The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (33 page)

Yvette came upstairs. “You might go and see him,” she said.

“I phone the hospital every morning. They tell me he’s doing fine.”

“He’s not out of the woods yet. They’re worried about the fracture. There’s a sliver of bone that –”

“Awright.”

“He asks about you every day. He thinks you’re angry he smashed up the truck and that’s why you won’t come.”

“Let’s not waste time,” Duddy said. “Here’s a box of matches. You poke them under my fingernails and light them one at a time. Go ahead.”

“I don’t feel sorry for you.”

Duddy poured himself a drink. “Did he have a –”

“He had a fit. Yes. It was brought on by fatigue.”

Duddy began to play the pinball machine. He won three free games.

“I want you to go to the hospital tomorrow.”

“When can I expect you back at the office?”

“I’m not coming back. You can stop my salary right away. I’ll consider the last two weeks as my notice.”

“What are you going to do?”

“As soon as possible I’m going to take Virgil to Ste. Agathe. I’ll get a job there and I’ll take care of him.”

“You make me laugh. Have you any idea how much money it’s going to take to look after him? The doctors’ bills alone –”

“I’ll manage.”

“How? On a chambermaid’s salary? I’m looking after Virgie. He’s going to have the best care. Anything he wants.”

“It’s all settled. I’m sorry, Duddy.”

“What about me? You said you loved me.”

“Looking after Virgil will be a full-time job.”

“Couldn’t we look after him together?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’ve got a martyr complex. Do you know that?”

“If you start shouting I’m going to leave.”

“I’m a realist but. I know you inside out. You’re gonna look after a cripple for the rest of your life? You’re no nun, let’s face it. You like it as much as I do.”

“There are times when I wonder what I ever saw in you.”

“You do, eh? Well I’ll tell you. You know what you saw in me? You saw a young guy who was going to make it. You saw a pretty good life ahead. Don’t look at me like that either. Let’s be frank. If not for me you might have been a lousy chambermaid for the rest of your life. Don’t! You try to slap me and I’ll kick your teeth in. ‘Sometimes I wonder what I saw in you.’ Don’t make me laugh.”

“We had some good times together, Duddy. Don’t spoil it. I prefer to remember that.”

“You want my handkerchief?”

“I’ll speak to the notary. The deeds can be transferred to your father’s name until you come of age.”

“You think the business is going to fall apart without you?”

“I never said that.”

“Well, there were lots of things you did pretty bad in that office. You couldn’t add your way out of a paper bag and it takes a magician to read your handwriting. You know what? I’ll tell you what. I’m going to get myself a real experienced secretary.
A girl who can spell
. Somebody real pretty. Boy, am I ever going to start having a good time.”

“Are you finished?”

“Shettup!”

“I want you to go and see Virgil tomorrow. I won’t be there. You won’t have to see me.”

“I wish Virgie was dead. Get out,” he hollered. “Get out, please.”

D
UDDY DIDN’T GO TO SEE VIRGIL THE NEXT MORNING
. He put an advertisement in the
Star
and began to interview girls to fill Yvette’s job. He hired the cutest one, but she left after a week because she couldn’t abide his language. He hired another one, a kid just out of school, began a desultory affair, and fired her when her period started eight days later. The third girl was highly experienced. She wanted desperately to put the office in order and went in for bullshit like interoffice memos (rockets, she called them) and asked Duddy so many questions he couldn’t answer that he fired her too. Four days of the week he was on the road, showing movies. He was not getting much sleep again and Lennie got him more benzedrine pills. Every Friday he sent Virgil his check and every Monday morning it was back on his desk, the envelope unopened. We’ll see, he thought. She’s proud, but they can’t hold out forever.

By the end of June the hotels had filled for the summer and Duddy’s playing schedule required him to be on the road all week. He kept Virgil’s sleeping bag in the back of the truck and slept in the fields and on the beaches to save money and hoping to catch pneumonia or be bitten by a snake. He’d go for days without shaving and was seldom seen in a clean shirt. If anyone remarked on his appearance he’d smirk and say something rude. He looked for fights everywhere and by mid-June he had already lost three clients. Even so his
schedule was a grueling one, enough to keep two men busy, and there were times when he forgot to take a pill and fell asleep at the wheel. He drove recklessly too. The hell with it, he thought.

“You look like a bum,” Max said to him one day at Eddy’s.

“A big deal.”

“Business isn’t so hot? I knew you’d get your fingers burnt one day. I warned you.”

Reyburn did a surprisingly good job on the Hershorn wedding. His film was straightforward, exactly the sort of thing Duddy had wanted and never had from Friar. But now he found it boring. He missed the crazy angle shots and montages and outlandish commentary.

“What’s wrong?” Reyburn asked.

“Nothing.”

“Mr. Hershorn is delighted.”

“Mr. Hershorn doesn’t know his ass from his elbow.”

“Look here, Kravitz, I don’t think you’re happy with me. I’ve been offered something in Toronto, but –”

“Take it. Good-by.”

“You’re a funny kid. I don’t understand you.”

“I’m a comedian.”

It was crazy, he had the Camp Forest Land film coming up and he’d never find another cameraman in time. Duddy phoned Grossman and offered to return his advance.

“We’ve got a contract,” Grossman said. “I promised all the parents that the kids would be in the movies …”

“My heart bleeds, Grossman.”

“A contract is a contract.”

“Sue me,” he said, hanging up.

He refused to show movies at Rubin’s because he was afraid to see Linda again, but one night in Ste. Agathe he ran into Cuckoo.

“Hey,” Cuckoo said, “remember the old days, before you were a movie mogul? No time for your old pals now, eh?”

“I’m working day and night.”

“All work and no play. You know what they say? Hey, how would you like to see one of my new routines?”

Duddy went to Cuckoo’s room. He couldn’t get out of it.

“The band’s playing Yiddish music, but eerie. There’s a scream offstage. I come on in this leather jacket, see. I’m on a tricycle. I’m slouching. Did you see
The Wild One?”

Duddy nodded.

“I’m on a tricycle, see. I’ve got a lollypop in my mouth and the number’s called ‘The Return of Moivyn Brandovitch or Mumbles the Macher.’ Wait till you hear the lyrics … ‘I’m a vild von from vay’ – What’sa matter? You dead?”

“Cuckoo, you’re never going to make it. You’re not good enough.”

Cuckoo staggered. He freed an imaginary dagger from his chest.
“Et tu, Brute.”

“You’re going to be playing this lousy hotel for the rest of your life.”

“Boy, have you ever changed. I’ve heard stories, but –”

“What kind of stories?”

“Stories.”

Duddy grabbed him. “What kind of stories?”

“Yvette’s back in town, living with some guy in a wheelchair. They say you took them both for every cent they had.”

“You little bastard.”

“Irwin’s graduated, you know. He’s got his law degree and he’s been speaking to Yvette. It seems the guy never should have been allowed –”

Duddy shoved Cuckoo across the room. He collapsed on the floor there, shielding his face. “Don’t hit me on the nose,” he shrieked. “Whatever you do don’t touch my nose! The operation cost me –”

Duddy fled. That makes the second time this week I hit a guy, he thought, and he drove to Montreal that night, even though he had to be back in the mountains to show his first movie at two the next afternoon. Duddy got out his typewriter and made a pot of coffee. He wrote a long intricate letter to Hersh, saying how much he loved
and missed Yvette, how Virgil’s accident was destroying him and the business was in ruins, and ending with how he saw no reason why he shouldn’t commit suicide. It was dawn by the time he finished. Duddy put the letter into an envelope addressed to Yvette and wrote another letter to her, this one shorter.

He mailed the long letter in the morning and held the shorter one back for a day, but both of them were returned to his office unopened.

At ten-thirty Monday morning the phone rang. It was Max. “Your Uncle Benjy died at three o’clock this morning,” he said. “He passed away in his sleep. He didn’t suffer.”

Everyone from the factory came to the funeral and so did lots of buyers and competitors and old comrades. Duddy drove in the car that followed immediately behind the hearse with his grandfather, his father, his brother, and Auntie Ida.

“We’re a small family,” Lennie said.

“But we stick together,” Max said. “We’re loyal.”

Duddy took his grandfather’s hand and held it between his own.

“He couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds,” Simcha said.

Ida looked out of the window. Duddy could make out the stays beneath her black silk dress and he imagined the raw marked flesh underneath.

“It’s about time either you or Lennie got hitched,” Max said. “Paw here would like to see some grandchildren …”

“Shettup,” Duddy said.

“He waited by the window for you day after day,” Ida said.

“I came whenever I could,” Lennie said.

“She means Duddel,” Simcha said.

“Gwan,” Max said. “He never had time for Duddy. Lennie was his favorite.”

“There’s a letter he left for you,” Ida said. “I’ve got it at home.”

“Sure thing,” Duddy said.

They drove in silence.

“He had his faults,” Max said.

Nobody answered.

“A better brother I couldn’t have had. I’m just saying he had his faults.”

They finally turned onto the gravel road leading to the cemetery.

“I’ve got faults too,” Max said. “I recognize it.”

Simcha watched without tears when they lowered the coffin into the earth. But when Duddy freed his hand from his grandfather’s he saw that the palm was cut and bleeding and he wrapped a handkerchief round it.
“Zeyda?”

The old man was muttering something in Hebrew. A prayer.

“Where’s my mother’s stone?”

He pointed it out. Lennie was already standing there.

“He did so much for me, you know,” Lennie said. “But I was always frightened of Uncle Benjy. There was something about him …”

“Easy. Take it easy, Lennie.”

“Towards the end, you know, I had a feeling he was making fun of me.”

“He loved you like a son. Everybody knows that. Let’s go, eh?” But Duddy lingered to take a last look at his mother’s stone. “We’re supposed to come here once a year, aren’t we? This year let’s try. We could come together.”

Duddy went home. They had heard about his uncle’s death in the mountains so they didn’t expect him with the movies, but his clients were annoyed because he didn’t even bother to phone.

I’ll get into bed, he thought, and never get out, not unless somebody comes for me. But nobody came and the heat made his head ache. He dreamt again about somebody else’s bulldozers clearing his land. He saw himself horribly mutilated in a road accident. Yvette came to the hospital, but it was too late. The doctors led her away. “He kept calling for someone,” they said. “A girl named Yvette. He’s left everything he owned in her name.”
Go ahead, cry your heart out, you lousy bitch
. In another dream he was an old man of forty, toothless, bald, a drunk, and he stopped at a big rich house to ask for a cup of coffee. Yvette answered the door wearing a mink coat. She recognized him and sank to her knees, but Duddy wouldn’t stay; he freed himself from her embrace and limped away. “I’ve got the mark of Cain on me,” he told her. He woke with a cry of anguish. His bed floated like a raft amid a wash of orange peels, last week’s newspapers, cigarette butts, sticky glasses, and watery ice cube trays. As the piercing sun sought him through a haze and a vulture circled predatorily, the sea lifted him onto an island. “Where does the white man come from?” a girl asked. “I think he’s dying,” her brother observed. “Bring me to your head man,” Duddy said.
“Capishe?”
Old, handsome, a scornful multimillionaire presiding over a banquet table, he heard whispering in the background.

“But why didn’t he ever marry?”

“They say that when he was very young …”

Sometimes the phone rang and twice the door.

“Yvette?”

Anxiously she ripped open the telegram.

There were broads, an endless spill of beauty queens for him and Friar, the merry movie-makers, as they wandered from country to country, but at the Academy Award dinner there were those who saw through his mask of forced gaiety.

“He hates all women so, poor devil.”

“But what an appetite! The comings and going from his house in one night. Jeez.”

A crowd gathered round the grizzled old lush who had expired on the Bowery pavement. Flies filled his battered face.

“Any identification?”

“Nothing in his pockets, except this.”

A faded photograph of Yvette.