by Bob Mitchell
“…that I wish just once, just once…
Ugo tries to hold back a tear, but it forms anyway, despite his bravest efforts, and rolls down his right cheek.
“…I could hear the sound of…a bird chirping and a baby crying and the ball hitting my racquet…”
Another tear forms and wends its saline way into the corner of his mouth.
“…and my sneakers rubbing against or sliding on the court and I wish just once I could know what a perfectly struck shot sounds like and just once I wish I could listen to the fans, those wonderful fans, cheering me on and I could hear you speak your wise words to me, hear the sound of your voice coming from your mouth, and just once I’d like to hear what mamma’s laugh sounds like and just once, I would…like to hear…Antonella’s sweet voice telling me…Ti amo…”
A stream of tears—two, now five, now ten—pour out of both of Ugo’s eyes and onto his already soaked tennis shorts.
Giglio himself is weeping inside and he’s never seen Ugo like this and after a minute of deafening silence, it is time for him to speak again.
“I understand, my boy, I understand, truly I do,” Giglio begins, acknowledging to himself that, not being deaf, he will never truly understand deep down.
“But you know,” Giglio says, “just think of some of the people who accomplished amazing things even though they couldn’t hear…”
Ugo lifts his head, the tears abate, his ears perk up.
“…and these amazing people are still beloved today for what they were able to accomplish despite their hearing challenges, even centuries after they are gone…”
A gentle smile begins to form in the corner of Ugo’s mouth.
“…in poetry, for instance, there was the great Frenchman, Pierre de Ronsard, who wrote some of the most beautiful love poems ever. In painting, there was the awesome Spaniard, Francisco Goya, who developed a bold and revolutionary style of artistic self-expression. In music, we have, of course, the genius German, Beethoven, who heard not with his ears, but from a place deep within his soul, and changed the course of classical music forever…”
Now the smile is a grin.
“…and do you know that the man who was one of the greatest, most creative inventors of all time…the phonograph…the light bulb…well, the brilliant American, Thomas Edison…he was deaf, too!” Giglio says.
Now the grin is a silent laugh, and Ugo Bellezza’s body is trembling with joy, and he lifts his head up proud and straight and looks at his beloved mentor, Giglio Marotti.
And a light beams, incandescent, from Ugo’s eyes toward Giglio’s, a light that would have made the Wizard of Menlo Park proud.
* * *
Avis Spade is sitting alone in her Manhattan bed, having weathered her personal storm, and is now hanging by the dual threads of her love for her son and the memory of what her husband used to be. For the moment at least, hope has narrowly prevailed in its battle against desperation.
Her iMiniTelevideoPhone rings and lights up, and miraculously, it is Jack Spade talking to her on the screen.
“Hi, Mom, it’s Jack. Don’t have much time, because Dad and I, we’re going out drinking with Odi and a few friends, but I just wanted to say hi and tell you I just won the Australian Open, in case you weren’t watching on TV, and also…that…I love you.”
Jack is spirited off the screen abruptly by his father, who says a cursory hello to his wife and sorry, but they gotta go now, they got people waiting, and see you in a coupla days…
Avis closes the screen on her TelevideoPhone and she knows that the ViewCall only lasted thirty seconds and that as usual Jack was tied to Ira’s schedule and hip and that she and her son didn’t have the luxury of chatting at their leisure and that this situation was likely to go on for quite a while and that Ira wasn’t likely to revert back to his old self anytime soon.
But in light of the final three words her son just uttered on the screen of the TelevideoPhone, she doesn’t much care.
15
First Fiddle
SO, THIS IS WHAT MICHELANGELO must have felt like just after he polished the last chisel mark on his David and stepped back to admire his creation, Giglio is thinking from his chair as he watches Ugo blast a few final serves.
It is the middle of June 2053, and Ugo is twenty-three and at the very tippy-top of his game. Way up here in the hills of Florence, above the Giardini Boboli and the hurly-burly of the city, Giglio and Ugo have been training on a spanking new, gorgeous grass court for the critically important Championships at Wimbledon, now being touted as the Big Showdown of All Time, and by the British media as the Thunder in London. The tennis court, which La Federazione Italiana Tennis has built in honor of national superhero Ugo Bellezza, is the first deluxe grass court ever constructed in Italy.
Ugo and maestro Giglio have just finished a punishing workout, and Giglio, watching from the sidelines in his chair, is more than ever in awe of Ugo’s game, ruminating on how mature and fully rounded it has become, how his protégé has continually refined and sharpened his tactical thinking, how he has developed into a player who is always in complete control and who has no ostensible weaknesses, how he has created for himself a uniquely beautiful way of playing tennis, and most of all how he has overcome obstacles large and small, obvious and subtle, along the way.
Giglio sits back in his chair and sighs, humbled to think that all the effort he has expended in the sculpting of Ugo Bellezza as a tennis player has in fact produced such a wondrous work of art.
* * *
Giglio, Gioconda, Ugo, and Antonella are sitting around the dining-room table at Gioconda’s flat on Via dei Vellutini, enjoying her dessert specialty, torta di mele. This apple tart is the icing on the cake of her sumptuous five-course dinner masterpiece.
Stuffed to the gills, Giglio presents the post-dessert dessert: He reaches under the table, grabs a large, rectangular, gaily wrapped package, and deposits it on the table next to Ugo’s plate.
An unexpecting Ugo smiles sheepishly and reads the card attached to the package, which is signed by Antonella, Gioconda, and Giglio: “A Ugo, ti amiamo moltissimo.”
“I love you guys a bunch, too,” Ugo signs, then opens the package slowly, lovingly.
It is a tennis racquet.
But what a tennis racquet.
Ugo has never seen anything like it before. He stares at it, unwraps the plastic covering, caresses it, turns it over, isn’t quite sure what to make of it. His heart is deeply touched by the gift, but his mind is crying out for an explanation.
His mamma sees his confusion and jumps right in.
“Mio figlio,” Gioconda says, “we are all so proud of you that we wanted to give you something very special now, before Wimbledon. So we thought and we thought, and Giglio came up with this beautiful idea, and here it is in your hands…”
Ugo’s mother wipes the corner of her eye with a bent index finger and continues.
“You are looking at a racquet that is one of a kind…just like you, mio figlio… “
Ugo listens in wonderment, not yet fully understanding.
“As you can see, carissimo, the racquet is made of two materials. On the inside, there is your usual composite construction of graphite, titanium, boron, and Kevlar. But on the outside…”
Again, the finger to the eye.
“…oh, the outside, this wooden overlay on the rim and the shaft, is what makes it really special, because outside and inside, the racquet is a marriage of the old and the new, of the classical and the modern.”
“So italiano!” Antonella chimes in.
“Yes, so italiano.” Gioconda says. “But here is the best part. This is not just any wood. Ugo, do you know who Antonio Stradivari was?”
“Yes, mamma, he was the finest violin maker in history, no?” Ugo signs to her.
“Hai ragione, ragazzo, you are right. Well, many months ago, the three of us drove up to Cremona to have this wooden overlay specially made. This is the town where maestro Stradiva
ri was born, made his extraordinary violins, and died, over 300 years ago. There, we hired the great racquet designer, Filippo Franceschi, to fashion the overlay for your racquet from local spruce wood. Then he had it highly polished with a local varnish, whose translucent coating highlights the beautiful grain of the wood. So, you see, the outer layer of the racquet is nearly a facsimile of the same wood used and the same process followed by maestro Stradivari to make his very first violin.”
Ugo gazes down at the gorgeous insignia on both sides of the base of the shaft—a large UB in capital letters flanked by violin F-holes—and now he understands.
“And not only that,” Giglio adds, “but aside from being beautiful, because of the internal construction and the strong protective layer of wood and varnish, it is also virtually indestructible! So you’ll only need this one, your special Ugo Bellezza racquet, instead of the hundreds you go through every year…”
Ugo smiles slyly, sensing that Giglio is not quite finished. Ugo is not disappointed.
“Now, you know, of course, that this racquet will not automatically make you a better player, that the quality of your game comes from what’s inside of you, and how you use the racquet. As the old adage goes, ‘a bad carpenter blames his tools’—”
“And by the same token, a good carpenter does not give his tools credit!” Gioconda adds with a wise giggle.
“Right,” Giglio says, “and one final thing. I hope this racquet will be a symbol for you of what we have discussed so often, you and I, namely, the importance of the marriage between beauty and function. Of creating something that is both beautiful in itself and also that works beautifully. Like Stradivari’s violin—”
“And Italian cooking,” Gioconda adds.
“And Italian fashion,” Antonella adds.
“And my beautiful new tennis racquet,” Ugo adds.
“And your tennis game!” Giglio adds, putting a final exclamation point on the conversation.
Ugo looks at his new racquet one more time, and then at the three people he loves most in the world, and he feels the affection and effort these three have put into this gift, and how much they care for him, and how much he is aching to use the racquet for his big match at Wimbledon.
And a soft glow emanates from Ugo’s handsome face, a glow that you could almost call divine, a glow of contented dreaminess like the one on the subject’s face in Titian’s Man with the Glove.
* * *
In Ugo and Antonella’s tiny flat on the Via Ghibellina, across the street from the Casa Buonarroti, the two lovers are seated on the sofa, pretty beat from a long day of practice sessions with Giglio.
“How did your hitting go today, cara?” Ugo asks.
“Great. I’m hoping that this year I can get to the quarters for the first time at Wimbledon,” Antonella signs optimistically. “And yours?”
“Amazing. I love my new racquet,” Ugo signs back. “It feels so comfortable, and I can feel the love travel through my hands and up my arms and across my body, even down to my toes, every time I hit the ball!”
“Carissima,” Ugo signs, positioning his right ear an inch away from Antonella’s perfect lips. “Would you mind telling me you love me?”
“Certo!” Antonella signs back, mildly surprised at the request, then, “Ti amo!”
“Would you mind saying it a little louder?” Ugo asks, his ear in the same spot, hoping against hope.
“Ti amo!” Antonella complies, getting it.
“Now, just one last time,” Ugo entreats, expecting a miracle.
“TI AMO!” Antonella repeats even more loudly, praying for her best friend’s unlikely dream to be realized.
Silence.
“Thanks anyway for trying, cara mia,” Ugo signs, his drowsy head gently depositing itself between Antonella’s warm and welcoming breasts.
16
Second Fiddle
“THAT LITTLE ITALIAN SONUVABITCH!” Ira screams in his chaise longue next to the lush grass court on the Spade Florida estate.
He and twenty-three-year-old Jack—the fitter, stronger, more determined version of the earlier model—are taking a break from their early evening training session in preparation for the Big Showdown of All Time at the 2053 version of Wimbledon in ten days, and he has just opened and read a letter sent to Jack from Florence, Italy, by Ugo Bellezza.
“That little Italian sonuvabitch!” Ira repeats, then reads the letter aloud to Jack:
Dear Jack,
I write to wish you many luck for the Wimbledon tournament next week.
I know how important this match is for all the two of us, and I want also
to say that whoever wins, it has been an honor to play against you during
these many matches.
Buona fortuna e tanti auguri, Ugo
“What does he think he’s trying to pull, writing you like this?” Ira bellows. “I mean, that’s the oldest trick in the book, trying to make nice so you’ll feel all soft and mushy toward him when you two meet in the finals. What a pathetic little sandbagger!”
“Well, maybe he really means it,” Jack offers.
If hot steam, accompanied by a train whistle sound, could shoot out of Ira’s ears right about now—like it does with one of those cartoon characters who is jumping up and down and shaking his fist and fit to be tied—it would.
“Goddammit, you sonuvabitch,” a red-faced Ira screams, his left eye twitching like the devil. “I don’t ever wanna hear words like that coming out of Jack Spade’s mouth again. I got too much invested in you to have you spewing crap like that and acting like Mister Softee!”
Jack is feeling like an article of second-hand merchandise but knows his place and zips his lip.
“Listen up,” Ira says, “week after next is the most important moment of your entire life, a moment that’s been building up and gaining steam for nearly fourteen years. And now it’s here. If you beat this Italian kid in the finals, the kid who wrote you this idiotic letter, you will be the clear number one in the world for now and probably forever. You will undoubtedly be considered until the end of time as the greatest player ever to step on a tennis court. That’s how important this goddam match is! And you’re sitting there telling me, ‘Well, maybe he really means it?’”
Jack’s face reddens, but it is pink compared to Ira’s maroon.
“A long time ago,” Ira says, “the great basketball player, Michael Jordan, said, ‘I gotta win. Nobody remembers losing.’ And that’s what America is all about. No one in this country wants to die a nobody, a loser. Everyone wants to be a somebody, a winner, someone people will remember. And all the work I’ve put into your career might make you a nobody if you don’t win at Wimbledon!” Ira is screaming at the top of his lungs and the blood vessels in his forehead are threatening to burst and his voice cracks and he is out of breath and can rant no longer.
Jack Spade nods obediently and smiles faintly, but what he really wants to do is to dig himself a hole and crawl all the way to China.
* * *
Sitting on the redwood deck that overlooks the expansive Florida estate, impressive martini in hand, Avis Spade hears the scolding, screaming voice of her husband down at the tennis court, this voice she knows so well and hears in her sleep, and stares out into space and wonders what the meaning of life could possibly be.
Her bland, blanched features reflect a fatigue that is not simply a result of sleep deprivation, but one that has been accruing for nearly two decades now. Two decades of neglect and abuse and abandonment and being forced to play second fiddle. Two decades of watching Ira take over the parenting chores with an iron fist, in his relentless, greedy pursuit of wealth and fame, forcing her maternal instincts to be washed away, tear by tear.
She is thinking about how those decades are gone now, vanished, in the books, and how Ira has forced her to squander her considerable talents for nurturing and for giving.
She is thinking about how pretty she used to be years ago, and how that modest beauty has f
aded little by little until now the best she can make herself look, even with the most hi-tech cosmetics, is respectable or nice or even mildly appealing.
She is thinking about how, ever since Jack was ten and this tennis thing got serious, she was compelled to harbor deep inside of her the greater part of her natural warmth and compassion and love, these feelings that she had at the ready, that she longed to share and to offer with no strings attached, and about how the strings of her fiddle have gotten, after all this time, so terribly out of tune.
Avis takes another sip of her exceedingly dry martini, looks out at the mind-numbing Florida flatness and the distant pastel horizon, and fills her head with scary thoughts she’d been trying so hard to forget, or at least to suppress, ever since that seemingly endless night and early morning she’d spent in Jack’s bathroom.
17
Showtime!
HIS POINTY, LOBSTER-RED NOSE HOVERS above the two-pint Waterford Crystal Lismore Pilsner glass, the cavernous nostrils twitching and greedily sniffing the sensuous bouquet of a Chimay Grande Réserve Trappist Monk Belgian Ale. As his gnarled but dainty left hand rotates the brew with erotic swirls, he grins lustily, the ghoulish smile exposing his forked tongue and all twenty-eight of his ghastly yellowed teeth.
At 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 Peanut-Soy Milk Power Smoothie.
On this eve of The Championships at Wimbledon, the two antagonists are sitting at a booth in Neither Fish nor Fowl, a specialty lunch eatery in Purgatory, an agreed-upon neutral site. The joint only serves meat or vegan dishes, and nothing in between, catering largely to resident sinners on the verge of either descending or floating upward.
As God bites into His tofu burger with avocado and tomato-mushroom ragout and the Devil chomps on his blood sausage and barbecued tripe-with-the-works hoagie, a tension fills the booth, as if something were preventing either antagonist from uttering the first word. Finally, God breaks the ice.