Cover image for Title

ROBERT COOVER

Romance of the Thin Man
and the Fat Lady

art

PENGUIN BOOKS

Contents

Romance of the Thin Man and the Fat Lady

The Babysitter

A Pedestrian Accident

ROBERT LOWELL COOVER

Born 4 February 1932, Charles City, Iowa, USA

‘Romance of the Thin Man and the Fat Lady’,

‘The Babysitter’ and ‘A Pedestrian Accident’ first published in Pricksongs and Descants 1971.

ALSO PUBLISHED BY PENGUIN BOOKS

Pricksongs and Descants • Gerald’s Party • Briar Rose & Spanking the Maid

‘Paul stepped off the curb and got hit by a truck. He didn’t know what it was that hit him at first, but now, here on his back, under the truck, there could be no doubt’

Romance of the Thin Man and the Fat Lady

Now, many stories have been told, songs sung, about the Thin Man and the Fat Lady. Not only is there something comic in the coupling, but the tall erect and bony stature of the Man and the cloven mass of roseate flesh that is the Lady are in themselves metaphors too apparent to be missed. To be sure of it, one need only try to imagine a Thin Lady paired with a Fat Man. It is not ludicrous, it is unpleasant. No, the much recounted mating of the Thin Man with the Fat Lady is a circus legend full of truth. In fact, it is hardly more or less than the ultimate image of all our common everyday romances, which are also, let us confess, somehow comic. We are all Thin Men. You are all Fat Ladies.

But such simplicities are elusive; our metaphors turn on us, show us backsides human and complex. For observe them now: the Thin Man slumps soup-eyed and stoop-shouldered, seeming not thin so much as ill, and the Fat Lady in her stall sags immobile and turned blackly into herself. A passerby playfully punches his thumb into her thigh, an innocent commonplace event, and she spits in his eye.

‘Hey, lady!’

‘Right in his eye! I saw her!’

‘What kinda circus is this, anyway?’

‘She’s probably not fat, just wearing a balloon suit!’

‘Come, darling, don’t get too close to the Fat Lady, something’s wrong with her.’

Children cry, and lovers, strangely disturbed, turn quickly away from them, seeking out the monkey cage. Whoo! the Image of all our Romances indeed!

Yet perhaps – why yes! surely! – the signs are unmistakable: a third party has intruded.

Madame Cobra the Snakecharmer?

The Incredible Man with the Double Joints?

The Missing Link?

No, our triangle is of a more sinister genius. Our villain is the Ringmaster.

‘We thought he’d understand. We were open about it. The circus life is a good life, but it’s a tough one, too. A man’s gotta be a man.’

‘Get off that diet, Fat Lady, says he. The pig. Okay, okay, I say. But he doesn’t believe me. He moves in on us! Can you imagine?’

‘I was in the Strong Man’s tent. I had twenty-five pounds up in the air, which for a Thin Man ain’t bad. I’m pretty proud of it and when he comes in I say: Hey! look at that muscle! I’ll show you muscle, says he, and kicks my poor ass all over that tent. He shouldn’t do that. I got a very fragile spine.’

‘Tape measure, calory charts, scales, everything. Don’t take his beady eyes off us day or night. I ain’t allowed to sweat, my Man can’t exert hisself. What’re we supposed to do?’

‘Like animals, that’s how he treats us. Livestock. Checks her teeth, hefts her udders, slaps her on the bare nates when she’s on the scales. No heart at all. She’s crying, but does he care? Eat! he says. Eat! You gotta let a woman be a woman, I believe that.’

It comes to this, then: that not even Ultimate Heroes are free from fashion. The Thin Man has wished to develop muscles, further to excite his Fat Lady –

‘Builds stamina, too. Helps your wind.’

And the Lady has attempted to reduce to be more appealing to her Man –

‘And I had my heart to think about. You understand.’

Now, were the Ringmaster a philosopher, he might have avoided the catastrophe – for, as in all true romances, and surely in the Truest, there is a catastrophe. He might have been able to convince the couple with a merest syllogism of the absurdity – indeed the very contradiction! – of their respective wishes. But, far from being a philosopher, he indulges in the basest of trades (and is thus the best of villains!): he is a trafficker, a businessman, a financier, a Keeper of the Holier Books.

‘Philosophy! You want philosophy? I’ll give you philosophy! Okay, okay, so they’re romantic symbols, I understand that, I’m not stupid, but what they symbolize, buddy, ain’t Beauty. It’s like that old fraud Merlin the Prestidigitator said when he came to try and softsoap me: Who can blame them if they see outside themselves symbols of their own? There’s something in all of us, Mr Ringmaster, he says, that rebels against extremes. Hell, I can follow that. And being a symbol: who wants it anyway? Narcissism, that’s all it is. But what the fuck else do you think a circus is all about? Philosophy! Philosophy my ass! And the same goes for human nature! Want me to wreck my goddamn business? Listen! If the Fat Lady were not the fattest and the Thin Man the thinnest in the world – we’re talking first principles now, buster – no one would pay to see them. Where are all your goddamn noble abstractions when the circus collapses and we’re all of us out on the streets? Adaptation, boys and girls! Expediency! And to hell with nature!’

Things do not work out as well, however, as the Ringmaster has anticipated. The Fat Lady in her gloom loses her appetite and begins to waste away. The Thin Man stops eating altogether and must be held in an upright position all day by props. And even the Ringmaster, normally of such stable even if unpleasant temper, grows inexplicably fidgety in the long fumbling nights alongside the couple’s troubled bed.

‘She can’t sleep, the poor dear. Whimpering all night long. I try to soothe her best I can, but my hands, so to speak, are tied.’

‘One squeak of the bedsprings and on come the lights!’

‘The man’s a nut!’

‘He looks down at my Man and says: That’s one muscle too many! And throws cold water on it –’

‘All night in a cold wet bed!’

At last, the Ringmaster negotiates a highly favorable contract of exchange with a rival circus, by which he is to acquire an Ambassador from Mars and a small sum of money for the waning Fat Lady. Another couple weeks, he thinks, and she would have been worthless. Hoo hee! a miraculous deal, a work of genius! Giggling softly (and no doubt meanly) to himself, he drops off that night into a comfortable slumber, the first in weeks, the bed beside him heaving fretfully the while with the parting anguish of the distraught lovers.

‘It wasn’t murder, it was a revolution.’

‘A revolution of love!’

As one, the entire complement of the circus arises at midnight –

‘Now!’

‘Freedom!’

‘Equality!’

‘Clobber the fuckin lech!’

– summarily executes and inters the Ringmaster alongside the deserted country road (castrating him symbolically in the process – circus people are born to symbology!), and installs the Fat Lady and the Thin Man as Representative of the Common Proprietorship.

‘We were all agreed. The Thin Man and the Fat Lady, in fact, were the last to know.’

‘An Ambassador from Mars indeed! Did he think we had no pride?’

So joy reigns in the circus for weeks. Every performance concludes with a party. The two lovers’ happiness seems to radiate magically, attracting new masses of spectators, all of which augments, in turn, their happiness. It is indeed a paradise. The Thin Man exercises without compunction and quickly reaps a sturdy little pair of biceps. The Fat Lady, all aglow, switches calory charts with the Thin Man, and within a week loses one of her several chins. Everyone, including the Thin Man, remarks on her beauty. Love is the word of the day. Circus people are basically good people. Their hatred for their former Ringmaster subsides, the souvenir taken from him is fed to the lions, and he is soon forgotten altogether. In a new day, there is no place for old resentments.

‘I mean, you go along for years, see, thinking you got a Ringmaster on accounta you gotta have one. Ever seen a circus without a Ringmaster? No. Well, that just goes to show how history can fake you out!’

‘It was beautiful! All of it just happening! Acts coming on spontaneously, here, there, it was wild and exciting and unpredictable!’

‘Suddenly it hits you, see. All your life you been looking at circuses and you say, that’s how circuses are. But what if they ain’t? What if that’s all a goddamn myth propagated by Ringmasters? You dig? What if it’s all open-ended, and we can, if we want to, live by love?’

‘We even started enjoying each other’s acts!’

‘I rode the elephant once!’

‘Who says clowns gotta take pratfalls alla time? I learned to play in the band and train a bear and ride a horse through a fiery hoop!’

But, just when the picture is pinkest, bad news: it becomes all too apparent that fewer people are visiting the stalls of the Thin Man and the Fat Lady, and those that do pass through, do so hastily and with little interest.

‘Okay, so they’re happy, so they’re in love. So what? You see one lover, you seen ’em all.’

At first, everyone stubbornly disregards the signs. The parties go on, the songs and the celebrations. The Thin Man lifts weights as always, and the Fat Lady diets. Their glad hearts, though gnawed at a bit by apprehension, remain kindled by love and joy. One could almost say it was the romantic legend come true. But finally they can no longer ignore the black-and-white truth of the circus ledger, now in their care. Somewhere, apparently, there is a fatter lady and a thinner man. Their new world threatens to crumble.

‘We didn’t wanna hurt their feelings, you know. We kidded them a little, hoping they’d take the hint.’

‘Why couldn’t they just love each other for themselves?’

‘For the good of the whole circus, we said.’

In their van one night, doubt having doused for the moment the flame of passion, they agree: the Fat Lady will restore her castoff corpulence, the Thin Man will return his set of barbells to the Strong Man. They re-exchange calory charts. They begin in earnest to win back their public, found to be an integrant of their attachment, after all.

It is not easy. Worried by business reverses, the Fat Lady must work doubly hard to lay on each pound. And the Thin Man discovers that his little knots of muscle tend to sag instead of disappear. But they are driven by the most serious determination. The eyes of the circus are upon them. Momentary reverses only steel them more to the task.

‘Chocolates! For me? It’s been so long!’

‘With love.’

‘But now that you’ve seen me like this, will you truly love me when I’m fat again?’

‘To be honest, dear, I ain’t sure I can even tell the difference.’