Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami Page A

sure of my talent. I’m not that nervy. I know I’m a haphazard, selfish type of person. But I’ve never been confused. I might have made some mistakes along the way, but I always felt I was on the right path.”
    “You’ve been lucky,” I replied. “Like a long spell of rain right after you plant rice.”
    “Maybe you’re right.”
    “But at this point, things aren’t working out.”
    “Right. They aren’t. Sometimes I get so frightened, like everything I’ve done up till now is wrong. I have these realistic dreams and snap wide awake in the middle of the night. And for a while I can’t figure out what’s real and what isn’t. . . . That kind of feeling. Do you have any idea what I’m saying?”
    “I think so,” I replied.
    “The thought hits me a lot these days that maybe my novel-writing days are over. The world’s crawling with stupid, innocent girls, and I’m just one of them, self-consciously chasing after dreams that’ll never come true. I should shut the piano lid and come down off the stage. Before it’s too late.”
    “Shut the piano lid?”
    “A metaphor.”
    I switched the receiver from my left hand to my right. “I
am
sure of one thing. Maybe you aren’t, but I am. Someday you’ll be a fantastic writer. I’ve read what you’ve written, and I know.”
    “You really think so?”
    “From the bottom of my heart,” I said. “I’m not going to lie to you about things like that. There’re some pretty remarkable scenes in the things you’ve written so far. Say you were writing about the seashore in May. You can hear the sound of the wind in your ears and smell the salt air. You can feel the soft warmth of the sun on your arms. If you wrote about a small room filled with tobacco smoke, you can bet the reader would start to feel like he can’t breathe. And his eyes would smart. Prose like that is beyond most writers. Your writing has the living, breathing force of something natural flowing through it. Right now that hasn’t all come together, but that doesn’t mean it’s time to—shut the lid on the piano.”
    Sumire was silent for a good ten, fifteen seconds. “You’re not just saying that to make me feel better, to cheer me up, are you?”
    “No, I’m not. It’s an undeniable fact, plain and simple.”
    “Like the Moldau River?”
    “You got it. Just like the Moldau River.”
    “Thank you,” Sumire said.
    “You’re welcome,” I replied.
    “Sometimes you’re just the sweetest thing. Like Christmas, summer vacation, and a brand-new puppy all rolled into one.”
    Like I always do when somebody praises me, I mumbled some vague reply.
    “But one thing bothers me,” Sumire said. “One day you’ll get married to a nice girl and forget all about me. And I won’t be able to call you in the middle of the night whenever I want to. Right?”
    “You can always call during the day.”
    “Daytime’s no good. You don’t understand anything, do you.”
    “Neither do
you,
” I protested. “Most people work when the sun’s up and turn out the light at night and go to sleep.” But I might as well have been reciting some pastoral poems to myself in the middle of a pumpkin patch.
    “There was this article in the paper the other day,” Sumire said, completely oblivious. “It said lesbians are born that way; there’s a tiny bone in the inner ear that’s completely different from other women’s that makes all the difference. Some small bone with a complicated name. So being a lesbian isn’t acquired; it’s genetic. An American doctor discovered this. I have no idea why he was doing that kind of research, but ever since I read about it I can’t get the idea out of my mind of this little good-for-nothing bone inside my ear. Wondering what shape my own little bone is.”
    I had no idea what to say. A silence descended on us as sudden as the instant fresh oil is poured into a large frying pan.
    “So you’re sure what you feel for Miu is sexual desire?” I