Caleb Crain - Necessary Errors

“The colleague and I were discussing a number,” Pavel continued, all the while frowning. He did not look willing to release Jacob from the question. “I said that the number was accurate. He said, ‘Yes, of course, but is it precise?’”

Jacob saw the answer now, and in his relief also saw his questioner more clearly. Pavel’s hands were trembling. His question was a sort of public confession. He had been left at a disadvantage in a contest with another man, and he had carried the memory of the conversation with him for a long time afterward, the way a child carries a parent’s incautious remark if it senses that the parent will be reluctant to explain. He was not trying to test Jacob. He was hoping that Jacob would be able to pull the sting.

Jacob came up with an example. “Suppose that my temperature is thirty-nine point two.” He wrote the number on the blackboard. “If my thermometer says forty-one”—he wrote that number on the blackboard and then crossed it out—“it’s not accurate. If it says thirty-nine,”—he wrote a 39 beneath the crossed-out 41—“then it’s accurate but not precise.” He then added a decimal point and a 2 after the 39, and circled the full number. “But a reading of thirty-nine point two is accurate and precise. Thirty-nine point two five would be even more precise. And so on.”

Pavel nodded. There was a buzzing at either side of him as the words for temperature and thermometer were translated and as the scientists reminded one another that American numerals had periods where Czech numerals had commas.

Ivan raised his hand. “And if the thermometer says forty-one point seven eight, it is precise but not accurate?”

A few moments ago they had doubted Jacob; now he was in danger of becoming their oracle. “No,” Jacob pronounced. “I would know what you meant if you said that, but no. A precise measurement is always an accurate one.”

Pavel fell back into his astronaut’s chair. “I am accurate when I say that the words ‘precise’ and ‘accurate’ are the same. But I am more precise when I say, that they are different.”

The pretty young woman beside Pavel held her head for a few moments in perplexity. She dropped her hands into her lap when she understood. — That’s it, she congratulated him in Czech.

“Let’s get back to the exercise,” Jacob said, and they allowed him to return their attention to word order in interrogative relative clauses.

Jacob proposed dialogues about eggs, a car, and privatization coupons. When he proposed tickets, however, Bohumil, the tiny old man, whose turn it was, asked, “May I choose another word?”

Jacob allowed him to.

“Zdenka,” Bohumil said, turning to the plump old woman, who happened to be sitting beside him, “ask me about the girlfriend.”

The old woman blinked calmly and sat up straight in her chair. Jacob was afraid that in her preoccupation with the mechanics of the grammar she might not have noticed Bohumil’s introduction of the premise for a joke.

“ A girlfriend,” Jacob corrected, but the correction came too late for Bohumil to respond without interrupting Zdenka.

“O Bohumil, do you have,” began Zdenka, in her labored way, “ your girlfriend?” She had tried at the last minute to avoid Bohumil’s mistake.

“A girlfriend,” Jacob corrected again.

“O Bohumil,” she began over again, “do you have a girlfriend?”

“Good!” said Jacob.

“Why are you asking me if I have a girlfriend?” Bohumil quickly replied.

“Good,” Jacob praised him, to be evenhanded.

Bohumil continued: “Who told you?” Some of the chemists chuckled.

“Because,” Zdenka answered, with the fingers of her right hand stretched out in anticipation, “she left keys.”

“Her keys,” Jacob supplied. Evidently Bohumil knew who he was joking with.

“Because she left her keys,” repeated Zdenka, at her own indomitable pace. “Is it now to me?”

“It can be your turn, sure.”

“Is it my turn?” she corrected herself, before proceeding. “O Bohumil, ask me about a boyfriend.”

“Zdenka, do you have a boyfriend?” Bohumil turned to her as he asked the question and looked at her over his glasses for added effect.

“Why are you asking,” Zdenka responded, not returning his gaze but sitting erect in her chair, with grandmotherly innocence, her eyes fixed on a spot in the ceiling, “me if I have a boyfriend?” She took an extra breath. “I, too, have a girlfriend!”

Over the outburst of further laughter and of commentary in Czech, Bohumil asked Jacob, “How do you say, osvobodit, osvobozená ?”

“Liberate. Liberated.”

“My wife is a liberated woman,” Bohumil said proudly.

“Aha,” said Jacob.

“And she is young and pretty,” Zdenka concluded, beaming with her triumph, “my girlfriend.”

“It’s like vaudeville in here,” Jacob observed.

“Czech vaudeville,” said Bohumil. “Do you know Voskovec and Werich?”

“No,” Jacob admitted.

“Ah, you would like them, I think. They were First Republic.” He folded his hands thoughtfully. “Like us,” he added, pointing to himself and Zdenka.

“Will you tell us something about yourself?” Ivan asked, a little plaintively. “Since how long are you here?”

“How long have you been here,” Jacob corrected, though he saw that teaching had become a lost cause. “Since August.”

“And are you a teacher in America?”

“I don’t know what I am in America.” There was a murmur as the remark was translated.

“We, neither,” Pavel put in, in his deeper voice. “We do not know what we are, in the new Czechoslovakia.”

“I thought you were chemists.”

“We are chemists now,” said Pavel. “But the future…?” He spread his hands.

“We are researchers,” one of them volunteered. “It is not business.”

The room fell silent for a few moments. They had come to the lesson to distract themselves from the uncertainty in their lives, but the uncertainty was present here, too.

“And how long do you stay?” Bohumil asked, politely.

“I’m not sure.”

“Until we learn English,” Bohumil decided for him, to the group’s approval.

* * *

When Jacob’s homeward tram paused at the metalworks, he noticed new graffiti on the corrugated siding that hid the factory from the street. He looked into his French-Czech dictionary for the words he didn’t know: they turned out to be the words for “Christmas” and “oranges.” Last week oranges had appeared in the ovoce a zelenina near the Stehlíks’ for the first time since his arrival, shrink-wrapped in groups of four on white Styrofoam trays. The label had said they were from Syria. He had bought a package and had eaten the fruit eagerly. Two days later, he had returned and bought more. He had felt confident about his greed for them, as if he were setting the Czechs an example. He tried to assemble the words in the graffiti into a translation. Until now, all the political graffiti that he had seen had been left over from the November revolution. It had referred to Havel and to Civic Forum, the movement that had put Havel in the castle, and there hadn’t been much. Graffiti was one of the things he had come too late for.

OUR CHRISTMAS PRESENT: ORANGES FOR SIXTY CROWNS, the line of graffiti read. THANKS, MR. KLAUS! When Jacob had bought his oranges, he hadn’t noticed the price, and it took him a moment to understand that the line was ironic. Klaus was the finance minister, and he was beginning to let things cost their true price. Their free price. Had Communists painted the graffiti? The only thing the oranges had put into Jacob’s head when he ate them was the hope that there might soon be bananas, which he could hardly remember the taste of. He pictured Communist strategists sitting around a table — a table like the one where he had just been teaching the chemists English — conspiring. Capitalism — the presence of oranges, at any price — was still fragile here. There had to be sacrifices, Jacob thought. The high prices were temporary, and in time economic growth would reward everyone. Of course it wasn’t Jacob who was making the sacrifices. He found himself wondering where the oranges used to come from. Maybe Cuba had sent them, at Warsaw Pact prices. There couldn’t have been very many, in that case. He would give Václav some when he got back. A part of him thought: There may be Czech children who can’t afford to eat oranges for lunch this winter, and here I am planning to feed one to a hamster. Only a corner of a segment, though. It was the first time Jacob had been away from him for so long — for seven hours, he counted. He had left the cardboard tube of a toilet paper roll in his cage in case he wanted something to gnaw on or climb.