War Photographer's Notebook

Chapter 1060 Good Weather and Good Harvest

On the morning of the second day after losing Lydia, the rumbling artillery fire once again turned into an alarm clock to wake up everyone in the basement.

Subconsciously glanced at the place where Lydia used to sleep before she was alive, Wei Ran sighed secretly, got up and added a few pieces of firewood to the stove that was about to go out.

In the steaming Mars, Wei Ran put on his clothes, stepped on the steps to the first floor, opened the shutter of one of the windows, and let the fiery red sun outside shine into this cold small room.

This is a rare fine weather, the wind outside the window is not too strong, the snow has stopped, and the ground covered in silver reflects golden light.

If one ignores the steaming smoke puffs in the distant city, the anti-aircraft guns blasting in the sky, and those air defense balloons and .
Wei Ran shook his head secretly. Sure enough, as long as enough conditions are ignored, any kind of hell can have a beautiful view, but that is nothing more than self-deception after all.

Such good weather also means that the visibility is far enough, which means it is more suitable for bombing.In other words, it means more danger.

Taking four sausages that were made last night, and some firewood cut from outside the city, Wei Ran returned to the basement where the air was stale.

After such a short time, the children have already lined up to shake the generator and start the simple radio, and Kona has also prepared honey water, and demonstrated to the little girl Olga sitting next to her how to feed Galina .

Use the steel needle on the gravity knife to poke a few holes on the four sausages and throw them into the pot to cook. Wei Ran took two pots of boiling water, returned to the first floor, took out another horse's head, and started scalding. The work of plucking.

Now, the firewood in this room can barely burn for a week. If the food reserves are opened to the children, they will probably be able to eat well for two days.But the price paid for all this is really too expensive.

When he threw the horse's head scalded by charcoal fire into the pot to cook, the homemade horse meat sausage in another soup pot was finally cooked.

Under the expectant gaze of the children, Wei Ran forked out the four sausages one by one, cut them into [-]cm long pieces, put them in the enamel cups of every child including Ke Na, and then served them The broth that had been boiled all night, even the horse bones that had been boiled for two days and became soft and rotten were crushed with a spoon, and a piece was dug out for everyone.

This morning, the children, who had been hungry for a long time, finally had a bite of meat that really needed to be chewed.

Compared with these happy children, Ke Na who was sitting on the steps looked absent-minded.

When the children took longer than usual to finish their breakfast, Wei Ran gave each of them a small piece of chocolate as usual.However, before the chocolates had completely melted in the children's mouths, an extremely clear and shrill air defense siren sounded from the city.

Almost subconsciously, the children shrank in the corner, covered their mouths with their hands, and shrank their bodies at the same time.

Wei Ran's reaction was not slow either. While Ke Na was busy closing the baffles of the windows on the ground floor of the basement, he had already run up to the first floor, sealed the chimney baffles at the fastest speed, and then moved to Beside the bed, he glanced at the formation of bombers looming in the sky, and then immediately locked the anti-theft damper on the window.

Just when he returned to the basement with a bucket of water to guard the stove, there was a clear explosion sound outside, and even his feet were trembling continuously.

But obviously, these children have long been used to such air raids, and even those who are as bold as Alyosha shake the generator leisurely, driving the radio to continue playing programs that are completely covered by the explosion.

"Boom boom boom!"

Amidst a series of explosions, the tremors on the ground became more and more intense, and some soil was shaken off the ceiling above the head, and there was a clear sound of knocking on the window outside the wooden baffle covered with iron sheets above the head.

Finally, Galina, who was held in Cora's arms, started to cry because the dust got into her eyes.Then, Anastasia and Bogdan, the two children who were only older than Galina, also cried for their mother because of fear, and in turn they were separated by the girl named Olga and Alexander. Hugged in my arms and protected.

After a long time, the explosions outside finally subsided, and the air defense sirens were lifted one after another, but the sound of firefighting became more intense farther outside the city.

Fanning the dust flying in front of his eyes, Wei Ran moved the enamel pot with the horse's head on the stove not far away to straighten it up, and adjusted the enamel kettles hanging around the stove. Stepping on the steps, he walked upstairs quickly.

As he opened the iron-clad wooden shutters, the room was illuminated by sunlight.Fortunately, this small concrete house did not attract the attention of the German bombers - at least the glass windows are still intact.

"the weather is nice today"

Ke Na walked up, stood side by side with Wei Ran in front of the window and said worriedly, everyone who has survived to this day knows that good weather not only means being able to bask in the sun, but also means more frequent bombing, and it also means that this kind of weather Going out to collect supplies is relatively more likely to encounter danger.

"Take care of the children," Wei Ran said as he opened the chimney's smoke baffle, turned around and grabbed the sledge, and was about to go out.

"I'll go with you," Ke Na said, and had already followed.

"you stay"

Wei Ran stopped the other party and pointed to the sausages hanging on the chimney, "You take the children to make sausages from the remaining horse heads today, and the bombings must be very frequent today, someone must guard the children and the sausages." stove."

Hearing this, Ke Na nodded reluctantly but did not let go of the sledge she was holding on to. Instead, she took out a cloth cover with a bosom furnace from her bosom with her other hand and handed it to Wei Ran, "Take Well, at least it can be warmer."

"Okay." Wei Ran nodded, took the cold bosom stove and stuffed it into the inner pocket of his jacket.

"You can load it with some oil"

Cora pointed to the copper water storage tank wrapped in several layers of blankets in the corner of the wall, "We have a lot of oil now, anyway, this oil can't be burned directly, so you can fill the bosom furnace."

After hesitating for a moment, Wei Ran nodded, filled the bosom with fuel, lit it and put it into the blood-stained cloth bag, then solemnly put it into the inner pocket of his jacket again.

"Come back alive" Ke Na almost begged before Wei Ran went out.

"certainly"

Wei Ran smiled, wrapped the blanket tightly around his body, put on his hat, gloves and the scarf that Mrs. Via had lent him, dragged the empty sledge and left the small concrete house.

Under the bright sunshine, Wei Ran, who was walking on the snow, didn't feel any warmth other than the bosom in his arms. The weather of melting snow was far colder than the weather of snowing.

Still regards the basement where Mrs. Via is buried as the end of the day. Along the way, Wei Ran also encountered buildings that were on fire and collapsed due to aerial bombs or shelling explosions, and met firefighters who were busy fighting the fire. And the residents who supported their bodies to help - also encountered those emaciated corpses that hadn't had time to be buried by the snow.

Once again, Wei Ran pressed the shutter towards the ruins that were still on fire. Wei Ran put away his camera, silently pulled the sledge, and wandered aimlessly in this hellish city, looking for each shot, and also for the Anything that can be used, burned, or eaten.

After an unknown amount of time, he stood next to the ruins of the nursing home again.But after only one night's work, there was a fresh bomb crater with a diameter of four or five meters on the ruins, and a hole that seemed to lead to the basement was also exposed, which was only less than half a meter wide and supported by a large number of broken steel bars. Stubble crevices.

Not in a hurry to get into the gap, Wei Ran first looked around, and after some searching, he managed to find six usable mousetrap cages.

After wandering around again to make sure that there was no one around, he took out the wire cutters from the metal book, cleaned the steel bars around the gap, put on a flashlight and bent down and drilled in.

Walking forward along the gap for less than two meters, Wei Ran took out the goggles and put them on. In addition to the faint smell of corpses, there is also a strong smell of rat feces, but it is exactly this smell , Let him choose to take the risk to come down and take a look.

Walking along the basement passage that seemed likely to collapse at any time, for a distance of five or six meters, two rooms with opposite doors appeared right in front of them.When the flashlight was just shaking at the door, he seemed to see a few pairs of flashing green reflections the size of mung beans.

Turning his head and looking behind him, Wei Ran gently pushed open a door with only the upper half of it burnt.

When the beam of the flashlight swept over, he couldn't help but startled. In this room, he could still see corpses who still covered their mouths and noses with towels until death.

But these corpses have been bitten by rats, leaving almost only a lot of white bones, some clothing fragments mixed in rat feces, and even various accessories.Of course, there were still slight rustling noises among those skeletons.

Forcing himself not to recall the rats he ate before, Wei Ran endured his nausea and untied the rat trap hanging from his waist, and then tore off a small blanket and cut it into long strips the size of a finger.

After searching left and right, Wei Ran picked up a smoky enamel jar, put the blanket in it, took out the kettle, and poured a little honey into it miserly.

After collecting the kettle and stirring it with his fingers, he hung the blankets as bait in the mouse traps, and then placed six mouse traps side by side at the door.

Taking a step back, Wei Ran pulled out the ax at his waist again, easily removed the burnt almost carbonized door frame and the wooden door, and then turned to look at another surviving room in the basement.

There were also scorched doors and door frames, but what was placed in this small room were all sundries.

There is a lady's bicycle with only rims left, a sewing machine that I don't know if it can still be used, a stack of pots and pans that have probably been forgotten for a long time, and even a screen whose diagonal length is not long. to a 10cm glycerine TV and an apparently scrapped record player.

Of course, he also found two oxygen cylinders more than one meter long, a copper fire extinguisher that looked like an oversized syringe, and a stack of tin buckets that he didn't know if they were used.

After a little thought, he removed the carbonized door frame and the door first and sent them out first, and then sent out the two oxygen cylinders, the old-fashioned piston fire extinguisher and the iron bucket.

Afterwards, he didn't even spare the rusty bicycle and pushed it out with difficulty.

After installing all these things on the sledge, covering them with blankets and tying them up with ropes, Wei Ran, who was inspired, continued to look around for the craters left by the bombs.

It's a pity that after wandering around for a whole day, apart from being almost taken away by shells fired by the Germans twice, the only new harvest he got was a kerosene lamp that was still in good condition and still had some fuel.

Dragging these things to the ration station, Wei Ran also received the food rations for him and the children after queuing for more than half an hour.

What he didn't expect was that this time he not only received the full amount of black bread, but also received a full iron bucket of coke and an infusion bottle full of milk!
This is undoubtedly the absolute good news, so much so that he couldn't help but quicken his pace on the way back.

Before the sun went down, when Wei Ran returned to the concrete house with such abundant supplies, it was no surprise that he won the cheers of all the children including Ke Na!
In addition to the surprises he brought back to the children, the children also prepared surprises for him. Among other things, there were several strings of sausages between the shelves. Correspondingly, the horse heads he brought back and the ones he brought back before Those horse intestines and horse stomachs have also disappeared.Obviously, during the day, Cora has been busy with the children.

Taking advantage of Ke Na's time preparing dinner, Wei Ran first combined the tattered bicycles he brought back with a generator, allowing the children to change from hand-operated power generation to a more relaxed and interesting pedal power generation.

In addition, he also filled the two oxygen cylinders with water and tied them to the stove, turning them into a set of simple radiators.

When he filled the oil lamp he brought back and hung it above his head, the children fell silent. All the little ones sat obediently on the soft and dry sponge cushions, hugged their knees, and looked up at the The quietly burning kerosene lamp also listened to the broadcast from the simple radio.

Seeing Ke Na gesturing towards him, Wei Ran followed her to the first floor quietly, and each sat on an upside-down metal bucket.

"Can you play that nice song again with the harmonica?" Ke Na asked obsessively at the dim light coming from the basement, almost talking to herself.

"As you wish, ma'am."

Wei Ran responded with a tone like a little bourgeois who should be shot, and while the girl couldn't help chuckling, he took out the harmonica from his pocket, and played the only piece he knew once again.

"Today's sausages were made by Alexander with his brothers and sisters"

In the soothing melody, Kona said in a rambling voice, "Galina was taken care of by Olga, and the rest of the younger children were taken care of by Sasha and a few girls. These children have all grown up. , Even if one day I die outside, as long as they can receive their daily bread, they can live on their own.”

Seeing that Wei Ran stopped playing and looked at her in astonishment, Ke Na smiled and waved her hands, "Don't worry, I didn't intend to commit suicide cowardly."

Seeing that Wei Ran was still looking at herself with a frown, Ke Na finally confessed, "Victor, I'm going to work at the distribution station."

"What did you say?" Wei Ran was stunned, "Are you going to work at a distribution station? Why?"

"We have to have a man working at the distribution station"

Ke Na lowered her head, "Although it is vicious to say so, only one of us working at the distribution station can get the most needed supplies for the children in time, and even some internal news in advance, such as the interruption of supplies, such as There is a chance of a safe evacuation, and that requires someone to work at the distribution station."

Sighing slightly, Wei Ran asked, "What about brothers and sisters?"

"I just said that Alexander and the others can take good care of their younger brothers and sisters. I tried it today, and don't you still have you?"

Seeing that Wei Ran didn't speak, Ke Na simply continued, "Or you go to work at the distribution station, and I will stay and collect supplies to take care of them."

Wei Ran looked at the other party and asked, "When are you going to work at the distribution station?"

"tomorrow"

Ke Na immediately responded, "Actually, I asked Sister Lydia's colleagues yesterday. They were short of manpower, and Sister Lydia was transferred to the port again, so..."

"I'll take you there tomorrow." Wei Ran sighed and brought the harmonica to his mouth again.

"Victor"

"What's wrong?" Wei Ran looked at the other party again.

"Do you know any other tunes?" Cora asked while dragging her chin with her hands, resting her elbows on her knees.

"Yes, of course I will, but I won't show it to you until I catch another mouse."

"Why?" Ke Na asked puzzled, but Wei Ran just smiled, closed his eyes and played the only piece he knew.

(End of this chapter)