Howard Jacobson - The Mighty Walzer

‘Not Nobody?’

‘Worse. It says “Title Vacant”.’ He waited for the information to sink in. ‘How do you like that? — TITLE VACANT!’

Was I meant to be amazed by this, or crestfallen, or outraged? I plastered mustard over a slice of pickled meat, folded it around a wedge of cucumber, and tried an expression that was a combination of all three.

‘There was a final, you see,’ Selwyn went on. ‘Between Ruth Aarons and Trude Pritzi, but no winner.’

‘They didn’t finish?’

‘They weren’t allowed to finish. They were disqualified.’

Selwyn’s eyes bulged so violently I wondered what the women could possibly have been disqualified for. Not unladylike behaviour, I hoped.

‘Well,’ Selwyn said, ‘you’re not all that wide of the mark. Pushing. That’s what they were disqualified for. Pushing. After one hour and forty-five minutes of chiselling the umpire looked at his watch, said “Jude Raus!”, and called it a day.’

I was familiar with the one hour forty-five minute rule. Anybody who knew anything about ping-pong had heard of the marathon battle between Erhlich of Poland and Paneth of Romania at the Worlds in Prague in ’36. For two hours and five minutes they pushed the ball back and forth before either of them won a point. Two hours and five minutes and it was 1–0. By 1–1 the crowds had all gone home. Assuming a tight finish, the possibility arose of a five-game match lasting more than a fortnight: a computation that took no account of the need to sleep. Thereafter the International Table Tennis Federation decided on limiting all matches to one hour and forty-five minutes on pain of disqualification.

So Ruth and Trude got theirs. Tough, but rules are rules. However, I had a fair idea that ‘Jude Raus!’ was an interpolation all of Selwyn’s own.

‘But if both girls were disqualified …’

‘Ruth Aarons was the holder of the title. Until someone took it off her it was hers. And if all Pritzi was prepared to do was chisel, what was wrong with Aarons chiselling back. “You want it, Trude? Then come and take it.” Tactics. Suddenly you’re not allowed tactics … If your name happens to be Aarons.’

‘Selwyn …’

‘You know where these Championships were held?’ He looked around the room as though it wasn’t safe to talk about these things still, not even in Laps’. He lowered his voice. ‘Baden.’

I wasn’t the mine of ping-pong information the Marks brothers were but I was in possession of a few essential facts, especially when they related to my nearly-hero Richard Bergmann, as for example that Baden was where the seventeen-year-old Bergmann became World Champion for the first time. ‘Bergmann, Selwyn.’ I rubbed my nose. ‘Bergmann!’

‘Exactly. They couldn’t give both titles to a Jew. Not in Baden. Not in 1937.’

I shook my head.

‘She was a golden girl,’ Selwyn went on. ‘I see what you’re thinking. A golden girl with a name like Ruth Aarons? Girls called Ruth Aarons are dark little meerskeits with a big shnozz and thick glasses. Well that’s your problem. She was a golden girl with blonde ringlets, a beautiful figure and a scintillating personality. But Baden finished her. Trude Pritzi went to London the next year and won the title. Ruth Aarons never played in a World Championships again. The yiddenfeits did for her.’

There turned out to be something prophetic about this conversation. A fortnight later the yiddenfeits did for Selwyn.

Years after the one hour and forty-five minute fiasco an expedite law was devised, of such complexity that it was altogether better for one’s long-term peace of mind to be disqualified and have done. How were you ever supposed to remember which was the twelfth shot on your own service and the thirteenth return of your opponent’s? Now I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that people play with calculators in their pockets. But at the time that Selwyn himself was disqualified from a tournament the Law of Expedition had yet to be hammered out. An umpire suddenly got twitchy and you were a goner, that was how it worked then.

He was right to feel he’d been hard done by, since if he was guilty of slow play so was his opponent. All you could say in the umpire’s favour was that Selwyn’s off the table tactics were slow also. ‘It’s my religion,’ Selwyn complained afterwards. ‘You know what will happen next if we aren’t allowed to practise our religion while we’re playing? They’ll disqualify us because of our names. Starr — you’re disqualified! Mistofsky — you’re disqualified. Walzer — you’re disqualified. The way they did with Aarons.’

But none of us could quite go along with him in the matter of his having to read a ruling from the Talmud between every point, or holding up his hand to re-arrange his fringes just as his opponent was about to serve.

Even his own brother wouldn’t back him. ‘You don’t bother with that stuff at home,’ he said. ‘At home you piss in your yarmulke.’

‘I’ve never pissed in my yarmulke.’

‘And you torture the cat with your tzitzits.’

‘We don’t have a cat.’

‘Did I say our cat? Any cat. I’ve seen you whipping cats with the fringes of your tzitzits. I’ve seen you tying their paws up.’

‘I don’t go near cats. I’m frightened of cats. They’re treife.’

‘What do you care about treife? You sneak bacon sandwiches into your bedroom in your yarmulke.’

‘Is that after I’ve pissed in it or before?’

‘What’s the matter with you? What gets into you as soon as you come out of the house? What are you trying to do — start a pogrom?’

‘Start one? That’s good,’ Selwyn said. ‘Start one! Next you’ll tell me that six million is an exaggeration.’

It was good for me that Selwyn was out of the tournament. We were at opposite ends of the draw. If he’d gone on making it through we’d have been looking at a showdown in the final. No problems about beating him — I’d never come close to losing to Selwyn Marks even in practice — but I didn’t want to win my first title that way. If I was going to be Manchester Closed Junior Champion I wanted to take out someone who wasn’t one of us in the final, someone who didn’t live next door to me, someone who didn’t have the murky waters of the Bug or Dniester flowing through his veins … what am I trying to say? — someone who was white.

Wasn’t Selwyn white? Only in a manner of speaking. Selwyn was pale. White only by default. What I had in mind was white white, foreign white.

It shouldn’t be that hard to understand. My ambition was to be crowned conclusive champion of Somewhere Else, not champion of Our Street.

This was my debut tournament. There’d been others I could have entered earlier in the season but Aishky had advised me to keep myself a secret for the big one.

I was hurt by the idea that I was still an unknown quantity. ‘I’m hardly a secret, Aishk,’ I said. ‘I’m in the papers every week.’

‘Sure, sure, but most of these kids haven’t seen you with their own eyes yet. Think surprise element. It’ll be like Nagasaki. Pow!’

Was Nagasaki where Ogimura lived, I wondered. The paper house breathed and shivered. The champion lay motionless on his futon, staring at the ceiling. Swish went the geisha’s kimono. Snap went her suspender.

If I’d been saving myself for the big one, it follows that I’d been saving the big one for me. Turning out once a week for a league match was one thing, but a tournament! — everyone who was anyone in Manchester ping-pong, the League Secretary, the League Chairman, the League President, for God’s sake (men who had crossed ping-pong bats embroidered on the breast pockets of their blazers), to say nothing of players from higher divisions, strokemakers and tantrum-throwers and rule-benders whose gamesmanship was the stuff of legend, veterans of the sport, scouts, coaches, international selectors, commentators, and who could guess how many members of the ping-pong watching public, all gathered in one place and at one time and with one purpose… To see me? Of course I did not really think that. But then again, of course I really did.