Haruki Murakami - Sputnik Sweetheart

Lying there, I close my eyes for a while, then open them. I silently breathe in, then out. A thought begins to form in my mind, but in the end I think of nothing. Not that there was much difference between the two, thinking and not thinking. I find I can no longer distinguish between one thing and another, between things that existed and things that did not. I look out the window. Until the sky turns white, clouds float by, birds chirp, and a new day lumbers up, gathering together the sleepy minds of the people who inhabit this planet.

Once in downtown Tokyo I caught a glimpse of Miu. It was about six months after Sumire disappeared, a warm Sunday in the middle of March. Low clouds covered the sky, and it looked like it would rain at any minute. Everyone carried umbrellas. I was on my way to visit some relatives who lived downtown and was stopped at a traffic light in Hiroo, at the intersection near the MEIDI-YA store, when I spotted the navyblue Jaguar inching its way forward in the heavy traffic. I was in a taxi, and the Jaguar was in the through lane to my left. I noticed the car because its driver was a woman with a stunning mane of white hair. From a distance, her white hair stood out starkly against the flawless navy-blue car. I had only seen Miu with black hair, so it took me a while to put this Miu and the Miu I knew together. But it was definitely her. She was as beautiful as I remembered, refined in a rare and wonderful way. Her breathtaking white hair kept one at arm’s length and had a resolute, almost mythical air about it.

The Miu before me, though, was not the woman I had waved goodbye to at the harbour on the Greek island. Only half a year had passed, yet she looked like a different person. Of course her hair colour was changed. But that wasn’t all.

An empty shell. Those were the first words that sprang to mind. Miu was like an empty room after everyone’s left. Something incredibly important—the same something that pulled in Sumire like a tornado, that shook my heart as I stood on the deck of the ferry—had disappeared from Miu for good. Leaving behind not life, but its absence. Not the warmth of something alive, but the silence of memory. Her pure-white hair inevitably made me imagine the colour of human bones, bleached by the passage of time. For a time, I couldn’t exhale.

The Jaguar Miu was driving sometimes got ahead of my taxi, sometimes fell behind, but Miu didn’t notice I was watching her from nearby. I couldn’t call out to her. I didn’t know what to say, but even if I had, the windows of the Jaguar were shut tight. Miu was sitting up straight, both hands on the steering wheel, her attention fixed on the scene ahead of her. She might have been thinking deeply about something. Or maybe she was listening to the “Art of the Fugue” that was playing on her car stereo. The entire time her icy, hardened expression didn’t change, and she barely blinked. Finally the light turned green and the Jaguar sped off in the direction of Aoyama, leaving behind my taxi, which sat there waiting to make a right turn.

So that’s how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the loss, no matter how important the thing that’s stolen from us—that’s snatched right out of our hands—even if we are left completely changed people with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue to play out our lives this way, in silence. We draw ever nearer to our allotted span of time, bidding it farewell as it trails off behind. Repeating, often adroitly, the endless deeds of the everyday. Leaving behind a feeling of immeasurable emptiness.

Though she came back to Japan, Miu couldn’t get in touch with me for some reason. Instead, she kept her silence, clutching her memories close, seeking some nameless, remote place to swallow her up. That’s what I imagined. I didn’t feel like blaming Miu. Let alone hating her.

The image that came to mind at that moment was of the bronze statue of Miu’s father in the little mountain village in North Korea. I could picture the tiny town square, the lowslung houses, and the dust-covered bronze statue. The wind always blows hard there, twisting the trees into surreal shapes. I don’t know why, but that bronze statue and Miu, hands on the steering wheel of her Jaguar, melted into one in my mind. Maybe, in some distant place, everything is already, quietly, lost. Or at least there exists a silent place where everything can disappear, melding together in a single, overlapping figure. And as we live our lives we discover—drawing towards us the thin threads attached to each—what has been lost. I closed my eyes and tried to bring to mind as many beautiful lost things as I could. Drawing them closer, holding on to them. Knowing all the while that their lives are fleeting.

I dream. Sometimes I think that’s the only right thing to do. To dream, to live in the world of dreams—just as Sumire said. But it doesn’t last for ever. Wakefulness always comes to take me back.

I wake up at 3 a.m., turn on the light, sit up, and look at the phone beside my bed. I picture Sumire in a phone box, lighting up a cigarette and pushing the buttons for my number. Her hair’s a mess; she has on a man’s herringbone jacket many sizes too big for her and mismatched socks. She frowns, choking a bit on the smoke. It takes her a long time to push all the numbers correctly. Her head is crammed full of things she wants to tell me. She might talk until dawn, who knows?

About the difference, say, between symbols and signs. My phone looks as though it will ring any minute now. But it doesn’t ring. I lie down and stare at the silent phone. But one time it does ring. Right in front of me, it actually rings. Making the air of the real world tremble and shake. I grab the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Hey, I’m back,” said Sumire. Very casual. Very real. “It wasn’t easy, but somehow I managed it. Like a 50-word précis of Homer’s Odyssey.”

“That’s good,” I said. I still couldn’t believe it. Being able to hear her voice. The fact that this was happening.

“That’s good?” Sumire said, and I could almost hear the frown. “What the heck do you mean by that? I’ve gone through bloody hell, I’ll have you know. The obstacles I went through—millions of them, I’d never finish if I tried to explain them all—all this to get back, and that’s all you can say? I think I’m going to cry. If it isn’t good that I’m back, where would that leave me?

That’s good. I can’t believe it! Save that kind of heartwarming, witty remark for the kids in your class—when they finally work out how to multiply!”

“Where are you now?”

“Where am I? Where do you think I am? In our good old faithful telephone box. This crummy little square telephone box plastered inside with ads for phony loan companies and escort services. A mouldy-coloured half-moon’s hanging in the sky; the floor’s littered with cigarette butts. As far as the eye can see, nothing to warm the cockles of the heart. An interchangeable, totally semiotic telephone box. So, where is it? I’m not exactly sure. Everything’s just too semiotic—and you know me, right? I don’t know where I am half the time. I can’t give directions well. Taxi drivers are always yelling at me: Hey lady, where in the world you trying to get to? I’m not too far away, I think. Probably pretty close by.”

“I’ll come and get you.”

“I’d like that. I’ll find out where I am and call you back. I’m running out of change, anyway. Wait for a while, okay?”

“I really wanted to see you,” I said.

“And I really wanted to see you, too,” she said. “When I couldn’t see you any more, I realized that. It was as clear as if the planets all of a sudden lined up in a row for me. I really need you. You’re a part of me; I’m a part of you. You know, somewhere—I’m not at all sure where—I think I cut something’s throat. Sharpening my knife, my heart a stone. Symbolically, like making a gate in China. Do you understand what I’m saying?”