Necessary Errors: A Novel (8 page)

It seemed grand to Jacob that he was sitting in a café in Prague with
his Czech lover, forgoing dinner for the sake of whatever it was that was between them. He could smoke a few cigarettes to kill his hunger, if the
didn’t accomplish that.

“Or we can buy
párky
later,” Jacob said, in English, thinking out loud. A
párek
was a fat roasted pink sausage, sold on the streets at all hours.

—And
párky
are pleasing to you, Kuba?

Jacob was happy to play the straight man. —A great deal, he said.

Upon the arrival of the waiter, Luboš asked him only to refill their drinks.

*   *   *

Jacob had arrived in Prague with a project. He couldn’t see that he was carrying it; to see that would have required standing a little farther outside himself than he was able to. He would have said it was a mood, if anyone had asked, or maybe a spirit, if he was writing in the privacy of his journal. But he wouldn’t have understood that it took the shape of a story he wanted to live out. It was a common enough project for an earnest, idealistic young person who was comfortable with only one pleasure, reading, and who had graduated from college in the year of the protest in Tiananmen Square, the breaching of the Berlin Wall, and the Velvet Revolution, so that his first personal experience of adult freedom—which he knew didn’t count for much in the grand scheme of things but which he felt with great intensity—seemed echoed by the wider world. Although he knew that he was hearing not echoes but emanations from distant sources, he wasn’t above thinking they might have a special resonance for him—that he might be receptive to them in a way others couldn’t be. He had a sense that everything in his life up to that point was prelude, which might safely be skipped by anyone who came late to the story, and the recent date of his discovery that he loved men strengthened this feeling; he thought that nothing finally attached him to the world that had formed him, and that this separation was what he had instead of a skill or a legacy; this was his special advantage. Without knowing it, he was looking for people who were heroic, so he could join them. It had to be without knowing it that he set out on this quest, because he did know that it was too late. Try as he might to acquire a memory of the revolution, he would find only souvenirs. He was on guard, paradoxically, against many of the same sentiments that drew
him; nostalgia would be a kind of infidelity to the change whose essence he was trying to come close to. To break through the commemorative trinkets and partygoer’s clichés, it was vital that he learn Czech, from a Czech lover if possible. Even if it was too late to take part in the great change that had happened here, he anxiously hoped that it might not be so far gone that it could not be, in subtle traces it had left behind, witnessed.

In the West, gays had woken up to politics later than other groups had, and it occurred to Jacob that he might not have arrived too late for the liberation of Eastern Europe’s gay people. He hadn’t settled in advance on the story he hoped to hear, but he did expect to recognize it if he came across it, and so when Luboš agreed to go home with him and began, during the tram ride, to tell a little more of his personal story, he listened with a certain partiality, an effort at recognition.

The effort was frustrated. Luboš’s story seemed to have no politics at all. In fact he seemed to have failed in a few instances to appreciate the freedoms that history had dropped in his lap. Luboš told him, for example, that the French businessman, the one whom Jacob had studied in T-Club, had recently taken him to Alsace for a couple of months so he could learn French, in order to improve communication between the two of them. (They were business partners, it turned out; Jacob had been mistaken in thinking the Frenchman was Luboš’s employer.) Luboš had hated the language classes and had stopped going to them. He had also taken his time about telling his partner that he had quit—had hidden in coffee shops, where he could read none of the newspapers, and in clothing stores, where he could afford none of the clothes, utterly bored—and they had had a vehement argument after the inevitable discovery, and Luboš had come back to Prague much sooner than planned. The two men had remained partners, however. Georges—his name was Georges Collin—did speak German, though with difficulty, and he wanted a foot in the Czech door very badly. It was not yet legal for a foreigner to run a business like Collin’s in his own name, and he did not think he could afford to wait for the law to change. There were many small but crucial tasks, such as renting an office or installing a telephone, that a Czech could navigate more adeptly than a foreigner, and, as in every business, a web of local negotiations was necessary, for which Georges wanted a native whose judgment of character he felt he could trust.

It was only the language barrier, Jacob felt, that brought Luboš to the immodesty of declaring himself trustworthy and a good judge of character. He said it without boasting, with a trace of self-deprecation even, as if he were admitting that he wasn’t clever. He had none of the loud manner that Jacob had found in the few gay businessmen he had met in America—which Jacob hadn’t minded so much, because it had seemed to imply a permission to josh with them as if they were circus animals rather than wild ones. Instead he had a quiet competence, a kind of security in himself. He was like an adult explaining his work to a child. He seemed more fully grown up than anyone Jacob had ever met.

And yet for no apparent reason he had passed up a chance to learn French, and now, for the sake of a tumble, he was stepping out of the tram at the foot of Jacob’s street.

The neighbor’s collie did not bark at them; it was in for the night. As they walked, Jacob let the back of his hand brush the back of Luboš’s, and the touch of warmth felt electric in the cold air. When he unlocked the gate to the yard, he nodded to Luboš to precede him, as if he were a gallant and Luboš a damsel, and that was as much of a sign as it seemed safe to give.

—But it is pretty here, Luboš said, once they were safely inside.

For a moment Jacob saw the rooms as a stranger might. His eye picked out as incongruous the few items genuinely his, as if they were the litter he was responsible for at a campground deep in a forest. It aroused him, for some reason, to be reminded that he lived this way. If he decided one afternoon never to come back he wouldn’t lose much.

He opened the refrigerator, and they both took beers. They hadn’t even kissed yet. They were like teenagers alone for the first time after an arranged marriage.

—Here you write your novels? Luboš asked, pointing at the kitchen table and seating himself at it.

“In there, actually,” Jacob replied, in English, and pointed into the bedroom at a little round white table, which Luboš couldn’t see from where he was sitting. Jacob pulled the table to the couch for a desk whenever he made an attempt. “But I haven’t written anything since I got here.”

Luboš nodded. —Kuba…, he began.

“Yes?” Jacob answered.

—Nothing, Luboš said.

“I’ll light the candle,” Jacob offered, and proceeded to, instead of trying to translate the suggestion.

—It’s nice, Luboš said. —Kuba…

—Yes, Jacob answered, this time in Czech in case his talking in English had made Luboš diffident.

—No, nothing, Luboš said again.

—There is a problem? Jacob asked.

—Yes, Luboš said, looking away. —I have AIDS.

It took a few repetitions before Jacob was sure he had understood the word. He leaned over Luboš and embraced him—awkwardly, because Luboš didn’t rise from his chair—then kneeled at the floor beside him and asked, in tears, how it had happened and how long he had known. Luboš, who had hardened a little at Jacob’s tears, said the news was recent. He spoke with a slight smile.

It was strange and unlucky, Jacob thought. While the Iron Curtain had stood, it had kept the disease out of Eastern Europe almost entirely. There were still very few cases. Jacob wanted to punish himself for having thought that when he left America he would leave the disease behind, too, at least for a while, but he shouldn’t tell the story as if it were about himself. It was awful for Luboš. This was in the days before the new therapies; almost no one lived more than ten years after a diagnosis. The only chance to live even that long was to have the best doctors, the ones with connections to researchers, and there wouldn’t be any in Czechoslovakia. Luboš probably didn’t even realize that the marketplace sorted fates in the illness, that it apportioned survival by taking a kind of measure of a patient’s resourcefulness.

—And you don’t? Luboš asked. —It is common in America, isn’t it?

—No, I don’t. It’s not that common. Do your friends know? Jacob asked. —Your parents?

—No, no, Luboš answered. He waved a hand, as if to say that Jacob was making too much of a fuss.

—I’m sorry, Jacob said, apologizing for his state.

—Please, Luboš said. —But I thought everyone in America…

—I’m too young, Jacob explained. He held Luboš’s hand and cried for a little while. This was as dangerous a world as the one he had left, and somehow he hadn’t thought it would be. He accused himself,
somewhat bitterly, of having come to Czechoslovakia to join in a victory lap he hadn’t earned, and told himself that Luboš’s Frenchman, who had no doubt given it to him, must have wanted something similar. —Your health now? Jacob asked.

—It’s good. He looked at Jacob with concern. —Kuba…

—Yes?

Luboš made an effort to find words in English. “I not know words. In Czech,
kecám
. I make joke.”

“I don’t understand,” Jacob said.

“
Srandu
. Fun. Not true.”

“A joke? You don’t have AIDS?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

Was Luboš only pretending in order to calm him down? But Luboš repeated the disavowal and insisted that he had meant to play a joke and hadn’t expected Jacob to have such a strong reaction.

—Truly? Jacob asked.

—Truly.

He felt an absurdly powerful relief. —I am happy, he said, and embraced Luboš again, a little less clumsily now, because, he realized, he no longer thought him fragile.

“But I don’t want, tonight. Sleep only. You understand?”

Jacob nodded.

—You don’t make such jokes in America? Luboš asked, uncertainly.

—No, Jacob answered. It occurred to him that he was entitled to feel angry, but he felt only puzzled. He drank quietly from his beer and cast his thoughts back, as one does when one has been fooled, to see whether in his excitement he had revealed more than he would have liked to.

“I’m sort of a weeper, aren’t I,” he said out loud in English, more to himself than to Luboš.

—Pardon?

“And you’re sort of an asshole.”

Luboš smiled. —You were very sad, he said. —It was good of you to be so sad.

Jacob saw that he had been expected to respond differently. When he and Luboš lay down for the night, they kissed quietly for a while, and in the end, because Jacob very much wanted to, they did make love,
safely, as Jacob had learned to do in Boston, where the few men that he had gone to bed with had all followed the rules without prompting.

*   *   *

In the morning, he didn’t want to look at Luboš. In those days, he often felt shy with the other person after spending the night, whether it was with a man or a woman. It was a reaction he had no control over, like the kick of a gun. He stiffly offered to share his
rohlíky
, butter, and strawberry jam. He hated himself for his reserve, but he didn’t know how to soften it. He tried to disguise it by telling Luboš to feel free to take a shower, but then he spoiled the invitation by adding that he had to shower himself and had to be at the school in an hour, so Luboš did not accept.

—I am glad, that we met, Luboš said at the door.

At least Jacob thought that’s what he said; he wasn’t sure he understood the last word, but he didn’t ask about it, because he was looking forward to being alone. In the daylight Luboš’s face seemed older, uneven. Jacob didn’t understand why he had been drawn to it. He knew, however, that he would be drawn to it again when this mood wore off. He tried to keep that in mind. —I, too, he answered. There was something that his struggle with himself was distracting him from. There was a nuance he was missing. He tried to force his attention. He remembered that he had no way of contacting Luboš. —Telephone? he asked.

This time Luboš supplied a number. It belonged to a friend, he said, with whom they could leave messages. There seemed to be nothing else to say. They embraced quickly, for a leave-taking, and the smell of Luboš, rising off his body as they touched, first disgusted Jacob, then melted him, the second response succeeding the first almost instantly, disorientingly. This was the body he had been lying next to, the aroma reminded him, with whom he had taken a simple pleasure. He had somehow forgotten it upon waking up.

*   *   *

“I just had the most disturbing experience,” Annie said in a hushed voice, about a week later, as Jacob sat down at her table in a café in
, or Old Town Square. It was midafternoon, and the square, which they had a good view of through the café’s windows, was nearly empty. It was too cold for tourists. Not long ago, a gold-colored statue of an East German car on legs had seemed to stride into
the square, in the corner marked by the Staré
horologe, but the statue had recently been taken down.
What’s Your Hurry?
had been the name of it. There no longer seemed to be any hurry at all, only gray bricks and a few wanderers, leaning into the wind as they walked.