he: A Novel(44)

He wonders how Georgia Hale feels as she watches Chaplin’s camera venerate Virginia Cherrill in City Lights, as she rues that this role was once, however briefly, hers, until Chaplin realized that Virginia Cherrill was more worthy of it than she.

At least, he thinks, Georgia Hale can console herself with the knowledge that Chaplin did not fuck Virginia Cherrill, however beautiful she may be. This lapse on Chaplin’s part is common knowledge around town. The reasons for Chaplin’s failure remain unclear, although they probably boil down to a simple absence of sexual attraction on both sides.

Even Chaplin needs to feel something.

But he believes that the fact Chaplin did not sleep with Virginia Cherrill may have contributed to the genius of City Lights. He finds in it a beauty, a purity. It is, be believes, Chaplin’s masterpiece, and he sheds tears at the end because it is so gentle, so perfect, so true.

Yet even as he leaves the theater, head low, he thinks:

I could not have made City Lights, but nor would I want to have made City Lights.

It is art, but it is not comedy.





94


The half-life of his marriage persists, flirting with farce as it fades.

On August 7th, 1931, he legally changes his name. A.J.’s son ceases to be. He is now the man the titles of his pictures declare him to be; the fiction created with Mae has become the reality. And as he alters his name, so, too, must Lois alter hers, even though she barely wishes to know him by any name.

Never mind. She will not have to suffer under it for long.

And meanwhile, he thinks, his dead boy bears the patronymic of one who no longer exists at all.





95


At the Oceana Apartments, he wakes in his chair. He had not intended to doze, and now the best of the day is gone.

This is his world, his lot, his stage. He haunts its three rooms, knowing his every mark: here for his correspondence, there for his meals, a turn for his bed. It is life as a vaudeville routine.

He takes up his pen and his yellow legal pad. He has an idea: a prison escape, except the prisoner is a woman. She has murdered her husband’s lover in an act of jealous rage, and remains infatuated with him. She hears that her ex-husband is about to marry again, and so breaks out of jail to prevent the wedding from going ahead.

Hal Roach always claimed that he had a macabre side.

The light dims ever so faintly: a momentary darkening, as of a cloud drifting, or a shadow briefly cast, or a figure seated just beyond the periphery of his vision shifting its position, signaling its unease.

He does not write this idea down. Better to let it go.

Babe would not like it.





96


It is always possible to discover hints of Babe’s presence on a set, even if Babe himself is nowhere to be seen, because Babe leaves a paper trail.

Babe reads the Los Angeles Times obsessively, every day. Babe does not miss an article or skip a page. When Babe is done with the Los Angeles Times, there is the Reader’s Digest, or The New Republic; there is ‘Life in These United States’, or the ever present threat of Communism, with H.G. Wells failing to convert Joseph Stalin to liberalism and appearing only mildly surprised at this defeat, like one who was firmly convinced he could finish that last slice of pie. Babe sees no difficulty in reading both the Reader’s Digest and The New Republic. It is all knowledge.

Babe does not live in fear of appearing ignorant before others. This would be proof of vanity. Babe lives in fear of being ignorant, and this is proof of humility. Babe has little time for fiction. Babe’s working life is devoted to fantasy, so when Babe is not working Babe will try to understand the order of things, and quiet corners of studio lots may provide the right kind of man with time and space in which to inquire into secret creations, and wisely perfect the world.

Babe remains faithful to Myrtle because Babe retains faith in Myrtle. Or, more correctly, Babe has continued to harbor the conviction that Myrtle might yet be saved, or might be persuaded to alter her behavior, but only if Babe is willing to abet her. Neither does Babe wish to walk away from another marriage. Babe has no desire to look back on the pathways of his life and see only debris.

But Babe is tired of being afraid to return home at night.

Babe is tired of the smell of liquor and piss.

Babe is tired of being lonely.

He watches Babe remove an adhesive bandage from his hand as they prepare to shoot a scene. The wound revealed is not big, but it is deep: a gouge in the pad below Babe’s right thumb, smeared brown with iodine. Babe either does not believe the make-up lady can disguise the bandage, or does not wish to be asked the cause of the abrasion.

Babe catches him looking.

A glass, Babe says. Dropped.

A pause.

– Well, eventually it dropped. After it was thrown.

– They do that. It’s called gravy-tea.

He slips so easily into character that he surprises even himself. After a moment’s hesitation, so also does Babe change. In Babe the process is more dexterous, as with so much that Babe essays: a marginal rearrangement of features, a delicate adjustment of posture. No longer Babe, but Mr Hardy.

– Not gravy-tea: gravity. It means that what goes up – Mr Hardy lifts a finger, points it skyward, and circles it in the air.

– must go down.

The finger inverts, and spirals in the direction of the floor. Mr Hardy smiles at him, the teacher to the pupil.