Caleb Crain - Necessary Errors

“Not officially.”

“In other words you do write them.”

“That’s classified. The number of tanks in Ostrava isn’t, but the authorship of the reports I write is.”

“How many tanks are in Ostrava?” Jana asked.

“Not enough!”

“Perhaps if there were more, it would, how do you say…” She made a gesture with two hands as if she were spreading something inside a basin, and she made a girlish sound effect as of something crashing.

“Collapse?” Rafe guessed.

“Sink?” she guessed. “It is so ugly and poisoned.”

“Oh no. Poor Ostrava!” To the others, he explained: “It’s a mining city.”

For a few minutes they held themselves crowded together in a single conversation, in order to welcome Jana and in order to give Rafe a chance to show off, in acknowledgment of the fact that they were about to lose him for a little while. But then Melinda broke the configuration, by touching Jana on the forearm and offering to show her the view from the balcony, such as it was, behind the bathtub in their kitchen. As the women moved away, the others shifted, too, some to refill their drinks and others to relax on the sofa in the living room, so that in a moment only the three Americans were left together.

“How did you learn Arabic?” Carl asked.

“Oh, the usual way, I suppose.” It was a vague answer; there was a touch of pettishness in it. Perhaps Rafe wished that Melinda had stayed beside him. “I took a semester in college. I figured, they have the oil.”

“How do you think it’ll go, in Kuwait?”

Rafe shrugged. His eyes focused on Carl and then drifted away. “It’s a question of getting all our stuff there. Our stuff and our boys. They don’t move quickly. But I think that enough of them got there before it started.”

“So you’re not worried.”

“I’m not worried about Kuwait.”

Unwatched by women, Rafe’s manner was slack, and Carl was taking advantage of his inattention to study him, in sidelong glances. Jacob wondered if Carl was trying to figure out whether Rafe was a spy. If Rafe were, it would have become second nature with him to sense suspicion and detection, as it was for Jacob. Was it disloyal of Carl to try to uncover one of their friends? In wartime, no less. If Rafe weren’t, suspicion might hurt his feelings even more. In that way too it would resemble Jacob’s secret.

“Is there room for more people on your balcony?” Jacob asked Rafe. “I’ve never seen it.”

“There’s not much to see,” Rafe answered. “Be my guest.”

“We keep our Hoover out here, I’m afraid,” Melinda apologized, as she and Jana made room for Jacob and Carl.

“I won’t trip on it.”

After the kitchen, the night air was empty of flavor. They had to stand four in a row, and the cold iron of the balustrade bit their fingers as they steadied themselves by gripping it. The balcony overlooked an empty, paved courtyard, lit by a parallelogram of night sky that happened to contain a gibbous moon, low and yellow.

“It’s cold,” Jacob complained.

“Cold keeps you honest,” Melinda answered.

“In that case I’d better go back in.”

“No, stay, the two of you. Tell us whether you’re afraid. I don’t require honesty.”

“Of bombs?” Jacob asked.

“Of anything.”

“Of anything,” Carl echoed. He stood nearest the door to the balcony, and Melinda stood farthest from it, and it seemed that she had chosen a piquant question to make sure it passed all the way down the chain and reached him. “We’re bold,” Carl decided.

“We are?” Jacob asked.

“We’re on the frontier. The Wild East. You are, anyway. I’m just a tourist.”

“The Wild Center ,” Melinda corrected. “No one likes to be thought of as east anymore.”

“Are you English teachers?” Jana asked.

“Jacob is,” Carl answered. “I don’t know what I am.”

“Nor I,” said Melinda, “though I, too, teach.”

“I don’t understand what they expect us to do about this warning,” Jacob said. “If we were the type who stay home, we wouldn’t be in Prague.”

“But that’s it,” Carl replied. “They don’t want you here.” He was evolving one of his theories. “It’s the frontier, and there’s too much freedom. What if you got used to it?”

“Do you think that you are more free here, than in America?” Jana asked.

“Absolutely. Here there are no expectations.”

“There never are, for an exile,” Melinda suggested. “It’s a great privilege.”

“I do not think, that I feel this freedom,” Jana objected. “I feel—” She turned to Melinda for the translation of a word.

“Nerves,” Melinda supplied. “Anxiety.”

“I wonder if it lasts,” said Jacob. “Don’t you think that eventually here becomes your real here? The charmless here?”

“Now I wonder if we’re discussing exile,” Melinda said, “or merely adulthood.”

“The trailing clouds dissipate,” Jacob offered.

“Sort of,” she agreed.

“Were you a pretty child?” Carl suddenly asked Melinda. “I bet you were.”

She flushed. “ I don’t know. You can’t ask a person that.”

“You were, is what you’re saying. You had a happy childhood and you miss it.”

“Don’t we all?” she answered. “No, I suppose that’s a terrible thing to say. There are unhappy childhoods.”

“But those people miss them even more, so you’re not wrong.”

“I’m going inside, before I embarrass myself further.”

“You haven’t. You couldn’t,” he said into the night air. Soon Jana, too, excused herself, and the two friends were left. They turned and looked frankly in at the party behind the glass.

The cold had whitened Carl’s face and reddened his fingers, Jacob saw as Carl lifted a cigarette to his lips. “I can fall for her, can’t I?” Carl asked. “I don’t want anything to happen. I mean, I know it isn’t going to.”

* * *

When Jacob had first fallen in love with a boy, three years before, he had seen that it was possible simply to turn away. The boy was straight; he was never going to fall in love with Jacob; and moreover Jacob then hoped that he himself would turn out not to be gay. It would have been correct to withdraw in silence, and it would have been prudent. But in giving up the misery he would also have had to give up the joy he found in his friend’s company, and so he stayed and eventually came to understand and name for himself the joy as well as the misery, though the boy never understood, never heard him name them, and perhaps never even knew the half of it. Ever since, it had been a principle with Jacob not to side with righteousness against feeling. Righteousness was a trap, he felt, and he had been lucky to get out as quick as he had. He therefore now set about being broad-minded about Carl’s crush. The happiness of their circle didn’t seem much threatened; as Jacob’s own experience suggested, nothing comes of most wishes. Furthermore, in Rafe’s absence, Carl and Melinda were careful with each other the next time they met. They weren’t distant, as they might have been if they were frightened. There was nothing for anyone to notice, and no one did.

The group, meanwhile, accepted Carl completely. When he announced that he had found another hospitable pub near Wenceslas Square, the group trusted him and for variety’s sake took his suggestion. In two cavelike rooms, whose low arched ceilings had been yellowed by decades of cigarette smoke, he led them to flimsy tables crammed together so tightly that you couldn’t get into or out of your seat without the cooperation of the people at the next table. Whenever you rose and made your way down the aisle to the men’s room, chair legs caught at you like brambles and had to be shaken off. The beer on tap was Pilsner Urquell; Carl recommended the goulash; the waiters were businesslike and did not try to pass off a tourist menu instead of the regular one. For a week the friends returned almost nightly, until their coats stank of the place and even by day their eyes were red from its haze.