Caleb Crain - Necessary Errors

The eggs themselves soothed his throat while he ate them, but when he asked Carl about his face, which felt warm, Carl said it was flushed. Jacob rinsed a washcloth under the tap and took it and his thermometer to bed with him on the sofa. When he was sick he didn’t like to move the sofa cushions to the floor. He realized that he was falling back into the routine that he had established when he was ill before. He assured Carl there was nothing he needed, closed his eyes, and shuddered under his blanket, the washcloth folded across his forehead, until his trunk felt warm and his forehead cool.

Following its usual rhythm, the fever broke in the early hours of the morning, and after breakfast walked with him to the day clinic for a new neschopenka and a new course of antibiotics. Jacob ordered Carl to go out and have fun, saying that would help him if he needed anything, and when he returned from the clinic, the apartment was empty. In the silence he took a deep breath. It felt to him as if he were repossessing the space, as if he were returning to the strange peacefulness of his earlier confinement. And something like his impression proved to be the case in the days following. In the hours when his head was clear, it was as if he had returned to a secret kingdom he had once known. But this time he had Václav, whom he sat with and babbled to when he was too feebleminded to read, and every evening Carl came home.

He went back to La Chartreuse de Parme . Fabrice was imprisoned high up in the Tour Farnèse, in a wooden cell fitted inside a stone one. Fabrice could see Clélia through a hole in the abat-jour of his window, and he tore pages out of books to make an alphabet, with which he signaled to her. Because of Clélia, Fabrice didn’t want to escape, and it occurred to Jacob that he didn’t want to escape his cell, either. He wondered if he, too, was in love. Carl, in love with Melinda, didn’t seem to want to be free. “Is that a good idea?” a psychotherapist had asked Jacob two summers earlier, when he had confessed that he wanted to room with a straight man he had then been in love with. He had done it anyway and it hadn’t had any terrible consequences.

Because of his relapse he saw no one in his landlord’s family for almost a week. Then at noon one day, during a midwinter thaw, he saw working in the courtyard with Bardo and Aja and realized that he missed talking to her. He was beginning to mend, and he thought it would be nice to feel the sun and play with the dogs. Mr. Stehlík’s scolding had upset him more than he had admitted to his friends; there had been something wild in the landlord’s anger, as if a restraint had snapped, and it had made Jacob aware for the first time of both the anger and the restraint. It was through that he was most likely to be able to repair fences, if they could be repaired. In his coat and boots, he ventured outside.

“Ahoj,” saluted him. The terrier growled and circled nervously; the boxer hung her head and approached Jacob with a moseying gait, her tail wagging. reproached both animals, and neither listened to her, but the terrier desisted when she saw the boxer’s acceptance of him. — Are you better? asked.

— A little, Jacob answered. He took off a glove and let Aja snuffle his fingers.

— She smells Václav, observed.

— Yes.

had taken two large red nylon rucksacks, emblazoned with the name and logo of a manufacturer of skiing equipment, out of the uninhabited rooms on the ground floor, and had set them down beside the driveway, evidently to load them in the car when it returned from an errand.

— Are you going to the country? Jacob asked. — Are you going for a ‘ski’?

— For a ‘ski’? she asked, quizzically. Jacob had guessed she would understand the English word, but maybe she didn’t. She looked around to see what he was looking at. — Ah, she said when she saw the rucksacks. She looked down at the ground as if in shame, and then up at the sky as if in comic expostulation. — Do you know, what it is? she asked. She was smiling her conspirator’s smile and dropped her voice so as not to be overheard by anyone inside the house.

— I don’t know, Jacob answered, also dropping his voice.

— Grandfather and Grandmother.

Involuntarily Jacob looked at the bags again. — The ones who…?

— Two years ago. And here we still have them.

Jacob felt his heart race. — Ashes? he asked.

— Of course, of course, answered. — Jesus Mary, if not…

Jacob was at a loss for words, so continued. — They were so lovely, so kind. They gave us everything. And here we still have them. She shrugged.

— Are you going to…, Jacob asked, his vocabulary faltering. — In the country?

— Finally. She clasped her hands together in gratitude.

— Near your chata ?

— Well, yes, thus.

— Then that’s good, Jacob said, and made an effort not to look at the bags again. — I’m sorry, he said, — that I angered your father.

pretended to be puzzled for a moment, as if she didn’t know what he was referring to. — Tata is very nervous now, she told him. — You mustn’t worry, but it is better if we…She made a calming gesture with her hands, leaning over at the same time, as if to block an imaginary sound with her body.

— Why is he nervous?

— Yes, why? she echoed, and looked off to one side. — Just thus, she finally said, concluding a train of thought she didn’t share. — Do you know, she continued, — you will have neighbor?

— In the empty rooms?

— They are not yet empty, she corrected him. She threw back her frizzy hair, and her face became jittery with good humor again. — That is my task, she lamented.

— Who will it be?

— Our plumber, Honza, she said.

Honza was a short, wiry, boyish man, about forty, with a tanned, lined face. He had recently started work on a project in the empty rooms, and he crossed paths with Carl and Jacob from time to time. He always shouted at them genially, as if louder Czech were easier to understand, and he addressed them as “kluci,” boys, rather than as “panové,” gentlemen.

was waiting for Jacob’s reaction.

— The little fellow, Jacob said.

— Little Honza, confirmed.