he: A Novel(97)

What place is this? Babe asks.

Cleethorpes, he says.

– How did we end up here?

– It’s on the schedule.

– No, how did we end up here?

And he knows that they will not be coming back.

On May 17th, 1954, they give their last performance together.

On May 18th, 1954, Babe has a heart attack.





196


They arrive in Europe with more than a thousand fellow travelers on board the America, the most beautiful liner yet built in the United States, their appearance heralded by bells.

They depart Europe on the Manchuria, a merchant ship bound for Vancouver with ten passengers on board, their departure unnoticed.

This is how it goes.

This is how it ends.





197


At the Oceana Apartments, after the evening meal, Ida touches his hands.

Your fingers are cold, she says. You’re shivering. What have you been doing?

– Remembering.

– You should go to bed. You’ll be warmer there.

– I will, in a moment.

I am almost done.





198


The heart attack makes him fear for Babe.

I am like a lost soul without him, he tells the newspapers after the retreat from England.

I am completely lost without him, he repeats.

I am lost.

He has grown to need Babe more than he ever did when they were making pictures together on Hal Roach’s lot. In those years, he was distracted by his capacities, by his appetites. He had a career, and a future. He had women. He would direct. He would create until the end. He would mature as an artist, like Chaplin.

But that is the past. Now he has only Ida, and Lois, his daughter.

Now he has only Babe.

He wants to tell Babe so much. He wants to say that he is sorry for using him as a pawn in his battles with Hal Roach.

For manipulating their partnership.

For threatening its termination to suit his own ends.

For besmirching his own reputation with foolishness and infidelity, and sullying Babe’s in the process.

For not making them both wealthier men.

Most of all, he wants to say: Stay.

Ben Shipman understands this, Ben Shipman who loves them both above all other men, Ben Shipman with his shock of white hair, and his thick glasses, and his inability to be as good a lawyer to them as Ben Shipman is a friend.

Babe knows, says Ben Shipman.

– How can you be sure?

– Because Babe sits in that chair, just as you do, and Babe talks to me, just as you do, and Babe is sorry, just as you are.

– What has Babe to be sorry for?

– For being unable to hold on to money any better than you could. For his impatience with you. For sometimes preferring the golf course and Santa Anita to the set of a picture. And for not being better. Isn’t that what it all comes down to, in the end? You both wish that you’d been better men. Maybe you could have, if only because that’s true of each of us. But I’ve been by your side longer than anyone, and I do not believe that I have ever been privileged to call two better men my friends. You have frustrated me; you have anguished me; you have infuriated me; you have ignored me; but you have never disappointed me. I have never known either of you to commit a base act, and in the wrongs that you have done, you have hurt yourselves more than anyone. You are beloved men, and beloved by none more than each other. Allow yourself some forgiveness.

But still he frets about Babe, and so busy is he fretting that when he suffers a stroke he can only express surprise, like a corner man urging on his fighter only to be caught by a mistimed punch. Now it is Babe who is calling him, and Babe who is by his side, and Babe who is making him laugh. The stroke leaves him with a limp, and slurred speech.

He has been working on scripts for a television show. He puts the scripts aside.

And Death begins its binding.





199


At the Oceana Apartments, he takes down from the shelf, for the final time, his copy of Chaplin’s memoir. He tells himself that he does so to reread the sections about Chaplin’s early life, and this is true, in part. He remains astonished by the obstacles Chaplin has overcome. He has never disputed Chaplin’s greatness.

He reads a little, but listlessly. He realizes he cannot deny the hurt he feels, because he can only conclude that Chaplin sought to cause him pain.

Not to be mentioned by Chaplin, not to be mentioned at all.

He wants no praise from Chaplin for his work or his acting, or even a testimonial to their former friendship. But to be denied the fact of his existence by this man whom he adored, to be excised entirely from the history of Chaplin’s life, is incomprehensible to him in the scale of its callousness.

He wishes, as he so often does, that Babe were here, so that he might ask of him:

How can a great man be so small?





200


Death does not come quickly for Babe. Death pilfers Babe piece by piece, pound by pound.

But not before Babe conspires with Death in his own dissolution.

Babe opens the door, and Death steps through.

Babe’s doctors are anxious about his weight. Babe weighs three hundred and fifty pounds. Babe is also worried. The heart attack suffered in England has focused Babe’s mind, and another heart attack has followed since then. Babe has gall bladder problems, and a kidney infection.