Auden and MacNeice then destroyed Kafka and Muir in an unparalleled demonstration of doubles play. Kafka was in sparkling form and Muir is solid in all passages, but Auden and MacNeice sometimes play like a single organism and today it was impossible to put anything between them. With the Auden serve on fire and MacNeice, proprietor of one of the best backhands in the game, elegant and deadly, they didn’t miss much.
Another great combination went through on Court 4, where Sackville-West and Stephen-Woolf, who have been playing together since they were both girls, got home despite a nasty scare. Prichard and Richardson took the first set before their more fancied opponents, who seemed rather to be hibernating, emerged into the full light of day.
Sackville-West and Stephen-Woolf play in long dresses and cardigans. They speak only to people to whom they have been formally introduced, which was a bit trying for the umpire today, ignored for two sets and then instructed to ‘sit down you ridiculous little thing. If we want anything, we’ll ring.’ Their play is imperious and they sometimes behave as if their opponents aren’t there.
‘We assume there is some opposition,’ explained Sackville-West. ‘A view confirmed on this occasion by the fact that so many of the balls we hit were in fact returned.’
‘We’re not idiots,’ added Stephen-Woolf. ‘There was manifestly some human agency involved.’
With their peculiar bird-like movements, they presented a commendable spectacle. Their understanding of one another was practically psychic in the third set, when Richardson, serving superbly, was shut out by a refusal to acknowledge that it was happening. The faster the serves got, the faster the returns came back.
Day 30
Stead v. Smith • Sartre and Camus v. Magritte and Dali • Nijinsky and Pavlova v. Bankhead and partner • Shostakovich and Prokofiev v. Cocteau and Picasso
Schwarztag.
Rosa Luxemburg is dead.
Her body was found in an industrial estate at dawn this morning. She had been shot at close range. This tragedy, on top of the murder of Karl Liebknecht, the suicide of Walter Benjamin and the disappearance of Osip Mandelstam, has thrown the future of the tournament into serious doubt. WTO organisers had undertaken to provide assurances by tonight that there would be no further incidents of this kind. No such undertaking has been received.
All flags are flying at half-mast. The tournament has expressed its ‘profound sorrow’ to Ms Luxemburg’s family and has issued a statement: ‘A decision will be made tonight or early tomorrow concerning the schedule for the remaining matches.’
There has been some criticism of the WTO’s handling of this issue. Auden, for example, said he had a feeling this might happen and it is not yet clear what, if anything, tournament management did to prevent it.
‘We’re running a tennis tournament,’ said one official. ‘We’re not responsible for everything that happens to individual competitors.’
‘Nobody said you were,’ replied Auden. ‘The question is, who is responsible for the death of Luxemburg?’
‘Not us.’
‘Then who?’ asked Auden.
‘The players are responsible for themselves. They’re all capable adults.’
‘Is Rosa Luxemburg to blame for her own death?’ Auden persisted. ‘Did she shoot herself six times in the back of the head from a distance of two metres?’
‘We don’t know what precisely happened to player Luxemburg,’ said the official.
‘Why don’t you know? You’re the WTO.’
‘Perhaps, out of respect,’ said the official, ‘we should not engage in speculation about what is a tragic matter.’
‘It is quite clear she was killed by her own people,’ said Auden. ‘Not by herself. Not by people who did not know who she was. It’s not a mystery. By doing nothing, the tournament is complicit in her murder.’
‘I thought you were going to America,’ said the official.
‘I do not wish to go to the America you come from,’ said Auden,
‘You do not realise you will go to the limestone I come from.
Where I arrive, you will be free to talk rubbish.
When you return, I will be prevented from talking sense.
In your new empire, strength will shoot craps with paranoia.
In my old age, memory will change hats with impunity.
You would like nothing more than to see me wish upon a star.
I would like to see you fired into another galaxy.
Unless you are very careful, your utopia will run out of gas.
Unless I am much mistaken, my dinner will be in the oven.’
‘You are obtuse,’ said the official. ‘And you go on too much.’
‘Tennis makes nothing happen,’ Auden went on,
‘Indifferent in a month,
Rankings are just a lot of bumpf.
Obsession with winning and making a packet,
Rebounds from every tennis racquet.’
Arthur Miller, still in the doubles with Chekhov and looking at a great future in the game, was also resolute. ‘Unwilling or unable to control the German or Russian federations, the WTO must broker an arrangement which allows the tournament to continue. It must do this by tomorrow and to the satisfaction of the players.’
‘And,’ agreed Mary McCarthy, ‘we don’t just want some sordid deal between imposters and criminals. Countries like my own must ensure that they don’t appease Germany and Russia for the moment but create a bigger problem later on.’
‘And if they negotiate in only their own interest,’ insisted Miller, ‘what difference will exist between them and the system they are replacing?’
In their rescheduled match, Christina Stead played like a woman who loved her tennis for a set and a half, until Smith’s languid rhythm began to work like a slow-acting opiate to dull the sharpness of the Australian’s attack. The match was stopped briefly while a young black man was removed from a tree just outside the fence at Court 4, where he seemed to be hanging to get a better view.
‘I’ll
