The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

by Mordecai Richler

  “Money isn’t everything, Mr. Cohen.”

  “A real communist. Oi-oi. Gimme your glass.”

  “I really should be going. I —”

  “Gimme your glass I said. That’s a good boy. Sure, money isn’t everything. Who in the hell ever said it was? Duddy, I like you. Tell me what happened. Maybe I can help?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Any time you want to come and work for me you name the salary. How’s that? A girl. Is that the trouble?”

  “Jeez.”

  “Duddy, I’ve got a soft spot for you. You know the way I feel about you? If you told me right now that you wanted to shave and start out again in another business I’d finance you. That’s the kind of confidence I have in you.”

  “My driver was in an accident.”

  “I heard.”

  “He’s crippled for life. It’s my fault.”

  “The hell it is!”

  Duddy told him haltingly about Virgil.

  “Duddy, it’s not easy to earn a living. If you went out in the trade and asked about me there are lots of men who would tell you Cohen is a lousy son of a bitch. You think I’ve never had troubles? You think you run a scrap yard for twenty-five years next September without accidents or lawsuits or under the table pay-offs or lies? There’s not one successful businessman I know, Duddy, who hasn’t got something locked in the closet. A fire, maybe. A quick bankruptcy, the swindling of a widow… funny business with a mortgage… a diddle with an insurance agent. It’s either that or you go under, so decide right now. You’re going to drive a taxi all your life or build a house like this and spend the winters in Miami.

  “You know I once nearly went to jail, Duddy? I came this close,” he said, “but I had a partner and he wasn’t as smart as me so he went to jail instead. He did two years for receiving stolen goods and all that time I took care of his wife. When he got out he yelled his head off at me. He picked up a knife to me, even. But I didn’t feel bad because I know that if he’d been smarter than me I would have been the one to go to jail. Listen, Duddy, it’s not all wine and honey in this world, but I’ve got a family and I take damned good care of them. My Bernie won’t have to send his partner to jail. But he didn’t land in this country with three words of English and fifty cents in his pocket, either, and there you are.”

  “But he’s crippled for life, Mr. Cohen.”

  “It’s not your fault. Goddam it, I never thought you were such a softie.”

  “It was dangerous to let him drive the truck.”

  “Duddy, in my yard once there was an accident with the derrick and a goy killed. The derrick was on its last legs and I got it cheap. So? I was working night and day then like you. It was the best derrick I could afford. I’m no monster. I had bad dreams. I’ll tell you this and I never said it not even to my wife before. I cried too. But you know what I thought to myself? Moishe — I thought to myself — your wife’s got one in the oven. A boy maybe. When that boy grows up do you want him to have to stand under faulty derricks for a lousy thirty-five bucks a week? No. Then pull yourself together, Moishe, and stop being a woman. Make yourself hard.”

  Mr. Cohen told Duddy more stories that reflected badly on himself, he even exaggerated some, but Duddy didn’t respond as he had hoped.

  “Listen here, my young Mr. Kravitz, you want to be a saint? Go to Israel and plant oranges on a kibbutz. give you the fare with pleasure. Only I know you and I know two weeks after you landed you’d be scheming to corner the schmaltz herring market or something. We’re two of a kind, you know. Listen, listen here. My attitude even to my oldest and dearest customer is this,” he said, making a throat-cutting gesture. “If I thought he’d be good for half a cent more a ton I’d squeeze it out of him. A plague on all the goyim, my motto. The more money I make the better care I take of my own, the more I’m able to contribute to our hospital, the building of Israel, and other worthy causes. So a goy crippled and you think you’re to blame. Given the chance he would have crippled you,” he shouted, “or thrown you into a furnace like six million others. You think I didn’t lose relatives? I lost relatives.”

  “Jeez,” Duddy said. “Wait a minute. Virgie is no nazi.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “He’s my friend.”

  “They’re all nazis. You scrape down deep enough and you’ll see. Up to here, Duddy,” he said, repeating his throat-cutting gesture. “That’s how I like to get them. Have another.”

  “Cheers.”

  “You want a helping hand? A loan until you get on your feet again?”

  “No. But thanks just the same.”

  “Duddy,” Mr. Cohen said sternly, “you won’t find me plastered like this again in another five years. Take while I’m in an offering mood. I’m not the Red Cross that you can call at any emergency.”

  “But I’m not sure what I want to do any more.”

  “Well, whatever you want to do, don’t stand under any faulty derricks for thirty-five bucks a week. That’s how people get killed. Good night and good luck.”

  After Duddy had gone Mr. Cohen took his drink into the kitchen and got some more ice.

  The goy hollered, he had rolled his eyes, and it had taken him longer than an hour to die. The health inspector had cost him five hundred dollars, but the case had never come to court. Death by misadventure was how the coroner put it. And five weeks later the coroner had sent Mr. Cohen a Christmas card and, terrified, Mr. Cohen had phoned his lawyer.

  “Don’t lose sleep,” the lawyer had said. “Send him a case of Scotch. The best there is.”

  Mr. Cohen still had the card. It was one of those religious ones, Joyeux Noël a Yoshka the cross. Some sense of humor they have, he thought.

  It’s a battlefield, he thought, it sure is. But you and I, Duddy, we’re officers, and that makes it even harder. (Remember how Gregory Peck had to send his fliers out to die in Twelve O’clock High?) captains of our souls, so to speak, and they’re the cabin boys. Cabin boys, poor kids, often get left standing on the burning deck, just like in that poem Bernie read me. It’s a battlefield. I didn’t make it (I wasn’t asked). I’ve got to live, that’s all.

  Mr. Cohen poured himself another drink. It had cost him fifty thousand dollars to build the house, his wife’s dream, and the only room he could tolerate was the kitchen. Mr. Cohen got up and looked in the fridge. With his wife up north for the summer he had a rest from that stinky new-style Chinese food, all those nuts and pineapple and not a chunk of meat anywhere as big as your toenail. With his wife away he was even able to keep a smoked meat in the fridge. There was nobody to lecture him about calories and stomach linings and fatty tissue around the heart. He made himself an enormous sandwich, leaned back, and let out a resounding burp.

  It’s my house, he thought, and I can do what I want here.

  Duddy started to take his father’s taxi out on a full shift. He usually started at six and drove until four in the morning. Most days he slept until noon, went out for a bite, and came back to sit by the window in his apartment until it was time to work again. He still couldn’t bring himself to read Uncle Benjy’s letter and he avoided any place where he might run into old friends. The heat wave worsened and Duddy began to make do on one meal a day. He lost lots of weight. Nights when he couldn’t sleep or woke from a dream of Virgil he played his pinball machine endlessly. He invented a league with eight teams and, playing for each one of them in turn, he kept track of the results and standings on a specially designed chart. He knew the machine extremely well, it would have been possible to cheat for his favorite team, but he was scrupulous about giving his best to each one. The machine had other uses too. If he wanted to go out for a drink, for instance, when he should have been trying to get some sleep, he would make an agreement with himself that if he hit five million on the machine — not an easy mark — he could go. Here he cheated sometimes. If he wanted to go out badly enough and the score on three balls was unpromising he’d tilt the machine accidentally, whi
ch entitled him to another game.

  He played other games too. In one he was a blind man and had to find his way round the apartment with his eyes shut. He lost if he bumped into anything. There were penalties to be paid too, like sleeping without a pillow or cutting out smoked meat for two days at a time. The apartment was gradually filled with crossword puzzle magazines and he worked out a method for playing two-handed Scrabble. He could roll dice for hour after hour and kept elaborate graphs to illustrate his imaginary winnings set against time invested, physical depreciation, and some even more esoteric data. The bookcase was soon crammed with the cheaper kind of paperbacks and in each one he marked how many manpower hours it had taken him to read it. The results of his overall paperback chart were gratifying. His reading speed per manpower hour showed a consistent tendency to improve.

  One night, bored with his other games, he got out the model of Lac St. Pierre and started a fire at the hotel. It was brought under control quickly, however, with a minimum loss of life, and he estimated the damage at approximately twenty thousand dollars. Luckily, he was covered with a good insurance policy.

  Duddy discovered that he was broke four days before his rent came due. He didn’t want to borrow from his father again, so he arranged to drive Miller’s taxi during the day. Working day and night for seventy hours, catching a half hour’s sleep here and there, he took in the necessary seventy-five dollars, staggered back into his apartment and collapsed on the bed. There was a letter for him from Ste. Agathe. It wasn’t from her, though. It was from Virgil.

  Duddy,

  I hope this letter finds you in the best of health. I know that you are still angry at me or you would have come to see me by now. I am also aware of the fact that you’ve had a quarrel with Yvette. She didn’t tell me about what but it would be tragic if the two of you severed relations. She doesn’t know that I’m writing you. I must make that clear. But you must come to see her. I’ve never seen somebody so depressed. Come out soon, Duddy, please.

  Sincerely yours,

  VIRGIL

  PS. Enclosed are two copies of my magazine. I’m looking forward to your frank opinion of same. PPS. I miss you too.

  Duddy picked up one of the magazines. It was mimeographed.

  THE CRUSADER

  The Only Magazine in the World Published

  by Epileptics for Epileptics

  Vol. 1. No. 2 September

  Famous Health Handicappers Through History No. 2

  A BIOGRAPHY OF JULIUS CAESAR

  HERE LIES THE NOBLEST ROMAN OF THEM ALL

  Julius Caesar was born in 102 B.C. and died of twenty-three dagger thrusts on March 15, 44 B.C. But between those dates he won world-wide fame as a soldier, administrator, author, and emperor, in spite of his health handicap. He was the author of several Latin books, including The Conquest of Gaul, still a good seller in the English translation. He is also the hero of a famous play by Shakespeare, part fact and part fiction. This play was recently made into a movie with Marlon Brando heading the all-star cast.

  Life was no breeze for the young Julius, but from the day of his birth until the day he met his untimely end he never once let his health handicap stand in his way. Julius had been born an epileptic and he was not ashamed of it. He had guts a-plenty.

  Like Abe Lincoln, another great man, his beginnings were humble. There was no silver spoon in his mouth at birth. He came up the hard way. First as a soldier and then as a politician. He served in Spain, Germany, and other lands, making him very well traveled before the air age, broadening his mind, and therefore making him fitter to rule. But his fantastic success story, his amazing popularity with ordinary joes, naturally made smaller men jealous and when he returned triumphant from Gaul they began to plot against him. This plot, in fact, led to a civil war, and the death of Caesar’s old comrade, Pompey. It also resulted in Caesar’s being appointed Dictator for life of the Holy Roman Empire, quite a big honor. Unfortunately, only a month later — after one of the dirtiest double-crosses of all time — he was stabbed twenty-three times on the steps of the senate. One of the murderers was his best friend, Brutus, and that’s how the expression Et tu, Brutel (meaning double-cross) has come into the English language.

  l You too, Brutus.

  Caesar, though always at odds with the senate, was not the Hitler type Shakespeare (also an anti-Semite) made him out to be. He was always good to his mother and a faithful husband, too. He was also very good to his troops and centuries ahead of his time he introduced something like our own GI Bill. His books, according to scholars, were models of their kind, and the word “honor” was often on his lips. Among other accomplishments he did lots for economic reconstruction and aggrarian reform in old Italy. It’s a dirty lie to say he was a tyrant. We have every reason to be proud.

  Next Issue: A Biography of Jos. V. Stalin A SPECTER IS HAUNTING EUROPE

  THE CRUSADER

  Editor & Publisher

  Virgil Roseboro

  Business Manager

  Yvette Durelle

  THE CRUSADER is a nonsectarian magazine with no political bias. Yearly Subscription: $2.00. No part of this periodical may be reproduced without consent of the publishers. All mms. should be addressed to 8 Rue St. Paul, Ste. Agathe des Monts, Que., Canada. A self-addressed envelope should be enclosed.

  YE OLDE EDITOR’S CORNER

  United We Stand

  Divided We Fall

  IT’S time to get in there and start pitching, comrades. We’ve got to organize. We’ve got to take a leaf from the book of the Negroes, Jews, and the homosexuals. Let’s not be too proud to learn from other minority groups.

  LET’S NOT BE SLOUCHES.

  If a Jew gets kicked out of a hotel the B’nai B’rith hollers. If a Negro is refused a job the NAACP goes to court. In Scandinavia the homosexuals were brave enough to organize and now they have laws to protect them. I’m not saying that, like the Jews, we need our own homeland or, like the queen, we want our own night clubs.

  WE’RE BETTER MIXERS THAN ANY OF THEM.

  But look at what the Harlem Globe Trotters have done for their race. Everybody knows that Einstein was a Jew, F.D.R. a polio victim, and Marcel Proust a homosexual, but how many folks know that Mackenzie King, record-holding prime minister for the whole Empire, was born with a Health Handicap?

  (cont. p. 3)

  OUR READERS WRITE

  Sweet (and Sour) Notes

  Sir:

  Congratulations and good luck! Your first issue was great. Let’s have more of those fighting editorials! Enclosed, please find two dollars for my subscription.

  Sincerely,

  Harvey S. Pignatano

  Houston, Texas

  Thanks, Harv. We’ll try to keep up the good work — ed.

  Sir:

  Until you started your moronic magazine the best thing about sufferers from epilepsy is they didn’t band together against the world. Your sectarian rag is just about the biggest step backwards we can take! Next thing you’ll want to elect an epileptic pope, so people can say we have dual loyalties too. If you mail me another copy it goes right into the ash can, like the last one.

  U.S. MARINE

  CAPTAIN, Retd.

  Check your history book, Captain. We’ve had a pope with a health handicap. Leo IX.

  Sir:

  Everyone in the asylum thinks your mag is the mostest. A couple of suggestions, however. How about a special supplement for paraplegics? What about some pin-ups?

  THE GUYS OF WARD SIX

  Watch for news of our Miss Health Handicap competition - ed.

  Sir:

  I have been going steady with a boy for six years. He is very nice. All my friends like him. I love him and want to marry him. But last Saturday eve at the church dance he had a fit in the middle of the dance floor and I’d be less than honest if I didn’t admit I was very embarrassed. I had no idea before the dance that he had a health handicap. What should I do? I’d still like to marry him, but I’m very fond of dancing too.


  What about our kids, if we have any?

  VERY UPSET

  Turn to Verne Delaney’s moving story on page 4 —ed.

  BOOKS

  Gloomy Is The Night by Derek Marler. Stubbs. $3.50.

  You said it, buster. The night I read this novel was the gloomiest I’ve spent in years.

  Here we go again, boys. We’re back in Paris, on the left bank, with those crazy mixed-up kids. Has Marler’s hero got problems? Sure. His next check from home may be overdue and meanwhile the world’s going to pot. He hates everybody and he’s just too, too sensitive to live. But Marler can write. Some of his dialogue just leaps off the page.

  A word of advice, Marler. How about giving us a novel about real people with real problems next time out. Hemingway was there before you, remember, and his hero had a bigger problem than mere Weltschmertz. Jake had a real health handicap.

  When oh when will somebody give us a novel about epileptics? Not since The Idiot has anyone made a real stab at it and there’s a subject big enough for any artist.

  Rating: One Star.

  EDITORIAL (cont)

  They all use publicity. We don’t. And why not? Because we’re not organized yet. We don’t meet and form pressure groups. If the communists can have an international SO CAN WE.

  The Senator from New York is a Jew and he speaks up for his people. According to Senator McCarthy there are plenty of commies and homos in the state department. There must be some epileptics too. WHY DON’T THEY SPEAK UP FOR US? Are they ashamed? The hell with them, then. We health handicappers want legislation to protect us.

  PEN-PALS CORNER, PERSONALS,

  CLASSIFIED ADS

  Health Handicapper, 38, female, Witness of Jehovah, interests: musical appreciation, reading, theater, walks, swimming, would like to meet another H.H., male, early forties, over 5ft 5in and with similar interests. Box 2213

  Rm to let in quiet, socialist atmosphere. 18 Brewer St., Montreal. No color bar. Health Handicappers welcome. Box 5528

  For Rubber products, free book on Family Planning, Surgical Belts, Etc., write Box 8211