by Caleb Crain
“I probably will, before too long.”
“You’ll have to, if I go, or you won’t have anyone to talk to.”
“What do you mean, if you go?”
“I thought I told you. I know I did. I find it quite lonely here. And gray, you know, all the time. I’m thinking of going back to Berlin.”
“You can’t go.”
“Well, I can, Jacob. Why don’t you come with me? There’s a real scene there. You’d be shut of all this poxy Czech mysteriousness.”
It was as if she had ventilated the room with a draft of the cold air outside. Suddenly he saw how easy it would be to go elsewhere.
“You could teach English, as you do here,” Annie continued. “We aren’t undesirables.”
“I’ll think about it,” he said, but he found later that he was reluctant to.
* * *
Annie didn’t leave, not immediately. On the contrary, she grew closer to the circle of expatriates that held her and Jacob, and that circle drew tighter. They all began to feel for it. At the nucleus were the Scots—Thom, Michael, and a few others—who formed the habit, after school let out, of stopping in at a nearby pub for a drink. Sometimes they also ordered the classic Czech dinner of pork cutlets, dumplings, and boiled cabbage; sometimes they didn’t bother with dinner; more than once they stayed until eleven, when the pub closed. Henry offered to join them if they were willing to meet downtown; he neither worked nor lived near the language school. Annie also urged them to move, because it made her nervous to drink so close to where she worked. As a group, they were conspicuously not Czech, even if they were no louder and no more drunk than anyone else. She hoped, too, that the clientele downtown might be a touch more genteel and put the lads on their mettle, a bit. No one else hoped this, or expected it, and it was mostly on account of their respect for Henry that the Scots did eventually move. They began to rendezvous with him three or four nights a week at the Automat, a buffet-style diner with steam tables at the foot of Wenceslas Square, which belonged to the cheapest class of eatery that the government certified, and to progress from there to a pub nearby. Annie joined them regularly at the new pub, though not at the Automat, whose food she could not bring herself to eat, and in her wake came a few other women who taught at the school, and Jacob, too, once he sensed that there would be enough women present to camouflage any lapses he might have from perfect masculinity. Rafe rarely came, but sometimes Melinda did. They had the sense that she was on loan to them, and her dresses and coats seemed to confirm the impression that she was finer than the settings they had chosen, and so, for the sake of balance and a kind of politeness, she was always particularly foul-mouthed in her banter, to show that her enjoyment was genuine—that she, at least, did not think she was slumming.
Their first downtown pub was U , where the waiters made no attempt to speak to them in anything but an abrupt, efficient Czech, and delivered beers with a promptness and mild irony that suggested that they recognized the Scots, Irish, and English to be representatives of a fellow pub-going culture. Their circle was so numerous that they usually had a table to themselves. There was sawdust on the floor, but the cutlets and gulash were excellent, as everyone agreed who wasn’t, like the Scots, economizing on meals in order to have as many crowns as possible for beer. The little bears that the pub was named for were painted on a sign hanging over its front door, and Jacob soon thought of them fondly, like characters in a fairy tale that he was having the good fortune to live out. The evenings were a holiday from his project of understanding the Czechs and of eavesdropping on the after echoes of their revolution, and some nights he seemed to forget about his project altogether for a while. Their time together was wonderfully insular; it sometimes felt to Jacob as if the world beyond their table, beyond the ring of his friends, did not exist.
He would probably have forgotten about his project for good if it weren’t for the problem of love. All the Scots were beautiful, especially Thom, with his square jaw and his blond hair flopping into his eyes, but Jacob was through with the mistake of falling for straight men. In America he had revealed his crushes to three straight men in a row, all of whom had been generous enough to let him get to know them anyway, and he had been able to see for himself the unlikelihood of reciprocity in such cases. He wasn’t alone in not knowing what to do about love. With the exception of Mel and Rafe, almost no one in the circle had a lover, not for long anyway. It sometimes felt as if, in compensation, they were all falling in love with one another, as a group.
One night, for the sake of variety, they shifted their drinking place north, to a pub that specialized in Slavic cuisine. The food was good, but the waiters, to judge by their reluctance to serve it, seemed not to trust expatriates to appreciate it. The beer arrived infrequently, and only in large amounts, forcing all the drinkers into a single rhythm, as if they were on an assembly line. Between deliveries, the waiters sat at a table of their own, in a corner, drinking and smoking; they rose from it of their own accord only to place folded cards, on which the word was printed in red, on tables abandoned by diners, to prevent any new patrons from sitting at them. Once, when Henry asked for a light, a waiter made a point of fetching an unopened box of matches from the kitchen and depositing it on the table with an aggrieved “Prosím,” instead of striking one from the box visible in the pocket of his white shirt. In revenge, Henry quietly taught Jacob a Czech word for waiter that was approximately as offensive, he said, as “bastard” or “son of a bitch” in English. “One sees, at times, why such a specialized profanity would have developed,” he added. The word could have gotten them thrown out if spoken too loudly, and it was tacit that Henry trusted Jacob not to use it—and not to disclose it to the Scots.
The next night Jacob stayed home because he needed to rest, and the following day he didn’t teach. When he arrived at the Slavic-cuisine pub that evening, he was full of longing. He was losing his acclimation to spending days and nights alone, and an interval away now left him with a burden of news that he wanted to communicate. For example, there were no longer onions in his local grocery store, and he had seen a few of his neighbors cluster quietly around the trunk of a Škoda full of unwashed potatoes. But his friends weren’t at the restaurant. When he entered, a waiter turned his head to glance at him, inhaling on his cigarette as he did. Seeing that Jacob was at a loss, he remained seated. The long, empty tables were covered in coarse white linen, sterile and unwelcoming, as in a surgery tent before a battle. Jacob’s friends had forgotten about him. They must have decided to try yet another pub. He felt hurt that Annie hadn’t gotten a message to him somehow; he thought that, since she hadn’t, someone ought to have stayed behind to intercept him. He knew objectively that the first was impossible—he hadn’t been to the school, after all, and Annie didn’t have the Stehlíks’ phone number—and the second unreasonable, because no one knew that he planned to show up. But the prospect of a night alone, when he had been looking forward to seeing his friends, seemed unbearable.
He walked south, hesitantly at first but then determinedly. Through the windows of the Automat, he saw that the servers were shutting down the buffet, wheeling away trays of food, leaving behind only clear steaming water in steel troughs beneath. He nerved himself for a second disappointment; he was going to try U again, in case they had gone back there. It reassured him to see the bears. His friends weren’t in the first room, but it was loud with arguments and endearments, and the light was soft. It was the sort of place they ought to be found in, Jacob thought. And in the second room he did find them, so deeply taken with one another that none of them looked up until he was nearly upon them, at which point they all rose with cries and greetings and embraced him. Thom had a back-up beer—the house beer at U was Budvar, and he was very fond of it—which he donated to Jacob as a welcome. “It’ll give me a chance to order yet another from the bugger when he comes back,” Thom said. “He thinks I’m a champion, and I don’t want to disappoint him.”
* * *
Every few days, Jacob saw Luboš, and from time to time they went to bed together, but Luboš did not lend himself to it, not fully. Jacob understood that he seemed to Luboš too young, too unsure of himself. Once, when he had learned the word, and more to show it off than for any other reason, Jacob referred to himself and Luboš as a couple. —But officially we are not, Luboš said, solemnly. There were no promises. Each was at liberty. Jacob made a point, therefore, of going back to T-Club. He didn’t meet anyone else he wanted to sleep with; every so often, in fact, he found Luboš there, who always handled the unexpected encounters graciously and usually let Jacob take him home.
“Why do you stand here, there is nothing to see. You will sit with us.” When Luboš was absent from T-Club, it was Ota who captured Jacob, though he took him no further than his table. “I have all the pretty men.”
Each time Jacob saw him, Ota seemed more preppy. To the polo shirt he added a lavender wool sweater, which he wore draped over his shoulders like a lady’s mink. A thin Czech leather belt, bluish where it was meant to be black, was in time replaced by a woven one, striped like a rep tie and fastened with a shiny brass clasp. Yet his complexion, never good, did not improve. There was always a patch of red spots breaking out where his sideburns would have been, if his whiskers were not so blond and delicate, or in the cadaverous hollows of his cheeks.
He quizzed Jacob on the words to American pop songs as they were being played, because he liked to be able to sing along, and he took showy note of any new man in the bar who was reasonably attractive.
“He is for you, this one, in the blue shirt. He will not say no to American cow.”
“Beef, you mean.”
“No, what is word, for baby beef.”
“Veal?”
“That drinks milk only, not even eats grass. This one will not refuse. But I am forgetting. You are, how do you say it, occupied.”
“You make me sound like a table in a restaurant.”
“Is that not the word? And I am the waiter. ‘May I help you, sir?’ Do you love Luboš? Is that right? Or do I say, Are you in love Luboš?”
“In love with.”
“Ah yes. Then are you in love with him.” Jacob didn’t answer. “Ale stydíš se, Kubo. You are shy.”
“What about you, Ota?”
“I? I love you, of course, Kuba, but I am too slow. Luboš has run off with you, like a rabbit. Not rabbit. Like fox.” And he translated for his entourage.
One of the boys, Milo, a blond with even bangs and a large, Roman nose, changed the subject by asking, in Czech, which state Jacob was from.
—I live in Texas, Jacob began, pointing a finger over his shoulder, as if the past were literally behind him, because he didn’t know how to form the past tense. —And then in Massachusetts.
“Stop this,” Ota interrupted, and mocked Jacob’s gesture, which had in fact become a crutch. “Já jsem bydlel,” he instructed. “Já jsem bydlel, ty jseš bydlel, on bydlel.”
It was easier to speak of the past in Czech than Jacob had expected. —I lived in Texas and then in Massachusetts, he said to Milo, more correctly.
—Were you a cowboy? Milo asked, with an amusement gentler than Ota’s. He asked as if he hoped Jacob would pretend.
—No, Jacob said, sorry to disappoint him.
—That’s too bad, Milo replied, and glanced under the table. —I like those big boots.
Ota again interrupted: “‘Ty velké boty,’ prosím , kluku. Ah, this reminds me. Do you hear?” He pointed at the speakers. “What does it mean, ‘things on your chest’?”
“A burden, a secret. Like the boy with the fox under his shirt.”
“And the fox eats the boy in the chest, I remember, and he says nothing. Do you have tape recorder?”
“No, but I can borrow one from the language school, since I’m the teacher.”
“Ah, teacher, then will you borrow it? And I will give to you the cassette of my favorite band, Depeche Mode, and you will write all the words of all the songs on a paper, that yes? And you will give to me the paper.”
He handed Jacob a cassette, which he must have been palming since before Jacob sat down next to him. “Jééé,” commented Milo, admiringly, when he leaned forward and saw that it was a copy of Violator, the band’s new album. The group seemed to have an intense following among Prague’s youth; Jacob had seen their name spray-painted on the side of a panelák—the first apolitical graffiti he had spotted.
“You may listen a week, two weeks, a month—as you like it,” Ota added. Listening was to be Jacob’s reward for service. Jacob accepted the commission.
* * *
On the nights Jacob stayed home and transcribed the lyrics, he felt a homesick pride: gay teenagers around the world learned his mother tongue by memorizing pop songs.
But then he didn’t see Ota for a little while. The fault lay with Ivan, T-Club’s doorman. For several weeks, after Jacob’s first visit, Ivan had admitted Jacob as soon as Jacob presented himself, but then, mysteriously, he reverted to a policy of making Jacob wait. Did he want a bribe? Jacob had no intention of giving him one; it would have been wrong, and for someone being paid a state salary in crowns, too costly.
Jacob was now sometimes made to wait ten minutes and sometimes an hour and a half. He and the doorman both understood that there was nowhere else he could go. He tried the city’s one other gay bar, where he danced for a few hours with a group of gypsies, some in half drag, but it was, as the guidebook had warned, rougher; there was little talking, which was what Jacob most wanted; it was much farther away; and he had been made to wait there, too, by a doorman who looked as if he would hit Jacob if he questioned him about it. Ivan would never hit, Jacob felt certain. Nonetheless, as soon as Jacob appeared at T-Club, he was at Ivan’s mercy.
He asked Luboš to take him to the movies, and they met at a theater in Malá Strana, the Lesser Town, for a Saturday matinee. An American thriller was playing with Czech subtitles. In the small, cobbled courtyard in front of the theater, while they stood reading the poster, an usher, a boy in his teens, approached and asked if they wanted to see the movie without paying; when his grandmotherly colleague was distracted, he let them in through a side exit, and Luboš handed him a small tip. Since seating in the theater was assigned, the boy had to make a show of directing them to their seats, which he did as formally as if he had not just belied his uniform. The movie itself was not likely to be as entertaining, but when the lights dimmed, Luboš allowed Jacob to hold his hand. —Don’t be afraid, he said to Jacob half jokingly. —I’m here.
Jacob gave himself to the movie’s artificial terrors, and afterward, in the cold air outside, the sun just setting, he felt refreshed and at ease. They crossed the river on the Charles Bridge, against the flow of tourists; Luboš had chosen a restaurant on the east bank. They walked through and then down Celetná—all the way to Republiky, the Square of the Republic, where, to Jacob’s surprise, Luboš led him into the Municipal House, a salmon-colored palace, fronted by a grand canopied entrance of tarnished iron, with bronze atlantes bearing geometric lamps, and above the atlantes, a half-moon mosaic of allegorical women, nude and clothed. There was a restaurant just inside, to the right, which looked as if it were reserved for visiting dignitaries. But Luboš was speaking to the maître d’; they had a reservation.
The dining hall held perhaps fifty tables, wrapped in white linen, the silver placed with an almost military correctness. All but a few were empty. The light of the chandeliers was brightened by their gilding and by reflection in the yellow and white of the walls, which framed, on high, murals of the city of Prague. In one, a woman extended her arms to the viewer, as if in welcome.
Luboš and Jacob followed a waiter down a few steps to a table on the main floor. —Kuba, in this building, they declared the republic.
—In November?
—In 1918. The First Republic.
—Where did they declare the current republic?
—Perhaps in Wencesla
s?
—You weren’t there?
—I was there a little. I’m not so engagé.
As the twilight failed, the white curtains became more opaque, more solid. It was still just possible to see through them, but one saw not the street but the scaffolding outside the windows. The overall effect was thus of a stage set of a restaurant interior that was becoming more plausible as the lighting was adjusted.
—Kuba, I have a question, Luboš began. He often said this by way of introduction, to help Jacob distinguish an actual question from the uncertainty sometimes audible in his voice as to whether Jacob understood what he was saying. He was smiling unevenly, like a diplomat obliged to raise an awkward subject for the sake of the country he represented. —How did you earn money in America?
—I told you. I worked in an office.
—You did not sell yourself?
—Sell oneself? Jacob echoed the phrase, to ask for clarification. It was a reflexive verb, and sometimes they had unexpected meanings.
—Your body. Your sex. You know what it is, prostitution?
He saw, this time, that Luboš was playing a game of some kind.
—Many people do it. And you are pretty and manly.
—No, I never did. He decided not to try to hide his puzzlement. —Why are you asking?
—I had the impression, that it is normal with you in America.
Jacob could not tell at what level the joke was being played. Was this a misapprehension caused by years of Communist propaganda, or a joke at the expense of the propaganda? Was Luboš mocking the misconceptions that straights have of gays? Or perhaps it was a poke at Jacob’s innocence, which Jacob knew he still had not really shed.
—Never? Luboš asked once more. He still wore a diplomat’s smile, as if the question weren’t his, or were asked for a purpose other than that of eliciting an answer, but in his tone of voice there was a conflicting note, which Jacob would have called sorrow, if that didn’t seem discordant, and in the repetition of the question there was insistence, as if Luboš needed to have something settled, though perhaps he wasn’t sure he was ready for it to be.
