Caleb Crain - Necessary Errors

The next night Jacob stayed home because he needed to rest, and the following day he didn’t teach. When he arrived at the Slavic-cuisine pub that evening, he was full of longing. He was losing his acclimation to spending days and nights alone, and an interval away now left him with a burden of news that he wanted to communicate. For example, there were no longer onions in his local grocery store, and he had seen a few of his neighbors cluster quietly around the trunk of a Škoda full of unwashed potatoes. But his friends weren’t at the restaurant. When he entered, a waiter turned his head to glance at him, inhaling on his cigarette as he did. Seeing that Jacob was at a loss, he remained seated. The long, empty tables were covered in coarse white linen, sterile and unwelcoming, as in a surgery tent before a battle. Jacob’s friends had forgotten about him. They must have decided to try yet another pub. He felt hurt that Annie hadn’t gotten a message to him somehow; he thought that, since she hadn’t, someone ought to have stayed behind to intercept him. He knew objectively that the first was impossible — he hadn’t been to the school, after all, and Annie didn’t have the Stehlíks’ phone number — and the second unreasonable, because no one knew that he planned to show up. But the prospect of a night alone, when he had been looking forward to seeing his friends, seemed unbearable.

He walked south, hesitantly at first but then determinedly. Through the windows of the Automat, he saw that the servers were shutting down the buffet, wheeling away trays of food, leaving behind only clear steaming water in steel troughs beneath. He nerved himself for a second disappointment; he was going to try U again, in case they had gone back there. It reassured him to see the bears. His friends weren’t in the first room, but it was loud with arguments and endearments, and the light was soft. It was the sort of place they ought to be found in, Jacob thought. And in the second room he did find them, so deeply taken with one another that none of them looked up until he was nearly upon them, at which point they all rose with cries and greetings and embraced him. Thom had a back-up beer — the house beer at U was Budvar, and he was very fond of it — which he donated to Jacob as a welcome. “It’ll give me a chance to order yet another from the bugger when he comes back,” Thom said. “He thinks I’m a champion, and I don’t want to disappoint him.”

* * *

Every few days, Jacob saw Luboš, and from time to time they went to bed together, but Luboš did not lend himself to it, not fully. Jacob understood that he seemed to Luboš too young, too unsure of himself. Once, when he had learned the word, and more to show it off than for any other reason, Jacob referred to himself and Luboš as a couple. — But officially we are not, Luboš said, solemnly. There were no promises. Each was at liberty. Jacob made a point, therefore, of going back to T-Club. He didn’t meet anyone else he wanted to sleep with; every so often, in fact, he found Luboš there, who always handled the unexpected encounters graciously and usually let Jacob take him home.

“Why do you stand here, there is nothing to see. You will sit with us.” When Luboš was absent from T-Club, it was Ota who captured Jacob, though he took him no further than his table. “I have all the pretty men.”

Each time Jacob saw him, Ota seemed more preppy. To the polo shirt he added a lavender wool sweater, which he wore draped over his shoulders like a lady’s mink. A thin Czech leather belt, bluish where it was meant to be black, was in time replaced by a woven one, striped like a rep tie and fastened with a shiny brass clasp. Yet his complexion, never good, did not improve. There was always a patch of red spots breaking out where his sideburns would have been, if his whiskers were not so blond and delicate, or in the cadaverous hollows of his cheeks.

He quizzed Jacob on the words to American pop songs as they were being played, because he liked to be able to sing along, and he took showy note of any new man in the bar who was reasonably attractive.

“He is for you, this one, in the blue shirt. He will not say no to American cow.”

“Beef, you mean.”

“No, what is word, for baby beef.”

“Veal?”

“That drinks milk only, not even eats grass. This one will not refuse. But I am forgetting. You are, how do you say it, occupied.”

“You make me sound like a table in a restaurant.”

“Is that not the word? And I am the waiter. ‘May I help you, sir?’ Do you love Luboš? Is that right? Or do I say, Are you in love Luboš?”

“In love with.”

“Ah yes. Then are you in love with him.” Jacob didn’t answer. “ Ale stydíš se, Kubo . You are shy.”

“What about you, Ota?”

“I? I love you, of course, Kuba, but I am too slow. Luboš has run off with you, like a rabbit. Not rabbit. Like fox.” And he translated for his entourage.

One of the boys, Milo, a blond with even bangs and a large, Roman nose, changed the subject by asking, in Czech, which state Jacob was from.

— I live in Texas, Jacob began, pointing a finger over his shoulder, as if the past were literally behind him, because he didn’t know how to form the past tense. — And then in Massachusetts.

“Stop this,” Ota interrupted, and mocked Jacob’s gesture, which had in fact become a crutch. “Já jsem bydlel,” he instructed. “Já jsem bydlel, ty jseš bydlel, on bydlel.”

It was easier to speak of the past in Czech than Jacob had expected. — I lived in Texas and then in Massachusetts, he said to Milo, more correctly.

— Were you a cowboy? Milo asked, with an amusement gentler than Ota’s. He asked as if he hoped Jacob would pretend.

— No, Jacob said, sorry to disappoint him.

— That’s too bad, Milo replied, and glanced under the table. — I like those big boots.

Ota again interrupted: “‘ Ty velké boty,’ prosím , kluku . Ah, this reminds me. Do you hear?” He pointed at the speakers. “What does it mean, ‘things on your chest’?”

“A burden, a secret. Like the boy with the fox under his shirt.”

“And the fox eats the boy in the chest, I remember, and he says nothing. Do you have tape recorder?”

“No, but I can borrow one from the language school, since I’m the teacher.”

“Ah, teacher, then will you borrow it? And I will give to you the cassette of my favorite band, Depeche Mode, and you will write all the words of all the songs on a paper, that yes? And you will give to me the paper.”

He handed Jacob a cassette, which he must have been palming since before Jacob sat down next to him. “Jééé,” commented Milo, admiringly, when he leaned forward and saw that it was a copy of Violator , the band’s new album. The group seemed to have an intense following among Prague’s youth; Jacob had seen their name spray-painted on the side of a panelák —the first apolitical graffiti he had spotted.

“You may listen a week, two weeks, a month — as you like it,” Ota added. Listening was to be Jacob’s reward for service. Jacob accepted the commission.

* * *

On the nights Jacob stayed home and transcribed the lyrics, he felt a homesick pride: gay teenagers around the world learned his mother tongue by memorizing pop songs.