Caleb Crain - Necessary Errors

The boy chuckled. Two other students caught up to him: had sandy hair and a bad complexion. Marek had black hair and was sucking on a pencil stub meditatively, as if it were a pipe. Their eyes shone with worship of Rafe, who, after a flurry of introductions and the injunction, “Mluvte anglicky, kluci!”—speak English, boys! — slipped away. Nothing had been said about money. The three turned their attention to Jacob with an air of polite disappointment.

“Please,” said , gesturing to chairs around a table where the newspaper was being laid out. To clear a space, Marek drew toward himself white sheets of cardboard, stamped with a blue grid, onto which type had begun to be glued.

“Rafe works in castle,” said , haltingly and somewhat tentatively.

Jacob couldn’t tell whether the boy wanted to be reassured about his facts or his English. “I think so,” Jacob answered. “He’s a translator.”

“Ten má ale kliku,” replied, lapsing into Czech.

“Ale mluvte anglicky!” Jacob said, trying to assume Rafe’s blustery manner. “‘He has all the luck.’”

“He has all luck,” repeated slowly. He grinned at his slowness. “There we met him. Mr. President Havel invite us. At press meeting, you know, where come the newspapers and speaks the president.”

“It isn’t usual, that they invite a university paper,” interposed.

“It’s called a press conference.”

“A press conference,” repeated. mouthed the syllables without voicing them. Marek merely looked thoughtful, as if respect were keeping him from trying to emulate English and modesty were keeping him from upstaging .

“But they invite us only one,” admitted.

“To one. They only invited us to one.”

“Tell me,” ordered , “of what political party is Rafe?”

“I don’t know. Should we get started with a lesson?”

“Often we have conversation only,” replied. “Is he of the left or the right?”

Jacob was afraid that free conversation would be little use to , who didn’t seem to know the basic patterns of English, or to Marek, who didn’t seem to speak at all, but he didn’t want to offend them by pointing out their disadvantages, and was studying him impatiently, in expectation of an answer.

“I imagine he’s a Democrat. Most intellectuals are, in America.” Daniel wasn’t, and he would have hated Jacob’s simplification.

“The Democrats are of the left, that yes? But why, if you are free not to be? I do not understand. The Republicans are the party of freedom, that yes? And the Democrats are like our Socialists.”

“It isn’t that simple,” Jacob protested.

“How is it?” asked. “I do not know.”

Rafe had answered these questions, too, Jacob sensed. , and perhaps the silent Marek, who was tapping the tin band at the end of his pencil against his teeth, were testing Rafe’s responses against Jacob’s, and vice versa.

“Democrats are not so left,” suggested.

“No, that’s true.” Appreciating support, Jacob failed to correct his grammar.

“You are innocent, in America,” accused. “You do not know, how the Communists are. Do you know, who Senator Joseph McCarthy was? Your government was full of Communist spies.”

“I don’t think so.”

“But yes! They are killers. The KGB was in the CIA. You do not even know.”

“Perhaps I don’t know,” Jacob conceded.

“Do you know what is, StB?”

“‘Do you know what the StB is.’ The secret police in Czechoslovakia.”

“Our KGB. Would you like to see a contract? Marku, please to show Mr. Jacob the contract. We will publish next week. Can you read Czech?”

“A little.”

“It is a form. You sign, when you say that you will give information to the StB. And then you are theirs. They show it, if you make trouble.”

The formal, legal Czech was beyond Jacob, but he could admire the letterhead, where the insignia of State Security was crisply printed, and the length of the numbered list of conditions of cooperation. “Where’d you get it?”

None of the boys seemed to hear the question.

“They are dirt, and they make people dirt,” continued. He read the contract through for Jacob, translating as he went. “The CIA must be as strong, or you will lose.”

“But we’ve won,” Jacob replied.

“But is not certain,” Marek replied, speaking for the first time, “that they lose. We do not have the papers of StB.” He tapped the contract with his pencil stub. “We have only this, and one or two other, as for amusement.”

The lesson ended awkwardly. The editors left it to Jacob to bring up the matter of payment and expressed surprise when he expected money for what they felt was no more than a mutual introduction.

* * *

The two friends were lying in their beds, reading. Carl had not yet got up to shut the door of his room for the night, and Jacob could hear him subsiding into sleep — could hear his breathing become more regular. A knock; .

“Are you awake?” she asked in English, apologetically. “There is war.”

“War?”

“Is Carl?” She meant: Is Carl here? “Father invites, that you watch the television. Upstairs.”

They padded up behind her in their socks. It would be Kuwait, Jacob realized. The British newsmagazine he liked to read had recently declared Saddam Hussein of Iraq to be another Hitler. The magazine’s editorials had compared Kuwait’s plight to Czechoslovakia’s in 1938, when it was betrayed by France and Britain. On the stairs, even before he knew for sure that it was indeed a war to defend Kuwait, he felt proud of his country for taking a stand. He wanted to explain the moral case to Carl, to hear it worked out in his own voice, but he was too excited to speak.