The place where Miu and Sumire were staying was a small cottage with a veranda facing the sea. White walls and a redtiled roof, the door painted a deep green. A riot of red bougainvilleas overgrew the low stone wall that surrounded the house. She opened the unlocked door and invited me in. The cottage was pleasantly cool. There was a living room and a medium-sized dining room and kitchen. The walls were white stucco, with a couple of abstract paintings. In the living room there was a sofa and bookshelf, and a compact stereo. Two bedrooms and a small but clean-looking tiled bathroom. None of the furniture was very appealing, just cosy and lived
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in.
Miu took off her hat and laid her bag down on the kitchen worktop. “Would you like something to drink?” she asked. “Or would you like a shower first?”
“Think I’ll take a shower first,” I said.
I washed my hair and shaved. Blow-dried my hair and changed into a fresh T-shirt and shorts. Made me feel halfway back to normal. Below the mirror in the bathroom there were two toothbrushes, one blue, the other red. I wondered which was Sumire’s.
I went back into the living room and found Miu in an easy chair, brandy glass in hand. She invited me to join her, but what I really wanted was a cold beer. I got an Amstel beer from the fridge and poured it into a tall glass. Sunk deep in her chair, Miu was quiet for a long time. It didn’t look like she was trying to find the right words she wanted to say, rather that she was immersed in some personal memory, one without beginning and without end.
“How long have you been here?” I ventured.
“Today is the eighth day,” Miu said after thinking about it.
“And Sumire disappeared from here?”
“That’s right. Like I said before, just like smoke.”
“When did this happen?”
“At night, four days ago,” she said, looking around the room as if seeking a clue. “I don’t know where to begin.”
“Sumire told me in her letters about going to Paris from Milan,” I said. “Then about taking the train to Burgundy. You stayed at your friend’s large estate house in a Burgundy village.”
“Well, then, I’ll pick up the story from there,” she said.
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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
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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
“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.”
