Haruki Murakami - Sputnik Sweetheart

“Well, then, the only thing we can do is patiently take the time to discuss the problem. That’s all I can say.”

Someone from another room knocked at the door and entered. “Mr Nakamura, could you lend me the key to the storeroom?” he asked. Mr Nakamura rummaged through the drawer in his desk for a while, but couldn’t find it.

“It’s gone,” he said. “That’s strange. I always keep it in here.”

“It’s very important,” the other man said. “I need it now.”

The way the two of them talked about it, it sounded like a very important key, something that probably shouldn’t have been kept in a drawer to begin with. They rifled through every drawer, but came up empty-handed.

The three of us just sat there while this was going on. A couple of times Carrot’s mother glanced at me beseechingly. Carrot sat as before, expressionless, eyes pinned to the ground. Pointless, random thoughts flashed through my head. The room was stifling.

The man who needed the key gave up, grumbling as he left.

“That’s enough,” Mr Nakamura said, turning to us; in a toneless, matter-of-fact voice he continued: “Thank you for coming. We’re finished here. I’ll leave the rest up to you and the boy’s mother. But get one thing clear—if he does this one more time, he won’t get off this easy. You do understand that, I hope? I don’t want any trouble. But I do have to do my job.”

She nodded, and so did I. Carrot looked as though he hadn’t heard a word. I stood up, and the two of them weakly followed suit.

“One last thing,” the security guard said, still seated. He looked up at me. “I know this is rude of me, but I’ll just go ahead and say it. Since I laid eyes on you there’s something just not quite right. You’re young, tall, make a good impression, nicely tanned, logical. Everything you say makes absolute sense. I’m sure the parents of your pupils like you a lot. I can’t really explain it, but since I first saw you something’s been gnawing at me. Something I just can’t swallow. Nothing personal, so don’t get angry. It’s just something bothers me. But what is it that’s gnawing at me, I wonder?”

“Would you mind if I ask you something personal?” I said.

“Ask away.”

“If people aren’t equal, where would you fit in?”

Mr Nakamura took a deep lungful of cigarette smoke, shook his head, and exhaled ever so slowly, as if he were forcing someone to do something. “I don’t know,” he replied.

“Don’t you worry, though. The two of us won’t be sharing the same level.”

She’d parked her red Toyota Celica in the supermarket car park. I called her over to one side, away from her son, and told her to go on home alone.

“I need to talk to your son alone for a while,” I said. “I’ll bring him home later.” She nodded. She was about to say something, but didn’t, got in her car, took her sunglasses from her bag, and started the engine.

After she left I took Carrot to a cheerful-looking little coffee shop I noticed nearby. I relaxed in the air-conditioning, ordered an iced tea for myself and an ice-cream for the boy. I undid the top button of my shirt, took off my tie, and slipped it in my jacket pocket. Carrot remained sunk in silence. His expression and the look in his eyes were unchanged from when we were in the security office. He looked completely blank, like he was going to be that way for a while. His small hands placed neatly in his lap, he looked down at the floor, averting his face. I drank my iced tea, but Carrot didn’t touch his ice-cream. It slowly melted in the dish, but he didn’t seem to notice. We sat facing each other like some married couple sharing an awkward silence. Every time she stopped by our table, the waitress looked tense.

“Things just happen,” I said finally. I wasn’t trying to break the ice. The words just came bubbling up.

Carrot slowly raised his head and turned towards me. He didn’t say a thing. I shut my eyes, sighed, and was silent for a while.

“I haven’t told anybody yet,” I said, “but during the summer holidays I went to Greece. You know where Greece is, don’t you? We watched that video in social studies class, remember?

In southern Europe, next to the Mediterranean. They have lots of islands and grow olives. Five hundred BC was the peak of their civilization. Athens was the birthplace of democracy, and Socrates took poison and died. That’s where I went. It’s a beautiful place. But I didn’t go to have a good time. A friend of mine disappeared on a small Greek island, and I went to help search. But we didn’t find anything. My friend just quietly vanished. Like smoke.”

Carrot opened his mouth a crack and looked at me. His expression was still hard and lifeless, but a glimmer of light appeared. I’d got through to him.

“I really liked this friend of mine. Very, very much. My friend was the most important person in the world to me. So I took a plane to Greece to help search. But it didn’t help. We didn’t find a clue. Since I lost my friend, I don’t have any more friends. Not a single one.”

I wasn’t talking to Carrot as much as to myself. Thinking aloud.

“You know what I’d really like to do the most right now?

Climb up to the top of some high place like the pyramids. The highest place I can find. Where you can see as far as possible. Stand on the very top, look all around the world, see all the scenery, and see with my own eyes what’s been lost from the world. I don’t know… Maybe I really don’t want to see that. Maybe I don’t want to see anything any more.”

The waitress came over, removed Carrot’s plate of melted ice cream, and left the bill.

”I feel like I’ve been alone ever since I was a child. I had parents and an older sister at home, but I didn’t get along with them. I couldn’t communicate with anyone in my family. So I often imagined I was adopted. For some reason some distant relatives gave me up to my family. Or maybe they got me from an orphanage. Now I realize how silly that idea was. My parents aren’t the type to adopt a helpless orphan. Anyway, I couldn’t accept the fact that I was related by blood to these people. It was easier to think they were complete strangers.

“I imagined a town far away. There was a house there, where my real family lived. Just a modest little house, but warm and inviting. Everyone there can understand one another, they say whatever they feel like. In the evening you can hear Mum bustling around in the kitchen getting dinner ready, and there’s a warm, delicious fragrance. That’s where I belong. I was always picturing this place in my mind, with me as a part of the picture.

“In real life my family had a dog, and he was the only one I got along with. He was a mongrel, but pretty bright; once you taught him something he never forgot. I took him for a walk every day, and we’d go to the park; I’d sit on a bench and talk about all sorts of things. We understood each other. Those were my happiest moments as a child. When I was in fifth grade my dog was hit by a lorry near our house and killed. My parents wouldn’t let me buy another. They’re too noisy and dirty, they told me, too much trouble.

“After my dog died I stayed in my room a lot, just reading books. The world in books seemed so much more alive to me than anything outside. I could see things I’d never seen before. Books and music were my best friends. I had a couple of good friends at school, but never met anyone I could really speak my heart to. We’d just make small talk, play football together. When something bothered me, I didn’t talk with anyone about it. I thought it over all by myself, came to a conclusion, and took action alone. Not that I really felt lonely. I thought that’s just the way things are. Human beings, in the final analysis, have to survive on their own.