“She was a wonderful woman,” Takatsuki said, studying his hands on the table. They were attractive hands for a man already in middle age. There were no wrinkles around his eyes, either, and his fingernails were tended with care. “You were fortunate to find her, Mr. Kafuku, and to have shared a life together.”

“You’re right,” Kafuku said. “I guess I was happy then. But that much happiness can lead to an equal amount of pain.”

“In what way?”

Kafuku picked up his glass and swirled the chunk of ice in it. “I worried that I might lose her. Just imagining that made my heart ache.”

“I know that feeling,” Takatsuki said.

“How so?”

“I mean…,” Takatsuki said, groping for the right words. “Losing someone that wonderful.”

“In general.”

“Yes,” Takatsuki said. He nodded several times, as if trying to convince himself. “I can only imagine what it must be like.”

Kafuku fell silent. He let the silence linger as long as possible. At last he spoke.

“In the end, though, I lost her. Gradually, in the beginning, then completely. Like something that is eroded bit by bit. The process began slowly until finally a tidal wave swept it all away, the roots and everything…Understand what I mean?”

“I think I do.”

Like hell you do, Kafuku said in his heart.

“Here’s what hurts the most,” Kafuku said. “I didn’t truly understand her—or at least some crucial part of her. And it may well end that way now that she’s dead and gone. Like a small, locked safe lying at the bottom of the ocean. It hurts a lot.”

Takatsuki thought for a moment before speaking.

“But, Mr. Kafuku, can any of us ever perfectly understand another person? However much we may love them?”

“We lived together for nearly twenty years,” Kafuku said. “As man and wife, but also as trusted friends. We were able to talk frankly about anything and everything, or so I thought. But maybe it wasn’t really like that. Perhaps—how should I put this?—I had what amounted to a fatal blind spot.”

“Blind spot,” Takatsuki echoed.

“There was something inside her, something important, that I must have missed. If I saw it, perhaps I failed to recognize it for what it really was.”

Takatsuki chewed his lip for a minute. He drained his glass and called over to the bartender to bring him another drink.

“I know what you mean,” he said.

Kafuku stared hard at him. Takatsuki met his gaze for a few seconds and then looked away.

“In what sense do you know?” Kafuku said in a low voice.

The bartender brought a fresh glass of whiskey on ice and replaced Takatsuki’s wet coaster with a new one. They remained silent until he had left.

“In what sense do you know?” Kafuku repeated.

Takatsuki pondered this question for a moment. Kafuku glimpsed movement in his eyes. He’s wavering, he concluded. Battling the urge to reveal something. In the end, though, Takatsuki managed to calm whatever had shaken him.