Necessary Errors: A Novel (48 page)

—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.

—He’s sympathetic, Jacob said. —How long does he stay?

—Until he finishes the plumbing? She shrugged in embarrassment. —And now I must empty his rooms. Do you want to help me?

—I’m sick, he said, and he crossed his arms over his chest and hunched his shoulders for effect.

—But perhaps you are bored?

—I’m writing.

—That’s a good one! About our family, no doubt.

—No, no. It’s fiction.

—Yes, well, I understand. But be nice.

—But really! I write about something else.

—Yes, well, yes, well. It will be quite a beauty! she said, as if she were already steeling herself. —Our crazy family in a book.

In fact Jacob was trying to write about Meredith. The doctor at the clinic had given him two weeks “to start with,” and though Jacob wasn’t sure he could afford two weeks now that so much of his income came from private students, he had them, and he had their peace and quiet. Between chapters of Stendhal, therefore, he sat at his typewriter.

A blank sheet sat fixed in his machine so long that the platen set a curl in it. It seemed wrong to write about Meredith and wrong not to write about her. He knew he was angry with her. She had been the poet of their generation—all her friends had thought themselves lucky to
have met her in her youth—and she had thrown away her talent with her life. She had also thrown away an understanding they had shared, a little prize they had conspired to give themselves, that no one their age could have deserved: the sense not merely that they were going to give their lives to writing but that somehow they already had.

What killed her, however, was another thing, a darker one, which she and Jacob had joked about together at lunch one day, while their companions at the table had sat by, puzzled.

“Its relation to writing isn’t causal,” Jacob had said.

“No, no,” she had dismissively agreed, tapping her fork dangerously. “‘Causal’—that’s vulgar. ‘Contiguous’?” she had suggested.

“Perhaps the territories are contiguous,” Jacob had replied.

“‘Congruent’?” she had also suggested but at once took it back. “No, no. ‘Contiguous.’” Suddenly she let down her fork with a clatter. “A Venn diagram!” She covered her mouth. “A Venn diagram is needed.” She always wore a bright red lipstick to lunch, as if to defy any shame or awkwardness that might be associated in some minds with the process of eating.

“What are you talking about?” a young man beside her had complained, and now, in Prague, Jacob couldn’t remember for certain the specific noun whose relation to writing they had been trying to find an adjective for. It might have been “unhappiness.” He had tripped over the thing beneath the word later, when he and Meredith had tried very briefly to become lovers.

Was there a connection, or wasn’t there? He decided to write about visiting her grave and rebutting there the answer that her death seemed to imply. She had no doubt been buried by her family in Virginia, but for the purposes of his story, he imagined the cemetery in the Massachusetts town where he himself had grown up. He knew what that cemetery looked like. If she were buried there, her plot would be down the hill, in the contemporary area where the lawn was smoother and the headstones were thicker and more polished. He imagined himself standing before hers. Unfortunately, he couldn’t bring the character based on himself to say what was on his mind, and he couldn’t write intelligibly about the romantic confusion that that character and the character based on Meredith fell into. He labored at the story anyway. He invented another character, a man who also came to the grave and cried there unabashedly.
He had once read an essay about a short story in which something similar had happened. Very confusedly, he tried to make the character based on himself seduce the character who cried, but he couldn’t make the seduction plausible. The whole thing refused to come to life. It was no more than a series of described gestures.

He hid the pages in the evening when he heard Carl’s key in the door. “Hey,” Carl would call out, and then set down his bag with a thump beside the refrigerator. Jacob would come into the kitchen, sit at the table, and listen to the sound of running water as Carl washed his hands and face. Then Carl would sit down across from him with a glass of water to report on his day. His beard was now full, and his hair, too, was growing longer. He combed drops of water out of his beard with his fingers as he spoke.