by Bob Mitchell
Until now.
A bug or a tiny piece of debris has suddenly lodged itself in Ugo’s right eye, and he is having a devil of a time dealing with it.
As he walks back onto the court at 1-2 in the fifth and deciding set, he is being forced to perform with 23 percent of his most precious sensory possession.
He grabs a towel from one of the ball boys and wipes his eye.
Niente.
Walking to the baseline to serve, Ugo Bellezza knows he is in serious trouble, but there is no panic in his eyes. Just some foreign body.
Across the net, he sees two receivers. Two Jack Spades, as if one weren’t enough for him to handle, swaying back back and forth forth and transferring his weight from one foot one foot to the other the other. Ugo looks for one more brief second at his fierce opponent and can’t help but notice those four pursed lips and those four killer eyes.
Ugo tosses the ball, lower than usual and way out to the right, and catches it. The crowd senses something is a bit off but figures even the greatest of players can occasionally execute a poor toss.
Again Ugo tosses the ball, this time a bit closer to his body but still poorly, and again catches it. He gestures to Jack a civil manual apology for the delay. The crowd murmurs. Jack sneers.
Ugo tosses the ball a third time, and it is not exactly a charm, but good enough, and he slams it pathetically into the bottom of the net.
Ditto for the second serve, and it is love-fifteen and somehow Ugo is not discouraged and gives Giglio a little smile, but his mentor and coach knows exactly what is going on and is not a happy camper and the fans are buzzing with consternation.
The always tranquil Ugo Bellezza walks calmly to the back of the court and asks one of the ball girls for a towel and what happens now is nothing short of divine intervention.
Somehow, knowing that he must get the speck out of his eye and fast—but how?—Ugo presses the towel against his face and closes his right eye and imagines the absolutely saddest of all his stored memories, and it is the sight of his mother that bitter December night receiving word from the coroner’s office that her twenty-eight-year-old husband had taken his own life and Ugo was only fifteen months old at the time but when he saw his mamma’s face contort and her reddened eyes squint and gush tears of sorrow and her throat get stuck and her mouth emit what in his unhearing toddler’s world he imagined to be an unspeakably plangent moan, the poignant silence of which he has never forgotten and never will forget…
The memory of this seminal moment is making Ugo’s right eye well up with a torrent of big chubby cathartic irrigating tears, the last of which miraculously transports the unaccountable speck of detritus within its globular form and is absorbed with the others into the thick red-white-and-blue terry cloth U.S. Open towel.
Posso vedere ancora!
Ugo has indeed regained his precious vision, and he steps up to the baseline, gathers himself, and uncorks a serve of such astonishing speed and pinpoint accuracy that Jack Spade is left shaking his head and walking briskly to the deuce court before the ball has even reached the baseline.
The hushed crowd suspends its breathing, then erupts in applause usually reserved for rock stars and presidential candidates.
This was an important point, not only because a break early in the fifth could mean curtains for Ugo, but also because so could the continuation of his ocular distress.
Ugo holds serve and his eye is now back to 100 percent and so is the stellar tennis, which continues to be substantially error-free and replete with dazzling gets and rallies and winners.
Game after game flies by before an entranced audience, each one more breathtaking than the last, and the 24,000 spectators in Arthur Ashe Stadium are thankful that the fifth-set tie-breaker rule was bagged in 2045 and grateful that they are witnessing this unbelievable display of tennis acumen from these two young men, Jack scratching and clawing and playing his win-at-all-costs ugly game and Ugo gliding and flowing and playing his effortless beautiful game, these two virtuosos who are clearly destined to become the two greatest players ever, if they have not already reached this lofty height.
The score in the fifth set is now an outlandish 24-25, breaking the all-time record of most games played in a set at the Open (25-23), established seventy-eight years ago, in 1969, by John Newcombe and Marty Riessen in the fourth set of a fourth-round match.
“Okay, this is it,” Ira implores Jake as he prepares to take the court to receive. “Break him here, end this thing now, and you’ll show the world who’s number one!”
As his son walks onto the court, dutifully pumped up, to receive serve in this fiftieth game, Ira Spade, unnoticed by everyone in the stadium, looks up at the Officials’ Booth, and, yes, he seems to be exchanging furtive nods with the Review Official parked in front of the Hawk-Eye Version XIII Electronic Line Call Replay Machine.
The next six points feature sizzling serves, spectacular returns, improbable gets, power and finesse, the absence of unforced errors, and above all the clash of two unwavering wills and two incomparable mental makeups.
And now it has come down to this: 24-25, deuce, and Jack is two points away from making his father soil his pants and from knotting up this budding rivalry at two majors apiece.
Ugo serves, and, with perfect timing, Jack greets the ball on the rise and absolutely pounds a return that even the arminharyesque reflexes of Ugo are unable to react to in time. Ugo barely gets his racquet on the blur of yellow coming back at him, and it is now championship point for the New Yorker.
Ugo cracks a serve down the middle and Jack barely gets his racquet on it but somehow wills it over the net and after two more back-and-forths the rally settles down to a test of nerves and strategy, each player bashing drives from both wings that are strong and deep but well within the sidelines and they are just lying in wait and biding their time until an inevitable winner is struck and Jack the bulldog and Ugo the gazelle are going at it like crazy and the only tension being felt is by every single one of the 24,000 dazzled, finger-biting spectators and they all just know that at any moment either the bulldog or the gazelle is going to blister a winner right on one of the outer lines of the court, as has already happened a startling 117 times during the match.
And indeed one of the players does drill an apparent forehand winner down the line, and it is Black Jack Spade, but the ball hits so close to the outside of the line that no one in the crowd can tell if it is in or out because this ain’t clay and there’s no obvious mark and actually the ball was wide, just barely out by a centimeter maybe, but the chair umpire calls it in and naturally Ugo Bellezza, who doesn’t have a sore-loser bone in his entire body, does not protest loudly but instead ambles calmly to the chair umpire and politely requests a video review.
The crowd is hushed for two minutes, then three, then seven, and the tension in the air is palpable and almost unbearable and at long last the chair umpire receives a message in his ear from the Officials Booth and passes it on to the public through his microphone: “Due to technical difficulties, the video replay machine has unexpectedly malfunctioned. We apologize for this mishap. The umpire’s call stands. Game, set, and championship to Mr. Spade,” he announces, pointing to Jack for the benefit of his deaf opponent.
This is not particularly the way they wanted it to end, but the spectators stand as one and yell and clap their appreciation for a splendid match.
Ugo Bellezza walks graciously up to the net and smiles broadly and extends his hand to his worthy opponent in acknowledgment of a hard-fought match well played.
Jack Spade accepts Ugo’s hand begrudgingly, then turns his back on the Italian genius, runs jubilantly to the middle of the court, and extends the index finger of his left hand four times, once to each side of the stadium crowd.
Ira Spade bathes in all his glory in his courtside chair, the most diabolical of smiles pasted on his fiendish face.
11
Tête-à-tête
HIS POINTY, LOBSTER-RED NOSE HOVERS
above the Starbucks coffee mug, the cavernous nostrils twitching and greedily sniffing the sensuous bouquet of a Super Hi-Octane Mocha Latte. As his gnarled but dainty left hand rotates the mug with erotic swirls, he grins lustily, the ghoulish smile exposing his forked tongue and all twenty-eight of his ghastly yellowed teeth.
At long last, Satan takes a sip.
“Damnation, this is fine!” he chortles with his best Jack Nicholson impression, winking to the august white-bearded gentleman seated across from him.
Clad in His finest formal white linen robe with purple and gold piping, God winks back solicitously and sips His cup of Darjeeling tea.
The two antagonists are sitting at an intimate corner table in one of the 418 Starbucks coffee shops in Limbo, an agreed-upon neutral site.
“Pretty snazzy little trick I just pulled at the Open, eh?” Satan crows. “That oughta send a message loud and clear. Yep, my guy looks like he’s on his way to—”
“Well, it doesn’t surprise Me one little bit, considering who I’m dealing with,” God says. “I certainly expected no less of you, but you will eventually realize that all the conniving and trickery in the world will never be powerful enough to combat the good and the beauty that are inherent in people—”
“Hogwash! Do you actually believe that bullpucky?” Satan retorts, his left eye twitching like hell. “What a sentimental old fool you are! You probably love the film It’s a Wonderful Life and Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, too!”
“Well, as a matter of fact—”
“Just as I thought. At any rate, looks like my guy has Big Mo in his corner now and it’s just a matter of—”
“Not so fast, Mr. I-Don’t-Want-to-Play-by-the-Rules—”
“Ha! Don’t make me laugh. Rules? You kidding? All that matters in life is results. Winning. The bottom line. Period, end of discussion.”
“Ah, but it isn’t the end of the discussion, not by a long shot,” God counters. “If you check your stats, My good fiend, you will discover that both your man and Mine have won the same number of major tournaments—two—and they are still only seventeen. No, I see it as dead even right now, with momentum favoring neither man. We will just have to wait a while to see who will ultimately prevail. And when they are fully ready and when the time is right, We shall know.”
The Devil slurps his Mocha Latte and daintily dabs his vermilion lips with a Starbucks paper napkin, left pinkie pointed north. “Yesindeedy, we will certainly know when the time is right. And when we do, and when I win our little wager,” Beelzebub continues, a globule of drool forming in the left corner of his mouth, “there will be no more Purgatory or Heaven, and you will be joining me for my big victory dinner, down there at the main table in Pants on Fire!”
God takes a thoughtful sip of His Darjeeling and utters His final words on the subject. “Facta non verba, I always say. Deeds not words. Talk all you want, My horned colleague, but Our bet will ultimately be decided not by what either of Us says, but rather up there, on the tennis court.”
12
That’s Amore
FROM THE BALCONY OF HIS VIA DEL CORSO HOTEL ROOM, Ugo Bellezza stares out at the shimmering onyx Roman sky, and the moon hits his eye like a big pizza pie.
It is late November 2051, Ugo is twenty-one, and he is training hard in Rome for the upcoming Australian Open. Giglio has chosen the Italian capital as their training base largely because of the newly built indoor facility, the Tennis Club Beppe Merlo in Trastevere, which features courts made of the exact same material (a cushioned acrylic called Plexicushion Prestige VI) as the one used in Melbourne.
As Ugo gazes at the sky and the breathtaking panorama, it is as if he were witnessing a silent documentary movie of the history of the civilized world. The juxtaposition of the trappings of a modern city with the remains of antiquity—obelisks, remnants of columns and walls, the Colosseum—fills up a series of soundless historical cinema frames, one cutting softly to the next with each blink of Ugo’s eyes.
It is not surprising that, in this pensive and serene moment in this timeless and ancient city, he is thinking of things eternal.
He is thinking about how apt the expression la Città Eterna is. No wonder they call this the Eternal City! It’s been here for nearly 3,000 years and will probably be around for another 100,000 at least.
He is thinking about the feelings Rome inspires in a human being. Feelings that transcend the finite, disposable, limited nature of ordinary life. Strong, uplifting feelings of immortality, permanence, continuity, and connectedness that are such stuff as dreams and hopes and eternity are made on.
Mostly, Ugo Bellezza is thinking of the eternal and indestructible nature of his love for Antonella Cazzaro, this amazing and inspiring creature with whom he is blessed to be sharing his life.
As his eyes drink in the sight of the effulgent dome of St. Peter’s Basilica bathed in greenish light and punctuated directly above—the dotting of the i that is the dome—by a gorgeous full moon, he blinks one last time. And in the darkness of his mind’s screen, the final frame of the silent movie appears, a super fading up slowly—white type on a black background—and revealing not the Italian word FINE, The End, but the word INIZIO.
The Beginning.
* * *
The throaty warmth of Antonella Cazzaro’s laughter fills an entire corner of the impressive Piazza Navona. She is guffawing at one of Ugo’s silly yet profound witticisms, and her laughter sets off a chain reaction around the little table they are lunching at, passing its contagion on first to Ugo, then Giglio, and finally proud mamma Gioconda.
Piazza Navona, this magnificent rectangular tennis court of a public square, is dominated by three Baroque fountains, the middle one of which, Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi—featuring an allegorical river god (representing the Danube, the Nile, the Ganges, and the Rio de la Plata) in each of the four corners—is particularly striking.
“Do you see that guy over there?” Giglio speaks and signs to Ugo and Antonella, pointing to the cowering river god of the Rio de la Plata.
Ugo and Antonella nod and feel one of Giglio’s meaningful stories barreling toward them.
“Well,” Giglio continues, taking a long sip of his Chianti Classico to wash down a forkful of bucatini all’Amatriciana, “why do you suppose he’s shielding his face with his hand like that?”
Silence.
“Because he was protecting himself?” Antonella asks.
“That’s a very good guess, carissima. Probably. But why?” Giglio persists.
Silence.
“What I’m going to tell you,” Giglio says after another sip, “never really happened, but it makes a great story, and besides, the figures in the statue are symbols, so why not surround them with a nice little myth?”
There are no objections at the table to Giglio’s thesis.
“Anyway, do you see the church behind me?” Giglio asks, pointing to the church of Sant’Agnese in Agone. “The guy who designed that church, Borromini, was the archrival of the guy who designed the fountain, Bernini. Legend has it that Bernini had that god of the Rio de la Plata put up his hand because—are you ready for this?—he was actually terrified that the facade of Borromini’s church was so badly built, it would fall down on him! In fact, however, the fountain was completed several years before Borromini ever began work on the church, but as I said, it makes a terrific story!”
Antonella and Ugo nod their approval.
“Now,” Giglio says, “I have one big question for you both.”
Again, the young couple can feel it coming.
“What great lesson can you take away from this fun little story?”
Huh?
“I mean, what does it tell you about the reason you play tennis?”
Huh???
Giglio takes another sip of Chianti. “A hint: It has to do with the nature of competition.”
Four ears are pricked and attentive.
“Okay, these two architectural geniuses had
a deep and bitter rivalry that is well documented. But for argument’s sake, let’s say that the story is really true, that in fact Bernini did design the god of the Rio de la Plata to make fun of his rival. So, wouldn’t you agree that if this were true, his creative motivation would have been misguided, that he would have been more concerned with making fun of Borromini than with creating the statue itself in the best, most beautiful way possible?”
Yep, they would.
“Okay, then, let’s take this a step further. Doesn’t this little story say something about tennis and the very nature of competition? Doesn’t it once again confirm for you guys what I always tell you about being proactive and not reactive, especially under pressure? Doesn’t it shout out to you the simple fact that if you compete in an overly personal way against your opponent, if you get into the petty politics and jealousies and dislikes and the psychology of proving your superiority over whoever happens to be on the other side of the net or the other side of the piazza, instead of just concentrating on the joy of competing and playing the game and creating your ‘sculpture’—your thing of beauty—you run the risk of being insecure or angry or even…fearful?”
Giglio puts his hand in front of his distorted face and freezes, statuelike, in terror.
Ugo and Antonella crack up and look one more time at the defensive posture of the Rio de la Plata god in the fountain and smile at each other and, yet again, appreciate in their hearts the uplifting wisdom of Giglio Marotti’s teaching.
And the transcendent power of metaphor.
* * *
Ugo and Giglio are in the middle of one of their practice sessions, hitting hot and heavy.
Literally.
The thermostat at the Tennis Club Beppe Merlo reads 38.9 Celsius, or 102 degrees Fahrenheit. Giglio has arranged for the heat to be cranked up on purpose, in order to simulate the subtropical summer climate of January in Melbourne.