Playing the Moldovans At Tennis (23 page)

In the second set I drew on all my reserves and managed to produce something close to my best tennis. In a highly competitive set I sneaked through by six games to four. I'd been a little lucky and I was aware that for a short period Spynu had let his concentration slip.Despite my recent ascendancy I still felt that Spynu was the more likely to take a final set But would there be time? The clock on the wall revealed that we only had fifteen minutes left before the lights ran out. Negotiations were necessary. I called my opponent to the net, pointed to the clock and announced:

'We only have time for a tie-break.'

Whether he understood or not, Spynu nodded, and I had won the advantage of not having to play a full-length third set, in which my lack of fitness would have become horribly exposed. This was sudden death and I had a chance. It was a tie-break I simply had to win.

Spynu, on the other hand, didn't give a toss, and was relaxed enough to be able to begin the final battle with an ace. I followed it with a double fault. I was feeling the pressure. A backhand return of serve from Spynu went for a clean winner leaving me 3-0 down. I was beginning to dislike this guy. This was not in the script. Spynu was playing his best tennis by far.

I fought hard but I failed to make up the deficit and at 3-6 I faced three match points. I needed a big serve. In my head I heard the echo of a thousand TV commentaries.
'That's what defines the true champion
–
the ability to find a big serve when they really need one.'

My problem was that I wasn't Pete Sampras or John McEnroe. I was Tony Hawks – and anyway I had to accept that I wasn't a true champion. My junior career had proved that I had anything but the temperament to win tournaments. Rather than reach a peak my tendency was to save my worst tennis for finals day.

As I walked up to the base line to serve I realised that from a tennis perspective I had arrived at the most important point in my life. I had staked a whole philosophy on winning this bet, a philosophy on which I had every intention of basing how I was going to live the rest of my life. I looked up at Spynu. He looked relaxed. Of course he did. This was easy for him, it meant nothing, probably no-one even knew he was playing a game of tennis. For him it was just a break from training. All the pressure was on me and I desperately needed to find some strength within. OK, maybe I didn't have a big serve, but I had served aces in the past. Sometimes a well-placed serve could elude the returner as well as the powerful one. All I needed to do was find one of them.

Then it came to me in a flash – I should ask for Daniel's help. Had that not been an inspirational moment at the piano earlier that afternoon? Had there not been the definite feeling of a presence there? It wasn't such a crazy idea. It had to be done. So, as I stood at the base line in readiness to serve, I bounced the ball in front of me and muttered:

'Daniel, if you're there mate, it's me –Tony, the bloke who sang to you this afternoon. listen, I need an ace, do what you can to help will you?'

And with those words I tossed the ball in the air, bent my knees, arched my back and launched all my energy into what was surely going to be an ace down the middle. The racket head made crisp contact with the ball as I whipped my wrist through to generate extra pace. It truly was the hardest serve I had ever hit.

It landed slap bang in the bottom of the net. I instantly realised what I had done wrong. I had sought assistance from the spirit of a temperamentally brittle concert pianist. Obviously, a better choice of deceased accomplice would have been Arthur Ashe, but I hadn't thought of him, and besides I hadn't sung to him that afternoon so he wouldn't really have had any vested interest in my success.

All was not lost, I had a second service to come. This time I decided to try and manage alone with no help from the dead. This point was going to be played by me alone. It would be a test of my character. I knew I could win it.

I elected to surprise Spynu by coming into the net behind my serve in the hope of picking off an easy volley. It would be a courageous move and not one that he would be expecting. I would serve at his body, not giving him any angles to make a passing shot and hopefully cramping him up and leaving him unsure whether to take it on the forehand or backhand side. I breathed in, mumbled 'Come on!' to myself, bounced the ball one final time. And then I served.

It was a good one, exactly what I had hoped for. Spynu struggled to get his body out of the way and only managed to flick back a limp backhand with no pace on it. It all seemed like it was happening in slow motion. My eyes fixed on the revolving yellow sphere spiralling towards me. I swiftly changed grip for a backhand volley. I closed in on the net, the ball still hanging agonisingly before my outstretched forearm. As the ball and racket made contact, my supreme effort resulted in a final animalistic grunt of desperation.

I had executed a perfect volley. It landed within an inch of the junction of Spynu's base line and side line, beyond the reach of his outstretched racket. I felt an adrenalin rush and a moment of pride that, after all, I
could
deliver when the moment required.

Unfortunately so could Spynu, who dispatched a glorious winning backhand down the line.

I had lost.

The Moldovan looked apologetic and ambled to the net to shake my hand. He had been the magnificent victor in a game which meant absolutely nothing to him. If the roles had been reversed then he wouldn't have played so well, I bet. Or perhaps I should lay off bets for a while. I'd just lost a big one. A very big one.

As Spynu put on his track suit and packed up his things, I sat by the side of the court replaying the last point. I simply could not believe what had happened. I had fought my way back into the match only to have my opponent play an inspired tie-break. Spynu held out his hand to shake mine before he left.

Thanks be to you,' he said in a shaky English accent 'I am sorry.'

'It's OK,' I replied humbly. Thank you for a good game. You deserved to win. You were the better player.'

He shrugged and moved off, clearly not having understood. Damn, I could have said what I really wanted to say;

Thanks for screwing up my bet you bastard.'

Johnny still hadn't shown up and I wasn't in the mood to wait I didn't really want to talk to anyone and especially someone with whom one of the main topics would no doubt be Philippa, our mutual friend who I couldn't remember. I walked back to Bet Daniel via Zichron Ya'acov's desolate town centre where I became solitary drinker in solitary bar. There weren't any good places to be at this moment, but I could have done with being somewhere that didn't feel like it had been purpose-built for melancholy. A theme park for manic de-pressives called 'GlumWorld'. Dispiritedly I stared into my Maccabi beer – a local Israeli beer when really I wanted a beer to match how I felt. A pint of
bitter.
The barman looked at me, still in my tennis kit and with my rackets on the floor beside me.

'Don't look so fed up,' he said. 'God, if you can't handle losing, then why play?'

It was just as well there were no army teenagers in the place. I could have grabbed one of their guns and shot him.

The lady seated next to me on the bus asked me what I was doing here in Israel.

'Oh I'm just on holiday – touring around having a look at the place,' was my cowardly reply.

My reserves of strength weren't sufficient to tell her the truth; 'Oh I just came here to play a tennis match.' I knew what her next question was bound to be.

'And did you win?'

I wasn't expecting much of Eilat. All I knew was that the sun shone there pretty much all the time and that if I was going to strip naked in London in the middle of winter then I might as well take advantage of this so that I could do so with a nice bronzed body. Most of the four and half hour bus ride was through desert landscape which, though stunning scenery, did little to raise my spirits. Nothing was growing. There was no rejuvenation. In my present mood I needed lush greens, rolling hills and gamboling lambs, instead of the lifeless shores of the aptly named Dead Sea. At one thousand feet below sea level this place is the lowest point on earth. So that was it. I had reached the lowest point on earth. I tried to console myself with the trite thought that sometimes you need to hit the bottom before you can come back up again, although I was well aware that this isn't always the case. (See Titanic for details.)

The bus made a fifteen minute stop in the resort of Ein Bokek. Well, the Israelis call it a resort but in reality it's just a few hotels built on the edge of the Dead Sea. It made Zichron Ya'acov seem like Las Vegas. People come here for the healing properties of the sulphuric hot springs, the beautifying properties of the thick black mud, and to float like zombies in a sea with a salt content six times denser than the Mediterranean. I walked down to the water's edge where a couple of Yorkshire lasses were wading hesitantly into the sea for their first 'swim'. Their boyfriends stood on the shore ready to catch the moment on film. The heavier of the two girls, called Laura, lowered herself into the water and was immediately buoyed up, her ample frame bobbing in the water like an apple in a bucket.

'Blimey, it works!' she screamed excitedly.

To me, her surprise seemed unjustified. Did she think that everyone who had come here to date had actually sunk, but that they'd all got together to concoct a story simply to fool her?

This feels weird,' she exclaimed while reclining awkwardly on the water. This is a whole new feeling!'

Was it a whole new feeling? I looked at her there, lying on her back with her legs wide apart, and I don't know why but I doubted her for a moment.

According to Genesis,
⁴
it was along these shores that the Lord rained fire and brimstone on the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. The Lord, who seemed to have been ever so snappy and irritable around this time, also turned Lof's wife into a pillar of salt. Either that or Lot's wife had run off with another man and left a pillar of salt with a note pinned to it.

⁴
It was the angel Peter Gabriel, I think.

GOD HAS DONE THIS TO ME TO PUNISH YOU. TEA IS IN THE OVEN.
YOU'LL HAVE TO GET THE SHOPPING IN THOUGH – I FORGOT
(WE DON'T NEED SALT)
.

The bus journey continued south through the Negev in the direction of the Sinai desert. It was here that Moses had received the Ten Commandments from God, carved on to a tablet of stone. It is my view that a piece of that stone had broken off by the time chroniclers and historians found it, so there are vital bits missing from the commandments which we are urged to follow. For instance; Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not kill and Thou shalt not commit adultery – should read; Thou shalt not kill
time,
Thou shalt not steal
glances,
and thou shalt not commit adultery
that much.
Adherence to these would be so much simpler.

We arrived in Eilat ten minutes before the sun went down which is exactly the amount of daylight you need to get to know the place. The town is little more than a cluster of modern hotels nestled at the northernmost tip of the Red Sea. The most remarkable thing about it is that the airport is just a matter of yards from the beach. When it's time to leave you can simply pick up your bags and
walk
to the airport. Taxi drivers must hate this place. I dumped my bags at my hotel and strolled down to the water's edge. The Red Sea struck me as being particularly blue, but then I suppose the Blue Sea wouldn't have been a very imaginative name. The truth is that it had originally been named The Reed Sea', but the omission of an 'e' by a seventeenth-century English printer had turned it Red. The typographical error could have been worse; a 'p' instead of the 'r' and it would have ended up being called the Peed Sea. That would have made the swimmers think twice.

I went out that night looking for some fun but there was none to be had. Saddam's 'magnificent victory' over the Americans and British had fed people's irrational fear of getting bombed, so there were no big groups of pissy tourists to get lost among. Just a smattering of earnest travellers and long-haired Aussie divers. I had a meal in one of Eilat's many empty restaurants and walked back to my hotel feeling lost and alone. That night as I lay in my bed, I chanted a one-word mantra which I believed would lull me into a liberating slumber.

'Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit . . .'

I wasn't taking this losing thing very well at all.

Over the next two days I tried to be a good tourist. I nurtured my tan, snorkelled and visited the Coral Underwater Observatory. None of it made me particularly happy. The trouble was that there was nothing around to snap me out of my present state of self-pity. I needed something to
happen,
or I needed to meet some people – anything to stop me feeling that all I was doing was killing time for three days until my flight left. It was crazy – I was spending my days sunbathing on the beaches of the Red Sea, occasionally swimming among exotic fish adjacent to the coral reefs, and all I wanted to do was go home. I couldn't help it, that was how I felt.

The
Jerusalem Post
turned out to be my ticket to freedom. This Israeli paper, which is printed in English, had enabled me to keep in touch with world events.
⁵
On my third morning of purgatory, I took tea on the hotel roof garden and thumbed through the sports pages to see if they would give any kind of update on the English football results. My eyes were drawn to a picture of two footballers locked in a tackle. There was nothing unusual in the photograph but the words written beneath it were intriguing, to say the least.

⁵
For 'world events' read 'Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky'.

Lod's Yossie Arat is flattened in a clumsy tackle by Marin Spynu of Maccabi Kfar Kana, in yesterday's 1-1 draw.

I studied the photograph more closely. The paper must have made a mistake. Neither player bore any resemblance to Marin Spynu. Mistakes happen all the time. I only had to look out over the Reed Sea for confirmation of that.

I put the paper down and returned to my tea, but my mind would not rest If the paper had
not
made an error, and let's face it – that was also conceivable, then I had
not
played Marin Spynu. Could Johnny have screwed up and got the wrong player? Had his physiotherapist friend sent the wrong guy? I trawled my memory and recalled the conversation I'd had with Leonid, the sports journalist in Chisinau, who had told me that
two
Moldovan players were playing for this same club in Israel – Marin Spynu and Sergiu Nani. Could it just be that I had played the wrong one and the bet was still alive? I tried to block out all thoughts that told me that I was indulging in a large amount of straw-clutching.

As I dialled Johnny's number my heart was pumping hard, desperate to deal with the new levels of hope which were coursing through my veins.

'Hello, Johnny?'

Yes.'

'It's Tony Hawks here.'

'Oh thank goodness you've called, we've been desperate to get hold of you, but we haven't known how to. We've been phoning England to see if anyone knew where you were.'

Why?'

'Because that wasn't Marin Spynu that you played in Zichron.'

Yes! I punched the air.

'I thought as much,' I said, 'there was a cock-up and that was the other Moldovan – Sergiu Nani, wasn't it?'

'I wish it was that innocent,' he said, nervously. The fact is we played a trick on you Tony. The guy you played wasn't Moldovan at all. He was a local tennis pro. Arthur put me up to this I'm afraid. It was all a practical joke – but I was supposed to tell you after the game. It all went wrong when I couldn't get there. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry.'

How embarrassing, I'd been duped. The fact that this scam had been so successful was either a tribute to Arthur's initiative or to my gormlessness. I thought for a moment and then decided it was the latter. There had been clues which I had overlooked. For starters, the ease in which the whole match had been arranged. I should have known that something was amiss when it all fell into place so easily. Experience had shown that you couldn't just lift a phone and then be on court with a Moldovan footballer. You had to suffer, you had to sweat, and you had to grovel.

Another clue had been something the phoney Spynu had said to me after the match;

Thanks be to you.'

No Moldovan had said that to me in all my three week stay there, when they did manage some English they always got 'thank you' right Thanks be to you' was clearly the language of someone
pretending
that they couldn't speak English.

'Have you told Arthur what happened?' I asked, returning my attention to the guilt-ridden Johnny.

Yes, and he thinks it's hilarious that you believe that you've lost. He says that he's not going to tell you that the thing was a set-up until you've finished singing the Moldovan National anthem – naked.'

The sly bastard. I'll get him back for this.'

'How?'

'I don't know yet, but I'll think of something.'

'If there's anything I can to do to help, just let me know.'

'My, you switch allegiance pretty quick.'

Well, I've messed up your trip – I feel awful.'

You can do one thing for me Johnny – if Arthur calls, don't tell him that you've spoken to me.'

'OK And listen, I've got you the mobile phone number of a guy called Faisal who seems to run the club Maccabi Kfar Kana, let me give it to you – it might speed things up for you.'

Thanks.'

I took down the number, accepted yet more apologies, and hung up. I forgave Johnny. He was just a nice guy who'd fallen under the influence of evil for a short while, that's all. It could happen to any of us.

I went straight to the hotel reception and checked out With a spring in my step I hot-footed it to the bus station, confident that I no longer required the heat of Eilat's winter sun. Now I was warm on the inside, where it counted.

According to the map, the village of Kfar Kana was only a few miles up the road from Nazareth so this seemed like the most logical place to use for base. It made perfect sense to me that a story such as mine, which had taken on such biblical proportions, should end here in the place where one of the greatest and most famous stories in the world had begun. It was here that the Angel Gabriel brought Mary the news of her forthcoming virgin birth; it was here that Mary was charged with selling this information to a confused and slightly insecure Joseph, and it was here that Jesus grew up and worked as a carpenter.

Actually, it has always struck me as being rather odd that Jesus should have spent so long studying and honing his carpentry skills and then not used any of them during his ministry. We read how he turned water into wine, fed the five thousand and took a bit of a stroll on some water, but there's never a mention of him stopping off anywhere and putting some shelves up for anybody. Never once is he reported as saying:

'Arise now, and ye shall walk – oh and while I'm here, you don't want me to knock you up a bookcase to go beside the settee, do you?'

Being the kind of chap he was, I think that's exactly the kind of warm-hearted thing Jesus would have done, but the fact is that the chroniclers of his story were trying to market him as the Son of God and probably felt it was an easier sell if people didn't see him as the kind of bloke who carried a Black & Decker Workmate around with him wherever he went. If they'd have been invented then he surely would have done. That's Messiahs for you – they're just your average human being who happens to have a shedload of wisdom. The New Messiah will most likely be an ordinary type too: a plumber, a school caretaker or a postman. I wouldn't have a problem with that; I'd happily follow him just as long as he didn't have a great big bunch of keys on his belt. You have to draw the line somewhere.

I don't know what I had been expecting, but Nazareth was something of a disappointment. Roadworks were everywhere. Apparently the town was gearing up for 'Millennium Fever' and the expected rush of religious pilgrims and unhinged fanatics who intended to come here and commemorate the momentous occasion by doing anything from praying quietly to committing suicide en masse. Religious cults which incorporate suicide as an end to the day's activities seem to be becoming more and more common. I just wonder whether they mention it in their publicity when recruiting new membership.

JOIN THE CULT OF THE SOLAR TEMPLE
FOR EXCITING NIGHTS OF PRAYER, TABLE TENNIS
AND EVENTUAL SUICIDE

(Delete as applicable)
I prefer to be buried/cremated/used for dodgy experiments.

The first two hotels I called at were full, but the man in the second one, which was a Roman Catholic hospice, said that I should find a vacancy with the Sisters of Nazareth. The Guest House wing of a convent didn't seem like the most exciting place in the world to stay, but since I was growing tired of lugging my bags around, it would have to do.

The convent stood behind a forbidding wall and was arranged around a magnificent courtyard complete with fountain and palm trees. Nuns criss-crossed it, eager to go about their business. For a moment I stood there, bags at my feet, dazzled by this exquisite scene. No doubt about it, I had missed my vocation. I should have been a nun. Maybe they'd let me join? I could found the tennis department. All I would ask is that they let me off 6.00 am prayers – I'd just pray twice as hard after breakfast.