As the ATP tour visits Munich this week, tennis observers with a taste for literature will want to take a look the new novel A BACKHANDED GIFT released by Marshall Jon Fisher, set in late 1980s Munich.
A BACKHANDED GIFT ($19.95, New Chapter Press, available here: http://www.amazon.com/A-Backhanded-Gift-Novel/dp/1937559149/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367453078&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=a+backanded+gift) is a funny, moving literary work with tennis serving as the backdrop by the author of the celebrated tennis book A TERRIBLE SPLENDOR. The book tells the story of Robert Cherney, a 30-year-old aspiring writer, who has left New York City for a job teaching tennis in Munich in the late 1980s. Aside from private lessons, he coaches the Mattathias Club men’s league team, a motley group of neurotics whose eccentricities seem exacerbated by their situation as Jews living in Germany. They have made fortunes in postwar Germany but are hounded daily by the ghosts of the past and wracked with guilt over living so blithely among their parents’ tormentors. One of the players on Robert’s team is his best friend in Munich, Max Altmann, a successful and wealthy young businessman who is also Robert’s employer, landlord, provocateur, and guide to Munich’s nightlife. In addition to trying to figure out his life and not go crazy teaching tennis, Robert is trying to forget Lexa, the focus of years of erotic obsession back in New York. Helping him are Ingrid, a 40-ish Mattathias member and tennis pupil, and Veronique, a Jewish graduate student whom Max tries to set up with Robert. Love, tennis, sex, frustrated artistic ambition, and the dilemma of being a German Jew are all ingredients of this literary delight that is at turns serious and comedic.
A tennis scene from the book is excerpted below.
When Robert made his way out to Courts 25-27, Uschi was there early as usual to stretch out. Uschi, a dentist, was without a doubt the most avid student of the game Robert had ever seen. He was at the courts every day; if he didn’t have a game he would hit serves or drill against the backboard, and he would play with anybody—adult or child, male or female— who would give him a chance to hit more tennis balls.
Now Uschi stretched his calves by pushing against the net as though preparing for the semifinals at Roland Garros. He had a distinctly nonathletic body, short and still pudgy despite the Nautilus workouts he endured three times a week. Forty years old, he was trying in the arena of men’s club tennis to make up for years of being picked last for every team in school.
Robert found it hard to respect a grown man’s almost ruthless devotion to a recreational game, but Uschi was such a good sort, willing to try whatever drill Robert suggested and to play with whomever he was paired, that Robert could overlook his zeal as a minor eccentricity. (After all, hadn’t Robert just a half-hour earlier taken a bucket of balls out onto an empty court and cranked serves as if he were taking on McEnroe the next day? And each morning didn’t he waste countless hours at an equally futile task?) You had to deceive yourself, he guessed, if you wanted to get anything done at all.
The next to appear was Emil, a surprise this early. Emil balanced Uschi at the other end of the agreeability scale. A great success in mortgage banking, so they said, he was in his mid‑forties, had a pot belly which proved an estimable impediment to the low backhand volley, and was used to having things his way. He was invariably late, and Robert couldn’t imagine why he was early tonight except to complain or lecture. He walked straight up to Robert and for a second they both watched Uschi, who was now executing ten kangaroo jumps, as Rod Laver had always advocated.
“He’s going to kill himself,” said Emil. “Du, Uschi,” he shouted in the middle of the seventh jump, “You’re going to kill yourself! Relax, we’re just fat old men plodding around the court.”
“Speak,” Uschi gasped after the tenth. “For your. Self.”
“If you worked that hard at pulling teeth, you’d be a millionaire.” Emil turned to Robert. “So what’s up for tonight?”
“Well, I thought we’d start out with stretching, and then….”
“We don’t have to,” he bellowed from his enormous abdomen, “Uschi has warmed up for all of us.”
“Anyway, then I figured we ought to do some serve-and-return drills and then work on our doubles. We lost that last match because our doubles teams had never played together before.”
“Well that’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” he said. “I simply can’t play with Bruno again. I mean, the fellow cannot hit a return of serve lower than comfortable overhead height, and that means that I, as his partner, get more tennis balls in my pupik than on my strings.”
“Well, I guess someone’s going to have to be the sacrificial lamb.”
“Ya, but not me. Why not Uschi,” he gestured to where the dentist was doing sit-ups by the net post. “He likes a challenge. He can work on his return of fuzz sandwich.”
“No, I really like the team of Uschi and Dan. But Max isn’t here tonight, so why don’t we stick Göttel with Bruno and let you play with Saul.”
“Fine. Saul is meshugeh ahf toit, but he’s a good player.” Incredible. Emil is satisfied, if only for the moment. Wait until Saul misses a sitter in a tiebreaker, vacillating between crushing it and trying a drop shot. Saul, who was just now entering the court with Dan, was by far the best natural player on the team, had been playing all his life and had groomed flawless strokes on the grass courts of Cambridge during his years abroad at university, but was only the number two player behind Max. This was because, as Emil had implied, he was a mentally handicapped tennis player. Certifiably insane when trying to play a match. He found ways to lose when it seemed impossible, when his opponent was so inferior that all he needed to do was poke the ball back safely in order to win.
Dan Cohen was his antithesis. Word was that Dan had once been South African squash champion. Whether or not that was true, he was certainly a squash player before a tennis player. His strokes put one in mind of a man trapped underwater in a chained trunk. But his mental game was sublime. Wielding a dirty, weathered old wooden Dunlop Maxply a half dozen years after the last serious player reluctantly gave up his wood, he pushed, sliced, and chopped his opponents into a frenzy. Invariably they were better players than he, but just as invariably they would lose to him, professional men reduced by his spins and lobs to red‑faced screaming racket‑throwing pre-schoolers.
Unfortunately, Dan’s mental toughness was a product not only of his purported sporting background, but also of his indifference. He acted as though he’d rather be doing anything than hitting balls across a net.
No one seemed to be able to delineate exactly what it was that Dan did. There were references to various business enterprises, though, and it seemed he always had some appointment or other that he had put off for the sake of the team; he checked his watch between points. It was an accomplishment to even get him to show up for Tuesday practice. Saul must have dragged him here; maybe they had been playing earlier. Saul would beat Dan in every practice match, sometimes crushing him with a display of beautiful backhands, spotless serve-and-volley play, and solid overheads. But whenever they played to determine position on the team, as soon as the result meant something, the backhands wilted, the double faults sprouted like weeds, and Dan’s hideous, perverse shots completely dismantled Saul’s elegant but undependable Cambridge strokes.
Afterward, though, everyone would agree that Saul should remain at number two. Though it was never spoken as such, putting Dan at number two would have been like trotting out some deformed, mutant man-beast to ensure victory at a garden croquet party (though in this case the chap looked normal enough). It was better to hide him down at number four. Dan never betrayed so much as the slightest discontent at the situation. Play him number one, play him number six, what difference did it make? He had more important things to think about than this silly game.
The last to arrive was Bruno (he had inherited that honor from Max, who was in Italy on business). One of the few Jews whose family had remained in Munich after the war without managing to accrue a fortune in the new Germany, Bruno had a bar / restaurant on Dachauerstrasse and was never completely comfortable with the country-club crowd. His arms had vein relief instead of flan softness. His thick black curls looked tough as Brillo, and he wore seedy sideburns and rarely had a good shave.
With the full team finally assembled, almost fifteen minutes late, Robert began the practice with stretching exercises. The afternoon heat was already fading into another cool Munich evening; the court lights were on, mercury-vapor suns in the darkening vespertine sky, casting a familiar glow on the red clay that reminded him of the same artificial light on the green hard courts of his childhood. Bending forward with one foot crossed in front of the other he looked up to see how they were doing. To his left Saul and Uschi stretched intently, heads hanging loose toward the court as though if they could master this exercise the elusive secrets of the game would be theirs. Next to them Bruno tried to reach his toes, or at least tried to look as though he were trying, but kept looking over to see what the others to his left were doing. Which was more or less nothing. Dan and Göttel, an imperious fiftyish local magistrate, were in the obligatory position, bent slightly at the waist but obviously with no intent of dipping their fingers below knee level. And Emil made no effort at even an ostensible stretch. He stood with his expensive graphite racket tucked under one arm like a riding crop and chatted constantly to Göttel. Every minute or so he would catch Robert’s eye and bend at the waist like one of those toy ducks bobbing into a glass of water and then continue his monologue.
“Okay, I think that’s enough stretching,” Robert said after they had struggled through a few different exercises. “Let’s do some serve-and-return drills. Dan and Saul, you take the first court, Uschi and Göttel the middle one, and Emil and Bruno on the end.” The players grabbed balls from the bucket and went to their respective courts, except for Emil, who slinked over to Robert.
“What’s going on?” he said. Robert looked at him out of the corner of his eye while officially observing the others, and waited. “I thought we had an agreement. I can’t possibly play with Bruno again.” “You’re not playing doubles with him,” Robert said. “I promise. This is just a drill. You’re against him. If he’s so bad, just crush his serves back. And now you can enjoy his high returns.” Of course Emil couldn’t enjoy Bruno’s high returns any more than he could enjoy Tolstoy in the original Russian, possessing no discernible volley or overhead with which to do so. In fact, they always had long, close matches when they played, involving contested line calls on both sides, sweat dripping from oversized guts, and a round of beer afterwards during which their teammates and Robert would try to repair injured psyches. Emil was just one spot above Bruno on the team ladder, five to Bruno’s six, but acted as though they belonged in different leagues.
“Why don’t you switch and let Uschi play with him? He doesn’t mind, and then I could play with Göttel.”
“He probably minds just as much as you do, Emil. He just doesn’t complain. Anyway, I already announced these pairings, so let’s not hurt anyone’s feelings.”
“Hurt that Schtarker’s feelings? Impossible.”
“Just this once, Emil? I won’t put you with him again.”
“Okay, okay.” He picked up three balls. “For the team.” He walked towards the far court, knocking the balls at Bruno on the other side and calling, “Okay, bartender, you start.” Bruno flipped Emil the finger as he collected the balls into various pockets in his shorts and got ready to serve. Any point won against the Mamzer banker, even in a practice drill, was golden.
Robert noticed after a while that most of the team had stopped serving and were just hitting the ball around lightly or playing out points. Only Uschi and Saul still worked from behind the baseline, dipping into the hopper for more balls to practice with. Emil and Bruno were playing a point as if to the death, running from corner to corner harder than they ever did against other teams.
“Let’s get some doubles going,” Robert called out. He walked up to Göttel and said, “I was thinking about mixing up our doubles combinations. How would you feel about playing with Bruno?”
“Out of the question. I couldn’t possibly play with that madman, and besides, Uschi and I are finally starting to cohere as a team. We just need more practice. Anyway, I wouldn’t try to interrupt that singles match right now. They might both attack you with their rackets. Look at the two of them, they look like Roman gladiators.”
“Okay,” said Robert, “we’ll keep the same teams for today. Let me see how Saul and Dan are doing.”
He walked over to the court where Saul was serving, grimacing, shaking his head, and serving. On the other side Dan appeared bored, hacking back returns completely unconcerned whether or not they landed in the court, which of course they always did. Saul noticed Robert coming towards him and concentrated harder on the ball in his hand.
“Toss it higher, Saul,” he said to himself loudly in English, his accent similar to Max’s more Oxbridge than German “by God man, toss it higher.”
He adjusted the shoulders of his white, collared tennis shirt, took off his round gold-rimmed glasses and wiped them on his shirt, carefully replaced them, and finally executed a serve of flawless form and grace which nonetheless caught the tape of the net and fell back, sparing Dan the effort of another return.
“Scheisse,” he hissed. “Shit.”
