he: A Novel(6)

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.

Making a Living.

Kid Auto Races at Venice.

Mabel’s Strange Predicament.

And thus he sees the Little Tramp being born.





12


At the Oceana Apartments, all tenses coalesce.

He is.

They were.

He was.

They shall not be.

He thinks: Babe, I cannot be myself without you.

He thinks: Babe, I am no longer myself without you.





13


In 1913, Babe marries Madelyn Saloshin: a little – a lot – older than Babe, because seven years is an age to a young man of twenty-one. Madelyn Saloshin is not pretty, but this is of no consequence. Madelyn Saloshin likes Babe, and Babe likes Madelyn Saloshin, and the very large are sometimes very lonely.

So Babe marries Madelyn Saloshin.

Babe marries a Jew.

Did it ever enter into proceedings? he asks Babe, when Babe is no longer married to Madelyn Saloshin.

– What?

– Her religion.

Babe gives him the frown, the one familiar to the Audience: the face of a man presented with thin soup, who will eat it because, in famine, even thin soup is a feast.

Yes, Babe replies, it mattered to me.

– How?

He is curious, but also fearful. There is no shortage of Jews in Hollywood, and no shortage of those who hate them, either, but such individuals are generally discreet in their discrimination, and gentlemanly in their cruelty. No, this club is not for you, but down the road, well …

– Because she had to learn to step lightly, just as I did. Because, had I asked, they would have said she was beneath me.

A flicker of the eyes, Babe’s voice softer now.

– And some of them did say it.

Them. Who are they? The same ones, he supposes, who in 1915 hanged Leo Frank from a tree in Marietta, Georgia, partly for being accused of killing a thirteen-year-old girl, but mostly for being a Jew in charge of a pencil factory.

And Miss Emmie, the doting mother: was she disappointed in her son’s choice of a Hebrew bride? Oh yes, and Miss Emmie will die disappointed in Babe, for this as for so many other deficiencies of character, although neither of them will ever refer to the sundering in such explicit terms.

I say, I say, I say: what’s worse than marrying a Jew?

Marrying an old Jew.

Take your bows.

Take your bows, and leave.





14


He tells himself that he cannot understand the reasons for Chaplin’s rise. He sees in this other only the reflection of his own longing. He can do what Chaplin does. He could show them, if he were given the chance. He has Chaplin’s grace, Chaplin’s – Self-belief?

Arrogance?

Appetite?

No, he has few of Chaplin’s appetites – or not yet – beyond the desire for more success.

Beyond the desire for any success.

Any at all.

He listens, too, to the wrong voices, and loudest is A.J.’s. The father has forged the son in his image. Like God, there is the stage, and there has always been the stage, and there always will be the stage. So while Chaplin glides through motion pictures, he stumbles over splintered boards in Lake Nipmuc, Massachusetts, and raises sawdust in Cleveland, Ohio.

He can do what Chaplin does. He has watched him for years. He has played the same roles. He is the shadow of this man.

And so he must become him.

He joins Edgar Hurley and Edgar Hurley’s wife, Wren, to form the Keystone Trio of 1915.

Absent the ability or opportunity to forge a paradigm, each will instead offer a simulacrum.

Edgar Hurley will be Chester Conklin.

Wren Hurley will be Mabel Normand.

And he will be Chaplin.

They present the screen upon the stage. They offer flesh and blood in place of light and shadow. (‘He impersonates Charlie Chaplin to the letter.’) He is a success, but only as another man. He is a good Chaplin and so, by definition, he is a failure as himself.

He feels his feet sliding, the ground shifting. The Audience laughs, but it laughs before he commences his routine. It laughs when he appears. It laughs because Chaplin makes it laugh. Without Chaplin, there would be no laughter at all.

Edgar Hurley hears the laughter, and wants it as his own. Edgar Hurley has also studied the master well. If the Audience is laughing at Chaplin, then it does not matter who wears the mask.

They head north – Pennsylvania, New York – and Edgar Hurley simmers, and Edgar Hurley argues, and Edgar Hurley will not be denied. Finally, Edgar Hurley becomes Chaplin, and Edgar Hurley takes the stage.