Necessary Errors: A Novel (82 page)

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Jacob considered calling Milo. He considered walking to Milo’s father’s apartment and surprising him. He was afraid that Milo might reproach him. He hadn’t really done anything wrong. He hadn’t meant to hurt him. He had just wanted to be alone for the day. He was afraid of not being able to explain himself. The wish for solitude had sneaked up on him. It was gone now, but he had to be careful—it would come back. From hour to hour, he put off calling, because when he tried to think of what he was going to say, his explanations were so elaborate that he worried that they would sound like a justification rather than an apology. He hesitated, though, to simplify them, because if he were to give up too much of himself, he would be returning under the cover of a lie, which he wouldn’t be able to prevent himself from tearing apart later. He wanted Milo to take him back, but it would be no good unless Milo understood—unless Jacob was able to stand up for himself or at any rate for the idea that he had been seized by on Saturday, which he was bound to be seized by again.

There was a new pay phone, bright orange and open to the air, on the avenue next to the new bakery near Jacob’s apartment, and in order to force himself out of the mental circles that he was running in, Jacob ordered himself to leave the house and call Milo from the pay phone on his way to buying cornflakes. Twice he put his crown in to the pay phone’s slot and then, unsure of what to say, pressed a lever to retrieve it. The third time, though, he dialed Milo’s number. As the phone rang, he heard the coin descend into the heart of the machine.

—Please, Milo answered.

—Jacob here.

—Well, clearly.

—Are you angry?

—So it’s not the end yet, Milo answered.

Jacob felt a light panic; he hadn’t expected that they would come so quickly to the point. —I don’t want the end, he said. In saying this, he said more than he had meant to, as one often does in a language one doesn’t quite know, but he found that he wanted to be saying it. He was new to lover’s quarrels and unfamiliar with the way a possibility of loss pricks appetite. —I did incorrectly, he continued. —I think maybe, that I was rehearsing for being without you.

—That’s a bit romantic.

—But it’s silliness. If I’m going to have to go away, it would be better if I enjoy myself prettily with you as long as I can.

—That’s some sentence. Did you rehearse?

—I thought about it enough, Jacob admitted.

—Well, that’s also a bit romantic. You don’t have a new lover?

—No.

—You can tell me. It’s normal.

—But I don’t have, Jacob insisted.

—Me neither, said Milo. —Until I go to Karlovy Vary, I think, that I don’t want another, he then added, as if, having obliged Jacob to make a confession, it was only fair play to make a return in kind.

—I’m a little afraid of returning to capitalism, said Jacob.

—Like everyone in Czechoslovakia.

—Will you see a movie with me tonight?

—Will we visit Václav?

Later, holding Milo’s hand in the dark, Jacob felt that it was only in recovering it that he learned what he had been in danger of losing. The touch of Milo’s hand seemed to remind him of parts of himself that he had already begun to forget about.

When the show let out, the streets were still light. As they crossed an avenue, Milo jumped and Jacob climbed over a set of red-and-white-striped metal railings, the kind meant to keep pedestrians from wandering across tram tracks, and in steadying himself as he stepped down, Jacob grabbed Milo’s shoulder and then took his hand and kept it. Men in Prague never held hands in public. Milo looked at him and accepted it. It was as if they were issuing a challenge to the city. Jacob felt bold and happy.

—I’m liberating you, Jacob said unseriously.

—
Ježišmarja
, but you’re a hooligan.

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At an office that a Western airline had opened, where the Czech sales agents were already trained in the Western manner of patient, impersonal cheeriness, Jacob learned that the only planes to America that he could still afford departed from London or Paris. He had been hoping he would be able to go through Paris on his way back. Annie told him about a new private bus company, willing to carry people to France for more or less
what a pre-price-liberalization, leftover-socialist train ticket had cost. He chose a departure date a few weeks away.

He tapped a reserve of crowns and dollars hidden in his Bible. There were a few hundred crowns left over, and on his way to a
Café, to meet
and her friend for an English lesson, he stopped in a pet supply store and bought a new glass cage for Václav, who was still living in Henry’s soup tureen. He also bought a little exercise wheel. Both items had been made in China. The wheel had an aluminum frame but its tiny slats were made of light blue plastic.

The edge of the cage dug into his side as he carried it down Celetná, and people stared as if they hoped to be able to see the living thing that belonged in it, though it held only the exercise wheel. It was odd to be buying a home for á at the end of owning him rather than at the beginning. Maybe he had done it because he felt bad about leaving the animal behind. It would make it easier to find someone to give Václav away to. He imagined that Milo would take him if no one else would, but he hadn’t asked yet.

and her friend, whose name was Lucie, were sitting at their regular table. When he entered, they were speaking quietly and confidentially, their Turkish coffees already in front of them, as well as a plate of wafer cookies, most of which, he knew from experience, they would insist toward the end of the lesson that he eat.

Lucie was a sort of elf. She squirmed, her teeth were slightly crooked, and her sharp cheekbones were often flushed. She was bolder than
—she had been a protester,
had once boasted on her behalf—and it sometimes seemed that
learned mostly by watching Lucie learn;
seemed distressed whenever it was her own turn to speak, and sometimes Jacob wondered if she continued the lessons out of concern for him rather than to satisfy any wish of her own—out of a tenderhearted fear, maybe, that he felt rejected by her family and a sense that it was her duty to prove that he hadn’t been. If so, then it was his duty to see to it that the lessons had a cash value. He was fairly conscientious about preparing them; he photocopied advanced drills from a newly printed textbook that he had borrowed from Thom; he clipped short articles out of newsmagazines to discuss. Because it was
and Lucie he sometimes let himself carry out ideas that were a little silly.