Even if we were a few minutes late, I assumed it would wait for connecting passengers.
I assumed wrong on both counts. We reached the station just as the train was pulling out; the next one wasn’t due for an hour. Since I had already wasted almost two hours covering twenty miles, the idea of another delay was insupportable.
“Why didn’t the train wait for us?” I asked a lady at the information desk.
“I don’t know.”
“Who does know?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who should know?”
“I don’t know.”
“This is the information bureau, isn’t it?”
She shrugged, bored by my questions.
“I’d like to speak to the person in charge here,” I said.
She waved vaguely. “He’s gone.”
“When will he be back?”
“I don’t know.” The woman must have employed Ivan Lendl as a dialogue coach.
“Who does know?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s your name?” I asked, lowering my voice malevolently like a man who might have some influence with the Railroad Commissioner.
She remained unimpressed. “I don’t have to tell you that.”
“Why? Don’t you know your name?”
“I don’t have to tell you anything,” she snapped.
“You haven’t told me anything.” My voice rose and ignominiously cracked.
“I told you the hour of the next train. It comes at one o’clock. Pleasant journey, monsieur.”
I barged out of the station and, with an hour to kill, went to eat lunch. Next door was a fast-food outlet called Flunch. Flunch for lunch! I should have known better. But it looked harmless enough—looked, in fact, like a simulacrum of McDonald’s, right down to the menu, which offered frites, milk shakes, and a choice of Burger Simple, Burger Fromage, or Burger Big.
“Big Burger, s’il vous plaît,” I said to the girl at the counter.
“You want what?”
“Big Burger,” I repeated.
“Ça n’existe pas,” she said. “That doesn’t exist.” Not that they were out of it or no longer sold it. No, it simply didn’t exist.
I pointed to the menu.
“Alors,” she said, smiling. “You mean Burger Big. I didn’t understand. You see, in French the adjective comes after the noun. You should learn our language.”
“It’s my language!” I bellowed. “‘Burger’ and ‘big’ are English.”
“As you wish,” she muttered.
“That’s what I wish. A Big Burger!”
But I was lying. What I wished was to lay waste to all of France. Where else in the world would one have to endure a lecture on grammar from a fast-food cashier?
***
Of course, the one-o’clock train was late. Of course I arrived at the Country Club quivering with rage, nervous exhaustion, and nausea—the Burger Big had lodged somewhere in my esophagus. But I figured the worst had to be behind me as I settled down to watch the rest of the Borg–Adriano Panatta match, which was knotted at a set apiece and three games all in the third set.
Other members of the press were in no better mood than I. The day was overcast and chilly, yet they had come dressed to work on their tans. Fortunately, I had had the foresight to wear a ski parka.
Borg got a service break, thanks to a double fault by Adriano Panatta. But then, unlike the old Borg, who seldom slipped when he was in the lead, he had difficulty clinging to his advantage. Serving sloppily, he gave Panatta several chances to break back, and if the Italian wasn’t equal to the opportunity, that had less to do with the Swede’s iron will than with Panatta’s poor play.
At the press conference, reporters were interested in Panatta only to the extent that he could comment on Borg’s shaky form. Once they had Borg in front of them, they abruptly shifted gears and were less interested in his form than in whether he would play Wimbledon. For British journalists, this was a favorite subject, their singular obsession.
Although I believed a public press conference was the wrong place to ask whether Borg had rigged a match with McEnroe, there seemed other questions that should have intrigued
journalists more than the odds on his playing Wimbledon. Repeatedly he had recited the short list of Grand Prix tournaments he had deigned to enter in 1982. But I wanted to know how many exhibition matches he would play this year.
As the room turned ominously silent, he fixed upon me what Russell Davies of the London Sunday Times has referred to as “those mutely piercing narrow eyes… I’m sure the Turin Shroud is one of his old towels.” After a significant pause Borg said, “ I have no idea. I play the Suntory Cup in Tokyo. After that, I don’t know.”
“Let’s forget the rest of the year. What’s your exhibition schedule for the next three months?”
“I—have—no—idea.” The words, spaced for emphasis fell on that cowed roomful of journalists like icy slabs from a glacier.
“The next month, then?” I persisted.
“I—have—no—idea.”
As every reporter knew, but few had informed their readers, Borg’s tournament schedule consisted exclusively of events where he had endorsement contracts or where his agents at IMG served as promoters. Whether these constituted illegal inducements or not, they obviously provided an added incentive. I assumed, as did most people in tennis, that that was why Borg was willing to qualify for those seven tournaments, but refused to do so at Roland Garros and Wimbledon, where he had no incentive except the same prize money available to everyone else.
Yet when I asked Borg why he played the qualies here and would again in Las Vegas, but not at the Grand Slam events, he muttered that he had to put his foot down somewhere.
Why didn’t he put it down in Monte Carlo?
“I decided to give the Pro Council until the French Open to change the rule.”
I waited for the other journalists to follow up on my questions. I had broken the ice. All they had to do was dive into the cold water with me. But they were less interested in whether his tax deal locked him into the Monte Carlo tournament than in the shakiness of his first serve.
Borg returned to his orange-juice metaphor. He said he was still feeling deconcentrated.
***
