Everything on the Line (6 page)

“No shit, Sherlock,” Ira says, “but what
else
?”

Jack is stumped.

“I’ll tell you what else. First, they’re lefties, every last friggin’ one of ’em.
Just like you.
And don’t you ever forget it. You lefties are a special group, a rare breed. There’s nothing harder in this world than to beat a lefty champion at his peak.
Mark my words, goddammit
!” Ira warns, his left eye twitching something awful.

“And look at those
eyes
!” he says, flipping through the photos again. “Cold-blooded killers, all of them! They were all great players not because they had perfect strokes or were overpowering, but because they had a no-mercy, go-for-the-jugular, killer instinct that comes along only once in a blue moon.”

Coach and pupil resume the hit for another twelve minutes with a diabolical drill that Ira cooked up, consisting of Jack’s having to backpedal from the net for a tough stretch overhead smash, then rush back up to net for a low volley, then repeat this eleven times without stopping. Ira calls it “the Dirty Dozen.”

Jack calls it “the Satanic Torture.”

Like Hercules cleaning up manure in the Augean stables, Jack performs the distasteful drill with aplomb, obedience, and—unlike the Greek hero—a series of unattractive grunts that, since he was a tot, his father has encouraged him to emit every time he hits a tennis ball. They are louder and more high-pitched, ear-shattering, obnoxious, and classless grunts than any other in the long and fabled history of tennis, easily surpassing the unattractive vocal emissions of such superb soprano gruntaholics as Monica Seles, Maria Sharapova, and Serena Williams.

At the end of the final set of twelve round-trips between net and service line, Jack is a tad late for an easy volley and dumps it into the bottom of the net before crumpling to the ground.

Similar to Muhammad Ali looking down with those fierce eyes at a beaten Charles Liston on that fateful night in 1965 in Lewiston, Maine, Ira glares defiantly at his exhausted offspring.

“Now, I know you’re tired, but if I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times why I work you so hard all the time. And it boils down to one single word:
Darwin!
The survival of
the fittest
! This means that only
the fittest
will survive! This means that in order for you to reach our goal, to be the best there has ever been, you have to be
fitter
than every opponent you face. It’s dog-eat-dog, you or them, and if you are
the
fittest
, it’s going to be
you
, goddammit!”

Never mind that Darwin preferred the phrase
natural selection
. Never mind that it was the British economist Herbert Spencer who actually coined the phrase
survival of the fittest
. Never mind that, at that time in the mid-nineteenth century,
fittest
meant “most appropriate or suitable” and not “in the best physical shape.” Ira Spade is a loyal Darwinian disciple, whether he actually understands the great naturalist or not.

On the way home, back in the Mercedes, Ira’s TelevideoPhone rings.

“Jel-lo,” Ira says, opening his Nokia SuperMiniLaser2800SE.

“Hey, Ira,” short, fat, bald, chinless Odi Mondheim says, looking obsequiously at Ira through the screen. Odi is Jack’s business manager, agent, factotum, and publicist. As a child, Odi couldn’t pronounce his Christian name—Cody—so the moniker stuck.

“Whassup?” Ira asks.

“Well, I just got off the horn with the Nike people—”

“So, didja stick it to ’em?” Ira asks impatiently.

“Well, I started to, but they said the kid’s only thirteen, and—”

“Goddammit, Odi, you sonuvabitch, listen to me. Thirteen, shmirteen, this kid’s a frigging
gold mine,
fer chrissakes. A big fat check just waiting to be cashed!”

“But—”

“Now listen,” Ira spews, “you’re gonna haul your fat ass back to Nike tomorrow and you’re gonna not chat about, but
demand
that sneaker deal we’ve been talking about. They all know how dominant the kid is for his age, and exactly where he’s headed. They’re not stupid, and, know what? Neither are we, goddammit!”

“Okay, whatever you say, Ira. You can count on me. Oh, and by the way, I had my inside guy do some research on that Italian kid you heard about, the one the same age as Jack? Yeah, his name is Ugo Bellezza. Well, don’t look now, buddy boy, but he just won the All-Italian Under-18s
as a thirteen-year-old
, in five grueling sets, against that world-ranked fifteen-year-old, Mauro Maione, which is a tiny bit troubling. I mean, if you ask me, this kid is gonna be Jack’s biggest rival before long, no question about it—”

“Not to worry,” Ira interrupts. “You’ll see. One day, not too far down the road, we’re gonna meet that little Italian sonuvabitch head-on and teach him a lesson he won’t soon forget.
Mark my words
.”

“Oh, and one more thing, my good friend,” Odi says at the other end of the line. “Here’s another juicy tidbit you might enjoy hearing. This Bellezza kid? He’s
deaf
.”

A funny grin insinuates itself on Ira’s face, his left eye is twitching like a broken traffic light, and he and his thirteen-year-old gold mine, who has fallen asleep in the passenger’s seat, slither silently into the black, frigid New York night.

5

Fifth Sense

TO A FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD DEAF PERSON, looking straight up at Antoni Gaudí’s spectacular Templo Expiatorio de la Sagrada Família in Barcelona is the visual equivalent of listening to the fourth movement of Beethoven’s
Ninth Symphony
, the finale to Rossini’s
William Tell Overture
, and Queen’s
Bohemian Rhapsody
, all at the same time.

Standing on the Calle de Mallorca, his head tilted all the way back like a crook-necked squash, Ugo Bellezza is being mesmerized by one of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring structures ever created by humankind.

He is feasting his eyes on the front of the cathedral, the glorious Nativity Façade.

Mamma mia!

He is gazing not at the front of a traditional Gothic cathedral, that high and wide mass of gray stone pointing up to the heavens and consecrated to God and Religion. No, this is something way more striking and a
cavallo
of a different
colore
and speaking of which look at those vibrant ones, the blues and the reds and the oranges and the yellows up there and all those shapes and materials consecrated to religion, yes,
certo
, but this church is also just as much a hymn to Nature and to Life and there is almost too much to take in visually all at once but it takes him in anyway, hook, line, and
piombo
, and the power and detail are seeping right into his adolescent bones.

And
Dio mio!
there must be 100 different plant species depicted on just this facade not to mention 100 different animal species (there’s an ox! and look at those turtles! and getta loada those chameleons! and way up there,
guarda
that big pelican!) and in no particular order Ugo’s eyes are panning to those three main doorways standing for Faith, Hope, and Charity and those four main towering steeples with
HOSANNA
and
EXCELSIS
and
SANCTUS
printed right on them! and all those biblical figures and the signs of the zodiac and the gorgeous mosaics and a huge cypress tree right there in front housing a bunch of alabaster doves and a host of angels and the flight to Egypt and musicians and kings and shepherds and Magi and saints…

And this is only the
front
of the building!

“È stupendo
,
no?”
Virgilio Marotti signs to Ugo Bellezza.

At moments like this, Ugo is thinking how grateful he is to be deaf and not blind. Then again, Ugo being Ugo, if the dice had been rolled differently and he were in fact blind and not deaf, he would be equally grateful every time he listened to the music of, say, Beethoven or Rossini or Queen.

“Stupendo,”
Ugo echoes, turning to his mentor with a closed fist to his face that mimics an open mouth by unclenching itself and expanding outward into five fully extended fingers.

“What I love about Gaudí,” Giglio continues, “is that he was always pushing the envelope, always going places no one ever went before, building things no one had ever dreamed of building. What I especially love is that we are all, every human being on the planet, capable of pushing envelopes, not just licking them. And your special envelope is tennis! The tennis court is finite, but, like Gaudí did with stone, you can make it infinite! You can expand the lines of the court and play like they are there but not there. In that small space that is allowed to you, you can do anything you want!”

Ugo nods and taps his heart with his middle finger.

“And don’t forget,” Giglio concludes, “how hard he worked to make this a reality. He slaved over this amazing cathedral for over forty years, knowing that he wouldn’t finish it in his lifetime. And it’s not even finished now, 119 years after his death. I read somewhere that he spent four entire years studying the ringing of bells so they would sound just right when they pealed up there!”

It has been an awesome day for the rising tennis star and his coach, filled from dawn to dusk with the magnificent creations of Gaudí: the Casa Battló, the Casa Milà, the Parc Güell, and now, icing on the architectural cake, the Sagrada Família.

But if Barcelona is the city of Gaudí, it is also the city of Godó.

* * *

The Open Seat Godó tennis tournament, first held in 1953, has become the number two clay-court tourney in the world, having surpassed the Monte Carlo Masters event and only behind the sole clay-court major championship, the esteemed French Open, to be contested five weeks hence at Roland Garros in Paris. That will be especially historic, because if they both reach the finals in the Juniors draw of the tournament, it will be the first time that Ugo will play that other young tennis wizard who shares most of the attention of the tennis world nowadays, the fiery American Jack Spade.

Preposterously and unprecedentedly, Ugo Bellezza and Jack Spade are, at the tender age of fifteen, co-ranked number one in the Juniors division, which is open to players eighteen years and under.

The host of the Seat Godó is the Real Club de Tenis Barcelona-1899, known for its raucous crowds, its hospitality, and above all its clay. Sure, the clay surfaces at both Roland Garros in Paris and the Foro Italico in Rome are dandy, but if you’re in the market for clay that is thicker, richer, redder, moister, softer, slippier, slidier, glidier, grittier, grainier, and gravelier than any other, well then, the clay right here at the RCT is your man.

Clay.
Or
terra batuda,
in the Catalan language of this region.
Meaning earth beaten to a pulp to make this rich red soft stuff. Beaten to a pulp, like players are when they undergo the ordeal of grueling matches on this surface.
Clay.
The ultimate tennis test of endurance, hard work, and persistence.
Clay.
One look at a young man after a match on clay, one look at the red clots of earth painting his arms and legs and apparel—a vermilion testimony to the pain and hardship accrued by slipping and sliding and diving on the crushed brick—will tell you volumes about
competing your brains out and struggling through adversity and testing what you have deep inside.
Clay.
The badge of honor smeared over one’s body, the red-specked reward for a blue-collar job. The tennis equivalent of Ben Hogan’s dirt, the essence of getting down and dirty and as close as you can humanly be to the soil.
Clay.
Not surprisingly to real aficionados of tennis, the very building material chosen by God when he presumably formed man out of the ground.

It is April 2045. Ugo and Giglio are in Barcelona preparing hard for the Juniors tune-up for the French Open. The ninety-third edition of the Godó tournament is now into the finals, and so is the Juniors competition, started in 2030. Ugo Bellezza is in the finals. Jack Spade is in Florida.

Ugo is now two years older and taller and stronger and quicker. But what is even more imposing than his perfect Michelangelo tennis physique is his perfect Leonardo tennis mind.

Even at the age of fifteen, he understands perfectly, thanks to Giglio, the spirit of the great man from Vinci. How nature works perfectly, and also man’s place in the universe. The great powers at work in the world—weight, force, movement, impetus, percussion—and how crucial they are to playing the game of tennis beautifully. The mechanics of the human body, its movements both on the ground and in the air. The structure and proportion and anatomy and physiology of the body, and the close relationship of the physical and spiritual realms (Ugo keeps a reproduction of Leonardo’s
Vitruvian Man in
his tennis bag at all times). Most important, Giglio has taught him to understand how all this knowledge can be put to maximum use on a tennis court.

Ugo is hitting serves on a side court, and Giglio is returning. But Ugo is not getting to hit any second serves for now. Because he has yet to miss a first serve. In forty-nine attempts. One devastatingly accurate serve after another. He is hitting corners, both in the deuce court and the ad court, wide and down the
T
.

Just like Little Ugo Oakley and the Chianti Bottles.

“Grandioso!”
Giglio signs from across the net. “Now let’s do some running!”

For the next twenty minutes, Giglio runs Ugo around the court with a series of drop shots, topspin lobs, and drives deep into the corners.

“Remember that ‘distance’ quote from
The
Notebooks
!” Giglio signs after one particularly intense rally that did not end particularly prettily.

Ugo smiles and recalls vividly—it was last year—when Giglio had brought this quote from Leonardo’s compilation of thoughts to his attention. It expressed in brilliantly simple terms the fact that getting to a ball in the most efficient way has less to do with running more quickly than with covering more distance with those
piccoli passi,
those “little steps”: