Caleb Crain - Necessary Errors

He bid good-bye to the oblivious children. Anežka, who had forgiven him, answered softly, sucking in her breath. Prokop, who had insulated himself with a force field of excitement, barked a cheerful farewell. At the edge of the table, the trolley lay unregarded, unclaimed. Prokop had not returned to it the way Anežka had returned to her doll. The thought of it stayed with Jacob as he walked up the dark street to wait for the bus. He told himself it would be absurd to feel guilty about it. It was normal for boys to outgrow such attachments, especially straight boys. In fact, the guilty thing would have been to teach Prokop to hold on to a doll, the way Anežka was doing, and as Jacob himself had often tried to when he was a child. A spark clinked in a street light overhead. All around him the night was mild and empty.

* * *

The friends decided to revisit the yellow-walled cellar in Malá Strana where they had given Michael a farewell party in the fall. According to Henry, it had grown a bit louche. The place was set up like a speakeasy, Jacob remembered, as Henry led him, Annie, and Thom edgewise through the ground-floor restaurant to the stairwell at the rear. They descended into stale air, which Jacob wasn’t immediately reconciled to breathing. German girls with angry eye shadow were sitting below the landing, blocking the narrow staircase, and the girls swore idly at the friends as they passed.

The bar and the unevenly plastered walls were unadorned, as before. Jacob thought he remembered that they had been playing tapes of jazz music in the fall, but weak speakers now emitted American punk — a thin gray stream of sound that the mutter and talk of the rooms easily broke through. To Jacob the room seemed vaguely menacing, and he felt self-conscious and detached, as if a bully were sizing him up; he felt the need to put up a bluff.

Henry volunteered to fetch drinks. Jacob, Annie, and Thom claimed a corner table. Someone had cut into the wall beside their seats the Czech word for gypsies and the German word for out . Tourists had written their names in ballpoint pen and then dated their inscriptions.

“Ehm, so, we’re off to Krakow tomorrow fortnight,” Annie announced, apropos of nothing.

“Are ye, then?” Thom replied.

“Mmm. Without the likes of you.”

“And a pleasant journey to you.”

“Just those of us who are romantically independent, you see,” she explained.

“I may soon have a right to join ye,” Thom said. “In a manner of speaking.”

“Have you done wrong, then?” Annie asked.

“Or too much right, perhaps,” he answered.

“You’re a fool if you have,” Annie accused him.

“So certain that I’m to blame!”

“You’re such a lad,” she said, disgustedly. She was smoking her cigarette fiercely, wincing against the smoke that she herself cast up.

Thom recognized a man coming down the stairs. “Did Henry invite that wanker?”

“Who?” Annie asked, swiveling to look. “Hans? Must have done.”

“They’re friends, I guess,” Jacob offered, because he was afraid that Thom was upset for his sake.

Just as Hans reached them, Henry arrived with four glasses, pressed against one another like cells in a honeycomb. “I should have known to buy a spare,” he apologized.

“Not at all. I shall—,” Hans began.

But he was interrupted by the advent of Melinda, who appeared behind him, striding across the long room eagerly, her sharp cheekbones pink from her quick transition out of the brisk night into the windowless heat of the cellar. “Darlings,” she saluted them. “What a relief. I was sure I had come down the wrong rabbit hole. I had no notion it had become so ropey here. Those vixens on the stairs — bloody hell…” She drew from her purse with one hand her cigarettes, lighter, and wallet, her fingers splayed separately open, at all angles like the blades of a Swiss army knife. “Does anyone else need a drink?” she asked.

“Allow me,” said Hans. He refused the crowns that she was unfolding and, turning unexpectedly to Jacob, said, “I heard that you…that a friend of yours was lost to you. I was very sorry.”

“Oh, it’s all right, thank you,” Jacob said, awkwardly. Seated securely among his friends, he had an uncharitable impression of Hans as a pudgy child who hoped the other children on the street would let him play with them.

Hans gave a slight bow and left them for the bar.

“That was decent of him,” said Melinda.

“Is Carl coming?” he asked, softly.

“I was going to ask you.”

“Say, have I shown you Sarah’s photos?” Henry asked, producing a blue air mail envelope.

“What are they of?” Jacob asked.

“My daughter’s birthday. Mel and Rafe found me a tricycle to send her.”

“Rafe heard of a shipment coming into ,” Melinda explained.

She let the photos slip out of the envelope and held them by the edges. The little blond girl with Henry’s wide eyes was sitting in a green garden under a canopy of pink crepe paper streamers.

Henry spoke shyly. “She looks pleased in the photos.”

“Oh she does,” Melinda assured him.

“This is Barcelona?” Thom asked, taking the photos one by one from Annie, who was taking them from Melinda.

“It’s her fourth birthday.” Henry’s eyes remained on the pictures.

“She’s a beautiful child, isn’t she,” Annie admired.

“With that Czechoslovak tricycle she’ll be the envy of all the Barcelona youth,” said Thom.

“It’s a Polish tricycle, actually.”

“Will you be getting a Polish tricycle, too, then Annie?” Thom asked.

“I may do,” she replied. “All sorts of good things in Poland.”

Hans returned and, with his feet, pulled out a chair opposite Melinda and Jacob. As he set down the beers that he had brought, Melinda drew back with the photos she still had, as if they were cards and she were afraid of revealing her hand.

“Pictures of Henry’s child,” she then said to Hans, by way of explanation.

“Ah, your scattered seed,” he said. When no one laughed, he added, “Cheers,” hurriedly, and sipped his beer.

“Cheers,” Melinda answered, since she was closest, but she didn’t touch her beer.

“What a thing to say,” Annie muttered.

Hans either didn’t hear Annie or pretended not to.

Annie turned to Jacob. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, have you ever heard this notion: life is an infection of matter, and spirit is an infection of life? Is that a thing that people think?”

“I’ve never heard it before.”

“Is that from your Thomas Mann?” Melinda asked.

“I find it rather a peculiar idea,” Annie admitted. “Even to me it didn’t quite sound like proper biology.”

“An old poofter, wasn’t he,” Thom commented.

“Do you think that comes into it?” Annie asked.

“It’s part of a larger idea about death, I seem to vaguely recall,” said Melinda.

“A cheerful sod,” said Thom. “You tell me such things from that book, I don’t know why you choose to read it.”

“Oh, I find I get quite lost in it,” Annie replied, with some enthusiasm. “Nothing whatever happens for pages and pages, and one doesn’t mind somehow. It’s rather like the , actually.” There was a sudden brightness and openness in her looks, and even Henry, who had gathered up his photos and was storing them away, looked up to admire her.