He must nevertheless be pleased with his form?
‘Form? It is not form. It is work. I hit the ball and then I run to where it will land and I hit it again. I do this until it stops coming back or until I break it.’
The mystery of Rosa Luxemburg deepened late this afternoon when Osip Mandelstam vanished following his mixed-doubles match. He was due to attend a press call with his partner but she turned up alone, forty minutes late, bruised and shaking. These occurrences cannot continue, especially at the end of a day on which the much loved American Paul Robeson was told he is not welcome in his own country. Organisers must sort it all out, and fast. They must find those responsible, remove and punish them. Security must be tightened and the players’ safety guaranteed. The future, not just of the tournament but of the game, is at stake.
A shadow has fallen over proceedings. Faulkner caught the mood of the occasion well and was torn by the instinct to exploit it and the need to help those players who are in trouble. ‘The impossible and the inevitable became,’ he said, ‘as they must and cannot become, the things that, at that precise moment, were required by the straining of the very moment against itself.’
Day 27
Millay v. Pavlova • Tagore v. Eliot • Spock v. Joyce • Mann v. Mayakovsky • Akhmatova v. Stephen-Woolf • Duchamp v. Hemingway
What a day to finish the fourth-round singles! The victory of Edna St Vincent Millay over Anna Pavlova has sent other players a message loud and clear. The pattern of the match was the same throughout: a fabulous display from the in-form Pavlova, followed by a brilliant tactical comeback from Millay. She came from 0–4 down to lose the first set narrowly, and from 0–3 and 0–5 down to get up in the other two. As Pavlova said in the post-match interview, ‘Edna played great today. I gave it everything but she was just too good. Can I thank the crowds? I love to play here. Thank you. You’ve been fantastic.’
Millay was indeed too good on the day. ‘I really enjoy the doubles,’ she said. ‘I find all this singles stuff a bit of a strain.’
On Court 1 we saw the Bengal tiger very nearly give a famous man a mauling. Rabindranath Tagore, who has been making his way quietly through the men’s draw, is a player who can serve and volley and who can, if required, stand on the baseline and take an opponent apart with tactics. He is patient and thorough. Eliot did only what he needed to do. ‘He plays like an Englishman,’ Tagore said. ‘This is all very well as far as it goes. But it is not the whole story. He also plays like an American. This is the difficulty for me. I play like an Indian. We know the English but the mysteries of America are less familiar to us.’
So how would Tagore tackle SuperTom in any future match-up?
‘Hold the tournament in India. This is the whole problem,’ he said. ‘If we held the tournament in Delhi, the results would be completely different. Completely different. The purpose of this tournament is to establish the primacy of Western European tennis. How many Africans, Arabs and Asians are playing here? Very few indeed. Is this because of some innate incapacity among the great majority of the world’s population to stand up and hit a bouncing ball? Or is it because of the way the tournament is organised?’
Surprisingly, SuperTom did turn up to today’s post-match press call although he refused to be drawn on the matter of cultural politics, or on politics more broadly or on religion, England, America, his childhood, his associations, other players, the match he had just finished, women generally and his own wife in particular, or drink. There wasn’t much anyone could do about this, since Eliot is the principal editor at Laver & Laver, the licensed publisher of match reports at this tournament.
Ben Spock played sparkling tennis but was discombobulated by James Joyce, who is running into excellent form although not unencumbered by domestic problems. He dismissed these as ‘nothing at all’ and said afterwards he had ‘enjoyed the match today. Young Daedalus played well and I take my hat off to him. He should get his end away tonight. Unfortunately my pleasure was impaired by the presence of a couple of spavined Carmelite tub’o’guts sitting on their gravied arses in about Row F. France is like Ireland. It’s a God-forsaken priest-ridden country and the sooner we learn to shit these weevils out of our system the sooner the future can begin.’
Thomas Mann needed everything he could muster to get past a rather desperate Mayakovsky in a thriller. Mayakovsky’s problem was that he lacked consistency. He began solidly, played spectacular tennis in the second set and struggled honestly in the third before surrendering in the fourth. Mann’s ingenuity has been a feature throughout the tournament and was a telling factor again today. He rode out the storm intelligently and played the big points well.
‘Pretty pleased,’ he said. ‘Mayakovsky played well and, like many others here, is monstered by the administration of the game in his own country. This is something we have to deal with, each of us. This is an international game. If we’re not careful and strong, nationalism will destroy it. I am here as a German. I don’t like what’s happening in Germany and I can announce to you today that after this tournament I will not be returning to Germany.’
So where will he live?
‘Switzerland in the short term but I’m thinking of going to America. The point I want to make is that I am German, and the only way I can ensure the survival of the Germany I love is to leave. Mayakovsky will not have that choice. Some
