The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

by Mordecai Richler

  “Jesus,” Max said, smacking the side of his face.

  “Hello, Linda,” Duddy said.

  Max pulled Lennie over. “This is my boy Lennie,” he told Dingleman. “He’s going to be a doctor. A specialist.”

  “That’s grand,” Dingleman said. “Hullo, Duddy.” He extended his hand, but Duddy didn’t take it. “I came to congratulate you,” he said.

  “Shake with him,” Max said.

  Duddy shook hands with him.

  “There. Isn’t that how sports should behave? Jerry’s a good loser,” Max said.

  “This is a fine property your son’s got here, Max.”

  “Well, you know. He’s a shrewd cookie. A chip off the old block.”

  “Yeah,” Duddy said, “and I’ll tell you something funny about this land, Dingleman. No trespassing.”

  “It’s a joke,” Max said quickly. “Duddy’s a kidder. Natural born.”

  “The sign goes up tomorrow. It reads, ‘Trespassers will be prosecuted.’ “

  “Ah ha ha,” Max said, poking Duddy.

  “You’re a big boy now,” Linda said, “aren’t you?”

  “I’m not a waiter any more, if that’s what you mean?”

  “It’s going to cost you a fortune to develop this land,” Jerry said.

  “So?”

  “Who’s the old man?” Jerry asked suddenly.

  “He’s not an old man, he’s my grandfather. This is my property, sonny. Watch how you talk.”

  “You’re going to need lots of money, Duddy. A fortune.”

  “A million,” Duddy began, “maybe more. Because there’s going to be a children’s camp and a hotel and — What’s the matter, Zeyda, are you going?”

  “Back to the car.”

  “Have you picked your farm yet?”

  “I don’t feel well. I’m going to sit in the car.”

  “But you haven’t chosen your farm yet. Zeyda, Dingleman stopped Duddy. “Let him go,” he said.

  Duddy watched the old man retire slowly down the slope. “All his life he told me a man should have land. He said he wanted a farm. I don’t…”

  Dingleman laughed. “Maybe he never expected you to get him one?”

  “Wha’?”

  “Have you ever read any Yiddish poetry?”

  “Zeyda, back. Zeyda!” the old man continued towards the car.

  “Certainly not,” Dingleman continued. “But if you had you’d know about those old men. Sitting in their dark cramped ghetto corners, they wrote the most mawkish, schoolgirlish stuff about green fields and sky. Terrible poetry, but touching when you consider the circumstances under which it was written. Your grandfather doesn’t want any land. He wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

  “Will you shettup, please?”

  “Duddy, don’t talk like that. He’s excited, Jerry. He —”

  “He said a man without land was nobody.”

  “He never thought you’d make it,” Dingleman said. “Now you’ve frightened him. They want to die in the same suffocating way they lived, bent over a last or a cutting table or a freezing junk yard shack.”

  “He can have any lot he chooses. Any one.”

  “Duddy, listen to me.”

  “He’s listening, Jerry. Listen,

  “I’m interested in this land. I’m interested in you too. I can raise the money for development. You can’t.”

  “Last time I saw you,” Duddy said, “you couldn’t even raise forty-five hundred. Remember, sonny?”

  “We could be partners.”

  Duddy watched his grandfather getting smaller and smaller. He disappeared behind a clump of trees.

  “Alone, you’ll never raise the money you need. With my help we could turn this into a model resort town in five years.”

  Duddy began to laugh. “You heard him, Daddy. You heard the man.”

  “Imagine,” Max said, “my boy and Dingleman. Partners.”

  Duddy laughed some more. “Listen, Dingleman,” he shouted, “get off my land. Beat it.”

  “Duddy,” Max began, “what’s got into you?”

  “Take off, sonny.”

  Max began to shake Duddy.

  “You’ll never do it alone,” Dingleman said.

  Duddy broke free. “I’m giving you five minutes to get the hell off my land. I’m the king of the castle here, sonny.”

  “He’s gone crazy,” Max said to Lennie.

  “Duddy,” Lennie said. “Why don’t you listen to Mr. Dingleman? He makes sense.”

  Duddy picked up a stone. “I’m giving you exactly five minutes to take Linda and get the hell out of here.”

  Linda made as if to slap Duddy’s face, but he caught her hand and held it. “I remember you,” he said. “You slap me and I’ll kick your ass so hard you won’t sit down for a week.”

  Linda spit.

  “It’s good for my grass,” Duddy said. Dingleman turned and began the long, difficult descent. Max pursued him. “Listen, he’s only a kid. You talk to me, Jerry.”

  “You two-bit, dope-smuggling cripple!”

  “Stop it,” Lennie said, alarmed.

  But Duddy cupped his hands and hollered. “On my land,” he shouted, “no trespassers and no cripples. Except on Schnorrer’s Day.”

  “Duddy, please.”

  Duddy jumped up and down, he laughed, he grabbed Lennie round the waist and forced him to dance round and round.

  “Don’t you understand?” he asked. “Don’t you realize that you’re standing smack in the middle of Kravitz Town? This is a goldmine, don’t you realize — He came all this way to beg me for an in. Faster, you bastard. Run, Dingleman. Let’s see you run on those sticks.”

  “Take it easy, Duddy. Please try to calm down.”

  Duddy whirled around and heaved the stone he still held into the lake.

  “Boy,” Lennie said, “are you ever the manic-depressive type.”

  “Come on. Let’s go see what’s ailing the zeyda.”

  Max caught up with his boys halfway down the hill. “You’re my son, Duddy, but I’m going to be frank. You’re in the wrong.”

  “You don’t so-say,” Duddy said.

  “He’s angry at you, Duddy, and when the Boy Wonder gets —”

  “I know. He eats bread and it comes out toasted. I’m angrier but.”

  Simcha sat silent and severe in the front of the car.

  “Why didn’t you pick a farm for yourself?” Duddy asked.

  “I don’t want a farm here.”

  “Why?”

  “The girl came to see me last week.”

  “What girl?”

  “Your girl.”

  “I haven’t got a girl.”

  “Yvette came to see me.”

  “You don’t have to worry,” Max said. “He’s all washed up with her. A good thing too. Mixed —”

  “Will you not interrupt, please?”

  “She told me what you did,” Simcha said. “And I don’t want a farm here.”

  “So you couldn’t even wait to hear my side of the story? Is that right?”

  “I can see what you have planned for me, Duddel. You’ll be good to me. You’d give me everything I wanted. And that would settle your conscience when you went out to swindle others.”

  “Will you all get into the car, please?” Duddy slammed the door. “Nobody’s ever interested in my side of the story. I’m all alone,” he said, pulling savagely at the gearshift.

  “The boy’s fits are getting worse and worse.”

  “I didn’t give him epilepsy.”

  “What’s going on?” Max asked.

  “Would you have rather I married a shiksa, Zeyda?”

  “Don’t twist. Not with me.”

  “You don’t twist either. You don’t want a farm. You never have. You’re scared stiff of the country and you want to die in that stinky old shoe repair shop.”

  Simcha took a deep breath.

  “A man without land is nothing. That’s what you always told me.
Well, I’m somebody. A real somebody.”

  “Why do we have to quarrel,” Max said. “We’re one family.”

  “You couldn’t even go to see Uncle Benjy before he died. Naw, not you. You’re just too goddam proud to live. You —”

  Simcha looked resolutely out of the window.

  “I’m sorry,” Duddy said.

  “You see, Paw. He’s sorry. Kiss and make up,” Max said.

  Eventually they reached the highway.

  “I’m sorry, Zeyda. . . Please?”

  But Simcha still stared out of the window. Duddy parked in front of Lou’s Bagel & Lox Bar. And Simcha wouldn’t get out of the car.

  “We won’t be long,” Duddy said. But inside he couldn’t eat. “Here, Lennie,” he said. “Take him a coffee.”

  “Forget it,” Max said. “He gets like that. I know from long experience.”

  “Shettup, please.”

  “Time heals,” Max said.

  “Will you shettup, please.”

  Lennie returned with the coffee. “Would you believe it,” he said. “He’s crying. I thought I’d never live to see the day…”

  Duddy bolted out of the store. He did not pause to look into the car, but hurried past it and around the block. He began to run. The land is yours, he thought, and nothing they do or say or feel can take it away from you. You pay a price.

  Yvette wasn’t at the house. Neither was Virgil. He found them in the park. Yvette saw him coming and motioned him back, behind a tree, before Virgil could see him. Then, after she’d whispered something to Virgil, she came to join him.

  “Seeing you again,” she said, “might be enough to bring on another fit.”

  Duddy swallowed, he wiped his hand through his hair, he didn’t speak. He looked exasperated.

  “Now tell me quickly what you want,” she said. “I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

  “Maybe. Maybe that’s so. But I’ve got plenty to say to you, sister. Why for two cents I’d wring your goddam neck. Why did you go to my grandfather? Of all the people in the world he’s the only one —”

  “That’s exactly why I went.”

  Duddy made a fist. He shook it.

  “I told him about the check. I told him everything. I wanted to hurt you as badly as I could.”

  “Gee, thanks. Thanks a lot.”

  “Please go.”

  “Look, I did it all for us. Do you think I enjoyed forging the check? Am I a thief?”

  “I don’t know what you are any more. I don’t care, either.”

  “I had to act quickly, Yvette. I had to think for all of us. What I did was… well, unorthodox. That’s the word I’m looking for. But you know, like they say, he who hesitates — Don’t you understand? It’s mine now. At last the land is mine, Yvette. All of it.”

  She tried to walk away. He stopped her.

  “I’m going to pay him back. I swear it, Yvette.”

  “We don’t want your money. If we wanted it we could sue you. All we want from you is to be left alone. Can you understand that?”

  “He’ll get every last cent of his money back whether he likes it or not. And that’s not all, either. I’m going to build him a pretty white house. Just like I said. So help me God I will.”

  “We don’t want to see you again, Duddy. Ever, I mean.”

  “Oh, where do you get this ‘we’ crap suddenly? We-we-we. Listen —”

  “Are you finished?”

  “— you listen, Yvette. You are looking at the man who is going to build a town where only bugs and bullshit was before. I’m going to create jobs. Jeez, I’m a public benefactor. But you’ve got to have faith in me, Yvette. You’ve got to help. Give me time.”

  “You can have all the time in the world, Duddy. But I don’t ever want to see you again.”

  “I don’t ever want to see you again,” he said, mimicking her voice. “Quack-quack-quack. What do you think this is? Some dumb movie?”

  “I’m serious, Duddy.”

  He gave her an anguished look, started to say something, held back, swallowed, shook his fist, and said, his voice filled with wrath, “I have to do everything alone. I can see that now. I can trust nobody.”

  “We betrayed you, I suppose.”

  “Yes. You did.”

  He had spoken with such quiet and certainty that she began to doubt herself.

  “You’ll come crawling,” he said.

  “I want you to know something. I’d you. I’d even get Irwin Shubert to take the case. But Virgil won’t let me. He doesn’t even want to hear about it any more.”

  “You hate me,” Duddy said. “Is that possible?”

  “I think you’re rotten. I wish you were dead.”

  “You don’t understand, Yvette. Why can’t I make you understand? Listen, Yvette, I —”

  But she turned away from him.

  “You’ll come crawling,” he shouted after her, “crawling on your hands and knees,” and he walked off.

  When Duddy finally returned to the store his father’s back was to him. Max sat at a table piled high with sandwiches and surrounded by strangers. “Even as a kid,” he said, sucking a sugar cube, “way back there before he had begun to make his mark, my boy was a troublemaker. He was born on the wrong side of the tracks with a rusty spoon in his mouth, so to speak, and the spark of rebellion in him. A motherless boy,” he said, pounding the table, “but one who thrived on adversity, like Maxim Gorki or Eddie Cantor, if you’re familiar with their histories. You could see from the day of his birth that he was slated for fame and fortune. A comer. Why I remember when he was still at F.F.H.S. they had a teacher there, an anti-Semite of the anti-Semites, a lush-head, and my boy was the one who led the fight against him and drove him out of the school. Just a skinny little fart he was at the time, a St. Urbain Street boy, and he led a fearless campaign against this bastard MacPherson…”

  The strangers looked up at Duddy and smiled.

  “That’s him,” Max said.

  Duddy retreated. He raised his hands in protest.

  “My brother,” Lennie said. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” Duddy said. “I’m fine.”

  “Can’t you ever smile?” Max said, turning to the strangers with a chuckle. “Would it cost you something to give us a little smile?”

  “I’m not driving back with you,” Duddy said gruffly. “You take the Zeyda I’m going by bus.”

  “Why?”

  “Never mind why. Christ almighty. Just give me the money for my fare. I’m flat broke.”

  “That’s a laugh,” Max said, turning to the others again. “Isn’t that a laugh. He’s broke.”

  Duddy’s cheeks burned red.

  “Are you O.K.?” Lennie asked. “You look sick, Duddy.”

  “I’m fine. Just give me the money, please.”

  “Aw, I know what it is. You can’t hide anything from the old man. I’ll bring in the Zeyda you’ll kiss and make up.”

  “In a minute,” Duddy said, “I’m going to explode. I’m going to hit somebody so hard —”

  “Easy,” Lennie said.

  Max smiled at the strangers. “It’s been a big day for him. Red letter stuff. And you’ve never seen a nervier kid.”

  Duddy started for his father, but the waiter got in his way. “Mr. Kravitz?” He smiled shyly at Duddy, holding out the bill. “Are you the Mr. Kravitz who just bought all that land round Lac St. Pierre?”

  “Yeah. Em, I haven’t any cash on me. Daddy, can you… ?”

  “That’s all right, sir. We’ll mark it.”

  And suddenly Duddy did smile. He laughed. He grabbed Max, hugged him, and spun him around. “You see,” he said, his voice filled with marvel. “You see.”

  About the Author

  MORDECAI RICHLER was born in Montreal in 1931. Among his most successful novels are The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz into an acclaimed film starring Richard Dreyfuss), St. Urbain ‘s Horseman, Solomon Gursky Was Here, Barney’s Version. divides his
time between Canada (Montreal and Lake Memphremagog) and London.

  Scan Notes, v3.0: Proofed carefully, italics intact.