Caleb Crain - Necessary Errors

— Tonight it can’t be seen, Jacob assured him.

— By good fortune, Luboš said, in reproach. He pretended to look around them for observers, but the gesture had an air of courtesy, of keeping up an old form. — To Slavia? Luboš suggested.

They walked past the sweetshop with glass walls, the balcony where Havel had declared the republic, and the gallery where the two of them had seen the exhibit of children’s book illustrations. Then they walked down as so often before. They walked past an antiques store where Jacob had once bought magic lantern slides of St. Vitus Cathedral and past the former offices of the Cuban cultural center, indefinitely shuttered. It had now been more than a year since the change, but everything was still in its old place. In a row there were a pharmacy, a stationer, an optician, and a travel agency, each labeled as such in the governmental lower case. A couple of months ago, on a street just parallel to this one, behind these smoke-gray Haussmann-like buildings, Jacob had been photographed for his residency permit in offices that had until very recently housed the secret police.

— A year later, and all is the same, Jacob said. — It is like a race where they fire the gun but no one moves.

— And yet we do move, as Galileo says, Luboš answered.

The National Theater came into view, amiable and glittering, like a woman with sloping shoulders and a bejewelled gown. Inside the building, Jacob had been told, the motto THE NATION TO ITSELF was inscribed in Czech on the proscenium arch. The theater was something the nation had given itself, in other words. It was a Victorian idea of independence. It was the idea behind choosing a playwright for president. Jacob couldn’t decide if it was modest or grandiose.

In the Slavia, their table this time faced the theater rather than the river, and Jacob let his eye wander up and down its columns, which were both decorative and terribly earnest, until he couldn’t see them any more for familiarity.

— What are you giving yourself? Luboš asked, to bring Jacob’s attention to the menu. His tone was almost businesslike, as if he were concerned to move their interaction forward, and Jacob wondered if it was a tone he used with clients.

— What is it? Luboš asked, when Jacob didn’t answer.

It shamed Jacob that Luboš was able to notice his momentary sulk. — I am deciding, he said, in half apology. Since Luboš had been willing to meet, Jacob ought to be able to spare him childishness. After all, Jacob had believed from the start that Luboš was sleeping with Collin, and he had known for just as long that Collin employed him, and if he had never put those two facts into any intimacy with each other before, why should it now make a difference that he could no longer think of them apart?

He looked through the menu for the name of a drink that he recognized. — I’m giving myself a soda water, he said.

He had mistaken how far Luboš was from him. But Luboš couldn’t have mistaken the distance. Jacob could imagine himself being seduced, being given money, and then deciding not to feel bad about it. Like the cab fare that Markus had given him in Berlin. But he couldn’t imagine setting out to be seduced for that purpose. Or maybe he could. But he couldn’t imagine going to bed with a person he wouldn’t also go to bed with for nothing. He didn’t care about money that way, he decided. But almost as soon as he consoled himself as to his principles, he wondered if he was underestimating Ota and Luboš, or overestimating himself: Perhaps it was only that he had never been made so to care for money.

Luboš ordered for both of them. He was all surface with the waiter, his face was a set of patterns, and he did not come back to himself after the waiter left. It was the manner that Daniel had had when he had shut Jacob out after their first night together, and that Markus had had when he had shut him out in Berlin.

“Do you know, what is a masáž ,” Luboš asked.

— A brothel? Jacob answered. Literally it meant a massage, of course.

Luboš seemed for a moment to hate Jacob for having put it so bluntly. — In this case, yes.

The waiter returned, and shifted their drinks from his tray to their table. — The business is of this sort, Luboš continued. — Or rather, it used to be.

— No longer?

— The third partner is said to be in Africa. He is indicted. Do you know that word?

— It was in something that I read about the life of Havel.

— Thus, said Luboš. —And thus there will be nothing. He shrugged, as if he had been telling ordinary news. — And now you know.

— Yes.

A silence fell, and together they looked absentmindedly at the other customers of the café—the young Czechs from the art schools, who were wearing their scarves indoors and gesturing ironically; the tourists who had opened themselves from layers of sweaters and coats like flowers opening from calyces and were bent studiously over postcards; the lovers. Jacob was annoyed to discover that he had forgotten his cigarettes.

— Kuba…, Luboš began. He looked as if he were troubled by a duty of some kind.

— Yes?

— I did not know how to tell you, Kuba.

— It isn’t a bother, said Jacob.

— But it is a bother, he insisted.

— Well, so, you didn’t tell me, did you.

To Jacob’s surprise, Luboš could not meet his gaze and was watching his own fingers gathered around the small glass of liqueur that he had ordered for himself. — I didn’t even want to try with you. Even at the beginning. I tried to frighten you off. Do you remember?

Jacob recalled the embraces and the tears of their first night together. — I thought it was a joke, Jacob said.

— It was. I didn’t think, that you would be gentle with me.

— I was a fool, Jacob said. He did not want any more compliments on his ignorance.

— You don’t understand. I don’t mean that night, though I didn’t expect gentleness then, either. I mean, that I didn’t think, that you would be gentle with me now. I didn’t think you would understand me now.

— Now, Jacob echoed.

— But I found that I wanted you even so. And here he shrugged again, this time with a kind of despair. — Even if you judged me.

— I wouldn’t judge you, Jacob protested. — I was in love.

— But no longer, Luboš pointed out.

Jacob found that he couldn’t contradict this. He sensed that Luboš didn’t blame him. It was after all a country full of people who expected to become hateful as they learned to do things for money.

—‘In love’ is not said, Luboš continued, coolly. — We say zamilovaný .

Jacob repeated the word. Its structure suggested that love was a state that one could be put under or put into, like a spell. Like Merlin inside his rock.

The moment was receding. In teaching the word, Luboš had taken a step into abstraction.

— Stay with me, Jacob said. — It isn’t fair.

— Without the being in love, Kuba? It was for that that I wanted you.

— If you left this business…

— You have a kind of freedom, Luboš said. He addressed Jacob as if one of them were onstage and the other in the audience. — We’re not yet rich that way.

He seemed to be praising Jacob for being able to escape him. He laid a couple of bills on the table between them, to cover the cost of his drink, and they said good-bye. Jacob tried to stay at the table for a little while alone, but the cheer of the café began to seem incongruous.