Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami

Rome.
    Anyhow, I’m sorry I wasn’t able to take you out to dinner like we planned. This Europe trip came about out of the blue, right after I moved. After that it was utter madness for a few days—running out to apply for a passport, buying suitcases, finishing up some work I’d begun. I’m not very good at remembering things—I don’t need to tell you, do I?—but I do try my best to keep my promises. The ones I remember, that is. Which is why I want to apologize for not keeping our dinner date.
    I really enjoy my new apartment. Moving is certainly a pain (I know you did most of the work, for which I’m grateful; still, it’s a pain), but once you’re all moved in it’s pretty nice. There’re no roosters crowing in my new place, as in Kichijoji, instead a lot of crows making a racket like some old wailing women. At dawn flocks of them assemble in Yoyogi Park, and make such a ruckus you’d think the world was about to end. No need for an alarm clock, since the racket always wakes me up. Thanks to which I’m now like you, living an early-to-bed-early-to-rise farmer’s lifestyle. I’m beginning to understand how it feels to have someone call you at three-thirty in the morning.
Beginning
to understand, mind you.
    I’m writing this letter at an outdoor café on a side street in Rome, sipping espresso as thick as the devil’s sweat, and I have this strange feeling that I’m not
myself
anymore. It’s hard to put it into words, but I guess it’s like I was fast asleep, and some-one came, disassembled me, and hurriedly put me back to-gether again. That sort of feeling. Can you understand what I’m getting at?
    My eyes tell me I’m the same old me, but something’s
different
from usual. Not that I can clearly recall what “usual” was. Ever since I stepped off the plane I can’t shake this very real, deconstructive illusion.
Illusion?
I guess that’s the word. . . .
    Sitting here, asking myself, “Why am I in Rome, of all places?” everything around me starts to look unreal. Of course if I trace the details of how I got here I can come up with an explanation, but on a gut level I’m still not convinced. The me sitting here and the image of me I have are out of sync. To put it another way, I don’t particularly
need
to be here, but nonetheless here I am. I know I’m being vague, but you understand me, don’t you?
    There’s one thing I
can
say for sure: I wish you were here. Even though I have Miu with me, I’m lonely being so far away from you. If we were even farther apart, I know I’d feel even more lonely. I’d like to think you feel the same way.
    So anyhow, here Miu and I are, traipsing around Europe. She had some business to take care of and was planning originally to go around Italy and France by herself for two weeks, but asked me to come along as her personal secretary. She just blurted this out one morning, took me by complete surprise. My title might be “personal secretary,” but I don’t think I’m much use to her; still, the experience will do me good, and Miu tells me the trip’s her present to me for quitting smoking. So all the agony I went through paid off in the end.
    We landed first in Milan, went sightseeing, then rented a blue Alfa Romeo and headed south on the autostrada. We went around a few wineries in Tuscany, and after taking care of business stayed a few nights in a charming little hotel, and then arrived in Rome. Business is always conducted in either English or French, so I don’t have much of a role to play, though my Italian has come in handy in day-to-day things as we travel. If we went to Spain (which unfortunately won’t happen on this trip), I might be of more use to Miu.
    The Alfa Romeo we rented was a manual shift, so I was no help at all. Miu did all the driving. She can drive for hours and never seems to mind. Tuscany is all hills and curves, and it was amazing how smoothly she shifted gears up and down; watching her made me (and I’m not joking