Caleb Crain - Necessary Errors

But then he didn’t see Ota for a little while. The fault lay with Ivan, T-Club’s doorman. For several weeks, after Jacob’s first visit, Ivan had admitted Jacob as soon as Jacob presented himself, but then, mysteriously, he reverted to a policy of making Jacob wait. Did he want a bribe? Jacob had no intention of giving him one; it would have been wrong, and for someone being paid a state salary in crowns, too costly.

Jacob was now sometimes made to wait ten minutes and sometimes an hour and a half. He and the doorman both understood that there was nowhere else he could go. He tried the city’s one other gay bar, where he danced for a few hours with a group of gypsies, some in half drag, but it was, as the guidebook had warned, rougher; there was little talking, which was what Jacob most wanted; it was much farther away; and he had been made to wait there, too, by a doorman who looked as if he would hit Jacob if he questioned him about it. Ivan would never hit, Jacob felt certain. Nonetheless, as soon as Jacob appeared at T-Club, he was at Ivan’s mercy.

He asked Luboš to take him to the movies, and they met at a theater in Malá Strana, the Lesser Town, for a Saturday matinee. An American thriller was playing with Czech subtitles. In the small, cobbled courtyard in front of the theater, while they stood reading the poster, an usher, a boy in his teens, approached and asked if they wanted to see the movie without paying; when his grandmotherly colleague was distracted, he let them in through a side exit, and Luboš handed him a small tip. Since seating in the theater was assigned, the boy had to make a show of directing them to their seats, which he did as formally as if he had not just belied his uniform. The movie itself was not likely to be as entertaining, but when the lights dimmed, Luboš allowed Jacob to hold his hand. — Don’t be afraid, he said to Jacob half jokingly. — I’m here.

Jacob gave himself to the movie’s artificial terrors, and afterward, in the cold air outside, the sun just setting, he felt refreshed and at ease. They crossed the river on the Charles Bridge, against the flow of tourists; Luboš had chosen a restaurant on the east bank. They walked through and then down Celetná—all the way to Republiky, the Square of the Republic, where, to Jacob’s surprise, Luboš led him into the Municipal House, a salmon-colored palace, fronted by a grand canopied entrance of tarnished iron, with bronze atlantes bearing geometric lamps, and above the atlantes, a half-moon mosaic of allegorical women, nude and clothed. There was a restaurant just inside, to the right, which looked as if it were reserved for visiting dignitaries. But Luboš was speaking to the maître d’; they had a reservation.

The dining hall held perhaps fifty tables, wrapped in white linen, the silver placed with an almost military correctness. All but a few were empty. The light of the chandeliers was brightened by their gilding and by reflection in the yellow and white of the walls, which framed, on high, murals of the city of Prague. In one, a woman extended her arms to the viewer, as if in welcome.

Luboš and Jacob followed a waiter down a few steps to a table on the main floor. — Kuba, in this building, they declared the republic.

— In November?

— In 1918. The First Republic.

— Where did they declare the current republic?

— Perhaps in Wenceslas?

— You weren’t there?

— I was there a little. I’m not so engagé.

As the twilight failed, the white curtains became more opaque, more solid. It was still just possible to see through them, but one saw not the street but the scaffolding outside the windows. The overall effect was thus of a stage set of a restaurant interior that was becoming more plausible as the lighting was adjusted.

— Kuba, I have a question, Luboš began. He often said this by way of introduction, to help Jacob distinguish an actual question from the uncertainty sometimes audible in his voice as to whether Jacob understood what he was saying. He was smiling unevenly, like a diplomat obliged to raise an awkward subject for the sake of the country he represented. — How did you earn money in America?

— I told you. I worked in an office.

— You did not sell yourself?

— Sell oneself? Jacob echoed the phrase, to ask for clarification. It was a reflexive verb, and sometimes they had unexpected meanings.

— Your body. Your sex. You know what it is, prostitution?

He saw, this time, that Luboš was playing a game of some kind.

— Many people do it. And you are pretty and manly.

— No, I never did. He decided not to try to hide his puzzlement. — Why are you asking?

— I had the impression, that it is normal with you in America.

Jacob could not tell at what level the joke was being played. Was this a misapprehension caused by years of Communist propaganda, or a joke at the expense of the propaganda? Was Luboš mocking the misconceptions that straights have of gays? Or perhaps it was a poke at Jacob’s innocence, which Jacob knew he still had not really shed.

— Never? Luboš asked once more. He still wore a diplomat’s smile, as if the question weren’t his, or were asked for a purpose other than that of eliciting an answer, but in his tone of voice there was a conflicting note, which Jacob would have called sorrow, if that didn’t seem discordant, and in the repetition of the question there was insistence, as if Luboš needed to have something settled, though perhaps he wasn’t sure he was ready for it to be.

It occurred to Jacob that a pause might be mistaken for complicity. — No, never, he said.

— Well, then, Luboš said, as if winding up a conversation. He seemed to see further doubts in Jacob’s eyes and added, — I did not really think it of you specially. I was kidding.

— You kid a lot.

— An awful lot, you’re right. Don’t become angry.

— No, no, Jacob assured him. Luboš seemed afraid that he might have hurt Jacob. Jacob realized he hadn’t washed his hands, and they felt hot and prickly; his palms were white, with red mottling. — I’m going to…, he began, and he rubbed his hands in pantomime.

In the restroom he paid fifty hellers to the attendant, even though he wasn’t going to use a urinal; it was simpler than trying to explain. Recently someone had taught him an obscene word for the women who worked in restrooms, who looked grandmotherly but were usually quite stern. A word for them and a word for waiters — perhaps there was an obscenity for everyone who was placed by work in the way of the public. He washed his face, too, and decided not to let the conversation return to Luboš’s question.

The beauty of the dining hall struck him, when he reentered it, like a kind of heat that he could feel on the skin of his face.

* * *

Because he knew it by heart, he decided to discuss one of Emily Dickinson’s poems in his first meeting with the school’s most advanced class, which he had recently been asked to teach as a substitute, every other Thursday. He wasn’t sure how advanced the students would be. was one of them — she had enjoyed his momentary disorientation when she had told him, upon crossing his path in the stairwell at home, that she looked forward to seeing him Thursday afternoon — but that gave him little indication, because it was hard to say how much English she knew. He always tried to speak Czech to her, for the sake of practice, and she, after one or two ironic sallies into English, usually gave her ground and retreated into Czech, as if it were somehow immodest for her to continue in Jacob’s language when he wasn’t speaking it.