"It's right here, come on down." Before Wei Ran finished speaking, he had already opened the car door.
Ralph, who was sitting in the driver's seat, looked at the Finnish signboard hanging at the door of the small hotel, and finally shook his head helplessly. He was not as knowledgeable as his cheap grandfather Noah, who could understand Finnish and Norwegian.
Wei Ran, who got out of the car one step ahead, waited for Ralph to park the car and follow him, then gently pushed open the wooden door that was two meters high but only less than one and a half meters wide.
Accompanied by the pleasant sound of wind chimes, behind the counter facing the wooden door, a silver-haired old lady also raised her head and slowly put on her reading glasses.
"Do you have a reservation?" The old lady's kind tone contained a trace of Finnish alienation.
Wei Ran shook his head, "No reservations."
"How many days will you stay?" the old lady chased away the fat cat lying on her lap and continued to ask.
Wei Ran was not in a hurry to answer, but looked up at the oil paintings hanging on the walls of the lobby of this small hotel. Without exception, in the lower right corner of these oil paintings there was an abstract windmill and the letter "m".
The combined pattern.
Ralph, who was originally standing behind him, immediately widened his eyes after seeing those oil paintings. Although it was the first time for him to see these oil paintings, the conspicuous sign in the lower right corner was different from the one at the entrance of the gallery he took care of.
The signs are the same!
"Those oil paintings are not for sale," the old lady reminded and then asked again, "How many days will you stay?"
Hearing this, Wei Ran finally looked away, "I want to find Mr. Karl and Mr. Konon."
"Who are you looking for?" The old lady's unchanging tone finally changed.
"Mr. Carr and Mr. Conon," Weiran said again, "or Mr. Flory, the comedian, and Mr. Jason, his copywriter."
"God! Where did you know these names?" The old lady stood up and asked in surprise.
It was only then that Wei Ran signaled Ralph, who was in a daze, to come over, took out the pocket watch with a gold case and the document that had been knocked over by ink from his briefcase, and placed them one by one on the old wooden counter.
on, "Ma'am, do you remember these things?"
The old lady picked up her pocket watch and looked at it, then picked up the ID book and looked at it. After a long time, she replied, "Remember, of course I remember, these are Uncle Konon's things, and even this ID book belongs to me."
It turned out like this when I accidentally knocked over the ink bottle in the drawer when I was a kid!
But I haven't seen them since. Young man, where did you get them? And where did you learn the names of my father Carl and my uncle Conon?"
"It's a long story."
Without a blush, Wei Ran attributed the reason why he found this place to the fact that he found the Soviet KGB investigation record after Konon mailed fake news to Pravda and was discovered. And he followed that investigation record all the way.
Found it here.
"Young man, what should I call you?" the old lady asked with a sigh.
"Victor"
“It’s a good name”
The old lady stretched out her hand in a very formal manner, "I am Tinia, the daughter of Mr. Karl you are looking for. Unfortunately, my father passed away more than ten years ago. My uncle, Mr. Konon, died after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Time also passed away.”
"I am very sorry to hear this news"
Wei Ran said apologetically that although he had known the result for a long time, the same news still made him feel unspeakably sad when the same news came from the mouth of Karl's daughter, a silver-haired old lady.
For the metal book that can send him back to that war and back again, and for the Weiran itself, the so-called changes in time are just two white lights that dazzle his eyes, but for the stories he has personally experienced
Man, that moment was more than half a century of waiting and searching.
"Although my father Karl and my uncle Konon have passed away, I still know the stories between them and those Germans."
The old lady Tinia picked up the document that he had blackened with ink and looked at it, and then asked, "So you found this place on behalf of a descendant of a German soldier named Yannick Muller?
"
"Indeed it is"
Wei Ran said this and patted the shoulder of Ralph next to him, "The son of the German soldier Yannick asked me to investigate the whereabouts of his father, and the young man next to me is the client's grandson Ralph."
Old Mrs. Tinia looked carefully at Ralph, who had no idea what they were talking about. She kindly pushed all the documents and pocket watches on the counter, and then walked out of the counter tremblingly, hunched over.
, took the two of them into the corner room on the first floor.
The three walls of this room are lined with a circle of bookshelves, and on the wall with the window, many photos are hung.
Old Mrs. Tinia tried to stand up straight, pointed at the group photo in one of the photos and said, "In that group photo, the shortest person is my father Karl, and the one next to him has one eye wrapped in gauze.
The tall man is my uncle Konon.
And this room was their former office. When I was very young, this was also my playground. I heard them tell more than once that during the war years, they became friends with a few Germans in a hunter’s cabin in a canyon.
A friend’s story.”
When Old Lady Tinia said this, she realized that Ralph had already taken a video with his mobile phone at Weiran's prompt. But she didn't care, and instead kindly motioned for the two of them to sit on the sofa by the window.
After coming down, she continued to tell the stories she had heard when she was a child, telling every detail of Wei Ran's personal experience.
Until the end, the old lady said with regret, "When I became an adult, I became the assistant of my father and Uncle Conon. They made a lot of money from comedy performances at that time. But I remember clearly, their first
The thing is to buy the land where the hunter's cabin I just mentioned is located. And what they have always wanted to do most is to turn what they experienced in that hunter's cabin into a script at the right time.
on the stage."
"What happened next?" Wei Ran, who had been avoiding the camera, couldn't help but ask. What happened next was not mentioned in the metal book, and it was also something he had never experienced.
"Later, my uncle Mr. Konon committed suicide on the night when the Soviet Union collapsed. After all, he was a Soviet, not a Finn, and he couldn't be a Russian."
Tinia said sadly, "Since then, my father has completely bid farewell to the stage, and even the scripts they have written are forever locked in the safe of the hunter's cabin. I still remember that
The name of the script is Friendship in the Blizzard, and I still remember some of the lines in it."
"Mrs. Tinia," Wei Ran asked hard-heartedly after a moment of silence, "That hunter's cabin and those German soldiers now..."
"The hunter's cabin is still there."
Old lady Tinia said calmly, "Every winter, I ask my son to repair the old house. As for the corpses of the Germans, according to my father, they have always been placed in the ice cellar, but the entrance to the ice cellar
It was sealed by my grandfather when I was very young. My son went to look for it a few years ago, but unfortunately he could not find the entrance to the ice cellar."
"I..."
"Can"
The old lady gave an affirmative answer without even waiting for Wei Ran to finish, "Whether it's taking the German home or going to the hunter's cabin to have a look. But I can't take you there."
You have to wait until my son gets off work and ask him to take you there."
Wei Ran heard this and said quickly, "It doesn't matter, we are waiting impatiently."
"So, how many days are you going to stay?" the old lady asked suddenly.
Wei Ran was stunned for a moment, then said with a smile, "Just one day for now! We need two rooms."
"Wait here, I'll get you the keys and make a pot of coffee." Old Mrs. Tinia stood up slowly, opened the door and walked out.
"Victor, please explain what's going on!" Ralph, who is extremely well-mannered, asked after finishing the video shooting.
After briefly recounting the cause and effect, Wei Ran gave an additional reminder, "Ralph, my work has been completed. I leave it to you on how to convey everything that happened in the winter of 1944 to Mr. Noah."
Ralph nodded, hesitated for a moment, walked to the window and dialed Noah's phone. After a brief communication, he also sent the video he had just taken.
"My grandpa Noah will be here as soon as possible."
After putting away his phone, Ralph asked apologetically, "Victor, if it's okay, can you go with me to the hunter's cabin in the canyon later? I don't know where to find someone who can."
Understand Finnish and German translations.”
"As long as I can catch the flight back to China tomorrow," Wei Ran agreed happily. He also wanted to see what the hunter's cabin looked like now.
They didn't have to wait long. A man who looked about forty years old walked into the hotel in a hurry and greeted Wei Ran and Ralph enthusiastically. There was no trace of the "shy" stereotype of Finnish people.
”.
This man who looked very similar to Carl back then was Tinia's son Andy. After his self-introduction, Wei Ran found out that Andy was actually a well-known cross-country player in the local area.
Ski instructor.
What happened next was much simpler. The two parties exchanged a few words, and Andy immediately took them out of the hotel and drove to a ski resort on the edge of the city.
I have to admit that Finland is really a country that produces racing drivers. On such a snowy road that is less than ten kilometers away, the off-road vehicle Andy drove was pressing the accelerator almost the whole way, showing off his skills from time to time.
It's a drifting turn on the icy road.
This was fine for Wei Yan, who had just completed the skydiving challenge not long ago and had already flown in the plane piloted by Dalia several times. However, Ralph, who was sitting next to him, was almost scared to death.
The three of them didn't wait long in the off-road vehicle with the heater on. A big red rescue helicopter slowly landed in the open space directly in front of the car.
"Let's go, that place is a bit far from here." Andy opened the door and asked Weiyan and Ralph to follow him and get into the cabin of the helicopter.
It was obvious that he was familiar with the helicopter pilot. He just said "go to the hunter's cabin" and the latter controlled the helicopter to take off and fly out.
Less than half an hour later, as the helicopter began to lower its altitude, Wei Yan gradually matched the topography outside the window with that in his memory.
Amidst the roar of the propellers, the rescue helicopter advanced along a deep canyon at low altitude, and finally landed skillfully in an open space in the middle of a coniferous forest.
"Come down and take a look, it's right here."
Andy waited until the helicopter stalled before opening the hatch, beckoning Wei Yan and Ralph to come down, and walked through the knee-deep snow to the door of the pointed hunter's cabin.
More than half a century has passed, although this cabin has an iron roof, and the log walls seem to have been reinforced, and there is even a locked barbed wire fence surrounding the hunter's cabin.
But compared with when Wei Ran and others took shelter here from the blizzard, the overall change was not big. Only the room used as a utility room was moved from the left to the right of the hunter's cabin, blocking the former door.
The door that originally connected the utility room has become a main door, and a solid wood platform has been paved at the door.
When Andy used the key to open the locked door, Wei Ran bypassed the solid wooden platform at the door without leaving a trace and walked into the interior of the hunter's cabin. He immediately found several very familiar things on the table by the window.
There were two dusty medicine boxes on the log table, one of which was filled with various medical instruments, and the other contained some old-fashioned shaving and barbering tools. There is no doubt that these are Dr. Jason's relics.
In addition, there is a deck of playing cards, a harmonica, several cloth bags rolled up in trouser legs, a palm-sized iron box, and a camera once used by Weihan on the table.
At Andy's signal, Wei Ran gently opened the rusty iron box, which was filled with semi-elliptical metal pieces.
Many of the names recorded on these metal plates are extremely unfamiliar to Wei Ran, but some of them are extremely familiar. Among those familiar names are Luca, Flory, Jason, and others.
Yannick is what we are looking for on this trip.
"I'm sure that the Yannick you are looking for should be here." Andy said apologetically, "But we don't know where the basement entrance to the ice cellar is."
"Mrs. Tinia said that Mr. Karl and Mr. Conon once created a script based on what happened in this hut?" Wei Ran closed the tin box again and reminded, "Maybe it was mentioned in their script.
Woolen cloth?"
Andy's eyes lit up when he heard this, "Victor, you reminded me, maybe it's really possible!"
At this time, there was no need for Wei Ran to say anything. Andy immediately moved away from the sofa facing the fireplace, then opened a small safe hidden in the corner and took out a loose-leaf book in a waterproof bag.
Through the waterproof bag, Wei Ran could clearly see that on the first page of this loose-leaf book, the same name - To Friendship in the Blizzard - was written in two different characters and fonts, Russian and Finnish.
The error-free chapters of "War Photographer's Notes" will continue to be updated.
