he: A Novel Read online

  But here is another Babe, a younger Babe: the fat boy, already Oliver after his parent, two hundred pounds of slow-moving quarry, trudging the streets of Milledgeville, Georgia, like Christ to the crucifixion, bearing a sandwich board advertising the meal specials at the Baldwin Hotel run by his mother, Miss Emmie. When Babe speaks of this time, as Babe rarely does, day becomes night, and Babe’s eyelids drop like hoods to conceal the brightness beneath.

  I might just as well, says Babe, have been wearing a target.

  5

  Fred Karno, Fred Karno, what manner of beast are you?

  An anarchist on the stage, a purveyor of farce and mummery; but an authoritarian off it, an enforcer of rules. The greatest impresario of the British music halls, and a genius in the business of pantomime burlesque, but too blinded by his own legend to see that the Karsino, his Tagg’s Island resort folly in the River Thames, will die with those same music halls, and The House That Karno Built, his great lair on Southwark’s Camberwell Road, will lead him into bankruptcy. A husband with an eye for other women, around whom rumors of domestic brutality swirl like a London Particular.

  But he loves Fred Karno, the Guv’nor. When he wishes to leave A.J.’s employ, it is Fred Karno to whom he turns. A.J. is disapproving – Fred Karno is not A.J.’s kind of man – but A.J. does not stop him.

  So you’re funny? Fred Karno remarks. Says who?

  – They laugh at what I do.

  – Who laughs?

  – The Audience.

  – And what does the Audience know? The Audience will laugh at a cat being burned. The Audience will laugh because others are laughing. Never trust the Audience.

  – The Audience laughs because I’m funny.

  If Fred Karno permits, he will show Fred Karno, even here in this cluttered theater office, more grim than grand, and smaller than A.J.’s. He will show Fred Karno, and he will make Fred Karno laugh like the rest.

  Do you think so? Fred Karno says.

  – I do.

  Fred Karno considers. Fred Karno regards the slow accretion of sand upon the shore, and the rise and fall of mountains. The clock in the corner marks the seconds of Fred Karno’s life, and Fred Karno’s life alone.

  Well, a man that knows his own mind is good enough for me, says Fred Karno, at last. Find Mr O’Neill. Ask him to explain what’s required of you.

  What is required is slapstick. What is required is falling down and getting up again. What is required is not choking on paint and custard. Up to Manchester with Mumming Birds, £2 a week, a foot soldier in Fred Karno’s Army, solely on his word to Fred Karno that he is funny.

  Fred Karno knows, though. Fred Karno has eyes and ears: his own, and those of others.

  And Fred Karno has Chaplin.

  Already it is clear to Fred Karno, clear to all, that Chaplin is different: touched by god, but which god? There is discipline to Chaplin’s anarchy, just as there is to Fred Karno’s, but Fred Karno is human, in his gifts as much as in his failings, while Chaplin is beyond human in both. Chaplin believes in himself, but nothing else. Chaplin will not stay with Fred Karno. Chaplin is simply passing through, and will always be so.

  Chaplin is the best that he has ever seen.

  And Chaplin is the worst.

  There is no joy in Chaplin, or none beyond what Chaplin can generate in others.

  Chaplin feeds and feeds, but Chaplin remains forever hungry.

  Chaplin, as an artist, must be perfect because Chaplin, as a man, is so flawed.

  6

  At the Oceana Apartments, he conjures Babe: the grace of him, the gentleness, the ability of one so vast to carry himself as though the excesses of his flesh are hollow within, so that only his willpower keeps him in touch with the ground.

  Babe tells tales against himself, of the implausibility of his brief boyhood attendance at the Georgia Military College, turning the horror of it into a skit, an opportunity to perfect his pratfalls. But when a voice suggests that this would make a fine two-reeler, Babe veers away, moving on to his days singing in Florida nightclubs, his bulk like an anchor to be dragged everywhere behind him.

  Fatty Hardy, the Ton of Jollity.

  Babe: invent the tale of a barber slapping your cheeks, comparing you to a little baby. Share it over and over, so that it concretizes in the telling and lends you a new name.

  Babe Hardy.

  Babe.

  Not Fatty or Chubby, not Roly or Dumpy, not Lardy or Blimpy or Butterball.

  Just Babe.

  Keep smiling, and they will keep smiling.

  Keep laughing, and they will laugh.

  Keep moving, keep dancing, keep adding layers to the legend, and your truth will pass unnoticed among them, because all they will see is what you tell them they are seeing.

  7

  Chaplin stares at the name of the ship.

  The Cairnrona, Chaplin says. We’re all doomed.

  It is September, 1910. He is walking behind Chaplin at Southampton docks, trying to keep pace with the older man because Chaplin knows the world and he wishes to know it also. Chaplin was with Fred Karno in Paris, and speaks of the women fucked in brothels, and the dancers charmed from the stage of the Folies Bergère and into Chaplin’s bed – or those claimed to have been charmed, because Alf Reeves says that nothing about Chaplin can be believed, not if it comes from the man’s own mouth. But he wants to believe Chaplin, wants to be like him, wants to be him. Chaplin dresses like a star, and tells the world of the star Chaplin is, and the brighter star Chaplin will become, the brightest ever. Chaplin has decreed it, and so it shall be written.

  – What about it?

  It is Fred Karno, Jr who speaks. Fred Karno, Jr and Alf Reeves have the task of corralling the fifteen-strong herd for the American tour. Fred Karno, Jr will have to account to his father for every penny spent, and the Guv’nor has delivered warnings about Chaplin. If a way could be found to do so, Chaplin would have booked himself a stateroom for the crossing, and left the rest to sleep beneath the firmament, rain or shine.

  Fred Karno, Jr is a little

  (very)

  fearful of Chaplin.

  Chaplin summons his smile, the one that makes Fred Karno, Jr remember why Fred Karno, Jr is very

  (a little)

  fearful of this man.

  Beachy Head, says Chaplin. Boom!

  And – in a bit of business so fast that he wishes to pause time and wind it back, just to examine how Chaplin performs the trick – Chaplin puffs full his cheeks, and opens wide his eyes, and causes his cap to rise so high above his head that his hands are already by his sides when it lands once again on his pate.

  Emily Seaman turns to Fred Karno, Jr.

  – What does Mr Chaplin mean by that?

  If Fred Karno, Jr knows the unfortunate history of the Cairnrona, Fred Karno, Jr chooses not to answer. It is a mistake. By doing so, further ground is ceded to Chaplin, and Chaplin will colonize whatever space is offered because Chaplin dreads emptiness and silence. So Chaplin is the stoker on the Cairnrona misplacing a red-hot cinder, and Chaplin is the cinder itself tumbling through the air into the bottom of the starboard bunker, and Chaplin is the engineer staring up through the darkness at the descending light, this Lucifer imminent, and Chaplin is the air and the gas and the spark and the combustion, and Chaplin is the bunker hatch blown from the shelter deck, and finally Chaplin is the unfortunate Frederick Charles Longhurst, assistant steward of the Cairnrona, going the way of the hatch, sprouting wings, hands joined in prayer, ascending to join the ancestors.

  April seventh of this year, Chaplin concludes. They’re probably still finding bits of Longhurst off Beachy Head.

  By now, a small crowd has gathered to watch. Chaplin takes a bow.

  Laughter. Applause. A moan from Emily Seaman.

  – Is Mr Chaplin serious?

  Mr Chaplin is always serious, says Alf Reeves.

  – Even when Mr Chaplin is being funny?

  Especially when Mr Chaplin is being fu
nny, says Alf Reeves. That’s why Mr Chaplin doesn’t make me laugh.

  At the Oceana Apartments, he keeps a picture in an album of members of the Fred Karno troupe on board the Cairnrona. He could find it, if he chose, but he does not need to see it to recall its every detail. They look, he knows, like a party of emigrants, and none would have appeared out of place queuing for soup from a charity kitchen, none except Chaplin, grinning from the center of a ship’s lifebelt, haloed by it, a man apart. He sits to Chaplin’s right, in a cap too big for his head.

  He admires Chaplin, and Chaplin wishes to be admired, but he does not yet adore Chaplin, and Chaplin needs to be adored. Chaplin does not see him as a threat, even if earlier in the year the Guv’nor gives him the lead in Jimmy the Fearless. He believes this to be a sign of the Guv’nor’s faith until George Seaman, Emily Seaman’s husband, informs him that he was only promoted to bring Chaplin down a peg or two, and Chaplin doesn’t much delight in being brought down. The Guv’nor knows that Chaplin is the butter on the bread and the gravy on the beef, which is why Chaplin takes center stage, even on the deck of the Cairnrona, and why Chaplin’s face beams from a lifebelt, just as it will if another cinder falls, and another explosion occurs, this one taking the ship to the ocean bed, while Chaplin floats safely above all, leaving the drowned to gaze up at the soles of his shoes.

  8

  For two months, they travel and perform.

  Montreal. Toronto. Into the United States.

  New York. The Wow-Wows. (‘Chaplin will do but the company amounts to little.’)

  Back to Toronto. Chicago. A Night in a London Club. (‘Chaplin has come to be recognized as the leading comedy character of the Karno offerings.’)

  Cincinnati. Mumming Birds. Chicago again. Milwaukee. Duluth and Minneapolis, split weeks. (‘The company is not especially strong.’)

  Winnipeg.

  Butte.

  Spokane.

  Seattle.

  Vancouver.

  Victoria.

  Tacoma.

  Portland.

  They share rooms for a dollar apiece, including meals, but only while working. When they travel, they do so at their own expense. To save money, they sleep at stations and on trains. They spend no more than a nickel on a meal, and then only once a day.

  They are tired.

  They are broke.

  They are not the stars. Chaplin is the star.

  They are not a company. Chaplin is the company.

  And when Chaplin leaves, as Chaplin must surely do, what then?

  He and Chaplin often room together. He prides himself on his neatness while Chaplin oscillates between dishevelment and elegance according to mood and sexual appetite. While he learns his lines, Chaplin practices his Greek. While he studies the theatrical pages, Chaplin ponders Schopenhauer. When money is at its scarcest, he fries spoiled chops over a naked flame while Chaplin plays the violin to hide the sound of sizzling, a blanket jammed beneath the door so the smell does not leak out, as of two suicides trapping gas.

  So they eat the same meals, and sleep in the same beds, and darn the holes in their clothing from the same ball of yarn, but they are not the same. Chaplin watches all, but not to learn, because Chaplin has nothing to learn.

  Chaplin gathers, Chaplin accrues.

  Routines, gags, bits of business.

  Women.

  They fall to their knees before Chaplin on the dusty floors of boarding houses.

  They fill their mouths with him, the young and the old.

  Mostly, the young.

  It is all that he has ever wanted, but it is not how he wanted it to be. He cannot live this way. He leaves the company in Colorado Springs, Arthur Dando, a fellow malcontent, by his side, and travels back to the East Coast. The Lusitania carries them home. In 1915, when a U-boat blows up the Lusitania, he recalls the Cairnrona and thinks that, well, at least he was consistent.

  9

  Milledgeville, situated at the heart of Baldwin County, and once the capital city of Georgia. Black labor built it, the slaves bought and sold in the marketplace by the Presbyterian Church on Capital Square. He supposes the ones who constructed the houses, the skilled artisans, were more fortunate than the poor souls carted off to pick cotton, but everything is relative.

  At the eastern border, fast flowing, runs the Oconee River. Sam Tant, Babe’s older half-brother, is killed while swimming in the Oconee River. Babe sometimes speaks of trying to rescue Sam Tant. Sam Tant jumps from a high branch, but misjudges the depth of the water and lands on his head. Babe pulls Sam Tant’s body from the river, but Sam Tant isn’t moving, and later Sam Tant dies. Babe tells the story often, one more burden for him to carry. He guesses that Babe was perhaps sixteen or seventeen when the incident occurred, but has never been able to pin down the year.

  Babe’s role in the tragedy adds another stratum to Babe’s mythology, continuing the process of augmentation and concealment in which Babe is engaged, Babe’s grief obvious and therefore not to be interrogated further, a deflector of intrusion. Sometimes he imagines himself peeling away Babe’s integuments, excavating the seams, so that Babe becomes thinner and thinner, smaller and smaller, until at last all that remains is the shining core of the man, the radiance within.

  But Babe is immune from such exploration, and when disease finally pares away the layers of Babe, all that is left is death.

  10

  Where is the plot?

  The answer is that there is no plot: plots are for the stage alone. There is no plan, no manifest destiny. There is only a series of events, some connected, some discrete, and this will be called a life. Destiny is for gods, and he is just a man.

  He is not Chaplin.

  He tries. Acts come together, acts fall apart. Perhaps A.J. will have him back, although A.J. has no time for Fred Karno’s foot soldiers, the deserters from the army. One cannot serve two masters.

  Failure: failure in America, then Britain, and finally Europe. If he had the money and ambition, he could probably have failed in Australia too, but in the absence of both he returns to London.

  He remembers Waterloo Station. He remembers rain and filth. He remembers the walk to High Holborn. He remembers the regretful sound of a horse’s hooves, slow in the night, like the ticking of an old clock, the clock in Fred Karno’s office, more seconds falling away, as of promise in decay, as of his own inexorable abatement; and the smell of the Cittie of Yorke, all piss and spilled beer. He remembers the hesitancy of his footsteps as he approaches the flat of Gordon, his brother.

  Gordon is managing the Prince’s Theatre. Gordon does not turn him from the door. This, then, is to be the pattern of his continuance: bit parts, and the shadowing of his brother. He will end his days in a back room surrounded by moldy scripts and shilling chits. To avoid confusion, he will forever forsake his first name for his middle one, and be known as S.J., his father’s heir, and when the stalls are empty and the lights are extinguished, he will prance in the dimness to the laughter of ghosts.

  A.J. was right.

  A.J. will have his way.

  He walks Shaftesbury Avenue.

  He walks Soho.

  He walks Leicester Square.

  His name is called. He turns. Alf Reeves, the man who smiles at Chaplin, but only with his mouth.

  Handshakes, backslaps.

  What news of America, he asks Alf Reeves. What news of the Guv’nor?

  He knows that Karno’s Comedians, as they are now called, are back in England, a respite before the return. He tries not to read of Fred Karno, but Fred Karno is unavoidable. The smell of burning bridges lingers in his nostrils. He threw Fred Karno’s generosity back in Fred Karno’s face. He has almost forgotten the biting of fleas, and sleeping in waiting rooms, and having his shoes stolen because he was foolish enough to leave them outside the right room in the wrong establishment. He remembers only what was lost.

  Alf Reeves gestures at the theaters around them, to gods in lights.

  – Where is yo
ur name?

  At the bottom of the right bills, he replies, and the top of the wrong ones.

  He puts his hands in the pockets of his trousers. There is a hole in the left. He can touch, with his index finger, the skin of his leg: sandpaper goose bumps. He is so attenuated, he wonders that he cannot yet scratch the very bone. He wishes that he had never walked through Leicester Square this day. He wishes that he had never met Alf Reeves.

  Come back to America with us, says Alf Reeves, or so he imagines, until he realizes that Alf Reeves has spoken, and this is indeed what Alf Reeves has said.

  He will be paid $30 a week.

  He will be paid $30 a week to understudy Chaplin.

  It is the autumn of 1912.

  11

  The Sullivan–Considine circuit.

  Cincinnati, A Night in an English Music Hall.

  Seattle, Vancouver, Portland.

  The cold. God, the cold.

  (‘Charles Chaplin is exceedingly funny.’)

  Chaplin.

  Chaplin is different now, because Chaplin is worse. Mack Sennett is calling once again. Mack Sennett’s Keystone machine must be fed, and Chaplin is the meat that will give good mince. In November, 1913, as the weather changes, Chaplin jumps.

  For $150 a week, with no more nickel lunches.

  For $150 a week, with his name above the title.

  For $150 a week, with all the girls Chaplin can fuck.

  It is his chance. With Chaplin gone, he can shine. But without Chaplin there is no company, because Chaplin is, was, and always will be the company. Alf Reeves claims to have tried to plead his case. In Alf Reeves’s telling, the theater owners are informed that he is Chaplin’s equal, but even Alf Reeves does not believe this, and the theater owners certainly do not believe it. They have been sold shit by better men than Alf Reeves, and better shit too.

  When the humiliation comes, it is worse than he has anticipated. The tour will go on, but only if Alf Reeves can guarantee the presence of Dan Raynor, the lead in Fred Karno’s London company, to take Chaplin’s place. Dan Raynor makes his way across the Atlantic, the new wheel on the wagon, but the wagon is falling apart, and it is winter, and Chaplin is in the ascendant. Although he tells himself he should not, he takes the time to bear witness to Chaplin’s rise.