Roger almost gagged. The bodies heaped like garbage, skinny sacks, ribs stark. The contrast between that place and this, Paris, Place Vendôme, the ritzy Ritz, the city shoring up for an imminent VE-Day, girls all over the place, was almost more than he could take.
Leets and Outhwaithe were there, poking about. Roger was due back in a day or so.
But he had come to a decision: he would not go.
I will not go.
No matter what.
He shivered, thinking of the slime at Dachau. He imagined the smell. He shivered again.
“Cold?”
“Huh? Oh!”
Roger looked up into the face of the most famous tennis player of all time.
“You’re Evans?” asked Bill Fielding.
“Ulp,” Roger gulped spastically, shooting to his feet. “Yes, sir, yes, sir, I’m Roger Evans, Harvard, ’47, sir, probably ’49 now, with this little interruption, heh, heh, number-one singles there my freshman year.”
The great man was a head taller than Roger, still thin as an icicle, dressed in immaculate white that made his tan seem deeper than burnished oak; he was in his late forties but looked an easy thirty-five.
Roger was aware that all commerce on the busy terrace had stopped; they were looking at Bill Fielding, all of them — generals, newspapermen, beautiful women, aristocrats, gangsters. Fielding was a star even in the exotic confines of the Ritz. And Roger knew they were also looking at him.
“Well, let me tell you how this works. You’ve played at Roland Garros?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, we’ll be on the Cour Centrale of course—”
Of course, thought Roger.
“—a clay surface, in an amphitheater, about eight thousand wounded boys, I’m told, plus the usual brass — you’ve played in front of crowds, no nerve problems or anything?”
Roger? Nervous?
“No, sir,” he said. “I played in the finals of the Ivies and I made it to the second round at Forest Hills in ’44.”
Fielding was not impressed.
“Yes, well, I hope not. Anyway, I usually give the boys a little talk, using Frank as a model, show them the fundamentals of the game. The idea is first to entertain these poor wounded kids but also to sell tennis. You know, it’s a chance to introduce the game to a whole new class of fan.”
Yeah, some class, most of ’em just glad they didn’t get their balls blown off in the fighting, but he nodded intently.
“Then you and Frank will go two sets, three maybe, depends on you.” Roger did not like at all the assumption here that he was the sacrificial goat in all this. “Then you and I, Frank and Major Miles, our regular Army liaison, will go a set of doubles, just to introduce them to that. Agreeable?”
“Whatever you say, Mr. Fielding. Uh, I saw you at Forest Hills in ’31. I was just a kid—” Oops, that was a wrong thing to say.
Fielding glowered. “Not a good tournament for me.”
“Quarters. You played Maurice McLaughlin.”
Fielding’s face lit up at the memory of the long-ago match; he was just coming off his prime then, his golden years, and still had great reserves of the good stuff, the high-octane tennis, left. “Oh, yes, Maurie. Lots of power, strength. But somehow lacking … Three and love, right?”
He remembers?
“That’s right, sir.”
“Yes, well, I hope you’ve got more out there than poor Maurie,” said Fielding disgustedly.
“Uh, I’ll sure try,” said Roger. Fielding was certainly blunt.
“All right. You’ve got transportation out to Auteuil, I assume.”
“Yes, sir, the Special Services people have a car and—”
Fielding was not interested in the details. “Fine, Sergeant, see you at one,” and he turned and began to stride forcefully away, the circle opening in awe.
“Uh. Mr. Fielding,” said Roger, racing after. His heart was pounding but once out at the Stade, he’d never have a chance.
“Yes?” said Fielding, a trifle annoyed. He had a long nose that he aimed down almost like the barrel of a rifle. His eyes were blue and pale and unwavering.
“Frank Benson. He’s good, I hear.”
“My protégé. A future world champion, I hope. Now if—”
“I’m better,” blurted Roger. There. He’d said it.
Fielding’s face lengthened in contempt. He seemed to be turning purple under the tan. He was known for his towering rages at incompetence, lack of concentration, quitters, the overbrash, the slow, the blind, the halt and the lame. Roger smiled bravely and forged ahead. He knew that here, as on the court, to plant your sneakers was to die. Attack, attack: close to the net, volley away for a kill.
“I can beat him. And will, this afternoon. Now I just want you to think about this. Continuing this tour with someone second-best is gonna kinda take the fun out of it, I’d say.”
The silence was ferocious.
Roger thrust on. “Now if I bury him, if I pound him, if I shellac him—” He was prepared to continue with colorful metaphors for destruction for quite some time, but Fielding cut him off.
“What is it you want?”
“Simple. In. In fast.”
“The tour?”
“Yes, sir.”
Fielding’s face confessed puzzlement. “The shooting’s over. Why now, all of a sudden?”
Roger could not explain — maybe even to himself — about the bodies at Dachau, the vista of wormy stiffs.
“Just fed up, is all, sir. Like you, I was put on this earth to hit a tennis ball. Anything else is just time misspent. I did my duty. In fact my unit just took part in what will probably be the last airborne operation in the ETO, a night drop and a son of a bitch, you’ll pardon me.” And it had been, sitting back at 82d Airborne Ops, running low on coffee and doughnuts. Roger tried to look modest. “And finally, well”—tricky this, he’d heard Fielding couldn’t abide bootlickers—“finally there’s you: a chance to apprentice under Fielding, under the best. I knew I’d better give it my best serve, flat out, go for the line, or always wonder about it.” He looked modestly — or what he presumed to be modestly — at his jump boots.
“You’re not shy, are you?” Fielding finally said.
“No, sir,” admitted Roger, “I believe in myself. Here, and on the court.” Roger realized with a start, He hasn’t said No.
“Words before a match are cheap. That’s why I never had any. Frank is my protégé. Ever since I discovered him at that air base in England, I’ve believed he had it in him to be the world’s best, as I was. You want in, do you? Well, this afternoon we’ll see if your game is as big as your ego. Or your mouth.”
He turned and walked out off the terrace.
Roger thought, Almost there.
But before Roger could insert Dachau into his file of might-have-beens there was Benson to play, Benson to beat, thinking positively, and Roger knew this would not be so easy. He’d done a little research on the guy, No. 1 at Stanford, ’39 and ’40, made the third round at Forest Hills in ’41, a Californian with that Westerner’s game, coming off those hard concrete courts, serve and volley, Patton-style tennis, always on the attack. But he’d shelved the tennis for four years, Air Corps, done twenty-three trips over Germany as a B-17 bombardier (D.F.C. even! another hero like Leets), survived the slaughterhouse over Schweinfurt the second time somehow, and only picked the game back up as a way of relaxing, cooling down near the end of his tour, when the reflexes go bad, the nerves sticky, the mind filling with hobgoblins and sirens and flak puffs and other terrors. When Fielding came to the air base in the fall of ’44, first stop on his first tour, somehow Benson had been urged on him. It was love at first sight, 6-love, 6-love, for Benson. Fielding, whose game was off but not that off, saw in the thin swift Californian something sweet and pure and deadly and knew that here was himself twenty years ago, poised on the edge of greatness.