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notice what Malta Kano and I were doing. People at nearby tables stole glances in our direction. I kept hoping all the while that there were no acquaintances of mine in the vicinity.
    “I want you to picture to yourself one thing you saw before you came here today,” said Malta Kano.
    “One thing?” I asked.
    “Just one thing.”
    I thought of the flowered minidress that I had seen in Kumiko’s clothes storage box. Why that of all things happened to pop into my mind I have no idea. It just did.
    We kept our hands together like that for another five minutes—five minutes that felt very long to me, not so much because I was being stared at by people as that the touch of Malta Kano’s hand had something unsettling about it. It was a small hand, neither hot nor cold. It had neither the intimate touch of a lover’s hand nor the functional touch of a doctor’s. It had the same effect on me as her eyes had, turning me into a vacant house. I felt empty: no furniture, no curtains, no rugs. Just an empty container. Eventually, Malta Kano withdrew her hand from mine and took several deep breaths. Then she nodded several times.
    “Mr. Okada,” she said, “I believe that you are entering a phase of your life in which many different things will occur. The disappearance of your cat is only the beginning.”
    “Different things,” I said. “Good things or bad things?”
    She tilted her head in thought. “Good things
and
bad things. Bad things that seem good at first, and good things that seem bad at first.”
    “To me, that sounds very general,” I said. “Don’t you have any more concrete information?”
    “Yes, I suppose what I am saying does sound very general,” said Malta Kano. “But after all, Mr. Okada, when one is speaking of the essence of things, it often happens that one can only speak in generalities. Concrete things certainly do command attention, but they are often little more than trivia. Side trips. The more one tries to see into the distance, the more generalized things become.”
    I nodded silently—without the slightest inkling of what she was talking about.
    “Do I have your permission to call you again?” she asked. “Sure,” I said, though in fact I had no wish to be called by anyone. “Sure” was about the only answer I could give.
    She snatched her red vinyl hat from the table, took the handbag that had been hidden beneath it, and stood up. Uncertain as to how I should respond to this, I remained seated.
    “I do have one small bit of information that I can share with you,” Malta Kano said, looking down at me, after she had put on her red hat. “You will find your polka-dot tie, but not in your house.”

High Towers and Deep Wells
  (or, Far from Nomonhan)
•
    Back home, I found Kumiko in a good mood. A
very
good mood. It was almost six o’clock by the time I arrived home after seeing Malta Kano, which meant I had no time to fix a proper dinner. Instead, I prepared a simple meal from what I found in the freezer, and we each had a beer. She talked about work, as she always did when she was in a good mood: whom she had seen at the office, what she had done, which of her colleagues had talent and which did not. That kind of thing.
    I listened, making suitable responses. I heard no more than half of what she was saying. Not that I disliked listening to her talk about these things. Contents of the conversation aside, I loved watching her at the dinner table as she talked with enthusiasm about her work. This, I told myself, was “home.” We were doing a proper job of carrying out the responsibilities that we had been assigned to perform at home. She was talking about her work, and I, after having prepared dinner, was listening to her talk. This was very different from the image of home that I had imagined vaguely for myself before marriage. But this was
the home I had chosen
. I had had a home, of course, when I was a child. But it was not one I had chosen for myself. I had been born