Caleb Crain - Necessary Errors

“They give you a biscuit with it there, don’t they. A wafer, I suppose you would call it. No, that’s not right. A cookie . Is that the word?”

“I must try it out,” Vincent said, as if Annie had urged him to go.

“You haven’t heard from Melinda,” Annie suggested.

“No.”

“I thought by now surely one of us would have done.”

“Where are these friends of yours?” Vincent asked.

Annie looked at him without answering.

“Rome, we’re pretty sure,” said Jacob.

“Don’t misunderstand me. I quite like Rome,” Vincent said.

Thom and Jana arrived. Jana was beginning to show, and the effort of walking down the stairs lightly flushed her face, which seemed to have taken on some of the translucency of an infant’s complexion.

“Isn’t she beautiful?” Annie whispered. Then, aloud: “And how are the two of you keeping?”

“Jana’s grand, as you see, but I seem to have put on a little flesh.” Thom opened his coat and swiveled. “Am I in danger of losing my girlish figure, do you think?”

“Would it be the pivo ?” Annie wondered.

“I say, that it is a bun in his oven,” said Jana.

“Wouldn’t that be a state of affairs, if we could both have come down with one at once?”

“Like earthworms or something,” said Jacob.

“Earthworms are hermaphrodites, aren’t they?” said Vincent. “I’d forgotten that.”

“What have you done to me, my dear?”

Thom and Jacob went to fetch a round: Mattoni for Jana, glasses of Staropramen for everyone else. When they returned and set the glasses down on the red-and-white gingham, the disks of the liquid’s surface trembled.

“Will the poetry corner be having any more meetings?” Annie asked. “I don’t suppose you will, now Carl’s gone.”

“What’s this?” Vincent interposed.

“For a while we tried to have a writing group.”

“Jana here was telling us she’s going to be working as a writer,” Annie said.

“As a translator,” Jana amended.

“For that paper,” Annie explained. “The one that’s published here in English. There must be loads of Harvs on it, I should think.”

“That’s great,” Jacob congratulated Jana.

“They pay little,” she replied, “but perhaps I shall learn something, if I will be clever.”

“Did you know that their reporters don’t speak Czech?” Annie asked Jacob.

“No.”

“Nor I. Should we have tried to write for it, do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

Vincent broke in: “I should have thought that sort of thing would be very much up your street, Jacob.”

“It didn’t occur to me.” He thought of journalism as Daniel’s turf — was that it?

“Wasn’t Hemingway a journalist, before he wrote his stories?” Vincent asked.

“Are you a Hemingway fan?” Jacob asked.

“I don’t know that I’d call myself a fan. There’s something to him, certainly.”

“Oh, certainly,” Annie said and nodded with false vigor.

“Must you always be slagging me off?” Vincent complained.

“You mustn’t make such claims if you’re so sensitive.”

Maybe journalism was too close to what Jacob wanted. Too close but not the thing itself. At a newspaper, Americans would have collected and condensed their ideas about the city. They would have passed the ideas back and forth until they had become a kind of currency, and they would expect to be able to buy him with this currency and for him to try to pay for his admission to their circle with it. It surprised him to find that he was still straining to keep himself pure. Evidently he was still on a quest.

Annie interrupted his thoughts. “Am I mad to think I can just keep on at the Jazyková škola in September? There’s so much that’s changing.”

“They’ll keep it open,” said Jacob. “It’s a state school.”

“Everyone else seems to have a plan of some kind.”

“You really are going to stay.”

“I told you I might do.”

A microphone whined briefly. The musicians had been unhurriedly gathering in the corner where they performed, and some began to pluck at the strings of their instruments, tuning them. There was a velvet thud as the caller touched his microphone and then a sound like someone pulling a crick out of his neck as the caller twisted it to adjust the height. — Ladies and gentlemen, the caller said in Czech, but the musicians signaled that they weren’t ready yet, and he didn’t continue. Dancers took last swigs of their beers and trotted out to their places on the floor.

“Milo took me swimming last weekend,” Jacob told Annie, not privately.

“Did he.”

“Where did you go?” Jana asked. “To the stadium at Podolí?”

“He took me to a quarry that he said was called Amerika.”

“Ah, Amerika! And did you like?” Jana asked.

“It was very nice,” Jacob said, nodding. “It’s an old limestone quarry that’s filled up with springwater,” he added, still trying to interest Annie.

“They turn there all our films about the American West,” Jana explained. “So we Czechs think it is literally America. Were the people, how do you say, without clothes?”

“Nudist? You know, there were a couple of people who didn’t seem to be wearing much, but I didn’t think I should look.”

“That would rather spoil the effect, I should think, not looking,” said Thom.

“I mean, I didn’t know if they were supposed to be nude.”

“Supposed to be?” Jana asked, amused.

“That doesn’t make sense, does it,” Jacob admitted.

“Who did you say took you there?” Thom asked.

“Milo,” said Jacob. “This guy I’ve been seeing, sort of.”

“There’s a bit more to it than ‘seeing,’” said Annie.

The caller broke into a stream of speech. The dancers on the floor before him were holding themselves tautly and self-consciously in position. The caller counted down, the fiddlers attacked their fiddles, and the dancers began to turn, the bright cloth of their costumes shifting in symmetrical arcs and swirls. They wheeled one another around in fours, the wheels tightening and relaxing as the caller issued new instructions, which came every four bars or so. He gave the calls in English, in what sounded like it was meant to be an American accent. So pronounced a curl was given to the vowels that to Jacob the accent sounded almost like a parody. It reminded him of the English spoken by the DJ at T-Club — the English in which he had announced songs, in between his muttered messages in Czech to his brothers-in-arms. It was a plastic language, a toy language. The speakers here were better than in T-Club, though, and conveyed the caller’s voice distinctly over the galloping, cheery music.

“How long have you been seeing him?” Thom asked.

“Just a few weeks. Maybe almost a month.”

“And here I’ve been dating a Czech since the dawn of time, and have I been brought to a nudist swimming hole? It hardly seems fair.”

“Amerika is too dangerous for you, my dear,” said Jana. “You would fall on the rocks. I will take you to Šárka, though perhaps when I am not in this state.”

“Do they wear swim trunks at this Šárka?” Thom asked.

“Only those who want to.”

“That’s all right, then. Will you come, Annie?”

“I don’t see why not,” Annie answered, indifferently. “Though I don’t promise that I will take my clothes off myself.”

“Where my parents stay in Greece, quite a few of the beaches are nudist,” Vincent volunteered.

“I suppose I’ll go if Annie does,” said Elinor. “Oh, look.”

Henry was emerging from the foot of the stairs, followed by Hans. They had been drinking; Henry stalked toward them across the room with a somewhat comical gait. Despite the lateness of the season, he was wearing his army green coat, the seams of which were by now fraying, and he had folded his arms through the vent so as to hide both his hands inside, double-Napoleon style. His steps were bowlegged, and he was holding his shoulders stiffly.