Chapter 21 castle in the air

Victor Veloun helps us carry away the housekeeper who is bleeding more and more and getting heavier.Victor, who is highly myopic, was still wearing glasses, so he didn't trip and fall on the stone steps in the stairwell.Victor works as a postman delivering money orders.It's unbelievable that a short-sighted person would do such an errand.Today, whenever Victor is mentioned, I call him poor Victor.My mother became my poor mother because of the family outing on the harbor breakwater.The same goes for Victor, who delivered the money order, because he lost his glasses and turned into poor, glasses-less Victor, but for a different reason.

"Did you see poor Victor afterward?" I asked my friend Vitra every visiting day.Since that time, however, when we took the tram from Flingenn to Gresheim—more on this trip—we have lost Victor Veloun.The only hope is that the spies following him have gone to waste and he has found his own glasses or a pair of glasses that fit his prescription.If possible, still the same as before, if not in the Polish post office, then in the post office of the Federal Republic of Germany as a postman, delivering money orders, although short-sighted, but wearing glasses, delivering colorful banknotes and coins to people bring happiness.

"Isn't that scary!" Yang, who was supporting Kobiela on the left, said out of breath. "If the British and the French don't come, God knows what will happen!" Victor, who was supporting the janitor on the right, said worriedly. "They will come! Liz-Smiegler was saying that on the radio yesterday. We have been assured that if there is a fight, all of France will stand up as one!" Jan said with difficulty. Maintain his confidence until the end of this sentence, because he saw the blood dripping from the back of his cut hand. Although this did not make him doubt the reliability of the French guarantee of the treaty, it worried him. France would stand up as one, keep her promises, and cross the West Wall, perhaps bleeding herself to death.

-------- ①Edward Ritz-Smeigley (1884～1941), Marshal of Poland, served as director of the Polish army after Bilsudski, and fled after the German army invaded Poland in September 1939. ② Refers to the Franco-Polish military agreement signed on May 19, 1939, which stipulated that "Once Germany attacks Poland with its main force, France will launch an offensive against Germany with its main force starting from the fifteenth day after the start of the French general mobilization."In fact, France did not launch an offensive at all, and the Western Front was just a "sit-in war." As for Britain, it did not send four divisions to France until October 11, three weeks after the war in Poland ended.

③ Refers to Germany's western defense line. "They're certainly on their way. The British fleet is already crossing the Baltic!" Victor Veluen liked to say with force and effect.He stopped on the stairs, his right hand immobilized by the wounded caretaker, but his left waved in the air, as if on a stage, and all five fingers cried out in unison: "Come, you proud Britannia!" people!" The two of them, while repeatedly weighing the relationship between Poland, Britain and France, slowly helped Kobiela to the temporary hospital.At this time, Oskar remembered the relevant passage in Gretchen Scheffler's book.Kaiser's "History of Danzig City" said: "During the German-French War from 1870 to 1871, four French warships sailed into Danzig on the afternoon of August 21, 1870. Zewan, at the anchorage, the cannons on the ship have been aimed at the port and the city. At night, the propeller-propelled Kwirt light cruiser 'Nymph' commanded by the German captain Weickmann forced the French to anchor in the bay. The fleet withdraws."

Before we approached the second-floor letter-room, I pondered the following opinion (subsequently confirmed): At the time when the Polish Post Office and all of Poland were under attack, the British fleet was concealed in a harbor somewhere in northern Scotland The huge French army was still eating lunch, and they sent a few small troops to conduct some reconnaissance activities near the Maginot Line①, which was considered to have fulfilled the Franco-Polish Guarantee Treaty.We were stopped by Dr. Michan at the door of the letter storage room and temporary hospital.He also wore a steel helmet, with a knight's handkerchief tucked in a triangle in his breast pocket.At his side was a commissioner from Warsaw named Conrad.Immediately Jan Bronski's terror set in.He pretended to be seriously injured.Victor Verun, unhurt and wearing glasses, was a useful shooter, and was sent downstairs to the business office.We were ordered to stay in this windowless room and light emergency candles, because the Danzig City Electricity Plant no longer wanted to supply electricity to the Polish Post Office.Dr. Michan didn't really believe that Young was badly wounded, but knowing that he was incapable of fighting and that he didn't have to be relied on to defend the post office, he ordered him to be a nurse, tending to the wounded and me, while hurriedly and desperately (I think That's it) stroked my head and asked Jan to take care of it and not let this poor child fall into the flames of war.

-------- ① Maginot Line, a fortification system built by France on the northeast border from 1929 to 1932, named after the then Minister of Defense. The field howitzer shot above the door of the business hall.We all shook.Michan in the helmet, Conrad the Warsaw commissioner, and Veluen the money order rushed downstairs to their combat posts.Jan and I walked into the airtight room that could mute the sound of gunfire, and saw seven or eight wounded already lying there.The howitzers were playing their prestige outside, shaking the candles in the room to flicker.In spite of the groaning wounded, or because of the groaning of the wounded, the room was silent.Hastily and fumblingly, Jan tore strips of cloth from the sheets, bound Corbyella's thighs, and went on to nurse herself.However, my uncle's cheeks and the back of his hands were no longer bleeding.The cut had hardened, but it was a little painful, which fueled Jan's fear, but there was nowhere to vent it in the low, airless room.He fumbled in his pockets and found a deck of cards, all of them missing.Scat!We played Scat until the defense was completely lost.

Thirty-two cards, shuffled, signed, split, played.All the letter baskets had been taken by the wounded, so we had to make Corbyella sit with his back against one of the baskets.Since he often fell over, we ended up tying him up with another wounded man's braces, keeping him in a fixed position, and not allowing him to drop his cards, because we needed Kobiela.Schkat has to be played by three people. If one of the three is missing, won't we be able to fight?Those people lying in the basket have difficulty distinguishing between red and black, and they don't want to play Schkat anymore.Even Kobeira didn't want to play Schkat anymore.He is going to lie down.The inspector wants to let things take their course.He was too lazy to do anything, closed his lashless eyes, and just wanted to see the final demolition of the post office building.But we didn't agree with his fatalistic attitude, so we tied him tightly and forced him to be the third family.Oscar as the second - this little guy will also play Schkater? !However, no one was surprised by this.

-------- ①After the German occupation of Danzig, the building of the Polish Post Office was demolished. The first time I spoke adult language in my voice and said "Eighteen!" ".I then asked, "What about twenty o'clock?" Yang said without hesitation, "I want more." I said, "Twenty-two? Twenty-three? Twenty-four?" Yang said regretfully, "No. "What about Corbyella?Even though he was bound by the straps, he was about to fall over.But we pulled him up again, and after the noise of a cannonball hit farther outside our card room had died down, Jan whispered in the ensuing silence: "Twenty-four, Corbyella! You Didn't you hear the kid call?"

I don't know where, out of what abyss, the housekeeper popped out of nowhere.It appears that he used a screw winch to lift his eyelids.Finally, his wet eyes looked drowsily at the ten cards, which Young had stuffed into his hand thoughtfully, without any tricks of peeking. "No," Corbyella said.In fact, we judged this by the squirming of his lips, because his lips were too dry to speak. I play a set of clubs.Jan called "Double."It's time to play a card, Yang shouted at Kobiela, and lightly poked his ribs to cheer him up, and followed him to play a card.I first hung out the ace in their hands, sacrificing the K of clubs, and let Young eat the J of spades①.The ten of diamonds was raised, and I took it with the trump card, because I was short of diamonds.I play, a Jack of Hearts flopping a Ten, and Kobiela pads a Nine of Diamonds.I threw a straight hand of hearts and won it with a 10-10 chance.I calculated: a total of forty-eight points, or twelve pfennigs!In the next game, I was more nervous when I took the risk of playing no master with two trumps missing.Kobiela had two jacks in his hand, but he didn't take them until thirty-three.He ate my Jack of Diamonds with the Jack of Clubs.The janitor picked up his opponent's cards, and his momentum picked up.He played the ace of diamonds, I played a card of the same suit, raised a ten for extra points, and Kobiela got it.He played another king, I should have taken it, but instead of taking it, I put in an eight of clubs, Jan took it, and he played a ten of spades, and I played a bigger card than that, damn it!Corbyella played the Jack of Spades, I forgot the card, and I might have thought it was in Young's hand, but it was actually in Corbyella's hand.He naturally played another spade, I discarded the card, and Yang added another point.Then I got it when they made hearts, but it didn't help anymore.I counted and counted only fifty-two.Lost one hundred and twenty points, thirty pfennigs.Jan lent me two guilders in change.While I was counting the money, Kobiela, though he had won the cards, fell down again, wanting no one to pay him, and even for a split second he let the first explosion of an anti-tank shell hit the stairwell Yes, even though it was his stairwell, the one he'd tirelessly cleaned over the years.

-------- ① Among the Skater cards, J is the trump card, and the order of size is clubs, spades, hearts, and diamonds.If there is a master, the card of a certain suit is also the trump card, and the order of size is A, ten, K, Q, nine, eight, seven. At this time, the door of the letter storage room began to shake, and the candlelight somehow fell over, and it was better to fall down in which direction, and Jan became frightened again.The stairwell was quieter again, and the next anti-tank round exploded only in the distance, on the wall in front of the post office, but Young was still mad as he shuffled the cards.He dealt the wrong cards twice, but I didn't say anything.As long as they were shooting, Jan couldn't hear the others.He was so nervous, dealt the wrong cards, even forgot to close the last two cards, and kept listening out with one of his two small, sensitive, fat ears, while we were impatient Waiting for him to call and play.Young became more and more absent-minded, but Kobiela was concentrating on playing Schat, although she wanted to poke his ribs anytime and anywhere to prevent his body from falling down.He was in bad shape, but he wasn't playing badly.Whenever he won a set he was playing, or got unlucky from Young who called "double," or ruined my tiebreaker, he always fell down.He is no longer interested in winning or losing.He just plays cards for the sake of playing cards.When we finished calculating the score, his body, which was bound by our borrowed suspenders, slanted to one side, and only his Adam's apple was terribly moving to show that the janitor Kobiela was still alive. Oscar also took great pains to play this three-man scutt.The siege and defense of the post office, with all the uproar and vibrations it caused, did not strain his nerves too much.What tires him is the fact that, for the first time, he has suddenly torn off all his disguise—for a while, of course.Up to that day, I had only revealed myself to Master Bebra and his sleepwalking wife Rosweta, and now I am in the presence of my uncle and imaginary father, a crippled housekeeper, and the future Rehabilitation in front of the wounded, determined not to come out as witnesses, showed them a fifteen-year-old semi-adult who matched my birth certificate, playing skat, a little recklessly, but not unskillfully.I made no attempt to pretend, but it was such a struggle for my midget-like body that after nearly an hour of playing I had severe pains in my extremities and head. Oscar wanted to wash his hands and quit.He could have been hit by a shell, shaking the building, and the next shell would have slipped away before it arrived.But a sense of duty that he had never felt bid him to persevere, to deal with the fears in his supposed father by the only effective means—playing the skat. So we keep playing and don't let Corbyella die.He couldn't care less about dying because I was trying so hard not to let the game stop.When the cannonball exploded in the stairwell, the candles were all down, and all went out, the only one who thought about what to do next was me.I took the matches out of Jan's pocket, along with Jan's gold filter cigarettes.I brought light back into the world, lit a Regata for Jan, and calmed him down.Before Kobiela could take advantage of the darkness to die, I lit the candles one by one in the darkness. Oscar glued two candles to his new drum, and kept the cigarettes beside him, not smoking himself, but handing one to Jan after a while, and letting Kobyella take one from his crooked mouth.Things improved, the game came alive, the cigarettes comforted and sedated, but Young kept losing game after game.Jan Bronski was sweating and licking his upper lip as he did when he was absorbed in something.He was so engrossed in his game that he called me Alfred or Matzerath and thought of Kobiela as my poor mother who played cards with him.When someone shouted "Conrad was killed!" in the hallway, Young looked at me reproachfully and said, "I beg you, Alfred, turn off the radio! I can't even hear my voice!" When they opened the door of the letter room and dragged a finished Conrad straight in, poor Young really lost his temper. "Shut the door, it's windy!" he protested.Really brought in the wind.The candle flickered and almost went out.It wasn't until they slammed Conrad into a corner, turned around, and closed the door behind them that the candlelight died down.The three of us must have looked strange.Candlelight shines on us from bottom to top, making us look like almighty magicians. Kobiela wanted to play hearts short of two kings, and he called: twenty-seven, thirty, no, he made a throat-cleaning gurgling sound, rolled his eyes constantly, and seemed to have something in his right shoulder. The thing tried to come out, twitched, throbbed like crazy, and finally calmed down.However, this caused Corbyella to fall forward, and the basket tied to his body, the letters in the basket, and the dead man without the straps also fell.It was too late to say it, but it was so fast, Yang exerted all his strength to support Kobiela and the basket at once.After Kobiela, who wanted to escape, was caught, he finally grunted "red heart" from his throat, Yang then spat out "double" from his teeth, and Kobiela squeezed out "double again".At this moment, Oskar understood that the defense of the Polish post office had been won, and the attackers had already lost the war as soon as they started it, even though they occupied Alaska and Tibet, Easter Island and Jerusalem in the course of the war. -------- ① Easter Island belongs to the Netherlands. The only bad thing is that Yang holds four aces in his hand, and he can play a set of 120 points without a master. If he wins, he can add 48 points, but he can't finish this set. Yang played the club first.At this time, he called me Agnes and regarded Kobiela as his love rival Matzerath.Then he feinted a jack of diamonds - I'd rather be mistaken for my poor mother than Matzerath - then a jack of hearts - I wouldn't anyway Willing to be mistaken for Matzerath—Jan waited impatiently until the Matzerath (who was actually a crippled caretaker named Kobiela) dropped his cards; Just played the card, but after Young slapped the Ace of Hearts to the floor, he couldn't and didn't want to understand, and he never would, because he was just a child with blue eyes and an air of The smell of cologne, never understanding anything, and therefore he did not understand why suddenly Corbyella let all the cards fall from his hand, overturning the basket, the letter in the basket, and the dead man lying on it.The dead man rolled down first, then the basket of letters, and finally the empty basket.Letters flood us, as if we were the recipients, as if now we should put the Scuttle cards aside and read the Epistles or collect stamps.But Young wanted neither to read the Epistles nor to collect stamps—he had grown up collecting too many stamps—now he just wanted to play cards and become his masterless.Young wants to win, to win.So he lifted Corbyella so that the wheels of the basket were on the ground, but let the other dead man lie on the ground, and did not pick up the letters to increase the strength of the basket (although this was not enough).He was just blindly surprised, looking at Kobeira.Kobiela hung on the very light and wobbly basket, showing a look of restlessness and restlessness, and slowly fell down again.At last Jan yelled at him, "Alfred, I beg you, keep playing and don't make a fuss, you hear? That's the game, and we'll go home when we're done, listen to me!" Oscar stood up tiredly, his limbs and head ached more and more.He gritted his teeth, put his strong little drummer's hand on Jan Bronski's shoulder, and forced himself to say the following, in a small but moving voice: "Let him go, Papa. He's dead and won't play any more. Let's play sixty-six if you like!" As soon as I called him Dad, Jan let go of the out-of-body body of the caretaker, stared at me with his blue flood-like eyes, and cried loudly: "No no no no ..." I stroked him, but he still cried "no no no".I kissed him meaningfully, but he was only thinking about the unfinished fight. "I would have won, Agnes. I would have won this game and gone home," he told me, as if I were my poor mother, and I - his son - simply Playing the part, agreeing with him, swearing to God that he would have won, he had won, he had only to believe it, and to listen to his Agnes.But Jan didn't trust me, nor my mother.Crying loudly, then humming incoherently in a low voice, he pulled the schkatter from under Corbyella's iceberg-like body, then searched between his legs, causing some letters to roll down like an avalanche. .He didn't stop until he found all thirty-two cards.He wiped the sticky blood from the cards that had seeped from Corbyella's pants.After he wiped off the cards one by one, he began to shuffle the cards and wanted to deal the cards. His brain—the forehead was in a good shape, not low at all, but the skin on the forehead was too slippery and not easy to penetrate—his brain finally Got it, there is no third person in the world to play skat with him anymore. It was very quiet in the mail room.There was also a full minute of silence outside to pay tribute to the last Skater player and the "third man".The door opened gently.It was Oscar who noticed the movement again.He looked up, expecting something otherworldly, but instead he saw the face of Victor Veluen, glassesless, squinting blindly. "I lost my glasses, Jan. Are you still there? Let's run away! The French are not coming, or they are too late. Come with me, Jan. Lead me, I lost my glasses!" Poor Victor probably thought he was in the wrong room, because no one answered him, no one gave him glasses, and Jan didn't reach out to him to lead him away.So he withdrew his glasses-free face, closed the door, and I heard Victor's footsteps, groping his way away in the fog in front of him. God knows what ridiculous thoughts are spinning in Yang's little head.He burst into tears, but laughed, first softly, then loudly, with great joy, teasing his pink, pointy tongue, throwing the skat in the air, and catching it again.There were only silent people and silent letters in the room, so that the atmosphere was like a windless and silent Sunday.Finally, Jan began to hold his breath and build a fragile house of cards with delicate movements.He used the Seven of Spades and the Q of Clubs as a wall, and put a King of Diamonds on top to form the bottom layer.Then use the nine of hearts and the ace of spades as the wall, and put the eight of clubs on it to form another bottom floor.He used ten and J as the walls, Q and A as the roof, and built a second floor on the two bottom floors, and each small room supported each other.He then resolved to add a third layer to the second.His hand seemed to be drawing a spell, which resembled another religious ritual, which my poor mother must have been familiar with.When Jan brought the Q of Hearts and the King of Hearts together, the building did not collapse; no, it was ventilated, and in the room full of dead men who were not breathing and two living men sitting holding their breath In the letter room, the building is also breathing slightly, let us sit with our hands crossed and watch, so that the skeptical Oscar - who is familiar with the rules of building a house of cards - forgets to look through the crack in the door of the letter room. The choking smoke and burnt smell coming in from the inside made people feel that the letter storage room and the house of cards inside were adjacent to hell, separated only by a wall and a door. -------- ①Building a house with cards is also a kind of children's game, and it is also a metaphor for an unreliable plan or a castle in the air. Instead of attacking head-on, they used flamethrowers to smoke out the last few defenders.So cornered was Dr. Michan that he took off his helmet, grabbed a piece of sheet cloth, and, thinking it was not enough, drew out his little knight's handkerchief, held one in each hand, and shook it vigorously to show the surrender of the Polish Post Office.They, thirty half-blind, burnt men, put their hands up and hugged the back of their necks, left the post office building, exited through the left side door, and stood in front of the courtyard wall, waiting for the militiamen who were slowly approaching.It was later said that during this short period of time, when the defenders were standing in the courtyard, and the assailant was on his way, three or four fled.From the garage of the post office they slipped through the garage of the adjoining police station and into houses on the banks of the Rem that had been evacuated and not guarded by troops.They found clothes there, even party emblems, took a shower, dressed and went out, slipping away one by one.One of them, it is said, went to an optician's shop in the old city ditch and bought a pair of spectacles, since his original pair had been lost in the battle at the post office.This, of course, was Victor Veloun.He put on new glasses and had a beer at the Lumber Market, and another later, as his lips were scorched and thirsty from the flamethrower.Although his new glasses were not as good as the old ones, they cleared up a bit of the fog in front of his eyes after all.He escaped, and to this day he is still fleeing, as his pursuers are on his heels. When the rest—I mean the thirty who hadn't made up their minds to run away—were standing under the wall facing the side door, Jan just put the Q of Hearts and the King of Hearts close together, and then happily withdrew his hand. . What else can I say?They found us.They yanked open the door, shouting, "Come out!" The air flowed in, and the wind blew in, knocking down the house of cards.They are ignorant of such architecture.They only believe in cement.They only build permanent structures.The post office secretary, Bronski, was offended and scowled, but they dismissed it.When they dragged him out, they didn't see Jan reach out again to take something from the deck.They didn't see me, Oskar, sweep the candle stub from my newly acquired drum to the ground, and take the drum with me; the candle stub was useless, because they shone us with so many flashlights; but they I didn't notice that the light from the flashlight made us unable to open our eyes and couldn't find the door.They were holding submachine guns behind the light of the flashlights, and they kept shouting, "Come out!" when Jan and I were already standing in the corridor, and they kept shouting, "Come out!" Ladd, named Purbeck, called Wischnewski who worked in the telegraph reception room during his lifetime.The fact that these people did not obey orders frightened them.They yelled: "Come out!" I couldn't help laughing out loud, and the militia realized that they had made a fool of themselves in front of me and Yang, so they stopped yelling and said, "That's it!" He took Yang to the yard of the post office and stood with the thirty people.They all put their arms up and put their hands on the back of their necks, so thirsty they were caught in the newsreels. As soon as the militiamen escorted us out of the side door, the newsreel shooter turned the camera fixed on a car and filmed us in that very short film.Later, the short film was screened in all cinemas. They pulled me out of the group that was standing under the wall.At this time, Oscar remembered that he was a dwarf, that a three-year-old child was not responsible for anything, and felt the pain in his head and limbs, and let himself fall to the ground struggling with the drum in his arms.This attack, half real, half fake, has always clung to my drum.They picked me up, put me in an SS car, and were going to take me to the city hospital.When the car was driving, Oscar saw Jan. Poor Jan was smirking alone in a dazed and happy way, holding a few cards in his raised hand, and a card in his left hand—I believe, it was the Queen of Hearts—towards Oscar, the son who drove away, waved.