Caleb Crain - Necessary Errors

In the West, gays had woken up to politics later than other groups had, and it occurred to Jacob that he might not have arrived too late for the liberation of Eastern Europe’s gay people. He hadn’t settled in advance on the story he hoped to hear, but he did expect to recognize it if he came across it, and so when Luboš agreed to go home with him and began, during the tram ride, to tell a little more of his personal story, he listened with a certain partiality, an effort at recognition.

The effort was frustrated. Luboš’s story seemed to have no politics at all. In fact he seemed to have failed in a few instances to appreciate the freedoms that history had dropped in his lap. Luboš told him, for example, that the French businessman, the one whom Jacob had studied in T-Club, had recently taken him to Alsace for a couple of months so he could learn French, in order to improve communication between the two of them. (They were business partners, it turned out; Jacob had been mistaken in thinking the Frenchman was Luboš’s employer.) Luboš had hated the language classes and had stopped going to them. He had also taken his time about telling his partner that he had quit — had hidden in coffee shops, where he could read none of the newspapers, and in clothing stores, where he could afford none of the clothes, utterly bored — and they had had a vehement argument after the inevitable discovery, and Luboš had come back to Prague much sooner than planned. The two men had remained partners, however. Georges — his name was Georges Collin — did speak German, though with difficulty, and he wanted a foot in the Czech door very badly. It was not yet legal for a foreigner to run a business like Collin’s in his own name, and he did not think he could afford to wait for the law to change. There were many small but crucial tasks, such as renting an office or installing a telephone, that a Czech could navigate more adeptly than a foreigner, and, as in every business, a web of local negotiations was necessary, for which Georges wanted a native whose judgment of character he felt he could trust.

It was only the language barrier, Jacob felt, that brought Luboš to the immodesty of declaring himself trustworthy and a good judge of character. He said it without boasting, with a trace of self-deprecation even, as if he were admitting that he wasn’t clever. He had none of the loud manner that Jacob had found in the few gay businessmen he had met in America — which Jacob hadn’t minded so much, because it had seemed to imply a permission to josh with them as if they were circus animals rather than wild ones. Instead he had a quiet competence, a kind of security in himself. He was like an adult explaining his work to a child. He seemed more fully grown up than anyone Jacob had ever met.

And yet for no apparent reason he had passed up a chance to learn French, and now, for the sake of a tumble, he was stepping out of the tram at the foot of Jacob’s street.

The neighbor’s collie did not bark at them; it was in for the night. As they walked, Jacob let the back of his hand brush the back of Luboš’s, and the touch of warmth felt electric in the cold air. When he unlocked the gate to the yard, he nodded to Luboš to precede him, as if he were a gallant and Luboš a damsel, and that was as much of a sign as it seemed safe to give.

— But it is pretty here, Luboš said, once they were safely inside.

For a moment Jacob saw the rooms as a stranger might. His eye picked out as incongruous the few items genuinely his, as if they were the litter he was responsible for at a campground deep in a forest. It aroused him, for some reason, to be reminded that he lived this way. If he decided one afternoon never to come back he wouldn’t lose much.

He opened the refrigerator, and they both took beers. They hadn’t even kissed yet. They were like teenagers alone for the first time after an arranged marriage.

— Here you write your novels? Luboš asked, pointing at the kitchen table and seating himself at it.

“In there, actually,” Jacob replied, in English, and pointed into the bedroom at a little round white table, which Luboš couldn’t see from where he was sitting. Jacob pulled the table to the couch for a desk whenever he made an attempt. “But I haven’t written anything since I got here.”

Luboš nodded. — Kuba…, he began.

“Yes?” Jacob answered.

— Nothing, Luboš said.

“I’ll light the candle,” Jacob offered, and proceeded to, instead of trying to translate the suggestion.

— It’s nice, Luboš said. — Kuba…

— Yes, Jacob answered, this time in Czech in case his talking in English had made Luboš diffident.

— No, nothing, Luboš said again.

— There is a problem? Jacob asked.

— Yes, Luboš said, looking away. — I have AIDS.

It took a few repetitions before Jacob was sure he had understood the word. He leaned over Luboš and embraced him — awkwardly, because Luboš didn’t rise from his chair — then kneeled at the floor beside him and asked, in tears, how it had happened and how long he had known. Luboš, who had hardened a little at Jacob’s tears, said the news was recent. He spoke with a slight smile.

It was strange and unlucky, Jacob thought. While the Iron Curtain had stood, it had kept the disease out of Eastern Europe almost entirely. There were still very few cases. Jacob wanted to punish himself for having thought that when he left America he would leave the disease behind, too, at least for a while, but he shouldn’t tell the story as if it were about himself. It was awful for Luboš. This was in the days before the new therapies; almost no one lived more than ten years after a diagnosis. The only chance to live even that long was to have the best doctors, the ones with connections to researchers, and there wouldn’t be any in Czechoslovakia. Luboš probably didn’t even realize that the marketplace sorted fates in the illness, that it apportioned survival by taking a kind of measure of a patient’s resourcefulness.

— And you don’t? Luboš asked. — It is common in America, isn’t it?

— No, I don’t. It’s not that common. Do your friends know? Jacob asked. — Your parents?

— No, no, Luboš answered. He waved a hand, as if to say that Jacob was making too much of a fuss.

— I’m sorry, Jacob said, apologizing for his state.

— Please, Luboš said. — But I thought everyone in America…

— I’m too young, Jacob explained. He held Luboš’s hand and cried for a little while. This was as dangerous a world as the one he had left, and somehow he hadn’t thought it would be. He accused himself, somewhat bitterly, of having come to Czechoslovakia to join in a victory lap he hadn’t earned, and told himself that Luboš’s Frenchman, who had no doubt given it to him, must have wanted something similar. — Your health now? Jacob asked.

— It’s good. He looked at Jacob with concern. — Kuba…

— Yes?

Luboš made an effort to find words in English. “I not know words. In Czech, kecám . I make joke.”

“I don’t understand,” Jacob said.

“ Srandu . Fun. Not true.”

“A joke? You don’t have AIDS?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

Was Luboš only pretending in order to calm him down? But Luboš repeated the disavowal and insisted that he had meant to play a joke and hadn’t expected Jacob to have such a strong reaction.

— Truly? Jacob asked.

— Truly.

He felt an absurdly powerful relief. — I am happy, he said, and embraced Luboš again, a little less clumsily now, because, he realized, he no longer thought him fragile.

“But I don’t want, tonight. Sleep only. You understand?”

Jacob nodded.

— You don’t make such jokes in America? Luboš asked, uncertainly.