Haruki Murakami - Sputnik Sweetheart

But all I felt was an incomparable loneliness. Before I knew it, the world around was drained of colour. From the shabby mountaintop, the ruins of those empty feelings, I could see my own life stretching out into the future. It looked just like an illustration in a science fiction novel I read as a child: the desolate surface of a deserted planet. No sign of life at all. Each day seemed to last for ever, the air either boiling hot or freezing. The spaceship that brought me there had disappeared, and I was stuck. I’d have to survive on my own.

All over again I understood how important, how irreplaceable, Sumire was to me. In her own special way she’d kept me tethered to the world. As I talked to her and read her stories, my mind quietly expanded, and I could see things I’d never seen before. Without even trying, we grew close. Like a pair of young lovers undressing in front of each other, Sumire and I had exposed our hearts to one another, an experience I’d never have with anyone else, anywhere. We cherished what we had together, though we never put into words how very precious it was.

Of course it hurt that we could never love each other in a physical way. We would have been far happier if we had. But that was like the tides, the change of seasons—something immutable, an immovable destiny we could never alter. No matter how cleverly we might shelter it, our delicate friendship wasn’t going to last for ever. We were bound to reach a dead end. That was painfully clear.

I loved Sumire more than anyone else and wanted her more than anything in the world. And I couldn’t just shelve those feelings, for there was nothing to take their place. I dreamed that someday there’d be a sudden, major transformation. Even if the chances of it coming true were slim, I could dream about it, couldn’t I? But I knew it would never come true.

Like the tide receding, the shoreline washed clean, with Sumire gone I was left in a distorted, empty world. A gloomy, cold world in which what she and I had would never ever take place again.

We each have a special something we can get only at a special time of our life. Like a small flame. A careful, fortunate few cherish that flame, nurture it, hold it as a torch to light their way. But once that flame goes out, it’s gone for ever. What I’d lost was not just Sumire. I’d lost that precious flame.

What is it like—on the other side? Sumire was over there, and so was the lost part of Miu. Miu with black hair and a healthy sexual appetite. Perhaps they’ve come across each other there, loving each other, fulfilling each other. “We do things you can’t put into words,” Sumire would probably tell me, putting it into words all the same.

Is there a place for me over there? Could I be with them? While they make passionate love, I’d sit in the corner of a room somewhere and amuse myself reading the Collected Works of Balzac. After she showered, Sumire and I would take long walks and talk about all kinds of things—with Sumire, as usual, doing most of the talking. But would our relationship last for ever? Is that natural? “Of course,” Sumire would tell me. “No need to ask that. ‘Cause you’re my one and only true friend!”

But I hadn’t a clue how to get to that world. I rubbed the slick, hard rock face of the Acropolis. History had seeped through the surface and was stored up inside. Like it or not, I was shut up in that flow of time. I couldn’t escape. No—that’s not entirely true. The truth is, I really don’t want to escape.

Tomorrow I’ll get on a plane and fly back to Tokyo. The summer holidays are nearly over, and I have to step once more in that endless stream of the everyday. There’s a place for me there. My apartment’s there, my desk, my classroom, my pupils. Quiet days await me, novels to read. The occasional affair.

But tomorrow I’ll be a different person, never again the person I was. Not that anyone will notice after I’m back in Japan. On the outside nothing will be different. But something inside has burned up and vanished. Blood has been shed, and something inside me is gone. Face turned down, without a word, that something makes its exit. The door opens; the door shuts. The light goes out. This is the last day for the person I am right now. The very last twilight. When dawn comes, the person I am won’t be here any more. Someone else will occupy this body.

Why do people have to be this lonely? What’s the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the Earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?

I turned face-up on the slab of stone, gazed at the sky, and thought about all the man-made satellites spinning around the Earth. The horizon was still etched in a faint glow, and stars began to blink on in the deep, wine-coloured sky. I gazed among them for the light of a satellite, but it was still too bright out to spot one with the naked eye. The sprinkling of stars looked nailed to the spot, unmoving. I closed my eyes and listened carefully for the descendants of Sputnik, even now circling the Earth, gravity their only tie to the planet. Lonely metal souls in the unimpeded darkness of space, they meet, pass each other, and part, never to meet again. No words passing between them. No promises to keep.

The phone rang on a Sunday afternoon. The second Sunday after the new school term began in September. I was fixing a late lunch and had to turn off the gas range before I answered. The phone rang with a kind of urgency—at least it felt that way. I was sure it was Miu calling with news of Sumire’s whereabouts. The call wasn’t from Miu, though, but from my girlfriend.

“Something’s happened,” she said, skipping her usual opening pleasantries. “Can you come straightaway?”

It sounded like something awful. Had her husband found out about us? I took a deep breath. If people discovered I was sleeping with the mother of one of the kids in my class, I’d be in a major fix to say the least. Worst-case scenario, I could lose my job. At the same time, though, I was resigned to it. I knew the risks.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“At a supermarket,” she said.

I took the train to Tachikawa, arriving at the station near the supermarket at 2.30. The afternoon was blazing hot, the summer back in force, but I had on a white dress-shirt, tie, and light grey suit, the clothes she’d asked me to wear. “You look more like a teacher that way,” she said, “and you’ll give a better impression. Sometimes you still look like a college student,” she added.

At the entrance to the supermarket I asked a young assistant who was rounding up stray shopping trolleys where the security office was. He told me it was across the street on the third floor of an annexe, an ugly little three-storey building without even a lift. Hey, don’t worry about us, the cracks in the concrete walls seemed to say, They’re just going to tear this place down someday anyway. I walked up the narrow, timeworn stairs, located the door with SECURITYon it, and gave a couple of light taps. A man’s deep voice answered. I opened the door and saw my girlfriend and her son inside seated in front of a desk facing a middle-aged uniformed security guard. Just the three of them.

The room was an in-between size, not too big, not too small. Three desks were lined up along the window, a steel locker against the wall opposite. On the wall between were a duty rota and three security guard caps on a steel shelf. Beyond a frosted-glass door at the far end of the room there seemed to be a second room, which the guards probably used for taking naps. The room we were all in was almost completely devoid of decoration. No flowers, no pictures, not even a calendar. Just an overly large round clock on the wall. A totally barren room, like some ancient corner of the world that time forgot. On top of which the place had a strange odour—of cigarette smoke, mouldy documents, and perspiration mixed together over the years.