6

“You see,” Virgil said, “it was a blessing in disguise. I’m glad you’re not angry though. I mean, well, remember I said you’d be remembered as the Branch Rickey like of the Health Handicappers? Well, what if Jackie Robinson had turned out to be a two hundred hitter? That’s what I turned out to be, you know. A prize flop. But if not for the accident there’d be no Crusader. might have taken me years and years to get going. See my point.”

“Sure, Virgie. Sure thing.”

There was a kind of flask attachment under the mattress of Virgil’s bed and it was gradually filling with urine.

“You know what,” Virgil said. “You get a life’s subscription and a monthly ‘Dial MOVIES’ ad free. How’s that?”

“Oh, fine. Fine, Virgie.”

Yvette sat in a chair by the window. “How are things at the office?”

“Oh, comme-ci, comme-ça.”

“Not that I care,” she said, “but how’s the new girl making out?”

“Can’t complain.”

“I hope she can add and has a better handwriting than I had.”

“Jeez.”

“The Crusader look like much yet,” Virgil said. “But it’s a start.”

“It looks just swell to me, Virgie.”

“We’ve got eighty-five subscriptions all paid up. In a year, maybe, I’ll be able to have it printed.”

“I sure hope so. Yvette?”

“Yes?”

“Well, why don’t you say anything?”

She didn’t answer.

“Are you all right?”

“That’s a new dress she’s wearing,” Virgil said. “She made it herself.”

“It’s very elegant,” Duddy said stiffly. “Stylish.”

Yvette got up and left the room.

“Shit,” Duddy said, “I’m always putting my foot in it.”

“Why didn’t you bring some flowers?”

“Aw.”

“It’s so good to see you. You’re my buddy.”

Ver gerharget, thought. “Listen,” he asked, lowering his voice, “what does she do at night?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know.”

“I don’t understand.”

“What’s there to understand? It’s a simple question.”

“Well, she goes out for walks…”

“Alone?”

“With her brother sometimes.”

“The little Hitler one?”

“Jean-Paul.”

“That’s the one. What else?”

“She goes to the movies.”

“Has she ever been out all night? Quick, she’s coming back.”

Yvette came in. “Would you boys like some coffee?” she asked.

Duddy looked at his watch. “Well,” he said, looking hopefully at Yvette, “I guess I’d better be moving along…”

“Aw, stay some more.”

“I’d like to, Virgie, but it’s getting on dinnertime and… well…”

“Isn’t he staying for dinner, Yvette?”

“If he wants to.”

After dinner Duddy and Yvette sat together on the porch steps.

“He looks well,” Duddy said.

“He’s been through a hard time.” She explained how after such an accident the focal point of the body’s balance alters. Virgil had suffered severe headaches and dizzy spells. “But starting next week he’ll be able to spend all his afternoons in the wheelchair.”

“Isn’t that something?” Duddy said.

Yvette sighed.

“You must be proud. I think you’ve worked miracles with him.”

“Please.” There was an edge to Yvette’s voice.

“Well, I’m of you, that’s all.”

Yvette rose abruptly.

“What have I done now?” Duddy asked.

“You look awful.”

“Thanks. It’s getting late, you know.”

“A bag of bones.”

“That’s me.”

“What’s happened to your car? How come you drove up here in the taxi?”

“My car’s in the garage.”

“You’ve stopped showing movies at the hotels. This is the best part of the season. Why?”

“I was spreading myself too thin. There are more lucrat —”

“Is that why your ads have stopped too?”

“Listen,” Duddy said, getting up, “how would you like to kiss my ass?”

“Is business that bad?”

“I’ve gone into bankruptcy. I hope that makes you happy.”

“Oh, Duddy, I’m sorry. Really I —”

“Stop being so sorry. I didn’t die. There’s not a businessman in town who hasn’t at least one bankruptcy in his pocket. I’ve got plans, you know.”

“Like what?”

“There are possibilities. Never mind. It’s getting late, you know.”

“Are you driving the taxi again?”

“For two cents I’d wring your neck. One cent.”

“Have you missed me?”

“What do you care? You’re having a pretty good time here.”

“Oh.”

“I hear things, you know.”

“Is that so?”

Duddy shrugged.

“I asked you a question. Have you missed me?”

“What’s the diff, eh?”

“I missed you.”

“Oh, here come the waterworks. Boy. It’s late, you know.”

“I missed you so much.”

“This is an age of scientific wonders. You miss somebody so you pick up the phone to say hello. Three minutes for sixty-five cents. Nobody goes broke.”

Yvette laughed.

“It’s getting late,” Duddy said.

“You’ve said that three times already.”

“Have I?”

“Why don’t you just come out with it and ask me if you can stay?”

Duddy drove to Montreal the next morning, picked up his stuff, and returned to Ste. Agathe by bus the same evening. Yvette met him at the station. “Hey,” he said, “did you see the paper? They raided Dingleman’s joint. For real, though. There’s going to be a trial.”

The house Yvette had rented for Virgil and herself was near the tracks, some distance from the lake. But there was a fine back yard and Duddy used to take out a blanket and lie in the sun there. Yvette had a good job, she was a lawyer’s private secretary, and every day at five-thirty Duddy would wheel Virgil out to meet her. Duddy was thin and, it seemed to her, nervously spent. But in a week’s time he was tanned, he had stopped biting his nails and he ate with appetite again. He was gradually losing his fear of Virgil too. At first Duddy had treated him cautiously, stiffly, like a bachelor with a newborn baby, but now he was beginning to joke with him. He no longer stared morosely at the urinal attached to the bed. Neither did Duddy moan or twitch in his sleep any more. But he avoided the lakeshore, the hotels or, indeed, any place where he might run into old friends or business associates. She knew that he had the map of Lac St. Pierre locked in his suitcase and that occasionally he took it out to study, but he would not discuss it. Neither would he go swimming there with her. She had, at first, been pleased when he slept late every morning; he needed the rest. But when she discovered that he was sleeping until noon and taking a nap before dinner she began to worry. She tried to joke about it. But he misunderstood. He snapped at her. “O.K.,” he said, “so you’re the breadwinner. You work hard.”

That made it awkward to ask him about his plans for the future. He was evasive. He’d say no more than, “I’ve got plans. I’m just letting them jell, that’s all.”

But what he thought was, Maybe I can just stay here, maybe everyone will forget me. He enjoyed it most when it rained and he could sit on the screened porch playing Scrabble with Virgil or, still better, just staring glumly. Then one afternoon when he was going through his papers he stumbled on Uncle Benjy’s letter. This time he read it.

The date doesn’t matter Dear Duddel,

I’ve lived fifty-four years and lots of terrible things have happened to me, but I didn’t want to die. That’s the kind of malarky you can hear on the radio any Sunday morning. But I didn’t want to die and I’d like you to know that.

I wish there were some advice, even one lousy little pearl of wisdom, that I could hand down to you, but — It’s not for lack of trying, Duddel. I have notebooks full of my clever sayings: don’t worry.

Experience doesn’t teach: it deforms.

Some Oscar Wilde I would have made, eh? Anyway, I’ve burnt the notebooks. I have no advice for you.

Wear rubbers in winter and don’t go bareheaded in the sun. It’s a good idea to brush your teeth twice a day. That, Duddel, is the sum of my knowledge, so this letter isn’t to teach you how to live. It’s a warning, Duddel. You’re the head of the Kravitz family now whether you like it or not. It took me by surprise, you know. I thought it would be Lennie. He was the bright one, I thought. O.K. I was wrong. Your zeyda, bless him, was too proud and I was too impatient. I hope you’ll make less mistakes than we did. There’s your father and Lennie and Ida and soon, I hope, there will be more. You’ve got to love them, Duddel. You’ve got to take them to your heart no matter what. They’re the family, remember, and to see only their faults (like I did) is to look at them like a stranger.

You lousy, intelligent people, that’s what you said to me, and I haven’t forgotten. I wasn’t good to you, it’s true. I never took time. I think I didn’t like you because you’re a throwback, Duddel. I’d look at you and remember my own days as a hungry salesman in the mountains and how I struggled for my first little factory. I’d look at you and see a busy, conniving little Yid, and I was wrong because there was more, much more. But there’s something you ought to know about me. Every year of my life I have looked back on the man I was the year before — the things I did and said — and I was ashamed. All my life I’ve ridiculed others, it’s true, but I was the most ridiculous figure of all, wasn’t I?

NOTE: Before you go any further you might as well know that I haven’t left you a cent. Not a bean. The estate will be administered by Rosenblatt and there’s money for Ida, a regular income, and enough to set Lennie up in practice. I’ve also left something for student scholarships (I haven’t got a son, and my name has to live on somehow). What I have left you is my house on Mount Royal with the library and everything else in it. But that bequest is conditional, Duddel. You are not allowed to sell it. If you don’t want to live in it with your family when you have one then it reverts to the estate and Rosenblatt will sell it.

Anyway, now that you know where you stand with the inheritance you can read on or not read on, just as you please.

There’s more to you than mere money-lust, Duddy, but I’m afraid for you. You’re two people, that’s why. The scheming little bastard I saw so easily and the fine, intelligent boy underneath that your grandfather, bless him, saw. But you’re coming of age soon and you’ll have to choose. A boy can be two, three, four potential people, but a man is only one. He murders the others.

There’s a brute inside you, Duddel — a regular behemoth — and this being such a hard world it would be the easiest thing for you to let it overpower you. Don’t, Duddel. Be a gentleman. A mensh.

Take care and God bless,

BENJY

PS. I built the house on Mount Royal for my son and his sons. That was the original intention.

Duddy folded up the letter, replaced it in the envelope, and locked it in his suitcase.

“Hey,” Virgil said, “where are you going?”

“Out.”

“It’ll soon be time to pick up Yvette.”

“Tell her I might be late for dinner.”

The lake, as he suspected, looked splendid even in autumn. Some of the trees were going yellow, others burned a brilliant red. Duddy crouched by the shore. He searched for flat pebbles and made them bounce two-three times across the water before they sunk. It’s mine, he thought. This is my land and my water, and he looked around hoping for an interloper so that he could say, “I’m sorry, there’s no trespassing allowed here.” But all he could find were footprints, reasonably fresh, a man’s and woman’s. The man had used a cane. Maybe two canes. The cane or crunch points dug deep near the water.

Duddy walked the length of the land he owned, tapping a tree here, picking up a piece of paper there. Lying on the grass, he chewed on a weed and considered the topmost pine trees in the surrounding hills. The frogs began to croak. I could have salted the lake with trout, he thought. That would have been a fine attraction. He entered the cool damp woods and climbed to the top of the highest hill overlooking the lake and that land was his too. A natural ski run, he thought. Around and around he could see all the land he owned and the rest, a third maybe, that was still in other hands. Beyond the woods he could make out the highway and Ste. Agathe. Wheat, potatoes and barley were being grown on some of the fields between and here and there wretched, skinny cows wandered, but already ranch-style houses were encroaching on the countryside, drawing nearer. I was right, he thought. I knew what I was doing. Five years from now this land will be worth a fortune.

There could have been a real snazzy hotel and a camp, the finest ski tow money could buy, canoes, cottages, dancing on the lake, bonfires, a movie, a skating rink, fireworks on Israeli Independence Day, a synagogue, a Western-style saloon, and people saying, “Good morning, sir,” adding in a whisper after he’d passed, “That was Kravitz. He built the whole shebang. They used to say he was a dreamer and he’d never make it.” There could have been his father, sitting on the porch and sucking sugar cubes maybe. “My boy was broke,” he’d say. “He hadn’t made his name yet. He was just another kid at the time and he got this job as a waiter at Rubin’s. But he wasn’t going to be a waiter for long, you bet. All the while he’s serving those chazers are ticking over like bombs in his head. Ticktock, ticktock… He sets up a roulette game, can you imagine? There he is not even eighteen yet, a St. Urbain Street punk, and he takes on all the B.T.O.’s at the hotel in a roulette game. On this side Fort Knox, so to speak, and on the other my kid, the house. And what does he say, ‘The sky’s the limit, gentlemen,’ and he doesn’t blink an eyelash. The money goes down one-two-three on the table, fives and tens and twenties, and the wheel begins to spin. Round and round she goes, where she stops nobody knows. It’s up to fate. Kismet, as they say. Outside, the stars don’t care. They shine on and on. Midnight, the monkey-business hour. Bears prowl the woods, a wolf howls for its mate. Somewhere a wee babe is screaming for its mommy… The waiters and office girls are banging away for dear life on the beach: nature. Plunk! wheel stops. Zero. kid rakes the table clean…”

There could have been his grandfather on the farm and everybody saying how Duddy was the easiest touch in town, allowing ten St. Urbain Street boys into the camp free each season, helping out Rubin with his mortgage after the fire there, paying a head-shrinker fortunes to make a man out of Irwin Shubert, his enemy of old (“Throwing good money after bad,” people said), building a special house for the epileptic who had been hurt working for him in those bygone days of his struggles, and giving so many benefit nights for worthy causes. They would have said that he was cultured too. “A patron of Hersh in the early days. The great man’s best friend.”

Duddy started back through the woods as the sun began to sink and he stopped twice to rest and reflect on the long walk home. Yvette was waiting for him on the porch steps.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“I went for a walk.”

“You’ve been crying.”

“Don’t be crazy. Where’s our fighting editor?”

“Duddy! Asleep. Listen, I’ve got some news for you.”

“Bad?”

“The notary phoned me at the office. The rest of the land has gone up for sale. There are two different owners and —”

“I’m not interested. Save your breath.”

“What?”

“Where could I raise any money now?”

“You’d need forty-five hundred dollars.”

“You might as well say a million. You mean for forty-five hundred I could have complete control?”

“Yes. But — well, other people are beginning to show an interest. Everybody’s beginning to buy land around here. The notary says there’s a boom. Since the Korean War he says —”

“I’m not interested. No more.”

“If you really mean that I’m glad. You almost killed yourself running after that land, Duddy. And how would you have ever raised the money to develop it?”

“Sure.”

“We don’t need to be rich.”

“Let’s not rub it in, please.”

“We can do anything you want.”

“I own a house,” he said. “A big one.” He told her about Uncle Benjy’s letter. “I think we should move in next week, before the winter. It’s time I got started again.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to be a gentleman. Ha, ha, ha.”

“What?”

“How do I know what I’m going to do? We’ll make out.”

“I’ve got faith in you. I’m not worried.”

“Good for you.”

“But I don’t want you to start running again. I couldn’t stand it.”

“Maybe Virgie will give me a job as a reporter?”

“Are you depressed?”

“Smiling Jack, that’s me. Laugh-a-minute Kravitz from way back.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Forty-five hundred bucks. How soon?”

“I thought you said —”

“Look, doll, with my name I’d be lucky if I could raise five. I’m just asking. You can’t shoot a man for being curious.”

“Three weeks. Duddy, if you start running again I’ll leave you. You’ll ruin your health.”

“Running doesn’t give you cancer.”

“What?”

“Skip it. I’m going for a walk.”

“Again?”

“Come with me. I’ll buy you a smoked meat.”

It was the first time he had taken her near the lakeshore, where the Outremont people, and tourists from the States, strolled arm in arm.

“The house will be a big help,” she said, taking his arm. “There’ll be no rent to pay. There’s no point in killing yourself, is there?”

“I’m not exactly the kind of shmo who opens a candy store, you know. A paper route I’m not looking for.”

“There are lots of things you could do.”

“I could be a fireman.”

Yvette kissed him on the cheek. “If you want to,” she said.

“I’m thinking of going to night school.”

“Oh, that would be wonderful. I can get work as a private secretary and —”

” — and The Crusader in about eighty-two cents a month. Listen, my little katchka, not going to live off you any more.”

“Duddy, you have to take it easy for a while. A little while, anyway. Do you realize that you had a nervous breakdown?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m just repeating what the doctor told me.”

“That’s crazy. I didn’t have a breakdown.”

“You had a nervous collapse. What do you want to study?”

“Things.”

“Like what?”

“I came so close too. Forty-five hundred fish.” They entered the restaurant together. “One minute, I want to get a paper.” There had been a rush on the Gazette there was only one copy left. Duddy took a look at the headline and whistled.

DINGLEMAN LINKED WITH DOPE SMUGGLING

Cote Alleges New York Tie-up

He was out on bail, the bastard.

“Oh boy,” Duddy said. “Jeez.”

“What is it?”

“Shettup. I’m reading.”

Cote had charged that Dingleman was connected with an international smuggling organization with an Italian tie-up. He was vague about proof, however. He wanted permission to bring in some American witnesses and to use testimony that had come up during Senator Kefauver’s investigations in the United States. Dingleman, questioned at his apartment, had denied everything. The only comment he’d make on his frequent trips to New York was that they were “of a highly personal nature.” He had, it seemed, been removed from the Montreal-New York train twice, but nothing had been found in his luggage. The rest of the story was a recapitulation of the gambling house and police bribery charges.

“Zowie!”

“Duddy, what is it?”

“I’ve got to make a phone call. I’ll be right back.”

Luckily, Lennie was home. “Listen,” Duddy said, “is heroin white and does it smell like cinnamon?”

“Yes, but —”

“That’s all, brother. I’ll see you tomorrow morning. One minute. Could you make a lab test on some stuff for me and tell me for sure if it was heroin?”

“Duddy, you’re not taking drugs?”

“Once a day and twice on Sunday. Don’t —”

“Don’t worry, Duddy. It’s tough, but cures are possible. There are new techniques. I —”

“Don’t be a jerk all your life. I’m no addict. Are you going to be in tomorrow morning?”

“Yes, but —”

“Good. Wait for me. And not a word about this to Daddy. Understand?”

“You’re a dope-runner. Duddy, I’m warning —”

“The chief rabbi of the underworld, that’s me. See you tomorrow. Good-by, Lefty.”

He came running out of the phone booth, rubbing his hands together and grinning. “I’ll bet the last train has gone,” he said.

“What?”

“I’ve got to get to Montreal tonight. Kid Kravitz rides again. Boy!”

“Duddy, what’s going on?”

“Aw, there’s a bus at six in the morning. I’ll take that. Listen, my little chazer-tell the notary we’re going to buy. Tell him not to advertise the land or even mention it out loud. I’ll have the forty-five hundred in no time. Jeez, am I ever hungry.”

“Will you please tell me —”

“My luck’s changed, that’s all. Give me that paper again.”

Four