Caleb Crain - Necessary Errors

— It’s so expensive. It isn’t for Czechs.

— But it is. A girlfriend showed me. It’s easy.

— And now you want to try it with a boy.

Jacob smashed the last bit of chocolate cake from the onto his fork, unpleasantly conscious of having eaten most of two pastries by himself.

— Why won’t he accept? one of the schoolgirls muttered. — The river is ours, isn’t it?

— The Germans they say believe, that even our river belongs to them, her friend replied.

— Catastrophe, the first girl said.

— So let’s go, Milo acquiesced.

When Jacob set his crumpled napkin on his plate, the first girl wished them “Bon voyage,” her eyes flickering up only for a moment from her pastry.

— He isn’t German, Milo said, in case the girl had thought Jacob was.

— He’s American, she replied, as if the fact were written on Jacob’s face.

Milo looked rather forlorn at first in the stern of the boat, as if he couldn’t bear the foolishness of what they were doing. But as soon as they stood out from shore, too far from any other people to be recognized, his willingness to be knocked about began to collaborate almost against his will with the capering of the skiff. The wind freshened, and it ridged short, choppy waves into the river.

Jacob let the current pull them down the river, which curved to the north and then east. He touched the oars to the water only to correct the skiff’s path, but even under such faint encouragement the boat was soon slicing at high speed across wave after wave, the waves cheerfully slapping themselves into nothingness against the side of it, the spray from the collisions cooling the air. Under the ponderous face of the hill that had once held Stalin’s monument, beneath the municipal propriety of the Bridge of Svatopluk , their speed felt rash. Surely they were going to be rebuked by someone. The river, like them, became less respectable as it turned the corner. It broadened, unpicturesquely. Along the foot of the right embankment ran a walkway of dirt and brown grass, accessible to no one. Litter from the street above had fallen down into it and seemed to have remained there for a long time uncollected. Just beyond the next bridge, they saw a yacht that had until recently been one of the state-run “botels” and was now a private night club, its new name lettered in purple on a black sign. They could make out a janitor pouring something overboard. On the left bank, the hill was punctured by a dark tunnel.

— Are you taking me to Germany? Milo asked.

— We have to turn, don’t we, Jacob recognized.

Ahead of them, an island divided the river, which was blocked on one side by a weir and on the other by a range of locks. They couldn’t go any farther. Jacob lowered an oar, and the skiff swirled about. The automobile tunnel and the waterborne nightclub were distasteful to Jacob, who had been hoping for an idyll like the one he had shared with Annie. It was hard work to pull the skiff back upstream, but he wanted to badly, so he laid out on the oars — he gave way , as they said in books about going to sea. As he pulled, he imagined that he was rescuing Milo and himself from the aesthetic threats of sleaze and automobile traffic. It was pleasant to know that the boat was powered by his own effort. Once they were above the Bridge of Svatopluk again, he felt safe. Of course it was pleasant, he thought to himself, to do something simple and muscular. After long distrust of his body, it was still a surprise whenever he discovered it could be useful, even in its way reliable. Milo was now leaning back sideways in the stern, resting on one elbow. He had taken off his shoes and socks, and was twiddling his toes. Jacob was sweating freely. When he pulled, he could feel the resistance of Milo’s mass in the boat, balancing him. He boasted to himself that he felt so much at ease in his body at the moment that he might even have taken off his shirt by now if they hadn’t been in the downtown of an old European city. The Mánes Bridge was ahead; the Charles Bridge, just beyond it. They were returning to the company of Prague’s famous sites, which it may have been vulgar to love but which Jacob did love. It was a luxury to be able to move Milo toward them with the angry strength in his hands, arms, legs, and back — to literally transport him.

— Shall we spell one another? Milo suggested.

— Yeah, good.

Jacob shipped the oars. The skiff drifted and began to rock idly with the river’s swell. With indications rather than words they choreographed a change of places, matching their steps until in the center they made the mistake of holding onto each other for a moment instead of onto the gunwales and in the security of their touch unconsciously rose from their crouches. The boat seesawed; they fell apart and scrambled down into their new seats.

“Ježišmarja,” Milo swore.

The boat was moseying downstream again. — You’ll have to turn, Jacob advised.

The oars splashed as Milo got used to them, but he soon found a stroke that suited him. In a steady rhythm, he gathered himself forward into a hunch, then stretched out and opened his long form. Another forward hunch, another long, taut form. He was more beautiful than any man whom Jacob could have hoped to take to bed in America.

— You can do it so well, Jacob said. — Why didn’t you want to row?

— I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t want to think, that you are like other travelers.

— I’m not.

— You are. You’ll ride away, Milo said, somewhat challengingly. — But don’t be sad, he added.

— I’m not, Jacob denied. — Attention.

“Jejeje,” Milo exclaimed. They were passing under the Mánes Bridge so close to one of the piers that Milo had to lie on the oars quickly to swing them inside the skiff. They waited to hear if the skiff would scrape the pier; no scrape came. As they were gliding away, Jacob reached out a hand and was able to touch one of the bridge’s black stones, slippery with algae. It didn’t have any smell.

Milo recovered his rhythm. — Where shall we dine? he asked. — U ? Jacob had taken him there a few times when they had found themselves downtown at the end of the day, and they had liked sitting quietly in a corner of the genial roar.

— I have a date, said Jacob.

— Truly?

He ought to have mentioned it sooner. — At a synagogue, he explained. — A friend wants to show it to me. We can meet later, you and I. I’m sorry.

— Perhaps I will have dinner with Father. I think, that he misses me.

They were approaching the Charles Bridge. Milo had brought them far over to one side of the river, almost to the Malá Strana bank. In fact he seemed to be steering them into Malá Strana itself.

— Where are you taking me? Jacob asked, with some concern.

— To Venice.

Most place-names in Czech were easy for a foreigner to recognize, but a few, like Benátky , the word for Venice, reminded one that the language was old enough to have come up with its own names for things. As the skiff approached the river’s edge, several of the orange and yellow palaces seemed gently to part, allowing an inlet of the river to continue between them. It was a canal.

Where the Charles Bridge made landfall in Malá Strana, the castle drew eyes upward and few tourists walked to the edge of the bridge to peer over and consider its footings. Jacob and Milo were able to pass unobserved as the canal took them under one of the bridge’s last arches. Milo let the skiff coast. It nudged a few ripples into the surface of the water, which fluttered in patterns associated with those ripples and made trickling sounds as it rose and fell against the brick bases of the canal-side palaces. They were simple palaces with tall, regular windows. A family had hung its laundry from the balcony of one of them. The canal itself had no social significance. The palaces beside it faced away. Perhaps they faced children playing soccer in a carless street nearby, because fragments of excited children’s voices echoed along the chamber formed by the tall buildings and the water, though no children and no soccer could be seen. — This is beauty, Jacob said, as Milo pulled them through the green shadow of an overhanging tree. It wasn’t a very manly sounding thing to say.