War Photographer's Notebook

Chapter 1059 Liars Sing Together

In the basement turned into a tomb, Ke Na stuffed the chalk in her hand into the crack on the wall, turned around and threw herself into Wei Ran's arms, and said pleadingly while shaking her shoulders, "Victor, promise me , if...if I die too, can I be buried here too?"

"I"

Wei Ran sighed, and gently hugged the thin girl who could touch the bones through the clothes, "I promise you, if you die too, I will bury you here too."

After sniffling, Ke Na took a step back, walked out without any hesitation and said, "I'm going to get today's bread, and see if I can get something extra by the way."

"I'm going to catch mice"

Wei Ran paused, and asked the same as he had asked Lydia before, "Shall we go back together later? You wait for me here."

"Okay." Ke Na nodded and stumbled away from the ruins.

Watching the girl go away, Wei Ran turned and looked at the wall. After a moment of silence, he silently took out the camera and pressed the shutter on those hot red words.

"Enough is enough, don't die anymore."

Wei Ran muttered to himself, put away the camera and walked out of the cold tomb and the ruins, dragged the small airdrop box, and walked step by step to the ruins of the nursing home where the mousetrap cages were arranged.

It's a pity that when he dug up the snow again and again and pulled out the mouse trap stuffed in the gap, he only got disappointed again and again.

Although he knew that there was a high probability that no mice could be caught in this place, Wei Ran didn't know where to put the mouse trap at all for a while, so he could only stuff it back, erase the footprints again, and pull The empty airdrop box turned around and walked back after going around a few times.

After waiting for a while near the ruins where the basement was located, Ke Na also came back with a sack.

"How are you going to explain it to the children?" Wei Ran motioned for the other party to sit on the airdrop box, and asked as he walked back.

"Sister Lydia was transferred to work at the port." Ke Na obviously had an excuse in mind, but his eyes just looked blankly at the ruins along the way.

Sighing secretly, against the cold wind and snowfall, Wei Ran took Ke Na back to the door of the small concrete house on the edge of the playground at two or three o'clock in the afternoon.

Still before Ke Na got off the airdrop box, the locked door from inside was already opened by the children.

However, compared to the previous excitement and cheers, the faces of these children were obviously full of panic and fear this time.

"What happened to you?"

While speaking, Cora had already squatted down, hugging the little girl Anastasia who was staggering towards her while sucking her fingers.

"Sister Ke Na, where is Sister Lydia?" The child king Alexander asked in panic.

"She won't be back in a short time." Ke Na's worried expression immediately made the children's nervous breathing stagnate.

"she"

"She's been transferred to port"

Kona sighed heavily, "Recently, the ice on Lake Ladoga has become more and more solid, and there are more and more vehicles running on it, which requires more manpower, so Sister Lydia just came back was transferred away."

"Will she come back?"

Anastasia, who was held in Ke Na's arms, asked in a childlike voice. This little girl is only five or six years old. To her, Lydia is no different in a certain way. Same existence as "mother".

"Where can she go if she doesn't come back?"

Ke Na responded naturally, and walked into the concrete house with the little girl in her arms, "She also promised to go to the zoo with us to watch Uncle Matvey's animal performance."

"But what about our concert tonight?" A little guy named Sergey asked naively, "Sister Lydia is not here, who will accompany you?"

"Of course I'm the accompaniment," Ke Na said confidently, "I'll be the accompaniment, and I'll take you to sing along."

"There's still one person missing," a little girl whose name Wei Ran couldn't remember couldn't help muttering.

"Let me play the accompaniment." Wei Ran took the initiative to come forward and said, "Actually, I can also play the bayan."

"You will too?" Ke Na looked at Wei Ran suspiciously, "I remember you said you wouldn't."

"I lied to you." Wei Ran spread his hands pretending to be proud, and at the same time glanced at the pile of firewood placed against the wall in the house without any trace.

"My mother said men are liars."

The little girl named Oujia deliberately teased Wei Ran while smiling, and the girl named Sasha beside her also nodded, and at the same time subconsciously glanced at the child king Alexander.

"Women are better at lying"

Wei Ran, who was trying to make a joke with energy, was stunned when he finished speaking. In this way, when he guessed that Lydia lied to Mrs. Via's son was still alive, he had told Lydia about it.

It's just that in just a few days, he also needs to lie to conceal the news of Lydia's death.

"Victor is right! Women are better at lying!"

The child king named Alyosha's deputy subconsciously said, "For example, Olga, she has lied to me several times."

Once this contradictory topic was opened, these children, big and small, immediately became hyped up, forgetting what the original topic was, and Ke Na, who was holding the little girl, who was strictly speaking underage, also quietly Wipe the corners of his eyes.

"Let me prepare dinner"

Wei Ran whispered something in the other party's ear, and Ke Na nodded, and followed the children into the warm basement.

After locking the door of the concrete house, Wei Ran brought two pots of boiling water from the basement and a horse's head, scalded it carefully, and then proceeded to pluck the hair by himself.

Finally, he took out a bucket of burning charcoal and scalded the smelly horse's head carefully. Then he put it into a separate enamel pot, added water and put it on the stove in the basement.

Taking advantage of the cooking time of the horse's head, Wei Ran also added half a piece of dried fish and a finger-thick piece of pike to another enamel pot that had been cooking on the stove, and also put some coarse salt into it.

After cooking this extraordinarily simple dinner, he was busy with the baby Galina, who made a bottle of honey water and handed it to the girl named Sasha, asking her to help feed the baby who was still in swaddling.

While he was busy here, the children were also taking turns shaking the pedals for power generation, driving the simple radio, and listening to the news from the radio station.

On the contrary, Ke Na hid in the shadows in the far corner of the basement by feeding honey water to the baby Galina.

Finally, when the basement was filled with the aroma of broth, the girl also handed the bayanqin in her arms to Wei Ran.

"What are you going to sing?" Wei Ran, who had just brought back the intestines of the army horse before the surface treatment, wiped his hands on his trousers before taking the bayan, and hanging it on his chest clumsily forward.

"Let's start with the simplest Internationale"

Ke Na said with a bit of embarrassment to Wei Ran, those children who had been listening to the radio just now also supplied electricity to the car light quite appropriately.

Immediately, the basement, which had just been darkened by the outside sky, was lit up by lights. Several older children, headed by Alexander, also stepped on the long table converted from shelves, and blocked the windows with wooden baffles to prevent the light from leaking out and causing fatal injuries. air raid.

"Then sing the Internationale." Wei Ran sighed, and pressed his fingers on the keys tremblingly.

Driven by the inexplicable sense of familiarity and almost muscle memory, he also successfully played the accompaniment of the Internationale with the bayan.

"Arise, cursed."

Ke Na, who was standing in the center of the basement, started to sing along with Wei Ran's accompaniment. Under her gestures, the surrounding children, big and small, also sang hard.

Amidst the loud and clear singing that almost lifted the ceiling of the basement, the faces of those children and the girl standing in the center gradually had hopeful smiles on their faces.

"Next is Katyusha!"

As soon as this song was finished, Ke Na "ordered" another song that the children knew, and Wei Ran started the accompaniment of this song without stopping at all.

A moment later, the children's chorus rang out again in this warm, solid and hidden basement.

During the time leading up to dinner, the children sang one after another the songs they had sung together when Mrs. Via and Lydia were alive.

Today, although there are two crucial people missing in this small choir, the voices of these barely filled children have become more powerful and louder.

Although they were still skinny with sunken cheekbones and protruding cheekbones, Wei Ran, who was playing the bayan, finally didn't have to worry about which of these little guys would fall down and never get up again.

In the accompaniment of one song after another, outside the window covered by the baffle, the sky finally became completely dark, and the heavy snow that had been raging all day finally stopped, and even the biting cold wind , there is also a moderate trend.

Just when the children who sang one song after another finally drank the broth and ate 100 grams of black bread per person, far away on the ice of Lake Ladoga, the huge transport team also braved the severe cold and night Once again chose to leave the port.

On the top of the basement, Wei Ran, who had finished his dinner in a hurry, also took out the boiled horse head out of the pot under the light of the dim candle light, carefully picked out the meat and chopped it into pieces , together with the shredded horse stomach bag, stuffed into the cleaned horse fat intestines.

Not long after, Ke Na also came out from the basement, and covered the wooden boards to block the sound of the radio.With the help of this girl who was silent a lot and learned to lie, the broth that boiled the horse's head turned into jelly, and strings of horse meat sausages were hung around the chimney.

(End of this chapter)