Caleb Crain - Necessary Errors

— No, Luboš answered. The sun had set, and it was hard to read anything in his expression besides his diplomatic smile. — Let’s go.

They walked together silently toward Republiky. Neither of them had a coat warm enough for the night. — Shall we have dinner? Jacob asked.

— I must home, Luboš said.

— May I come, too?

— No.

Jacob wanted to embrace him as in the sculpture but didn’t dare. When they were alone Luboš was tender and put hands on him so gently. Outside, their tenderness was hidden, though they carried it with them nonetheless, like a ballpoint pen of Jacob’s that had once slipped through a hole in his coat pocket into the lining, so that it was always near to hand, though he never retrieved it.

— But where do you live? It felt like a breach of an unspoken contract for Jacob to ask.

— Far from the center, was all that Luboš would say. — Don’t be angry, Kuba. We’ll see each other soon.

* * *

There was a going-away party for Michael the next evening at a bar in Malá Strana. The street door of the bar was unmarked, like a speakeasy’s, but it opened and closed too often for Jacob to mistake it. Inside, a long, narrow room was crowded with tables of loud, oblivious, uninterruptible drinkers, none of whom Jacob recognized, but a staircase in back led down to a warren of further rooms, with pale yellow walls and a bar of their own, and here Jacob found everyone packed into a corner where they did not quite fit, their cigarettes open on the table before them for one another’s taking.

“I’m going to Berlin after all,” said Annie, when he sat down beside her. Her eyes were bright with the news. “If such as Michael can feck off to where he likes, when he likes, so can I, you know.”

“Oh, no, don’t go, Annie.”

“I’m not off for good just yet. I’m going week after next to have a look around. Thom is covering for me at the school. Why don’t you find someone to cover for you as well, and we can go and interview together?” She added, confidentially, “It’s a real city, so far as your interests are concerned. If you know what I mean.”

The last few months would turn out to have been a detour, if he followed her. Leaving would be a kind of revenge on what had frustrated him here. At his age it was in his power to start over as often as he liked, and he wouldn’t have that power forever.

“Would you miss your friend, is that it?” Annie asked.

“I’m not expecting anything from him.”

“That’s not quite what I asked.”

“He’s probably sleeping with someone else.”

“You think he’s cheating on you?”

“He’s probably cheating when he’s with me, if there are any rules to break, but I don’t think there are. Evidently that’s how it’s supposed to be with homosexuals.”

“Homosexuals — where?” interrupted Melinda, turning to them.

“Hush,” said Annie.

“Here, actually,” Jacob volunteered.

“Darling, how lovely. I’d been hoping, but I didn’t want to pry and you’re not so obvious. But how is it supposed to be with homosexuals, exactly? I missed that part, in my eavesdropping.”

“No one is allowed to limit anyone’s options.”

“Man is dog to man, is that it? I’ve heard tell of that. It sounds very exciting to an outsider, but it might be a lot of rot, you know. The sort of thing men say when it’s convenient.”

“But it’s men on both sides, or rather all sides, in this case.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to believe them any more than we do.”

“Well, it’s what I was told,” Jacob said. “By a Thatcherite in Boston,” he added.

“Yes, I hear you have them in America, too, now. I’m so sorry. And is it catching in Prague as well, is that what you’re finding?”

“I guess so. The free market. Or maybe it’s just that he likes the other guy better.” But he pictured Collin as he said this, and added, “But I don’t believe it.”

“Nor I. Is any of this for general consumption, by the way?”

“No. If you don’t mind.”

“I shan’t tell Rafe, then. He wouldn’t mind at all, but he has no discretion.”

“We’re going to Berlin together,” Annie put in.

“Not you, too, Jacob? But you can’t, not just as I’ve found you out. It would be like having to wrap the Christmas presents up again and put them back under the tree.”

“One earns actual cash in Berlin, Mel,” Annie explained.

“Your mother sends you the loveliest packages of fruit and chocolates. I don’t see what you need hard currency for.”

“But she doesn’t send nice Marlboros, like the ones Jacob has.”

“Now that would be a mother indeed. Where does Jacob get them, I wonder.”

“All the Harvs have a few extra dollars here and there,” Annie observed. “From their government no doubt. For the work they do for the Agency.”

“I buy them with the money from my plane ticket home,” Jacob said. “I cashed it in.”

“Was that wise?” Melinda asked, laying one of her white hands on his forearm. “Perhaps I needn’t worry too hard about your leaving us after all.”

“Excuse me, excuse me.” Thom clambered over them as he made his way out of the corner. “Are you going to have a pivo , Jacob, or are you going to piss away your evening in mere talk?”

Jacob followed him to the bar.

“I must admit I’ll be sorry to see the wanker go,” Thom confessed, as he pulled a twenty-crown note out of his wallet.

“But you’ll have your apartment back.”

“Ah no, Michael’s been sleeping on Henry’s sofa, not mine. I’m at the with Annie, and they don’t allow us guests. But I’ll wager Henry is pleased, come to think of it. One for you. Does Annie need another? That makes an order of five, then. , prosím . A great relief, because I dread to say the number four. Can you say it, Jacob? A diabolical word. They laugh at me quite brutally but I hear that even Havel can’t pronounce that consonant in the middle of it.”

Next to them, Rafe and Kaspar were discussing something in German, but they switched into English when Jacob tried to listen.

“I was saying to Kaspar,” Rafe explained, leaning toward Jacob’s ear, “there was a report this morning at the ministry, from somebody at the WHO, that the death rate is climbing across Eastern Europe. A very slight but steady uptick.”

“Chernobyl?” Jacob suggested.

“No, that’s good, that’s very good, but the curves are the wrong shape. It’s not anything , apparently, or not anything you could do anything about — not malnutrition or an obvious problem like that. It’s accidents. People having their strokes or heart attacks a little sooner than they ordinarily would, that sort of thing.”

“And I say, it is capitalism,” Kaspar said.

“It’s exciting, capitalism,” Rafe continued. “Makes the ticker go a little faster.” He was speaking in the ironic, amoral, speculative tone of voice that at Harvard had been the specialty of the boys from the better prep schools.

“They don’t even have capitalism here yet,” Jacob demurred.

“I know!” Rafe rejoined. “Think what’ll happen when they do.”

“You are in a strange place,” Kaspar said, thinking aloud.

“Who — us?” Rafe asked.

“Yes. You bring capitalism here without bringing it with you.”