The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

by Mordecai Richler

“It would be a genuine honor, Mr. Kravitz.”

  “O.K., Virgie, I’ll see about the truck first thing tomorrow morning. Now if you’ll excuse me for a minute… I want to see Yvette.”

  Duddy poured himself another drink and took it with him to Yvette’s apartment. She sat on the sofa in her nightgown.

  “O.K., what’s got into you?”

  “I’ve seen you do lots of dishonest things, Duddy, but never in my life did I expect you to cheat a boy like Virgil.”

  “Cheat. I’m a cheater? Wow!”

  “How much are you paying for the truck?”

  “It’s a gift. From Debrofsky’s son-in-law to me. I’m getting it for nothing.”

  “You are getting it for nothing. The company is, anyway.”

  “I’m smart. Can I help it?”

  “You can’t do this to Virgil.”

  “What am I doing? Twisting his arms. I take a boy in off the streets and give him a job and —”

  “Please, Duddy, I’m not Mr. Cohen.”

  Duddy sat down beside her on the sofa and tried to kiss her. “I’m in the mood,” he said.

  “I never thought you were such a bastard,” she said, moving away.

  “Hey, one minute. What’s with you and this Virgil?”

  “I like him. I think he’s sweet.”

  “Is that all? Are you sure?”

  Yvette laughed. “Is that why you wouldn’t let me drive back to Montreal with him?”

  “He’s an epileptic. I wouldn’t let you drive with him because I was afraid of an accident. I think of your welfare, you know. You’d be surprised. What’s wrong now?”

  “You’re not lying to me, Duddy? He is an… an epileptic?”

  Duddy told her how Virgil had kept him up all night at the hotel. “There, aren’t you sorry now? You thought I was trying to swindle him when all the time I was being a big help to him. I’m taking a chance on the boy. I like him.”

  “I ought to slap your face.”

  “What did I do now?”

  “Do you mean to say that knowing how grateful he’d be for a job — any job — you managed to swindle him out of his thousand dollars? Oh, Duddy.”

  “Swindle. The truck will be registered under his name. I’m paying him sixty-five bucks a week too. While I train him. could he earn that kind of dough?”

  “How much are you paying for the truck? Tell me the truth.”

  “I’m a humanitarian. I took such a chance on a boy like that and this is the thank you I get.”

  “Chance? Do you think he could have a fit while he was driving the truck?”

  “Why not?”

  “You mustn’t let him do it, Duddy. You have to stop him.”

  “I’m exaggerating,” Duddy said, sighing. “He can tell when they’re coming on. All he has to do is pull over to the curb.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah,” he said wearily.

  “I’ll never forgive you if anything happens to him. I swear it.”

  “What’s so special about Virgie?”

  “I told you. I like him.”

  “Is that why you moved into the hotel the second night when,” he began to shout, “you could have stayed at your place for nothing?”

  “I had a fight with my family.”

  “Oh. About what?”

  “Never mind.”

  “About what, please?”

  “My brother found out I’m living with you.”

  “Which brother? Jean-Paul? That anti-Semite! That shicker!”

  “I won’t be able to see my parents again.”

  “Oh, gee. I’m sorry.” He took her hand. “Really, Yvette.”

  “Duddy, I’m very tired. I want to go to sleep. I know that truck isn’t costing you more than five or six hundred dollars. I want you to return the rest of the money to Virgil.”

  “Listen, listen, the cat’s pissin’.”

  “I’m not coming into the office until you do that.”

  “That does it,” Duddy said. “I was just on the verge of giving him a couple of hundred dollars… just to make you feel good. But I won’t be threatened, you hear?”

  “Do as you like. But just remember what I said.”

  Duddy leaped up. “You’re fired,” he said, “and that’s final.”

  He took the steps back to his own apartment two at a time and poured himself another drink. Virgil was laying out his sleeping bag on the floor. “Listen,” Duddy said, “I’m giving you sixty-five bucks a week. Not sixty.”

  “Gee.”

  “He hasn’t even worked for me one day and he’s got a raise. Oh, that bitch.” Duddy picked up an enormous book. “What in the hell is this?”

  “A rhyming dictionary, Mr. Kravitz. I’m a poet.”

  “He’s a poet.”

  “I wrote two sonnets for Yvette in Ste. Agathe.”

  Duddy put down his drink. “I’d like to see them, please,” he said.

  “She has them. She wanted to keep them.”

  “Turn your back for one minute. That’s all you need.”

  “I beg your pardon, Mr. Kravitz?”

  “You want to play high score again?”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “We’ll play for five dollars this time.”

  “Gee whiz, that’s a lot of money.”

  Duddy was ahead on the fifth ball when he shook the machine too avidly and tilted it. “Here,” he said, handing Virgil the five dollars.

  “Oh, I couldn’t take it, Mr. Kravitz. I’d feel so guilty.”

  “For Christ’s sake!”

  “You work so hard for your money.”

  “A gambling debt is a gambling debt. Tomorrow you’d better find yourself a room.”

  “Are you angry with me, Mr. Kravitz?”

  “No. I’m not angry.” He picked up the dictionary again. “A poet, eh?”

  “I’ve got a very good name for a poet. Virgil was the most famous poet of olden times. He wrote in Latin.”

  “You read a lot?”

  “Whenever I can.”

  “Well, I read a lot too. I’m no dope. You ever read God’s Little Acre?”

  “No.”

  “You get a copy. I recommend it highly.” Duddy began to pace. Twice he ran to the door and opened it. “I thought I heard somebody.” That bitch, he thought. “Well, let’s see a sample of your work.”

  Virgil jumped up, dug into his kitbag, and handed Duddy a page. Duddy read the poem and handed it back to Virgil, smiling broadly. “It doesn’t even rhyme,” he said. “A poet.”

  “Modern poetry isn’t supposed to. This is a blank verse.”

  “Wha’?”

  “I’m a follower of Kenneth Patchen.”

  Virgil told him about Patchen. He said he was great.

  “Get me a copy of his book. I’d like to read it. Excuse me a minute.”

  Duddy ran downstairs and listened at the door. He heard Yvette in the kitchen. “Can I come in?” he shouted.

  The kitchen light went out.

  “Try to be ready at eight-thirty. I want to get down to the office early tomorrow.”

  Again there was no reply and Duddy went upstairs to sleep. Yvette did not come into the office the next morning or the morning after. Duddy sent flowers, but they came back; so did the chocolates. Meanwhile he discovered that Yvette was seeing Virgil every evening. Duddy worked late with Mr. Friar every night and helped to get the Seigal movie into presentable shape. When he got in early one morning he told Virgil, “Tell Yvette I’m drinking too much. Say I look terrible.”

  “I don’t mean to intrude, Mr. Kravitz, but I understand the two of you have had a disagreement. I put in a good word for you whenever I can.”

  A week went by. Ten days. Duddy called Virgil into the office. “Look,” he said, “a funny thing happened. Debrofsky’s brother-in-law made a mistake. The truck only cost seven-fifty.” He handed Virgil a check for the difference. “I’m afraid it’s postdated,” he said. “But if you wait a coupl
e of weeks…”

  Yvette returned to work the next morning.

  “I want you to go to Ste. Agathe,” Duddy said. “I’ve got the money for Duquette.”

  She put out her hand for the keys.

  “I’ve got nothing to do this afternoon. Maybe I’ll tag along for the drive.”

  “If you like.”

  Back in Montreal again they drove straight to the office. Duddy had lots of letters to dictate. But first he took out the map and red crayon and colored in the land that used to belong to Duquette.

  “I own nearly half of it now. Well, more than a third anyway. Six months it took me. That’s all. Well, what do you say? What’s your opinion of Duddy Kravitz now?”

  Three

  1

  Duddy’s winter was exceptionally prosperous, and happy too. Mr. Friar had succeeded in making something of the Seigal bar-mitzvah movie and Duddy had picked up a small profit, although he let it go at a reduced price. He did extremely well, too, with his third bar-mitzvah movie and two of weddings. He hired a girl to help Yvette. Making commercial films for television, it seemed to Duddy, might turn out to be even more profitable than — as he called them — his “social featurettes.” He began to think in terms of larger offices with a studio of his own and he made several trips to Toronto to find out what he could about industrial films and the profits to be made there. Meanwhile, on the distribution side, he was breaking even, better sometimes, and building up lots of goodwill. Whenever it was possible he showed films free of charge at, for instance, a Knights of Pythias evening for underprivileged kids or any charity event in Ste. Agathe. He was determined to make friends with the mayor there and he succeeded. He rented his films by the week and Virgil’s salary had to be paid anyway. Lots of his free showings got him mentions in Mel West’s What’s What once he got a whole paragraph to himself. It read: ADD MONTREALERS WITH A HEART: Up-and-coming cineman Duddy Kravitz informs me he’s rarin’ to show movies free any time, anywhere, if the cause is worthy… Kravitz, soon to celebrate his first year in show biz, has three original productions under his belt already, and his plans for the future include a feature-length comedy production with Ourtown’s Cuckoo Kaplan… Howdy dood it? “I work eighteen hours a day,” he says, “and if I drive my staff hard they know I’ve always got my schonzola to the grindstone too.” How old is he? Nineteen! So don’t let any socialist sad sacks tell you it’s no longer possible to go from rags to riches in this country… Born and bred on St. Urbain Street, Duddy was working as waiter not many moons ago… reminder: For those free films DIAL MOVIES.

  Virgil never found a room. He stayed on in the apartment — he was on the road three or four days a week anyway — and Duddy got to enjoy having him there. With his second week’s salary Virgil bought Duddy a record player and he never returned from a trip to the Laurentians without flowers or a box of chocolates for Yvette and a trick cigarette lighter or maybe a book for Duddy. Only twice during the first month did he waken with a bruised and bloody mouth.

  One of Virgil’s poems was published in Attack!, mimeographed magazine published by some fighting young followers of Ezra Pound. It was called “Himmler Has Only Got One Ball.”

  “At least this one rhymes,” Duddy said, “but why don’t you try something longer. You know, with a story.”

  Virgil had met the editor of Attack!, fierce little man with a broken nose, at Duddy’s apartment soon after it had become a gathering place for bohemians. That came about through Duddy’s acquisition of the record player and his discovery that he was a music lover. Duddy bought Beethoven’s nine symphonies on long-playing records and listened to them in order. He kept a date stamp and ink pad next to his records and each time he listened to one of them he stamped the date on the album. He also began to collect Schubert and Mozart and Brahms and that’s how he ran into Hersh, his old F.F.H.S. schoolmate. Hersh had come into the record store to collect an extremely rare African war chant record he had ordered some months before.

  “For Christ’s sake,” Duddy shouted. “Hersh, of all people.”

  Hersh wore his hair long. He had grown a beard.

  “Hey,” Duddy said, punching him lightly on the shoulder, “where’s your violin and the cup, eh?”

  But Hersh made a sour face.

  “I was only kidding,” Duddy said.

  Hersh, who had campaigned against the 7¢chocolate bar and come second in the province and won a scholarship to McGill, had quit the university. Duddy was astonished. “Jeez,” he said.

  Hersh was no longer short, he’d lost his squint, but he was still somewhat pimply. He had grown up to be a big, chunky man with a long severe head and enormous black eyes. “There was no sense in staying on,” he said. “I had no intention of becoming the apogee of the Jewish bourgeois dream. Namely a doctor or a lawyer.”

  “Aha,” Duddy said.

  “I think I’ve succeeded in purging myself of the ghetto mentality.”

  Duddy took Hersh to his apartment for a drink.

  “A writer,” Duddy said. “Can you beat that? How are you doing?”

  “Writing isn’t a career. It’s a vocation. I’m not in it for the money.”

  “No offense. Publish anything?”

  Hersh quickly told him what he thought about editors. He said his writing wasn’t commercial. He pointed out that he didn’t get the usual printed rejection slips, but personal notes from editors, always asking if they could see more of his work.

  “Sure,” Duddy said, “but have you published anything?”

  “No.”

  “Well, some people hit it off right away. Others struggle for years. I’m sure you’ll be famous. I’ll bet you’ll be another Ellery Queen.”

  “I don’t write detective stories.”

  Hersh told him that he was going to Paris in the autumn.

  “A St. Urbain Street boy. Isn’t that something. Boy, I understand that the dames there…”

  “That’s a clichéIt isn’t true.”

  Duddy grinned. “Hoohaw,” he said, and he poured Hersh another drink. “It’s so good to see you. We ought to have reunions like. When I think of all the swell characters I used to know at F.F.H.S. Hey, remember the time that lush-head MacPherson accused me of killing his wife?”

  “He’s in an asylum.”

  “Wha’?”

  “He’s in Verdun. I think I’d better be off. Thanks for the drink.”

  “Aw, come on. Sit down.”

  “Why pretend we’re friends, Duddy? We hated each other at school.”

  Virgil arrived and Duddy sent him out for some smoked meat and more liquor. “Virgie’s a poet. He writes blank verse. Like Patchen.”

  “Do you read Patchen?”

  “Sure.”

  “He’s a minor talent.”

  “No kidding?”

  Yvette came and Hersh decided to stay. He had a date, though.

  “Tell the broad to come here,” Duddy said.

  The girl came and brought two others with her. Mr. Friar arrived. One of Hersh’s friends got on the phone and by ten-thirty there were twelve people in the apartment, including the fierce editor of Attack! sent Virgil out for more booze and began a high score competition on the pinball machine. When the party finally broke up at two A.M. or thereabouts he shouted, “Come again. Come any time.”

  They did, too, and they brought still more friends. Yvette was amused. “I never thought I’d see the day when you were played for a sucker. Maybe there’s still hope for you.”

  “Hersh is going to be another Tolstoi. Boy, are you ever a killjoy.”

  “All right,” Yvette said, “but if you think I’m going to clean up this mess every night… “

  “Intellectual stimulation is good for you,” Duddy said. “I read in Fortune nowadays many executives go to the university in the summer to read up on philosophy and shit like that. It broadens you.”

  Virgil showed Yvette a book of poems by the editor of Attack! signed it for me,” he said.


  “He tried to sell me a copy too.”

  “Jeez, Yvette, a poet’s gotta live too. Have a heart.”

  “Don’t tell me you bought one off him?”

  “What if I did?”

  One or another of Hersh’s crowd dropped in every night. Keiley was the noisiest and the most troublesome. He left burning cigarettes everywhere and when Yvette got angry with him he said, “A man shouldn’t be dominated by his possessions.” The hardest to get rid of, however, was the fierce editor of Attack! never left until the last bottle was empty. Virgil adored him. After the others had gone he would sit on the floor and Blum would recite his latest poems to him in a booming voice. “I can’t understand it,” Blum said, “when you think how well known the other poets of my generation are… Spender and Dylan and George Barker… I can’t understand it…”

  When he had too much to drink and began to cry Blum reminded Duddy of Cuckoo Kaplan. Hersh didn’t like Blum. “An unsigned copy of his poems,” he said, “is a collector’s item.”

  But Hersh was hard and cynical only when the others were around. Alone with Duddy he was a different sort of person. “Watch out for some of the others,” he once warned Duddy. “They don’t understand your kind of generosity. They poke fun at you behind your back.”

  Yvette agreed. “They’re taking advantage of you,” she said.

  “Gwan. The trouble with you, Yvette, is you just can’t understand people who are interested in the higher things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Man does not live by bread alone,” Duddy said.

  It was a rare night when Duddy came home from the office and found nobody sitting in the apartment. He ran up enormous food and liquor bills but Hersh’s crowd gave him more pleasure than he had ever had before. There were other guests too. Max and Lennie came occasionally and Bernie Altman was invited to dinner at least once a week. Duddy, taking him into his confidence one night, told him about Lac St. Pierre, and with Yvette’s help the two boys constructed a relief model of the area. That took them weeks of painstaking work on the floor with balsam wood, flour, paints and airplane glue while Yvette fed them sandwiches and coffee and outside the snow fell. There were fierce arguments too over the site of the camp dining room and whether or not it was in good taste to have the boys’ and girls’ bunkhouses laid out to spell D.K. Bernie lent Duddy books by Mumford and spoke passionately to him about Le Corbusier, but though Duddy swore he would have no other architect design Lac St. Pierre, he still felt that some of Bernie’s designs were a little too unusual.