Caleb Crain - Necessary Errors

“But that is not the same, except perhaps to your friend Hans. I worked to continue certain possibilities, and it happened that the government did not like them.”

“No, Hans wouldn’t understand that distinction,” Henry said.

“I think that Havel is a good man. He is in earnest. It is only that my place has changed. I am through the looking glass.”

The room had grown dark while they were talking, and when Annie lit the candle on the kitchen table, the flame created a scene different from the one it created when Jacob was alone — a scene of conversation.

While the roast stood and the gratin cooled, Thom dropped into boiling water two long white cylinders of Czech dumpling, which he had mixed earlier from a box. After a few minutes, he fished the cylinders out and cut slices by garroting each cylinder several times with thread.

“So that’s how it’s done,” Jacob commented.

“Jana taught me,” Thom said, with a certain pride.

“It is clever,” said Annie. The exposed, perfectly white flesh of the slices steamed lightly. Thom set two on each plate while Henry carved the chicken. There was barely room for the friends around Jacob’s small kitchen table; Henry had to eat with his plate on his lap and his beer on the floor. They were gathered in a corner of the apartment as they were gathered in a corner of the city, as if to make of their shared mood a haven, and the emptiness outside their circle seemed like a protection. What if they were to stay here together forever, Jacob wondered, apart from their families and their pasts, improvising the rest of their lives? He had told Luboš that he couldn’t stay, but he had spoken then as if the decision were someone else’s, as if his presence weren’t his own property. He could choose to give it away if he wanted to. If he continued to want to so badly…

“I completely forgot to tell you,” said Annie, “that Thom and I checked out one of the school’s tape players, for you, in case you were wanting to hear some music. We teachers can take them home, you know.”

“Oh, I’ve already got one checked out.”

She looked crestfallen.

“But did you bring any tapes?”

“Thom did. And I thought I was so clever. When you told me about that fellow loaning you a tape, I ought to have known you would have a way to play it.”

“What tape might that be?” Thom asked.

“Depeche Mode,” Jacob answered. “It wasn’t my choice.”

“I was going to propose an exchange but in that case I think I’ll offer a simple loan,” he said, handing Jacob a cassette he had been keeping in his shirt pocket. “I think you said you liked this band.”

“I liked their last album. I don’t know this one.”

“A friend just sent it from Edinburgh.”

“I wouldn’t think you’d like them,” Jacob said, opening the cassette to read the insert. “They’re even faggier than Depeche Mode.”

Annie gave him an admonishing look.

“That may be, but they’re proper socialists,” Thom replied, and winked at Kaspar.

“Oh, all that God and Marx stuff,” Jacob said, remembering the lyrics.

“That is something that is worse, I hear,” Kaspar said.

“What?” asked Annie.

“The life of gays.”

It took Jacob a moment to realize that it was his own description of the band on Thom’s cassette tape that had introduced the topic.

“I have friends,” Kaspar continued, with a vague gesture that implied he was not free to be precise about their identity, “and they tell me that many of the young men now—.” He hesitated. “Perhaps it is not delicate.”

“Oh, if you don’t want to tell us,” said Annie. “We are eating, and I’d rather not hear a story like the last one.”

“Is it that bad?” Jacob asked.

“It is not so bad, in that way,” Kaspar hazarded.

“Please tell us. I’m curious now. You’re tough enough,” Jacob said to Annie.

“Whatever I am, I am not ‘tough,’ thank you.”

“Don’t be mad.”

“I’m not ‘mad,’ either,” she muttered. She studied her plate.

Kaspar delayed a moment more, as if trying to find the most polite way to put it. Just before he spoke, Jacob realized that he knew what Kaspar was going to say. “They sell themselves.”

How ugly he is, thought Jacob. What a piglike face he has.

“What do you mean?”

“For deutschmarks.”

“You tell such stories, ” Annie said, looking up and staring at Kaspar fixedly, as if she were making an effort not to glance at Jacob.

“My friends worry,” Kaspar said. “They see it, they say. They are older.”

It’s just his tendency to exaggerate, Jacob said to himself. But it was difficult for him to contradict Kaspar without exposing himself. “That seems unlike the Czechs,” he risked.

“How unlike them?” Kaspar countered, happy for a debate. “Or rather, how is it more unlike them than unlike any other nation?”

“They’re so proud,” said Jacob.

“Yes, they are, it is true,” Kaspar conceded.

“There are women who sell themselves at the western border crossings,” Henry said. “To the truckers. No one is sure what to do about it. None of the dissidents wants to take a moral position on anything sexual.”

“Why not?” Jacob asked. He didn’t really want to hear any more, but he didn’t want to seem to have been thrown.

“I don’t think they’re comfortable with the idea, philosophically,” Henry answered. “They’re rather famous for respecting their marriage vows more in spirit than by the letter. Havel in particular.”

“You wouldn’t know it to look at him, would you,” Thom said. “With that little moustache.”

“It’s the use you put it to,” Henry answered cheerfully.

They insisted on washing all the dishes, pots, and pans before they left. Jacob thanked them until he felt silly doing it. Once in bed, he fell asleep after only a few paragraphs of Stendhal, and in the middle of the night, he woke to the sound of rain, an old habit, a legacy of childhood, pointless now that he no longer had a bicycle or a dog that he needed to be sure were inside and dry. He recognized, however, by the clarity with which he remembered the bicycle and dog and by the dryness of his sheets, that his nights of fever were finally behind him.

* * *

Although Jacob didn’t believe Kaspar’s rumor, he found the next day that he wanted to see T-Club again with his own eyes. The wish seemed to him a little ridiculous, like a miser’s compulsion to open his strongbox to reassure himself of his treasure.

It was a Friday night. Ivan gave Jacob a half nod to signal that he had seen Jacob arrive, and it raised Jacob’s hopes. But then he seemed to put Jacob entirely out of mind. Since the improvement in Jacob’s Czech, Ivan no longer yelled at Jacob in German. He had adopted the simpler tactic of affecting not to hear him. Between the arrivals of more-favored guests, the doorman stood lost in thought, his arms folded over his belly, his ass resting against the half door of the wardrobe, oblivious to Jacob’s occasional questions and to the bar’s disco. His eyes were sunk deep out of sight, as if he had somehow retracted the living part of himself, like a hermit crab drawn into its shell. He didn’t pare his nails, comb his hair, or count his money; there was no sign that it cost him anything to keep Jacob waiting.

Jacob was too agitated to read. He tried to settle himself into a patience that matched the doorman’s but could only manage it for a few minutes at a time and always lapsed into watching Ivan for a sign. The black vertical bars of the entrance grille and the smooth, dark concrete of the floor made him think of a jail, and then the artificial vines made him think of a zoo. A cheap zoo. It was absurd to want so badly to get into such a place.