Necessary Errors: A Novel (90 page)

“You’re a right fool, you know,” Annie said to Jacob, aside. “He’s quite fit.
I
wouldn’t give him up.”

“Co
?” Milo asked.

Before Jacob could translate, Annie interrupted with alarm: “Don’t
tell
him.” She made a show of looking crestfallen at Jacob’s willingness to betray her confidence.

“
ti to
,” said Jacob.

“No, don’t tell him later, either. That’s no better.” Then she thought better of her tactics and addressed Milo again herself: “I said you were handsome,” she confessed. She checked with Jacob: “Is it all right, to say that?”

“
, že jsi hezký,” Jacob translated.

“No, diky,” Milo thanked Annie, with some embarrassment.

“He isn’t blushing, is he?” Annie asked. “I meant it in a kind way.”

“I don’t think anyone really ever minds being told they’re handsome,” Elinor reassured her.

“No, sometimes they do mind. Sometimes it isn’t polite to make personal comments,” Annie said, regretfully. “I’m sorry I’m all aflutter,” she told Jacob. “I’ve never met any of your ‘friends’ before.”

“‘Friends’?”

“Whatever you call them. What does he do, by the way?”

“He’s a photographer,” Jacob answered.

“To sotva,” Milo qualified.

“He says I’m exaggerating,” Jacob translated.

“Well, it’s hard, isn’t it, to
be
anything,” Annie said. “So I find, at any rate. I’m a teacher, for the moment,” she declared to Milo. “
,” she said, patting her chest.

Jacob and Milo laid their towels down beside the women’s blanket.

—You, said Milo, nodding at Annie, —are Irish?

“I am, yes,” said Annie, with a glance at Jacob to acknowledge him as the source of the information.

—And you, Milo continued, looking now at Elinor, —also Irish?

—English, Elinor answered in Czech.

—I, Moravian, Milo told them.

—Truly? said Jacob. He hadn’t ever asked. —I thought you were a Praguer.

—Father and Mother were born in Moravia, in a little town that is called
. We have a river and a little bridge with statues, like the Charles Bridge but prettier. We have a small, square castle.

—Is there a forest? Jacob was trying to picture it.

—Around the castle. Forest and meadows. I’ll show them to you. When you come back.

Jacob had never said he would come back, but the word for “when” could also mean “if.” —I’m from Texas.

—And where do you keep your hat? Milo replied.

They subsided into individual enjoyment of the sun. Annie lowered her glasses. Milo stripped off his shirt and settled back on his elbows. Jacob remained sitting up, his arms around his knees. He wished he could see Milo’s little town, but he would give that up, too. One had to impose a certain amount of structure on one’s life.

“Are we sitting in the nudist section?” he asked.

“I believe so,” said Annie. “Those two women to our right are topless, aren’t they.”

“Oh,” said Jacob. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“I didn’t suppose you would. Don’t look at them now, Jacob.”

“I don’t get to see breasts very often.”

“You aren’t any less philistine, are you. I don’t know why I thought you would have a measure of sophistication.”

“Up there seems to be the clothed section,” explained Elinor, pointing north. “Where those little buildings are.” She indicated a few white-painted wood structures, set back a ways from the water, the sort of summer makeshifts whose little-cared-for condition suggests that they must always have existed, always as sun-faded as they are now.

Annie spotted Jana, Thom, and Henry walking toward them up the green. To counterbalance her belly, Jana was leaning back on her haunches as she walked. The men had slowed their pace to match hers.

“May I share your blanket?” Jana asked. She let Thom and Henry, each holding one of her hands, lower her into a sitting position. Like her belly, her breasts, too, were round and heavy, though they were loose, whereas her belly was taut. Thom took a folded blanket out of their bag and tucked it under her as a cushion.

“Can I slip off your shoes for you?” offered Annie.

“Pull,” she said to Annie, as she raised one foot at a time.

“Still wearing all your togs, I see, Annie,” Thom commented.

“I’ve only got on just the swimsuit, really, under this camisole.”

“Just this side of decency.”

“For the time being. Have you met Jacob’s man?”

“Is this him?”

Milo was made slightly bashful by their attention. Jana spoke to him in Czech: —When Jacob told us, that you showed him Amerika, I told him, that I would show him Šárka.

—A good idea, Milo agreed.

“Thanks for arranging it,” Jacob said in English.

“It is for myself that I arranged it. I must take every pleasure while I still can.”

“
And
she came to look at the girls,” said Thom.

“It is true,” Jana admitted. “I wanted to see them and to remember that I will look something like one again some day.”

“You’re beautiful now,” Annie assured her.

“Feel.” She pulled the back of Annie’s hand against her cheek.

“Like a baby’s bottom, isn’t it,” Thom said.

“It’s so soft,” Annie agreed.

“And here’s another transformation,” said Thom, clapping his hands on his potbelly.

“Is it soft, too?” Henry asked.

“Feel it for yourself, why don’t you,” Thom offered, lifting up his T-shirt to expose it.

“That’s all right, mate.”

“It’s like a baby’s bottom. A hairy, old baby. Anyone else like a feel?”

“Jacob was telling us that Milo is a photographer,” Annie said to Jana, in an effort to restore propriety.

—Only as an amateur, Milo said.

“Jana’s a journalist,” Annie told Milo.

—An interpreter, Jana for her part qualified. —I merely work with journalists.

Milo asked Jana the name of the newspaper. When he didn’t recognize it, she excused him, on the grounds that after all it was written for expatriates like their boyfriends rather than for Czechs like themselves.

—I’m not working right now, Milo said of himself, —but next month I’m going to Karlovy Vary, where I’ll be a casino employee.

—A casino, Jana replied. —They must trust you.

—I might only be some kind of barman. I don’t yet know.

—You’ll learn excellent English.

—Well, maybe German.

In first conversations, a gay person not in the closet sometimes has to fend off a straight’s attempts to demonstrate good will. In conversation with Jana, Jacob thought, Milo might also feel obliged to show that he didn’t mind that his job was less promising than hers. The difference in the nature of their jobs was likely caused, after all, in large part by the difference between his gay world and her straight one.

—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.