Necessary Errors: A Novel (26 page)

“He could appeal to your good nature,” said Annie. When Annie and Jacob had come back from Berlin, the headmistress had scolded her for arranging a substitute on her own rather than through the office.

“But he does not know how. He tries by—,” he gestured instead of saying it again.

“So it’s once again the problem of socialism with a human face, as it were,” said Henry.

“But when there is no longer socialism, and the face is wounded. And when, as Jacob says, the antibiotics are rather mediocre.”

“So you do think capitalism will be an improvement, after all,” said Jacob.

“Oh no. Under capitalism no one will take any trouble to persuade another, only to buy him.”

“You miss socialism, then?” Henry asked.

“I missed socialism even when we had it.”

“But it was socialism that caused the damage,” Jacob said. “The poor antibiotics and so on.”

“But the
idea
of socialism didn’t,” Kaspar answered, humorously, so as to suggest that the quixotism of his defense wasn’t lost on him. “The powerful will find a new kind of force. The one you are accustomed to, probably. But for the moment there is this clumsiness. It is an interlude.”

“It must be awful, not to have a nose,” Annie said.

“It would be a pity if there were nothing about the coming changes you approved of,” Henry commented, “when you worked so hard against the last government.”

“But I did not work against the government,” he protested, with the innocence that Jacob imagined he put on when asking Melinda for tea while in her bathtub.

“You worked as a dissident.”

“But that is not the same, except perhaps to your friend Hans. I
worked to continue certain possibilities, and it happened that the government did not like them.”

“No, Hans wouldn’t understand that distinction,” Henry said.

“I think that Havel is a good man. He is in earnest. It is only that my place has changed. I am through the looking glass.”

The room had grown dark while they were talking, and when Annie lit the candle on the kitchen table, the flame created a scene different from the one it created when Jacob was alone—a scene of conversation.

While the roast stood and the gratin cooled, Thom dropped into boiling water two long white cylinders of Czech dumpling, which he had mixed earlier from a box. After a few minutes, he fished the cylinders out and cut slices by garroting each cylinder several times with thread.

“So that’s how it’s done,” Jacob commented.

“Jana taught me,” Thom said, with a certain pride.

“It
is
clever,” said Annie. The exposed, perfectly white flesh of the slices steamed lightly. Thom set two on each plate while Henry carved the chicken. There was barely room for the friends around Jacob’s small kitchen table; Henry had to eat with his plate on his lap and his beer on the floor. They were gathered in a corner of the apartment as they were gathered in a corner of the city, as if to make of their shared mood a haven, and the emptiness outside their circle seemed like a protection. What if they were to stay here together forever, Jacob wondered, apart from their families and their pasts, improvising the rest of their lives? He had told Luboš that he couldn’t stay, but he had spoken then as if the decision were someone else’s, as if his presence weren’t his own property. He could choose to give it away if he wanted to. If he continued to want to so badly…

“I completely forgot to tell you,” said Annie, “that Thom and I checked out one of the school’s tape players, for you, in case you were wanting to hear some music. We teachers can take them home, you know.”

“Oh, I’ve already got one checked out.”

She looked crestfallen.

“But did you bring any tapes?”

“Thom did. And I thought I was so clever. When you told me about that fellow loaning you a tape, I ought to have known you would have a way to play it.”

“What tape might that be?” Thom asked.

“Depeche Mode,” Jacob answered. “It wasn’t my choice.”

“I was going to propose an exchange but in that case I think I’ll offer a simple loan,” he said, handing Jacob a cassette he had been keeping in his shirt pocket. “I think you said you liked this band.”

“I liked their last album. I don’t know this one.”

“A friend just sent it from Edinburgh.”

“I wouldn’t think you’d like them,” Jacob said, opening the cassette to read the insert. “They’re even faggier than Depeche Mode.”

Annie gave him an admonishing look.

“That may be, but they’re proper socialists,” Thom replied, and winked at Kaspar.

“Oh, all that God and Marx stuff,” Jacob said, remembering the lyrics.

“That is something that is worse, I hear,” Kaspar said.

“What?” asked Annie.

“The life of gays.”

It took Jacob a moment to realize that it was his own description of the band on Thom’s cassette tape that had introduced the topic.

“I have friends,” Kaspar continued, with a vague gesture that implied he was not free to be precise about their identity, “and they tell me that many of the young men now—.” He hesitated. “Perhaps it is not delicate.”

“Oh, if you don’t want to tell us,” said Annie. “We
are
eating, and I’d rather not hear a story like the last one.”

“Is it that bad?” Jacob asked.

“It is not so bad, in that way,” Kaspar hazarded.

“Please tell us. I’m curious now. You’re tough enough,” Jacob said to Annie.

“Whatever I am, I am not ‘tough,’ thank you.”

“Don’t be mad.”

“I’m not ‘mad,’ either,” she muttered. She studied her plate.

Kaspar delayed a moment more, as if trying to find the most polite way to put it. Just before he spoke, Jacob realized that he knew what Kaspar was going to say. “They sell themselves.”

How ugly he is, thought Jacob. What a piglike face he has.

“What do you mean?”

“For deutschmarks.”

“You tell such
stories,
” Annie said, looking up and staring at Kaspar fixedly, as if she were making an effort not to glance at Jacob.

“My friends worry,” Kaspar said. “They see it, they say. They are older.”

It’s just his tendency to exaggerate, Jacob said to himself. But it was difficult for him to contradict Kaspar without exposing himself. “That seems unlike the Czechs,” he risked.

“How unlike them?” Kaspar countered, happy for a debate. “Or rather, how is it more unlike them than unlike any other nation?”

“They’re so proud,” said Jacob.

“Yes, they are, it is true,” Kaspar conceded.

“There are women who sell themselves at the western border crossings,” Henry said. “To the truckers. No one is sure what to do about it. None of the dissidents wants to take a moral position on anything sexual.”

“Why not?” Jacob asked. He didn’t really want to hear any more, but he didn’t want to seem to have been thrown.

“I don’t think they’re comfortable with the idea, philosophically,” Henry answered. “They’re rather famous for respecting their marriage vows more in spirit than by the letter. Havel in particular.”

“You wouldn’t know it to look at him, would you,” Thom said. “With that little moustache.”

“It’s the use you put it to,” Henry answered cheerfully.

They insisted on washing all the dishes, pots, and pans before they left. Jacob thanked them until he felt silly doing it. Once in bed, he fell asleep after only a few paragraphs of Stendhal, and in the middle of the night, he woke to the sound of rain, an old habit, a legacy of childhood, pointless now that he no longer had a bicycle or a dog that he needed to be sure were inside and dry. He recognized, however, by the clarity with which he remembered the bicycle and dog and by the dryness of his sheets, that his nights of fever were finally behind him.

*   *   *

Although Jacob didn’t believe Kaspar’s rumor, he found the next day that he wanted to see T-Club again with his own eyes. The wish seemed to him a little ridiculous, like a miser’s compulsion to open his strongbox to reassure himself of his treasure.

It was a Friday night. Ivan gave Jacob a half nod to signal that he had seen Jacob arrive, and it raised Jacob’s hopes. But then he seemed to put Jacob entirely out of mind. Since the improvement in Jacob’s Czech, Ivan no longer yelled at Jacob in German. He had adopted the simpler tactic of affecting not to hear him. Between the arrivals of more-favored guests, the doorman stood lost in thought, his arms folded over his belly, his ass resting against the half door of the wardrobe, oblivious to Jacob’s occasional questions and to the bar’s disco. His eyes were sunk deep out of sight, as if he had somehow retracted the living part of himself, like a hermit crab drawn into its shell. He didn’t pare his nails, comb his hair, or count his money; there was no sign that it cost him anything to keep Jacob waiting.

Jacob was too agitated to read. He tried to settle himself into a patience that matched the doorman’s but could only manage it for a few minutes at a time and always lapsed into watching Ivan for a sign. The black vertical bars of the entrance grille and the smooth, dark concrete of the floor made him think of a jail, and then the artificial vines made him think of a zoo. A cheap zoo. It was absurd to want so badly to get into such a place.

—Please, Jacob said. —Please.

Ivan met the appeal with a look of disgust and admitted him. Jacob had waited more than an hour. He told himself he didn’t care what a doorman thought of his willingness to beg.

Once inside, his eyes adjusted slowly. That night, the dance floor was striped with blue and purple lights, which flashed in a lazy rhythm independent of the music, and a few teenagers danced among them industriously, knifing and swaying in high-waisted pants and pajama-like shirts. At the surrounding tables, darker, sat men in their twenties in faded denim jackets, and in the outer belt, near Jacob, stood older men in still quieter clothes—the Czechs pale-skinned, the Germans pink. Jacob ordered a beer from the balding waiter with large glasses, the kind one, whose name was Pavel. Ota had introduced Jacob to him a month ago, explaining that everyone in the bar forgave Pavel for not being gay. The affection implied by the comment had seemed to embarrass the waiter at the time. Pavel did not now show that he remembered the introduction, but he exchanged Jacob’s money for a beer with his usual air of gawky good intention. —Thanks, Jacob said.

—There is no cause for it, the waiter answered.

There was nothing new. The loners held themselves with the same shuffling alertness. Those with friends still kept their chatter loud for the benefit of those who might want to overhear, still directed one another’s stares by nudges, and occasionally gave a girlish scream.

One came from Ota. He was at his usual table in the rear, wearing a thin wool sweater. It was robin’s egg blue, with a black-and-tan argyle pattern covering the chest but not the arms. His curls were waxed with gel and teased higher than usual. As Jacob approached, he saw that Ota was not wearing a T-shirt and that the scratch of the sweater had raised the skin of his neck and cheeks to an irritable and prickly red. The fabric held him so tightly that the outlines of his collarbones and almost his ribs were visible as he turned his head to greet Jacob.

“My prince has come,” Ota said. His audience laughed. “Is that correct?”

“The English is correct,” Jacob answered.

—But you are not my prince, Ota sighed in Czech, taking one of Jacob’s hands in both of his. —It is really a pity.

—You are laughing at me.

—But through tears, Kuba.

Ota named for Jacob the young men at his table. Two were familiar; two, new. One of the new ones, who had the dark coloring of a gypsy, gave Jacob a smile of hungry interest. His hair was long, worn in the early Beatles bowl cut that was becoming fashionable. There was also an older man, a German in a loosened tie. He had a small, prim moustache.

Ota said that the German was a distinguished guest. —But here we have the American ambassador to the Czechoslovak Federal Republic, Ota continued, by way of introducing Jacob. —Shirley Templová! As you see, she is no longer blonde, unfortunately. But she is
woman
, now.

—I thank you, Jacob said, bowing slightly.

—In fact he is named Kuba, Ota amended. —Like Fidel, who is not a blond either.

“Ahoj,” Jacob saluted the group. The one young man was watching so closely that Jacob felt shy. The German, on the other hand, did not seem to recognize the greeting; either he understood no Czech or he had no interest in Jacob and did not care if he showed it. —But you are a
blond, Jacob returned to Ota, because he guessed that Ota was vain on this point tonight.

—Is it not pretty? Ota asked. The gel drew his curls into such tight circlets that his scalp showed clearly beneath them. The curls seemed to lie on his head like something separate, like a necklace laid in a mass on a dresser. They were an empty, pure color, like clean, dry sand.

—Very much so, Jacob agreed.

“Another
hit
song from the United States,” the DJ announced, interrupting all conversations, in a singsong English he must have learned from recordings. He continued in singsong Czech, a strange thing to hear. He spoke too quickly for Jacob to follow, but what he said made Ota and his friends laugh.

“Sakra,” Ota swore.

—What did he say? asked Jacob.

“Nothing, nothing,” Ota answered in English, as if to insist on the language barrier. “It was something in Czech.”

—I know that, but what did he say?

—Look at how he is staring at us, Ota remarked of the acolyte across the table who seemed interested in Jacob.

—What? this young man responded.

—What? Ota mocked him. —I am quite good to you, he told the young man.

It seemed to please the young man to be told this, and his eyes shifted between Ota and Jacob.

—What did the DJ say? Jacob repeated.

—But do not be dull. It was a silliness. He said that the song was from America, and that we all want to have many ties of international brotherhood.

—As formerly with Russia?

—He did not say that, but as you wish.

—But wasn’t it a joke?