Chapter 32 nativity play

At that time, people talked about its miracle weapon and ultimate victory.We, the ashes, talk neither of this nor of that, but we truly possess miracle weapons. -------- ① Refers to the propaganda before the defeat of Nazi Germany.Known as "miracle weapons" are the V-1 and V-2 missiles. After Oskar took over the leadership of this group of thirty or forty people, I first asked Stuartbeck to introduce me to the leader of the Neufa Wasser faction.More Keina, seventeen years old, lame, the son of a responsible officer of the New Channel Pilotage Bureau Saussure (Ferdinandde Saussure, 1857-1913) Swiss linguistics, due to disability - the right leg is two centimeters shorter than the left leg - both Cannot serve as an Air Force Auxiliary or be drafted into the military.Although Molkena flaunted his lameness visibly, he was also shy and soft-spoken.This perpetually sly smiling young man was a top student at the Konrad School's senior class, and if the Russian Army did not object, he might well have passed his final exams with distinction.More Keener wanted to go to college to study philosophy.

Just as Stuartbeck respected me, so the cripple unconditionally regards me as Jesus, leading the ashes.At the beginning, Oscar asked the two factions to show him the warehouse and the vault.The two factions gathered the proceeds of the excursions in the same cellar.The cellar in a quiet, elegant villa on the Jeschken Valley Road in the Langfur district is spacious and dry.The villa is covered with various creeping plants, separated from the street by a gently sloping lawn, and the owner is the parents of the shirtless angel, using the surname "Von Puttkammer".Monsieur von Puttkammer stayed in fair France, commanded a division, and was a Knight's Cross of Pomeranian-Polish-Prussian descent.Mrs. Elisabeth von Puttkammer was sickly and had gone to Upper Bayan a few months ago to recuperate there.And Wolfgang von Puttkammer, whom the ashes-scatterers called the shirtless angel, became the owner of the villa.The old maid who stayed at the villa to look after the young master was almost deaf, and we never once saw it, because we went to the cellar through the laundry room.

In the warehouse are cans, tobacco and many bales of parachutes.Two dozen military watches hung on a shelf, and the shirtless angels moved the watches according to the order of Stieterbeck, and the time on the watches was also adjusted to be exactly the same.He also had to scrub two machine guns, a submachine gun and several pistols.They also showed me an anti-tank rocket launcher, machine gun ammunition, and twenty-five hand grenades.All this and a large row of gasoline cans are prepared for the attack on the Economic Bureau.And so Oscar gave his first order in Jesus' name: "Bury the weapons and gasoline in the garden. Give the firing pins to Jesus. We use another weapon!"

The boys showed me another cigarette case full of looted medals and badges of honor.I smiled and allowed them to take possession of the decorations.I should have taken the paratrooper's knives off these lads.The blade on the handle is so beautiful, I am eager to try it, and they will really use it in the future. Then they took me to the vault.Oscar asked them to count in person, review, and record the balance of the treasury as 2,420 Reichsmarks.It was the beginning of September 1944.By mid-January 1945, when Konev and Zhukov broke through the Weixel line, we were forced to abandon the vault in the cellar.The shirtless angel confessed, and on the table of the State Supreme Court lay the bundles of banknotes we handed over, amounting to thirty-six thousand Reichsmarks.

-------- ① Konev and Zhukov were famous Soviet generals during World War II. In my nature, Oscar always stayed behind the scenes when it came to action.During the day, mostly alone, sometimes accompanied by Stieterbeck, I searched for worthwhile targets for nighttime operations, and then let Stieterbeck or Morkena organize the implementation without me leaving Truczynski Auntie's apartment, in the middle of the night, standing at the bedroom window, using a voice with a more remote effect than before-now I call it a miracle weapon-singing to smash the ground floor windows of many party offices, a company that prints daily necessities tickets The backyard windows of the printing house, and once, reluctantly at their request, shattered the kitchen windows of a Senate teacher's private house, because the lads were taking revenge on him.

It was now November. The V-1 and V-2 missiles are flying to England, and my singing is flying over Longfur, along the woods of Hindenburg Street, over the railway station, the old city and the old city, visiting Butcher Lane and the museum, let the lad They broke in and looked for the carved wooden stern of Niobe. They did not find her.In the next room, Madam Truczynski, who was shaking her head and slumped in her chair, had something in common with me.Oscar was singing at a distance, and she was thinking at a distance, looking for her son Herbert in the sky, and her son Fritz in the middle of the front line.Her eldest daughter, Gust, married in the Rhineland in early 1944, and Mrs. Truczynski looked for her in faraway Düsseldorf.Her husband, Banks, the restaurateur, has a house there, but he himself is in Courland, and Guste has been with him and known him only for a short fourteen days, that is, when he returned from the front for vacation. day.

These are peaceful nights.Oskar sat at Madam Truczynski's feet, played a few fantasias on his drum, and took a baked apple from the oven on the tiled hearth, with the old woman and the little child eating it. Baba's fruit disappeared into the dark bedroom.He pulled up the anti-aircraft blackout paper, opened the window a crack, and sent out his directional remote singing.He doesn't sing the praises of the trembling stars, the Milky Way has nothing he's looking for, his goal is the Winterfield Square, but not the radio building, but the box-shaped building with doors next to each other, all Hitler Youth Office of District Headquarters.

When the weather is crisp, my work is done in minutes.The baked apples by the open window were not so hot anymore.I nibbled it back to Madam Truczynski and my drum, and soon went to bed, confident that while Oskar slept, the ashes were of course robbing the party cash drawer in the name of Jesus, life Information tickets, and more importantly official seals, printed forms or lists of Hitler Youth patrols. I tolerated it and let Stütterbeck and Molkner go about their business with forged papers. The main enemy of the gang was the Duty Patrol.I allow them to kidnap opponents at their whim, throw ashes on the kidnapped, and--to name it from Coalpaw in charge--slap their eggs.

These actions were only a prelude, and did not reveal my real plan, and I was not directly involved, so I cannot confirm whether the following incident was done by the ashes: In September 1944, two senior officers of the patrol One of them, Helmut Netterberg, whom everyone feared, was tied up and thrown from the Cow Bridge into the Mottlau River and drowned. Later it was said that the gang of ashes spreaders was connected with the Centella pirates in Cologne on the Rhine, and that the Polish partisans in the Tuchel Heath influenced and even manipulated our actions.I, Oscar and the leader of the gang, Jesus, have to deny it in this dual capacity, which is purely false.

-------- ①Thingrass Pirates, a German youth armed bandit group that appeared before the end of World War II. Later, when our case was tried, it was also asserted that we were related to the assassins and conspirators of July 20th, because the father of the shirtless angel, August von Puttkammer, had a relationship with Rommy Field Marshal was so close that he committed suicide.Shirtless Angel saw his father only four or five times throughout the war, noticing only the constant change of his rank insignia.The boy didn't hear of the officer's affair, which didn't matter to us, until our trial, and he wailed without shame, and Coalpaw, who sat next to him, had to throw ashes on him before the judge.

-------- ① Refers to the participants who assassinated Hitler and plotted a coup in 1944. Adults only had one contact with us during our activities.A few shipyard workers—communist, as I guessed right away—tried to influence the Shihau Shipyard Apprentices in our gang to turn us into a Red Underground.Apprentices do not object.Middle school students refused to have any political inclinations.Air Force Auxiliary Mister, the cynic and ideologue of the Ash-Scatterers gang, expressed his opinion at a general meeting as follows: "We have nothing to do with political parties. We fight against our parents and other grown-ups. people, whatever they are for or against." Although Mister's exaggeration was too much, all the middle school students still agreed.This led to a splintering of the Ash-Scatterers gang.So the apprentices of the Schauvs—these were able boys, and I am sorry to lose them—founded their own society, but in spite of the objections of Stieterbeck and Morkena, still called themselves ashes-scatterers.At trial—because their group was busted at the same time as ours—they were accused of burning a training submarine in the dock area.More than a hundred submarine pilots and naval sergeants in training lost their lives, tragically.The fire started on deck, making it impossible for the submariners sleeping below deck to escape from the forecastle.Naval sergeants under the age of eighteen tried to jump out of the porthole and jump into the water of the harbor to escape, only to be caught by their hip bones, and the fast-eating fire burned up from behind, their shouts were too loud and too long , the others had to shoot them dead from the launch. We didn't set fire to it anyway.It may have been done by the apprentices at the Shirhau shipyard, or by the Westerlanders.The Ash-Scatterers are not arsonists, although I, their spiritual guide, may have acquired the credentials of an arsonist from my grandfather Koljacek. -------- ①The Westerland Association was established in 1934 and resumed its activities in 1944. It is an underground organization representing the interests of the Polish people in eastern Germany. The assembler, whom I still remember vividly, had been transferred from the German factory in Kiel to the Sihav shipyard and had visited us shortly before the breakup of the ashes.The two sons of a longshoreman in Fuchswal, Erich Pitzger and Horst Pitzger, brought him to meet us in the cellar of the Puttkammer villa.He looked intently at our warehouse, saw a lack of useful weapons, but stammered a few compliments.He asked who the leader of the gang was.Stieterbeck responded, and Morkener pointed at me hesitantly, and he laughed so loudly that Oskar almost handed him over to the ashes-scatterers to scatter him. "What kind of dwarf is he?" he asked Moulkena, pointing his thumb over his shoulder. Molkena smiled a little awkwardly, and before he could speak, Stuartbeck replied with astonishing composure: "This is our Jesus." The fitter, who called himself Walther, could not tolerate the term and went so far as to blow up a tantrum in our den: "Talk, please, are you politically opposed? Are you all partisans rehearsing for Christmas Eve?" Won't the nativity scene work?" Steutbeck opened the cellar door, gave Coalpaw a wink, shook out the blade of the paratrooper's knife from the sleeve of his jacket, and said, not so much to the assembler, but to the gang: "We're Massors." , is rehearsing the nativity play for Christmas Eve." The fitter, however, did not suffer much.They blindfolded him and led him out of the villa.After a while the apprentices at the Shihav's shipyard split off and formed their own association under the fitter's leadership, leaving us alone.Today, I can say with certainty that they are the ones who burn training subs. That day, Stuartbeck gave the correct answer as I meant.We were not interested in politics, and after the Hitler Youth patrols had become discouraged and hardly left their duty rooms, or were limited to checking the papers of licentious girls at the train station, we also moved our working area inside the church, according to that A radical leftist assembler rehearses a nativity play. The quite capable apprentice Shihau has been taken away, we must first replenish our strength.At the end of October, Stuartbeck swore the oaths of two rectors of the Sacré Coeur, Felix and Paul Lewand.Stuartbeck approached the brothers through their sister Luzi.Despite my protests, the girl, not yet seventeen, took part in the swearing-in ceremony.Brother Lunwand must put his left hand on my drum--the lads exaggerate the drum as a symbol--according to the formula of the ashes: a piece of paper, pure nonsense, all nonsense, So I can't remember either. Oscar watches Luzzi during the swearing-in ceremony.She shrugged her shoulders, held a slightly shaking piece of sausage bread in her left hand, and bit her lower lip. The triangular fox had no expression on her face, and her eyes burned Schmidtbeck's back.I began to worry about the future of the ashes. We set about making changes to the cellar rooms.I was at Madame Truczynski's apartment, and the ashes-scatterers worked together to add things.From the Church of Santa Catarina we brought a statue of Joseph, half a man high, which turned out to be an original from the sixteenth century, some church candlesticks, some liturgical vessels and a Eucharist banner.During a night visit to Trinitatis Church, I brought back a wooden trumpet-blowing angel, which was not artistic, and a multicolored painting carpet that could be used as a wall decoration.This reproduction of an antique features a coy lady and a submissive monster named the Unicorn.Steutbeck has some reason to think that the girlish smile woven on this blanket is playfully cruel, similar to the smile on Luzzi's fox face.I still hope my lieutenants aren't prepared to be submissive like some mythical unicorn.The front wall of the cellar, which had been painted with all sorts of incoherent things, "Black hands" and "skulls," now hung this tapestry, and the unicorn was at last the subject of our discussion.At this time, I asked myself, Lu Qi has come and gone here, giggling behind your back, why, Oscar, why did you move the second Lu Qi weaved here.She's going to turn your lieutenant into a unicorn, she's lifelike, and after all, she's targeting you, because only you, Oscar, are you truly allegorical, rare monsters with exaggerated swirling horns. Advent has come.We brought many statues of the Holy Child from the surrounding churches, life-size and innocently carved.I used them to cover up the tapestry layer by layer, so that this allegorical play receded from the foreground and became a grand finale.In mid-December, Rundstedt launched the Ardennes Offensive.Preparations for our grand event are also complete. -------- ① Lundstedt, Marshal of Nazi Germany.The Ardennes Offensive was the last German offensive during World War II and was defeated by the Allies. Maria was completely immersed in the Catholic spirit, which made Matzerath very distressed.For several Sundays, I took Maria's hand to ten o'clock mass.Afterwards, I directed all the ashes-scatterers to go to church.We knew the way, without Oscar singing broken glass, and with the help of brothers Felix and Paul, we broke into the Sacred Heart Church from the night of December 18th to the early morning of the 19th. It's snowing, but it melts when it hits the ground.We parked three carts behind the sacristy.Paul Lewand has the gate key.Oscar took the lead, guiding the boys to the holy water pool one after another, making them kneel in the nave, and kneeling towards the main altar.I then instructed them to cover the Sacred Heart with a blanket from the Bureau of Volunteer Labor so that his blue gaze would not interfere too much with our work.Delici and Mister transported the tools to the left altar in the left transept.First the stables with their many mangers and firs had to be moved into the nave.We already have the shepherds, angels, sheep, donkeys, and cows we need.Some of our gangs are out-of-the-box, but we lack the main character.Belissar removes the flowers from the altar table.Totila and Thayer rolled up the rug.Coal claw removal tool.Oscar knelt behind the prayer pew, overseeing the dismantling. -------- ①According to the "Bible", Jesus was born in a stable with a manger as a bed. The baptist boy with chocolate-colored rough fur was sawn off first.Good thing we brought a metal saw.Inside the plaster, there are finger-thick metal rods connecting the Baptist and the colorful cloud.The coal claws saw.He's really like a schoolboy when he does this kind of work, clumsy.How nice it would be to have the apprentices from the Siharu Shipyard there!Cinderbeck replaced Coal Claw.He worked a little harder, and after half an hour of noise we put the baptist boys down and wrapped them in blankets and felt the silence of the midnight church. Jesus' entire buttocks were attached to the virgin's left thigh, and it took a lot of time to saw him off.It took Delich Rabbit, Felix Lewand and Lionheart a full forty minutes.Why hasn't Morkena come yet?He will come directly from the new channel with his men, and meet us at the church, so that the procession will not be conspicuous.Stuartbeck is in a bad mood, I think he's neurotic.He asked the Luwand brothers many times about Morkena.Finally, as we all expected, they uttered the name Luzzi.Stuartbeck no longer asked, snatched the hacksaw from Lionheart's clumsy hand, gritted his teeth recklessly, and gave the boy Jesus a fatal blow. When the statue of Jesus was brought down, the aura circle was broken.Stuartbeck apologized to me.It was with great difficulty that I suppressed my rage, and had the fragments of this gilt plaster plate picked up into two hats.Coalpaw thinks it can be glued together.The sawed Jesus was protected with a pillow and wrapped in two blankets. We plan to saw off the Virgin in two sections, first above the pelvis and then between the heel and the cloud.The cloud was left in the church, and we took only the two parts of the Virgin, Jesus, no doubt, and the Baptist Boy if possible, to the Putkamer crypt.Surprisingly, we overestimated the weight of the plaster figure.The center of this group of statues is empty, the outer wall is only two fingers thick, and only the iron frame is a bit troublesome. The lads, especially Coalpaw and Lionheart, were exhausted.Gotta give them a break because none of the rest, including the Lunwand brothers, can saw.The gangs were scattered and sat on the pews in the church to suffer from the cold.Steutbeck stood, denting the felt hat he had taken off as soon as he entered the church.I don't like this emotion.Something must have happened.The lads could not bear the atmosphere of empty church buildings at night.Everyone was a little nervous when Moore Kayna didn't come.The Lunwand brothers, apparently frightened by Stuartbeck, stood aside and whispered until Steutbeck ordered them to be quiet. I remember getting up from my prayer mat with a slow sigh and walking straight to the remaining virgin.Her gaze, which had been on John, was now on the altar steps covered with powdered plaster.Her right index finger, originally pointing to Jesus, now points to nothing or to the dark left transept.I climbed up the altar step by step, then looked back, looking for the deep-set eyes of Steutbeck.His eyes went blank, and Coalpaw poked him before he noticed me calling him.He stared at me blankly, bewildered, which I have never seen before.He didn't understand me, then finally understood or partially understood.He walked over slowly, very slowly, but took another step onto the altar, picked me up, and put me on the white, slightly tilted left thigh of a virgin who could see that the sawman was poor. On the cross-section of it, it roughly shows the imprint of the buttocks of the boy Jesus. Steutbeck immediately turned around, strode onto the pavement, and was about to indulge in his fantasies, but suddenly turned his head, narrowed his eyes, which were close together, and cast a flickering, examining gaze.When he saw me sitting in the place of Jesus, so natural and worthy of worship, he showed a deeply moved expression, just like the boys sitting on the pews in the church. It didn't take him long to grasp my plan and even expand it.He asked Nases and Bluebeard to point the two flashlights used during the disassembly directly at me and the virgin, because the light hurt my eyes, he ordered to switch it to red light, and signaled Brother Lunwand to come to him , whispered a few words.They would not do what he demanded, and Coalpaw approached without waiting for a sign from Steutbeck, and stretched out his joints to the two brothers, ready to scatter ashes.The two brothers relented and went to the sacristy, watched by Coalpaw and Air Auxiliary Mist.Oskar waited calmly, setting the drums upright.Oskar was not in the least surprised when the tall Mister returned in a priest's robe, and the Lunwand brothers in a chaplain's attire, in white and red.Cinderpaw, in his vicar's cassock, brought everything needed for Mass.He put something on the cloud and stepped back quietly.Felix Lewand holds the small censer, his brother Paul the bell.The robes of Saint Wienker are too bulky to wear on Mist.But Mister's imitation is not bad.At first, with the cynicism of a liberal arts schoolboy, he was drawn to the scriptures and the sacramental liturgy.What he showed us all, and especially me, was not a childish parody, but a real Mass, which was later called a Mass in court, even though they said it was a black mass. The three boys began to pray in sections.The whole gang kneels down on a bench or on a paved floor and makes the sign of the sign of the sign of the cross.Mister began to sing Mass, with a certain mastery of the scriptures, and with the skilful cooperation of the two parishioners.As I sang "Ascend to the Altar of the Lord," I beat the drum carefully.When I sang "Lord have mercy", I used a stronger voice to accompany it.When I sang "Glory to the Lord in Heaven," I also praised the Lord on the drum, called the congregation to prayer, and replaced the recitation of the Epistle at daytime Mass with a longer drum solo.I hit "Hallelujah" with particular success.As I sang the creed, I found out how the boys believed in me.When it was time for the consecration ceremony, my drum was played softly, and I asked Mister to put out bread, mix water with the wine, and use incense to fumigate the Holy Grail and me, and I watched Mister wash his hands.Pray, brothers and sisters, I beat the drum in the red light of the torch, and turn into incarnation: this is my flesh.We will pray, Mister sings, admonished by divine decree - the lads in the pews sang to me the Lord's Prayer in two different texts, Mister knew how to unite Protestants and Catholics at Holy Communion .I played the "Professed Faith" lead on the drum while they were taking communion.The virgin points to Oscar, the drummer.Oscar takes office to succeed Christ.Mass went well.Mister's voice increases and decreases.How beautiful his voice is when he blesses: forgiveness, forgiveness, forgiveness.All the lads were indeed set free spiritually when he spit out the closing words "Come on, now dismissed!" to the church.Therefore, when secular arrests come, it is only a gang of ashes-scatterers who have strengthened their faith and strengthened their faith in Oscar and the name of Jesus. -------- ①The Mass is a Eucharistic ceremony of Catholicism, named after the word "missa" in the concluding words "ite, missa est" (let's go, dismiss now).The implication here is that these young people are innocent. While attending mass, I could already hear the sound of cars.Stuartbeck, too, looked back.So we alone were not suddenly startled when voices were heard from the great door, from the sacristy, and from the right side door.The heels of boots rattled on the church pavement.Stuartbeck is going to lift me from the lap of a virgin.I indicated no need.He understood Oscar's meaning, nodded, and let the group kneel as usual, kneeling and waiting for the criminal police.The lads then knelt, trembling, and some of them moved on their knees, but we all waited in silence until the criminal policeman came across the left transept, through the nave, towards us from the sacristy, Surround the altar on the left.Lots of harsh flashlights that didn't turn red.Steutbeck stood up, made the sign of the cross, appeared in the light of the flashlight, handed his felt hat to Cinderpaw, who was still kneeling, and walked towards a swollen shadow without a flashlight in his raincoat. Enkesheng walked down, and dragged a thin, desperately struggling black figure from behind him, and pulled it under the light of the flashlight, it was Luzi Lunwand.He punched the stern, triangular face under the Basque hat until a policeman knocked him down in the middle of the bench. "Oh, Jesus," I heard a criminal policeman cry from the virgin's arms, "this is indeed our chief's son!" After hearing this, Oscar was rather proud that he would have a police chief's son as his capable deputy, and then played the role of the three-year-old kid abducted by a half-adult with a sneer, accepting without resistance. Asylum: His Majesty Wink took me in his arms. Only the criminal police were yelling.The lads were taken away.His Majesty Wienker had to put me on the pavement.He suddenly collapsed and sat down on the bench.I stood by our tools, and behind the chisel and hammer I found the food basket, full of the sausage bread that Delici had prepared before we went into action. I grabbed the basket and walked over to Luzzie, who was thin and shivering in her light coat, and handed her the slice of bread with the sausage.She picked me up, holding me in her right hand and the sausage bun in her left, and immediately stuck a piece between her fingers between her teeth.I watched her battered, burning, stuffed face: eyes rolling behind two black slits, skin hammered, a chewing triangle, doll, black kitchen Mother, devouring sausages with skin on, becoming leaner, hungrier, more triangular, more doll-like as I ate it—the image was imprinted on my brow and in my brain.Who is going to take this triangle from my forehead and my brain?How long will it stay in my heart?Chew there, chew sausages, sausage skins and people, smile like triangles (if triangles can smile too), smile like the lady training unicorns in the tapestry, how long will this last? Steutbeck turned his bloodied face to Luzzi and Oscar as the two police officers led him away.But I looked beside him, and from now on I will never recognize him again.I was carried away by Luzzi, who was devouring sausage bread, between five or six criminal policemen, after my former gang of ashes-scatterers. What is left?All that remained were His Majesty Wienker, our two flashlights that were still glowing red, and the discarded chaplain and priest's robes.The chalice and the consecrated bread and wine remained on the altar steps.The Sawed John and the Sawed Jesus remain with the Virgin; and we had intended to move her to the Puttkammer Cellar, to make her embody a power to rival the Ladies Tamer Tapestry. Still, Oscar was brought to trial for what I still call today the Second Judgment of Jesus.The trial ended with me, and naturally with the acquittal of Jesus.