Caleb Crain - Necessary Errors

For now, though, he was a stranger. He noticed that Henry was standing beside him and seemed to be waiting to say a word. “Have you seen the art?” Henry spoke into his ear. He pointed east, where at a distance there were a few more faint lights. “It appears to be a kind of installation.”

The two of them struck out across the dark together. Henry’s pale hands and the bluish whites of his eyes seemed to flutter in the air beside Jacob. The lights that they were approaching were on the ground, pointed up toward white masses, and as Jacob watched his steps, the low angle of the light, falling across the hillocky dirt, made him think of a beach at night lit by a bonfire. When they came close, the white masses resolved into shapes in papier-mâché: an oversize skull and skeleton, the bones crowded into a jumble, with the skeleton’s neck at a sharp angle, as if, even in this enormous space, the remains had had to be crammed in to make them fit. A large cap and a large hammer and sickle lay on the ground before the skull’s hollow eye sockets.

“Oh, it’s Stalin ,” Henry chuckled. “We’re meant to be in his tomb with him.”

On closer examination, they saw that there were in fact several skeletons, and all of them were inside a sort of wire mesh cage. At first Jacob thought that the cage was to protect the art from its audience, but on second thought that didn’t seem in keeping with the evening’s spirit.

A tall, unshaven man saluted them and borrowed a Petra from Henry. “Can we ask him?” Jacob said. — Please, would you be able to explain it to us? Is it Stalin’s grave?

The man shrugged, as if this was a high price for the cigarette he was fingering. — What have I to explain? Here is Mr. Stalin, here is his monument, may he rest in peace.

— If it isn’t a bother…, Jacob persisted.

The man sighed noisily. — Well, yes, it is Stalin’s grave, he told them, speaking and smoking in practiced alternation. — And something else. In the cellar of every panelák , every family has a locker, with such a grille, and there they keep flags and banners and such shit for the First of May and Victorious February and the Anniversary of the Great October Revolution and so on. So this is sort of the locker of the government, see, and they kept here Mr. Stalin and the rest of the line for meat, until they forgot about them.

“What’s the line for meat?” Jacob asked Henry, as the man returned to his friends.

“In the statue, before they tore it down, Stalin was leading three or four workers, and the Czechs always said it looked like they were queuing up at a butcher’s shop.”

In the still air, the smoke from their informant’s cigarette hung about them, and Henry tried to wave it away. The effort made his hands cold, and he blew on them. “He’s a sharp fellow. He’s the one who did the Trabant on feet in Old Town Square.”

“He wasn’t so friendly, though.”

“Oh, did you think that was the artist? I thought that was just a wanker who wanted a fag.” There were more works of art farther on, but Henry excused himself. “Enough for me, thanks.”

Jacob continued his walk alone, but he found that the rest of the exhibition was not as good. Either it was so abstract as to be without resonance — triangular panes of glass suspended from wires, for example, under a title like Viewpoints IV —or it was morbid without the touch of humor that gave the Stalin skeleton its charm. Over the course of the year, Jacob was to find in his visits to galleries that a morbid solemnity was typical of the less-talented emerging artists. The tone seemed to be a reaction to the new freedom — both an exploration of it and a way of taking refuge from it. Such artists were like Western teenagers at the stage when they are impressed with the discovery that pain and suffering are real and may be spoken about. They were boring because of their honesty.

He turned back toward the corner where he had left his friends. He was tired and a little drunk, and he stumbled a couple of times but didn’t fall. He realized he was growing impatient with the care that was necessary to walk safely, and when he recognized his impatience he paused. In the dimness he closed his eyes. Beneath the murmur of the partygoers, he heard the watery emptiness of the cave that they were in. It seemed to be spinning slowly around him. A year ago he had been in America. Two years ago he had been straight. Tonight he was underground, with the remains of the bogey man, lit by the torches of the children who had killed him.

“Jacob? Are you all right, darling?” Melinda asked.

He opened his eyes. “Fine,” he reassured her. She was with Carl, who also looked concerned.

“There’s sod all in the way of fresh air down here,” Melinda suggested.

“I’m fine,” he repeated.

“And we’ve been smoking up what there is of it,” she continued.

“That’s a good idea,” said Jacob, and dug his cigarettes out of his pocket. They declined his offer to share but then watched him light up with the attention of children outside a pastry-shop window. They declined a second offer, too, however.

“I was wondering if it might be possible to meet someone here,” Jacob said, in an effort to make his daze seem less mysterious.

“That’s the spirit,” said Melinda.

“Is it very open here?” Carl asked.

“Not really.”

“It is changing,” Melinda suggested, but then she hesitated. “Isn’t it? I suppose I don’t actually know.”

“I can’t tell,” answered Jacob. “Are you getting along with everybody?” he asked Carl.

“Your friends are so lovely.”

“Oh, good.”

“Thom? He’s adorable. And Annie’s so sweet. She’s a little sad, isn’t she?”

“I don’t think I should be hearing this,” Melinda interrupted. “You will excuse me.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll stop.”

“Absolutely not. I ought to check on Rafe in any case.” She began to walk away from them.

“Be careful of the gopher holes or whatever they are,” Carl called after her.

They watched her step from mound-top to mound-top, bringing her feet together after each step, like someone crossing a brook on a series of stones.

“And Melinda?” Jacob asked, when they thought she could not hear.

“She, I don’t know, she draws you out. Is that it? Do you find that she does that?”

“Sometimes, yes.”

“We were looking at the sculpture.” He gave a sharp laugh as he nodded toward it.

“What?” asked Jacob.

“Nothing, nothing. I wasn’t prepared for your friends to be so charming.”

“What did you say?”

“Oh, I told her I taught English as a second language in America, and I hadn’t come all this way just to do more of it. That’s all. It wasn’t any more than that.”

Carl sometimes joked about what he called his “enlightened shortsightedness”—about his reluctance, as a matter of philosophical principle, to sacrifice the self he was now for the sake of a self that it would be prudent someday to be. It was one of the traits that had made Jacob wonder if Carl was as straight as he seemed to be, and even after Jacob came to understand that it had nothing to do with sexuality, he still loved Carl for it. It was a kind of nakedness, and it set him apart from Jacob’s schoolmates, all of whom had seemed to measure their lives against an ideal career.

“It’s different here,” Carl continued. “Not knowing what you’re doing.”

“Being here is what you’re doing, when you’re here.”

“And that’s how it should be, everywhere. But here it actually seems to be possible. Maybe because the city is so beautiful? Somehow it makes me really sad.”