ‘My point,’ said Camus.

  ‘And mine to a degree,’ said Sartre.

  ‘To what degree?’

  ‘A doctorate ideally,’ opined Sartre. ‘Sorbonne would be good.’

  ‘My cock is a wealthy man,’ contributed Dali. ‘And it has made an attractive offer for my hand in marriage.’

  Nijinsky and Pavlova forfeited their doubles match when, during a practice session this morning, h
e attempted to float off a building. ‘Mr Nijinsky is not well,’ said an official, ‘and, in his own interests and those of his family, he must withdraw.’

  ‘I will win the tournament,’ said Nijinsky. ‘I am God.’

  Shostakovich and Prokofiev had their doubles match against Cocteau and Picasso postponed because, as Prokofiev put it, ‘I don’t know where Shosters is.’

  Amelia Earhart is also missing. ‘No one knows where she went,’ said a friend. ‘She just took off.’

  Some players have already left Paris. Others are packing. Wodehouse and Isherwood have departed for the US. Einstein left yesterday, last night and again this morning. Freud and Klein are still in the tournament but are wait-listed. Auden and his wife are expected to go before the week is out.

  ‘Why should Mandelstam have to forfeit her doubles match because she isn’t here?’ complained Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan. ‘Her husband has gone missing! Is she supposed to fill in time playing tennis while she waits for him to turn up? We weren’t even consulted. We were just told we were through to the next round.’

  Peggy Guggenheim agreed. ‘Sam and I were told we were through in the mixed too; that the Mandelstams had forfeited. How do they know? She’s frantic and he isn’t even here. I’ll be out buying paintings, incidentally.’

  It was a relief when Shostakovich turned up. It is fair to say he was pale as he read from two statements. ‘I damn the monstrous opinions of the fascist Russian Tennis Federation. The crimes that are committed in its name and by its agency are legion. The degradation of the human condition in Russian tennis is both pitiful and perfidious.’ He shuffled his pages. ‘I wish to make a complete apology. I know that the Russian Tennis Federation is right. I accept stern criticism and must do more to reflect glory on Russian tennis administrators, who are towering geniuses.’

  American team management was in damage control late today too. Bessie Smith never made it to the hospital. Unfortunately, due to what was described by medical authorities as ‘a mixup involving epidermal melanocytes and pigmentation,’ Ms Smith was refused admission. She died in the ambulance. It was a dark coda to a tragic day.

  Quarter-finals

  Day 31

  * * *

  Shostakovich and Prokofiev v. Cocteau and Picasso • Arendt v. de Beauvoir

  * * *

  This morning a meeting was held between WTO officials and players’ representatives. All the day’s remaining matches were postponed to allow competitors to attend funeral services. This follows crisis talks, which began last night, aimed at securing the completion of the tournament and ensuring the safety of players. The WTO ‘recognises this as a priority and has tightened security at entrances and exits’. The tennis federations of all playing nations have released a signed joint statement ‘deploring the recent tragic events in Paris’ and ‘undertaking to meet to formulate new and binding guidelines for the conduct of future tournaments’.

  Matches not finished yesterday were rescheduled for this afternoon and, despite some rain, were completed.

  Magritte and Dali offered to assist organisers by finishing their match against Sartre and Camus, and playing their quarterfinal against Chaplin and O’Neill, at the same time.

  ‘Two players up one end and four up the other?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Dali. ‘Save wear and tear on the schedule.’

  ‘But we don’t know you’re even in the quarter-finals yet,’ said Darwin. ‘You can’t play your quarter-final match until you beat Sartre and Camus.’

  ‘We could make it a rule that, after each serve, we hit to them first, and only hit it to Chaplin and O’Neill after JPS and Albert have had a lash at it.’

  ‘The point is, at this stage, you cannot play Chaplin and O’Neill at all.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Magritte, ‘put them up the same end as Dali and me and we’ll all have a go at Sartre and Camus.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ said Darwin. ‘It has not yet been determined who will play Chaplin and O’Neill.’

  ‘Do you agree that there are only four people in the world who can possibly play Chaplin and O’Neill in the quarters?’ asked Magritte. ‘JPS and Albert and Dali and me.’

  ‘That is exactly the position.’

  ‘Perfect,’ said Magritte. ‘Chaplin and O’Neill up one end. JPS and Albert and Dali and me up the other.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Wasted opportunity,’ warned Dali.

  ‘Doesn’t make any sense at all,’ agreed Magritte.

  In the event, Sartre and Camus took the first set but the rest of the match was a Magritte–Dali exhibition and the Belgian–Spanish combo will go on to meet Chaplin and O’Neill in the quarters.

  Shostakovich and Prokofiev began well against Cocteau and Picasso but their play became erratic when they attempted to avoid the fluency of Picasso by concentrating their effort on his partner. But there’s not much Cocteau can’t do and it wasn’t long before they were hitting the ball to Picasso to give themselves time to think. The wiry Frenchman had a field day at the net, poaching anything he could put away, sure in the knowledge that the wonderful Spaniard was taking care of business behind him.

  ‘I had a great time,’ he said to the press. ‘I enjoy doubles, Picasso is my friend and I love this surface.’

  The Arendt–de Beauvoir match, much hyped by local media, was a disappointment. Arendt had come so far, but surely she couldn’t topple the player for whom the women’s draw seemed to have been invented. De Beauvoir said she felt great; she was fit, she was ready and she was cheered onto the court as if she were Joan of Arc’s sister. Not much more than an hour earlier Sartre and Camus had been knocked over in the men’s doubles, and nothing sharpens the de Beauvoir game more than a setback to JPS. The auguries had all been attended to.

  The first set lasted thirty-four minutes, Arendt breaking serve at 3–3 and holding the break. In the second set de Beauvoir lost some of her focus. She missed a lot of shots wide and she double-faulted to lose her serve at 4–4. She broke back immediately with some courageous net-play but Arendt was not to be denied and came back again, winning the match with three glorious forehands, two down the line and one across court, to complete a stunning anti-climax.

  ‘I had a match plan,’ explained de Beauvoir, ‘and I followed it. The plan was worked out by my coach, based on how we thought we could win, and my job was simply to put the plan into action.’

  ‘Here was this great woman,’ said Arendt. ‘A woman who has assumed legendary status in our minds, in whom we have invested ideas and characteristics of our own, for our own reasons. And here she was now, on her own, a person like anyone else. It was, in the end, a perfectly ordinary tennis match.’

  What had Arendt expected?

  ‘It wasn’t just me,’ she said. ‘It was everyone. We expected something bigger, something mythic; Roman perhaps, Greek, I don’t know. I don’t think the reality was disappointing. She was an individual, doing her job.’

  ‘She was full of shit,’ said Nelson Algren from the players’ box.

  There was further criticism of the plan to clean up the game. ‘The WTO is weak,’ Mary McCarthy told the French media. ‘If the central governing body is weak, ambitious member federations will do what they want. The rules need to be clear and they need to be policed. It’s no use waiting for a problem to fester and then trying to put a bandage on it.’

  Others think the tournament has revealed what is going on in some of the member federations but that little can be done about it.

  ‘It’s hopeless,’ said Strindberg. ‘Hopeless and completely pointless.’

  ‘It’s not hopeless,’ said Heidegger. ‘It’s also none of the WTO’s affair. German tennis is as good as any tennis in the world. A lot of this is jealousy.’

  ‘A lot of what is jealousy?’

  ‘I forget,’ said Heidegger, ‘but I’m sure I’m right.’

  Roland Barthes thought these questions were irrelevant. ‘The significant thing i
s not that tennis was hijacked by totalitarianism,’ he said, ‘but that it has survived. Look at the players who are left in the draw. The only Germans left in the singles are Mann, a stalwart critic of the German administration, and Hannah Arendt, who has left the country. The only Russians are Chekhov and Anna Akhmatova, the most subtle articulator of the Russian malaise and the great surviving dissident.’

  He wasn’t finished. ‘The only Americans are Waller, who isn’t even allowed in certain toilets in America, Lardner, whose son has just appeared before the House American Tennis Unhearings and SuperTom, who lives in England. The only Englishman left is Orwell, who has never even been approached to play Davis Cup and lives on an island off the coast of Scotland.’

  The other two are Joyce, whose matches are not allowed to be broadcast in Ireland, despite the fact that they are full of meticulously assembled shots he remembers having seen there as a child, and Duchamp, the mocker of everything French tennis stands for.

  Day 32

  * * *

  Lardner v. Duchamp • Mann v. Eliot • Auden and MacNeice v. Chandler and Hammett • Astaire and Rogers v. Wilding and Elliott • Freud and Klein v. Beckett and Guggenheim

  * * *

  Chekhov and Duchamp have tough assignments in the next few days, with singles and doubles commitments. So too do doubles partners Arendt and Akhmatova in action against each other on Friday for the right to play Millay in the women’s singles final.

  Also busy with doubles are Beckett, Maxine Elliott and Katherine Mansfield, and all three are still in the mixed.

  The first of the men’s quarter-finals pitted Lardner against Marcel Duchamp. Both are capable of beating anyone. To get here, Lardner has knocked out the moody Glenn Miller, Nabokov in straight sets, Chaplin in the upset of the round, Ted Cummings and the Mississippi mauler, Bill Faulkner.