Sputnik Sweetheart

8

“I’ve known the wine producers around that village for ages, and I know their wines like I know the layout of my own house. What kind of wine the grapes on a certain slope in a certain field will produce. How that year’s weather affects the flavour, which producers are working hardest, whose son is trying his best to help his father. How much in loans certain producers have taken out, who’s bought a new Citroen. Those kinds of things. Wine is like breeding thoroughbreds—you have to know the lineage and the latest information. You can’t do business based just on what tastes good and what doesn’t.”

Miu stopped for a moment to catch her breath. She seemed unable to decide whether to go on or not. She continued.

“There are a couple of places in Europe I buy from, but that village in Burgundy is my main supplier. So I try to spend a fair amount of time there at least once a year, to renew old friendships and gather the latest news. I always go alone, but this time we were visiting Italy first, and I decided to take Sumire with me. It’s more convenient sometimes to have another person with you on trips like this, and besides, I’d had her study Italian. In the end I decided I would rather go alone and planned to make up some excuse to have her go back home before I set out for France. I’ve been used to travelling alone ever since I was young, and no matter how close you are to them it’s not easy to be with someone else day after day.

“Sumire was surprisingly capable and took care of lots of details for me. Buying tickets, making hotel reservations, negotiating prices, keeping expense records, searching out good local restaurants. Those kinds of things. Her Italian was much improved, and I liked her healthy curiosity, which helped me experience things I never would have if I’d been alone. I was surprised at how easy it is to be with someone else. I felt that way, I think, because of something special that brought us together.”

“I remember very well the first time we met and we talked about Sputniks. She was talking about Beatnik writers, and I mistook the word and said ‘Sputnik’. We laughed about it, and that broke the ice. Do you know what ‘Sputnik’ means in Russian? ‘Travelling companion’. I looked it up in a dictionary not long ago. Kind of a strange coincidence if you think about it. I wonder why the Russians gave their satellite that strange name. It’s just a poor little lump of metal, spinning around the Earth.”

Miu was silent for just a moment, then continued.

“Anyway, I ended up taking Sumire with me to Burgundy. While I was seeing old acquaintances and taking care of business, Sumire, whose French was nonexistent, borrowed the car and drove around the area. In one town she happened to meet a wealthy old Spanish lady, and they chatted in Spanish and got to be friends. The lady introduced Sumire to an Englishman who was staying in their hotel. He was more than 50, a writer of some sort, very refined and handsome. I’m positive he was gay. He had a secretary with him who seemed to be his boyfriend.

“They invited us for dinner. They were very nice people, and as we talked we realized we had some mutual acquaintances, and I felt like I’d found some kindred spirits.

“The Englishman told us he had a small cottage on an island in Greece and would be happy if we used it. He always used the cottage for a month in the summer, but this summer he had some work that kept him from going. Houses are best occupied, otherwise the caretakers will get lazy, he told us. So if it isn’t any bother, please feel free to use it. This cottage, in other words.”

Miu gazed around the room.

“When I was in college I visited Greece. It was one of those whirlwind tours where you leap from port to port, but still I fell in love with the country. That’s why it was such an enticing offer to have a free house on a Greek island to use for as long as we wanted. Sumire jumped at the chance, too. I offered to pay a fair price to rent the cottage, but the Englishman refused, saying he wasn’t in the rental business. We batted some ideas around for a while, and ended up agreeing that I would send a case of red wine to his home in London to thank him.

“Life on the island was like a dream. For the first time in I don’t know how long I could enjoy a real holiday, without any schedule to worry about. Communications are a bit backward here—you know about the awful phone service—and there aren’t any faxes or the Internet. Getting back to Tokyo later than originally planned would cause a bit of a problem for other people, but once I got here it didn’t seem to matter any more.

“Sumire and I got up early every morning, packed a bag with towels, water, sunscreen, and walked to the beach on the other side of the mountains. The shore is so beautiful it takes your breath away. The sand is pure white, and there are hardly any waves. It’s a little out of the way, though, and very few people go there, particularly in the morning. Everyone, men and women, swims nude. We did, too. It feels fantastic to swim in the pure blue sea in the morning, as bare as the day you were born. You feel like you’re in another world.

“When we tired of swimming, Sumire and I would lie on the beach and get a tan. At first we were a little embarrassed to be nude in front of each other, but once we got used to it, it was no big deal. The energy of the place was working on us, I suppose. We’d spread sunscreen on each other’s backs, loll in the sun, reading, dozing, just chatting. It made me feel truly free.

“We’d walk back home over the mountains, take showers and have a simple meal, then set off down the stairs to town. We’d have tea in a harbour cafe, read the English paper, buy some food in a shop, go home, then spend our time as we pleased until evening—reading out on the veranda or listening to music. Sometimes Sumire was in her room, writing apparently. I could hear her opening up her PowerBook and clattering away on the keys. In the evening we’d go out to the harbour to watch the ferryboat come in. We’d have a cool drink and watch the people getting off the ship.

“There we were, sitting quietly on the edge of the world, and no one could see us. That’s the way it felt—like Sumire and I were the only ones here. There was nothing else we had to think about. I didn’t want to move, didn’t want to go anywhere. I just wanted to stay this way for ever. I knew that was impossible—our life here was just a momentary illusion, and someday reality would yank us back to the world we came from. But until that time came I wanted to enjoy each day to the fullest, without worrying about anything. We loved our life here. Until four days ago.”

On their fourth morning there they went as usual to the beach, skinny-dipped, returned home, and left again for the harbour. The waiter at the cafe remembered them—the generous tips Miu always left didn’t hurt—and greeted them warmly. He made some polite comment about how beautiful they looked. Sumire went to the kiosk and bought a copy of the English newspaper published in Athens. That was their only link with the outside world. Sumire’s job was reading the paper. She’d check the exchange rate and translate and read aloud to Miu any major news item or interesting article she happened to come across.

The article Sumire picked to read aloud that particular day was a report of a 70-year-old lady who was eaten by her cats. It happened in a small suburb of Athens. The dead woman had lost her husband, a businessman, eleven years before and ever since had lived a quiet life in a two-room apartment with several cats as her only friends. One day the woman collapsed face down on her sofa from a heart attack and expired. It wasn’t known how much time had elapsed between her attack and her death. At any rate, the woman’s soul passed through all the set stages to bid farewell to its old companion, the body it had inhabited for 70 years. She didn’t have any relatives or friends who visited her regularly, and her body wasn’t discovered until a week later. The doors were shut, the windows shuttered, and the cats couldn’t get out after the death of their owner. There wasn’t any food in the apartment. There must have been something in the refrigerator, but cats don’t possess the necessary skill to open fridge doors. Starving, they devoured the flesh of their owner.

Taking an occasional sip from her coffee cup, Sumire translated the article in stages. Some bees buzzed around the table, licking the jam a previous patron had spilled. Miu gazed at the sea through her sunglasses, listening intently to Sumire.

“And then what happened?” Miu asked.

“That’s it,” said Sumire, folding the tabloid in half and laying it on the table. “That’s all the newspaper says.”

“What could have happened to the cats?”

“I don’t know…” Sumire said, pursing her lips to one side and giving it some thought. “Newspapers are all the same. They never tell you what you really want to know.”

The bees, as if sensing something, flew up in the air and with a ceremonious buzz circled for a while, then settled again on the table. They returned to their jam licking.

“And what was the fate of the cats, one wonders,” Sumire said, tugging at the collar of her oversize T-shirt and smoothing out the wrinkles. She had on a T-shirt and shorts and—Miu happened to know—no underwear underneath. “Cats that develop a taste for human flesh might turn into man-eating cats, so maybe they destroyed them. Or maybe the police said, ‘Hey, you guys have suffered enough,’ and they were acquitted.”

“If you were the mayor or chief of police in that town, what would you do?”

Sumire thought about it. “How about placing them in an institution and reforming them? Turn them into vegetarians.”

“Not a bad idea.” Miu laughed. She took off her sunglasses and turned to face Sumire. “That story reminds me of the first lecture I heard when I entered a Catholic junior high school. Did I ever tell you I went to a very strict Catholic girls’ school for six years? I attended an ordinary elementary school, but I went into that school in junior high. Right after the entrance ceremony a decrepit old nun took all of us new students into the auditorium and gave a talk on Catholic ethics. She was a French nun, but her Japanese was fluent. She talked about all kinds of things, but what I recall is the story of cats and the deserted island.”

“That’s sounds interesting,” Sumire said.

“You’re shipwrecked, washed up on a deserted island. Only you and a cat made it to the lifeboat. You drift for a while and end up on this island, just a rocky island with nothing you can eat. No water, either. In your lifeboat you have ten days’ worth of biscuits and water for one person, and that’s it. That’s how the story went.

“The nun looked all around the auditorium and she said this in a strong, clear voice. ‘Close your eyes and imagine this scene. You’re washed up on a deserted island with a cat. This is a solitary island in the middle of nowhere. It’s almost impossible that someone would rescue you within ten days. When your food and water run out, you may very well die. Well, what would you do? Since the cat is suffering as you are, should you divide your meagre food with it?’ The sister was silent again and looked at all our faces. ‘No. That would be a mistake,’ she continued. ‘I want you to understand that dividing your food with the cat would be wrong. The reason being that you are precious beings, chosen by God, and the cat is not. That’s why you should eat all the food yourself.’ The nun had this terribly serious look on her face.

“At first I thought it was some kind of joke. I was waiting for the punchline. But there wasn’t one. She turned her talk to the subject of human dignity and worth, and it all went over my head. I mean, really, what was the point of telling that kind of story to kids who’d just entered the school? I couldn’t figure it out—and I still can’t.”

Sumire thought it over. “Do you mean whether it would be okay in the end, to eat the cat?”

“Well, I don’t know. She didn’t take it that far.”

“Are you a Catholic?”

Miu shook her head. “That school just happened to be near my house, so I went. I liked their uniforms, too. I was the only non-Japanese citizen in the school.”

“Did you have any bad experiences?”

“Because I was Korean?”

“Yes.”

Again Miu shook her head. “The school was quite liberal. The rules were pretty strict, and some of the sisters were eccentrics, but the atmosphere was generally progressive, and no, I never experienced any prejudice. I made some good friends, and overall I’d say I enjoyed school. I’ve had a few unpleasant experiences, but that was after I went out into the real world. But that’s nothing unusual—it happens to most people.”

“I heard they eat cats in Korea. Is it true?”

“I’ve heard the same thing. But nobody I know does.”

It had been the hottest time of day, and the early afternoon town square was nearly deserted. Almost everyone in town was shut up in a cool house, taking a nap. Only curious foreigners ventured out at that time of day.

There was a statue of a hero in the square. He’d led a rebellion in mainland Greece and fought the Turks who controlled the island, but was captured and put to death by skewering. The Turks set up a sharpened stake in the square and lowered the pitiful hero onto it, naked. Ever so slowly, the stake went through his anus, and finally all the way to his mouth, taking him hours to die. The statue was supposedly erected on the spot where this happened. When it was erected, the valiant bronze statue must have been quite a sight, but over the intervening years, what with the sea wind, dust, and seagull droppings, you could barely make out the man’s features. Island folk hardly gave the shabby statue a passing glance, and the statue itself looked like it had turned its back on the world.

“Speaking of cats,” Sumire had blurted out, “I have a very strange memory of one. When I was in second grade we had a pretty little six-month-old tortoiseshell cat. I was on the veranda one evening, reading a book, when the cat started to run like crazy around the base of this large pine tree in the garden. Cats do that. There’s nothing there, but suddenly they hiss, arch their backs, jump, hair standing on end and tail up, in attack mode.

“The cat was so worked up it didn’t notice me watching it from the veranda. It was such a strange sight I laid down my book and watched the cat. It didn’t seem to tire of its solitary game. Actually, as time passed it got more determined. Like it was possessed.”

Sumire took a drink of water and lightly scratched her ear.

“The more I watched, the more frightened I became. The cat saw something that I couldn’t see, and whatever it was drove it into a frenzy. Finally the cat started racing around and around the tree trunk at a tremendous speed, like the tiger that changes into butter in that children’s story. Finally, after running forever, it leaped up the tree trunk. I could see its tiny face peeping out between the branches way up high. From the veranda I called out its name in a loud voice, but it didn’t hear me.

“Finally the sun set and the cold late-autumn wind began to blow. I sat on the veranda, waiting for the cat to come down. It was a friendly cat, and I thought that if I sat there for a while, it would come down. But it didn’t. I couldn’t even hear it miaowing. It got darker and darker. I got scared and told my family. ‘Don’t worry,’ they said, ‘just leave it alone and it’ll come down before long.’ But the cat never came back.”

“What do you mean—never came back?” asked Miu.

“It just disappeared. Like smoke. Everybody told me the cat must have come down from the tree in the night and gone off somewhere. Cats get worked up and climb tall trees, then get frightened when they realize how high they are, and won’t come down. Happens all the time. If the cat was still there, they said, it’d miaow for all it’s worth to let you know. But I didn’t believe that. I thought the cat must be clinging to a branch, scared to death, unable to cry out. When I came back from school, I sat on the veranda, looked at the pine tree, and every once in a while called out the cat’s name. No reply. After a week, I gave up. I loved that little cat, and it made me so sad. Every time I happened to look at the pine tree I could picture that pitiful little cat, stone-cold dead, still clinging to a branch. The cat never going anywhere, starving to death and shrivelling up there.”

Sumire looked at Miu.

“I never had a cat again. I still like cats, though I decided at the time that that poor little cat who climbed the tree and never returned would be my first and last cat. I couldn’t forget that little cat and start loving another.”

“That’s what we talked about that afternoon at the cafe,” said Miu. “I thought they were just a lot of harmless memories, but now everything seems significant. Maybe it’s just my imagination.”

Miu turned and looked out of the window. The breeze blowing in from the sea rustled the pleated curtains. With her gazing out at the darkness, the room seemed to acquire an even deeper silence.

“Do you mind if I ask a question? I’m sorry if it seems off the subject, but it’s been bothering me,” I said. “You said Sumire disappeared, vanished ‘like smoke’, as you put it. Four days ago. And you went to the police. Right?”

Miu nodded.

“Why did you ask me to come instead of getting in touch with Sumire’s family?”

“I didn’t have any clues about what happened to her. And without any solid evidence, I didn’t know if I should upset her parents. I agonized over it for some time and decided to wait and see.”

I tried picturing Sumire’s handsome father taking the ferry to the island. Would her stepmother, understandably hurt by the turn of events, accompany him? That would be one fine mess. As far as I was concerned, though, things were already a mess. How could a foreigner possibly vanish on such a small island for four days?

“But why did you call me?”

Miu brought her bare legs together again, held the hem of her skirt between her fingers, and tugged it down. “You were the only one I could count on.”

“But you’d never met me.”

“Sumire trusted you more than anyone else. She said you think deeply about things, no matter what the subject.”

“Definitely a minority opinion, I’m afraid.”

Miu narrowed her eyes and smiled, those tiny wrinkles appearing around her eyes.

I stood up and walked in front of her, taking her empty glass. I went into the kitchen, poured some Courvoisier into the glass, then went back to the living room. She thanked me and took the brandy. Time passed, the curtain silently fluttering. The breeze had the smell of a different place.

“Do you really, really want to know the truth?” Miu asked me. She sounded drained, as if she’d come to a difficult decision.

I looked up and gazed into her face. “One thing I can say with absolute certainty,” I said, “is that if I didn’t want to know the truth, I wouldn’t be here.”

Miu squinted in the direction of the curtains. And finally spoke, in a quiet voice. “It happened that night, after we’d talked about cats at the café.”