The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (17 page)

“Remember,” Mr. Friar said severely. “No artistic interference.”

“Right now I can see myself waiting on tables again.”

“Let’s have another,” Mr. Friar said.

They had one more and then Duddy called for the waiter and paid the bill. Outside, Mr. Friar was not as loquacious as usual. He seemed self-absorbed.

“Thanks a lot for the drinks, Mr. Friar.”

“Don’t mention it.
À demain.”

D
UDDY WAS EXHAUSTED. I’LL SLEEP IN TOMORROW
morning, he thought. I need the rest. But he woke with a scream at three
A.M
. from a dream that was to become a recurrent nightmare. Bulldozers, somebody else’s surveyors, carpenters and plumbers roared and hammered and shouted over the land round Lac St. Pierre. Irwin Shubert held an enormous plan in his hands. He smiled thinly. “Waaa …”

Somebody shook him. “Duddy, wake up! Duddy! It’s me. Lennie.”

Max rushed into the room. “What’s going on here?”

“It’s Duddy. He had a nightmare.”

“You O.K.? You want a Coke or something? Tea?”

“Listen, Duddy. Listen closely. I want you to try to remember everything about your dream.” Lennie grabbed a pencil and paper. “Anything that comes into your head you tell me. I’ll analyze it for you.”

“Jeez.”

“Go ahead. Tell him.”

“I dreamt I was screwing this broad,” Duddy said.

“That’s my boy.”

“Were there any doors? Did you have to go through passages to get to her? What made you –”

“There was a bed like. Her cans were something out of this world …”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Lennie said, putting his pencil and paper away.

“What’sa matter?” Max asked. “Aren’t you interested in that kind of dream? Go ahead, Duddy. I’m listening.”

“Are you making tea?”

They couldn’t get to sleep again. Max and Lennie sat at the kitchen table and Duddy made one of his huge and intricate omelets.

“I don’t get it,” Max said, getting out his backscratcher. “If you were in bed with this broad why did you scream?”

“She bit my toe.”

“Even if you didn’t dream that,” Lennie said, “it’s a very significant remark.”

“Hey,” Max said, “what did you put in this omelet?”

“It’s great,” Lennie said. “Duddy makes the best omelet this side of the Rio Grande.”

Lennie said that yesterday in the operating theater he had seen a baby delivered for the first time. He described it for them and said that three students had fainted. Max made both his boys laugh with his story of the drunken American who had got into his taxi and asked to be taken to where the king lived. He wanted to see the palace. “Can you beat that?” Max asked.

Duddy’s imitation of Mr. Friar brought tears to Lennie’s eyes.

“You know what,” Max said, thumping the table. “I’m taking Sunday off. We’re going out for a drive and a first-class feed. The three of us.”

“Atta boy.”

“I’m sorry,” Lennie said, “but I’ve got a date.”

“Can’t you break it?”

“Not a chance.”

“Well,” Max said, “maybe next Sunday. We don’t see enough of each other. I’m your father. You’re supposed to come to me with your problems.”

Lennie frowned. “I’d better turn in,” he said. “I’ve got an early class tomorrow.”

“You go to bed too, Duddy. I’m going to sit up for a bit.”

“I’ll sit with you. ’Night, Lennie.” Duddy made more tea.

“Do you know anything about Lennie that I should know?”

“No. Why?”

“There’s something funny going on.”

“Aw. It’s your imagination.” Duddy started to tell him about his adventures as an “indie,” but Max wasn’t interested. “Daddy, have you ever thought of getting married again?”

“What?”

“Jeez. Don’t get angry. I thought maybe you were lonely like.”

“Nobody could ever replace your mother for me,” Max said sternly. “You’re a funny kid. I can’t figure you. Out of left field you come running with the craziest questions.”

“I don’t remember her very well. I was only six when she …”

“You missed out on plenty, brother. Plenty. Minnie was some wife.”

There was a picture in the living room of Max and Minnie on their wedding day. He wore a top hat and her face was in the shadow of a white veil. But her smile was tender, forgiving. It looked to Duddy as if she had probably used to laugh a lot. He could remember her laugh, come to think of it. Something rolling, turning over dark and deep and endless, and with it hugs and gooey kisses and a whiff of onions. He remembered too that Max had held him pinned down to the bed once, saying over and over again, “Easy, kid. Easy,” while Minnie had applied Argyrol drops to his nose. Once more Duddy was tempted to ask his father if Minnie had liked him, but he couldn’t bring himself to risk it.

“Omelets weren’t coming out of our ears in those days,” Max said. “I used to come home after work and for a starter there’d usually be chopped liver and what gefilte fish she made! Ask Debrofsky. Ask your Uncle Benjy even. He was crazy about Minnie. You’d be surprised how often he used to come here in the old days. We used to sit around the dining room table after dinner on a Friday night cracking nuts and waiting for the eleven o’clock news. Your mother used
to keep up with all the radio programs. On Monday night we’d sit together in the living room, me with my books on electrical studies and Minnie making cookies with one ear open in case you should start bawling your head off, and together we’d listen to the Lux Radio Theater. That’s still an excellent program, but without Minnie – We used to play parchesi a lot, too, and Chinese checkers, and if I had the boys round for a poker game they loved it. Minnie would make us
latkas
or open up some herring she’d pickled herself and the boys were so happy that when she came round to collect for a raffle for the new synagogue or something nobody ever made a smart remark. The boys,” he said, his voice filled with marvel, “would even buy up a whole book just because it was Minnie, and a dollar was a dollar in those days.

“Montreal wasn’t what it is now, you know. For kids these days everything’s a breeze. I remember when the snow in winter was often piled higher than a man on the streets. There was a time back there when they had horses to pull the streetcars. (That’s why even today they say horsepower and measure an engine’s strength by it.) Hell, they tell me that new rabbi in Outremont, Goldstone I think his name is, runs a sort of marriage clinic where he gives sex talks. In my day all you had to do was mention the word sex to a rabbi and you’d get a clap on the ear that would last you a week. Look at you,” he said, his anger rising, “eighteen years old and driving a car of your own already. My father never even bought me a bicycle. O.K., I didn’t pay for your car, but I could have, you know.” Max paused, searching Duddy’s face for skepticism. But Duddy merely grinned. “Boy, if I got into half as much trouble at school as you did the
zeyda
would have taken off his belt to me. Aw, kids these days. Softies.” Max replaced his backscratcher in the kitchen drawer and got up and yawned. “Why don’t we turn in?”

“Tell me more about Maw.”

“Some other night.”

“O.K., I’ll just do the dishes and then –”

“The noise’d wake Lennie. They’ll keep. C’mon to bed. Hey,” Max said, “I almost forgot. The Boy Wonder will see you at eleven-thirty tomorrow.”

“Jeez. No kidding.”

“A promise is a promise.”

Duddy embraced Max. He punched him softly on the shoulder.

“Just be punctual,” Max said, “and don’t make trouble,” and he started for his bedroom.

“One minute. That means I’m ready, doesn’t it, Daddy? That means you think I’m like O.K. now.”

“Don’t make trouble. That’s all I ask. This is a special favor the Wonder is doing me.”

“I won’t make trouble, Daddy. You’ll be proud.”

J
ERRY DINGLEMAN, KNOWN TO MANY AS THE BOY WONDER
since Mel West had done a complete column on him, was a man with many offices. His most impressive office was on the top floor of his gambling establishment on the other side of the river, but on Wednesday mornings he did business in a poky little office off the Tico-Tico dance floor. The Boy Wonder was only a St. Urbain Street boy to begin with, he remembered well his own early hardships, and he liked to lend a helping hand. Time was precious, however, and so he limited his consideration of favors to Wednesdays. Wednesday was known to his inner circle as Schnorrer’s Day and from ten to four the supplicants came and went. Third cousins once removed and just off the train from Winnipeg came. Chorines too old even for the streets tried him and crackpot inventors who claimed to have been at F.F.H.S. with him came at least once a month. Cops who wanted to borrow against the pay-off and side men too far hooked to ever play again were among the Schnorrer’s Day regulars. The collector from the Liberal Party and aged lushes with lice crawling over their faces sat in the same stiff-backed chair opposite the Wonder’s maplewood desk. When the Jewish General Hospital went out on a building campaign it sent a representative too.

The Boy Wonder was a God-fearing man and he didn’t smoke or drive his car or place bets on the Sabbath. His father had spent ten
years in prison and his Uncle Joe had been shot down on the street during the bad days, but Jerry Dingleman had never been involved even indirectly in any bloodshed or spent a day behind bars. Not before the time of his personal trouble, anyway.

His legs were twisted and useless. At the age of twenty-eight the Boy Wonder had been struck by polio and when he got out of bed many months later he could walk only with the help of crutches. He never once spoke about his illness but there were lots of stories about it. Mel West had printed the one about the insurance policy. The Wonder, it seems, had carried a polio policy worth fifty thousand dollars and, according to West, when the doctors told him he would never walk again the Wonder had replied with a tough smile, “Yeah, but I beat Lloyd’s. I never lose a bet.” This led West to compare Dingleman with F.D.R. and the Boy Wonder barred him from his clubs for two years.

The story nobody ever mentioned to his face had to do with the girl. There were many versions. But about several facts there could be no question. Before his illness Jerry Dingleman had been engaged to Olive Brucker and two weeks afterwards she had sailed for Europe alone. There was some dispute about who had broken the engagement, but there was no argument over whether or not the two young people had been in love.

“You must never repeat this. Not a word of it,” was how Max always began the Wonder-Olive story, “but you should have seen the Wonder in those days. Handsome?
Handsome
. He had a smile that melted the rubber bands in the girls’ panties left, right, and center. For good looks he could have wiped the floor with Clark Gable or any other star. You take your pick. And Olive? A knockout! If old man Brucker wasn’t so stinking with cash, if it wasn’t that she needed money like I need a headache, she could have raked in plenty as a model. When she walked down St. Catherine Street it was enough to stop the traffic … Only the Wonder was always by her side and the guys stepped on the gas quick again, let me tell you. They were inseparable. Not only
that but they looked so right together that complete strangers would take one look and smile, they felt so good inside.

“That son of a bitch Brucker should only live long enough to choke to death on razor blades. They say it was the Wonder who called it off because he didn’t want her stuck with a cripple. But that’s a dirty lie. The old scum-bag, may his stocks fall through the bottom of a graph tomorrow and his balls float in sulphuric acid the day after, he was the one. He packed her off to Europe before she could say Jack Robinson.”

Some other facts were beyond dispute too. Polio wrought immense physical changes in Jerry Dingleman. At thirty he was no longer a handsome man. His shoulders and chest developed enormously and his legs dwindled to thin bony sticks. He put on lots of weight. Everywhere he went the Boy Wonder huffed and puffed and had to wipe the sweat from the back of his rolled hairy neck with a handkerchief. The bony head suddenly seemed massive. The gray inquisitor’s eyes whether hidden behind dark glasses – an affectation he abhorred – or flashing under rimless ones unfailingly led people to look over his shoulder or down at the floor. His curly black hair had dried. The mouth began to turn down sharply at the corners. But the most noticeable and unexplained change was in the flesh of his face. After his illness it turned red and wet and shiny. His teeth, however, remained as white as ever and his smile was still unnervingly fresh.

The smile that somehow retained an aura of innocence made those who feared or disliked the Boy Wonder resent him all the more. A man, they said, after a certain age is responsible for his face, and following that they always brought up in a whisper the riddle of the Wonder’s sex life since his personal trouble. He was still capable. But some insisted he was now indefatigable and others said that he had picked up some dirty specialties. There was the question of the girls in and out of his apartment three-four at a time, a rumor of incredible films imported from Europe, books of photographs and amazing statues. Nobody really knew. It was intriguing, that’s all.

But people did know what had happened to Olive – and it was a dirty shame. She had gone through three husbands; two she had divorced and one had committed suicide. All of them had been handsome and, they said, had looked a lot like the Wonder before his personal trouble. Olive darted to and fro between Montreal, New York, Paris, and the Riviera. She usually looked potted and there were some who said you don’t get like that on booze: it was something else. Olive never stayed in Montreal for more than three weeks at a time but each visit spawned a multitude of scandalous stories. Murray Gold swore that he had seen her come running out of the Wonder’s apartment building one wintry night with a bloody nose and no shoes. She was not allowed into the gambling house on the other side of the river or any of his restaurants or night spots. Olive, they said, had a head-shrinker in New York that cost fifty bucks a crack. The same people said that although he wouldn’t see her in Montreal the Wonder visited her in New York. It was Dingleman, they said, who got her out of Bellevue that time.