Caleb Crain - Necessary Errors

“Ahoj,” he heard, through the huffing of the wind. The bell didn’t always work, and sometimes Milo hollered up to Jacob’s bedroom window. He was standing on the street below, looking up with untroubled cheerfulness. Jacob tossed the house keys down to him and then made a point of sitting at his typewriter again.

— I have your photos, Milo said a minute later, as he let himself in.

“Okay,” said Jacob in English, not looking up.

— I picked them up, since they were ready.

— How much do I owe you?

— Ach, I don’t know. Can we look through them?

“Okay,” Jacob agreed.

— Are you writing? Milo asked, as he pulled a chair up beside Jacob.

— Maybe.

With time, the documentary function in their relationship had fallen almost entirely to Milo, but one day a few weeks ago Jacob had rebelled against the division of labor and put film in his Minolta. He had taken a roll of pictures of Milo in the Žižkovižkov apartment and on the empty streets around it. He would have felt self-conscious taking pictures of Milo downtown, in front of other people, though Milo himself seemed to have no such shyness, perhaps because photography was his art and he had become accustomed to the kinds of indecorousness incidental to it.

Jacob had used one of the last rolls of a stock of Tri-X film that he had brought with him from America. There was a small, disorienting thrill in the discrepancy between the black-and-white images of Milo that they were leafing through and the flesh-and-blood Milo beside him. In the prints, Milo’s beauty was almost classical, it seemed to be a matter of line and form, but the Milo holding the prints was pink and sweaty and his hair was a little longer, a little softer than in the photos. He hadn’t cut it since the pictures were taken.

— Well, that’s a magnificent man, Milo observed. — Did you sleep with him?

— Once.

— You can show him off to your friends.

— I told them about you.

— What did they say?

— I told them you took me to Amerika, and the Scot’s girlfriend said, that we must to Šárka.

— I’d like to escort you to Šárka, said Milo. He flipped through a few more prints, but he had sensed Jacob’s mood, and neither he nor Jacob were still looking at them carefully.

— I have to wash the laundry, Jacob said flatly.

— Do you want help?

— No. I also have to work, probably. I have to write. He didn’t look at Milo as he said it. It sounded like an excuse to get rid of him. — Do you still photograph for yourself sometimes?

— How so, for myself?

— As art.

— Just the documentary about a co-laborer from the brotherly socialist republic of America.

It was unkind to throw Milo out. But it was unfair that Jacob should have to feel guilty about it. He hadn’t given his life away. If he did feel guilty, he foresaw, he wouldn’t be able to write anything, even if he were left alone.

— I don’t know what I want to do, said Jacob. He felt awfully sorry for himself. Why shouldn’t he? He couldn’t be what he wanted to be, not for a long time, maybe never. It was as if over the past year or so he had taken a few steps away from a paved road. For a while longer he was still going to be able to justify his digression by pretending that he might soon retrace his steps. If things got bad enough, in fact, he might actually retrace them. For a while longer he was going to continue to be able to minimize the delay that his ever-lengthening detour involved. At some point, though, his justifications were going to start to sound like lies, and he was going to have to admit, to himself and maybe to other people, that he had gone astray. He was going to have to admit not only that he had been walking deliberately away from the road but also that for a long time he had been accomplishing little other than walking away from it. The effort might never come back to him. He might never get anything for his pains but the experience of having wandered, which as someone who actually had wandered he wouldn’t be likely to idealize. He didn’t know for sure that he was headed anywhere, because, to phrase it more carefully, he didn’t know if he was going to live long enough to reach a place that he could learn, in retrospect, to call a destination. He didn’t know how far away such a place might be; certainly he didn’t seem to be progressing very rapidly toward it right now. He had to try to write something while he could. Time was running out. He was probably going to have to give up soon — he was probably going to have to double back to the paved road — but he didn’t have to give up quite yet, so he should at least write a little. — Better if I’m alone today, he told Milo.

— Mushrooms and vinegar, Milo replied, and left.

* * *

“Such a spa you are!” Annie observed with amusement, in the school’s tiled smoking room between classes. “To send him away like that. Poor sod.”

“Who, him or me?”

“I suppose the both of yehs, but I was thinking more of him. How was he to know you had this, ehm, idea, you might call it, in your head?”

“Should I call him?”

“Well, if you can’t be fagged to call him…”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you still fancy him?”

“I do.”

“Then I think you’d do well to call him. If you still fancy him, that is. Though I wonder if he’ll have you again. I don’t know that I’d have you back, frankly.”

“You think it’s too late.”

“When was it?”

“Saturday.”

“Maybe if you make it up to him, like.”

“How?”

“How am I to know? You’re understood to be the great expert in what a bloke fancies.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“No, not if you don’t want to see him again.”

“Can’t I want to spend the day by myself?”

“But not sudden like. You can’t surprise a person. And he offered to do your bloody washing with you, and you’re an American.”

“What does that mean?”

“I only mean you’re sure to be very particular about your washing. The Americans in the are, is why I say it. It’s like chemistry for them. Science, you know. I watch how they do it. They make measurements.”

“You think I fucked it up.”

“I don’t say that. I say you might have done.”

* * *

Around this time a letter from Melinda arrived for Jacob care of the language school. She had managed to type it.

,

Has it really been a month and a half? It feels like bloody forever. Don’t think that I have forgotten that you were to write me first, or that I consider you any less remiss merely because I neglected to give you our Roman address before departure. But seeing as how I did neglect to give it you, there’s nothing for it, I suppose, and it must be I who writes. Herewith, then…

How the hell are you, darling? Do you miss us half as much as we miss you? Don’t answer that. Carl by the way fully intends writing you a long letter himself, apologizes for not having written sooner, sends regards, etc., so I mustn’t steal his thunder and shan’t except to say that here in Rome he has grown almost unrecognizably industrious, plastering campuses with photocopied offers to give private English lessons out of purloined Czech instruction manuals. (He didn’t purloin them from you, I hope? He did from someone, so perhaps it’s better to keep this bit of the epistle rather close.) My contribution to our financial wellbeing is to offer to sell the car, an offer I repeat almost daily, because I am sure we are running afoul of some nuance of Italy’s vehicular registration protocol and foresee the day when I shan’t be able to flirt my way out of an encounter with a carabiniere. Either that or we shall turn the old Ford into a gypsy cab, so as to profit from our liability. It is widely believed here that all you need do is shout at tourists from a car for money to tumble out of them. Fancy me bawling at timid American matrons from a rolled-down window…