Caleb Crain - Necessary Errors

It occurred to Jacob that Kaspar might be chattering because he had a fever. “Are you all right to go outside?”

“But it is summer almost. It is not so cold as this cave. The sun slays the bacilli.”

“You make it sound like Sir Gawaine or something.”

“It is something like. Will you pour the water? My hands…”

Jacob poured the hissing water into the blue-and-white teapot; the infuser rattled against the china. On the dictionary, beside the pot, Kaspar had stacked two cups and two saucers, and Jacob gingerly lifted the dictionary-as-tea-tray, careful to hold the dictionary itself shut. At the western end of his room, Kaspar opened a small door into a stairwell that ran up to a courtyard. The two men took the stairs with baby steps, the teacups clinking, Kaspar panting.

The sun fell on two wooden benches, placed where a pavement of concrete flagstones gave way to a yellowed lawn.

“It was a great trouble to find Rafe,” Kaspar resumed, when they were seated.

Jacob looked in on the brewing tea, which he had set, dictionary and all, on the dry grass between them. “He wasn’t at home? In Havelská?”

“He does not like to have a home, you know.”

“Since Melinda?”

“Since always. It was also difficult because he is more angry with me now.”

“He couldn’t be angry with you.”

“I am to him a disappointment. It is his job, you know, to understand people, and he mistook me. He thought I simply liked to be contrary.”

“His job?”

“Oh, I do not mean to say his job. I do not mean to say more than I can. It is his métier, rather. He does not care to be wrong about a person.”

The sun seemed to be calming Kaspar, as if he were an infant and it were bathing him. He closed his eyes in it and folded his arms, hugging himself in his sweater, which Jacob would have found too warm. He was catching his breath, Jacob noticed; catching it and slowing it down.

Jacob poured the tea. His grip shook as much as Kaspar’s would have, and as he placed Kaspar’s on the bench beside him, the cup loudly shivered in its saucer.

At the sound Kaspar opened his eyes again. “You are here,” he said a little sleepily, as if he had briefly drifted off and wasn’t sure upon returning that he remembered the last few minutes correctly. One ended up wanting to take care of Kaspar despite oneself.

“I am,” Jacob admitted.

“Perhaps it is in talking,” Kaspar said.

“What is?”

“That one is near God.” He smiled as if to apologize for having reintroduced the topic. “In a special kind of talking, perhaps. Perhaps in talking with you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. With you when you are here.”

“Not me.”

“Yes, with the you that is here.”

“You mean a general you.”

“No!” Kaspar seemed alarmed. “Not a general you.”

“I don’t know if I know what you mean.”

“The you that cannot go away.”

“I can always go away,” Jacob said drily.

“Ah, that is so. Maybe it is that you, then,” Kaspar said, not at all shy to assert the opposite of the idea that he had just been maintaining. “The one that can go away. You are after all a writer. You are always here and you are always not here. And I think it must also be in writing. In some kinds of writing. Will you come to shul with me?”

“Sure. Where is it?”

“Near the central train station. I will meet you outside the station on Friday, half an hour before sundown. It will make you very happy.”

The windows of Kaspar’s building, blinded by the glance of the sun, looked down on them.

“How is it that you know the word ‘shul,’ Jacob?” Kaspar continued.

“I’m American,” Jacob irritably answered. “It’s crazy of you to be so into Judaism.”

“Is it crazy?” he asked, a little fearfully. He was sometimes aware of the fragility of his own character as well as the humor of it.

“Maybe you’re interested because in Prague Judaism is something lost.”

“Not altogether lost,” Kaspar insisted. “One may be with them.”

“Like the pity you have for Communism now.”

“But it is the same with Christ,” Kaspar objected. “It is only that he was lost that makes him God.”

“Is that orthodox? I thought he was supposed to have been God in the first place.”

“No,” Kaspar disagreed. “It is that he came back. No one usually returns.”

“So it’s the coming back and not the being lost.”

“Well, if you ask, it is the loss, I think. One needn’t believe in the coming back, but it is perhaps necessary for something dear to be lost.”

“Why?”

“Perhaps it is necessary to the making of a story. A story after all is a way of remembering love.”

Jacob thought of the debates of the writing group. “I thought a story was something that trapped you.”

“But that is how. It could not trap you if it were not about love.”

“You said once that sex couldn’t be put into a story.”

“Oh, well, sex.”

“What do you have against sex?”

There was something preposterous about introducing the topic with Kaspar. “Perhaps I have not such a wide acquaintance with it.”

“I’m seeing someone,” Jacob said, a little boldly.

“‘Seeing,’” Kaspar echoed. “Oh yes,” he added, as soon as he remembered this use of the word. “Are you happy?”

“I guess. I’m not going to stay, though.”

“Why not, if you have found him?”

“I only found him because I was leaving. That was the understanding. Also I ruined it a little. I let him think I was a writer.”

“But it is true.”

“No it isn’t.”

“You will not let me say it. Perhaps I am not as beautiful as this man.”

“You aren’t in love with me.”

“You cannot be sure. But in any case it is not that, either, that licenses him.”

“What is it?”

“That you are in love with him.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, it is you who will know.”

Jacob had taken advantage of Milo. It was sweet to pretend to be a writer, but it was cheating; it was only by leaving that Jacob would have any chance of becoming the sort of figure that he had let Milo fall for. If, after leaving, he found that he couldn’t become that figure, he could at least try to become someone responsible, someone a little more substantial.

“It’s a nice day, isn’t it?” Jacob suggested.

“It is only in countries where the winter is bitter that the spring is capable of this subtlety.”

“Have you ever lived in a country without bitter winters?”

“In books,” Kaspar admitted.

* * *

— Are they good? Milo asked. Jacob had chosen a piece of hazelnut sponge cake and a . They were standing at a plastic counter in the glass-walled pastry shop in .

Jacob shrugged. — I didn’t want to miss anything.

— Evidently. He borrowed Jacob’s fork and sliced off a sample of the . He hadn’t shaved, and some vanilla cream stuck to the stubble on his upper lip. Jacob signed to him to wipe it off. — Better? Milo asked, presenting himself for inspection and glancing at two unnoticing schoolgirls beside them. The girls were solemnly, almost meditatively sharing a , or wreath — a sort of a puff-pastry donut.

— But come with me, Jacob said. He was trying to convince Milo to go rowing on the Vltava. — Don’t be wicked.