Caleb Crain - Necessary Errors

— That’s a bit romantic.

— But it’s silliness. If I’m going to have to go away, it would be better if I enjoy myself prettily with you as long as I can.

— That’s some sentence. Did you rehearse?

— I thought about it enough, Jacob admitted.

— Well, that’s also a bit romantic. You don’t have a new lover?

— No.

— You can tell me. It’s normal.

— But I don’t have, Jacob insisted.

— Me neither, said Milo. — Until I go to Karlovy Vary, I think, that I don’t want another, he then added, as if, having obliged Jacob to make a confession, it was only fair play to make a return in kind.

— I’m a little afraid of returning to capitalism, said Jacob.

— Like everyone in Czechoslovakia.

— Will you see a movie with me tonight?

— Will we visit Václav?

Later, holding Milo’s hand in the dark, Jacob felt that it was only in recovering it that he learned what he had been in danger of losing. The touch of Milo’s hand seemed to remind him of parts of himself that he had already begun to forget about.

When the show let out, the streets were still light. As they crossed an avenue, Milo jumped and Jacob climbed over a set of red-and-white-striped metal railings, the kind meant to keep pedestrians from wandering across tram tracks, and in steadying himself as he stepped down, Jacob grabbed Milo’s shoulder and then took his hand and kept it. Men in Prague never held hands in public. Milo looked at him and accepted it. It was as if they were issuing a challenge to the city. Jacob felt bold and happy.

— I’m liberating you, Jacob said unseriously.

— Ježišmarja , but you’re a hooligan.

* * *

At an office that a Western airline had opened, where the Czech sales agents were already trained in the Western manner of patient, impersonal cheeriness, Jacob learned that the only planes to America that he could still afford departed from London or Paris. He had been hoping he would be able to go through Paris on his way back. Annie told him about a new private bus company, willing to carry people to France for more or less what a pre-price-liberalization, leftover-socialist train ticket had cost. He chose a departure date a few weeks away.

He tapped a reserve of crowns and dollars hidden in his Bible. There were a few hundred crowns left over, and on his way to a Café, to meet and her friend for an English lesson, he stopped in a pet supply store and bought a new glass cage for Václav, who was still living in Henry’s soup tureen. He also bought a little exercise wheel. Both items had been made in China. The wheel had an aluminum frame but its tiny slats were made of light blue plastic.

The edge of the cage dug into his side as he carried it down Celetná, and people stared as if they hoped to be able to see the living thing that belonged in it, though it held only the exercise wheel. It was odd to be buying a home for á at the end of owning him rather than at the beginning. Maybe he had done it because he felt bad about leaving the animal behind. It would make it easier to find someone to give Václav away to. He imagined that Milo would take him if no one else would, but he hadn’t asked yet.

and her friend, whose name was Lucie, were sitting at their regular table. When he entered, they were speaking quietly and confidentially, their Turkish coffees already in front of them, as well as a plate of wafer cookies, most of which, he knew from experience, they would insist toward the end of the lesson that he eat.

Lucie was a sort of elf. She squirmed, her teeth were slightly crooked, and her sharp cheekbones were often flushed. She was bolder than —she had been a protester, had once boasted on her behalf — and it sometimes seemed that learned mostly by watching Lucie learn; seemed distressed whenever it was her own turn to speak, and sometimes Jacob wondered if she continued the lessons out of concern for him rather than to satisfy any wish of her own — out of a tenderhearted fear, maybe, that he felt rejected by her family and a sense that it was her duty to prove that he hadn’t been. If so, then it was his duty to see to it that the lessons had a cash value. He was fairly conscientious about preparing them; he photocopied advanced drills from a newly printed textbook that he had borrowed from Thom; he clipped short articles out of newsmagazines to discuss. Because it was and Lucie he sometimes let himself carry out ideas that were a little silly.

When noticed the exercise wheel inside the glass cage, she covered her mouth in amusement. — That is excellent, she commented in Czech.

“Will Václav study with us today?” Lucie asked in English.

“He already knows English,” said Jacob. “He hears it a lot at home.” He ordered his usual soda water.

“Ah, the mouse is not there,” Lucie observed, as she looked at the cage more closely.

“ ,” said, with mild indignation. “Je .”

“Omlouvám se,” said Lucie.

“English, English,” ordered Jacob.

“He is not mouse,” repeated herself. “Is…”

“Hamster,” Jacob provided. “ A hamster.”

“Is not a mouse,” said . “Is a hamster.” In Czech she softly cursed the English language’s perverse encumberment with not only definite but also indefinite articles. “But Václav,” she continued, resuming her tentative English, “has he not… a home…already?”

“He lives in a pot right now,” Jacob confessed.

“A pot!” exclaimed. — But you are horrible, she said, shaking her head. — Since April! It’ll be dark there.

Lucie shrugged and said, “He’s a mouse,” taking Jacob’s side.

— But he isn’t , insisted again.

— I have bought him a home at the end of ends, Jacob said in his own defense. He switched back to English: “I had to buy him one, so I can give him away.”

“Mmm,” began. She stared at Lucie blankly for a moment as if to draw from her the words she was looking for. “You don’t love Václav any more?”