Izumi’s disappearance on a Greek island

Izumi’s disappearance on a Greek island is the turning point in a night search: her companion wakes to find her gone, follows what may be music toward a hilltop village, and reaches a summit where there is no trace of the celebration he expected. The search yields neither Izumi nor an explanation. Instead, the moonlit landscape becomes inseparable from his fear that his own identity has disappeared, too.

The Empty Apartment

The episode begins in the middle of the night, when the narrator wakes and discovers that Izumi is no longer beside him. He checks the time on a watch next to the bed: half past twelve. After turning on the lamp, he looks around the room and finds it quiet and undisturbed. Two bent Salem cigarette butts and an empty, crumpled pack remain in the ashtray, small signs of an ordinary evening that offer no explanation for her absence.

He searches the living room, kitchen, and bathroom, then looks into the front yard. The vinyl lounge chairs are still there in the moonlight, but Izumi is not. He calls her once softly and then more loudly, alarmed by the sound of his own voice and its lack of answer. A faint breeze moves the pampas grass. He returns to the kitchen and pours half a glass of wine to calm himself.

Following the Moonlit Road

The empty kitchen and its strange shadows recall an earlier night when a cat disappeared up a pine tree. Then, as now, the full moon filled the scene; the narrator had stared at the branches and thought he saw the cat’s eyes, only to recognize that impression as an illusion. This recollection links Izumi’s absence to a previous, unresolved disappearance without explaining either one.

The narrator puts on a thick sweater and jeans, takes the coins lying on the table, and goes out. He assumes that Izumi could not sleep and has gone for a walk, most likely to the harbor, since there is nowhere else nearby for her to go. The road is quiet, the houses dark, and the moonlight makes the ground appear silver. He walks alone, guided by the practical belief that there is only one road to the harbor and that he will be able to find her there.

Halfway to the harbor, he hears faint, unamplified music. At first he wonders whether it is a hallucination, but listening closely, he recognizes a melody played on an instrument. He cannot identify the instrument or the source. The music seems to come from the village above a hill the couple climbed each day for exercise. At a crossroads, he imagines that Izumi may have heard it too and would have gone toward it.

The Hilltop and the Missing Celebration

He turns toward the hill and climbs. As he goes, the music grows clearer and more festive, and he imagines that a banquet is taking place in the village. Earlier that day, he and Izumi had seen a lively wedding procession at the harbor; he connects the sound to a wedding feast that might still be continuing into the night. The celebration remains an inference, not something he sees.

Without warning, the narrator says that he disappears. The sudden statement marks the search’s inward turn: he has set out to find Izumi, but on the moonlit climb he loses confidence in the reality of his own identity. He describes himself as a substitute rather than himself, a sense of estrangement that recalls an earlier feeling he had on a plane over Egypt. The music and the moonlight accompany this crisis, but neither supplies an explanation for Izumi’s absence.

He continues to the summit, reasoning that he has come this far and must see whether any trace of the music remains. In five minutes he reaches the top. The view opens southward toward the sea, harbor, and sleeping town, while the far side of the mountain remains dark. There is no sign that a lively celebration has taken place there. The imagined wedding banquet has led him to a real place, but the summit offers no confirmation and no clue to Izumi’s whereabouts.

Return Without Resolution

The narrator returns to the apartment and drinks a glass of brandy, but cannot sleep. He remains unsettled until the eastern sky grows light. His search has ended without finding Izumi, and the absence persists beyond the night’s journey.

As morning approaches, he imagines cats starving in a locked apartment and consuming what he calls his real self. The vision extends his earlier fear that he has become a false or provisional person, and he pictures his consciousness fading as the cats surround him. This is presented as a fearful image, not as a confirmed event. The episode closes without revealing where Izumi has gone or whether the music came from an actual celebration. What it does establish is the narrator’s dependence on her: he thinks of her as the only thing holding together his fragile sense of self, so her disappearance leaves both his search and his identity without a resolution.