The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

by Mordecai Richler

  Duddy danced with her three or four times. She was O.K. on the slow ones, but when the band played something hot, a boogie-woogie, for instance, Duddy switched to his free-swinging F.F.H.S. Tea Dance style and all at once the floor was cleared and everyone stood around watching. At first this seemed to delight Linda, she laughed a lot, but the second time round she quit on Duddy in the middle of a dance. Once, during a slow number, he held her too close.

  “Please,” she said.

  “This is called a ‘Y’ dance,” Duddy said. But she didn’t get the joke.

  Linda invited three others to their table and Duddy ordered drinks for them. Melvin Lerner, a dentistry student, held hands with Jewel Freed. They were both working at Camp Forest Land. The other man was bearded and somewhat older than the others; he was thirty maybe. Peter Butler lived in Ste. Agathe all year round, he had built his own house on a secluded part of the lake.

  “Peter’s a painter,” Linda said to Duddy.

  “Inside or outside?”

  “That’s good,” Peter said. “That’s very good.” He slapped his knees again and again.

  Duddy looked puzzled.

  “He’s not joking,” Linda said. “Peter’s not a house painter, Duddy. He paints pictures. Peter is a nonfigurative painter.”

  “Like Norman Rockwell,” Peter said, laughing some more.

  “Touché,” said, and she ordered another round of drinks.

  “What do you do?” Melvin asked Duddy.

  “He’s making a study of the hotel business like,” Linda said.

  Peter and Linda danced two slow numbers together and when Duddy looked up again they were gone. An hour later Linda returned alone, her face flushed and bits of dead leaves stuck to her dress. “I need a drink,” she said. “A big one.”

  “Maybe we oughta go. I’ve got to be up at seven tomorrow.”

  “One for the road.”

  So Duddy ordered another round. Maybe it was the liquor — he was certainly not used to it — but all at once it seemed to him that Linda had changed. Her voice softened and she began to ask him lots of questions about his plans for the future. She was not ridiculing him any more, he was sure of that, and he was no longer afraid of her. From time to time the room swayed around him and he was glad he wasn’t the one who would have to drive home. But dizzy as he was he felt fine. He no longer heard all her remarks, however, because he was thinking that hotel owners’ daughters had fallen for poor boys before and, given a shot at it, there were lots of improvements he could make at Rubin’s. There was the Laurentian Liner “Well, Duddy, are you game?”

  The room rocked.

  “Tell me if you don’t want to. I won’t be angry. Maybe Irwin would…”

  “No, no. I’ll do it.”

  “It’ll give you a good start on your stake.”

  She helped him outside and into the station wagon. His head rolling and jerking loose each time they hit a bump, Duddy tried, he tried hard, to remember what he had agreed to. He had told some lies about himself and the Boy Wonder, they had talked about the gambling house he ran, and the conversation had come round to roulette. Duddy pretended to be an expert and Linda just happened to own a wheel. Then what? He told her he had already earned more than four hundred dollars in tips and Linda said that was plenty. Plenty? Plenty for him to act as banker for the roulette game they were going to run in the recreation hall beginning at one A.M. Sunday night. Wouldn’t her father object? No, not if ten per cent of each win went into a box for the Jewish National Fund. He couldn’t lose — there was that too. She told him so. He might even come out a few hundred dollars ahead.

  “Can you make it upstairs yourself?”

  “Sure.”

  “Aren’t you going to kiss Linda before you go?”

  “Mn.”

  13

  That was Wednesday, and in the three days to go before the game Duddy began to fear for his money. “Sure you could win,” Cuckoo said, “but you could lose too. If I were you I wouldn’t do it.” But if he was afraid for his money, neither did he want Linda to think that he’d welsh on a promise. She was so sweet to him these days. At night in the recreation hall she sometimes called him over to join her for a drink. Still, he thought, maybe I ought to speak to her. I work hard for my money and I need it. Then people began to stop him in the lobby or on the beach.

  “I’ll be there, kid,” Paddy said.

  Farber slapped him on the back and winked. “Count me in,” he said.

  Mr. Cohen stopped him outside the gym. “Is it O.K. if I bring along a couple of pals?”

  The Boy Wonder, Duddy thought, would not chicken out in a situation like this. He would be cool. But Duddy couldn’t sleep Friday night and he was ashamed to go and tell Cuckoo again that he was scared. He wouldn’t want Linda or Irwin to know that, either. It was so nice, too. Suddenly people looking at him and smiling. He no longer had to go round to the back of the hotel to sit with the kitchen help and chambermaids for companionship. Aw, the hell, Duddy figured out that if the bank ever dropped below one hundred dollars he would stop the game, but he withdrew three hundred just in case. Linda took him aside on Saturday afternoon. “Maybe we’d better call it off,” she said. “You might lose.”

  “You said I couldn’t lose.”

  “I said, I said. How do I know?”

  “I’m not calling it off. I can’t. All those people. Jeez.”

  Cuckoo pleaded with him once more. “But what if you lose, Duddy?”

  “Simple,” Duddy said. “If I lose I drown myself. That’s show biz.”

  On Sunday night the boys in Artie Bloom’s band, who were in on the story, broke up early and everyone pretended to be going off to bed or somewhere else. The lights in the recreation hall were turned out and the front door was locked. Fifteen minutes later some of the lights were turned on again and a side door was opened. The players began to arrive. Duddy set up the table and announced the odds in a failing voice. He would pay thirty to one on a full number and the top bet allowed was fifty cents. That would pay fifteen dollars, one-fifty of which would go into the J.N.F. box. Linda, who was helping him, began to sell change. Farber bought five dollars’ worth and Mr. Cohen asked for ten. Once Duddy had counted forty players in the hall he asked for the door to be shut.

  “Don’t worry,” Linda said. “The more players, the more money on the board, the better it is for the bank.”

  But Duddy insisted.

  “I’ll only take ten dollars’ worth for a start,” Irwin said.

  Duddy looked sharply at Linda and it seemed to him that she was even more frightened than he was. “O.K.,” he said. “Place your bets.”

  Duddy counted at least thirty dollars on the first run. Jeez, he thought. His hands shaky, he was just about to spin the wheel when a voice in the darkness shouted, “Nobody leave. This is a raid.”

  “Wha’?”

  “My men have got the place surrounded. No funny stuff, please.”

  A spotlight was turned on and revealed was Cuckoo Kaplan in a Keystone Cop costume. His nightstick was made of rubber and the height he shook it at made all the women laugh.

  “You’re a dirty pig, Cuckoo.”

  “Some cop.”

  Duddy shut his eyes and spun the wheel and number thirty. two came up. Nobody was on it. He paid off even money on two blacks, that’s all.

  Cuckoo took off his shoe, reached into an outlandishly patched sock, and pulled out a dollar bill. “Rubin just gave me an advance on next year’s salary. He’s crying in the kitchen right now.”

  “Cuckoo!”

  “Put the works on number six for me, but I can’t look.” After an hour of play Duddy was ahead more than two hundred dollars. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Lots of you seem to be losing. I’m no chiseler. From now on you can bet a dollar on a number if you want.”

  That’s when Irwin changed another twenty-five dollars and sat down at the table and began to play in earnest. His bets seemed to follow no apparent pa
ttern. On each spin of the wheel he placed a dollar on numbers fifteen, six, thirty-two, three, and twelve, and it was only the next morning when he looked closely at the wheel that Duddy realized these numbers ran together there. Irwin won; he didn’t win on each spin, but whenever one of his numbers came up he collected thirty dollars and twice if his number repeated. Others, riding his streak of luck, began to bet with him, and once Duddy had to pay off three different people on number three. That cost him ninety dollars, not counting the side and corner bets.

  “Don’t worry,” Irwin said. “David’s father is in the transport business. He doesn’t really to work as a waiter.”

  Duddy turned to Linda, his look astonished.

  “His brother Bradley is a big rancher in Arizona,” Irwin said. “All David has to do is wire him for more money.”

  “It’s getting late,” Mrs. Farber said.

  Ed Planter yawned and stretched.

  “Don’t go,” Duddy said. “Not yet, please. Give me a chance to win some of my money back.”

  Farber saw that Duddy was extremely pale.

  “Don’t worry, kid,” Mr. Cohen said. “Your luck will change.”

  But Duddy’s luck didn’t change, it got worse, and nobody at the table joked any more. The men could see that the boy’s cheeks were burning hot, his eyes were red, and his shirt adhered to his back. When Duddy paid out on a number his hands shook.

  Cuckoo pulled Irwin aside. “It’s your wheel, you bastard. I found out.”

  “Really?”

  “Do you know how hard that kid works for his money?”

  Irwin tried to turn away, but Cuckoo seized him by the arm. “I’m going to speak to Rubin,” he said. “First thing tomorrow morning I’m going to talk to him.”

  “Linda and I are going to be engaged,” Irwin said. “Rubin is very pleased about that. I thought maybe you’d like to know.”

  “Come on,” Duddy said. “Place your bets. Let’s not waste time.”

  The men at the table were tired and wanted to go to bed, but they were also ashamed of winning so much money from a seventeen-year-old boy and they began to play recklessly, trying to lose. It was no use.

  “We want to see you upstairs later, Irwin,” Bemie Altman said.

  On the next spin Duddy went broke and he had to close the game.

  “That’s show biz,” Irwin said. “Right, Cuckoo?”

  The men filed out without looking at Duddy, but Linda stayed on after the others had gone.

  “Thanks,” Duddy said. “Thanks a lot.”

  “How much did you lose?”

  “Everything. Three hundred dollars.” Duddy began to scream. “You said I couldn’t lose. You told me it was impossible for me to lose.”

  “I’m sorry, Duddy. I had no idea that —”

  “Aw, go to hell. Just go to hell please.” He gave the wheel a shove, knocking it over, and rushed outside. Once on the beach he could no longer quell his stomach. Duddy was sick. He sat on a rock, holding his head in his hands, and he began to sob bitterly.

  “Hey,” Cuckoo shouted, entering the lobby, “has anybody here seen Duddy?”

  “No.”

  “He still hasn’t shown up at the dorm,” Bernie said. “It’s more than an hour now…”

  “What’s going on?” Rubin demanded. “I’m the boss here.”

  Duddy clenched his teeth and pulled his hair until it hurt. “Goddam it to hell,” he said. Some stake. Six weeks of hard work and not a cent to show for it. He was back where he’d started from. Worse. He was probably a laughingstock too. Jeez, he thought. “Goddam you.”

  Some scraping on the sand disturbed him and Duddy hid behind a rock. He recognized Cuckoo’s voice.

  “Somebody saw him run towards the beach. There’s no telling what he might do.”

  Linda said something he couldn’t make out and Cuckoo’s reply was lost in the wind. Then he heard Linda say, “I knew it was his wheel, but I never thought…”

  Footsteps approached from another direction. Somebody had a flashlight.

  “Duddy!”

  Let them think I’ve drowned, he thought. It would serve them right. He had seen a drowned woman once at Shawbridge, and the thought of his own face bloated like that — Irwin hanging for it, the bastard, and his father maybe feeling sorry he hadn’t treated him as well as Lennie — made a hot lump in Duddy’s throat. He began to sob again.

  “Duddy!”

  There was a dip of oars and a rippling in the water. A boat had started out.

  “Hal-lo! Duddy!”

  Scampering barefooted across the sand, Duddy broke for the protecting woods. He heard Rubin’s gruff voice, “That little bastard, I’ll kill him. There was a drowning at the Hilltop Lodge once and the next day there weren’t two guests left at the hotel. If this got into the papers it could ruin…”

  Duddy was seized by an uncontrollable fit of laughter. He rolled over in the grass, biting his arm to muffle the noise.

  “… send for the cops?”

  Next came Rubin’s voice. “Oh, no you don’t. No cops. That little bastard I’ll choke him to death.”

  Duddy came out on a dirt road on the other side of the woods and started back into Ste. Agathe. Three times he stopped, his laughter immense. The thought of them searching for him all through the night and Irwin certainly catching shit galore almost made him forget the three hundred dollars. Almost, but not quite.

  Pajama-clad guests drifted down into the lobby one by one.

  “I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes, Rubin.”

  “How could you let a seventeen-year-old kid lose all his tips in a roulette game?”

  “I knew nothing about it. I swear I —”

  “Save it for the reporters tomorrow. When they drag the kid out of the lake —”

  “Bite your tongue,” Rubin shouted.

  “The poor kid.”

  “Next season it’s Hilltop Lodge for me,” Mrs. Dunsky said.

  “Me too,” Mrs. Farber said.

  Rubin reminded his guests that there had been a case of ptomaine poisoning at the Hilltop Lodge last year.

  “You think your food goes down so good, Rubin? Around the corner at the drugstore bicarbonate sales are booming.”

  “We’re doing everything humanly possible,” Rubin said. “All the boys are out searching.”

  “The bottom of the lake?”

  The guests stared accusingly at Rubin. “Why don’t you all go to sleep,” he said.

  “In a hotel where tragedy has just struck?”

  “Tomorrow,” Paddy said, “you can change the name from the Hotel Lac des Sables to Rubin’s Haunted Hotel.”

  “Already it’s beginning to feel spooky in here. Hey, open up the bar, Rubin.”

  “Yeah, we could do with some salami sandwiches too. This is going to be a long night.”

  “All right,” Rubin said. “All right.”

  Circling back over the highway, Duddy re-entered Ste. Agathe through those streets, remote from the lake, where the French-Canadians lived. His legs ached from the long hike; he was starved and searched for an open restaurant. He found a French-Canadian chip place open on the edge of town. Yvette was there.

  “Duddy!”

  Duddy didn’t realize it, but his clothing was muddy and he had ripped his shirt in the bushes.

  “Were you in a fight?”

  He sat down and told her, between explosions of laughter, what had happened. Yvette felt rotten about the three hundred dollars, but when he got to the part about Rubin she began to laugh too.

  “Have something else?”

  Duddy had already consumed three hot dogs and two orders of chips.

  “I think they want to close,” he said. “Why don’t we go for a walk?”

  Avoiding the main streets and the lake shore, or anywhere he might run into a searching party, they started out together holding hands. She led him towards the railroad tracks as the stars started to fade out and light began to spread across the sky
. Duddy saw for the first time the part of Ste. Agathe where the poorer French-Canadians lived and the summer residents and tourists never came. The unpainted houses had been washed gray by the wind and the rain. Roosters crowed in yards littered with junk and small hopeless vegetable patches and Duddy was reminded of his grandfather and St. Dominique Street, and he promised himself to send the old man a postcard tomorrow. There were faded Robin Hood Flour signs on some walls and here and there a barn roof or window had been healed with a tin Sweet Caporal sign.

  “This way,” Yvette said.

  Crossing the tracks, they came out on a rocky slope on the edge of the mountain. The dew soon soaked through Duddy’s shoes and trouser bottoms. His body ached. The excitement of the game and search past, he longed for his bed, but Yvette led him deeper into the field. Down a bumpy hill and up the other side onto a flat table of a rock. There she made him rest.

  “It’s so nice to see you lie still for once,” she said.

  “Wha’?”

  “You’re always running or jumping or scratching… “

  Duddy was surprised and flattered to discover that anyone cared enough to watch him so closely. “I like you,” he said.

  “Do you think I’m pretty?”

  “Sure. Sure thing.”

  He edged closer to her and, to his surprise, she didn’t withdraw. Duddy fondled a breast tentatively. She kissed him, forcing his mouth open.

  “Listen, Yvette, I haven’t got a… “

  But she didn’t care. Jeez, he thought, if the guys could see me now.

  “You’re my speed, Yvette. You’re for me.”

  Duddy and Yvette returned to Ste. Agathe by another route, separating before they reached the lakeshore. Yvette kissed him on the cheek. “You work too hard,” she said. “There’s nothing but bones… “

  “Aw.”

  She told him that she was off on Wednesday afternoon.

  “Let’s go swimming,” he said.

  It was almost nine when Duddy entered the lobby of the Hotel Lac des Sables and the guests were beginning to come down for breakfast.