by Caleb Crain
“Nonsense. Thank you, for taking them off my hands.” He took a swig from his beer in his loose-armed, careless way. There was an awkward pause between them, on account of having transacted business. Melinda had gone off with Jana, who had learned there was a restroom after all. “Quite a setting,” Rafe commented. “The real Czech underground, as it were.”
Jacob let his attention wander into the surrounding crowd. The partygoers had stationed their supply of beer in a corner of the monument—there were two words for “corner” in Czech, Jacob had recently learned; it was usually roh when understood from the outside, and usually kout from the inside, though not always—and their talk was echoed by the two perpendicular concrete walls nearby so sharply and quickly that it was beyond Jacob’s skill in Czech to follow any of it. Even if he had been able to see distinctly, he didn’t think he would have been able to parse the meaning of clothes and expressions as well as he could in T-Club. The partygoers were straight, after all. Or perhaps, it occurred to him, that was a false assumption. They were young; they were his age, mostly. They were excited, with the selfish happiness of people who have pulled off a stunt together, and that energy would be a kind of ring around them, he knew, that would lock him out, at first, if he tried to test it, but if he were able to break into it somehow, if he were able to think of something to say that took their interest, the party might become a place where he could meet someone, perhaps someone who was gay but for whom gayness wasn’t the beginning and end of himself, who had first suspected it of himself, as Jacob had, not so long ago, who thought of himself mostly just as someone attracted to people who were playful, inventive, and gentle.
For now, though, he was a stranger. He noticed that Henry was standing beside him and seemed to be waiting to say a word. “Have you seen the art?” Henry spoke into his ear. He pointed east, where at a distance there were a few more faint lights. “It appears to be a kind of installation.”
The two of them struck out across the dark together. Henry’s pale hands and the bluish whites of his eyes seemed to flutter in the air beside Jacob. The lights that they were approaching were on the ground, pointed up toward white masses, and as Jacob watched his steps, the low angle of the light, falling across the hillocky dirt, made him think of a beach at night lit by a bonfire. When they came close, the white masses resolved into shapes in papier-mâché: an oversize skull and skeleton, the bones crowded into a jumble, with the skeleton’s neck at a sharp angle, as if, even in this enormous space, the remains had had to be crammed in to make them fit. A large cap and a large hammer and sickle lay on the ground before the skull’s hollow eye sockets.
“Oh, it’s Stalin,” Henry chuckled. “We’re meant to be in his tomb with him.”
On closer examination, they saw that there were in fact several skeletons, and all of them were inside a sort of wire mesh cage. At first Jacob thought that the cage was to protect the art from its audience, but on second thought that didn’t seem in keeping with the evening’s spirit.
A tall, unshaven man saluted them and borrowed a Petra from Henry. “Can we ask him?” Jacob said. —Please, would you be able to explain it to us? Is it Stalin’s grave?
The man shrugged, as if this was a high price for the cigarette he was fingering. —What have I to explain? Here is Mr. Stalin, here is his monument, may he rest in peace.
—If it isn’t a bother…, Jacob persisted.
The man sighed noisily. —Well, yes, it is Stalin’s grave, he told them, speaking and smoking in practiced alternation. —And something else. In the cellar of every panelák, every family has a locker, with such a grille, and there they keep flags and banners and such shit for the First of May and Victorious February and the Anniversary of the Great October Revolution and so on. So this is sort of the locker of the government, see, and they kept here Mr. Stalin and the rest of the line for meat, until they forgot about them.
“What’s the line for meat?” Jacob asked Henry, as the man returned to his friends.
“In the statue, before they tore it down, Stalin was leading three or four workers, and the Czechs always said it looked like they were queuing up at a butcher’s shop.”
In the still air, the smoke from their informant’s cigarette hung about them, and Henry tried to wave it away. The effort made his hands cold, and he blew on them. “He’s a sharp fellow. He’s the one who did the Trabant on feet in Old Town Square.”
“He wasn’t so friendly, though.”
“Oh, did you think that was the artist? I thought that was just a wanker who wanted a fag.” There were more works of art farther on, but Henry excused himself. “Enough for me, thanks.”
Jacob continued his walk alone, but he found that the rest of the exhibition was not as good. Either it was so abstract as to be without resonance—triangular panes of glass suspended from wires, for example, under a title like Viewpoints IV—or it was morbid without the touch of humor that gave the Stalin skeleton its charm. Over the course of the year, Jacob was to find in his visits to galleries that a morbid solemnity was typical of the less-talented emerging artists. The tone seemed to be a reaction to the new freedom—both an exploration of it and a way of taking refuge from it. Such artists were like Western teenagers at the stage when they are impressed with the discovery that pain and suffering are real and may be spoken about. They were boring because of their honesty.
He turned back toward the corner where he had left his friends. He was tired and a little drunk, and he stumbled a couple of times but didn’t fall. He realized he was growing impatient with the care that was necessary to walk safely, and when he recognized his impatience he paused. In the dimness he closed his eyes. Beneath the murmur of the partygoers, he heard the watery emptiness of the cave that they were in. It seemed to be spinning slowly around him. A year ago he had been in America. Two years ago he had been straight. Tonight he was underground, with the remains of the bogey man, lit by the torches of the children who had killed him.
“Jacob? Are you all right, darling?” Melinda asked.
He opened his eyes. “Fine,” he reassured her. She was with Carl, who also looked concerned.
“There’s sod all in the way of fresh air down here,” Melinda suggested.
“I’m fine,” he repeated.
“And we’ve been smoking up what there is of it,” she continued.
“That’s a good idea,” said Jacob, and dug his cigarettes out of his pocket. They declined his offer to share but then watched him light up with the attention of children outside a pastry-shop window. They declined a second offer, too, however.
“I was wondering if it might be possible to meet someone here,” Jacob said, in an effort to make his daze seem less mysterious.
“That’s the spirit,” said Melinda.
“Is it very open here?” Carl asked.
“Not really.”
“It is changing,” Melinda suggested, but then she hesitated. “Isn’t it? I suppose I don’t actually know.”
“I can’t tell,” answered Jacob. “Are you getting along with everybody?” he asked Carl.
“Your friends are so lovely.”
“Oh, good.”
“Thom? He’s adorable. And Annie’s so sweet. She’s a little sad, isn’t she?”
“I don’t think I should be hearing this,” Melinda interrupted. “You will excuse me.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll stop.”
“Absolutely not. I ought to check on Rafe in any case.” She began to walk away from them.
“Be careful of the gopher holes or whatever they are,” Carl called after her.
They watched her step from mound-top to mound-top, bringing her feet together after each step, like someone crossing a brook on a series of stones.
“And Melinda?” Jacob asked, when they thought she could not hear.
“She, I don’t know, she draws you out. Is that it? Do you find that she does that?”
“Sometimes, yes.”
“We were looking at the
sculpture.” He gave a sharp laugh as he nodded toward it.
“What?” asked Jacob.
“Nothing, nothing. I wasn’t prepared for your friends to be so charming.”
“What did you say?”
“Oh, I told her I taught English as a second language in America, and I hadn’t come all this way just to do more of it. That’s all. It wasn’t any more than that.”
Carl sometimes joked about what he called his “enlightened shortsightedness”—about his reluctance, as a matter of philosophical principle, to sacrifice the self he was now for the sake of a self that it would be prudent someday to be. It was one of the traits that had made Jacob wonder if Carl was as straight as he seemed to be, and even after Jacob came to understand that it had nothing to do with sexuality, he still loved Carl for it. It was a kind of nakedness, and it set him apart from Jacob’s schoolmates, all of whom had seemed to measure their lives against an ideal career.
“It’s different here,” Carl continued. “Not knowing what you’re doing.”
“Being here is what you’re doing, when you’re here.”
“And that’s how it should be, everywhere. But here it actually seems to be possible. Maybe because the city is so beautiful? Somehow it makes me really sad.”
“It is sad.”
“Jet lag, probably.”
“Because it can’t last. It’s already over, really. The revolution.”
“Oh, that,” Carl said with mock shallowness. “But I’m talking about my feelings.”
Jacob wished he could hold Carl’s hand. He had never really felt any wish stronger than this for Carl, he told himself. “I’m glad you’re here,” Jacob said. “None of them know what it’s like not to be in America.”
“What it’s like to know true freedom.”
“I hope you’ll stay,” Jacob risked.
They made their way back to the crowd.
“A crisis in supply approaches,” Thom warned.
“Can I get you one?” Carl offered. Jacob accepted.
“It’s bloody cold in here,” Melinda complained.
“Is it?” asked Annie. “I don’t seem to notice it.”
“You’re shivering, darling.”
“Am I? Perhaps I am.”
“I asked him, you know,” Melinda told Jacob.
“Asked him what?”
“What he had come for. To test your speculation.”
“And?”
“‘To see.’ You Americans turn out to be so open-ended. I understood you all to have goals.”
“We have ideas, as you say.”
“Mmm,” she agreed.
“What’s this?” Rafe asked.
“There’s an attempt to figure out Carl,” Jacob answered.
“The orphan,” Rafe said. “Melinda’s very good with orphans.”
“I don’t think he’s an orphan,” Jacob protested.
“Kaspar isn’t an orphan, either, technically,” Rafe continued. “He has that father.”
“I don’t think many people are as lost as Kaspar,” Melinda said.
“How is Kaspar?” asked Jacob, forgetting that he had ever been angry with him.
“I’m afraid he’s ill. He didn’t teach this week.”
The friends finished their last round quickly. When they emerged from the cave, they saw that a few stars had been able to pick their way through the glare cast by the city’s lamps and by the new snow, which lay on its domes, towers, and gables. The snow whitened the streets, too, except for a pair of iron rails that the night tram kept fresh and black. From the top of Stalin’s hill they could look down at the city’s beauty as if they, too, were dictators or kings. Annie took Jacob’s arm, and they negotiated the stone steps together, slowly.
“I don’t want any more romance, for a little while,” Jacob volunteered.
“It isn’t always necessary, is it.”
“I didn’t tell you,” Jacob continued. “He was selling himself.”
“Oh?” Annie replied, as if she might need more explanation, and then, as if on second thought she decided she didn’t want any, she added, “That is dreadful. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t tell Melinda.”
“No? I won’t, then. I don’t believe she tells us everything.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just a feeling.”
As they descended to the level of the city, the city gradually slipped away from their view, closing like a fan, until, at the foot of the hill, they felt the hill’s steep face menacing their backs, and a row of lamps seemed to invite them to return to the city across the empty Bridge of Svatopluk . Waiting on the other side, the heavy, white palaces stood shoulder to shoulder at the river’s edge, as if to form of themselves a wall.
* * *
“My god, they’re all spies,” Carl pretended to believe. “Every last one of them.”
“Even Thom?” asked Jacob.
“He’s a sly one.”
By way of experiment, they had made two cups of what the Czechs called Turkish coffee. It came out weaker than the version sold in restaurants, but just as bitter. As in a restaurant, they had to pick the grounds out from between their lips and teeth between sips.
“Are you growing a beard?” Jacob asked.
“I don’t know. Do I look like a slob?”
“No,” Jacob assured him. It both softened and roughened his face. “It’s mature.”
“I’ll ask Thom about his case this afternoon. We’re going to that ashen wedding-cake thing at the top of Václavák.”
“The National Museum. Cabinets full of rocks.”
“Oh? Maybe we’ll go for a drink instead, then.”
“No. The building is pretty. You should go.”
“You should ask Rafe when you see him,” Carl said. “But I suppose he wouldn’t be able to tell you if he were.”
“I’d be asking him to lie.” Jacob lifted Václav out of his cage and petted him. “Of course only a gay person would think of it that way,” he observed.
“Maybe he wants us to think he is.”
“I met someone like that here. A Danish guy.”
“To impress girls.”
“You should pretend to be one.”
“That’s it,” Carl agreed, in jest. “That’s the answer.”
“Instead of growing a beard.”
“Hey, respect the beard, man.”
Jacob was mildly envious of the trip to the National Museum; he had to work that afternoon. Rafe was going to introduce him to the student editors whose English lessons he was taking over.
“Thom doesn’t know, right?” Carl asked. “About you.”
“No.”
“That’s criminal, you know. He’s a sweetheart.”
“I know.”
In the quarter of Malá Strana where Jacob was to meet Rafe, the sidewalk ran level with the street so that cars could drive onto it when a tram passed. The doorways had the shape of arches, and plaster lions were flaking off the keystones of the arches, as if the Renaissance were shedding the Baroque. Into many of the arches, modern rectangular doors had been fitted, smaller than the dark, tall windows of the floor above, but here and there an old, grand door remained, oak with black iron hinges, capable of shuttering the mouth of a building definitively.
The side street that housed the newspaper’s offices looked empty when Jacob turned into it, but as Jacob was hunting for the blue plaque with the building’s street number (not to be confused with the red plaque that gave its district registration number), Rafe startled him by appearing at his elbow.
“Boo.”
“Where were you?”
“Keeping out of the wind. There’s a pasáž behind yon door.” He rang a doorbell. “I didn’t ask if you were ready. Are you ready? You’ll like the boys. They’re posers, but you’ll like them.”
“Prosím,” a voice said through the intercom. Jacob was afraid that the person might have been able to hear Rafe’s slight.
“Tad
y pan Rejf a pan Jakub,” Rafe announced cheerily.
“Prosím,” the voice repeated, buzzing them in.
They rode a tiny elevator with dented yellow walls to the third floor. “I’m going to bow right out,” Rafe said. “Is that okay?” He had folded a tram ticket into a paper star and was shaking it nervously inside a cupped hand as if it were a die that he was about to throw.
The newspaper’s office lay at the end of a corridor, behind a door with a large pane of frosted glass. The room inside smelled of cigarettes and men’s sweat. Underfoot were bales of the latest issue tied in twine. Torn pages of notes, ashtrays crammed full of stubbed butts, pots of glue, and cups of oily coffee cluttered the desks, beside each of which rose a tall, steel filing cabinet, like a smokestack beside a factory. Over one of the desks hung a calendar with a photograph of a fjord, its days marked up in several inks. In design the newspaper itself, at least the examples that Jacob could see, looked almost deliberately crude. The logo seemed to have been drawn with a marker, and the columns of type were clumsily arranged.
A tall, thin young man with shadows under his eyes threaded his way toward them. “, my man,” Rafe greeted him.
The boy chuckled. Two other students caught up to him: had sandy hair and a bad complexion. Marek had black hair and was sucking on a pencil stub meditatively, as if it were a pipe. Their eyes shone with worship of Rafe, who, after a flurry of introductions and the injunction, “Mluvte anglicky, kluci!”—speak English, boys!—slipped away. Nothing had been said about money. The three turned their attention to Jacob with an air of polite disappointment.
“Please,” said , gesturing to chairs around a table where the newspaper was being laid out. To clear a space, Marek drew toward himself white sheets of cardboard, stamped with a blue grid, onto which type had begun to be glued.
“Rafe works in castle,” said , haltingly and somewhat tentatively.
Jacob couldn’t tell whether the boy wanted to be reassured about his facts or his English. “I think so,” Jacob answered. “He’s a translator.”
“Ten má ale kliku,” replied, lapsing into Czech.
“Ale mluvte anglicky!” Jacob said, trying to assume Rafe’s blustery manner. “‘He has all the luck.’”