Read Online Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami - Free Book Online Page B

the summit, two children discovered they’d forgotten to pack their lunches in their backpacks. There weren’t any stores around, so I had to split my own nori-maki lunch the school had provided. Which left me with nothing to eat. Someone gave me some chocolate, but that was all I had the whole day. On top of which, one girl said she couldn’t walk anymore and I had to carry her piggyback all the way down the mountain. Two boys started to scuffle, half in fun, and one of them fell and banged his head on a rock. He got a slight concussion and a heavy nosebleed. Nothing critical, but his shirt was covered in blood, as if he’d been in a massacre. Like I said, total chaos.
    When I got home I was as exhausted as an old railroad tie. I took a bath, downed a cold drink, snuggled into bed too tired to think, turned off the light, and settled into a peaceful sleep. And then the phone rang, a call from Sumire. I looked at the clock by my bedside; I’d only slept for about an hour. But I didn’t grumble. I was too tired even to complain. Some days are like that.
    “Can I see you tomorrow afternoon?” she asked.
    My woman friend was coming to my place at 6:00 p.m. She was supposed to park her red Toyota Celica a little way down the road. “I’m free till four,” I said simply.
    S umire had on a sleeveless white blouse, a navy-blue miniskirt, and a tiny pair of sunglasses. Her only accessory was a small plastic hair clip. An altogether simple outfit. She wore almost no makeup, exposed to the world as is. Somehow, though, I didn’t recognize her at first. It’d been only three weeks since we last met, but the girl sitting across from me at the table looked like someone who belonged in an entirely different world from the Sumire I knew. To put it mildly, she was thoroughly beautiful. Something inside her was blossoming.
    I ordered a small glass of draft beer, and she asked for grape juice.
    “I hardly recognize you these days,” I said.
    “It’s that season,” she said disinterestedly, sipping at her drink with a straw.
    “What season?” I asked.
    “A delayed adolescence, I guess. When I get up in the morning and see my face in the mirror, it looks like someone else’s. If I’m not careful, I might end up left behind.”
    “So wouldn’t it be better to just let it go, then?” I said.
    “But if I lost myself, where could I go?”
    “If it’s for a couple of days, you can stay at my place. You’d always be welcome—the you who lost
you.
”
    Sumire laughed.
    “All kidding aside,” she said. “Where in the world could I be heading?”
    “I don’t know. Think of the bright side. You’ve quit smoking, you’re wearing nice clean clothes—even your socks match now—and you can speak Italian. You’ve learned how to judge wines, use a computer, and at least for now go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning. You must be heading somewhere.”
    “But I still can’t write a line.”
    “Everything has its ups and downs.”
    Sumire screwed up her lips. “Would you call what I’m going through a defection?”
    “Defection?” For a moment I couldn’t figure out what she meant.
    “Defection. Betraying your beliefs and convictions.”
    “You mean getting a job, dressing nicely, and giving up writing novels?”
    “Right.”
    I shook my head. “You’ve always written because you wanted to. If you don’t want to anymore, why should you? Do you think your quitting writing is going to cause a village to burn to the ground? A ship to sink? The tides to get messed up? Or set the revolution back by five years? Hardly. I don’t think anybody’s going to label that
defection.
”
    “So what should I call it?”
    I shook my head again. “The word
defection
’s too old-fashioned. Nobody uses it anymore. Go to some leftover commune, maybe, and people might still use the word. I don’t know the details, but if you don’t want to write anymore, that’s up to you.”
    “Commune? Do you mean the places