Haruki Murakami - Sputnik Sweetheart

H a r u k i M u r a k a m i

Philip Gabriel

V

Published by Vintage 2002

8 10 9 7

Copyright Haruki Murakami 1999

English translation Haruki Murakami 2001

Haruki Murakami has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

First published by Kodansha Ltd in 1999 with the title Sputoniku no koibito First published in Great Britain in 2001 by The Harvill Press Vintage Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA Random House Australia (Pty) Limited 20 Alfred Street, Milsons Point, Sydney New South Wales 2061, Australia

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The quote from Pushkin on page 62 is from Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse, translated by Babette Deutsch (Mineola, NY: Dover publications, 1999) A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 9780099448471 (from Jan 2007)

ISBN 0099448475

Papers used by Random House are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bookmarque Ltd, Croydon, Surrey

Scanners note: the book has been proofed and formatted as a Word doc to match UK

paperback edition as closely as possible, including the use of similar fonts, headings, andparagraph spacing. Jan. 2010.

Sputnik Sweetheart

Sputnik

On 4 October 1957, the Soviet Union launched the worlds first man-made satellite, Sputnik I, from the Baikanor Space Centre in the Republic of Kazakhstan. Sputnik was 58 cm in diameter, weighed 83.6 kilograms, and orbited the Earth in 96 minutes and 12 seconds.

On 3 November of the same year, Sputnik II was successfully launched, with the dog Laika on board. Laika became the first living being to leave the Earths atmosphere, but the satellite was never recovered, and Laika ended up sacrificed for the sake of biological research in space.

from The Complete Chronicle of World History

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 plainsflattening everything in its path, tossing things up in the air, ripping them to shreds, crushing them to bits. The tornados intensity doesnt 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, SumireViolet in Japanesewas 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 itand found her fellow students (which would include me, Im 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, dont pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world? Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life and itd 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 shed go on nonstop, but if she was with someone she didnt get along withmost people in the world, in other wordsshe barely opened her mouth. She smoked too much, and you could count on her to lose her ticket every time she took the train. Shed get so engrossed in her thoughts at times shed forget to eat, and she was as thin as one of those war orphans in an old Italian filmlike a stick with eyes. Id love to show you a photo of her, but I dont have any. She hated having her photograph takenno 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.

Im getting the order of events mixed up. The woman Sumire fell in love with was named Miu. At least thats what everyone called her. I dont know her real name, a fact that caused problems later on, but again Im getting ahead of myself. Miu was Korean by nationality, but she didnt 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 Kerouacs 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, shed 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:

No man should go through life without onceexperiencing healthy, even bored solitude in thewilderness, finding himself depending solely onhimself and thereby learning his true and hiddenstrength.

Dont 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 thats it. Youre done for the day. The rest of the time you can read, write, whatever you want. At night scruffy bears hang around your cabin. Thats 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 youll have to come down off that mountain. As usual, my practical, humdrum opinions didnt faze her.