Necessary Errors: A Novel

by Caleb Crain

  “Are you a monk?” Jacob asked.

  “I am a knight.”

  “That’s right,” said Jacob.

  They stopped at a gray building across the street from a steep, wooded hill. Wordlessly they climbed to the top floor. The apartment was spare and simple. The knight declined to turn on a light, but on the mantel, a crucifix under glass glowed a delicate electric blue, and by its light and that of the streetlamps outside, Jacob saw that the mantel also held a bottle of water, labeled in Czech script as blessed by the pope; a framed postcard of an Italian painting of the Virgin Mary; a wooden rosary wrapped around a white statuette of Jesus; and a jar of earth, labeled as having come from the Holy Land. A part of Jacob may have felt a little sorry, but another part was happy to be a little brutal. There were twin beds, somewhat austere, and onto one of them the knight pulled Jacob and there unbuckled Jacob’s belt. “Will you make use of this? I want it very badly. Or rather, not it, but what I would like you to use it with.” The condom proved troublesome afterward, when Jacob thoughtlessly flushed it, causing the knight to worry that it might stop up the plumbing and be discovered during repair. His concern was so vivid as to suggest it might have happened to him once before. “It is not for me that I fear, but there should not be questions for the monks.”

  Thus ended Jacob’s half year of abstinence. After breakfast, the two walked around downtown while the knight indicated buildings that the church intended to reclaim. “Do you see that rectory? In any case it will soon be a rectory again. I am speaking to a member of Parliament about it tonight.” The knight’s other hobby horse in conversation was the freemasonry, as it were, of nobles, which he extravagantly praised. Crossing , he became excited upon recognizing two tall, middle-aged German tourists, whom he identified as a count and an earl. “Now you will see,” the knight whispered to Jacob. When hailed, the Germans, polite and cautious, spoke in English as a courtesy to Jacob, whose presence the knight left unexplained. The men showed no sign of knowing that they belonged to a secret club that ruled the world. “They didn’t say anything about it,” Jacob commented after the tourists had parted from them.

  “Ah, but they wouldn’t. They needn’t, you see. We recognize one another.”

  “It’s like being gay.”

  “Not at all.”

  “You have a society right under the noses of a society that doesn’t see you.”

  “But it’s very different. The matter is entirely different.”

  It occurred to Jacob that the Germans’ courtesy might have been the sort extended to an acquaintance known to be harmless but delusional. By midafternoon, as the knight’s supposed appointments with government officials approached, Jacob found himself exhausted, and it was a relief that the knight’s instructions for a reunion in Vienna (“It will be pointless to ask for me by name at this address. Ask the housekeeper rather for the gentleman visiting in the rooms of the lawyer Detlev Bachofen; I am always to be found in his rooms on Thursdays at five o’clock. We shall have a whole evening together of delightful fucking”) were too cloak-and-dagger to bother remembering, though the fiction of a future rendezvous did make the moment of farewell carefree.

  Jacob’s other adventure was less mysterious. The pages torn from his gay travel guide listed a café attached to a Wenceslas Square hotel, which he hadn’t yet visited because the location was so public and because a coffee there cost as much as a meal elsewhere. Out of options, he steeled himself one afternoon. He took a seat in the café’s second-floor balcony, which discreetly overlooked the main floor, amid waiters’ knowing looks and the enveloping dull bronze and red serge of tourist’s art deco. Older men sipping nearby queried him with surreptitious glances, and he felt saved from them when a skinny young man with dyed blond hair walked over and after a brief pretense of needing to borrow matches sat down to flirt in earnest. He was twenty-two; he was a pastry-cook’s apprentice; he loved Americans. Not long after, he and Jacob were rolling in bed together at Jacob’s apartment. They had sex and then, because there was nothing to talk about, had sex again. Idly, postcoitally, the man regretted the ugly furnishings that had come with the ižkov apartment and began to propose colors and designs to replace the sheets and curtains. Jacob was entertained until the man said that next time he came he would bring his mother’s plates, which were much prettier than Jacob’s. He thought he was moving in, Jacob realized with alarm. Jacob disillusioned him; for good measure he invented dinner plans that required an immediate parting. The man looked stunned but said that he understood. He added that he hadn’t expected Jacob to be such a person. Jacob shrugged.

  * * *

  Since his first day in Prague, Jacob had been going into bookstores. He picked books up from their tables nervously and greedily, pronouncing in his head the authors’ names, which he didn’t recognize, and the words in the titles, which he didn’t understand, trying to gauge literary value by the quality of paper, binding, and design. He held them under false pretenses—he couldn’t read; he merely wanted to—and he was afraid in early visits that a sales clerk might offer to help him choose or might try to draw him into a literary conversation. In those days, however, sales clerks in Prague rarely spoke to customers unless they had to. Jacob’s disingenuousness was never exposed; it was able to ripen in time into something more ambiguous.

  Now he began to go into bookstores more often. Prices were the same everywhere, but there was variation in supply, now that private publishers had begun to compete with those run by the state. Several private presses were samizdats turned moderately professional; their books were for the most part paperbacks with homemade designs. One or two seemed to have Austrian or German capital behind them, and theirs had shinier covers but even coarser paper stock, probably on Western advice. For beautiful hardcovers with sewn bindings and sophisticated illustration, there was as yet no alternative to the state-run presses, which in the last year and a half had started printing older books that had been suppressed since the “normalization” period of the 1970s, as well as a few samizdat titles. Their most beautiful books were First Republic classics whose liberalism or perversity had put them in a bad odor with the overthrown regime.

  The state presses were also, at long last, printing more Czech-English dictionaries. One morning, long after he had given up looking for it, Jacob found the English equivalent of his Czech-French dictionary: a pocket-size glossy blue hardcover. He found it in a bright, new shop on Melantrichova. Cool and trim, the dictionary fit well in his hand, the way his French one did. It was really too late, though. The dictionary was for tourists and beginners; sometime during the winter he had stopped carrying the Czech-French version around with him, and he wasn’t likely to consult the Czech-English one any more often.

  He looked around at the other books for sale. The shop happened to be run by the state press responsible for children’s books, and he noticed a small shelf devoted to the illustrator whose exhibit he had seen with Luboš in the winter. Here was the messy, oversize dog troubling a punctilious family. Here was a book of witches and princesses, tremblingly lined. Here, too, were a few books for grown-ups illustrated by the same artist, including the translation of Tristram Shandy with which the exhibit had ended. The artist had drawn noses, battlefield maps, wilted flowers, lines that weren’t straight, and diagrams of causality. It wasn’t what Jacob was looking for and he would never “read” it, but the illustrations were in amber, pink, and chocolate, it was in his hands, and it didn’t cost much more than he spent on beer on a generous night.

  “Ahoj,” he was startled to hear himself saluted.

  Looking up, he saw a young blond man, whom he knew he knew but couldn’t at first place. “Ahoj,” Jacob answered. Was the man gay? He was Jacob’s age. His hair was pure blond, very short, sloppily cut, as if he were a surfer who lived on a beach and had had to cut it himself. He was watching the expression on Jacob’s face as if he were looking forward to whatever he was going to see there—as if he were confident that he was goi
ng to enjoy it. He had a long Roman nose. Nose, feet…It was the boy in Ota’s circle who had hoped Jacob would turn out to be a cowboy. He was taller than Jacob remembered. An inch or two taller than Jacob, even.

  “Milo,” the boy said, tapping his own chest once.

  “Jakub,” said Jacob.

  —But I remember, Milo answered. —Can I? he continued, gesturing that he’d like to examine Jacob’s book, which Jacob handed to him. He leafed through the pages delicately and quickly. His fingers, Jacob saw, had the same stubby, oval nails as the construction worker who had once asked Jacob about American wages. —Well, and it’s pretty, the boy said. —Are you going to buy it?

  —But it’s translated from English. Why would I read it in Czech?

  —The drawings are Czech. Them you can read.

  Several of the drawings were of bulbously lettered Czech words crowding and jostling one another. —You’re right, Jacob conceded.

  —Well, yes. The joke in his eyes wasn’t that he knew better than Jacob. It was that the decisions Jacob faced might be better decided in a more lighthearted way than Jacob was used to. —And what further? the boy asked, imitating a sales clerk.

  Jacob picked up the blue pocket dictionary again. —I was looking at this.

  —You don’t yet have?

  —I have Czech-French.

  —But you aren’t French. You are from Texas.

  —Once again you’re right.

  —Well, yes. So buy. That you may support our Czechoslovak businesses.

  —Shall I really buy? Jacob doubted.

  —Why not? Do you have the dough for it?

  —Enough.

  The boy shrugged, because of course it didn’t really matter to him whether Jacob bought the books or not. Again Jacob had the impression that the boy was going to be delighted by whatever Jacob did, and the impression emboldened him.

  —What are you doing right now? Jacob asked.

  —Nothing.

  —Nothing?

  —Maybe something with you.

  —I’d like that.

  —Well, then,…I also, Mr. Cowboy. Shall we give ourselves something, somewhere?

  The woman at the cashier neatly wrapped the books up for Jacob in paper printed with the name of the children’s publishing house, as if the books were gifts. The pale, loose flesh of her upper arms, bare in a sundress, quivered as she folded and taped, and Jacob felt suddenly and irrationally happy, as if he had just realized there wasn’t any reason not to do the things he wanted to do, if he could do them—as if he were going to get away with living a happy life whether or not he deserved one.

  In the street Milo asked if Jacob liked ice cream and suggested a place in . They walked together up Melantrichova, along the familiar crooked route. The sun was striking hard on the street’s white stones; tourists were chattering and giggling; he and Milo caught each other’s eye. He felt the pleasure of walking in public next to a beautiful man. It was a pleasure that he thought even straight men must sometimes feel, though maybe they described it to themselves as pride or belonging. He and Milo weren’t claiming each other, but they were going to sleep together, Jacob knew. They were going to sleep together that afternoon. No one around them had any idea, and the sense of conspiracy made the pleasure of anticipation even greater. Was it too much?

  —You know, I return to America in August, Jacob cautioned Milo.

  —Then let’s hurry! Milo answered, and he made as if to dash ahead, but didn’t.

  Later, after the ice cream, on the tram to Jacob’s apartment, they sat side by side, alert to everything happening in the car because for the moment nothing but attention could be made from their excitement. Milo let the back of his left hand rest against the back of Jacob’s right, as if by accident. Neither glanced down at this point of contact between them; they were both too canny to need to. A bearded man with a mustard-colored shoulder bag boarded at , and as the tram pulled ahead the man began to flash a bright medallion at passengers: he was a revizor, checking tickets. Two rows ahead, a grandmotherly woman rummaged nervously in her purse, unable to find her senior citizen’s card. Two schoolgirls behind her, noticing her agitation, whispered, —Ma’am, here you have one of our tickets, here quickly. When the woman turned to accept their offer, her face showed surprise and a little fear. Jacob later felt that he never came any closer to the revolution.

  * * *

  —Do you want? Jacob asked.

  —But no, Milo answered. —It damages the lungs on you.

  —You’re too good.

  —But I’m an angel.

  —Do you have wings?

  —Of course. Can’t you see?

  The two were still in bed, and Jacob could see everything. He felt for the angled buds of bone in Milo’s upper back. —Here in back, Jacob confirmed.

  —I’d rather smoke something else.

  —Marijuana?

  —You’re so innocent.

  —Oh, something to smoke like for example—

  —Hands off!

  * * *

  —And what are the parents like? Jacob asked.

  —Father works. As a teacher of Czech.

  —And Mother?

  —She died. Years ago.

  —I’m sorry. Your father knows about you?

  —We leave each other in peace.

  —You’re going to have to tell him.

  —So wise are these Americans.

  —But yeah.

  —Your feet.

  —My feet?

  —They’re so beautiful.

  —What?

  —It’s like ‘worth mushrooms.’

  —Do you speak Czech? Jacob asked.

  —Nothing is Czecher than mushrooms. It’s said of nonsense. ‘Your feet.’ ‘Mushrooms.’ ‘Mushrooms with vinegar.’

  —Why?

  —I don’t know. Just because. Mushrooms are pleasing to us.

  * * *

  The two of them were provoked by qualities in each other’s bodies that, as young people, they didn’t have much conscious awareness of: the responsiveness of their complexions, the richness, variety, and speed of the changes between hues—qualities only visible face to face, or face to the nape of the neck, too subtle to be caught on film, which has to commit to lines and static tones. They sat talking naked so often and so long perhaps because they liked to be able to read the whole opalescent page of each other at once.

  There wasn’t any sting to their appetites, because they were always able to satisfy them quickly; satisfaction kept their greed and lust innocent. They weren’t held back by any worry about what their episodes in bed would lead to, because it was understood that before the end of the summer Jacob was going to be leaving for America and Milo for a job as a waiter in a new casino in Karlovy Vary. That limit may have been a further provocation; a modicum of malice impelled Jacob, after all. He was aware that he was taking for himself, that he had decided not to be too high-minded or too careful any more. He was consoling himself by using Milo. The good luck was that Milo didn’t seem to mind and seemed in fact for his part to want to use Jacob in turn.

  * * *

  The city’s great cemeteries lay just south of the Žižkov apartment. Jacob’s tram took him past them every day; sometimes he switched to the bus at a stop with the poetic name of Mezi , or “Between the cemeteries.”

  One Saturday he decided to visit. Because his usual daily course took him past the burial grounds, turning aside felt at first like cutting short a trip rather than making one. He stepped into the shade of one of the Olšany cemeteries with the consciousness that he remained visible from the tram stop that he usually crossed to but this time hadn’t.

  The grass that ran between and around the heavy slabs was rich, its color deepened by an undergrowth of moss. Tall poplars lined the central lane, but among the graves themselves there grew chestnuts. A squirrel dropped an empty burr, and Jacob picked up the prickled, yawning shell and shook it in his closed fist. He was alive, and the heat
made him nervously conscious of it. Conscious of wanting to fuck around with Milo again, of wanting to explore every last corner of Prague before he left. The dead didn’t want anything, but on the other hand, they didn’t mind anything, either. Their monuments were colorless as if to represent the absence of judgment. He felt aware of the muscles under his clothes carrying him forward.

  In the recent weeks of lengthening sun, the poplars had grown a heavy green umbrage, which rocked gently overhead. The roofing green made the paths into corridors, and Jacob remembered walking empty corridors after school in Grafton, Massachusetts, on the days he had stayed late to develop pictures in the darkroom. He had repeated a sentence to himself as he walked, a kind of charm for safekeeping. It couldn’t have been the sentence he thought he remembered, which now seemed absurdly unhappy, worse than could have been the case. The teacher who managed the darkroom had overheard him once, and he had had to pretend not to know what he’d been saying.