he: A Novel(8)

You understand, she says.

He understands.

She is Charlotte Mae Dahlberg.

She is Mae.





18


What was Babe before him? What was he before Babe? It is as though, shortly after their first meeting, they became conjoined, so that all other possible existences ceased at that moment. Is this of consequence? Of course it is.

And of course it is not.

Half of these existences – Babe’s more than his, because Babe was captured by the light long before he – are anyway unreal. Like the flesh, film is a temporary medium.

It rots, it burns.

Babe sometimes amuses himself by trying to recall, in alphabetical order, the names of the films made before his old life ceased, and a new one began.

A Bankrupt Honeymoon.

A Brewerytown Romance.

A Day at School.

A Fool There Was.

A Janitor’s Joyful Job.

A Lucky Strike.

A Maid to Order.

A Mix Up In Hearts.

A Pair of Kings.

A Tango Tragedy.

A Terrible Tragedy.

All for a Girl.

Ambitious Ethel.

An Aerial Joyride.

– Is that it?

Babe is sure that he has missed one.

Along Came Auntie.

– How many?

Three hundred, Babe thinks.

A Sticky Affair.

And what can Babe recall of their making?

Aunt Bill.

Almost nothing, apart from sweating in Jacksonville for the Lubin Company, and Siegmund Lubin promoting him as Babe Hardy, the Funniest Fat Comedian in the World. Siegmund Lubin – never a man to tell one lie when two will serve better – informs the Florida Metropolis that Babe was personally chosen by him from a number of heavyweight performers, and adds that Babe is six feet, nine inches tall and weighs three hundred and fifty pounds. The Metropolis dispatches one of its best and brightest to confirm the existence of the freak.

For most of his life, until Death sets about its business, it is the only occasion on which Babe can recall someone expressing disappointment at his size.

Babe takes whatever role is offered: fat cop, fat grocer, fat woman, fat baby, fat lover. Babe is fat for Lubin, fat for Edison, fat for Pathé, fat for Gaumont-Mutual, fat for Mittenthal, fat for the Whartons, fat for Novelty-Mutual, fat for Wizard, fat for Vim. If Babe finds employment because Babe is fat – and Babe does – then it stands to reason that Babe will be more frequently employed if Babe is fatter, so Babe puts on weight.

With Billy Ruge, Babe becomes one half of Plump and Runt. Babe avoids the sobriquet Fatty only because of Roscoe Arbuckle over at Keystone, and for this much Babe is grateful. By the time Roscoe Arbuckle is accused of killing Virginia Rappe, crushing her so badly in the process of raping her (because Roscoe Arbuckle has earned his moniker) that Roscoe Arbuckle ruptures her bladder, Babe will be established in his own right.

Roscoe Arbuckle’s downfall is a set-up, of course. They all know it. The predatory Bambina Delmont, a professional blackmailer, sees an opportunity to squeeze Roscoe Arbuckle for money, or make what she can off his reputation by selling a story to the newspapers, and so contrives a narrative that involves Roscoe Arbuckle’s massive weight, and Roscoe Arbuckle’s thick cock, and perhaps, for added spice, the insertion of a champagne bottle into Virginia Rappe’s quim. But Bambina Delmont has a tongue so crooked it could be used to uncork wine, and even the prosecution knows that as a witness – and, indeed, as a human being – Bambina Delmont is next to useless. This doesn’t stop Matthew Brady, the San Francisco DA, from dragging Roscoe Arbuckle through three increasingly ludicrous trials, all because Matthew Brady wants to run for governor, and Roscoe Arbuckle’s hide will make a fine rug for Matthew Brady’s new office.

And even though Roscoe Arbuckle is eventually cleared, and an apology offered to him by the jury, Roscoe Arbuckle’s career is over, and Roscoe Arbuckle takes Fatty with him.

Rape isn’t funny.

Manslaughter isn’t funny.

Venereal disease isn’t funny.

Virginia Rappe’s many backstreet abortions are not funny.

No matter that Roscoe Arbuckle has no connection to any of these sorrows, and is entirely innocent. Roscoe and, by association, Fatty are no longer funny.

Babe will watch all of this unfold, and think: Be careful.

They will not laugh when you finally fall.





19


At the Oceana Apartments, he wonders still at the obsession with plot.

Louis Burstein, General Manager of the Vim Comedy Company, employer of Fat Comedian Babe Hardy, would, he thinks, have found common ground with Hal Roach, the two producers in accord. Louis Burstein once tells the Sunday Metropolis newspaper of Jacksonville, Florida that Louis Burstein has ‘studied the problem of how to produce good comedies thoroughly’. Louis Burstein’s conclusion, after long hours of deep reflection, is that ‘every one of our comedies must have a plot’.

‘Must’? Why ‘must’? Perhaps it is a desire to impose an order, a purpose, upon art because life resolutely refuses to oblige. Reality is random. Reality is chance. Even now, with the slivers of his existence floating before him, Babe’s story ended and his in its final act, he cannot make sense of it all. He sees only wreckage. After all, he has somehow contrived to be married seven times (or is it eight? Yes, eight it is.) to four different women.