The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

by Mordecai Richler

  The Talmud Torah boys were getting older, American comic books were beginning to trickle into the city again, and so Duddy was attracted by this new line. After some haggling he agreed to order by the dozen if, in exchange, he was given exclusive rights to a territory that, after even more bargaining, included three Protestant schools, two parochials, the B’nai B’rith Youth House, a yeshiva, and at least four poolrooms and a bowling alley. This venture was the first of Duddy’s to end in disaster. Three weeks later, when the going was really good, Barney was picked up by the police and fined. Duddy, unfortunately, was caught with a large stock on hand. He took fright and threw them in the furnace.

  Other projects, like the hockey stick sideline, were more profitable.

  At the age of twelve Duddy discovered that smiling boys with autograph books could get in to hockey practices at the Forum. Getting in to see minor league teams like the Royals was a cinch, and if you were quick or smart enough to hide in the toilet after the Royals had left the ice you could also get to see the Canadiens practice, and those were the years of Lach, Blake, and the great Maurice Richard. While they were on the ice the players’ spare sticks, kept in a rack against the wall in a gangway leading into the passages out, were guarded by a thirteen-year-old stick boy. Duddy guessed that these sticks, each with a star player’s name crayoned on it, would be treasured by many a fan. So he worked out a system. Getting another boy, usually A.D., to come along with him and talk to the stick boy, leading him gently away from the rack, Duddy would then emerge from under a seat, grab as many sticks as he could manage, and run like hell. The sticks netted him a tidy profit. But even though the stick boy was changed from time to time, making further forays possible, the business was a risky one. It was only seasonal too.

  Duddy took his first regular job at the age of thirteen in the summer of 1945. He went to work in his Uncle Benjy’s dress factory for sixteen dollars a week, and there he sat at the end of a long table where twelve French-Canadian girls, wearing flowered housecoats over their dresses, sewed belts in the heat and dust. The belts were passed along to Duddy, who turned them right side out with a poker and dumped them in a cardboard carton. It was tedious work and Duddy took to reversing the black and red and orange belts in an altogether absent-minded manner. Supporting the poker against his crotch, he’d roll the belts over it one by one. The girls began to make jokes about his technique, but Duddy did not understand at first what the fuss and giggles and slow burning looks were all about.

  The girls, however, seemed agreeable enough. Funny-looking and thin mostly, that was true; one with a squint and three with crucifixes, five with black hair worn pompadour style and two with wedding rings and another, without a ring, who was pregnant. Gabrielle had a bad rumbling cough and when the one with the squint lowered to thread a needle you could see something of her bosom. She had the biggest breasts of the twelve. Her name was Theresa and there was always a Pepsi beside her machine. She usually consumed at least four by noon and as the day wore on big wet patches spread under her armpits and she began to smell bad. The girls punched in each morning at five to nine, and by nine A.M. they had all assumed their places by the machines: a tense crouch. At one minute past nine there was a bell, a whir, the machines began and the girls, taking deep breaths, bent their heads lower over their work. One of them, Jacqueline, was a chain-smoker, and by ten-thirty her smock and everything around her were littered with ashes.

  Around the time when Duddy began to understand the jokes about his method of rolling belts, he also noticed that only two men worked on the third floor. Malloy, who dusted coats on manikins at the far end of the floor, was an old man with a fierce tattoo on his chest. Herby, the sweeper, was a colored boy, and Duddy always watched him for the pink flash of his tongue and the palms of his hands. Other men — even Uncle Benjy himself — occasionally passed through the third floor. Manny Kaplan, the (as he put it) personnel manager and a nephew on the other side of the family, came in once in the morning and again in the afternoon. He swept in with a big frenzied smile and shouted, “Atta boy,” at the girls, “atta boy,” and leaning and looking he counted how many belts they still had to do, making a note of who was behind and who was absent. Much more popular was little Epstein, the silver-haired cutter who came once a day with chocolate cookies, a pound of Bing cherries maybe, or two dozen plums for the girls, always stopping to pinch or kiss them, rolling his eyes and saying, “Mn-mn” in a way that made the girls laugh and feel good.

  Duddy noticed that there were only two other men on the floor and that when he supported the poker against his crotch Adele, the youngest girl at the table, watched him out of the corner of her eye. She was a nervous girl, too, forever getting up to go to the toilet. One hot afternoon, after Duddy had got up to let her pass, Theresa indicated with a jerk of her head that Duddy ought to follow her. He waited a moment, coughed, and excused himself. The other girls giggled when he went off.

  Unfortunately for Duddy, his Uncle Benjy passed by a half hour later and saw that Adele and Duddy were gone and guessed where they were. Uncle Benjy had Duddy transferred to the cutting room.

  Uncle Benjy was a wealthy man. A disappointed one too. His wife, Ida, went to Florida every winter. And when they were together for an important wedding or an old friend’s funeral or the summer they both had a lot to drink before going to bed.

  “They say there’s a new doctor in Los Angeles who can work miracles.”

  “Benjy, please.”

  “What harm could it do to give him a try?”

  “You ought to leave me, Benjy. I’d understand.”

  “Got yourself lined up good in Miami, eh? Some ritzy bachelor who can make his ears wiggle.”

  “Benjy.”

  “Or maybe that physio-what’s-it you told me about. You know, the blond exerciser with the Ph.D.”

  “Gil?”

  “That’s the one. Come clean, Ida. I can take it.”

  She would pass out at last and Benjy would get out of bed and gather up her dress and girdle and stockings where they had fallen on her way to bed. Afterwards he would usually sit up in the kitchen for hours. A short fat man in enormous blue shorts with a golf ball pattern, he might fry himself a couple of eggs and read the socialist magazines he subscribed to that came from England and the United States. These bored him even more than Miami. Foolishness, romance about what the workers were, and advertisements for family planning and summer camps where solemn Negroes sang progressive songs.

  Always, before going to sleep, he kissed Ida on the forehead. Sometimes, more drunken times, he would hold her close, his head squeezed against her breasts, and she would waken dizzy and afraid. He never knew that. She made sure he never realized that her sleep had been disturbed. But come morning Ida would be gone again.

  Finally Benjy’s father called him to the house. “Why are there no children?” he asked.

  “I’m impotent.”

  The old man gave Benjy a bottle. “It’s made from herbs. An old country recipe.”

  At home Benjy flushed the bottle’s contents down the toilet and he and his father never discussed the matter again. Meanwhile, Benjy made more money and enemies. He refused to contribute to the synagogue building fund. “Praying went out with the spears, Sam. You can quote me.” A known supporter of communist causes, he was always good for a touch when there was a strike or a defense fund or the Tribune in trouble. He enjoyed bragging about these contributions in the company of other manufacturers.

  “Comrade Peltier — he drops in from time to time, you know — told me the other day that when we get round to nationalizing the needle trade I’m likely to be in charge.”

  “Another season like this and you can take charge tomorrow.”

  “That means that in your sweatshop, Sam, you’d have to allow a union.”

  “Over my dead body.”

  “All right. Over your dead body, then. And Harry here is going to have to put paper and soap in those filthy toilets of his.”
r />   Uncle Benjy got along no better with the communists who came to him for money. He couldn’t forgive them their abuse of Trotsky and they were unhappy about his little irreverences, like making an ostentatious sign of the cross when Peltier mentioned Stalin. Books, probably, gave him the most enjoyment, and Benjy was a prodigious reader. But here too there was more disappointment than pleasure. Tolstoi, yes, and Balzac. Gorki, too. But where among the modern belly-achers was there a writer to teach him about a fat factory owner hopelessly in love with a woman who dyed her hair, wore too much rouge, and preferred contract bridge to Bach. A foolish woman. Ida. “Even if we could have a son,” he often thought, “Ida would be no fit companion for my old age, so why…” He didn’t understand why and nobody could tell him. Meanwhile, he helped keep the family together and drank alone.

  When Max had come to tell him he was getting married, Benjy said, “Bring her around, sure. I can hardly wait. The girls who would marry the likes of you I have to see to believe.” His wedding gift was to set Max up with a taxicab. “I’d give you a job in the factory but I happen to be in business to make a profit.” And Max, familiar with his older brother’s acid tongue, had smiled affably and made no reply. “Imagine,” he once told Debrofsky, “not being able to get it up. Ever, I mean.”

  “No wonder he’s such a lush,” Debrofsky had said.

  “Once,” Max had said, dropping a sugar cube on his tongue, “just after he began to make his name but before his personal trouble, the Boy Wonder won a bet by spending a night in the Ford Hotel banging three different broads. He’s got a whang that could choke a horse. Iknow, we had a leak together once… But to get back to poor Benjy, he’s got his good points, you know. For my Lennie he’d do anything.”

  It was true.

  Benjy was in the hospital the night Lennie was born and he held him and bloodied his knuckles the day he was circumcised. He had a specialist flown in from Toronto when Lennie developed an unusually severe case of rheumatic fever and he picked the boy’s school, the books he ought to read, and took him to every circus that came to town.

  “It’s not right, Max,” Minnie said. “You’re the father.”

  “I’m the father. Sure I’m the father. But Benjy can’t — well, you know.”

  Uncle Benjy took pride in all of Lennie’s achievements. The medals, the scholarships, and ultimately his acceptance by the McGill University Faculty of Medicine. He paid the boy’s fees, gave him a weekly allowance, and was certainly prepared to set him up in practice when the time came.

  Uncle Benjy felt differently about Duddy, but it did not come out until the boy went to work for him. He did not like Duddy on sight, it’s true. The thin crafty face, the quick black eyes and the restlessness, the blackheads and the oily skin, the perpetual fidgeting, the grin so shrewd and knowing, all made a bad impression on Uncle Benjy. He was prepared to give Duddy a chance, however, but Duddy went and loused it up. Two weeks after he had been transferred to the cutting room he charged into Uncle Benjy’s office and told him, “That old geezer in the cutting room, Laroche, is swiping lengths of cloth. I saw him.”

  But Uncle Benjy looked at him with displeasure.

  “What’sa matter?”

  “I’m not interested.”

  “He’s stealing from you. Jeez, aren’t you gonna fire him?”

  “Next time you come in here with a story like that I’ll fire you.”

  Duddy leaped to his feet.

  “Wait.” Uncle Benjy could see that the boy’s eyes were full, but he could not stop himself. “In all my years in the trade I’ve never hired anyone to spy on the workers here.”

  “Why?”

  “What?”

  Duddy smiled thinly and his voice quieted. “Are you afraid that there are even more of them stealing?”

  “What?”

  “That maybe with all your loans and favors to them they still think you’re the boss like?”

  “Some kid. Some kid you are.”

  “Not like Lennie?”

  “You’re only here a week and already you may have got a girl in trouble. Two weeks in the cutting room and you come to me with this story about Laroche. Manny tells me you’ve been selling the girls underwear and stuff you get from some mail order house. Is that true?”

  “How did you make all your money, Uncle Benjy? Tell me that.”

  “Some kid.”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “I don’t like squealers. Try to remember that.”

  “Why don’t you fire me, Uncle Benjy?”

  “I’m not going to fire you because it would hurt your grandfather.”

  “Is that so?”

  “You’re some kid, Duddy, some kid, but this much you ought to know. If you ever do anything to hurt your grandfather I’ll break every bone in your body beginning with the little fingers.”

  “How come you care so much? You never even go to visit him any more.”

  Uncle Benjy pushed his chair back from his desk. “I think you’d better get back to work,” he said.

  Uncle Benjy, Duddy figured, had humiliated him, and he would remember that.

  “When the Boy Wonder,” Max had once told him, “loses his temper he could eat bread and it would come out toasted. That’s the size of it.”

  Duddy liked to think that his anger was made of the same hot stuff. He liked to think, in fact, that point for point he was a lot like the Boy Wonder before he had made his name. Duddy had seen him stepping outside the synagogue on Yom Kippur once, before his personal trouble, and left and right men had waved heartily or turned pale and the women had followed him with their eyes. The Boy Wonder was no atheist, like Uncle Benjy. Even, as Max had once explained to him, Yom Kippur fell on the same day as the Kentucky Derby and a heavyweight champion fight together the Boy Wonder would place no bets. Max knew because, even though he was a taxi driver, he was an intimate of the Boy Wonder and one day he would introduce Duddy to him.

  “Not yet. Next year maybe. When you’re ready.”

  But it was a promise all the same.

  Meanwhile Duddy worked on the weekends and each summer (though never for Uncle Benjy again), and he continued to put money in the bank. For Duddy had never forgotten that his grandfather had said, “A man without land is nobody.”

  Duddy wanted to be a somebody. Another Boy Wonder maybe. Not a loser, certainly.

  COMMENCEMENT

  They arrived by fives and eights and threes. A surge of mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and grandparents to a hot sticky gym. They came with smiles and jokes and embarrassment, the men pulling at their ties and the women choked by their girdles, walking through the halls of learning to see their sons and daughters, the class of ‘48, graduate classes one, two, and three from Fletcher’s Field High School to — as Leonard Bush, M.A. (McGill), said each year — the wide world. Here, Max Kravitz said, was the door to the sub-basement where the Boy Wonder had organized a lunchtime crap game. There with the red face goes Feeney, an enemy of our people. Here comes Mendelsohn’s boy, the scholarship winner. There was the exact spot, Benny Rabinovitch pointed out, where Mickey “The Mauler” Shub had KO’d the sometime principal of F.F.H.S., Dr. Ross McEwen.

  The men mopped their necks with handkerchiefs and the women, wearing too much make-up, fanned themselves with programs that announced GREETING, GRADS, from THE TAILOR, and scholarships for a hundred dollars donated by Steinberg’s Groceterias and for fifty dollars in everlasting memory of Mrs. Ida Berg.

  “It goes off the income tax,” Sam Fine said.

  They arrived too soon and thirsty and proud and immediately shamed their sons and daughters by waving and whistling at them.

  “Yoo-hoo.”

  High over the platform loomed the mighty black and green crest with the inscription WORK AND HONOR.

  “Well, well, if it isn’t Tannenbaum in the flesh. You got a son here?”

  “Why not?”

  “Is yours going to a night club afterwards? I gave mine a t
en-spot. Aw, what the hell I said to myself. Next week he goes to work in the store.”

  “Mine’s going to McGill to be a lawyer.”

  “The way you operate, Tannenbaum, you’ll need him.”

  Fanning themselves, they watched as the staff filed in silent and severe and took their places on the platform at last. “White men,” Panofsky said sourly.

  “What’sa matter with women teachers that they never have no watermelons?”

  “Sam, please, people can hear you.”

  One chair was empty. Mr. MacPherson wasn’t there.

  “That’s Coldwell, the torturer. Yeah, that one.”

  Mr. Feeney sat next to Mr. Cox. Mr. Gyle, who had failed engineering and decided to become a teacher, sat next to Miss Bradshaw. Mr. Jackson adjusted his hearing aid.

  “Becky! Be-cky! over here. does she turn away, Louis?”

  The choir of two hundred boys and girls came marching in according to height, the boys in white shirts and black bow ties and the girls in school tunics.

  “Listen, with the speeches and everything we’ll be lucky to get out of here by two o’clock.”

  “Sh.”

  Ten men went to mow,

  Went to mow a meadow,

  Ten men, nine men, eight men,

  Seven men, six men, five men,

  Four men, three men, two men,

  One man and his dog

  Went to mow a meadow.

  “A Yiddish song they couldn’t sing? It would be against the law?”

  Martin Abromovitch, his Adam’s apple making his black bow tie bobble, strode across the platform to play the Polonaise Chopin.

  “I know that. It was in A Song to Remember.”

  “Sh.”

  “Oh sh-sh yourself. Pain in the neck!”

  There was some mistaken applause at the end of the first section, more at the end of the second and still more, these decidedly resentful, at the end of the third. When Martin Abromovitch finally finished playing, the wary ones among the audience waited until he stood up and bowed twice before joining in the ovation with warm charitable looks for the uncultured early applauders among their neighbors.