Caleb Crain - Necessary Errors

— It is distant, our home, she said, uncertainly. He didn’t think he could object; for months she had traveled the same distance to him. So she wrote out the numbers of the three buses he would have to take and the names of the stops where he would have to transfer. Later, when he consulted his map, he saw that he would be riding beyond the edge of it. Later still, when he alighted from the second of the buses, at the foot of a long white panelák , into a wind that threw gravel down an empty cement walkway, he realized that the journey was too long for the fee he had proposed. But now there were children expecting lessons from him; he couldn’t back out.

There were only two other passengers on the last bus he had to take, which idled for several minutes before getting under way. Against the posted rules, one of the passengers was bantering with the driver. Jacob nervously read the names of passing street signs. As of two minutes ago, he was late. He was afraid he would make himself even later by failing to pull the cord in time for his stop. Sometimes a bus driver would sail past a stop if he hadn’t been alerted far enough in advance.

Jacob managed to pull the cord in time. He shouted thanks to the driver, and on the sidewalk was struck by the sight of the panelák ’s bleached concrete walls, now distant, where a few newly washed sheets, even more brilliantly white, fluttered against the ropes that held them, on balconies that ran the length of the building and brought to mind the decks of an ocean liner. Then he turned away, into a street of villas.

A rank of bare lindens defended the houses on the right. On the left, a wire-mesh fence gave way to a brick wall, painted yellow. A door in this wall bore the number Milena had given him. He rang the bell and waited, tracing with his eyes the brown serpentine fingers of a vine that had grown up the wall and over it.

“It is, how to say, wine,” Milena explained when she answered the door.

“A grapevine,” Jacob corrected.

“Yes. Please, come in.”

They walked past a rabbit hutch, from which small red eyes watched them, and past the snow-covered furrows and mounds of a wintering garden. At the corner of the villa, two children soundlessly appeared in a doorway as Milena opened it. — But children, he cannot enter, you must step out of his way, the mother said, in a mild tone that they seemed to consider harmless, for they watched him a few moments longer before sidling back inside. “Please,” Milena resumed, gesturing that he should enter.

“Thank you.”

“Thank you,” echoed the girl, throwing him a glance.

“You already speak English,” Jacob answered, and the girl became shy. He stepped after the children into a sort of cloakroom. The pale winter sun, with its touch of violet, came in through the sidelights of the door. A narrow staircase led up into a honey-colored darkness.

“Prokop, Anežka, Mr. Putnam,” Milena announced.

“Oh, they can call me Jacob,” he offered. He repeated their names, and they more quietly repeated his.

Laughing for the sake of politeness, rather than because of any joke, Milena tugged off her shoes and replaced them with slippers from a low shelf. The children were already wearing their slippers. Milena tried to dissuade Jacob from taking off his shoes, but when he insisted, she offered him slippers, too: —Please, though they are not so pretty…

— Mami, in English! Anežka demanded, in Czech.

— You are right, you are right, Milena replied, also in Czech. “Please,” she addressed Jacob, “up?” Evidently the family lived on the villa’s second floor.

“Tchay-kop,” Prokop said, when they reached the top of the stairs.

“Dj,” Jacob corrected. The sound didn’t exist in Czech.

“Dj,” the boy accurately repeated. “Moment,” he added, and then he ran off, Anežka following.

Milena led Jacob into a large room that ran the east length of the building. It seemed to combine dining and living areas. In broad windows, full of the already darkening sky, hung pots of delicate ferns; the windows were underlined by low shelves of books along the wainscoting. Jacob noticed what must have been an encyclopedia — a file of brown spines of a nineteenth-century smokiness, with feathery, gilded lettering. In the room’s far corner, a deal table supported a television with a chalky screen. A slump-shouldered sofa faced it; draped over the sofa was a polyester shawl, auburn and umber. The dining table was dressed in white linen.

“Please,” said Milena, touching the place at the head of the table. “Something to a meal?”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Jacob said. He saw that his words confused her. She had caught the implication of refusal, but not his precise meaning, and she looked hurt. “Did you already make it?” he asked, trying to save the moment. He repeated his question in Czech: — Is it already prepared? The way he phrased it sounded almost demanding.

— Yes, yes, she assured him.

“Okay, sure, thank you,” he said, though he had no appetite. It was not yet five in the afternoon.

— It is already prepared, she repeated, and backed into a white kitchen. He saw that there were several covered saucepans simmering on her stove. The sight made him afraid he had just agreed to eat the family’s dinner, but he could think of no way to find out now whether he had really been meant to accept the generosity.

Prokop appeared at the threshold of the room, holding something behind his back. His sister crouched beside him, tightly hugging a doll — a baby-girl doll with a plastic head and a lumpy cloth body. Prokop whispered something to his mother, who nodded in response. — But can he in Czech? Prokop then asked her aloud.

— He can, Milena answered. To Jacob she explained, “Prokop wants you show…”

The boy held out a green metal toy. At first Jacob thought it was a railroad car. — It’s a tram! Jacob said.

The boy looked disappointed. — It is an American tram, he insisted.

— Show, Jacob said. Without surrendering it, the boy let him look. The toy was forest green, with peach and red trim. At each end was an open balcony, with steps for mounting or alighting, and at the corners were poles to grab on to, which seemed to support the roof of the car like a temple’s columns. Along the sides, windows had been cut into the tin, and rectangles of what looked like exposed camera film had been placed in the frames. Through them Jacob could see an occasional glint off a gear of the mechanism inside. The boy turned the toy as he held it out so that Jacob could see all the sides, as if it were a gem and he were displaying its facets.

— It’s handsome, Jacob said in praise. A placard on the car’s roof read Bay and Taylor Sts. — It’s from San Francisco, he added.

— From where?

— It’s a city in Western America, where there are many hills, and so they have trams.

The boy now looked warily at his own toy, as if it had kept a secret from him.

— A friend of father brought him it, Milena commented.

— Shall we start the lesson?

— But no, you must have something in the way of a meal, Milena replied. — Sit, please.

The two children sat in a row to his right. — The children just ate, Milena explained, as she set before him a plate of sliced meatloaf, boiled cabbage, and dumplings, covered in gravy. It was gray and smelled like soil after a rain. As he ate, the last of the daylight slipped away.

Anežka had set her doll, which Jacob had forgotten to ask about, in her lap, and she was making its mittenlike hands paw the air in some private game.

— And what do you have there? Jacob asked. — Or rather, whom?

The girl smiled but did not reply. The stranger was not supposed to have seen.