Haruki Murakami - Sputnik Sweetheart

She was lucky enough to find a furnished apartment on a shortterm lease, a pleasant, tidy little building on top of a hill on the outskirts of town. The view was superb. Nearby was a place where she could practise piano. The rent wasn’t cheap, but if she found herself strapped for cash she could always rely on her father to help out.

Thus Miu began her temporary but placid life in the town. She’d attend concerts at the music festival, take walks in the neighbourhood, and before long got to make a few acquaintances. She found a nice little restaurant and café that she began to frequent. Out of the window of her apartment she could see an amusement park outside town. There was a giant Ferris wheel in the park. Colourful boxes with doors forever wed to the huge wheel, all of which would slowly rotate through the sky. Once it reached its upward limit, it began to descend. Naturally. Ferris wheels don’t go anywhere. They go up, they come back down, a roundabout trip that, for some strange reason, most people find pleasant.

In the evenings the Ferris wheel was speckled with countless lights. Even after it shut down for the night and the amusement park closed, the wheel twinkled all night long, as if vying with the stars in the sky. Miu would sit near her window, listening to music on the radio, and gaze forever at the up-and-down motion of the Ferris wheel. Or, when it was stopped, at the monument-like stillness of it.

She got to know a man who lived in the town. A handsome, 50-ish Latin type. He was tall, with a thoroughly handsome nose and dark straight hair. He introduced himself to her at the cafe. Where are you from? he asked. I’m from Japan, she answered. And the two of them began talking. His name was Ferdinando. He was from Barcelona, and had moved here five years before to work in furniture design.

He spoke in a relaxed way, often joking. They chatted for a while, then said goodbye. Two days later they met each other at the same cafe. He was single, divorced, she found out. He told her he left Spain to begin a new life. Miu didn’t have a very good impression of the man. She could sense he was trying to move In on her. She sniffed a hint of sexual desire, and it frightened her. She decided to avoid the cafe.

Still, she bumped into Ferdinando many times in town—often enough to make her feel he was following her. Perhaps it was just a silly delusion. It was a small town, so running across the same person wasn’t so strange. Every time he saw her, he smiled broadly and said hello in a friendly way. Still, ever so slowly, Miu became irritated and uneasy. She started to see Ferdinando as a threat to her peaceful life. Like a dissonant cymbal at the beginning of a musical score, an ominous shadow began to cloud her pleasant summer.

Ferdinando, though, turned out to be just a glimpse of a greater shadow. After living there ten days, she started to feel a kind of impediment attaching itself to her life in the town. The thoroughly lovely, neat-as-a-pin town now seemed narrow-minded, selfrighteous. The people were friendly and kind enough, but she started to feel an invisible prejudice against her as an Asian. The wine she drank in restaurants suddenly had a bad aftertaste. She found worms In the vegetables she bought. The performances at the music festival sounded listless. She couldn’t concentrate on her music. Even her apartment, which she thought quite comfortable, began to look to her like a poorly decorated, squalid place. Everything lost its initial lustre. The ominous shadow spread. And she couldn’t escape it.

The phone would ring at night, and she’d pick it up. “Alio?” she’d say. But the phone would go dead. This happened again and again.

It had to be Ferdinando, she thought. But she had no proof. How would he know her number? The phone was an old model, and she couldn’t just unplug it. She had trouble sleeping, and started taking sleeping pills. Her appetite had gone.

I’ve got to get out of here, she decided. But for some reason she couldn’t fathom, she couldn’t drag herself away from the town. She made up a list of reasons to stay. She’d already paid a month’s rent, and bought a pass to the music festival. And she’d already let out her apartment in Paris for the summer. She couldn’t just up and leave now, she told herself. And besides, nothing had actually happened. She hadn’t been hurt in any real way, had she? No one had treated her badly. I must just be getting overly sensitive to things, she convinced herself.

One evening, about two weeks after she began living there, she dined out as usual at a nearby restaurant. After dinner she decided to enjoy the night air for a change, and took a long stroll. Lost in thought, she wandered from one street to the next. Before she realized it, she was at the entrance to the amusement park. The park with the Ferris wheel. The air was filled with lively music, the sound of carnival barkers, and children’s happy shouts. The visitors were mostly families, and a few couples from town. Miu remembered her father taking her to an amusement park once when she was little. She could remember even now the scent of her father’s tweed coat as they rode the whirling teacups. The whole time they were on the ride, she clung to her father’s sleeve. To young Miu that odour was a sign of the far-off world of adults, a symbol of security. She found herself missing her father.

Just for fun, she bought a ticket and went inside the park. The place was filled with different little shops and stands—a shooting gallery, a snake show, a fortune-teller’s booth. Crystal ball in front of her, the fortune-teller, a largish woman, beckoned to Miu:

“Mademoiselle, come here, please. It’s very important. Your fate is about to change.” Miu just smiled and passed by.

She bought some ice-cream and sat on a bench to eat it, watching the people passing by. She felt herself far removed from the bustling crowds around her. A man started to talk to her in German. He was about 30, small, with blond hair and a moustache, the kind of man who’d look good in a uniform. She shook her head and smiled and pointed to her watch. “I’m waiting for somebody,” she said in French. Her voice sounded higher, and remote to her. The man said nothing further, grinned sheepishly, gave her a brief wave of the hand and was gone.

Miu stood up, and wandered around. Somebody was throwing darts and a balloon burst. A bear was stomping around in a dance. An organ played “The Blue Danube Waltz”. She looked up, and saw the Ferris wheel leisurely turning through the air. It would be fun to see my apartment from the Ferris wheel, she suddenly thought, instead of the other way around. Fortunately she had a small pair of binoculars in her shoulder bag. She had left them in there since the last time she was at the music festival, where they came in handy for seeing the stage from her far-off seat on the lawn. They were light and strong enough. With these she should be able to see right into her room.

She went to buy a ticket at the booth in front of the Ferris wheel.

“We’ll be closing pretty soon, Mademoiselle,” the ticket seller, an old man, told her. He looked down as he mumbled this, as if talking to himself. And he shook his head. “We’re almost finished for the day. This will be the last ride. One time around and we’re finished.” White stubble covered his chin, his whiskers stained by tobacco smoke. He coughed. His cheeks were as red as if buffeted for years in a north wind.

“That’s all right. Once is enough,” Miu replied. She bought a ticket and stepped up on the platform. She was the only person waiting to board, and as far as she could make out, the little gondolas were all empty. Empty boxes swung idly through the air as they revolved, as if the world itself were fizzling out towards its end.