“Writing novels is much the same. You gather up bones and make your gate, but no matter how wonderful the gate might be, that alone doesn’t make it a living, breathing novel. A story is not something of this world. A real story requires a kind of magical baptism to link the world on this side with the world on the
“So what you’re saying is that I go out on my own and find my own dog?”
I nodded.
“And shed fresh blood?”
Sumire bit her lip and thought about this. She tossed another hapless stone into the pond. “I really don’t want to kill an animal if I can help it.”
“It’s a metaphor,” I said. “You don’t have to actually kill anything.”
*
We were sitting as usual side by side at Inogashira Park, on her favourite bench. The pond spread out before us. A windless day. Leaves lay where they had fallen, pasted on the surface of the water. I could smell a bonfire somewhere far away. The air was filled with the scent of the end of autumn, and far-off sounds were painfully clear.
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“What you need is time and experience,” I said.
“Time and experience,” she mused, and gazed up at the sky.
“There’s not much you can do about time—it just keeps on passing. But experience? Don’t tell me that. I’m not proud of it, but I don’t have any sexual desire. And what sort of experience can a writer have if she doesn’t feel passion? It’d be like a chef without an appetite.”
“I don’t know where your sexual desire has gone,” I said.
“Maybe it’s just hiding somewhere. Or gone on a trip and forgotten to come home. But falling in love is always a pretty crazy thing. It might appear out of the blue and just grab you. Who knows—maybe even tomorrow.”
Sumire turned her gaze from the sky to my face. “Like a tornado?”
“You could say that.”
She thought about it. “Have you ever actually seen a tornado?”
“No,” I replied. Thankfully, Tokyo wasn’t exactly Tornado Alley.
About a half a year later, just as I had predicted, suddenly, preposterously, a tornado-like love seized Sumire. With a woman 17 years older. Her very own Sputnik Sweetheart.
*
As Sumire and Miu sat there together at the table at the wedding reception, they did what everybody else does in the world in such situations, namely, introduce themselves. Sumire hated her own name and tried to conceal it whenever she could. But when somebody asks you your name, the only polite thing to do is to go ahead and give it.
According to her father, her mother had chosen the name Sumire. She loved the Mozart song of the same name and had
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decided long before that if she had a daughter that would be her name. On the record shelf in their living room was a record of Mozart’s songs, doubtless the one her mother had listened to and, when she was a child, Sumire would carefully lay this heavy LP on the turntable and listen to the song over and over. Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was the soloist, Waiter Gieseking on piano. Sumire didn’t understand the lyrics, but from the graceful motif she felt sure the song was a paean to the beautiful violets blooming in a field. Sumire loved that image. In junior high, though, she came across a Japanese translation of the song in her school library and was shocked. The lyrics told of a callous shepherd’s daughter trampling down a hapless little violet in a field. The girl didn’t even notice she’d flattened the flower. It was based on a Goethe poem, and Sumire found nothing redeeming about it, no lesson to be learned.
*
“How could my mother give me the name of such an awful song?” said Sumire, scowling.
Miu arranged the corners of the napkin on her lap, smiled neutrally, and looked at Sumire. Miu’s eyes were quite dark. Many colours mixed together, but clear and unclouded.
“Do you think the song was beautiful?”
“Yes, the song itself is pretty.”
“If the music is lovely, I think that should be enough. After all, not everything in this world can be beautiful, right? Your mother must have loved that song so much the lyrics didn’t bother her. And besides, if you keep making that kind of face you’re going to get some permanent wrinkles.”
Sumire allowed her scowl to relax.
“Maybe you’re right. I just felt so let down. I mean, the only
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tangible sort of thing my mother left me was that name. Other than
“Well, I think Sumire is a lovely name. I like it very much,”
said Miu, and tilted her head slightly as if to view things from a new angle. “By the way, is your father here at the reception?”
