Sputnik Sweetheart

16

I hadn’t heard a word from Miu since the day we’d said goodbye at the harbour. This struck me as odd, since she promised to get in touch regardless of whether there was any news about Sumire. I couldn’t believe she’d forgotten me; she wasn’t the type to make promises she didn’t intend to keep. Something must have happened to keep her from contacting me. I considered calling her, but I didn’t even know her real name, or the name of her company or where it was. As far as Miu was concerned, Sumire hadn’t left behind any solid leads. Sumire’s phone still had the same message on it, but it was soon disconnected. I thought about calling her family. I didn’t know the number, though it wouldn’t have been hard to find her father’s dental clinic in the Yokohama Yellow Pages. But somehow I couldn’t take that step. Instead, I went to the library and looked through the August newspapers. There was a tiny article about her, about a 22-year-old Japanese girl travelling in Greece who disappeared.

The local authorities are investigating, searching for her. But so far no clues. That was it. Nothing I didn’t already know. Quite a few people travelling abroad disappeared, it seemed. And she was merely one of them.

I gave up trying to follow the news. Whatever the reasons for her disappearance, however the investigation was proceeding, one thing was certain: if Sumire were to come back, she’d get in touch. That was all that mattered.

September came and went, autumn was over before I knew it, and winter set in. 7 November was Sumire’s 23rd birthday, and 9 December was my 25th. The New Year came and the school year ended. Carrot didn’t cause any more problems and went into fifth grade, into a new class. After that day I never really talked to him about the shoplifting. Every time I saw him, I realized it wasn’t necessary.

Since he had a new teacher now, there were fewer times I’d come across my former girlfriend. Everything was over and done with. Sometimes, though, a nostalgic memory of the warmth of her skin would come to me, and I’d be on the verge of picking up the phone. What brought me to a halt was the feeling of that supermarket storeroom key in my hand. Of that summer afternoon. And of Carrot’s little hand in mine.

Every time I met Carrot at school, I couldn’t help thinking that he was one strange child. I had no inkling of what thoughts were brewing behind that thin, calm face. But something was definitely going on under that placid exterior. And if push came to shove, he had the wherewithal to take action. I could sense something deep about him. I believed that telling him the feelings I held inside was the right thing to do. For him, and for me. Probably more for my sake. It’s a little strange to say this, but he understood me then and accepted me. And even forgave me. To some extent, at least.

What kind of days—the seemingly endless days of youth—would children like Carrot go through as they grew into adulthood? It wouldn’t be easy for them. Hard times would outnumber the easy. From my own experience, I could predict the shape their pain would take. Would he fall in love with somebody? And would that other person love him back? Not that my thinking about it mattered. Once he graduated from elementary school, he’d be gone, and I’d see him no more. And I had my own problems to think about.

I went to a record shop, bought a copy of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf singing Mozart’s lieder, and listened to it again and again. I loved the beautiful stillness of the songs. If I closed my eyes, the music always took me back to that night on the Greek island.

Aside from some very vivid memories, including the one of the overwhelming desire I felt the day I helped her move, all Sumire left behind were several long letters and the floppy disk. I read the letters and the two documents so many times I nearly had them memorized. Every time I read them, I felt like Sumire and I were together again, our hearts one. This warmed my heart more than anything else could. Like you’re on a train at night travelling across some vast plain, and you catch a glimpse of a tiny light in the window of a farmhouse. In an instant it’s sucked back into the darkness behind and vanishes. But if you close your eyes, that point of light stays with you, just barely, for a few moments.

I wake up in the middle of the night and get out of bed (I’m not going to be able to sleep anyway), lie down on my sofa, and relive memories of that small Greek island as I listen to Schwarzkopf. I recollect each and every event, quietly turning the pages of my memory. The lovely deserted beach, the outdoor cafe at the harbour. The waiter’s sweat-stained shirt. Miu’s graceful profile and the sparkle of the Mediterranean from the veranda. The poor hero standing in the town square who’d been impaled. And the Greek music I heard from the mountaintop that night. I vividly relive the magical moonlight, the wondrous echo of the music. The sensation of estrangement I experienced when I was awakened by the music. That formless, midnight pain, like my body, too, was silently, cruelly, being impaled

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?”

“I think so.”

“Then come and get me.”

Suddenly the phone cuts off. Still clutching the receiver, I stare at it for a long time. Like the phone itself is some vital message, its very shape and colour containing hidden meaning. Reconsidering, I hang up. I sit up in bed and wait for the phone to ring again. I lean back against the wall, my focus fixed on a single point in the space before me, and I breathe slowly, soundlessly. Making sure of the joints bridging one moment of time and the next. The phone doesn’t ring. An unconditional silence hangs in the air. But I’m in no hurry. There’s no need to rush. I’m ready. I can go anywhere.

Right?

Right you are!

I get up out of bed. I pull back the old, faded curtain and open the window. I stick my head out and look up at the sky. Sure enough, a mouldy-coloured half-moon hangs in the sky. Good. We’re both looking at the same moon, in the same world. We’re connected to reality by the same line. All I have to do is quietly draw it towards me.

I spread my fingers apart and stare at the palms of both hands, looking for bloodstains. There aren’t any. No scent of blood, no stiffness. The blood must have already, in its own silent way, seeped inside.