You have got to love this country. A few snowflakes and the whole country literally grinds to a halt. Blaming ‘Russian winds’ for dumping a fresh load of the white stuff over the south of the country, London was at a standstill yesterday as trains, planes and various types of public service automobiles did not take to the runways, tracks and streets.

It was nice, though, to see England blanketed by snow again. This was the England of my childhood. And while I lamented my lack of adequate footwear to deal with snow and ice, it was still nice to know that while it was all cold and freezing outside, for a while it kinda looked pretty nice.

*****

Having just finished the book, I think I will put off watching The Reader for a while, because I want the magic to stay with me for a bit. I think the way Schlink unravelled the mysteries is the key to how the story stays with you. He gives you pieces of the puzzle at the right moment for you to make up the picture as you go along: not too soon, not too late. I think he’s managed to accomplish in a little over 200 pages what other books have failed with twice the volume: capturing pride, dignity, longing and most of all love. And the fact that love, innocent or not in its first few flushes, manifests itself in more than just the physical and the known: be it in the form of taped readings or a taped picture on a prison wall.

*****

He gets there. In the movie he gets there, even though she thinks he has forgotten. But he hasn’t. This was their child, together theirs, not hers, not his but theirs. So he made it, and she smiled and kissed him as her eyes watered, because she knew he was busy but he made time for her. And together they listen to the heartbeats of their child.

But for a fact I knew he didn’t make it. Instead she drove herself, because he was too busy to take time out for her and for their child. Maybe he was ashamed that she, so over the age, was again pregnant, even if it was their child, together theirs, not hers, not his but theirs. So he forgot, or feigned a meeting, or created some other workpile he could have otherwise ignored. So she went alone, and she heard the heartbeats of her soon-to-be born child, but even louder she heard her heart break.

You never forget.
*****

And finally, on love again, from Xiaolu Guo’s A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers:

“‘Love’, this English word: like other English words it has tense. ‘Loved’ or ‘will love’ or ‘have loved’. All these specific tenses mean Love is time-limited thing. Not infinite. It only exist in particular period of time. In Chinese, Love is ‘ai’. It has no tense. No past and future. Love in Chinese means a being, a situation, a circumstance. Love is existence, holding past and future.”