Caleb Crain - Necessary Errors

“He’s well away, isn’t he,” Vincent commented.

When Henry reached the table, he bent over, looked to either side conspiratorially, and then pulled out from beneath his coat two paper cups of French fries with mayonnaise.

“Hranolky!” exclaimed Jana.

From the side pockets of Henry’s coat came three more cups’ worth. A certain amount of mayonnaise had gotten smeared inside one of the pockets, and Henry tried to wipe it out with a scrap from a newspaper he’d been reading.

“You’re champions,” said Elinor, as the fries were being distributed around the table communally. There was no kitchen at the Country Club for some reason.

“You weren’t challenged by the biddie at the door?” Thom asked.

“We gave her the impression that we were well and truly pissed,” said Henry.

“Not quite a wrong impression,” noted Hans.

“Where are they from?” Jacob asked. “Do you remember Arbát?” There had been a fast food restaurant by that name on Na when Jacob first arrived in the city. The sign outside had been in Cyrillic lettering; inside, the décor had been red and yellow, the colors of the Soviet flag. Jacob had discovered it in his first week in Prague, when everything was novel to him, and it seemed now to belong to a different city, which in a way it did. It had closed not long after — perhaps it had formally been an undertaking of the Soviet Union’s and had had to be shut down on that account — and Jacob had never been able to go back to it.

“Arbát?” Hans echoed. His face took on a stubborn look. “No, that is shut now.”

“These are from the stand-up place in Lucerna,” Henry explained.

“But do you remember Arbát?” Jacob insisted.

“More or less,” Henry answered.

Hans for his part turned away. It occurred to Jacob that Hans might think that Jacob intended to tease him — to make a remark about, say, the triumph of McDonald’s, which would no doubt arrive in Prague soon and which happened to share Arbát’s color scheme. He studied Hans for a little while but he couldn’t think of a way to repair the misunderstanding, if in fact there was one.

“Do you think I could teach children?” Annie asked Jacob, leaning over the table to consult with him. “Very young ones, I mean. Such as you have done, with the children of that student of yours.”

“Sure,” answered Jacob.

“You don’t find it too difficult, do you. I must ask Jana if she thinks it would be of interest to a Czech mother. To have a native speaker as an instructor.”

“It’s a good idea.”

“Then if something should happen to the language school…I rather like to be in the company of children’s voices. They’re quite cheerful. Soothing, even. Like little brooks or something. I know it’s what people say, but it’s also true, you know. I should think a small number of them would be quite pleasant to sit and talk to, of an afternoon.”

“I’m sure they would be.”

“Yes,” said Annie, agreeing with herself and seeming to see the picture in her mind’s eye.

Jacob wondered if he was remembering places like Arbát in anticipation of leaving — if he was assembling a map of the city in his memory, so as to be able to revisit it later. It was strange to realize that one couldn’t know in advance which places one was later going to wish to remember. He didn’t really need to remember Arbát, for example; it hadn’t turned out to be very important to him. Maybe someday he wasn’t going to think that Prague itself had been very important. What was it going to represent? Especially now that he had learned to take it so casually, as if it were an interlude in a larger story, whose outlines he didn’t yet know. Would he remember this room, for example? A large, white, underground room, furnished with low, flimsy card tables and filled with the smells of cigarette smoke, dancers’ sweat, and spilled beer.

* * *

The smell of Milo’s hair, in bed beside Jacob in the morning, was a little like the smell of butter. More delicate, maybe, if that were possible. Jacob missed it when Milo wasn’t there, though when Milo was there, it embarrassed Jacob that he noticed it.

— Would you want marmalade again? Jacob asked. — Not cornflakes?

— Something a little sour is maybe pleasing to me, Milo answered. — For a change, after a night with you.

— You ox, Jacob said.

Milo got out of bed and tugged on his boxers and socks. Jacob wondered if he should buy him a pair of slippers. A spare set of slippers was probably the Czech equivalent of a toothbrush left at a lover’s apartment in America.

At the Country Club Annie had mentioned that Kaspar had had a mild relapse. The news had reminded Jacob of his promise to visit, and after breakfast, he walked to Vršovice, hoping to find Kaspar at home.

The door to Kaspar’s characterless white building was unlocked; maybe the key that Melinda had loaned him for his earlier visit hadn’t really been necessary.

“Come, come,” Kaspar said when Jacob knocked, hurrying Jacob in as if he had been expecting him.

“Annie said you weren’t feeling well,” Jacob began.

“The carcass still moves.” Something had been exciting Kaspar; his eyes shone. His card table had been pulled to the edge of his bed, where, around the nest where he had been sitting, several dictionaries lay open. Evidently he had been translating. “I have been wanting to ask you a question. Where does God exist, do you know?”

“That’s your question?”

“Isn’t it a question?” For a moment Kaspar looked a little frightened and searched Jacob’s eyes.

“Do you mean, is he in heaven or is he everywhere?”

“He is not everywhere, I think.”

“Why do you think I know?” Jacob asked. “I don’t even know if he exists.”

“No, he does not exist everywhere,” Kaspar replied, as if Jacob’s attempt to evade the question contributed to answering it. “Shall we have tea?”

Jacob nodded. Kaspar shuffled in his old-bear way over to his electric pot, filled it, and clicked it on. There was nowhere to sit, unless they were both going to sit on the bed. The aluminum folding chair, like the card table, was covered in scratched-up typescripts.

“I felt it, this time,” Kaspar continued. “I felt that I am not able to find him alone.”

“I’m sorry, I’m not following.”

“When I was in hospital.”

“Oh.” Jacob thought of the mystical experience that he had shared with Henry but Kaspar’s forwardness filled him with so much skepticism and mistrust that he pushed his own memory away. “Do you want me to clear a place?”

“But we shall sit in my garden.”

“You have a garden?”

“I have had long conversations with you in it.”

“I don’t think so. I had no idea you had a garden. It was winter the last time I was here.”

“Was it so?” Kaspar sadly asked. “In winter a garden is less attractive,” he reflected. “But they recommended the air of winter to us. To strengthen our lungs. In the time of history. How do you say, in English, ‘in the time of stories’? In Czech it is quite poetic. They say, ‘Bylo nebylo .’”

“‘There was and there wasn’t,’” Jacob translated.

“Do you say it also in English?”

“No. You say, ‘Once upon a time.’”

“Oh yes. I had forgotten. I will make a tray of this,” Kaspar said, closing a dictionary, “if you will carry. For me it is too heavy. Do you like? It is of Rafe and Melinda.” He was taking pieces of a blue-and-white tea service out of a cardboard box on the floor. “For good-bye. She alone presented it, but she was at pains to name him, and so I had to find him.”