by Bob Mitchell
And Dio mio! there must be 100 different plant species depicted on just this facade not to mention 100 different animal species (there’s an ox! and look at those turtles! and getta loada those chameleons! and way up there, guarda that big pelican!) and in no particular order Ugo’s eyes are panning to those three main doorways standing for Faith, Hope, and Charity and those four main towering steeples with HOSANNA and EXCELSIS and SANCTUS printed right on them! and all those biblical figures and the signs of the zodiac and the gorgeous mosaics and a huge cypress tree right there in front housing a bunch of alabaster doves and a host of angels and the flight to Egypt and musicians and kings and shepherds and Magi and saints…
And this is only the front of the building!
“È stupendo, no?” Virgilio Marotti signs to Ugo Bellezza.
At moments like this, Ugo is thinking how grateful he is to be deaf and not blind. Then again, Ugo being Ugo, if the dice had been rolled differently and he were in fact blind and not deaf, he would be equally grateful every time he listened to the music of, say, Beethoven or Rossini or Queen.
“Stupendo,” Ugo echoes, turning to his mentor with a closed fist to his face that mimics an open mouth by unclenching itself and expanding outward into five fully extended fingers.
“What I love about Gaudí,” Giglio continues, “is that he was always pushing the envelope, always going places no one ever went before, building things no one had ever dreamed of building. What I especially love is that we are all, every human being on the planet, capable of pushing envelopes, not just licking them. And your special envelope is tennis! The tennis court is finite, but, like Gaudí did with stone, you can make it infinite! You can expand the lines of the court and play like they are there but not there. In that small space that is allowed to you, you can do anything you want!”
Ugo nods and taps his heart with his middle finger.
“And don’t forget,” Giglio concludes, “how hard he worked to make this a reality. He slaved over this amazing cathedral for over forty years, knowing that he wouldn’t finish it in his lifetime. And it’s not even finished now, 119 years after his death. I read somewhere that he spent four entire years studying the ringing of bells so they would sound just right when they pealed up there!”
It has been an awesome day for the rising tennis star and his coach, filled from dawn to dusk with the magnificent creations of Gaudí: the Casa Battló, the Casa Milà, the Parc Güell, and now, icing on the architectural cake, the Sagrada Família.
But if Barcelona is the city of Gaudí, it is also the city of Godó.
* * *
The Open Seat Godó tennis tournament, first held in 1953, has become the number two clay-court tourney in the world, having surpassed the Monte Carlo Masters event and only behind the sole clay-court major championship, the esteemed French Open, to be contested five weeks hence at Roland Garros in Paris. That will be especially historic, because if they both reach the finals in the Juniors draw of the tournament, it will be the first time that Ugo will play that other young tennis wizard who shares most of the attention of the tennis world nowadays, the fiery American Jack Spade.
Preposterously and unprecedentedly, Ugo Bellezza and Jack Spade are, at the tender age of fifteen, co-ranked number one in the Juniors division, which is open to players eighteen years and under.
The host of the Seat Godó is the Real Club de Tenis Barcelona-1899, known for its raucous crowds, its hospitality, and above all its clay. Sure, the clay surfaces at both Roland Garros in Paris and the Foro Italico in Rome are dandy, but if you’re in the market for clay that is thicker, richer, redder, moister, softer, slippier, slidier, glidier, grittier, grainier, and gravelier than any other, well then, the clay right here at the RCT is your man.
Clay. Or terra batuda, in the Catalan language of this region. Meaning earth beaten to a pulp to make this rich red soft stuff. Beaten to a pulp, like players are when they undergo the ordeal of grueling matches on this surface. Clay. The ultimate tennis test of endurance, hard work, and persistence. Clay. One look at a young man after a match on clay, one look at the red clots of earth painting his arms and legs and apparel—a vermilion testimony to the pain and hardship accrued by slipping and sliding and diving on the crushed brick—will tell you volumes about competing your brains out and struggling through adversity and testing what you have deep inside. Clay. The badge of honor smeared over one’s body, the red-specked reward for a blue-collar job. The tennis equivalent of Ben Hogan’s dirt, the essence of getting down and dirty and as close as you can humanly be to the soil. Clay. Not surprisingly to real aficionados of tennis, the very building material chosen by God when he presumably formed man out of the ground.
It is April 2045. Ugo and Giglio are in Barcelona preparing hard for the Juniors tune-up for the French Open. The ninety-third edition of the Godó tournament is now into the finals, and so is the Juniors competition, started in 2030. Ugo Bellezza is in the finals. Jack Spade is in Florida.
Ugo is now two years older and taller and stronger and quicker. But what is even more imposing than his perfect Michelangelo tennis physique is his perfect Leonardo tennis mind.
Even at the age of fifteen, he understands perfectly, thanks to Giglio, the spirit of the great man from Vinci. How nature works perfectly, and also man’s place in the universe. The great powers at work in the world—weight, force, movement, impetus, percussion—and how crucial they are to playing the game of tennis beautifully. The mechanics of the human body, its movements both on the ground and in the air. The structure and proportion and anatomy and physiology of the body, and the close relationship of the physical and spiritual realms (Ugo keeps a reproduction of Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man in his tennis bag at all times). Most important, Giglio has taught him to understand how all this knowledge can be put to maximum use on a tennis court.
Ugo is hitting serves on a side court, and Giglio is returning. But Ugo is not getting to hit any second serves for now. Because he has yet to miss a first serve. In forty-nine attempts. One devastatingly accurate serve after another. He is hitting corners, both in the deuce court and the ad court, wide and down the T.
Just like Little Ugo Oakley and the Chianti Bottles.
“Grandioso!” Giglio signs from across the net. “Now let’s do some running!”
For the next twenty minutes, Giglio runs Ugo around the court with a series of drop shots, topspin lobs, and drives deep into the corners.
“Remember that ‘distance’ quote from The Notebooks!” Giglio signs after one particularly intense rally that did not end particularly prettily.
Ugo smiles and recalls vividly—it was last year—when Giglio had brought this quote from Leonardo’s compilation of thoughts to his attention. It expressed in brilliantly simple terms the fact that getting to a ball in the most efficient way has less to do with running more quickly than with covering more distance with those piccoli passi, those “little steps”:
That movement is slower which covers less distance in the same time.
And that movement is swifter which covers more distance in the same time.
And from that moment on, every time he pursues a tennis ball, Ugo Bellezza has never forgotten this all-too-obvious but profound thought.
During a short break, Giglio and Ugo discuss with their hands the tactical catechism of creating beautiful points—hitting every ball as early and cleanly as possible, moving your opponent around, planning ahead, not getting late to balls or being off-balance, footwork, focus, and footwork.
The man and the boy-man are now back at work on the red stuff, crushing blistering baseline groundies. Ugo is making it all seem so effortless, but little does one know.
It is impossible for a person who possesses the ability to hear to imagine what it would be like to be deaf and play tennis. And especially to play tennis at such a high level.
Without being in that deaf person’s tennis shoes, little does one know what it is like not to hear the sound of ball on racquet, to be
thus disoriented, not knowing how hard a ball is being hit or with (or without) what type and severity of spin. Little does one know what it is like to be playing points in a cocoon of utter soundlessness, with no echo of footsteps from the other side of the net, no way of knowing that your opponent is (or isn’t) charging the net when your back is toward him after you have chased down a lob. Little does one know what it is like not to hear umpire calls, or scores being announced if there’s no scoreboard (so you have to keep score yourself, adding to the mental stress), or applause, or jeering for that matter, or the aural ebb and flow between the point itself and then the crowd reaction and then the silence preceding the next point.
Instead of possessing these hearing aids every other player enjoys and takes for granted, Ugo’s tennis universe is mute, mum, still, and silent.
As a tomb.
But life has this funny way of compensating, of allowing a person’s body to make up for an absence or a defect. Much like the saphenous vein is rent from a heart attack victim’s leg to bypass a blocked artery (and compelled to act, after a lifetime of being a vein carrying blood to the heart, as an artery transporting blood away from it), Ugo’s lack of hearing has been replaced by something just as powerful and maybe more wondrous. It is another, substitute fifth sense, in the place of hearing, a sense of creativity and high right-brain activity, an ability to see what hearing people do not, an eerie sense of knowing when to take risks and which shots to execute, a frightening intuitive intimacy with the entire court and how to make use of it and where to be at all times and where to make his opponent be.
It is a sense only special people are born with.
La vita è strana, life is funny, Giglio is thinking as he and Ugo wrap up their hit. Here we are, living in an age where technological advances are astounding: We’ve put a man and a woman on Mars, surgeons are performing brain implants, we can see each other as we speak on our TelevideoPhones. And yet there’s still no progress on helping deaf people overcome their handicap. But…perhaps everything happens for a reason? Perhaps, were he a hearing person, Ugo would not have developed this special ability. And who knows? Perhaps he would not have been happier than he is now and has always seemed to be.
* * *
Fifteen-year-old Ugo Bellezza continues to turn tennis heads, reaching the finals of this preparatory event in Barcelona. But now an upset is brewing, and he is mired in a struggle against an eighteen-year-old who is ranked number three in the Juniors behind Ugo and Jack—the talented Frenchman from Brittany, Tristan Corbière.
The young man from Roscoff—a remote town on the northern coast of Finistère and just east of the tip of France’s nose—has done his homework and, so far, figured out a way to blunt the aggressive, thinking style of the Florentine. He has realized, early on, that any serious competitor will try to take advantage of his opponent’s weakness, and in order to profit from Ugo’s deafness he has concentrated on disguising his shots, on keeping them on his racquet for as long as possible, on not telegraphing anything, especially his drop shot. And since he knows that Ugo depends entirely on visual cues in order to anticipate shots, his strategy has until now, through nearly two sets, perplexed the Italian youngster and thrown him completely off his game.
Devo migliorare, Ugo is thinking as he takes a swig from his bottle of high-energy Agua del Cid on his seat during a changeover. I need to get better. I’m down 6-0, 5-1. Okay, so how’d I get here? Well, this guy is tough, I give him credit for that. But like Giglio always tells me, his good play will make mine better.
Ugo looks at Giglio, seated by his side. (The rules were changed in 2027—the sole exception being the always-reactionary Wimbledon—when the WTA realized that Davis Cup had it right all along and that having coaching was more exciting and the player had to win it on the court anyway and why not allow a coach there in the chair on the sidelines, since every other major sport except for golf allowed coaches to give input during timeouts or on the bench?) Mentor and protégé exchange loving glances.
Giglio makes the sign for deaf (he touches his index finger first to his mouth, then to his ear) and then for zero (he makes a big O with both hands, then pulls them apart with each hand thrusting out, all ten fingers separated). Ugo understands instantly: “You are deaf. So what? That is nothing.” He knows by now that adversity is a built-in part of tennis and of life, and that his deafness is a major obstacle and really una metafora for adversity. How to react to adversity is the key. So when it presents itself, what will you do? Giglio is saying that this obstacle is not a problem, but instead it is a motivator, just like being behind.
But despite the best-laid plans of mice and boy-men, this seventh game of the second set doesn’t quite work out, as Ugo’s usually dependable serve is broken after a long, eight-deuce game, and now he is down, really down, 6-0, 6-1. (In 2033, all Juniors matches were officially increased to a more adult three-of-five sets.)
A player with a weaker character might have caved in at this point. Not Ugo Bellezza. He is determined to change the way the match is being played. But how?
That is the eighty-five million, three hundred-eighty-six thousand, three hundred-thirty-five lire question.
Toweling off, Ugo is thinking of all the practice hours he has put in to be performing on this stage, to be here in front of 7,200 cheering spectators. He can see them clapping rhythmically for him, for a comeback. He cannot hear them, but he can see them, and he can feel their spirit in his bones.
Ugo becomes focused when he sees in his mind’s eye his coach Virgilio Marotti urging him to take piccoli passi, those little steps, and he is thinking of that Chinese proverb that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and that’s what he must do now.
And here are Ugo Bellezza and Tristan Corbière back on the court for the third set and Tristan is serving and he wins the first three points and is ahead forty-love and this is where most players who are receiving serve would sort of tank and give it about 30 percent thinking they’re almost certainly not going to win the game and the prevailing wisdom is just to take a risk and go for broke and try for a long-shot winner first chance they get and see how it goes and they usually miss and there goes the game and they are content to have given it a shot and oh well.
Not Ugo Bellezza.
Ugo sets his jaw and focuses on the Frenchman’s service motion and even though he knows he is the underdog now, he and Giglio have discussed being down forty-love many times and how despite the long odds this is perhaps the most important point in any match simply because your opponent, who’s serving and in complete control, doesn’t expect to lose the game and more important doesn’t expect heavy resistance from you and should you put up this resistance, should you demonstrate to him that you are not willing to lose any point, not even this one with the odds heavily stacked against you, well then, you are making a powerful symbolic statement that you are not going away, not now and not ever, and if you do win this point, this forty-love point, then the server is a scintilla more worried and less confident on the subsequent forty-fifteen point and if he should lose that one, well, lookee here, he’s within one measly point of having the game go to deuce, this game that only moments ago he had basically wrapped with pretty paper and tied up with a cute little bow made of red ribbon.
And Ugo hangs in there and wins the forty-love point with persistence and grit, after an arduous twenty-eight-shot rally, with his penetrating groundies and his moving Corbière side to side until the Breton at long last dumps a backhand drive weakly into the middle of the net.
And this is the moment, the turning point Ugo has been waiting for and he can sense the momentum ooze from Corbière’s side of the net to his and he wins the next point after a similarly tactical and grueling twenty-four-shot rally with the same result and it is now forty-thirty and Ugo can feel Tristan feeling the tension upon seeing his seemingly insuperable lead transformed into a suddenly shaky one.
And at forty-thirty, the Frenchman spins in a safe serv
e and Ugo is ready and drives it deep into the backhand side of the court, right in the corner, and Tristan barely gets his racquet on it and returns it very shallow, not even to the service line, and Ugo sees blood and is all over it like a rash. And he can now go to either corner and deep and he will have his opponent right where he wants him and Corbière knows that this is the safe and sure route and is ready to scamper either to his left or to his right behind the baseline to retrieve the deep and dangerous drive but instead what Ugo pulls off at this moment is a shot of such brilliance and daring, especially after clawing his way back to forty-thirty and being so close to knotting the game so why would he go for any shot that wasn’t totally safe and sure?
But no, there he is at the center of the court and halfway in toward the net and here’s that fifth sense kicking in big-time and to Tristan’s surprise and to the surprise of all 7,200 spectators, Ugo Bellezza executes the most delicious and premeditated forehand drop shot of all time, surpassing anything Beppe Merlo or Budge Patty or Manolo Santana or Björn Borg could have cooked up, first by keeping the ball on his racquet for what seems a mini-eternity and then slicing down on the ball—a maneuver as delicate as a mother placing her newborn back in the crib—and then sending it, with excruciating nonchalance, spinning felt head-over-felt heels barely over the net and three inches from the sideline and the ball hits the red clay surface and dies a glorious death and spins back against the net and collects itself there in a lump and Tristan Corbière is frozen stiff on the baseline and doesn’t even try for it and looks across the net at the audacious and brilliant perpetrator of the dastardly surprise ambush and shrugs his shoulders as if to hoist up a white flag.
And now the Gallic lad himself is giving Ugo a round of applause and the crowd of 7,200 erupts in collective appreciation and shrieks out vamos and andiamo and allez as one and Ugo can’t hear anything but can feel it all and he looks over at Giglio sitting there not ten feet from the ball and his mentor’s mouth is open wide but when their eyes meet it enunciates four syllables to his protégé and Ugo lip-reads the syllables but doesn’t really need to because he already knows what they are.