In the basement that turned into a tomb, Ke Na put the piece of chalk in her hand back into the crack in the wall, turned around and threw herself into Wei Ran's arms, while trembling her shoulders and pleading, "Victor, promise me
, if...if I die too, can you bury me here too?"
"I..."
Wei Ran sighed and gently hugged this thin girl who could feel her bones through her clothes, "I promise you, if you die too, I will bury you here too."
After sniffing, Kona took a step back and walked out without any hesitation and said, "I'm going to get today's bread and see if I can get anything extra."
"I'm going to catch mice"
Wei Ran paused and asked like he had asked Lidya, "Shall we go back together later? You wait for me here."
"Okay...ok..." Kena nodded and stumbled away from the ruins.
Watching the girl walk away, Wei Ran turned around and looked at the wall. After a moment of silence, he silently took out his camera, pointed at the hot red words and pressed the shutter.
"Enough already, no more deaths..."
Wei Ran murmured to himself, put away his camera and walked out of the cold tomb and ruins. Dragging the small airdrop box, he walked step by step towards the ruins of the nursing home where rat traps were arranged.
Unfortunately, when he dug through the snow again and again and pulled out the mouse cage stuck in the gap, he only received disappointment again and again.
Although he knew that there was a high probability that no mice could be caught in this place, Wei Ran, who didn't know where to place the mouse trap for a while, could only stuff it back, erase the footprints again, and pull it
The empty airdrop box circled around for a few times before turning around and heading back.
After waiting for a moment near the ruins where the basement was located, Kona also came back carrying a sack.
"How are you going to explain it to the children?" Wei Ran asked the other party while walking back as he motioned for the other party to sit on the airdrop box.
"Sister Lydia was transferred to the port to work." Kona had obviously already thought of an excuse, but his eyes were just looking at the ruins along the way with a blank expression.
Sighing secretly, Wei Ran, against the cold wind and snow, pulled Ke Na back to the door of the small cement house on the edge of the playground at two or three o'clock in the afternoon.
Still, before Kona could get off the airdrop box, the door that was locked from the inside was already opened by the children.
However, compared to the excitement and cheers before, this time the faces of these children were obviously full of panic and fear.
"What's wrong with you?"
As Kona spoke, she knelt down and hugged the little girl Anastasia, who was sucking her fingers and staggering towards her.
"Sister Kena, where are sisters Lidia?" Alexander, the child king, asked in panic.
"She won't be back in a short time." Kona's worried look immediately made the children's nervous breathing stop.
"she..."
"She was transferred to the port"
Kona sighed heavily, "Recently, the ice on Lake Ladoga has become more and more solid, and more and more transport vehicles are running on it, which requires more manpower, so as soon as Sister Lidya came back
He was transferred."
"Will she come back?"
Anastasia, who was held in Kona's arms, asked in a sweet voice. This little girl was only five or six years old. To her, Lydia was already the same in some ways.
Existing like "mother".
"Where else can she go if she doesn't come back?"
Kona responded matter-of-factly as she carried the little girl into the cement house, "She also agreed to go to the zoo with us to watch Uncle Matvey's animal show."
"But what about our concert tonight?" A little guy named Sergey asked innocently, "Sister Lydia is not here, who will accompany us?"
"Of course I will accompany you," Ke Na said confidently, "I will accompany you, and I will lead you to sing together."
"There is still one person missing," a little girl whose name Wei Ran couldn't remember couldn't help but muttered.
"Let me accompany you," Wei Ran took the initiative to come up and said, "Actually, I can also play the bayanqin."
"You can do it too?" Ke Na looked at Wei Ran suspiciously, "I remember you said you couldn't."
"I lied to you." Wei Ran spread his hands pretending to be proud, and at the same time glanced at the stack of firewood placed against the wall of the house without leaving any trace.
"My mother said that men are liars."
The little girl named Oujia smiled and deliberately teased Wei Ran. The girl named Sasha beside her also nodded and glanced at the child king Alexander subconsciously.
"Women are better at lying"
Wei Ran, who was trying hard to joking, was stunned after saying this. He had said this to Lidya when he guessed that Lidya's son who had deceived Mrs. Wea was still alive.
It's just a few days, and he still needs to lie to conceal the news of Lydia's death.
"Victor is right! Women are better at lying!"
The deputy child king named Alyosha said subconsciously, "Just like Olga, she has lied to me several times."
As soon as this opposing topic was brought up, these children, big and small, immediately got into a frenzy and forgot what the original topic was. And Kona, who was holding the little girl in her arms, a girl who was not technically an adult, also quietly
Wiped the corners of his eyes.
"I'll prepare dinner"
Wei Ran whispered something into the other person's ear, and Ke Na nodded and followed the children into the warm basement.
After locking the door of the cement house, Wei Ran brought two pots of boiling water from the basement and a horse head. After carefully scalding it, he started plucking the hair alone.
Finally, he brought out a bucket of red-hot charcoal and carefully scalded the smelly horse head. Then he put it into a separate enamel pot, added water and placed it on the stove in the basement.
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! While the horse head was boiling, Wei Ran also added a small half of dried fish and a finger-thick piece to another enamel pot that had been cooking on the stove.
Dog fish meat, and put some coarse salt in it.
After cooking this extraordinarily simple dinner, he was busy with the little baby. Galina made a bottle of honey water and handed it to the girl named Sasha, asking her to help feed the infant little guy.
While he was busy here, the children were also taking turns shaking the pedals used to generate electricity, driving the simple radio, and listening to the news on the radio station.
Kona, on the other hand, took advantage of feeding honey water to the baby Galina and hid in the shadows in the deepest corner of the basement.
Finally, when the basement was filled with the aroma of broth, the girl also handed the bayangqin in her arms to Wei Ran.
"What are you going to sing?" Wei Ran, who had just been processing the intestines of the military horses brought back from the surface, wiped his hands on his pants first, then took the bayangqin and hung it on his chest awkwardly.
forward.
"Let's play the simplest international song first"
Kona said with some embarrassment, and the children who had been listening to the radio just now also supplied power to the car lights in response to the situation.
Suddenly, the basement, which had just darkened due to the sky outside, was lit up with lights. Several older children, led 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 let's sing an international song..." Wei Ran sighed and pressed his fingers on the keys with a slight trembling.
Driven by the inexplicable sense of familiarity and almost muscle memory, he also successfully played the accompaniment of the Internationale on the bayan.
"Get up, you who are being cursed..."
Standing in the middle of the basement, Ke Na began to sing along with Wei Ran's accompaniment. Under her gestures, the children around her, big and small, also began to sing hard together.
Amidst the loud singing that almost overturned the ceiling of the basement, the faces of the children and the girl standing in the center gradually gained hopeful smiles.
"Next is Katyusha!"
As soon as this song was finished, Ke Na "on-demand" another song that all children knew, and Wei Ran started playing the accompaniment of this song without stopping.
After a while, the children's chorus rang out again in this warm, solid and hidden basement.
During the period before supper, the children sang one song after another that had been sung together when Mrs. Via and Lydia were alive.
Nowadays, although two crucial people are missing from this small choir, the voices of these children who have barely filled their bellies have become stronger and louder.
Although they were still skinny and skinny, with sunken cheeks and protruding cheekbones, Wei Ran, who was playing the bayan accompaniment at this time, finally didn't have to worry about any of these little guys falling down and never getting up again.
With the accompaniment of one song after another, outside the window covered by the shutter, the sky finally turned completely dark, and the heavy snow that had been raging all day finally stopped, and even the biting cold wind
, there is also a easing trend.
Just when the children who sang one song after another finally drank broth and ate 100 grams of black bread per person, far away on the ice of Lake Ladoga, a huge transport team braved the cold and night
Once again I chose to leave the port.
And above the head of the basement, Wei Ran, who had finished his dinner in a hurry, also took out the boiled almost boneless horse head from the pot under the dim light of the candle, and carefully picked out the meat and chopped it into pieces.
, together with the horse stomach bag cut into thin strips, stuffed into the washed horse fat intestine.
Not long after, Kona also walked out of the basement and covered it with wooden boards to block the sound of the radio. With the help of this girl who was actually silent for a long time and learned to lie, she cooked the horse head broth.
It turned into aspic, and strings of horse meat sausages were hung around the chimney.
