The Perfect Game - Page 2

who loves his art. The good musician
loves being a musician, the bad musician loves music. With such a
pure and hopeless passion do I worship croquet. I love the game
itself. I love the parallelogram of grass marked out with chalk or
tape, as if its limits were the frontiers of my sacred Fatherland,
the four seas of Britain. I love the mere swing of the mallets, and
the click of the balls is music. The four colours are to me
sacramental and symbolic, like the red of martyrdom, or the white
of Easter Day. You lose all this, my poor Parkinson. You have to
solace yourself for the absence of this vision by the paltry
consolation of being able to go through hoops and to hit the stick."

And I waved my mallet in the air with a graceful gaiety.

"Don't be too sorry for me," said Parkinson, with his simple sarcasm.
"I shall get over it in time. But it seems to me that the more
a man likes a game the better he would want to play it. Granted that
the pleasure in the thing itself comes first, does not the pleasure
of success come naturally and inevitably afterwards? Or, take your
own simile of the Knight and his Lady-love. I admit the gentleman
does first and foremost want to be in the lady's presence. But I
never yet heard of a gentleman who wanted to look an utter ass when
he was there."

"Perhaps not; though he generally looks it," I replied. "But the truth
is that there is a fallacy in the simile, although it was my own. The
happiness at which the lover is aiming is an infinite happiness, which
can be extended without limit. The more he is loved, normally speaking,
the jollier he will be. It is definitely true that the stronger the
love of both lovers, the stronger will be the happiness. But it is not
true that the stronger the play of both croquet players the stronger
will be the game. It is logically possible--(follow me closely here,
Parkinson!)--it is logically possible, to play croquet too well to
enjoy it at all. If you could put this blue ball through that distant
hoop as easily as you could pick it up with your hand, then you would
not put it through that hoop any more than you pick it up with your
hand; it would not be worth doing. If you could play unerringly you
would not play at all. The moment the game is perfect the game
disappears."

"I do not think, however," said Parkinson, "that you are in any
immediate danger of effecting that sort of destruction. I do not
think your croquet will vanish through its own faultless excellence.
You are safe for the present."

I again caressed him with the mallet, knocked a ball about, wired myself,
and resumed the thread of my discourse.

The long, warm evening had been