Haruki Murakami - Sputnik Sweetheart

“You mean, about your falling in love with someone other than me?”

“Right,” she said. “About my falling passionately in love with somebody other than you.”

I clamped the phone between my head and shoulder and stretched. “I’m free in the evening.”

“I’ll be over at five,” Sumire said. And then added, as if an afterthought: “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For being nice enough to answer my question in the middle of the night.”

I gave a vague response, hung up, and turned out the light. It was still pitch black out. Just before I fell asleep, I thought about her final thank you and whether I’d ever heard those words from her before. Maybe I had, once, but I couldn’t recall.

Sumire arrived at my apartment a little before five. I didn’t recognize her. She’d taken on a complete change of style. Her hair was short in a stylish cut, her fringe still showing traces of the scissors’ snips. She wore a light cardigan over a shortsleeve, navy-blue dress and a pair of black enamel, mediumhigh heels. She even had stockings on. Stockings? Women’s clothes weren’t exactly my field of expertise, but it was clear that everything she wore was pretty expensive. Dressed like this, she looked polished and lovely. It was quite becoming, to tell the truth. Though I preferred the old, outrageous Sumire. To each his own.

“Not bad,” I said, giving her a complete once-over. “But I wonder what good old Jack Kerouac would say.”

Sumire smiled, an ever-so-slightly more sophisticated smile than usual. “Why don’t we go for a walk?”

We walked side by side down University Boulevard towards the station and stopped by our favourite coffee shop. Sumire ordered her usual slice of cake along with her coffee. It was a clear Sunday evening near the end of April. The flower shops were full of crocuses and tulips. A gentle breeze blew, softly rustling the hems of young girls’ skirts and wafting over the leisurely fragrance of young trees.

I folded my hands behind my head and watched Sumire as she slowly yet eagerly devoured her cake. From the small speakers on the ceiling of the coffee shop Astrud Gilberto sang an old bossa nova song. “Take me to Aruanda,” she sang. I closed my eyes, and the clatter of the cups and saucers sounded like the roar of a far-off sea. Aruanda—what’s it like there? I wondered.

“Still sleepy?”

“Not any more,” I answered, opening my eyes.

“You feel okay?”

“I’m fine. As fine as the Moldau River in spring.”

Sumire gazed for a while at the empty plate that had held her slice of cake. She looked at me.

“Don’t you think it’s strange that I’m wearing these clothes?”

“I guess.”

“I didn’t buy them. I don’t have that kind of money. There’s a story behind them.”

“Mind if I try to guess the story?”

“Go ahead,” she said.

“There you were in your usual crummy Jack Kerouac outfit, cigarette dangling from your lips, washing your hands in some public toilet, when this five-foot one-inch woman rushed in, all out of breath, dressed to the nines, and said, ‘Please, you’ve got to help me! No time to explain, but I’m being chased by some awful people. Can I exchange clothes with you? If we swap clothes I can give them the slip. Thank God we’re the same size.’ Just like some Hong Kong action flick.”

Sumire laughed. “And the other woman happened to wear a size-six-and-a-half shoe and a size-seven dress. Just by coincidence.”

“And right then and there you changed clothes, down to your Mickey Mouse knickers.”

“It’s my socks that are Mickey Mouse, not my knickers.”

“Whatever,” I said.

“Hmm,” Sumire mused. “Actually, you’re not too far off.”

“How far?”

She leaned across the table. “It’s a long story. Would you like to hear it?”

“Since you’ve come all the way over here to tell me, I have a distinct feeling it doesn’t matter if I do or not. Anyway, go right ahead. Add a prelude, if you’d like. And a ‘Dance of the Blessed Spirits’. I don’t mind.”

She began to talk. About her cousin’s wedding reception, and about the lunch she had had with Miu in Aoyama. And it was a long tale.

The day after the wedding, a Monday, was rainy. The rain began to fall just after midnight and continued without a stop till dawn. A soft, gentle rain that darkly dampened the spring earth and quietly stirred up the nameless creatures living in it.

The thought of meeting Miu again thrilled Sumire, and she found it hard to concentrate. She felt as though she were standing alone on the summit of a hill, the wind swirling around her. She settled down at her desk as usual, lit a cigarette, and switched on her word processor, but stare as she might at the screen, not a single sentence came to her. For Sumire that was next to impossible. She gave up, turned off the word processor, lay down in her tiny little room, and, an unlit cigarette dangling from her lips, gave herself up to some aimless musings.

If just the thought of seeing Miu has me this worked up, she thought, imagine how painful it would be if we’d said goodbye at the party and never saw each other again. Am I just yearning to be like her—a beautiful, refined older woman? No, she decided, that can’t be it. When I’m beside her, I always want to touch her. That’s a bit different from a yearning.

Sumire sighed, gazed up at the ceiling for a while, and lit her cigarette. It’s pretty strange if you think about it, she thought. Here I am in love for the first time in my life, aged 22. And the other person just happens to be a woman.

The restaurant Miu had made a reservation at was a ten-minute walk from the Omote Sando subway station. The kind of restaurant that’s hard for first-timers to find; certainly not a place where you just casually drop in for a meal. Even the restaurant’s name was hard to remember unless you heard it a couple of times. At the entrance Sumire told them Miu’s name and was escorted to a small, private dining room on the first floor. Miu was already there, sipping an iced Perrier water, deep in conversation with the waiter about the menu. Over a navy-blue polo shirt Miu had on a cotton sweater of the same colour, and she wore a thin, plain silver hairpin. Her trousers were white slim-fit jeans. On a corner of the table rested a pair of bright blue sunglasses, and on the chair next to her was a squash racquet and a Missoni sports bag. It looked like she was on her way home after a couple of afternoon games of squash. Her cheeks were still flushed a faint pink. Sumire imagined her in the shower at the gym, scrubbing her body with an exotic smelling bar of soap.

As Sumire entered the room, dressed in her usual herringbone jacket and khaki trousers, her hair all messy like some orphan, Miu looked up from the menu and gave her a dazzling smile. “You told me the other day that you can eat anything, right? I hope you don’t mind if I go ahead and order for us.”

Of course not, Sumire replied.

Miu ordered the same thing for both of them. The main course was a light grilled fish with a touch of green sauce with mushrooms. The slices of fish were cooked to perfection, browned in an almost artistic way that you knew was just right. Pumpkin gnocchi and a delicate endive salad rounded off the meal. For dessert they had the crème brûlée, which only Sumire ate. Miu didn’t touch it. Finally, they had espresso. Sumire observed that Miu took great care over what she ate. Her neck was as slender as the stalk of some plant, her body without an ounce of detectable fat. She didn’t seem to have to diet. Even so, it would appear she was super-strict about food. Like some Spartan holed up in a mountain fortress.