Questioning

"Is it possible, finally, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another?

We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close are we able to come that person's essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone.

...

That night, in our darkened bedroom, I lay beside Komiko, staring at the ceiling and asking myself just how much I really knew about this woman. The clock said 2:00 a.m. She was sound asleep. In the dark, I thought about blue tissues and patterned toilet paper and beef and green peppers. I had lived with her all this time, unaware how much she hated these things. In themselves they were trivial. Stupid. Something to laugh off, not make a big issue out if. We'd had a little and would have forgotten about it in a couple of days.

But this was different it was bothering me in a strange way, digging at me like a little fish bone caught in the throat. Maybe - just maybe - it was more crucial than it had seemed. Maybe this was it: the fatal blow. Or maybe it was just the beginning of what would be the fatal blow. I might be standing in the entrance of something big, and inside lay a world that belong to Komiko alone, a vast world that I had never known. I saw it as a big dark room. I was standing there holding a cigarette lighter, it's tiny flame showing me only the smallest part of the room.

Would I ever see the rest? Or would I grow old and die without ever really knowing her? If that was all that lay in store for me, then what was the point of married life I was leading? What was the point of my life at all if I was spending it in a bed with an unknown companion?"

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, H. Marukami