The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (10 page)

Duddy, too, was most impressed with Cuckoo, and he used to bring him breakfast in bed. Cuckoo, who was familiar with Max the Hack by name, gave Duddy bit parts in two of his skits. He could see that the boy was lonely and he didn’t mind when he came to his room late at night to talk.

The bed in the hot, smoke-filled little room was always unmade. Usually the breakfast tray was still on the floor and there were cigarette butts and soiled laundry and empty rye bottles everywhere. Duddy usually cleared a space for himself on the floor and Cuckoo, reduced to his underwear, curled like a coiled spring on a corner of the bed with a glass in his hand, mindless of the cigarette ashes he dropped on the sheets.

Duddy told Cuckoo about some of his business ideas.

Next summer, he thought, he might try to set up in the movie rental business. All he needed was a truck, a projector, and a
goy
to run the camera, and with a good movie, playing a different resort each night, he would rake in no fortune, but … Another idea he had was to make color movies of weddings and bar-mitzvahs. There might be a goldmine in this, he told Cuckoo, and he was thinking of calling himself Dudley Kane Productions. Who knows, but if the idea caught on, five-six years from now he might be able to make a feature-length comedy right here in Montreal, starring Cuckoo Kaplan. But to begin with, he needed that truck and projector and a
goy
to operate it. Maybe the Boy Wonder, who was an intimate of his father’s, would stake him. Duddy said that he would see about that in the autumn.

The rye helped to calm Cuckoo. Gradually he stopped scratching his head and, if Duddy stayed long enough, he sometimes tried out one of his new routines on him. But first he’d say, “You’ve got to be honest with me. I want to know exactly what you think. I can take it.”

Duddy was flattered by the tryouts in the small bedroom and every one of Cuckoo’s routines made him howl.

“You kill me, Cuckoo. My sides hurt me, honest.”

When Cuckoo was depressed after playing to a hostile house on a Saturday night, Duddy would hurry to his bedroom with sandwiches and a pitcher of ice cubes. “Look,” he’d say, “you think it was always such a breeze for Danny Kaye when he was playing the borscht circuit?” On and on Duddy would talk while Cuckoo consumed rye with alarming haste. When Cuckoo replied at last, he’d say in a slurred voice, “That’s show biz, I guess. That’s show biz.” It was his favorite expression.

“You know something, kid, my trouble is I’ve got the wrong face for a comic. People take one look at Danny Kaye or Lou Costello and right off they howl. I have to work too hard. They take one look at my kisser and they want to buy me a sandwich or help me find a girl.”

Cuckoo took lots of vitamin pills and he ate sparingly. Many times
after a show that only went over so-so he was sick to his stomach. Then, perched on his bed ready for instant flight, wiping his thin chest with a towel, he would wait until he felt sufficiently settled inside to start drinking again. On one night like that he told Duddy, “I’m going to be famous one day. I’m going to be very famous. And I’ll never forget you.”

Something else about Cuckoo was that he too hated Irwin Shubert.

One night after the show Irwin phoned Cuckoo to say he was in the bar at Le Coq d’Or twelve miles away with a Broadway producer on vacation who was looking for fresh faces for his latest musical. Irwin’s manner was so urgent, so sincere, that Cuckoo hurried right over there. While Irwin and the producer went through a couple of bottles of champagne he did his Romeo and Juliet Capelovitch act twice and his James Cagney bar-mitzvah speech. “Can you dance?” the producer asked. Cuckoo danced. “Let’s hear you sing something?” Cuckoo sang. The producer ordered more champagne. “Let’s see the Capelovitch routine again. If you’re not too tired, I mean?” Cuckoo obliged. “Thanks a million,” the producer said, and he got up and left the bar.

“Where’s he going?” Cuckoo asked, out of breath.

“He wants to talk to me privately,” Irwin said. “You wait here.”

Cuckoo waited an hour, he waited two hours, he waited until closing time, and then he was given a bill for two dinners and a whole evening’s drinking. It came to nearly thirty dollars. Only a couple of afternoons later he overheard Irwin say to one of the guests, “Not only is he the most puerile comedian I’ve ever seen, he’s also the most gullible. The other night Jerry and I were stuck with a big bill at the Coq d’Or so I phoned Cuckoo and …”

The story spread. People smiled at Cuckoo and slapped him on the back. “Hey, how’d you like to meet a producer tonight?” So Cuckoo took to waiting for Irwin on the beach. Then, once Irwin’s back was turned, Cuckoo would wink at the others, lick his index finger and wet his eyebrows with it, and walk off saucily. That was
usually good for a laugh, but Duddy warned him against it one night. “They say he and Rubin’s daughter are going to get hitched. They go riding together a lot. So watch it, eh?”

Yet another business idea Duddy told Cuckoo about was his plan for a Ste. Agathe newspaper. There were nine hotels in town, he said, and each one must have a list as long as your arm of addresses for all over the States. Wouldn’t it be smart publicity for them to keep Americans in touch, to remind them out of season about Ste. Agathe and the swell times they had had there? And think, too, of the possible advertisers who would want to reach American tourists passing through Montreal. Night clubs, department stores, hotels, restaurants. Jeez, everybody. The newspaper could organize beauty contests and regattas and fight racial prejudice. This was an idea that could work. Duddy was convinced of it and he told Cuckoo that he would like him to write a funny column for the newspaper. He thought he might call it the
Laurentian Liner
, because it would travel everywhere, and Cuckoo agreed the name was a catchy one. Duddy said he would speak to the Boy Wonder about it in the autumn.

Duddy had been putting money in the bank since he was eleven and in his first month at Rubin’s he had earned nearly three hundred dollars in tips, but what he needed was a real stake.

At night, lying exhausted on his cot, Duddy realized how little money he had in big business terms and he dreamed about his future. He knew what he wanted, and that was to own his own land and to be rich, a somebody, but he was not sure of the smartest way to go about it. He was confident. But there had been other comers before him. South America, for instance, could no longer be discovered. It had been found. Toni Home Permanent had been invented. Another guy had already thought up Kleenex. But there was something out there, like let’s say the atom bomb formula before it had been discovered, and Duddy dreamed that he would find it and make his
fortune. He had his heroes. There was the stranger who had walked into the Coca-Cola Company before it had made its name and said, “I’ll write down two words on a piece of paper, and if you use my idea I want a partnership in the company.” The two words were “Bottle it.” Don’t forget, either, the man who saved that salmon company from bankruptcy with the slogan
This salmon is guaranteed not to turn pink in the can
. There was the founder of the
Reader’s Digest –
he’d made his pile too. The man who thought up the supermarket must have been another shnook of a small grocer once. There was a day when even the Boy Wonder gathered and sold streetcar transfers. Sure, everyone had to make a start, but it was getting late. Duddy was already seventeen and a half and sure as hell he didn’t want to wait on tables for the rest of his life. He needed a stake. When he got back to Montreal in the autumn he would speak to his father and go to see the Boy Wonder.

“I’m not,” he once told Cuckoo, “the kind of a jerk who walks around deaf and dumb. I keep my eyes peeled.” And already Duddy had plenty of ideas. He had even had letterheads printed – Dudley Kane, Sales Agent – and every week he marked the advertising section of the Sunday edition of the New York
Times
for novelties, bargains, and possible agencies. That was a hint he had picked up from Mr. Cohen, whose family was staying at Rubin’s for the entire summer. Duddy replied to several advertisements in the
Times
. He was, at one time, interested in a new soap that was guaranteed not to sting the eyes.

Duddy watched all the businessmen who came to the hotel. He made sure they got to know him, too, and that they made no mistake about his being a waiter. That was temporary. He watched the way they avoided their wives and the sun and sat around playing poker and talking about the market and the boom in real estate. Most of them ate too much and took pills. One, a Mr. Farber, had summoned Duddy to his table on his first day at the hotel and torn a hundred
dollar bill in two and given Duddy half of it. “We’re here for the season,” he had said, “and we want snappy service. You give it to us and the other half of this note is yours. O.K., kid?”

Duddy dreamed, he planned, he lay awake nights smoking, and meanwhile Irwin continued to torment him. One night a bottle of ketchup was emptied on his sheets and once he discovered a dead mouse in his serving jacket pocket.

The other waiters began to feel badly. “Aw, lay off,” Bernie Altman said. Another night Donald Levitt said, “Take it easy. Irwin. I’m warning you. He’s had enough.”

But Irwin couldn’t stop and Duddy began to retaliate. When Irwin started to mock him in the dormitory with the others there, Duddy would begin to improvise songs.

Another went:

W
ITH THE COMING OF JULY, THE HOTTEST AND MOST
grueling month of the season, the waiters were soon too drained for midnight jaunts to Val Morin. They rose listlessly at seven to set their tables and squeeze fruit juices for breakfast, and once the last breakfast had been served, say ten-thirty, it was necessary to set the tables again for lunch. The brawls in the kitchen quickened and the competition for tips got fiercer. After lunch, if the boys had no cutlery to polish, they were usually off duty for two hours and all of them slept, either on the beach or in the darkened dormitory. Not Duddy, however. He hung around the card tables and picked up additional tips running errands for the players.

“There’s nothing that little fiend wouldn’t do for a dollar,” Irwin told Linda, “and that’s how I’m going to teach him a lesson. I’ve got it all figured out.”

It was a long hot summer and soon a misplaced toothpaste tube or a borrowed towel was enough to set one boy violently against another. The dormitory over the dance hall had a corrugated tin roof and there were nights when it was too stuffy to sleep. Bernie Altman lost seven pounds and circles swelled under Donald Levitt’s eyes, but Duddy showed no signs of fatigue. One afternoon, however, he felt faint, and instead of waiting on the card players he searched for a place to rest. He didn’t dare go to the beach because he was a lousy
swimmer and Irwin was certainly there, anyway, and he would ridicule his thin white body again, making the girls laugh. The garden was no use because he would surely be asked to fetch a handbag from a third floor bedroom or search for a misplaced pair of sunglasses. So Duddy wandered round the back of the hotel and sat down on a rock. It was so different here from the beach or the main entrance with its flower beds and multicolored umbrellas and manicured lawns. Flies buzzed round a heap of garbage pails, and sheets and towels flapped on a dozen different lines that ran from the fire escapes to numerous poles. A group of chambermaids and kitchen helpers, permanent staff, sat on the fire escape. Dull, motionless, their eyelids heavy, they smoked in silence. Yvette waved, another girl smiled wearily, and Duddy waved back, but he didn’t join them. He returned the next afternoon, however, and the afternoon after that, and each time he sat nearer to the drained, expressionless group on the fire escape. On Sunday afternoon he brought six bottles of ice-cold beer with him, laid them on the steps, shrugged his shoulders, and walked off to his rock again. Yvette went over to him.

“Is the beer for us?”

“Let’s not make a fuss, eh? I got some big tips today, that’s all.”

“You’re very nice. Thanks.”

“Aw.”

“Won’t you join us?”

“I’ve got to get back,” he said, “see you,” and he hurried off, embarrassed, to the dormitory. He found Irwin going through his suitcase there. “Hey!”

“Somebody stole my watch.”

“Keep away from my stuff or you’ll get this,” Duddy said, making a fist. “You’ll get this right in the kisser.”

A couple of afternoons later Irwin rushed into the dormitory. “Do you know what Duddy told Linda this afternoon?” he asked the boys. “Some fantastic story about a brother Bradley who owns a ranch in Arizona.”

“So?”

“I happen to know he only has one brother. He’s in med, I think.”

“All right. He lied. Big deal.”

“He’s taking Linda out tonight,” Irwin said in his liquid whisper.

When Duddy entered the dormitory a half hour later, the boys watched apprehensively as he shaved and shined his shoes. Bernie Altman would have liked to warn him that something was up, but Irwin was there and it was impossible.

Duddy was pleased, but he felt jumpy too. He didn’t know much about broads, though there had naturally been lots of rumors and reports. Of Flora Lubin, for instance, he had heard it said, “That one likes it the Greek way,” but watching Flora walk down the street with her schoolbooks held to her breast Duddy couldn’t imagine it. Neither could he credit another report, this one about Grepsy Segal’s big sister, that, as A.D. put it, she jerks away for dear life every night. (A girl couldn’t, anyway, she didn’t have a tool.)

Through the years Duddy had collected lots of injunctions about broads and the handling thereof. War Assets safes are not safe. Tell them anything but never put it in writing. “Talk, talk, talk, but no matter what they say there’s only one thing they really want.” Don’t give your correct name and address unless it’s really necessary. The hottest are redheads and the easiest single ones over twenty-seven. “A good thing is to start with tickling the back of the neck. That kills them. It’s a scientific fact.” Gin excites them. Horseback riding gives them hot pants too. Cherries are trouble, but married ones miss it something terrible. “Jewish girls like it just as much as
shiksas
. More, maybe,
I
know.”