Necessary Errors: A Novel (86 page)

The café was located in the
piano nobile
of an eighteenth-century palace that had recently been restored to the family from whom the Communists had nationalized it. The Communists must have appreciated the beauty of the rooms, because they had left intact the height of the ceilings and the generosity of the windows. The walls were now painted a delicate shade of lime, with white trim; in the windows were boxes of daisies.

The café was one of the new, fully private enterprises. The
d’ was reluctant to let Jacob wander among the tables in search of Rafe; he understood it to be within his authority to escort Jacob to a table of his—the
d’s—choosing. He trailed Jacob skeptically; only after Rafe had accepted Jacob’s presence with a welcoming nod did he retreat. Moments later, a waiter brought Jacob a menu, unprompted.

“It’s awfully professional here,” said Jacob, admiring the menu, which wasn’t a mimeograph.

“Isn’t it great?” Rafe replied.

Jacob studied the menu; he was wary of meeting Rafe’s eye, though Rafe seemed at ease—composed, beneath a surface animation.

“So what can I do for you?” Rafe asked, as soon as Jacob had ordered an espresso.

“I’m leaving next week.”

“Back to the home front, eh.”

It was the middle of the afternoon on a weekday, and only a fraction of the tables were occupied. At one of them sat three businessmen in Western suits and ties, their table cluttered with American-style memo pads and thick pens. Most of the other patrons were young people, writing postcards alone or chatting in small groups. Their cheeks were
sunburnt, and they had tucked their unwashed hair under bandannas. Tall nylon backpacks sagged on the floor beside their chairs.

“They’re ruining the city, aren’t they,” remarked Rafe. “The backpackers. Though I suppose it’s hypocritical of me to regret the Americanization.”

“Why?”

“Why indeed. I can’t tell sometimes, Jacob—are you really
or do you put it on?”

“I think I really am.”

“You almost convince me.”

“I try to be polite,” Jacob said.

“Oh, that’s different. That could be quite dangerous even,” he said with approval. “Have you seen Kaspar lately? Did he tell you how Goethe murdered Schiller? He’s figured it out.”

“He didn’t mention it.”

“Because, who wrote
Faust
? It couldn’t have been Goethe, who never had a dramatic idea in his life. Schiller wrote it, Kaspar says, and then the devil convinced Goethe to murder him and steal his manuscript. So a
little
bit of it
is
by Goethe, actually. The part about being tempted to kill Schiller. He’s made a list of parallel passages.”

“He said he hadn’t seen so much of you lately.”

“This was about a month ago. Maybe he’s moved on. Heard from Melinda? Does she write to you?”

“Not much, but she doesn’t have as much reason to write to me as she does to you.”

“And she doesn’t have as much reason
not
to write to you as she does to me.”

“She wrote me once,” Jacob admitted.

“And me once, too. She must be going down her list.”

Rafe noticed that his own teacup was empty and tried to pour himself more, but he was out. He summoned a waiter and lifted the lid of his pot to ask for a refill of hot water. There was a trace of impatience in his manner, a hint that it might be considered gracious of him not to mind having to ask. No one would have dared reveal impatience to a waiter in the fall, before the latest changes. It was like Rafe to have discovered that one could now take such a liberty.

“What are you going to do in America, tell me again?” Rafe asked.

“I’m going to school.”

“But what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“The life of the mind,” Rafe conjectured.

“I guess.”

“I wonder if it’ll be enough for you. You’ve learned a lot here. Not everyone picks up Czech.”

“I only picked up a little
. I was dating Czechs and I had to be able to get by.”

“But that’s something, too. I bet you learned a lot about that, and I bet it’s not like it is in America. This’ll interest you, I think. I had a friend, another ‘Harv,’ as Annie calls us, who interviewed with the ‘State Department’ around the time we were graduating, which is what they tell you to say when you’re interviewing for one of the intelligence agencies, as you probably know. They gave him these puzzles to solve, sort of like the kind that the consulting firms give at their interviews. They told him, for instance, to imagine you’re with an ‘asset,’ someone you hope will bring in information. Imagine you’re with an asset who’s gay. He’s nervous. He’s suspicious. What do you say to put him at ease?”

“You mean, what do you say because he’s gay?” Jacob considered. “That’s a tricky one.”

“Isn’t it? Because if you say
you’re
gay, and he makes a pass at you, what then? Even if you really are gay, you might not want to go to bed with him.”

“You could say you’re a tolerant person.”

“And that would be highly laudable in you, but a bit abstract, don’t you think? Everyone likes to say they’re tolerant.”

“I give up.”

“My friend didn’t get it, either,” said Rafe. His hot water had come and the old leaves were steeping; he fussed with the pot to give Jacob time for one more chance. “Come on.”

“No idea.”

“You say you have a gay brother,” Rafe revealed, pouring himself a new cup.

“Oh, that’s good,” Jacob admitted. “Because then he thinks you’re an ally, but there’s no possibility of romantic trouble.”

“Isn’t it good?”

“Too bad I couldn’t figure it out.”

“I imagine you’re usually pretty good at puzzles, though. At thinking about people. There’s almost always a story that people are telling about themselves, and sometimes you can get them to tell it ever so slightly differently.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Don’t be bashful. I’m just saying, what if you’re bored? At this school. What if you’re of my party without knowing it?”

“Which party is that?”

Rafe grinned for an answer.

“Goethe’s or Schiller’s?” Jacob asked. “You could have told me that
you
had a gay brother,” Jacob ventured.

“But I don’t need to win your trust. After all we’ve been through. Or do I, still? Is that what you’re saying? That’s not very nice, if so. But then I might answer that it wouldn’t be a matter of urgency for me because you don’t really know anything. Not anything strategic.”

“I really don’t,” Jacob said carefully.

“See?” Rafe met his gaze. “You say that with such conviction. That’s why I say you could be dangerous.”

“Dangerous to whom?”

“You tell me,” Rafe challenged him. “To the Schillers of the world?”

“Wasn’t it Schiller who explained the difference between
and conscious art?”

“To the Goethes, then. Who can be even trickier. See, I think you’re more like me, and that you’d find that even what my friend went out for was too tiresome for you. You wouldn’t like the having-an-allegiance part of it.”

“Did your friend get in?”

“He said he didn’t, but I imagine they tell them to say that, too.”

“So you don’t have an allegiance yourself.”

“Do I seem to? I don’t think I’m the sort who really has a home team.”

“Kaspar said something like that about you.”

Rafe sipped his tea. “I think Kaspar and I understand each other, finally.”

*   *   *

Leaving requires work. There were a few more books that he meant to buy. He had to sort his clothes into those worth bringing home and those that it made more sense to leave behind. He decided that his fireproof red blanket should stay but that his Russian-made windup alarm clock could come home with him. He left Václav’s empty cage on the sidewalk one morning, and it was gone by the time he returned from teaching in the afternoon. Chores distracted him from such maudlin trains of thought as wondering whether he was likely to recognize in the moment the last time that he and Milo went to bed together.

In Paris, it would be convenient to have a student ID card, and he raised the subject with Henry, who worked after all at the Czechoslovak government’s office for foreign students. Henry invited him to drop by his office some morning. He could issue Jacob a card, and they could have lunch afterward.

Annie helped Jacob buy a scarf for Jacob’s mother one afternoon, and they ended up at the foot of Wenceslas Square, listening to the four Czech teenagers who sang early Beatles songs under the English-language name the Dogs. The Dogs were surrounded by a ring of young
trampové
, native and foreign. Cheery and dated, the songs corresponded to a popular idea of the revolution as an outburst that had been meant to happen at the end of the 1960s and had somehow been preserved from staling or souring.

“They’re not bad,” said Annie. They were standing at a slight remove from the Dogs’ admirers.

“It’s funny that people come halfway around the world to hear songs they already know.”

“Everything needn’t always be improving.”

“I didn’t say it was wrong to like it.”

“But you think it’s simple.” The song ended; there was a clatter of applause. “It’s a pity you can’t stay longer,” she added, before the young people began to sing again.