Necessary Errors: A Novel

by Caleb Crain

  —What’s your subject matter, when you photograph? Henry asked in Czech.

  —Visitors from the West.

  —Seriously?

  —No. I don’t have a special subject matter.

  —He photographed on Vaclavák during the revolution, Jacob boasted on Milo’s behalf.

  —Like everyone, Milo said.

  —But that’s an idea, said Henry. —Visitors from the West. Do you have your apparatus with you?

  He hadn’t brought it.

  “Because we’re quite a sight, the lot of us,” Henry continued in English. “Another day, perhaps.”

  “Though there isn’t likely to be one, is there,” said Annie. “Not with Jacob, I mean. It’s a pity Melinda isn’t here, for that matter. I imagine she’s quite beautiful without her clothes on. Why do you give me that look, Thom? Don’t you think she would be?”

  “I’m quite sure of it.”

  “Did you fancy her, too?” Annie asked. “I suppose we all did.”

  The friends settled in. More towels and blankets were unrolled. Books and magazines were taken out of satchels. A tube of Western suntan lotion was passed around. The possibility of nudity was mooted, but one had to be clothed to buy refreshments, and several of the friends were already hungry. A delegation walked up to one of the white clapboard stands where, under letters spelling out , red letters bleached pink by the sun, it was possible to buy a párek on a cardboard square with the traditional daub of mustard and heel of stale rye. Some of the friends also bought bottles of Staropramen.

  After eating and drinking, no one was in a rush to swim. They lay idly in the heat and light. Because it made Jacob slightly giddy to have Milo beside him among his friends, he made a series of stupid jokes that Annie pretended to disapprove of. Milo’s presence was like a boast that Jacob was making—a boast that it turned out his friends liked to hear him make because they took it as a sign of trust in them. The obvious thing to say was that it was like taking off his clothes with them, at a spot where people came together to take off their clothes, and like taking off Milo’s clothes, too, and discovering, once all of them were in their glory, that they were all quite beautiful.

  “But I’m not sure I’m going to take my suit off,” Annie said, when Jacob confusedly tried to share his idea of the comparison. “If it were just you and poxy Thom…,” she suggested. “But as it is, I find it a bit shy-making. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “I don’t mind,” said Jacob.

  “Milo’s gay, you know, Annie,” said Thom, who’d had a few. “He won’t be looking at you.”

  “I know that,” she said, exasperatedly. “It’s not anyone in particular. It’s just that the group is rather large, is all.”

  “If a fine specimen of manhood such as meself declines to be bashful before the male gaze,” Thom persisted, “there’s no call for you to be, is there.”

  “The ‘male gaze,’ Thom?” Henry queried.

  “I believe that’s what Carl used to call it, when he went on about it,” Thom replied. “In his cups.”

  “I think I will just sit here then,” Annie said, “rather than take a swim, if you don’t mind.”

  “Allowing us quite a sight of ankle nonetheless,” commented Thom.

  “Perhaps it should just be the boys for now,” put in Elinor, linking an arm in Annie’s for solidarity. “Though we’ll watch the show.”

  “Well, go on, then,” said Annie. “If you’re going to take off the rest of your kit.”

  “You first, Henry,” said Thom.

  “Me first?” Henry echoed. “All right, then.”

  “Are you serious?” Jacob asked.

  “All at once, then, men,” Henry declared.

  “That’s the spirit,” agreed Thom.

  The Western men unbuttoned their shorts and pulled off their briefs. A moment later, Milo followed their example, and the men walked with a studied lack of hurry toward the water. Jacob was at first careful not to look at Henry and Thom, but it seemed wrong to make a fuss of not looking, and of course it was right to look at Milo, though dangerous. It was a relief to reach the water, and though the water was cold, they waded steadily in, shivering but stoic, so as to gain the modesty afforded by its reflections and be exempted together from exposure as well as from clothing, though their limbs, once submerged, continued to glow pale and greenish beneath them, in images rippled and scattered by the shifting of the reservoir’s surface.

  “It’s very strange to be completely naked in public,” said Jacob. “It isn’t something Americans ordinarily do.”

  “I can’t say it’s very English, either,” replied Henry. “It’s a Scottish thing, though, isn’t it? With the kilts and all that.”

  “It is,” Thom answered. “On account of our climate, I believe.”

  Henry spouted a little fountain up and over his head. “What does it call to mind?” he asked.

  “I thought it would be sexy,” said Jacob, “but it’s not really sexy. Everyone’s so exposed.”

  “Speak for yourself,” retorted Thom.

  “You’re not exposed, or it is sexy?”

  “Quite an invigorating set of sensations, I’d say.”

  “But for you it feels less animal?” Henry asked Jacob.

  —What are you discussing? Milo wanted to know.

  —The sense of nakedness, Jacob answered.

  —Philosophically?

  —More or less.

  —Why it’s strange, Henry interpreted for Milo. —What distinguishes it from normal social relations.

  —The metaphor is, maybe, without clothes a person becomes his true I, Jacob suggested.

  —You’re open, Milo offered. He seemed to be describing the feeling that he was having rather than speculating about it, as Jacob and Henry were.

  —Momentarily you’re authentic, Henry took up the idea. —Moment by moment.

  —Especially if you’re male, joked Milo.

  —About certain things a naked man can’t lie, agreed Henry.

  —What if no one was ever ashamed, suggested Jacob.

  A flurry of laughter reached them from shore. Annie and Elinor had changed their minds, and to Jana’s applause, scorning to shield themselves with their arms, the women ran to the water and splashed noisily, conspiratorially in. They swam deliberately away from the men. Annie even shouted a taunt, though the men weren’t able to parse it.

  “I believe I’ll head to shore,” said Thom, “while it’s safe to make a break for it.”

  “I’ll join you,” said Henry.

  Left to themselves, Jacob and Milo decided to swim across the reservoir and back before leaving the water. They rested when they reached the shallows of the far shore. Milo shook his bangs out of his eyes and though he was touching the bottom swept his arms back and forth as if he were still treading water. Now that they were apart from the others, their presence together in the water changed character.

  —It would be a version of utopia, your idea, said Milo.

  The maple leaves above them were motionless, Jacob noticed, as if the leaves had forgotten themselves in a task. By this time of year, the leaves weren’t going to change in form again, the way Jacob had imagined that he himself might still change after he returned to America. The work of the leaves now was to continue to be the selves they had become. It occurred to Jacob, rebelliously: What if he had misunderstood himself? What if he wasn’t going back for the sake of his ambition? What if his ambition was just a name he gave to a kind of conformity, and he was going back because he wasn’t brave enough to live a life that wasn’t expected of him, a life so far from any road that there wouldn’t be any signposts or milestones?

  He was panicking, he told himself as a way of hushing his doubts. He was safe here; he didn’t need to panic. The water around them remained cool and quiet.

  * * *

  They all came to see him off the next day at the bus station.

  —Don’t read it now, Milo said as he handed Jacob a
letter. —Read it when you’re without Prague, as if I had sent it to you by post.

  Jacob cried, of course, as the bus pulled away. From being people whom he had lived among, his friends became a picture of the same people, falling behind him.

  Not long after the bus got on the highway, he had a moment of horror—of seeing, briefly, the mistake that he was making. He considered getting off the bus. He kept considering it, even after it would have meant having to ask to be let off in a town and having to take a train back to Prague. But he felt that he needed to move forward, a need the illusion of which he was to chase for a number of years. It was to be a long time before he accepted that it isn’t necessarily foolish to change one’s mind dramatically, a much longer time than the duration of a bus ride between Prague and Paris. He consoled himself meanwhile by losing himself somewhat in his feelings: Now, he thought, now, now I know what it feels like to go into exile. Quietly he watched the countryside unrolling itself by the side of the bus. He watched it, Milo’s letter on his knee, until about the time the bus crossed from Germany into France. Then he opened the letter.

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  ALSO BY CALEB CRAIN

  American Sympathy:

  Men, Friendship, and Literature in the New Nation