Sputnik Sweetheart

1

In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life. An intense love, a veritable tornado sweeping across the plains—flattening everything in its path, tossing things up in the air, ripping them to shreds, crushing them to bits. The tornado’s intensity doesn’t abate for a second as it blasts across the ocean, laying waste to Angkor Wat, incinerating an Indian jungle, tigers and everything, transforming itself into a Persian desert sandstorm, burying an exotic fortress city under a sea of sand. In short, a love of truly monumental proportions. The person she fell in love with happened to be 17 years older than Sumire. And was married. And, I should add, was a woman. This is where it all began, and where it all ended. Almost.

At the time, Sumire—“Violet” in Japanese—was struggling to become a writer. No matter how many choices life might bring her way, it was novelist or nothing. Her resolve was a regular Rock of Gibraltar. Nothing could come between her and her faith in literature.

After she graduated from a public high school in Kanagawa Prefecture, she entered the liberal arts department of a cosy little private college in Tokyo. She found the college totally out of touch, a lukewarm, dispirited place, and she loathed it—and found her fellow students (which would include me, I’m afraid) hopelessly dull, second-rate specimens. Unsurprisingly, then, just before her junior year, she simply upped and left. Staying there any longer, she concluded, was a waste of time. I think it was the right move, but if I can be allowed a mediocre generalization, don’t pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world? Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life and it’d lose even its imperfection.

Sumire was a hopeless romantic, a bit set in her ways—innocent of the ways of the world, to put a nice spin on it. Start her talking and she’d go on nonstop, but if she was with someone she didn’t get along with—most people in the world, in other words—she barely opened her mouth. She smoked too much, and you could count on her to lose her ticket every time she took the train. She’d get so engrossed in her thoughts at times she’d forget to eat, and she was as thin as one of those war orphans in an old Italian film—like a stick with eyes. I’d love to show you a photo of her, but I don’t have any. She hated having her photograph taken—no desire to leave behind for posterity a Portrait of the Artist as a Young (Wo)Man. If there were a photograph of Sumire taken at that time, I know it would provide a valuable record of how special certain people can be.

I’m getting the order of events mixed up. The woman Sumire fell in love with was named Miu. At least that’s what everyone called her. I don’t know her real name, a fact that caused problems later on, but again I’m getting ahead of myself. Miu was Korean by nationality, but she didn’t speak a word of Korean until she decided to study it when she was in her midtwenties. She was born and raised in Japan and studied at a music academy in France, so as well as Japanese she was fluent in both French and English. She always dressed well, in a refined way, with expensive yet modest accessories, and she drove a twelve-cylinder, navy-blue Jaguar.

The first time Sumire met Miu, she talked about Jack Kerouac’s novels. Sumire was absolutely nuts about Kerouac. She always had her Literary Idol of the Month, and at that point it happened to be the out-of-fashion Kerouac. She carried a dogcared copy of On the Road or Lonesome Traveler stuck in her coat pocket, thumbing through them every chance she got. Whenever she came across lines she liked, she’d mark them in pencil and commit them to memory as if they were Holy Writ. Her favourite lines were from the fire lookout section of Lonesome Traveler. Kerouac spent three lonely months in a cabin on top of a high mountain, working as a fire lookout. Sumire especially liked this part:

“Don’t you just love it?” she said. “Every day you stand on top of a mountain, make a 360° sweep, checking to see if there are any fires. And that’s it. You’re done for the day. The rest of the time you can read, write, whatever you want. At night scruffy bears hang around your cabin. That’s the life!

Compared to that, studying literature in college is like biting down on the bitter end of a cucumber.”

“Okay,” I said, “but someday you’ll have to come down off that mountain.” As usual, my practical, humdrum opinions didn’t faze her.

Sumire wanted to be like a character in a Kerouac novel—wild, cool, dissolute. She’d stand around, hands shoved deep in her coat pockets, her hair an uncombed mess, staring vacantly at the sky through her black plastic-framed Dizzy Gillespie glasses, which she wore despite her 20/20 vision. She was invariably decked out in an oversized herringbone coat from a second-hand shop and a pair of rough work boots. If she’d been able to grow a beard, I’m sure she would have.

Sumire wasn’t exactly a beauty. Her cheeks were sunken, her mouth a little too wide. Her nose was on the small side and upturned. She had an expressive face and a great sense of humour, though she hardly ever laughed out loud. She was short, and even in a good mood she talked like she was half a step away from picking a fight. I never knew her to use lipstick or eyebrow pencil, and I have my doubts that she even knew bras came in different sizes. Still, Sumire had something special about her, something that drew people to her. Defining that special something isn’t easy, but when you gazed into her eyes, you could always find it, reflected deep down inside.

I might as well just come right out and say it. I was in love with Sumire. I was attracted to her from the first time we talked, and soon there was no turning back. For a long time she was the only thing I could think about. I tried to tell her how I felt, but somehow the feelings and the right words couldn’t connect. Maybe it was for the best. If I had been able to tell her my feelings, she would have just laughed at me.

While Sumire and I were friends, I went out with two or three other girls. It’s not that I don’t remember the exact number. Two, three—it depends on how you count. Add to this girls I slept with once or twice, and the list would be a little longer. Anyhow, while I made love to these other girls, I thought about Sumire. Or at least thoughts of her grazed a corner of my mind. I imagined I was holding her. Kind of a caddish thing to do, but I couldn’t help myself.

Let me get back to how Sumire and Miu met.

Miu had heard of Jack Kerouac and had a vague sense that he was a novelist of some kind. What kind of novelist, though, she couldn’t recall. “Kerouac… hmm… Wasn’t he a Sputnik?”

Sumire couldn’t work out what she meant. Knife and fork poised in mid-air, she gave it some thought. “Sputnik? You mean the first satellite the Soviets sent up, in the fifties? Jack Kerouac was an American novelist. I guess they do overlap in terms of generation…”

“Isn’t that what they called the writers back then?” Miu asked. She traced a circle on the table with her fingertip, as if rummaging through some special jar full of memories.

“Sputnik…?”

“The name of a literary movement. You know—how they classify writers in various schools of writing. Like Shiga Naoya was in the White Birch School.”

Finally it dawned on Sumire. “Beatnik!”

Miu lightly dabbed at the corner of her mouth with a napkin.

“Beatnik—Sputnik. I never can remember those kinds of terms. It’s like the Kenmun Restoration or the Treaty of Rapallo. Ancient history.”

A gentle silence descended on them, suggestive of the flow of time.

“The Treaty of Rapallo?” Sumire asked.

Miu smiled. A nostalgic, intimate smile, like a treasured old possession pulled out of the back of a drawer. Her eyes narrowed in an utterly charming way. She reached out and, with her long, slim fingers, gently ruffled Sumire’s already tousled hair. It was such a sudden yet natural gesture that Sumire could only return the smile.

Ever since that day, Sumire’s private name for Miu was Sputnik Sweetheart. She loved the sound of it. It made her think of Laika, the dog. The man-made satellite streaking soundlessly across the blackness of outer space. The dark, lustrous eyes of the dog gazing out of the tiny window. In the infinite loneliness of space, what could Laika possibly be looking at?

This Sputnik conversation took place at a wedding reception for Sumire’s cousin at a posh hotel in Akasaka. Sumire wasn’t particularly close to her cousin; in fact they didn’t get along at all. She’d just as soon be tortured as attend one of these receptions, but she couldn’t back out of this one. She and Miu were seated next to each other at one of the tables. Miu didn’t go into all the details, but it seemed she’d taught Sumire’s cousin the piano—or something along those lines—when she was taking the entrance exams for the university music department. It wasn’t a long or very close relationship, clearly, but Miu felt obliged to attend.

In the instant Miu touched her hair, Sumire fell in love, as if she were crossing a field when bang! a bolt of lightning zapped her right in the head. Something like an artistic revelation. Which is why, at that point, it didn’t matter to Sumire that the person she fell in love with happened to be a woman. I don’t think Sumire ever had what you’d call a lover. In high school she had a few boyfriends, guys she’d go to the cinema with, go swimming with. I couldn’t picture any of those relations ever getting very deep. Sumire was too focused on becoming a novelist to really fall for anybody. If she did experience sex—or something close to it—in high school, I’m sure it would have been less out of sexual desire or love than literary curiosity.

“To be perfectly frank, sexual desire has me baffled,” she once told me, making a sober face. This was just before she left college, I believe; she’d downed five banana daiquiris and was pretty drunk. “You know—how it all comes about. What’s your take on it?”

“Sexual desire’s not something you understand,” I said, giving my usual middle-of-the-road opinion. “It’s just there.”

She scrutinized me for a while, as if I were some machine running on a previously unheard-of power source. Losing interest, she stared up at the ceiling, and the conversation petered out. No use talking to him about that, she must have decided.

Sumire was born in Chigasaki. Her home was near the seashore, and she grew up with the dry sound of sand-filled wind blowing against her windows. Her father ran a dental clinic in Yokohama. He was remarkably handsome, his wellformed nose reminding you of Gregory Peck in Spellbound. Sumire didn’t inherit that handsome nose, nor, according to her, did her brother. She found it amazing that the genes that had produced that nose had disappeared. If they really were buried for ever at the bottom of the gene pool, the world was a sadder place. That’s how wonderful this nose was.

Sumire’s father was an almost mythic figure to the women in the Yokohama area who needed dental care. In the examination room he always wore a surgical cap and large mask, so the only thing the patient could see was a pair of eyes and ears. Even so, it was obvious how attractive he was. His beautiful, manly nose swelled up suggestively from under the mask, making his female patients blush. In an instant—regardless of whether their dental plan covered the costs—they fell in love.

Sumire’s mother passed away from a congenital heart defect when she was just 31. Sumire hadn’t quite turned three. The only memory she had of her mother was a vague one of the scent of her skin. Just a couple of photographs of her remained—a posed photo taken at her wedding, and a snapshot taken immediately after Sumire was born. Sumire used to pull out the photo album and gaze at the pictures. Sumire’s mother was—to put it mildly—a completely forgettable person. A short, humdrum hairstyle, clothes that made you wonder what she could have been thinking, an ill-atease smile. If she’d taken one step back, she would have melted right into the wall. Sumire was determined to brand her mother’s face on her memory. Then someday she might meet her in her dreams. They’d shake hands, have a nice chat. But things weren’t that easy. Try as she might to remember her mother’s face, it soon faded. Forget about dreams—if Sumire had passed her mother on the street, in broad daylight, she wouldn’t have known her.

Sumire’s father hardly ever spoke of his late wife. He wasn’t a talkative man to begin with, and in all aspects of life—as though it were a kind of mouth infection he wanted to avoid catching—he never talked about his feelings. Sumire had no memory of ever asking her father about her dead mother. Except for once, when she was still very small, for some reason she asked him, “What was my mother like?” She remembered this conversation very clearly.

Her father looked away and thought for a moment before replying. “She was good at remembering, things,” he said.

“And she had nice handwriting.”

A strange way to describe someone. Sumire was waiting expectantly, the snow-white first page of her notebook open, for nourishing words that could have been a source of warmth and comfort—a pillar, an axis, to help prop up her uncertain life here on this third planet from the sun. Her father should have said something that his young daughter could have held on to. But Surnire’s handsome father wasn’t going to speak those words, the very words she needed most.

Sumire’s father remarried when she was six, and two years later her younger brother was born. Her new mother wasn’t pretty either. On top of which she wasn’t so good at remembering things, and her handwriting wasn’t any great shakes. She was a kind and fair person, though. That was a lucky thing for little Sumire, her brand-new stepdaughter. No, lucky isn’t the right word. After all, her father had chosen the woman. He might not have been the ideal father, but when it came to choosing a mate, he knew what he was doing.

Her stepmother’s love for her never wavered during her long, difficult years of adolescence, and when Sumire declared she was going to quit college and write novels, her stepmother—though she had her own opinions on the matter—respected Sumire’s desire. She’d always been pleased that Sumire loved to read so much, and she encouraged her literary pursuits.

Her stepmother eventually won over her father, and they decided that, until Sumire turned 28, they would provide her with a small stipend. If she wasn’t able to make a living by writing then, she’d be on her own. If her stepmother hadn’t spoken up in her defence, Sumire might very well have been thrown out—penniless, without the necessary social skills—into the wilderness of a somewhat humourless reality. The Earth, after all, doesn’t creak and groan its way around the sun just so human beings can have a good time and a bit of a laugh.

Sumire met her Sputnik Sweetheart a little more than two years after she’d dropped out of college.

She was living in a one-room apartment in Kichijoji where she made do with the minimum amount of furniture and the maximum number of books. She’d get up at noon, and take a walk around Inogashira Park in the afternoon, with all the enthusiasm of a pilgrim making her way through sacred hills. On sunny days she’d sit on a park bench, chewing on bread, puffing one cigarette after another, reading. On rainy or cold days she’d go into an old-fashioned coffee house where classical music played at full volume, sink down into a wornout sofa, and read her books, a serious look on her face as she listened to Schubert’s symphonies, Bach’s cantatas. In the evening she’d have one beer and buy some ready-to-eat food at the supermarket for dinner.

By 11 p.m. she’d settle down at her desk. There’d always be a thermos of hot coffee, a coffee mug (one I gave her on her birthday, with a picture of Snafkin on it), a pack of Marlboro and a glass ashtray. Of course she had a word processor as well. Each key with its very own letter.

A deep silence ensued. Her mind was as clear as the winter night sky, the Big Dipper and North Star in place, twinkling brightly. She had so many things she had to write, so many stories to tell. If she could only find the right outlet, heated thoughts and ideas would gush out like lava, congealing into a steady stream of inventive works the likes of which the world had never seen. People’s eyes would pop wide open at the sudden debut of this Promising Young Writer with a Rare Talent. A photo of her, smiling coolly, would appear in the arts section of the newspaper, and editors would beat a path to her door. But it never happened that way. Sumire wrote some works that had a beginning. And some that had an end. But never one that had both a beginning and an end.

Not that she suffered from writer’s block—far from it. She wrote endlessly, everything that came into her head. The problem was that she wrote too much. You’d think that all she’d have to do was cut out the extra parts and she’d be fine, but things weren’t that easy. She could never decide on the big picture—what was necessary and what wasn’t. The following day when she re-read what she’d printed out, every line looked absolutely essential. Or else she’d Tippex out the whole thing. Sometimes, in despair, she’d rip up her entire manuscript and consign it to the bin. If this had been a winter night and the room had had a fireplace, there would have been a certain warmth to it—imagine a scene from La Bohème—but Sumire’s apartment not only lacked a fireplace, it didn’t even have a phone. Not to mention a decent mirror.

On weekends, Sumire would come over to my apartment, drafts of her novels spilling out of her arms—the lucky manuscripts that had escaped the massacre. Still, they made quite a pile. Sumire would show her manuscripts to only one person in the whole world. Me.

In college I’d been two years ahead of her, and our subjects were different, so there wasn’t much chance we’d meet. We met by pure chance. It was a Monday in May, the day after a string of holidays, and I was at the bus stop in front of the main gate of the college, standing there reading a Paul Nizan novel I’d found in a second-hand bookshop. A short girl beside me leaned over, took a look at the book, and asked me, Why Nizan, of all people? She sounded like she was trying to pick a fight. Like she wanted to kick something and send it flying, but lacking a suitable target had attacked my choice of reading matter.

Sumire and I were very alike. Devouring books came as naturally to us as breathing. Every spare moment we’d settle down in some quiet corner, endlessly turning page after page. Japanese novels, foreign novels, new works, classics, avantgarde to bestseller—as long as there was something intellectually stimulating in a book, we’d read it. We’d hang out in libraries, spend whole days browsing in Kanda, the second-hand bookshop Mecca in Tokyo. I’d never come across anyone else who read so avidly—so deeply, so widely, as Sumire, and I’m sure she felt the same.

I graduated around the time Sumire dropped out of college, and after that she’d hang out at my place two or three times a month. Occasionally I’d go over to her apartment, but you could barely squeeze two people in there, and most of the time she’d end up at mine. We’d talk about the novels we’d read and exchange books. I cooked a lot of dinners. I didn’t mind cooking, and Sumire was the kind of person who’d rather go hungry than cook herself. She’d bring me presents from her part-time jobs to thank me. Once she had a job in a warehouse in a drug company and brought me six dozen condoms. They’re probably still at the back of a drawer somewhere.

The novels—or fragments of novels, really—Sumire wrote weren’t as terrible as she thought. True, at times her style resembled a patchwork quilt sewn by a group of stubborn old ladies, each with her own tastes and complaints, working in grim silence. Add to this her sometimes manic-depressive personality, and things occasionally got out of control. As if this weren’t enough, Sumire was dead set on creating a massive nineteenth-century-style Total Novel, a kind of portmanteau packed with every possible phenomenon in order to capture the soul and human destiny.

Having said that, Sumire’s writing had a remarkable freshness about it, her attempt to honestly portray what was important to her. On the plus side she didn’t try to imitate anyone else’s style, and she didn’t attempt to distil everything into some precious, clever little pieces. That’s what I liked most about her writing. It wouldn’t have been right to pare down the direct power in her writing just so it could take on some pleasant, cosy form. There was no need to rush things. She still had plenty of time for detours. As the saying goes, “What’s nurtured slowly grows well.”

“My head is like some ridiculous barn packed full of stuff I want to write about,” she said. “Images, scenes, snatches of words… in my mind they’re all glowing, all alive. Write! they shout at me. A great new story is about to be born I can feel it. It’ll transport me to some brand-new place. Problem is, once I sit at my desk and put them all down on paper, I realize something vital is missing. It doesn’t crystallize—no crystals, just pebbles. And I’m not transported anywhere.”

With a frown, Sumire picked up her 250th stone and tossed it into the pond.

“Maybe I’m lacking something. Something you absolutely must have to be a novelist.”

A deep silence ensued. It seemed she was seeking my run-ofthe-mill opinion. After a while I started to speak. “A long time ago in China there were cities with high walls around them, with huge, magnificent gates. The gates weren’t just doors for letting people in or out, they had greater significance. People believed the city’s soul resided in the gates. Or at least that it should reside there. It’s like in Europe in the Middle Ages when people felt a city’s heart lay in its cathedral and central square. Which is why even today in China there are lots of wonderful gates still standing. Do you know how the Chinese built these gates?”

“I have no idea,” Sumire answered.

“People would take carts out to old battlefields and gather the bleached bones that were buried there or lay scattered about. China’s a pretty ancient country—lots of old battlegrounds—so they never had to search far. At the entrance to the city they’d construct a huge gate and seal the bones up inside. They hoped that by commemorating the dead soldiers in this way they would continue to guard their town. There’s more. When the gate was finished they’d bring several dogs over to it, slit their throats, and sprinkle their blood on the gate. Only by mixing fresh blood with the dried-out bones would the ancient souls of the dead magically revive. At least that was the idea.”

Sumire waited in silence for me to go on.

“Writing novels is much the same. You gather up bones and make your gate, but no matter how wonderful the gate might be, that alone doesn’t make it a living, breathing novel. A story is not something of this world. A real story requires a kind of magical baptism to link the world on this side with the world on the other side.”

“So what you’re saying is that I go out on my own and find my own dog?”

I nodded.

“And shed fresh blood?”

Sumire bit her lip and thought about this. She tossed another hapless stone into the pond. “I really don’t want to kill an animal if I can help it.”

“It’s a metaphor,” I said. “You don’t have to actually kill anything.”

We were sitting as usual side by side at Inogashira Park, on her favourite bench. The pond spread out before us. A windless day. Leaves lay where they had fallen, pasted on the surface of the water. I could smell a bonfire somewhere far away. The air was filled with the scent of the end of autumn, and far-off sounds were painfully clear.

“What you need is time and experience,” I said.

“Time and experience,” she mused, and gazed up at the sky.

“There’s not much you can do about time—it just keeps on passing. But experience? Don’t tell me that. I’m not proud of it, but I don’t have any sexual desire. And what sort of experience can a writer have if she doesn’t feel passion? It’d be like a chef without an appetite.”

“I don’t know where your sexual desire has gone,” I said.

“Maybe it’s just hiding somewhere. Or gone on a trip and forgotten to come home. But falling in love is always a pretty crazy thing. It might appear out of the blue and just grab you. Who knows—maybe even tomorrow.”

Sumire turned her gaze from the sky to my face. “Like a tornado?”

“You could say that.”

She thought about it. “Have you ever actually seen a tornado?”

“No,” I replied. Thankfully, Tokyo wasn’t exactly Tornado Alley.

About a half a year later, just as I had predicted, suddenly, preposterously, a tornado-like love seized Sumire. With a woman 17 years older. Her very own Sputnik Sweetheart.

As Sumire and Miu sat there together at the table at the wedding reception, they did what everybody else does in the world in such situations, namely, introduce themselves. Sumire hated her own name and tried to conceal it whenever she could. But when somebody asks you your name, the only polite thing to do is to go ahead and give it.

According to her father, her mother had chosen the name Sumire. She loved the Mozart song of the same name and had decided long before that if she had a daughter that would be her name. On the record shelf in their living room was a record of Mozart’s songs, doubtless the one her mother had listened to and, when she was a child, Sumire would carefully lay this heavy LP on the turntable and listen to the song over and over. Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was the soloist, Waiter Gieseking on piano. Sumire didn’t understand the lyrics, but from the graceful motif she felt sure the song was a paean to the beautiful violets blooming in a field. Sumire loved that image. In junior high, though, she came across a Japanese translation of the song in her school library and was shocked. The lyrics told of a callous shepherd’s daughter trampling down a hapless little violet in a field. The girl didn’t even notice she’d flattened the flower. It was based on a Goethe poem, and Sumire found nothing redeeming about it, no lesson to be learned.

“How could my mother give me the name of such an awful song?” said Sumire, scowling.

Miu arranged the corners of the napkin on her lap, smiled neutrally, and looked at Sumire. Miu’s eyes were quite dark. Many colours mixed together, but clear and unclouded.

“Do you think the song was beautiful?”

“Yes, the song itself is pretty.”

“If the music is lovely, I think that should be enough. After all, not everything in this world can be beautiful, right? Your mother must have loved that song so much the lyrics didn’t bother her. And besides, if you keep making that kind of face you’re going to get some permanent wrinkles.”

Sumire allowed her scowl to relax.

“Maybe you’re right. I just felt so let down. I mean, the only tangible sort of thing my mother left me was that name. Other than myself, of course.”

“Well, I think Sumire is a lovely name. I like it very much,” said Miu, and tilted her head slightly as if to view things from a new angle. “By the way, is your father here at the reception?”

Sumire looked around. The reception hall was large, but her father was tall, and she easily spotted him. He was sitting two tables away, his face turned sideways, talking with some short, elderly man in a morning coat. His smile was so trusting and warm it would melt a glacier. Under the light of the chandeliers, his handsome nose rose up softly, like a rococo cameo, and even Sumire, who was used to seeing him, was moved by its beauty. Her father truly belonged at this kind of formal gathering. His mere presence lent the place a flamboyant atmosphere. Like cut flowers in a large vase or a jet-black stretch limousine.

When she spied Sumire’s father, Miu was speechless. Sumire could hear the intake of breath. Like the sound of a velvet curtain being drawn aside on a peaceful morning to let in the sunlight to wake someone very special to you. Maybe I should have brought a pair of opera glasses, Sumire mused. But she was used to the dramatic reaction her father’s looks brought out in people—especially middle-aged women. What is beauty? What value does it have? Sumire always found it strange. But no one ever answered her. There was just that same immovable effect.

“What’s it like to have such a handsome father?” Miu asked.

“Just out of curiosity.”

Sumire sighed—people could be so predictable. “I can’t say I like it. Everybody thinks the same thing: What a handsome man. A real standout. But his daughter, well—she isn’t much to look at, is she? That must be what they mean by atavism, they think.”

Miu turned towards Sumire, pulled her chin in ever so slightly, and gazed at her face, as if she were admiring a painting in an art gallery.

“If that’s how you’ve always felt up till now, you’ve been mistaken,” she said. “You’re lovely. Every bit as much as your father.” She reached out and, quite unaffectedly, lightly touched Sumire’s hand that, lay on the table. “You don’t realize how very attractive you are.”

Sumire’s face grew hot. Her heart galloped as loudly as a crazed horse on a wooden bridge.

After this Sumire and Miu were absorbed in their own private conversation. The reception was a lively one, with the usual assortment of after-dinner speeches (including, most certainly, Sumire’s father), and the dinner wasn’t half bad. But not a speck of this remained in Sumire’s memory. Was the main course meat? Or fish? Did she use a knife and fork and mind her manners? Or eat with her hands and lick the plate?

Sumire had no idea.

The two of them talked about music. Sumire was a big fan of classical music and ever since she was small liked to paw through her father’s record collection. She and Miu shared similar tastes, it turned out. They both loved piano music and were convinced that Beethoven’s Sonata No. 32 was the absolute pinnacle in the history of music. And that Wilhelm Backhaus’s unparalleled performance of the sonata for Decca set the interpretive standard. What a delightful, vibrant, and joyous thing it was!

Vladimir Horowitz’s mono recordings of Chopin, especially the scherzos, are thrilling, aren’t they? Friedrich Gulda’s performances of Debussy’s preludes are witty and lovely. Gieseking’s Grieg is sweet from start to finish. Sviatoslav Richter’s Prokofiev is worth listening to over and over—his interpretation exactly captures the mercurial shifts of mood. And Wanda Landowska’s Mozart sonatas—so filled with warmth and tenderness it’s hard to understand why they haven’t received more acclaim.

“What do you do?” asked Miu, once their discussion of music had come to an end.

I dropped out of college, Sumire explained, and I’m doing some part-time jobs while I work on my novels. What kind of novels? Miu asked. It’s hard to explain, replied Sumire. Well, said Miu, then what type of novels do you like to read? If I list them all we’ll be here for ever, said Sumire.

Recently I’ve been reading Jack Kerouac. And that’s where the Sputnik part of their conversation came in.

Other than some light fiction she read to pass the time, Miu hardly ever touched novels. “I never can get it out of my mind that’s it’s all made up,” she explained, “so I just can’t feel any empathy for the characters. I’ve always been that way.” That’s why her reading was limited to books that treated reality as reality. Books, for the most part, that helped her in her work. What kind of work do you do? asked Sumire.

“Mostly it has to do with foreign countries,” said Miu.

“Thirteen years ago I took over my father’s trading company, since I was the oldest child. I’d been studying to be a pianist, but my father passed away from cancer, my mother wasn’t strong physically and besides couldn’t speak Japanese very well. My brother was still in high school, so we decided, for the time being, that I’d take care of the company. A number of relatives depended on the company for their livelihood, so I couldn’t very well just let the company go to pot.”

She punctuated all this with a sigh.

“My father’s company originally imported dried goods and medicinal herbs from Korea, but now it deals with a wide variety of things. Even computer parts. I’m still officially listed as the head of the company, but my husband and younger brother have taken over so I don’t have to go to the office very often. Instead I’ve got my own private business.”

“Doing what?”

“Importing wine, mainly. Occasionally I arrange concerts, too. I travel to Europe quite a bit, since this type of business depends on personal connections. Which is why I’m able, all by myself, to compete with some top firms. But all that networking takes a lot of time and energy. That’s only to be expected, I suppose…” She looked up, as if she had just remembered something. “By the way, do you speak English?”

“Speaking English isn’t my strong suit, but I’m okay, I guess. I love to read English, though.”

“Do you know how to use a computer?”

“Not really, but I’ve been using a word processor, and I’m sure I could pick it up.”

“How about driving?”

Sumire shook her head. The year she started college she tried reversing her father’s Volvo estate into the garage and smashed the door on a pillar. Since then she’d barely driven.

“All right—can you explain, in 200 words or less, the difference between a sign and a symbol?”

Sumire lifted the napkin from her lap, lightly dabbed at her mouth, and put it back. What was the woman driving at? “A sign and a symbol?”

“No special significance. It’s just an example.”

Again Sumire shook her head. “I have no idea.”

Miu smiled. “If you don’t mind, I’d like you to tell me what sort of practical skills you have. What you’re especially good at. Other than reading a lot of novels and listening to music.”

Sumire quietly laid her knife and fork on her plate, stared at the anonymous space hanging over the table, and pondered the question.

“Instead of things I’m good at, it might be faster to list the things I can’t do. I can’t cook or clean the house. My room’s a mess, and I’m always losing things. I love music, but I can’t sing a note. I’m clumsy and can barely sew a stitch. My sense of direction is the pits, and I can’t tell left from right half the time. When I get angry, I tend to break things. Plates and pencils, alarm clocks. Later on I regret it, but at the time I can’t help myself. I have no money in the bank. I’m bashful for no reason, and I have hardly any friends to speak of.”

Sumire took a quick breath and forged ahead.

“However, I can touch-type really fast. I’m not that athletic, but other than the mumps, I’ve never been sick a day in my life. I’m always punctual, never late for an appointment. I can eat just about anything. I never watch TV. And other than a bit of silly boasting, I hardly ever make excuses. Once a month or so my shoulders get so stiff I can’t sleep, but the rest of the time I sleep like a log. My periods are light. I don’t have a single cavity. And my Spanish is okay.”

Miu looked up. “You speak Spanish?”

When Sumire was in high school, she spent a month in the home of her uncle, a businessman who’d been stationed in Mexico City. Making the most of the opportunity, she’d studied Spanish intensively. She had taken Spanish in college, too.

Miu grasped the stem of her wineglass between two fingers and lightly turned it, as if turning a screw on a machine. “What would you think about working at my place for a while?”

“Working?” Unsure what expression would best fit this situation, Sumire made do with her usual dour look. “I’ve never had a real job in my life, and I’m not even sure how to answer a phone the right way. I try to avoid taking the train before 10 a.m. and, as I’m sure you’ve noticed from talking to me, I don’t speak politely.”

“None of that matters,” said Miu simply. “By the way, are you free tomorrow, around noon?”

Sumire nodded reflexively. She didn’t even have to think about it. Free time, after all, was her main asset.

“Well then, why don’t we have lunch together? I’ll reserve a quiet table at a restaurant nearby,” Miu said. She held out the fresh glass of red wine a waiter had poured for her, studied it carefully, inhaled the aroma, then quietly took the first sip. The whole series of movements had the sort of natural elegance of a short cadenza a pianist has refined over the years.

“We’ll talk over the details then. Today I’d rather just enjoy myself. You know, I’m not sure where it’s from, but this Bordeaux isn’t half bad.”

Sumire relaxed her dour look and asked Miu straight out:

“But you just met me, and you hardly know a thing about me.”

“That’s true. Maybe I don’t,” Miu admitted.

“So why do you think I might be of help to you?”

Miu swirled the wine in her glass. “I always judge people by their faces,” she said. “Meaning that I like your face, the way you look.”

Sumire felt the air around her suddenly grow thin. Her nipples tightened under her dress. Mechanically she reached for a glass of water and gulped it down. A hawk-faced waiter quickly sidled in behind her and filled her empty glass with ice water. In Sumire’s confused mind, the clatter of the ice cubes sounded just like the groans of a robber hiding out in a cave.

I must be in love with this woman, she realized with a start. No mistake about it. Ice is cold; roses are red. I’m in love. And this love is about to carry me off somewhere. The current’s too overpowering; I don’t have any choice. It may very well be a special place, some place I’ve never seen before. Danger may be lurking there, something that may end up wounding me deeply, fatally. I might end up losing everything. But there’s no turning back. I can only go with the flow. Even if it means I’ll be burned up, gone for ever.

Now, after the fact, I know her hunch turned out to be correct. One hundred and twenty per cent on the money.