The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

  “Hey, look! Look, jerkos! Ten on each. Mac strapped me. Mac, of all people.”

  Mr. MacPherson strapped fifteen boys that week, and his method improved with practice. But the rowdiness in class, and his own drinking, increased in proportion to the strappings. He began to sit around the house alone. He seldom went out any more. And then one night, a couple of weeks after he had returned to school, Mr. MacPherson sat down before his dead fireplace and broke open a new bottle of whisky. He sat there for hours, cherishing old and unlikely memories and trying to feel something more than a sense of liberation because Jenny, whom he had once loved truly, was dead. Half the bottle was finished before all of Mr. MacPherson’s troubles crystallized into the hard, leering shape of Duddy Kravitz. Mr. MacPherson chuckled. Staggering into the hall, pulling the light cord so hard that it broke off in his hand, he rocked to and fro over the telephone. It did not take him long, considering his state, to find Kravitz’s number, and he dialed it with care. The telephone must have rung and rung about fifteen times before somebody answered it.

  “Hullo,” a voice said gruffly.

  Mr. MacPherson didn’t reply.

  “Hullo. Hullo! Who is that anyway? Hullo.”

  It wasn’t Kravitz. He would have recognized Kravitz’s voice. The room began to sway around Mr. MacPherson.

  “Who’s speaking?” the voice commanded.

  “Mr. MacPhers —”

  Mr. MacPherson slammed the receiver back on the hook and stumbled into the living room, knocking over a lamp on his way. The first thing he saw there was the history test papers. He ripped them apart, flung them into the fireplace, and lit them. Exhausted, he collapsed into his armchair to watch them burn.

  7

  Leonard Bush, the principal of F.F.H.S., was a man with many troubles. Only this morning a letter had come from the general manager of the Blue-top Milk Company to protest that Joseph Dollard, one of their drivers, had been innocently collecting empty milk bottles outside F.F.H.S. when somebody standing in a fourth floor window had urinated on him, which — Mr. Bush would certainly agree — could not have been accidental. Attached came a bill for cleaning charges. There was also a letter from the vice-president of the P.T.A. to ask about the man who had been handing out free copies of the New Testament outside F.F.H.S. For, with all due respects, Mr. Bush would certainly agree that this was an insult to people of the Jewish faith.

  Leonard Bush was a capable, soft-spoken man in his early fifties. His first visitor that morning, a Mrs. Yagid, wanted to know why her Herby, a remarkable boy — and I don’t say that because he’s my own, we’re not such common types — why her Herby was not an officer in the F.F.H.S. Cadets, not a sergeant even, when that stinker Mrs. Cooperman’s boy next door, the one with the running nose, was a captain. His second visitor, Glass the used-car dealer, told him it would be a shame, stupid even, to make his boy repeat grade ten again over a lousy two per cent, and besides, he had a little hunch that if Mr. Bush dropped in to his lot tomorrow there might be a bargain, a real steal, of a car there for him. Leonard Bush’s third visitor was Max Kravitz.

  “I mean saying such a thing as ‘you dirty Jews’ to a bunch of boys. I mean a phone call at three o’clock in the morning, Mr. Bush. You know what I ask myself? What kind of men are teaching my boy? How can they expect to make decent citizens of them when they themselves are like bad children? Tell me if I’m wrong, sir. You can be honest with me and I’ll be honest with you. That’s what I’m like.”

  “We like honesty here too, Mr. Kravitz.”

  “You call me Max. I’m a simple man, Mr. Bush, a taxi driver. But a taxi driver, Mr. Bush, is a little like being a doctor. Night and day, rain or shine, I am at the service of John Q. Public. You’d be surprised at the things that come up in my life. Pregnant women to be rushed to the hospital, accidents, fights, and older men with fine reputations, if you’ll pardon me, trying to have sexual relations with young girls in the back of my taxi. No, thank you. But, like I said, it is nothing for me to be called to an emergency in the middle of the night, so, as you can well understand, I can’t afford to have my sleep disturbed for nothing.”

  Mr. Bush assured Max Kravitz that Mr. MacPherson had never called the boys dirty Jews. He also said that it was certainly not Mr. MacPherson who had telephoned in the middle of the night. It was, in his opinion, a student imitating Mr. MacPherson. But it was no use. Something, Mr. Bush knew, would have to be done. At first the staff had been sympathetic about Mr. MacPherson’s loss, but his drinking had since become the school joke. So the next morning Mr. Bush suggested to Mr. MacPherson that he would like to have a quiet chat with him after school was out. That morning, three weeks after Mr. MacPherson had returned to school, he was confronted with the problem of the history test papers.

  Duddy dashed out his cigarette. “My dear Mac,” he said, “the Room 41 gang doesn’t care how many times a week you go out to tie a load on. But if you don’t mind, our parents work hard to keep us here. Our reports are supposed to come out next week. We want the results of our hist’ry test.”

  The boys applauded and Duddy bowed ceremoniously and sat down.

  And it all came tumbling down on Mr. MacPherson — the drinking, the phone call, how Kravitz was master of the classroom and he was being ostracized in the Masters’ Room. A quiet little chat after school was out, that’s what Mr. Bush had said. My pension, he thought. They’ll take away my job.

  “C’mon! What about our marks?”

  Mr. MacPherson pounced on the register. Abrams, he called. Abrams cupped his hand under his armpit and made a foul noise. Abromovitch, Bernstein. Nobody answered. He hadn’t checked the attendance all week. But he kept on reading. “Kravitz!”

  “Yes, your highness.”

  Something about him, the look in Mr. MacPherson’s eyes maybe, made Weidman scramble back to his seat, sure that Mac had finally gone off his rocker. Cohen clutched a ruler in his hand, waiting. Mr. MacPherson walked slowly down the room towards Kravitz.

  “It was you who phoned, wasn’t it?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “It was you.”

  “So help me, sir, it wasn’t.”

  “You killed my wife, Kravitz.”

  “Stay away from me. I’m warning you.”

  “You killed my wife.”

  Duddy put up his fists. “Why don’t you have another drink, eh? You should be locked up, that’s what. You have no right to be with children.”

  “You murdered her, you filthy street Arab.”

  “Leave him alone,” Abrams whined.

  “Please let him go, sir. We’ll be good.”

  Mr. MacPherson mumbled something inarticulate and passed out. In falling, he banged his head against a desk.

  “Duddy! Get the doctor. Hurry! I think Mac is dead!”

  Hersh began to sob. “We killed him,” he screamed.

  Duddy stamped his foot on the floor. “What does he mean I killed his goddam wife? I didn’t mean nothing all the time. Nothing. We’re all in this together, you understand?”

  Once the doctor had assured him that Mr. MacPherson had revived completely, though he was still in a shocked state, Mr. Bush stepped into the Medical Room to speak to him. Mr. MacPherson, resting on the cot, immediately asked, “Have you come to strap me, Leonard?”

  “I’m glad to see you still haven’t lost your sense of humor, John.” Mr. Bush laughed uneasily. He told Mr. MacPherson that he thought it would be best if he took a few days off. There would be plenty of time for their little chat another day. Outside, a taxi was waiting.

  “I don’t want a taxi,” Mr. MacPherson said. “I’d rather walk.”

  Mr. MacPherson stepped short when he noticed Kravitz and the others idling outside Felder’s store. The boys seemed subdued and unsure of themselves. Duddy started to walk towards him, but then he apparently changed his mind, for he turned around to rejoin the boys.

  “Kravitz.”

  Duddy stopped
.

  “You’ll go far, Kravitz. You’re going to go very far.”

  Mr. MacPherson, smiling a little, walked away towards Pine Avenue.

  THE MARCH OF THE FLETCHER’S CADETS

  Lance Corporal Boxenbaum led with a bang bang bang on his big white drum and Litvak tripped Cohen, Pinsky blew on his bugle, and the Fletcher’s Cadets wheeled left, reet, left, reet, out of Fletcher’s Field, led by their commander in chief, that snappy five-footer W. E. James (that’s “Jew” spelled backward, as he told each new gym class). Left, reet, left, reet, powdery snow crunching underfoot, Ginsburg out of step once more and Hornstein unable to beat his drum right because of the ten on each Mr. Coldwell had applied before the parade. Turning smartly right down Esplanade Avenue, they were at once joined and embarrassed on either side by a following of younger brothers on sleighs, little sisters with running noses, and grinning delivery boys stopping to make snowballs.

  “Hey, look out there, General Montgomery, here comes your mother to blow your nose.”

  “Lefty! Hey, Lefty! Maw says you gotta come right home to sift the ashes after the parade. No playing pool, she says. She’s afraid the pipes will burst.”

  Tara-boom, tara-boomtara-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM, past the Jewish Old People’s Home, where on the balcony above, bedecked with shawls and rugs, a stain of yellowing expressionless faces, women with little beards and men with sucked-in mouths, fussy nurses with thick legs and grandfathers whose sons had little time, a shrunken little woman who had survived a pogrom and two husbands and three strokes, and two followers of Rabbi Brott the Miracle Maker watched squinting against the fierce wintry sun.

  “Jewish children in uniform?”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s not nice. For a Jewish boy a uniform is not so nice.”

  Skinny, lumpy-faced Boxenbaum took it out on the big white drum, and Sergeant Grepsy Segal, who could burp or break wind at will, sang: Bullshit, that’s all the band could play, Bullshit, it makes the grass grow green.

  Mendelsohn hopped to get back into step and Archie Rosen, the F.F.H.S. Cadet Corps quartermaster, who sold dyed uniforms at eight dollars each, told Naturman the one about the rabbi and the priest and the bunch of grapes. “Fun-nyNaturman said. Commander in Chief W. E. James, straight as a ramrod, veteran of the Somme, a swagger stick held tight in his hand, his royal blue uniform pressed to a cutting edge and his brass buttons polished perfect, felt a lump in his throat as the corps, bugles blowing, approached the red brick armory of the Canadian Grenadier Guards. “Eyes… Right,” called, saluting stiffly.

  Duddy Kravitz, like the rest, turned to salute the Union Jack, and the pursuing gang of kid brothers and sisters took up the chant: Here come the Fletcher’s Cadets, Smoking cigarettes.

  The cigarettes are lousy

  And so are the Fletcher’s Cadets.

  Crunch, crunch, crunch-crunch-crunch, over the powdery snow, ears near frozen stiff, the F.F.H.S. Cadet Corps marched past the Jewish Library, where a poster announced: Wednesday Night

  ON BEING A JEWISH POET

  IN MONTREAL WEST

  A Talk by H. I. Zimmerman, B.A.

  Refreshments

  and smack over the spot where in 1933 a car with a Michigan license plate had machine-gunned to death the Boy Wonder’s uncle. They stopped in front of the Y.M.H.A. to mark time while the driver of a Kik Kola truck that had slid into a No. 97 streetcar began to fight with the conductor.

  “Hip, hip,” W. E. James called. “Hip-hip-hip!”

  A bunch of Y.M.H.A. boys came out to watch.

  “There’s Arnie. Hey, Arnie! Where’s your gun? Wha’?”

  “Hey, sir! Mr. James! You know what you can do with that stick?”

  “Boxenbaum. Hey! get a rupture if you carry that drum any further.”

  “Hip, hip,” W. E. James called. “Hip-hip-hip!”

  Geiger blew on his bugle and Sivak goosed Kravitz. A snowball knocked off Sergeant Heller’s cap, Pinsky caught a frozen horse-bun on the cheek, and Mel Brucker lowered his eyes when they passed his father’s store. Monstrous icicles ran from the broken second floor windows of his home into the muck of stiff burned dry goods and charred wood below. The fire had happened last night. Mel had expected it because that afternoon his father had said cheerfully, “You’re sleeping at Grandmaw’s tonight,” and each time Mel and his brother were asked to sleep at Grandmaw’s it meant another fire, another store.

  “Hip, hip. Hip-hip-hip.”

  To the right Boxenbaum’s father and another picketer walked up and down blowing on their hands before the Nu-Oxford shoe factory, and to the left there was Harry’s War Assets Store with a sign outside that read: IF YOU HAVEN’T GOT TIME TO DROP IN

  — SMILE WHEN YOU WALK PAST

  Tara-boom, tara-boomtara-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM, past the Hollywood Barbershop where they removed blackheads for fifty cents, around the corner of Clark where Charna Felder lived, the F.F.H.S. Cadet Corps came crunch-crunch-crunch. Tansky started on his drum, Rubin dropped an icicle down Mort Heimer’s back, and the cadets wheeled left, reet, left, reet, into St. Urbain Street. A gathering of old grads and slackers stepped out of the Laurier Billiard Hall, attracted by the martial music.

  “Hey, sir. Mr. James! Is it true you were a pastrycook in the first war?”

  “We hear you were wounded grating latkas.”

  “There’s Stanley. Hey, Stan! Jeez, he’s an officer or something. Stan! O.K. about Friday night but Rita says Irv’s too short for her. Can you bring Syd instead? Stan! Stan?”

  Over the intersection where Gordie Wiser had burned the Union Jack after many others had trampled and spit on it the day Ernest Bevin announced his Palestine policy, past the house where the Boy Wonder had been born, stopping to mark time at the corner where their fathers and elder brothers, armed with baseball bats, had fought the Frogs during the conscription riots, the boys came marching. A little slower, though, Boxenbaum puffing as he pounded his drum and thirteen or thirty-five others feeling the frost in their toes. The sun went, darkness came quick as a traffic light change, and the snow began to gleam purple. Tansky felt an ache in his stomach as they slogged past his house and Captain Bercovitch remembered there’d be boiled beef and potatoes for supper but he’d have to pick up the laundry first.

  “Hip, hip.

  To the right the A.Z.A. clubhouse and to the left the poky Polish synagogue where Old Man Zabitsky searched the black windy street and saw the cadets coming towards him.

  “Label. Label, come here.”

  “I can’t, Zeyda, a parade.”

  “A parade. Narishkeit. short one man for prayers.”

  “But Zeyda,

  “No buts, no please. Rosenberg has to say Kaddish.”

  Led by the arm, drum and all, Lionel Zabitsky was pulled from the parade.

  “Hey, sir. A casualty.”

  “Chicken!”

  Past Moe’s warmly lit cigar store where you could get a lean on rye for fifteen cents and three more cadets defected. Pinsky blew his bugle faint-heartedly and Boxenbaum gave the drum a little bang. Wheeling right and back again up Clark Street, five more cadets disappeared into the darkness.

  “Hip, hip. Hip-hip-hip.”

  One of the deserters ran into his father, who was on his way home from work.

  “Would you like a hot dog and a Coke before we go home?”

  “Sure.”

  “O.K., but you mustn’t say anything to Maw.”

  Together they watched the out-of-step F.F.H.S. Cadet Corps fade under the just starting fall of big lazy snowflakes.

  “It’s too cold for a parade. You kids could catch pneumonia out in this weather without scarves or rubbers.”

  “Mr. James says that in the First World War sometimes they’d march for thirty miles without stop through rain and mud that was knee-deep.”

  “Is that what I pay school fees for?”

  8

  Where Duddy Kravitz sprung from the boys grew up dirty and sad, spiky also, like grass
beside the railroad tracks. He could have been born in Lodz, but forty-eight years earlier his grandfather had bought a steerage passage to Halifax. Duddy could have been born in Toronto, where his grandfather was bound for, but Simcha Kravitz’s C.P.R. ticket took him only as far as the Bonaventure Station in Montreal, and he never did get to Toronto. Simcha was a shoemaker, and two years after his arrival he was able to send for his wife and two sons. A year later he had his own shop on a corner of St. Dominique Street. His family lived upstairs, and outside in the gritty hostile soil of his back yard, Simcha planted corn and radishes, peas, carrots and cucumbers. Each year the corn came up scrawnier and the cucumbers yellowed before they ripened, but Simcha persisted with his planting.

  Simcha’s hard thin dark figure was a familiar one in the neighborhood. Among the other immigrants he was trusted, he was regarded as a man of singular honesty and some wisdom, but he was not loved. He would lend a man money to help him bring over his wife, grudgingly he would agree to settle a dispute or advise a man in trouble, he never repeated a confidence, but about the conditions of his own life he remained silent. His wife was a shrew with warts on her face and she spoke to him sharply when others were present, but Simcha did not complain.

  “He’s only a shoemaker,” Adler said, “so why does he act so superior?”

  Once Moishe Katansky, a newcomer, dared to sympathize with Simcha Kravitz about his marriage, and Simcha raised his head from the last and looked at him so severely that Katansky understood and did not return to the shop for many months. Simcha’s shop was a meeting place. Here the round-shouldered immigrants gathered to sip lemon tea and to talk of their fear of failure in the new country. Some came to idolize Simcha. “You could,” they said, “trust Simcha Kravitz with your wife — your money — anything.” But others came to resent their need to go to his shop. They began to search him for a fault. “Nobody’s perfect,” Katansky said.