Caleb Crain - Necessary Errors

“So it is not a fiction, as I thought, that people are begging in America,” Ivan said. He seemed as willing to be amused by his misplaced confidence as he had been a few minutes ago by what he had imagined to be the crudeness of Communist propaganda. “This is, how do you say, a depression.”

“It’s depressing,” Jacob corrected.

After the Victorian-parlor heaviness of the scientists’ meeting room, the parking lot and the long muddy field that approached the institute looked spare and modern. There was still snow along one edge of the pavement, in a dirt-tipped, crumpled archipelago, but a mild March wind was loosening the world, opening it, the way meltwater opens the soil and makes it crack and breathe. About one more hour of daylight remained; it would take Jacob that long to reach Rafe and Melinda’s place downtown.

“Do you know, the Communists were very proud of their Czech chemists,” Ivan continued. “Like athletes, we were for propaganda. But under capitalism we must pay for ourselves.” As they crossed the parking lot, Ivan walked so close to Jacob that he inadvertently jostled him: “Oh, pardon me!” It was unusual for a Czech to come so near, and Jacob found himself unpleasantly conscious of Ivan’s thin blond hair, boxy plastic glasses, and prominent nose.

“I don’t think any of you chemists will end up homeless.”

“But do you know, already I do not have a home. I have a wife and two children, and we live in the flat of my mother-in-law and father-in-law.”

“I’m sorry,” Jacob said weakly.

“Oh no, it is very common. It is the way, under socialism. Do you know, how many years I am waiting for a flat?”

“How many?”

“Eleven years. Since marriage. And now I have a son nine years old and a daughter four.”

“That’s terrible,” Jacob said.

“But excuse me. I do not want to talk to you about the Czech homeless. (Oh, pardon me! Again!) I have, rather, a question. If I may.”

“Sure.”

“Could you tell me, how did you become an English teacher? For you know, it is a very wonderful thing now, in Prague, and I think that if I could become an English teacher, it would be a very good thing for me.”

“But you’re a chemist. You went to school for it, didn’t you?”

“Do you think,” Ivan persisted, “that my English is so good to teach it?”

“‘Is good enough to teach it.’”

Ivan repeated the correct wording. “So, perhaps, it is not so good, you are saying.”

“No, no,” Jacob assured him. “You speak very well.”

Because the air was bright and fresh, the ground around them empty, and both of them young, it was possible to imagine that either of them could become anything he wanted. And Ivan’s English was in fact quite good. Jacob found himself remembering, almost as a matter for self-reproach, that he himself had wandered into the language instruction office of the Prague school system as if he had conjured it. That was capitalism, after all, when it was going well; your wishes seemed to rise up to meet you.

“The English book that you have, from the school. Would it be possible, do you think, that I could borrow it? To learn, for myself. Also, with this book, I think that I myself could teach lessons. Do you think it is possible?”

For a moment, Jacob wondered if Ivan wanted to steal the class of chemists from him, but he suppressed the fear as uncharitable. Since he only had the one book and couldn’t do without it for long, he suggested that Ivan copy it on one of the institute’s photocopy machines the next time Jacob visited the institute.

“But I don’t know if you should give up on chemistry,” Jacob felt obliged to say. It was harder to communicate, now that it was between them that Ivan wanted the use of something Jacob controlled. “There’s a demand for English teachers now, but science will be more important in the long run.”

They were nearing the bus stop, and Ivan let Jacob step away from him. “But this is perhaps something, that I cannot wait for.”

Jacob thought of Ota, but Ivan was a scientist, and he probably saw things more clearly than Ota did. It would be a kind of rudeness to keep warning him. He would risk seeming stingy and repressive. He reached out to shake Ivan’s hand, which startled the fragile-looking man, and they parted.

* * *

In the Havelská arcade that led to Mel and Rafe’s apartment, plastic lamps had long ago been drilled into the stone medieval ceiling. When Jacob arrived, their yellow light had not yet crystallized against the evening; it still offered itself only as a supplement to the dark but vivid light from the sky, which, though clear, was the color of lake water before a storm. Jacob’s hand, as he raised it to Mel and Rafe’s buzzer, seemed to partake of the conflicting elements; a faint gilt rested on the tops of his fingers, while his palm seemed dripping with a shadowy blue, below.

He heard footsteps and then a scratching as the lock was worked. “Would you like to come up, or are you in a rush?” Melinda asked. She had changed into a white linen blouse with a high, almost clerical collar.

“Either way,” said Jacob.

“Well, you’re welcome to come up.” She said it a little shortly, maybe because Jacob had forced her to answer her own question. “Rafe’s here,” she added, as she preceded him up the narrow stairs.

She called her boyfriend’s name as she nudged open the door to their apartment and as Jacob followed her in. Rafe emerged from their bedroom, grinning, unkempt. “Jacob! Feeling better?” he said. “You look better.”

“Thank you.”

“I mean, you look well. I’ve never actually seen you look worse, so you can’t look better, can you. Sorry I can’t join you,” he said, explaining, apologetically: “Work.”

“What are you working on?”

“Will you have a drink? Slivovits? Becher?”

Jacob looked to Melinda, but she gave no sign. “I don’t want to put you to the trouble…”

“Oh, come on. Have a drink.”

“Some water would be fine.”

“Water? You’re such a cheap date! I bet you’re easy, too, aren’t you?”

“The water drinkers rarely are, in my experience,” Melinda interposed.

“In your experience,” Rafe continued to goof from the kitchen, as he poured Jacob a glass from the tap. He looked into the pantry, as if he might take something stronger for himself.

Jacob drank his water half down for lack of knowing what to say. “So what are you working on?” he again asked Rafe.

“Oh, a white paper,” he answered. “Now that there’s only one superpower, I have to prove to the Europeans that mutually assured destruction is a game that can be safely played as a solitaire.”

“Can it really? How does it work?”

“If anyone looks cross-eyed at America, we blow ourselves up!”

“Brilliant!” Jacob said, hoping to match Rafe’s ironic enthusiasm.

“‘Brilliant,’ yes,” Rafe repeated. “You sound like Carl,” he added, after a pause.

Jacob apologized: “He’s practically the only person I’ve seen for weeks, until today.”

“Oh, me too!” Rafe exclaimed. “He stops by, you know. Today he photographed me, for a keepsake. ‘This was Melinda’s “boyfriend,”’ I imagine. He’s very devoted to everything about Melinda. Including me.”

“He’s joking, though it may not be apparent,” Melinda said.

“I’m not joking. He did photograph me.”

“I meant your tone.”

“What’s my tone? I’m not Jealous. No, that’s not true, I am jealous. But jealousy is great. Jealousy is the spice of married life.”

“It doesn’t seem quite right for you to enjoy the spice without having committed yourself to the bread and butter,” Melinda suggested.