Sputnik Sweetheart Read Online Free PDF

constitution,” I said, as calmly as possible. “No room for discussion or doubts. You’ve got to accept that, or we won’t get anywhere.”
    “Gotcha. I’ll accept that.”
    “Thank you. So—the emperor is a symbol of Japan. But this doesn’t mean that the emperor and Japan are equivalent. Do you follow?”
    “I don’t get it.”
    “OK, how about this—the arrow points in one direction. The emperor is a symbol of Japan, but Japan is not the symbol of the emperor. You understand that, right?”
    “I
guess.
”
    “Say, for instance, you write ‘The emperor is a sign of Japan.’ That makes the two equivalent. So when we say ‘Japan,’ it would also mean ‘the emperor,’ and when we speak of the emperor, it would also mean ‘Japan.’ In other words, the two are interchangeable. Same as saying, ‘
A
equals
b,
so
b
equals
a.
’ That’s what a sign is.”
    “So you’re saying you can switch the emperor and Japan? Can you do that?”
    “That’s not what I mean,” I said, shaking my head vigorously on my end of the line. “I’m just trying to explain the best I can. I’m not planning to switch the emperor and Japan. It’s just a way of explaining it.”
    “Hmm,” Sumire said. “I think I get it. As an image. It’s the difference between a one-way street and a two-way street.”
    “For our purposes, that’s close enough.”
    “I’m always amazed how good you are at explaining things.”
    “That’s my job,” I said. My words seemed somehow flat and stale. “You should try being an elementary-school teacher sometime. You’d never imagine the kind of questions I get. ‘Why isn’t the world square?’ ‘Why do squids have ten arms and not eight?’ I’ve learned to come up with an answer to just about everything.”
    “You must be a great teacher.”
    “I wonder,” I said. I really did wonder.
    “By the way, why do squids have ten arms and not eight?”
    “Can I go back to sleep now? I’m beat. Just holding this phone I feel like I’m holding up a crumbling stone wall.”
    “You know . . . ,” Sumire said, letting a delicate pause intervene—like an old gatekeeper closing the railroad crossing gate with a clatter just before the train bound for St. Petersburg passes by. “It’s really silly to say this, but I’m in love.”
    “Um,” I said, switching the receiver back to my left hand. I could hear her breathing through the phone. I had no idea how I should respond. And as often happens when I don’t know what to say, I let slip some out-of-left-field comment. “Not with me, I assume?”
    “Not with you,” Sumire answered. I heard the sound of a cheap lighter lighting a cigarette. “Are you free today? I’d like to talk more.”
    “You mean, about your falling in love with someone other than me?”
    “Right,” she said. “About my falling passionately in love with somebody other than you.”
    I clamped the phone between my head and shoulder and stretched. “I’m free in the evening.”
    “I’ll be over at five,” Sumire said. And then added, as if an afterthought: “Thank you.”
    “For what?”
    “For being nice enough to answer my question in the middle of the night.”
    I gave a vague response, hung up, and turned off the light. It was still pitch black out. Just before I fell asleep, I thought about her final
thank you
and whether I’d ever heard those words from her before. Maybe I had, once, but I couldn’t recall.
    S umire arrived at my apartment a little before five. I didn’t recognize her. She’d taken on a complete change of style. Her hair was cut stylishly short, her bangs still showing traces of the scissors’ snips. She wore a light cardigan over a short-sleeve, navy-blue dress, and a pair of black enamel, medium-high heels. She even had on stockings.
Stockings?
Women’s clothes weren’t exactly my field of expertise, but it was clear that everything she had on was pretty expensive. Dressed like this, Sumire looked polished and