Caleb Crain - Necessary Errors

A large room was roaring with conversation, its air dusty with cigarette smoke. No one noticed him. A sepia light fell through tinted windows. The diners and drinkers were workers, most of them in blue jumpsuits. He took a seat at one of the long dark tables, after asking permission of the men already sitting at it.

— Please, one of them said, with a gesture, and returned to a discussion with his friends.

The man’s face and forearms were dark from sun. He looked about thirty. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, and the blond stubble on his chin glittered as he talked. Around his beer glass, his fingers were thick and his fingernails oval. His eyes, however, were fine and quick, and he caught Jacob studying him. He nodded amiably.

Jacob unfolded his Lidové noviny. He attempted the lead story, which had eluded him on the train. Newspapers were written in a different register of Czech from the one he had learned to speak. They were full of the words for handling ideas, the equivalents of “approve,” “inquiry,” and “comparable,” assembled on the same pattern as the English words but from Slavic roots and prefixes instead of Latin ones. So once he was able to identify “refer,” it shouldn’t be hard to recognize “infer” and “transfer” and “defer”…

— Please, a waiter whined.

— Good day, Jacob said, but he saw, as he said it, that the waiter considered Jacob’s greeting a waste of his time. — What do you have in the way of ready food? Jacob added, trying to be more purposeful.

The waiter sighed dramatically. — I’ll bring you a menu. He began to stalk off.

— But please, Jacob said. The waiter would bring the tourist menu, overpriced, if he wasn’t stopped. — Do you have pork meat with cabbage and dumplings?

— Of course.

— Thus, one, please, and one beer.

— Thus, the waiter agreed. He seemed relieved. Evidently he hadn’t wanted to fleece Jacob if he didn’t have to. In blue ink he wrote the price of the dish on a slip of gray paper; he slashed once, below the number, to represent Jacob’s beer; and he anchored the slip under the ashtray nearest Jacob.

— It isn’t a bother, if I smoke? Jacob asked the men at his table. They had finished eating — they had stacked their plates — so Jacob thought they wouldn’t mind. There were three of them. Besides the quick-eyed man, there was a heavyset one with a ragged beard and a sharp-looking one with his black hair smarmed and his sleeves rolled up.

— Not at all, answered the quick-eyed man.

Jacob nodded his thanks. Now he had more of their attention than he was comfortable with. He felt lucky that he was smoking Sparty rather than Marlboros today, though he wondered if even Sparty might seem a little precious here. The men were watching him. He tapped nervously on the little blue trireme that decorated the pack. — If you would like…, it occurred to him to offer, and he held out the open pack to them.

It was as if he had enchanted them, or as if he had broken an enchantment. They laughed and accepted. They were drunker than he had realized.

— Thanks many times, the quick-eyed man said. Jacob nodded again but then looked away, because the man seemed so at ease in his skin that he was hard to resist, and Jacob didn’t want to gawk. He didn’t want to offend them.

The workers, however, didn’t seem to fear that the rapport was fragile. “Hele,” the quick-eyed man hailed Jacob. — Look, where are you from? He was addressing Jacob informally; he was quite drunk.

— From America.

— That’s what I told you, said the sharp-looking man, as he lightly thumped the table.

— Look, the quick-eyed man again addressed Jacob, as if the injunction would help Jacob cross the language barrier. — And in what way do you work?

Jacob couldn’t help but return the man’s amiable gaze. In America the return might have triggered either a suspicion that Jacob was gay or a suspicion that Jacob was mocking the man, or both, but here there was no interruption. The man and Jacob seemed able to look at each other fondly without either thinking the worse of the other, though their eyes didn’t lock, because the worker’s frame wobbled slightly from drink and his eyes didn’t compensate for the wobble, for the same reason. — In what way? Jacob repeated, uncertain of the meaning of the question.

— Yeah, and forgive, but also, how much does it pay, if it isn’t a bother?

The other two workers fell expectantly silent. — Not at all, Jacob said. They wanted to hear the good news.

To answer honestly, he would have to say that he hoped to be a writer when he returned to America, and that he didn’t know how much writers were paid. But he couldn’t say that; it would sound both arrogant and weak. He would have to answer as if he were still the self he had been when he left, which, now that he was invited to describe it, he saw as a discarded shell. The shell, however, had made more money than he, in the future, was likely to, and he found that he wanted to impress the men. — In America I wrote papers for business, he said. The same ignorance that prevented him from understanding the newspaper kept him from describing his work more precisely. — They paid me thirty-five dollars each hour, he added. That much, anyway, was easy to communicate.

— A thousand crowns, the man in the beard grunted.

— A thousand crowns an hour, echoed the sharp one, emphatically.

— And that is little! the quick-eyed man exclaimed.

— In truth? his friends challenged him.

— That is little, that yes? the quick-eyed man asked Jacob, for confirmation. — You aren’t rich.

The part of Jacob that was still a boy from a public school, who had worked hard to get into and through Harvard — the part of him that he had just revisited, in order to answer the man’s question — felt threatened. The man had asked his question so colloquially. “Nejseš bohatej,” rather than “nejsi bohatý.” You’re one of us, his manner of speaking implied. He was recognizing something about Jacob. A part of Jacob heard it as, You’re no better than us.

— No, I’m not rich, Jacob agreed. Despite himself, he couldn’t keep a note of disappointment out of his voice. He had been proud of making so much money, even though he had hated the job. Even now he could see a way to be proud of America for having been able to pay him so much.

— But…, the man began, and then faltered. Somewhere there had been a miscommunication.

The waiter set a beer before Jacob, violently but without spilling any.

— To health, the quick-eyed man said, raising his own half-empty glass for encouragement.

— To health.

— With papers you work, the man continued. — For real work of course they pay more.

The beer was Staropramen. The sour tang was so closely associated in Jacob’s mind with intoxication that the first sip alone somewhat disoriented him. Even in Prague he almost never drank in the middle of the day. It was too late to ask for a soda water, though. He would drink only half, he decided.

— More? he repeated, not quite following the man’s line of argument.

— They pay more if you make houses, roads, plates. As the man said the word for plates, he gave a quarter-turn with his thumb to the stack of plates in front of him, by way of demonstration. — Cigarettes, he added, with a nod to the Sparta he was smoking. From the gestures, Jacob saw that the man thought that it was the difference in language that was keeping Jacob from understanding.

— They pay more to those, who work with their hands, the man tried again, with the manner of someone who has been reduced to saying something so obvious that he is afraid that he risks sounding impolite. Now Jacob got it. A road was more valuable than a corporate newsletter, so a construction worker like him would naturally make more than a paper-pusher like Jacob.