by Caleb Crain
“I don’t understand. Why am I warm?”
“Teplý; warm,” Ota glossed. “Like T-Club.”
Jacob shook his head.
“T for teplý. Maybe I have wrong word. Not hot, not cold,” he explained, wavering a hand in midair.
“Yes, that’s warm.”
“In Czech, warm is gay. Not in English?”
“No,” Jacob answered. “I thought T-Club had to do with tea, as in .”
“?” Ota purred, at the prospect of a piece of Western gay lore he did not yet know. “Why? Is tea gay in America?”
“Kind of.”
“You must explain. I know, that it is hard work, translation, but is rewarding.”
* * *
For the next hour Ota bantered with Jacob, sometimes in Czech but mostly in English, which he continuously interpreted for his audience, shifting as continuously in his chair, so that each comment flew into the face of one of the boys, each comment to a different boy in an unpredictable sequence, fixing them with his attention and binding them together, through him, in a radiant pattern. As he shifted, too, he seemed to take glances at Jacob from every conceivable angle.
The youngest Czechs in the bar, including the ones Jacob was sitting with, chattered freely, but among the rest, conversation was rare, and they stood apart from one another. Jacob wondered how acquaintances happened among these men, if they ever did, or whether they all knew one another already. Perhaps a shift of attitude had come with the Velvet Revolution, and the grown men were not yet accustomed to it.
“Do you think it’s easier to be gay here since last year?” Jacob asked.
“Since last year?”
“Since November.”
“Ah. We hope, that it is easier. Yes, it is easier. Everything is easier.” Ota seemed to gain momentum as he answered. “But, you know, this is state socialist bar. State socialist gay bar.” He seemed anxious to be just to the old regime. He did not translate what he said into Czech, however, and his hold on his audience momentarily slackened.
“I’m going for a walk,” Jacob said, rising.
“A walk?” Ota repeated.
“A tour,” Jacob explained.
“Ah. ‘As you like it.’” He waved Jacob up and out of his chair, graciously.
From the bar, where he bought another beer from the polite, silent bartender, Jacob surveyed the crowd. There was only one really handsome man in the room. He was standing behind Jacob and to his left, near the door. Tall and fine-featured, the man looked a few years older than Jacob—twenty-six or twenty-seven, like Daniel. His smile seemed measured, and his eyes pensive, as if he weren’t entirely at ease. A courtier whom the republicans had forgotten to purge, and who was thinking through his next few steps. When he caught Jacob looking at him, he looked quickly away, but a delicate amusement slowly surfaced in his face, as if despite himself, and for a moment Jacob thought he saw in his eyes a wish for Jacob to approach him—in this climate Jacob figured he had an almost exotic appeal, and he meant to take advantage of it—before a subtle flutter passed over the man’s features, like the blades of an iris swiveling shut inside a camera’s lens, and whatever it was that Jacob had seen was gone, or at least obscured.
Pretending to want a better view of the dance floor, Jacob walked to an empty spot just past the man and stood there for a minute, taking nervous gulps of his beer. The man’s shoes were Czech, with thin, flat soles and a rubbery leather whose dye seemed to have worn off at the toes, but he wore a Western-made sweater, cream-colored, with a neat steel zipper.
“Ahoj,” Jacob said, nodding.
The man nodded back.
—Are you Czech? Jacob asked, stupidly but in Czech.
—Yes, the man said. —And you, you’re not Czech? He enunciated with a gentle precision.
—No, Jacob admitted.
The man play-acted surprise, and Jacob play-acted a bashful pride at having seemed so convincingly Czech as to have necessitated an explicit denial. They introduced themselves; the man’s name was Luboš.
—Why are you here? Luboš asked.
—I’m teaching English.
Luboš asked a further question, which Jacob couldn’t understand. Seeing Jacob’s difficulty, he repeated it, first in fluent German, which Jacob understood no better, and then in halting French.
—You speak French? Jacob asked in that language, with alacrity.
The question seemed to alarm Luboš, who leaned over and whispered his answer—“Je déteste le français”—in an accent so faulty that Jacob thought at first that he had said that he hated the French people, not their tongue.
English was no use, either, because Luboš knew only a few words, but in each of the failed attempts there had been a clue, and by now Jacob had pieced together the man’s objection: Jacob could teach English anywhere, and his answer had therefore failed to explain why he had chosen Czechoslovakia.
Jacob held up an index finger while he sorted through the Czech words he knew. —I want to write, he answered at last. It wasn’t what he would have said in English, but it was something he knew how to say.
—Like Havel.
—Yes, Jacob said. In English he would have said “I guess” or “Sure,” but he didn’t know how to in Czech.
—And that’s why you’re here. To write plays and to be president.
—Novels, Jacob specified.
—Ah, novels, the man said. His smile faded into a look of mild concern, as if he had just remembered something, and his eyes drifted to a plane beyond Jacob, who nervously checked over his shoulder for a rival, and felt ashamed of himself for doing so. He was afraid he must seem young to the man, that the man was indulging him, as Daniel had, and that he would therefore, like Daniel, turn inconsequently away when he was ready to find pleasure for himself.
—You’re very handsome, Jacob said, somewhat desperately.
The compliment brought the man’s eyes back into focus. —And what do you do in America? Are you a student?
—No, I work.
—Do you write?
—No, I work in an office. And you?
For a moment it seemed the man was not going to answer. —I work for my friend, he said at last, quietly, and with a small nod of his head indicated a man standing behind him.
In most of the men in a gay bar there is a greater responsiveness than is usual in the world outside, and though most of them make it a piece of strategy to restrain their response, and though the elements composing it are more often subtle than not—a shift of weight, an extra blink of the eyes, an effort not to look at something that naturally draws attention—its presence is palpable; the room vibrates with it. It was therefore exceptional that the man indicated by Luboš gave no sign that he was aware that Jacob and Luboš were discussing him. Jacob did not at first appreciate this absence fully; he merely took it as an opportunity to study the man, angular but otherwise nondescript, clean-shaven, about fifty. He was not Czech. Many of the Czechs in the bar wore one or two items of Western clothing, and though the items were, in themselves, cheap, at least to an American eye, in context they nonetheless served as badges of something higher, a wish for color or fineness. This man, however, was dressed entirely in such items, and so there was nothing for them to contrast with, and they appeared merely to be what they were, shoddy clothes, without a brand, loosely sewn together from fabric that wouldn’t have seemed out of place on office furniture. You couldn’t find such clothes in a mall; you could only buy them on a certain kind of city street, where stores go regularly in and out of business.
The man’s presence in the room was like a spot cut out of a map.
—Who is he? Jacob asked.
“Businessman,” said Luboš quietly, in English. Jacob wanted to take Luboš away, immediately. He didn’t want to see the man, any more than the man wanted to be seen, because he compromised the picture that Jacob was composing, even if he was no more than an employer. —He’s French, Luboš added, speaking in Czech again.
> Jacob had finished his beer, but he pretended there were still a few drops left and raised his bottle again. For some reason neither he nor Luboš seemed to be able to say anything further. As Jacob watched, Luboš’s face relaxed into a fine indifference, as if he were already wishing Jacob farewell. Jacob studied hungrily the features that went into this diplomatic attitude, but he could not think of a way to open them again.
“Dance?” Jacob asked in English.
—I can’t, Luboš answered. —I must stay here, because my friend does not speak Czech.
This sounded final, at least for the evening. —Do you have a telephone?
—No.
—I am staying with a family, and they have a telephone, Jacob volunteered. He took the number out of his wallet and copied it over on a slip of paper borrowed from the bartender.
—I will call, Luboš said. Jacob had no idea whether he would.
“You are leaving,” Ota inferred, when Jacob appeared at his table. “And now you know Luboš. Is problem.”
“Is the problem Luboš or my meeting him?”
Ota smiled, showing his teeth. “No, no. Forget it. It is good to meet you.” He held Jacob’s hand in both of his when they shook. “I will see you here again.”
The attendant, Ivan, surrendered Jacob’s raincoat easily. At the top of the stairs, the street looked almost exactly as it had when Jacob had arrived. It was slightly darker; the pub that he had mistaken for T-Club was now closed. It was as if the aboveground world didn’t believe in the one he had just been visiting. He walked around the corner to wait for a night tram.
* * *
It was with the feeling of having swum several lengths of a pool underwater and at last emerged into air that Jacob knocked at Mel and Rafe’s apartment the next evening. “Jacob, darling, welcome,” Melinda greeted him at the door. She was wearing a black velvet gown, which showed her off—an English beauty with black hair, slender features, bad posture, and a classic complexion, three drops of red wine in a glass of whole milk. “Are we shaking hands, then?” she continued, and kissed him.
“I’m underdressed.”
“Oh no, darling. My mother posted this off to me, on account of the revolution, she said, and I don’t foresee any occasions more formal, so I thought I should improve the opportunity. It was her mother’s, as it happens.”
“It’s gorgeous.”
“This is my favorite part of it,” interjected Rafe, advancing, and he traced the V of the dress as it exposed the pale, spine-dimpled skin of her back, lightly brushed by the loose tresses of her hair.
Rafe had a boyish face, which he disguised with boxy glasses and flyaway hair. “You and Annie are the first ones here.” He beckoned Jacob into the small, yellow apartment. “I’m amazed we don’t have Kaspar yet. He usually shows up at three in the afternoon when he knows something’s on.” Kaspar was an East German dissident, or had been until recently, when those categories collapsed. Mel and Rafe seemed sometimes to have adopted him, though he was a decade their senior. “To take a bath,” Rafe explained. “We have a lovely bathtub. Have you seen it before?” The tub was at the end of their narrow kitchen, and Jacob discovered Annie sitting at a small table in front of it. They waved at each other; then Jacob leaned over and gave her a kiss, which seemed to give her a mild startle. “It’s not very private,” Rafe continued, “especially if this isn’t your house.”
“Kaspar is without any shame,” Melinda said. “It’s quite refreshing. I’ll be keeping myself demurely in the other room, a novel in hand, and he’ll call to me, while soaking, and demand that I brew him tea.”
“Well, not demand,” Rafe qualified.
“No, he doesn’t demand, does he. Plead in his engaging, Kaspar-like way, would I mind, could I possibly allow myself to be troubled to make him some tea, which I must then do, of course, eyes schoolgirlishly averted.”
“It’s very sexy, her schoolgirl thing,” Rafe said. “Staropramen, slivovitz, or some wine from Slovenia that happens to be quite good?”
“His informants put him on to it,” Melinda explained.
“I’ll try the wine,” said Jacob. The kitchen’s top shelf was devoted to empty bottles, no two alike, and their number was a kind of boast of well-being, of openness to experiment.
An empty cup and saucer were in front of Annie, and she was staring at them while Mel and Rafe were speaking. When Jacob sat down across from her and asked what she had been up to, she seemed to shake something out of her eyes, or to dust something off of herself, a mood perhaps. “I did the wash this morning. We have machines in the , you know. It’s quite convenient.”
“My landlords let me use theirs, but I’m not sure they’re happy about it. I think the mother and daughter keep it a secret from Mr. Stehlík.”
She nodded in the way of a person not closely listening. “It’s very considerately managed, the . It’s a great luxury for there to be a machine that one has an undisputed right to. I’m very slow about the wash, as a result. I savor it, really. I spend the whole morning.”
“And that was your day.”
“I felt a little melancholy, so I came by early, and Melinda had me on her hands instead of Kaspar. We had a good chat.” She straightened herself in her chair and met Jacob’s gaze.
“You don’t have to say, if you don’t want.”
“Oh, it’s quite tiresome, really,” she said. She claimed that it wasn’t worth going into. She had come to Prague looking for adventure, and she’d found a great deal of that, as much as she wanted, anyway. “But one would like a spot of romance as well. Did you find any, last night? Romance, I mean.”
Had she forgotten it was a secret? “No, no, it was dull.” He had in fact been looking forward to telling her about Luboš. He had hoped that she would be able to hear the pattern in what, at moments, seemed to him no more than an arbitrary sequence of facts.
“Were you on the prowl last night, Jacob?” Melinda asked. “Do tell.”
“I went to check out a local pub,” Jacob said. “Nothing to report, I’m afraid.”
“Too bad!” Melinda exclaimed, shaking a small fist in a light mockery of frustration.
“Are you a free agent, Jacob, or did you leave someone behind in Massachusetts?” Rafe asked.
Jacob wondered why Rafe had said “someone” but saw no way of finding out. “No one who would have me,” he answered.
“The best sort of freedom, then—vengeful.”
“That’s right. Fuck ’em,” said Jacob, pretending to belong to the party of boys versus girls, and clinked his glass against Rafe’s.
“Such fine sentiments,” Annie observed.
“Come see my cimbalom,” Rafe suggested, now in a parody of refinement, rising up on the balls of his feet and putting his fingertips together.
“Your what?”
Rafe led him into the living room, where, on top of a bureau, there lay a musical instrument. It resembled the insides of a piano, but smaller and with the metal strings crossing into each other from both sides, like the lacing of a shoe. The case was a finely tooled blond wood. Lying idly across the strings were two wool-wrapped mallets, looking like caterpillars on sticks. Rafe picked them up and tapped out a scale. From the pattern of the blows Jacob saw that one would have to memorize the tuning; it wasn’t simple. The sound was gentler than a harp—softer at the onset of a tone—and because it lacked the machinery of keys, it was less regular and more personal than a piano.
“It’s beautiful,” Jacob said. “Where’d you get it?”
There was a buzz. “Oh, the door,” Rafe excused himself.
Jacob took up the mallets and tried to pick out thirds, fifths, octaves. He didn’t even have a radio in his apartment. Sometimes, at night, a tram that he was riding in would set up vibrations in its rails and wires as it scraped slowly around a curve, and he would leave off reading in order to listen. The sound in the tram’s wires resembled that made by drawing a wet finger along the rim of a wine glass.
&
nbsp; It was Kaspar who had arrived. He was a short, bearish man with soft chestnut hair and a disorganized beard, and he was wearing a drooping, broad-striped sweater at least a size too large. Between kissing Melinda and shaking Rafe’s hand, he nodded at Jacob from across the room, as if to signal that he should stay where he was. After the silent communication, Jacob was shy about sounding the instrument.
“Are you able to play?” Kaspar asked, once he had made his way to Jacob.
“This is Jacob,” Rafe put in.
“Oh yes, I know,” said Kaspar. “The writer.” His eyes were glossy with delight.
“I haven’t really written anything yet.”
Kaspar turned to Rafe. “You told me he had written a novel.”
“It’ll never be published, though,” Jacob explained, before Rafe could answer.
“That is not what matters,” Kaspar said. His eyes weren’t aligned, Jacob saw; one of them wandered, though each seemed to be studying him from its distinct angle. “It is the spirit of what you are doing.” He seemed on the verge of tears as he spoke, and Jacob sensed that Kaspar was offering an idea that had given him solace.
A Westerner hardly deserved the benefit of it. “I’m an American,” Jacob protested. “There’s no one I can blame for holding me back.” He was reluctant to contradict the man any more sharply; he seemed so fragile.
“It is still the spirit that matters,” Kaspar insisted.
“If I believed that, I might never actually do anything. I might never get around to being the person I thought I was.”
A flicker of mischief came into the East German’s eyes. “Yes, those are the conditions we lived under.”
