High life
Doing a Darling
Taki
Rottach on Tegernsee The Eighty Yard Run' is probably Irwin Shaw's best short story. The hero, Christian Darling, walks along the football field where he played 15 years earlier. It is dark and it's alumni day weekend. Darling pretends to run with the ball, dodging imaginary tacklers, cutting and spinning, looking for the end zone. A young couple necking in the stadium see a middle-aged man pretending to play and stare at him in astonishment. 'I played here a long time ago,' says Darling to no one in particular. Although his run was only in practice, all the memories of youth come flooding back. The hero of the story is by now a dinosaur, unable to adapt to a changing world, almost broke and dreaming of his youth when he felt invulnerable.
I used to play tennis with Shaw, and walk up mountains in Switzerland. I had read all his stuff and admired him a la Papa Hem- ingway. Papa didn't like Irwin because Shaw had been Mary Hemingway's lover before she met Hem. On the night Adam Shaw was born in New York, Shaw cele- brated at the 21 club, and almost came to blows with a drunken Papa. Irwin told me the story as we climbed 25 years ago. He encouraged me to write 'despite the fact your favourite character of mine is Chris- tian Diestl' (the German officer in The Young Lions). Oh well, better Christian Diestl than Christian Darling. Diestl dies when Michael Whitaker throws a grenade. Like many Germans, pedantic to the end, Diestl says to himself, 'I forgot about the grenade ...' Darling lives a slow death, thinking of his practice 80-yard run.
Mind you, I'm doing a Darling as I write. This is my second tournament in two weeks, after a successful week in Flims. Nothing in Switzerland, however, compares with the beauty of this valley and the Tegernsee lake. Fifty kilometres south of Munich, this is the heart of enchanting, romantic Bavaria. King Max I of Bavaria bought the Tegernsee monastery, which dates from 719, in 1817, and turned it into a summer palace. Max was highly cultured and very merry. He infected not only his immediate circle at court but also the whole of Munich society with his love for the beautiful Tegernsee valley. Aristocrats, rich burghers, painters, sculptors, writers and poets followed. Ludwig Thoma, the chronicler of Bavarian morals and manners — he lovingly portrayed the countryside and its people in his numerous short stories and plays — being one example.
The landscape here is softer, more romantic, than that of Switzerland. The architecture is Austrian, with gaily painted wood and stone chalets, onion-domed churches and, unlike in Helvetia, few banks. Whereas the Swiss are xenophobic and greedy, the Bavarians are among the friendliest people on earth. As in Austria — my favourite country and people by far — everything is Dankeschon, Bittescheon, Guten Morgen . In fact, the last time I saw such beautiful scenery and friendly people I was in Klagenfurt four years ago.
That was the time I saw the loveliest girl — ever — standing in the shallow part of the lake holding her dress up above her knees. I told her I wished to die because I was old, fat and could no longer play tennis. Her boyfriend came over and told me to get lost.
This time I saw an almost lookalike, yet again emerging from a lake, alas with two small children, I didn't try anything because of the two little buggers.
So why am I doing a Christian Darling? Dunn°. As I wrote in my 'Top Drawer' a couple of weeks ago, in Switzerland I beat Swiss and Italians and felt it all come back. This week I had to play against Germans and now know for sure it has gone for ever. Jesus H. Christ, as they say in Tel Aviv-on- the-Hudson, do these Germans know how to fight. Alas, now only on court. I lost in the first round to a seeded Kraut and am now hoping to win the consolation prize. Incidentally, I was rung up by a Daily Mirror hack about the A.A. Gill letter in last week's Spectator. Ooh, what I'm going to do to Gill when I next see him. He wrote that I should reproduce myself, and called me a foul-smelling dago lesbian. This time I plan to put him in a crate, bundle him over to the Tegernsee, and skewer him on the onion dome of a monastery high on the Wallberg. Ouch!
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