Sputnik Sweetheart полностью

I stood up from the grass and continued to climb uphill. I’d come this far and might as well reach the top. Had there really been music there? I had to see for myself, even if only the faintest clues remained. In five minutes I reached the summit. Towards the south the hill sloped down to the sea, the harbour, and the sleeping town. A scattering of streetlights lit the coast road. The other side of the mountain was wrapped in darkness, not a single light visible. I gazed fixedly into the dark, and finally a line of hills beyond floated into sight in the moonlight. Beyond them lay an even deeper darkness. And here around me, no indication whatsoever that a lively festival had taken place only a short while before.

Though the echo of it remained deep inside my head, now I wasn’t even sure I’d heard music. As time passed, I became less and less certain. Maybe it had all been an illusion, my ears picking up signals from a different time and place. It made sense—the idea that people would get together on a mountaintop at 1 a.m. to play music was pretty preposterous. In the sky above the summit, the coarse-looking moon loomed awfully near. A hard ball of stone, its skin eaten away by the merciless passage of time. Ominous shadows on its surface were blind cancer cells stretching out feelers towards the warmth of life. The moonlight warped every sound, washed away all meaning, threw every mind into chaos. It made Miu see a second self. It took Sumire’s cat away somewhere. It made Sumire disappear. And it brought me here, in the midst of music that—most likely—never existed. Before me lay a bottomless darkness; behind me, a world of

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pale light. I stood there on the top of a mountain in a foreign land, bathed in moonlight. Maybe this had all been meticulously planned, from the very beginning.

*

I returned to the cottage and downed a glass of Miu’s brandy. I tried to get to sleep, but I couldn’t. Not a wink. Until the eastern sky grew light, I was held in the grip of the moon, and gravity, and something astir in the world.

I pictured cats, starving to death in a closed-up apartment. Soft, small carnivores. I—the real me—was dead, and they were alive, devouring my flesh, chewing on my heart, sucking my blood. If I listened very carefully, somewhere far, far away I could hear the cats lapping up my brain. Three lithe cats, surrounding my broken head, slurping up the mushy grey soup within. The tips of their red, rough tongues licked the soft folds of my mind. And with each lick of their tongues, my mind—like a shimmer of hot air—flickered and faded away.

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In the end we never found out what happened to Sumire. As Miu put it, she vanished like smoke.

Two days later Miu came back to the island on the noon ferry together with an official from the Japanese embassy and a police official in charge of tourist affairs. They met with the local police and launched a full-scale investigation involving the islanders. The police put out a public appeal for information, publishing a blown-up version of Sumire’s passport photo in a national newspaper. Many people got in touch, but nothing connected. The information always turned out to be about someone else.

Sumire’s parents came to the island, too. I left just before they arrived. The new school term was around the corner, but mostly I couldn’t stand the thought of facing them. Besides, the mass media in Japan had caught wind of events and had begun to contact the Japanese embassy and the local police. I told Miu

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it was about time for me to be getting back to Tokyo. Staying any longer on the island wasn’t going to help find Sumire. She nodded. “You’ve done so much already,” she said.

“Really. If you hadn’t come, I would have been completely lost. Don’t worry. I’ll explain things to Sumire’s parents. And I’ll handle any reporters. Leave it to me. You had no responsibility for any of this to begin with. I can be pretty businesslike when I need to be, and I can hold my own.”

*

She saw me off at the harbour. I was taking the afternoon ferry to Rhodes. It was exactly ten days since Sumire had disappeared. Miu hugged me just before I left. A very natural embrace. For a long moment, she silently rubbed my back as she held me. The afternoon sun was hot, but strangely her skin felt cool. Her hand was trying to tell me something. I closed my eyes and listened to those words. Not words -something that couldn’t coalesce into language. In the midst of our silence, something passed between us. “Take care of yourself,” said Miu.

“You, too,” I said. For a while we stood there in front of the gangplank.