Sputnik Sweetheart

10

When I woke up, Miu was setting the table for breakfast out on the veranda. It was 8.30, and a brand-new sun was flooding the world with sunlight. Miu and I sat down on the veranda and had breakfast, gazing at the bright sea as we ate. We had toast and eggs and coffee. Two white birds glided down the slope towards the coast. A radio was playing nearby, an announcer’s voice, speaking quickly, reading the news in Greek.

A strange jet-lag numbness filled my head. I couldn’t separate the boundary between what was real and what only seemed real. Here I was on a small Greek island, sharing a meal with a beautiful older woman I’d met only the day before. This woman loved Sumire, but couldn’t feel any sexual desire for her. Sumire loved this woman and desired her. I loved Sumire and felt sexual desire for her. Sumire liked me, but didn’t love me, and didn’t feel any desire for me. I felt sexual desire for a woman who will remain anonymous. But I didn’t love her. It was all so complicated, like something out of an existential play. Everything hit a dead end there, no alternatives left. And Sumire had exited stage right.

Miu refilled my empty coffee cup. I thanked her.

“You like Sumire, don’t you?” Miu asked me. “As a woman, I mean.”

I gave a slight nod as I buttered my toast. The butter was cold and hard, and it took some time to spread it on the bread. I looked up and added, “Of course that’s not something you necessarily can choose. It just happens.”

We continued eating breakfast in silence. The news ended, and the radio started to play Greek music. The wind swelled up and shook the bougainvilleas. If you looked closely, you could make out whitecaps appearing.

“I’ve given it a great deal of thought, and I think I should go to Athens right away,” Miu said, peeling some fruit. “I’d probably get nowhere over the phone, so it’d be better if I went straight to the embassy and talked with them face to face. Maybe someone from the embassy will be willing to come back with me, or I might wait for Sumire’s parents to arrive in Athens and come back with them. At any rate, I’d like you to stay here as long as you can. The police might get in touch, and there’s always the possibility that Sumire will come back. Would you do that for me?”

Of course, I replied.

“I’m going to go to the police station again to check on the investigation, then charter a boat to take me to Rhodes. A return trip to Athens takes time, so most likely I’ll get a hotel room and stay a couple of days.”

I nodded.

Miu finished peeling the orange and wiped it carefully with a napkin. “Have you ever met Sumire’s parents?”

I never have, I said.

Miu gave a sigh like the wind at the edge of the world. “I wonder how I’m going to explain it to them.”

I could understand her confusion. How can you explain the inexplicable?

Miu and I walked down to the harbour. She had a small bag with a change of clothes, wore leather high-heeled shoes, and carried a Mila Sch[umlaut]on shoulder bag. We stopped by the police station. We told them I was a relative of Miu’s who happened to be travelling nearby. They still didn’t have a single clue. “But it’s all right,” they said cheerily. “Not to worry. Look around you. This is a peaceful island. We have some crime, of course—lovers’ quarrels, drunks, political fights. We’re dealing with people, after all, and everywhere you go it’s the same. But those are domestic squabbles. In the last 15 years there’s never once been a foreigner who’s been the victim of a crime on this island.”

That might very well be true. But when it came to explaining Sumire’s disappearance, they had nothing to say.

“There’s a large limestone cave on the north shore of the island,” the police ventured. “If she wandered in there, maybe she couldn’t find her way out. It’s like a maze inside. But it’s very, very far away. A girl like that couldn’t have walked that far.”

Could she have drowned? I asked.

The policemen shook their heads. There’s no strong current around here, they said. And the weather this past week has been mild, the sea calm. Lots of fishermen go out to fish every day, and if the girl had drowned, one of them would have come across her body.

“What about wells?” I asked. “Couldn’t she have fallen in a deep well somewhere while she was out for a walk?”

The chief of police shook his head. “There aren’t any wells on the island. We have a lot of natural springs so there’s no need to dig any. Besides, the bedrock is hard and digging a well would be a major undertaking.”

After we left the police station I told Miu I wanted to walk to the beach she and Sumire had frequented, if possible in the morning. She bought a simple map of the island at a kiosk and showed me the road; it takes 45 minutes one way, she cautioned, so be sure to wear some sturdy shoes. She went to the harbour and, in a mixture of French and English, quickly concluded negotiations with the pilot of a small taxi boat to take her to Rhodes.

“If only we had a happy ending,” Miu said as she left. But her eyes told another story. She knew that things didn’t work out that simply. And so did I. The boat’s engine started up, and she held down her hat with her left hand and waved to me with her right. When her boat disappeared offshore, I felt like my insides were missing a couple of parts. I wandered around the harbour for a while and bought some dark sunglasses at a souvenir shop. Then I climbed the steep stairs back to the cottage.

As the sun rose higher it grew fiercely hot. I put a short-sleeve cotton shirt on over my trunks, put on my sunglasses and jogging shoes, and set off over the steep mountain road to the beach. I soon regretted not bringing a hat, but decided to forge on. I soon got thirsty walking uphill. I stopped and took a drink and rubbed the sunscreen Miu had lent me over my face and arms. The path was white with dust, which swirled into the air whenever the wind blew. Occasionally I’d pass villagers leading donkeys. They’d greet me in a loud voice: “Kali mera!”

I’d say the same thing back to them. I supposed it was the thing to do.

The mountainside was covered with short, twisted trees. Mountain goats and sheep made their way over the craggy rock face, crabby looks on their faces. The bells around their necks made a matter-of-fact little tinkling sound. The people herding the flocks were either children or old people. As I passed they’d glance at me out of the corner of their eyes and then half raise their hand in some sort of sign. I raised my hand the same way in greeting. Sumire couldn’t have come this way by herself. There was no place to hide, and someone would have seen her.

The beach was deserted. I took off my shirt and trunks and swam in the nude. The water was clear and felt wonderful. You could see all the way to the stones on the bottom. A yacht was anchored at the mouth of the inlet, sail stowed, and the tall mast swayed back and forth like a giant metronome. Nobody was on deck. Each time the tide went out, countless little stones were left behind, clattering listlessly. After swimming, I went back to the beach and lay down, still naked, on my towel and gazed up at the high, pure blue sky. Seabirds circled above the inlet searching for fish. The sky was utterly cloudless. I dozed there for perhaps half an hour, during which time no one visited the beach. Before long a strange hush fell over me. This beach was a little too quiet for a person to visit alone, a little too beautiful. It made me imagine a certain way of dying. I dressed and walked over the mountain path, back towards the cottage. The heat was even more intense than before. Mechanically moving one foot after the other, I tried to imagine what Sumire and Miu must have talked about when the two of them walked this road together.

Sumire might very well have been pondering the sexual desire she felt. The same way I thought about my own desire when I was with her. It wasn’t hard for me to understand how she felt. Sumire pictured Miu naked beside her and wanted nothing so much as to hold her tight. An expectation was there, mixed with so many other emotions—excitement, resignation, hesitation, confusion, fear—that would well up, then wither on the vine. You’re optimistic one moment, only to be wracked the next by the surety that it will all fall to pieces. And in the end it does.

I walked to the top of the mountain, took a break and a drink of water, then headed downhill. Just as the roof of the cottage came into view, I remembered what Miu had said about Sumire feverishly writing something in her room after they came to the island. What could she have been writing? Miu hadn’t said anything more, and I didn’t push it. There might—just might—be a clue in what Sumire wrote. I could have kicked myself for not having thought of it before.

When I got back to the cottage I went to Sumire’s room, turned on her PowerBook, and opened the hard drive. Nothing looked promising. There was a list of expenses for their European trip, addresses, a schedule. All business items related to Miu’s work. No personal files. I opened the RECENT DOCUMENTS menu—nothing. She probably didn’t want anybody to read it and had erased it all. Which meant that she had saved her personal files on a floppy disk somewhere. It was unlikely she’d taken the disk with her when she disappeared; for one thing, her pyjamas didn’t have any pockets.

I rummaged around in the desk drawers. There were a couple of disks, but they were copies of what was on the hard drive or other work-related files. Nothing looked promising. I sat at the desk and thought. If I were Sumire, where would I put it? The room was small; there weren’t many places to hide something. Sumire was very particular about deciding who could read what she wrote.

Of course—the red suitcase. This was the only thing in the room that could be locked.

Her new suitcase seemed empty, it was so light; I shook it, but it didn’t make any sound. The four-digit padlock was locked, however. I tried several combinations of numbers I knew Sumire was likely to use—her birthday, her address, telephone number, post code—but none of them worked. Not surprising, since a number that someone could easily guess wasn’t much use as a combination number. It had to be something she could remember, but that wasn’t based on something personal. I thought about it for a long time, and then it hit me. I tried the area code for Kunitachi—my area code, in other words. 0-4-2-5.

The lock clicked open.

A small black cloth bag was stuck inside the inner side pocket of the suitcase. I unzipped it and found a little green diary and a floppy disk inside. I opened the diary first. It was written in her usual handwriting. Nothing leaped out at me. It was just information about where they went. Who they saw. Names of hotels. The price of petrol. Dinner menus. Brands of wine and what they tasted like. Basically just a list. A lot of the pages were blank. Keeping a diary wasn’t one of Sumire’s strong points, apparently.

The disk was untitled. The label just had the date on it, in Sumire’s distinctive handwriting. August 19**. I slipped the disk inside the PowerBook and opened it. The menu showed two documents, neither of which had a title. They were just Document 1 and Document 2.

Before opening them, I slowly looked around the room. Sumire’s coat was hanging in the wardrobe. I saw her goggles, her Italian dictionary, her passport. Inside the desk were her ballpoint pen and propelling pencil. In the window above the desk the gentle, craggy slope was visible. A black cat was walking on top of the wall of the house next door. The bare little box room was enveloped in the late afternoon silence. I closed my eyes and could still hear the waves on the deserted beach that morning. I opened my eyes again, and this time listened closely to the real world. I couldn’t hear a thing.

I set my pointer on Document 1 and double-clicked the icon.