Haruki Murakami - Sputnik Sweetheart

I was nervous the first time we made love, which made things awkward. I apologized to her.

“Aren’t we polite!” she said. “No need to apologize for every little thing.”

After her shower she threw on a dressing gown, grabbed two cold beers from the fridge, and handed one to me.

“Are you a good driver?” she asked.

“I just got my licence, so I wouldn’t say so. Just average.”

She smiled. “Same with me. I think I’m pretty good, but my friends don’t agree. Which makes me average, too, I suppose. You must know a few people who think they’re great drivers, right?”

“Yeah, I guess I do.”

“And there must be some who aren’t very good.”

I nodded. She took a quiet sip of beer and gave it some thought.

“To a certain extent those kinds of things are inborn. Talent, you could call it. Some people are nimble; others are all thumbs… Some people are quite attentive, and others aren’t. Right?”

Again I nodded.

“Okay, consider this. Say you’re going to go on a long journey with someone by car. And the two of you will take turns driving. Which type of person would you choose? One who’s a good driver, but inattentive, or an attentive person who’s not such a good driver?”

“Probably the second one,” I said.

“Me, too,” she replied. “What we have here is very similar. Good or bad, nimble or clumsy—those aren’t important. What’s important is being attentive. Staying calm, being alert to things around you.”

“Alert?” I asked.

She just smiled and didn’t say anything.

A while later we made love a second time, and this time it was a smooth, congenial ride. Being alert —I think I was starting to get it. For the first time I saw how a woman reacts in the throes of passion.

The next morning after we ate breakfast together, we went our separate ways. She continued her trip, and I continued mine. As she left she told me she was getting married in two months to a man from work. “He’s a very nice guy,” she said cheerily. “We’ve been going out for five years, and we’re finally going to make it official. Which means I probably won’t be making any trips by myself any more. This is it.”

I was still young, certain that this kind of thrilling event happened all the time. Later in life I realized how wrong I was.

I told Sumire this story a long time ago. I can’t remember why it came up. It might have been when we were talking about sexual desire.

“So what’s the point of your story?” she asked me.

“The part about being alert,” I replied. “Not prejudging things, listening to what’s going on, keeping your ears, heart, and mind open.”

“Hmm,” Sumire replied. She seemed to be mulling over my paltry sexual affair, perhaps wondering whether she could incorporate it into one of her novels.

“Anyway, you certainly have a lot of experiences, don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t say a lot, ” I gently protested. “Things just happen. ”

She chewed lightly at her nail, lost in thought. “But how are you supposed to become attentive? The critical moment arrives, and you say okay, I’m going to be alert and listen carefully, but you can’t just be good at those things by snapping your fingers, right? Can you be more specific? Give me a for instance?”

“Well, first you have to relax. By… say, counting.”

“What else?”

“Think about a cucumber in a fridge on a summer afternoon. Just an example.”

“Wait a second,” she said with a significant pause. “Do you mean to tell me that when you’re having sex with a girl you imagine cucumbers in a fridge on a summer afternoon?”

“Not all the time,” I said.

“But sometimes.”

“Maybe.”

Sumire frowned and shook her head a couple of times.

“You’re a lot weirder than you look.”

“Everybody’s got something weird about them,” I said.

“In the restaurant, as Miu held my hand and gazed deep into my eyes, I thought about cucumbers,” Sumire said to me.

“Gotta stay calm, gotta listen carefully, I told myself.”

“Cucumbers’?”

“Don’t you remember what you told me—about cucumbers in a fridge on a summer afternoon?”

“Oh, yeah, I guess I did,” I recalled. “So did it help?”

“A little,” she said.

“Glad to hear it,” I replied.

Sumire steered the conversation back on track. “Miu’s apartment is just a short walk from the restaurant. Not a very big place, but really lovely. A sunny veranda, house-plants, an Italian leather sofa, Bose speakers, a set of prints, a Jaguar in the garage. She lives there alone. The place she and her husband have is somewhere in Setagaya. She goes back there at the weekends. Most of the time she stays in her apartment in Aoyama. What do you think she showed me there?”

“Mark Bolan’s favourite snakeskin sandals in a glass case,” I ventured. “One of the invaluable legacies without which the history of rock and roll cannot be told. Not a single scale missing, his autograph on the arch. The fans go nuts.”

Sumire frowned and sighed. “If they invent a car that runs on stupid jokes, you could go far.”

“Put it down to an impoverished intellect,” I said humbly.

“Okay, all joking aside, I want you to give it some serious thought. What do you think she showed me there? If you get it right, I’ll pay the bill.”

I cleared my throat. “She showed you the gorgeous clothes you have on. And told you to wear them to work.”

“You win,” she said. “She has this rich friend with clothes to spare who’s just about the same size as me. Isn’t life strange?

There are people who have so many leftover clothes they can’t stuff them all in their wardrobe. And then there are people like me, whose socks never match. Anyway, I don’t mind. She went over to her friend’s house and came back with an armful of these leftovers. They’re just a bit out of fashion if you look carefully but most people wouldn’t notice.”

I wouldn’t know no matter how closely I looked, I told her. Sumire smiled contentedly. “The clothes fit me like a glove. The dresses, blouses, skirts—everything. I’ll have to take in the waist a bit, but put a belt on and you’d never know the difference. My shoe size, fortunately, is almost the same as Miu’s, so she let me have some pairs she doesn’t need. High heels, low heels, summer sandals. All with Italian names on them. Handbags, too. And a little make-up.”

“A regular Jane Eyre,” I said.

All of which explains how Sumire started working three days a week at Miu’s office. Wearing a suit jacket and dress, high heels, and a touch of make-up, taking the morning commuter train from Kichijoji to Harajuku. Somehow I just couldn’t picture it.

Apart from her office at her company in Akasaka, Miu had her own small office at Jingumae. There she had her desk as well as her assistant’s (Sumire’s, in other words), a filing cabinet, a fax, a phone, and a PowerBook. That’s all. It was just one room in an apartment building and came with an afterthought-type of tiny kitchen and bathroom. There was a CD player, minispeakers, and a dozen classical CDs. The room was on the second floor, and out of the east-facing window you could see a small park. The ground floor of the building was taken up by a showroom selling Northern European furniture. The whole building was set back from the main thoroughfare, which kept traffic noise at a minimum.

As soon as she arrived at the office, Sumire would water the plants and get the coffee-maker going. She’d check phone messages and e-mails on the PowerBook. She’d print out any messages and put them on Miu’s desk. Most of them were from foreign agents, in either English or French. She’d open any ordinary post that came and throw away whatever was clearly junk mail. A few calls would come in every day, some from abroad. Sumire would take down the person’s name, number, and message and relay these to Miu on her cellphone. Miu usually showed up around one or two in the afternoon. She’d stay an hour or so, give Sumire various instructions, drink coffee, make a few calls. Letters that required a reply she’d dictate to Sumire, who’d type them up on the word processor and either post or fax them. These were usually quite brief business letters. Sumire also made reservations for Miu at the hairdresser, restaurants, and the squash court. Business out of the way, Miu and Sumire would chat for a while, and then Miu would leave.