The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (2 page)

Room 41 had a reputation for being the toughest class in the school. There were those, Mr. MacPherson knew, who thought he was too soft a replacement for Horner. Only yesterday Mr. Jackson had said, “You shouldn’t have put John at the mercy of Kravitz and Co. He’s in no shape to cope these days.”

“He’s right, Leonard. Poor John hasn’t stepped out of the house once since Jenny took ill.”

“I’ve got a feeling he’s usually up half the night with her, too.”

“You should have given me Room 41,” Mr. Coldwell had said with appetite. “I would have strapped plenty of respect into Kravitz.”

The boys had been unusually quiet when Mr. MacPherson had entered Room 41 after the first bell. On the blackboard, drawn in a clumsy hand, was the chalk figure of a lean man being crushed by a snowball. Underneath was the inscription
OUR MAC
. Mr. MacPherson contrived to appear calm. “Who did it? Whose filthy work is this?” Fully expecting the answering quiet, he smacked his copy of
The
World’s Progress (Revised)
against the desk and sat down. “We shall remain seated until the coward who has done this owns up.”

Ten minutes passed in silence before somebody giggled in the back row. Mr. MacPherson whipped out his attendance book. “Hersh, erase the boards.”

“But it wasn’t me, sir. I should drop down dead it wasn’t me.”

Small, squinting Hersh was the butt of the class. His undoing had been a demonstration against the rise in the price of chocolate bars. A photograph on the back page of the
Telegram
had shown Hersh, his attempt to hide behind taller members of the Young Communist League unsuccessful, holding high a placard that read
DOWN WITH THE
Ji
CHOCOLATE BAR
.

“Erase the boards, Hersh.”

Mr. MacPherson called out the names in his attendance book, asking each boy if he was responsible for the “outrage” on the board, and eventually he bit into Kravitz’s name with special distaste.

“Present, sir.”

“Kravitz, are you responsible for this?”

“For what, sir?”

“For the drawing on the board.”

“Partly, sir.”

“What do you mean, partly? Either you are responsible or you are not responsible.”

“Sir, it’s like –”

“Stand up when you talk to me. Impudent!”

“Yes, sir. If you want to know the truth we’re all responsible like. But we only meant it for a joke, sir.”

“Do you mean to insinuate that I haven’t got a sense of humor?”

“Well, sir …”

“Answer my question.”

“No, sir.”

“All right, then, whose idea was this little prank?”

“I’m telling you we’re all responsible.”

“Was it your idea?”

No answer.

“This class will not go to the basketball game this afternoon, but will stay in for an hour after school is out. And you, Kravitz, will do the same tomorrow and the next day.”

“That’s not fair, sir.”

“Are you telling me what’s fair?”

“No, sir. But why am I different from everybody else?”

“I don’t know, Kravitz. You tell me.”

Mr. MacPherson smiled thinly. Everybody laughed.

“Aw, sir. Gee whiz.”

“This class may do anything it likes for the next period. I absolutely refuse to teach the likes of you.”

“Anything, sir?”

“Look here, Kravitz, you’re a brat and an exhibitionist. I’m –”

“You said my father wasn’t fit to bring me up. I’ve got witnesses. That’s an insult to my family, sir.”

“– not going to strap you, though. I won’t give you that satisfaction. But –”

“You think it’s a pleasure or something to be strapped? Jeez.”

“– I know you’re responsible for the drawing on the board and I think it cowardly of you not to have taken complete responsibility.”

“I’m
a coward. Who’s afraid to strap who around here?”

“I’m not afraid to strap you, Kravitz. I don’t believe in corporal punishment.”

“Sure.”

“Sir.”

“Sure, sir.”

Outside, Duddy slapped Abrams on the back. “Mac is gonna wish he was never born,” he said. “It’s the treatment for him.”

The treatment took more than one form. With Mr. Jackson, who wore a hearing aid, the boys spoke softer and softer in class until all they did was move their lips in a pretense of speech and Mr. Jackson
raised his hearing aid to its fullest capacity. Then all thirty-eight boys shouted out at once and Mr. Jackson fled the physics lab holding his hands to his ears. The boys retaliated against Mr. Coldwell by sending movers, taxis, and ambulances to his door. Mr. Feeney was something else again. He would seize on each new boy and ask him, “Do you know what the Jewish national anthem is?”

“No, sir.”

So Mr. Feeney would go to the board and write, “To the Bank, to the Bank.”

“Do you know how the Jews make an
S?”

“No, sir.”

Mr. Feeney would go to the board, make an
S
, and draw two strokes through it. Actually, he meant his jokes in a friendly spirit and the sour reactions he usually got puzzled him. Anyway, the boys got even with Mr. Feeney by filling out coupons for books that came in plain brown wrappers with his daughter’s name and, with cruel accuracy, by writing away for bust developers for his wife.

Duddy pretended he was dialing a number on the telephone. “Hey! Hullo, hullo. Is Mac in? Hey, Mac? Em, this is the Avenger speaking. Yep, none other. Your days are numbered, Mac.”

The boys split up. Those who had after-school jobs, like Hersh, went one way and the others, led by Duddy Kravitz, wandered up towards Park Avenue.

To a middle-class stranger, it’s true, one street would have seemed as squalid as the next. On each corner a cigar store, a grocery, and a fruit man. Outside staircases everywhere. Winding ones, wooden ones, rusty and risky ones. Here a prized plot of grass splendidly barbered, there a spitefully weedy patch. An endless repetition of precious peeling balconies and waste lots making the occasional gap here and there. But, as the boys knew, each street between St. Dominique and Park Avenue represented subtle differences in income. No two cold-water flats were alike. Here was the house where the fabulous Jerry Dingleman was born. A few doors away lived Buddy Ash, who
ran for alderman each election on a one-plank platform: provincial speed cops were anti-Semites. No two stores were the same, either. Best Fruit gypped on the scales, but Smiley’s didn’t give credit.

Duddy told the boys about his brother Bradley. “I got a letter from him only yesterday aft,” he said. “As soon as I’m finished up at Fletcher’s Field he wants me to come down to Arizona to help out on the ranch like.”

Leaning into the wind, their nostrils sticking together each time they inhaled, Abrams and Samuels exchanged incredulous glances, but didn’t dare smile. They were familiar with the exploits of Bradley. He had run away to the States at fifteen, lied about his age, joined the air force, and sunk three Jap battleships in the Pacific. They were going to make a movie about his life, maybe. After the war Bradley had rescued an Arizona millionaire’s beautiful daughter from drowning, married her, and bought a ranch. Familiar with all of Bradley’s exploits, the boys also suspected that he was a fictional character, but nobody dared accuse Duddy of lying. Duddy was kind of funny, that’s all.

“Hey,” Abrams shouted. “Look!”

Right there, on St. Joseph Boulevard, was a newly opened mission. The neon sign outside the little shop proclaimed
JESUS SAVES
in English and Yiddish. Another bilingual sign, this one in the window, announced
THE MESSIAH HAS COME
, over open copies of the Bible with the appropriate phrases underlined in red.

“Come on, guys,” Duddy said.

Somewhat hesitant, the boys nevertheless followed Duddy inside. Trailing snow over the gleaming hardwood floor, they ripped off their stiff frozen gloves and began to examine the pamphlets and blotters that were stacked in piles on the long table. A door rasped behind them.

“Good afternoon.” A small rosy-faced man stood before them, rubbing his hands together. “Something I can do for you?”

“We were just passing by,” Duddy said. “Hey, are you a Hebe?”

“Of the Jewish faith?”

“Yeah. Are you?”

“I was,” the man said, “until I embraced Jesus.”

“No kidding! Hey, we guys would like to know all about Jesus.
Isn’t that right, guys?”

“Sure.”

“How we could become
goyim
, Christians like.”

“Aren’t you a little young to –”

“Could we take some of these pamphlets? I mean we’d like to read up on it.”

“Certainly.”

“Blotters too?” A.D. asked quickly.

“For
keeps?”

“Of course.”

Duddy gave Samuels a nudge. “Hey, sir,” he asked, “you ever heard of F.F.H.S.?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Duddy told him about it. “I’ve got an idea for you, sir. Lots of guys there are dying to know about Jesus and stuff. Our parents never tell us anything, you know. So what I’m thinking is why don’t you come round at lunchtime tomorrow and hand out some of these
free
pamphlets and stuff to the guys, eh?”

Racing down the street, A.D. goosed Samuels and Duddy pushed Abrams into a snowbank. The boys stopped short outside the Lubovitcher Yeshiva and began to arm themselves with snowballs. “They’ll be coming out any minute,” Duddy said.

They had come to torment the rabbinical college students before. During another cold spell they had once given one of the smaller boys the alternative of having his faced washed with snow or licking the grill of the school fence. Stupidly, the boy had chosen to lick the grill. And there he had remained, his tongue adhering to the iron, until medical help had come.

“Here they come, guys!”

“Jesus saves. Read all about it!”

The alarmed students drew back into their school just as the F.F.H.S. boys began to pelt them with pamphlets and snowballs. Two bearded teachers, armed with brooms, charged down the steps and started after the boys. Duddy led the retreat across the street. There, joining arms, the boys marched along, stopping at the corner of Jeanne Mance Street to stuff a mailbox with snow. They sang:

A
FTER HE LEFT THE SCHOOL THAT AFTERNOON MR
. MacPherson decided that rather than getting right on a streetcar, instead of waiting in the cold and fighting for a place in the rush hour, he would go to the Laura Secord Shop to buy a box of chocolates for Jenny. Directly across the street from the shop was the Pines Tavern.

Once in the tavern, Mr. MacPherson was careful to seat himself two tables away from the nearest group of laborers. He decided that he had been morally right to call Kravitz a coward. But after he had delayed his trip to the Laura Secord shop twice more he admitted to himself that there were more urgent reasons why it had been wrong to insult Kravitz. Tomorrow or the next day the bottle of ink on his desk would be mysteriously overturned. Pencils and sheets of foolscap paper would disappear from his drawers. The boys would be given to fits of coughing or, at a secret signal, would begin to hum “Coming Through the Rye.” On his side Mr. Macpherson would bombard the boys with unannounced exams and cancel all athletics, assign at least two hours of homework nightly and suspend a few boys from school for a week, but he would not use the strap.

Long ago Mr. MacPherson had vowed never to strap a boy. The principle itself, like the dream of taking Jenny on a trip to Europe, keeping up with the latest educational books, or saving to buy a
house, was dead. But his refusal to strap was still of the greatest consequence to Mr. MacPherson. “There,” they’d say, “goes the only teacher in F.F.H.S. who has never strapped a boy.” That he no longer believed in not strapping was beside the point. As long as he refused to do it Mr. MacPherson felt that he would always land safely. There would be no crack-up. He would survive.

Outside again, waiting for his streetcar, Mr. MacPherson kept kicking his feet together to keep them from freezing. Flattened against the window by the crush of people in the rear of the streetcar, anxious because the man next to him was sneezing violently, he thought, Another eight years. Eight years more, and he would retire.

Only when he hung his coat up on the hall rack did he realize that he had forgotten to buy that box of chocolates for Jenny. There were two strange coats on the rack. The woman’s coat was gray Persian lamb. Briefly Mr. MacPherson considered slipping outside again.

“Is that you, John?”

“Yes.”

“Surprise, John. We have visitors. Herbert and Clara Shields.”

Ostensibly her voice was cheerfully confident, but Mr. MacPherson was familiar with the cautionary quality in it, and the fear also. Calling out to him, even before he got out of the hall, was a warning. Automatically Mr. MacPherson reached for the package of Sen-Sen he always carried with him. He also lit a cigarette before he entered the bedroom.

Jenny sat up in bed. Her mouth broke into a small, painful smile. Mr. MacPherson smiled back at her reassuringly and averted his eyes quickly. “Hello, Herbert, Clara,” he said. “How nice to see you again.”

Big, broad Herbert Shields charged out of his seat and grabbed Mr. MacPherson’s hand. “You old son of a gun,” he said.

“Herbert and Clara are in Montreal for the Pulp and Paper convention. They’re going abroad this summer. Herbert’s been made an assistant to the vice-president. Isn’t that lovely, John?”

“It is indeed. I’m very happy for you, Herbert. How nice of you to remember us. Really, I –”

“Look at him, Herbert,” Clara said. “He hasn’t changed one bit. He’s still our John. I’ll bet he thinks we’re dreadful. Materialists, or philistines. John, are you still a what-do-you-call-it? A pacifist?”

“You old son of a gun,” Herbert said.

The Shieldses had kept in touch with most of the old McGill crowd. Jim McLeod had his own law firm now and was going to stand for parliament. Chuck Adams – Hey, remember the time he sent out invitations to the Engineers’ Costume Ball on pink toilet paper? Well, Chuck has finally married Mary. Walsh is Eastern Sales Manager for Atlantic Trucking and Wes Holt is buying up salmon canneries left and right on the West Coast.