Read Online Necessary Errors: A Novel by Caleb Crain - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Caleb Crain
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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 oftheir own, in a corner, drinking and smoking; they rose from it of their own accord only to place folded cards, on which the wordwas 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.
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 oftheir own, in a corner, drinking and smoking; they rose from it of their own accord only to place folded cards, on which the wordwas 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.
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