And so it went, and a delightful spectacle it all was until Porter fell and twisted his back, damaging a leg so badly he had to be strapped and stretchered off.
Kurt Gödel was brilliant for two sets but couldn’t go the distance against a hard-hitting Ernie Hemingway, who finished, dripping with sweat, bandages on his left arm and right knee and with a cut over his eye, looking like a gladiator, spent but victorious. Gödel said later that he proved what he had set out to prove and was happy. Asked what this was, he remarked that ‘it is difficult to prove anything’.
‘Crap,’ said Hemingway. ‘There was him and there was me. Two of us. The old one and the young one. In the sun. By the middle of the day it would be hot. We both knew what would happen. We would both sweat. Old sweat and young sweat. We both knew.’
There appeared to be a scuffle in the crowd during Luigi Pirandello’s confidence-building win over the young French pretender Jacques Lacan but police reported no trouble, just half-a-dozen characters who had turned up at the wrong venue. And in the best of the matches late in the day, Big Bill Yeats played the important points well against Fermi and was delighted to get out of a close contest with a lovely forehand cross-court winner in the warm purple twilight of an evening dripping with promise.
Day 17
Sartre v. Mandelstam • Matisse v. Low • Apollinaire v. Benchley • Fields v. Dali • Montessori v. Markievicz • Pavlova v. Klein • Magritte v. Kazantzakis
It was 11.49 am. The French media were in disarray. The players had left the arena. The crowd was stunned. Jean-Paul Sartre had just been beaten. Gone. Goodnight nurse. Eliminé.
Some say he was lucky to get past Duke Ellington in the first round. French commentators disagreed. Everyone has a bad match somewhere in a tournament, they argued; Ellington was his and JPS would move on.
It looked like business as usual as the players warmed up. Sartre appeared to be moving well, hitting the ball hard and serving at full strength in front of a huge partisan crowd, many of them students.
But let us now praise famous Mandelstam, who was magnificent today. It is hard to think of a shot he didn’t play and after 2–0 in the third he didn’t lose a point.
Sartre’s response after his demolition was to quarrel with Simone de Beauvoir over the idea of multiple partners in the mixed doubles.
‘We disagree. I am opposed to the proposal in its current form. If I wish to have multiple partners I will do so. And so can de Beauvoir. Although if she does, I won’t be one of them.’
De Beauvoir’s position is slightly different. ‘I support the right of all women to have multiple partners but since my man doesn’t want me to do so, I will be doing as I’m told.’
‘I am a feminist too,’ said Sartre. ‘I support your right to do so.’
‘I have, however, played with other partners in the past,’ said de Beauvoir.
‘You’re telling me you have,’ said Nelson Algren from the players’ box.
‘But from now on I won’t be doing that,’ continued de Beauvoir. ‘I will be writing about it.’
‘Heartless bitch,’ said Nelson Algren.
‘Get the car, Simone,’ said Sartre. ‘We’re leaving.’
Strictly speaking this wasn’t a great morning for French prestige. Henri Matisse spent nearly four hours trying to hold out New Zealander David Low before getting on top of him in the final set. Low made a lot of friends in this match and Matisse was impressed. He said afterwards it was the best match he had played in a long time and that Low was a considerable player whose influence on the game would be profound. ‘In England he has already changed the look of the game.’
Next door on Court 3 local clay-court specialist Billy Apollinaire found himself in a heap of trouble against the resourceful Robert Benchley, who had come to the match on his way back from dinner ‘at the home of someone called Harris’. The American played the first set very gingerly, in a sweater and dark glasses and socks ‘to keep the noise down’. Apollinaire grabbed the initiative in the third and was up 3–1 when Uncle Bob got annoyed by some pigeons sitting on the roof. He scowled at them. He walked over to them and explained the situation. ‘That’s the thing with pigeons. They like clarity.’ He was prepared to be reasonable, he said. He was trying to get some work done and could they please be quiet, less ‘pigeon-like’ and ‘could you three, in particular, stop looking askance at me?’
Apollinaire tried everything but Benchley got out of jail after the pigeons agreed to terms.
And will he be practising his serve before his next match?
Benchley smiled. Yes, he said. He would. As soon as he could find Harris.
Another chapter of oddities began on the same court shortly afterwards when Bill Fields turned up at four o’clock to find he had no opponent, Salvador Dali having arrived an hour earlier on Court 4 to find that he, also, had no opponent. Both players were notified that their match would commence at 3 at 4. Officials explained that their intention was to start the match at four o’clock on Court 3.
If that was the case, the remarkable Spaniard asked, why had it been advertised on television as a feature match? He was only here to play in feature matches, he said, and the middle of the afternoon on a remote court was not a feature match. Fields felt that the match should be postponed for twenty-four hours. Dali agreed and suggested the matter be put to Fields. Fields thought it an excellent idea and, subject to approval by Dali, proposed the delay be put into action immediately. Dali agreed. So did Fields.
Officials, however, insisted that the players should be ready to commence in five minutes.
And so it
