‘What’s the problem?’ asked the umpire.
‘How many games have we played in this set?’ asked Gödel.
‘Two,’ said the umpire.
‘And we’ve won one each?’ said Gödel.
‘That’s right. Is there some difficulty with that?’
‘I take it you imagine one and one to be two.’
‘If you’re going to question that,’ said the umpire, ‘you’ll be flying in the face of every mathematician since Euclid.’
‘Euclid believed the world was flat,’ replied Gödel. ‘Euclidean ideas cannot be axiomatic.’
‘Until someone can prove that one and one are not two, I’ll operate on the assumption that they are.’
‘It is not necessary to prove that one and one are not two. It is necessary only that there be an instance in which it cannot be proven that they are.’
‘We’ve played two games in this set,’ repeated the umpire, ‘and the score is one all.’
‘This is all very fine as an assertion,’ said Gödel. ‘What I am concerned about is verifiable proof.’
Also through to the second round today were the majestic Russian Osip Mandelstam and the Norwegian Eddie Munch, who looks as if he couldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding. Mandelstam is a joy to watch and today he made just two unforced errors against the polished Englishman Carol Reed, only the third man this year to take a set from the Russian.
The Rules Committee announced this evening that, in order to clarify the situation, the following pairings have been removed from the mixed doubles:
F. Werfel (Aut) and A. Mahler (Aut)
W. Gropius (Ger) and A. Mahler (Aut)
G. Mahler (Aut) and A. Mahler (Aut)
O. Kokoschka (Aut) and A. Mahler (Aut).
There was one other withdrawal from the mixed: the W. B. Yeats (Ire) and M. Gonne-MacBride (Ire) combination will not be competing because, as Yeats put it, ‘No point. She won’t play.’
Meanwhile Ernie Hemingway had a good hit-out tonight against panoramic Italian Luchino Visconti. Gertrude Stein watched from the players’ box until Hemingway was forced to deny that she was coaching him by the use of hand signals.
‘I was tired,’ he said. ‘I didn’t need the old woman telling me what to do. She wanted to help. I could see that. Could see it in her eyes. Something in me said, “Yes.” Something else said, “No.” I went with the “no”. I forget where the sun was. “Up” probably.’
Day 5
Earhart v. O’Keeffe • Christie v. Oakley • Akhmatova v. Buck • Chanel v. Bara • Pickford v. Post • Gide v. Freud • Crosby v. Coward • Stanislavsky v. Picasso • Forster v. Pirandello • Miller v. Matisse • Wittgenstein v. Williams
Five women’s seeds were on court today and all went through. Amelia Earhart was a picture of efficiency in her win over countrywoman Georgia O’Keeffe. This was a contrast in styles, Earhart in shorts and playing a strong serve and volley game, O’Keeffe in flowing drapery which fell, at rest, like soft flower petals arranged in the form of a vagina.
Agatha Christie posed questions to which the normally accurate Annie Oakley simply didn’t have the answers. The Russian Anna Akhmatova had a good battle against Pearl Buck and, whatever was needed against the American Theda Bara, Coco Chanel had it. On Court 3, in an all-American derby, Mary Pickford shat on Emily Post.
The crowd was put through the agonies of St Jude by the brilliant but often frustrating Frenchman André Gide. The Austrian Sigmund Freud, who may have to be spoken to about his loud grunts, said Gide must have seen his parents in the act of congress. Gide replied that his parents were dead but the Doc insisted: ‘Gide must have imagined his parents in the act of congress. It was not important how he saw them in the act of congress, simply that he did.’
Gide was unmoved. It had never occurred to him, he said, that his parents engaged in congress at all. He described himself as a married gay red anti-communist Christian revolutionary hedonist ascetic and countered that, since it was Freud’s idea that his parents had experienced congress, it must have been Freud who imagined it.
Next up, we saw Bing Crosby happily trouncing Noel Coward. A natural with something of Twain about him (he whistles to himself while changing ends), Crosby was untroubled by the technically accomplished Coward, who made no excuses but is well known to prefer playing doubles ‘in which we serve slightly better’.
Constantin Stanislavsky’s method of playing is ‘to analyse the psychology’ of the player he wishes to be and, by sheer concentration, then ‘become’ that player. ‘I am not being me,’ he says. ‘I must actually become someone else.’ Precisely who he was being in his contest against Picasso was not obvious but after the second set he made a number of guttural remarks and banged himself on the head with an ice-bucket. This seemed to clarify things and he took the third set before Picasso got down to business.
Until recently Picasso autographed his racquets after a match and threw them into the crowd. Those lucky enough to catch one were making up to $500 each from fans anxious to purchase a memento of their hero. WTO officials lowered the boom when it became clear that the same people were catching the racquets at each tournament and upon closer inspection proved to be employed as racquet-catchers by Picasso’s company, Racquets Inc. The Spaniard loves the Centre Court atmosphere and was still out there signing autographs when the players were hitting up for the next match.
The English Davis Cup selectors took a keen interest in Ted Forster’s tussle with accomplished Italian Luigi Pirandello but, the minute Forster noticed them conferring, the pressure seemed to get to him. ‘I heard what the women were saying yesterday,’ he confessed. ‘I don’t want to be in some national squad either. This is not a team sport. It’s
