Haruki Murakami: Sputnik Sweetheart

“I have no idea,” Sumire answered.

“People would take carts out to old battlefields and gather the bleached bones that were buried there or lay scattered about. China’s a pretty ancient country—lots of old battlegrounds—so they never had to search far. At the entrance to the city they’d construct a huge gate and seal the bones up inside. They hoped that by commemorating the dead soldiers in this way they would continue to guard their town. There’s more. When the gate was finished they’d bring several dogs over to it, slit their throats, and sprinkle their blood on the gate. Only by mixing fresh blood with the dried-out bones would the ancient souls of the dead magically revive. At least that was the idea.”

Sumire waited in silence for me to go on.

“Writing novels is much the same. You gather up bones and make your gate, but no matter how wonderful the gate might be, that alone doesn’t make it a living, breathing novel. A story is not something of this world. A real story requires a kind of magical baptism to link the world on this side with the world on the other side.”

“So what you’re saying is that I go out on my own and find my own dog?”

I nodded.

“And shed fresh blood?”

Sumire bit her lip and thought about this. She tossed another hapless stone into the pond. “I really don’t want to kill an animal if I can help it.”

“It’s a metaphor,” I said. “You don’t have to actually kill anything.”

We were sitting as usual side by side at Inogashira Park, on her favourite bench. The pond spread out before us. A windless day. Leaves lay where they had fallen, pasted on the surface of the water. I could smell a bonfire somewhere far away. The air was filled with the scent of the end of autumn, and far-off sounds were painfully clear.

“What you need is time and experience,” I said.

“Time and experience,” she mused, and gazed up at the sky.

“There’s not much you can do about time—it just keeps on passing. But experience? Don’t tell me that. I’m not proud of it, but I don’t have any sexual desire. And what sort of experience can a writer have if she doesn’t feel passion? It’d be like a chef without an appetite.”

“I don’t know where your sexual desire has gone,” I said.

“Maybe it’s just hiding somewhere. Or gone on a trip and forgotten to come home. But falling in love is always a pretty crazy thing. It might appear out of the blue and just grab you. Who knows—maybe even tomorrow.”

Sumire turned her gaze from the sky to my face. “Like a tornado?”

“You could say that.”

She thought about it. “Have you ever actually seen a tornado?”

“No,” I replied. Thankfully, Tokyo wasn’t exactly Tornado Alley.

About a half a year later, just as I had predicted, suddenly, preposterously, a tornado-like love seized Sumire. With a woman 17 years older. Her very own Sputnik Sweetheart.

As Sumire and Miu sat there together at the table at the wedding reception, they did what everybody else does in the world in such situations, namely, introduce themselves. Sumire hated her own name and tried to conceal it whenever she could. But when somebody asks you your name, the only polite thing to do is to go ahead and give it.

According to her father, her mother had chosen the name Sumire. She loved the Mozart song of the same name and had decided long before that if she had a daughter that would be her name. On the record shelf in their living room was a record of Mozart’s songs, doubtless the one her mother had listened to and, when she was a child, Sumire would carefully lay this heavy LP on the turntable and listen to the song over and over. Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was the soloist, Waiter Gieseking on piano. Sumire didn’t understand the lyrics, but from the graceful motif she felt sure the song was a paean to the beautiful violets blooming in a field. Sumire loved that image. In junior high, though, she came across a Japanese translation of the song in her school library and was shocked. The lyrics told of a callous shepherd’s daughter trampling down a hapless little violet in a field. The girl didn’t even notice she’d flattened the flower. It was based on a Goethe poem, and Sumire found nothing redeeming about it, no lesson to be learned.

“How could my mother give me the name of such an awful song?” said Sumire, scowling.

Miu arranged the corners of the napkin on her lap, smiled neutrally, and looked at Sumire. Miu’s eyes were quite dark. Many colours mixed together, but clear and unclouded.

“Do you think the song was beautiful?”

“Yes, the song itself is pretty.”

“If the music is lovely, I think that should be enough. After all, not everything in this world can be beautiful, right? Your mother must have loved that song so much the lyrics didn’t bother her. And besides, if you keep making that kind of face you’re going to get some permanent wrinkles.”

Sumire allowed her scowl to relax.

“Maybe you’re right. I just felt so let down. I mean, the only tangible sort of thing my mother left me was that name. Other than myself, of course.”

“Well, I think Sumire is a lovely name. I like it very much,” said Miu, and tilted her head slightly as if to view things from a new angle. “By the way, is your father here at the reception?”

Sumire looked around. The reception hall was large, but her father was tall, and she easily spotted him. He was sitting two tables away, his face turned sideways, talking with some short, elderly man in a morning coat. His smile was so trusting and warm it would melt a glacier. Under the light of the chandeliers, his handsome nose rose up softly, like a rococo cameo, and even Sumire, who was used to seeing him, was moved by its beauty. Her father truly belonged at this kind of formal gathering. His mere presence lent the place a flamboyant atmosphere. Like cut flowers in a large vase or a jet-black stretch limousine.

When she spied Sumire’s father, Miu was speechless. Sumire could hear the intake of breath. Like the sound of a velvet curtain being drawn aside on a peaceful morning to let in the sunlight to wake someone very special to you. Maybe I should have brought a pair of opera glasses, Sumire mused. But she was used to the dramatic reaction her father’s looks brought out in people—especially middle-aged women. What is beauty? What value does it have? Sumire always found it strange. But no one ever answered her. There was just that same immovable effect.

“What’s it like to have such a handsome father?” Miu asked.

“Just out of curiosity.”

Sumire sighed—people could be so predictable. “I can’t say I like it. Everybody thinks the same thing: What a handsome man. A real standout. But his daughter, well—she isn’t much to look at, is she? That must be what they mean by atavism, they think.”

Miu turned towards Sumire, pulled her chin in ever so slightly, and gazed at her face, as if she were admiring a painting in an art gallery.

“If that’s how you’ve always felt up till now, you’ve been mistaken,” she said. “You’re lovely. Every bit as much as your father.” She reached out and, quite unaffectedly, lightly touched Sumire’s hand that, lay on the table. “You don’t realize how very attractive you are.”

Sumire’s face grew hot. Her heart galloped as loudly as a crazed horse on a wooden bridge.

After this Sumire and Miu were absorbed in their own private conversation. The reception was a lively one, with the usual assortment of after-dinner speeches (including, most certainly, Sumire’s father), and the dinner wasn’t half bad. But not a speck of this remained in Sumire’s memory. Was the main course meat? Or fish? Did she use a knife and fork and mind her manners? Or eat with her hands and lick the plate?