Round 5
Day 28
Dali v. Joyce • Matisse v. Chekhov • Akhmatova v. Bernhardt • Einstein v. Duchamp • Chandler and Hammett v. Benchley and Thurber • Leavis and Lawrence v. Chaplin and O’Neill
Salvador Dali did something today which has never been done before in open competition. He called for the official tournament doctor and asked to see a psychiatrist because, he said, he wanted to find out whether he was insane. It was half-way through the second set and he thought he could hear voices.
‘Of course he can hear voices,’ said his opponent Joyce. ‘We all do. The place is full of them fifteen-love thirty-love thirty-fifteen thirty-all its like a river of peoples talk the scores the riddle of steeples torque the whores the fiddle of Jesus baulk the cause the middle of deepest Cork the floors.’
‘Thank you,’ said Dali. ‘If you don’t mind I’ll go with the possibility of my own insanity.’
‘You’re not insane,’ said Joyce. ‘You’re Spanish. You come from a priest-addled slut bastard of a country like Ireland.’
‘I am a sex god,’ said Dali.
‘You cannot be a god of any kind,’ said Joyce. ‘There is no God.’
‘I must be insane then, to imagine I am one.’
‘Not at all,’ replied Joyce. ‘The idea of God is used to manipulate people. That’s what you’re trying to do now.’
‘I must be insane to do that,’ said Dali.
‘You seem to me to be as sane as the next man.’
‘Ah!’ said Dali. ‘I believe that is the problem.’
‘What makes you sure your belief system is reliable?’ asked Joyce.
‘Good point,’ said Dali. ‘Get me a doctor immediately.’
This was all very amusing but did little to stay the hand of fate. The combination of Joyce’s court-coverage and accuracy was too much on the day.
‘Great shot,’ called Matisse as Chekhov returned the first serve of their match.
‘Couldn’t have put it better myself,’ said Mailer, in the press box.
Matisse had sent down a vicious kicker into the body. Instead of moving to the right and playing a cramped shot in defence, Chekhov had drifted left, allowed the serve to move across him and then pelted it back across court as Matisse trundled in to put away the regulation volley. It was an ominous sign. In bright sunlight in front of a packed house Chekhov played Matisse like a fish for two sets. It was impossible to imagine how the Frenchman, especially in the heat, could come back from 1–6, 2–6, 0–3.
‘Wasn’t looking good,’ said Matisse. ‘I felt like a blur. I was running about like a madman but Tony is so accurate there’s nothing you can do when he’s playing like that. Whatever happens, he turns it to his advantage.’
In fact this extended even to the breaks. Chekhov plays the game at an intensity that requires intervals and he uses them brilliantly. ‘The intervals,’ he asserted, ‘are as important as the play.’
How Matisse cut his way back into this match is anyone’s guess. Exhausted and right up against it, he struggled to hold serve for 1–3 in the third and then broke Chekhov for the first time. He stopped worrying about how things looked and hit it as he felt. He sacrificed some precision but, since precision is the stock in trade of the Chekhov game, this unhorsed his opponent’s approach more than it did his own. He won the next four games to take the set and took the fourth to love. Chekhov won the first two games of the final set and a man just down from the press box looked at the woman next to him as if he’d known her for years. ‘We’re in for something here,’ he said.
Matisse promptly took three games on the trot and played his best tennis of the match. As Chekhov approached his chair at the changeover, he muttered something. ‘I beg your pardon, Mr Chekhov?’ inquired the umpire.
Chekhov turned, the faintest smile on his lips. ‘I was just saying I wouldn’t mind going to Moscow.’
At 2–5 it looked as if the Frenchman was on his way to a quarter-finals berth. But, as so often before, Chekhov’s instinct about how the play should finish was unerring. He broke Matisse twice and served it out at 7–5. Asked what he planned from here, he said, ‘Wasted opportunities. Less is more.’
He then paused, brightened, looked as if he had had another thought and leant into the microphone. ‘I was going to say something else,’ he said, ‘but I don’t believe I will.’
Russia’s Anna Akhmatova also went through to the semifinal after beating the heroic Bernhardt in a nip-and-tuck affair. Bernhardt gave a towering performance in the first set, but the patient Akhmatova insinuated herself into the second and dictated terms in the third. Bernhardt pronounced herself ‘very satisfied. There are no Germans left to beat.’
Akhmatova will play the winner of the Arendt–de Beauvoir contest, which has been postponed. Both players have refused to appear until the WTO ‘ensures Rosa Luxemburg’s safety and addresses player security as a matter of urgency’. Officials say they ‘are working through the issues and are hoping to reschedule the Arendt–de Beauvoir match in the next couple of days’.
An hour after this, however, de Beauvoir turned out on Court 3 with JPS for their mixed-doubles encounter with Wilding and Elliott, which they lost. Asked why she played, in spite of her own ultimatum, de Beauvoir replied, ‘Because he asked me.’
‘That would be right,’ said Nelson Algren from the players’ box. ‘Speak like a saint. Behave like a dog on a chain.’
Albert Einstein threw everything he had at Marcel Duchamp this afternoon and for over an hour we saw serving of such intensity that spectators were advised to turn their backs while the ball was being hit and then turn around quickly to see the result. In the first set Duchamp took evasive action and tried not to get hurt. Then Einstein served an ace which crashed into the metal railing around the base of a television tower
