Germanic Officer x You Who Traveled Across Time (Sixty-Six)
Chapter 66 St. Bartholomew's Day
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In the morning, after Feynz left the apartment, you packed up and headed to St. Stephen’s Basilica on Žilinska Street in the fifth district of Budapest.
St. Stephen's Basilica is a very typical neoclassical style, with red marble columns and gold-painted murals. Walking under the wide dome, one feels as if one would fall into the abyss without God's grace.
You walk around the "Right Hand of God" housed in a magnificent gilded reliquary. It is the right hand of Stephen I, the first king of Hungary, and is a holy relic revered by Catholics as "Immortal".
Thanks to a bull from Pope Pius XII, Germany did not claim it for itself.
Because the emblem of Pope Pius XII is hung on the door of St. Stephen's Basilica, it means that the church is under the protection of the Vatican Papal Nunciature and is a real safe house in war.
In fact, in NC's view, the so-called holy relic was just a shriveled stump, not even as valuable as the golden box that contained it. It was a complete "buy the box and return the pearl" idea.
You arrived at the mass room at the back of the cathedral. Hurley had been waiting for you for a while. You quickly walked to the second-to-last row of wooden benches and sat next to him.
The Spanish Child was placed in the Ark of the Covenant and moved to the Cathedral of St. Stephen.
According to legend, the Ark of the Covenant contains a stone tablet engraved with the Ten Commandments and the staff used by Moses' brother Aaron, which is a symbol of God's presence.
In order to fulfill the agreement, NC temporarily found this eight-kilogram golden statue of the Son of God from the warehouse, and the cardinal was in the process of re-purifying it.
The altar in the front was covered with a starched white tablecloth. The cardinal, wearing a mass robe, stood behind the Gospel bookshelf, muttering something and performing a purification ceremony.
"God, Holy Father, we call upon you devoutly... Please do not close your holy eyes and ignore our tragic fate. You created us... God, please come to the altar..."
As the purification ceremony was going on, you quietly observed your surroundings and noticed that there were some believers with strange expressions sitting on the wooden benches.
What flashed in their eyes was not the ecstasy of God's presence, but an indescribable strangeness.
Confused, you turned your head and asked softly, "Heer?"
"The Germans sent them."
Hurley reached out and gently tucked a few strands of your hair behind your ear, adding, "They were originally cultists."
ah……
You may have heard these days that in order to obtain the protection of Pope Pius XII and avoid the misfortune that was about to befall them, some Hungarians chose to "convert" - they no longer believed in Islam but converted to Christianity.
Pope Pius XII had always maintained superficially friendly relations with Germany, and the Nazis were willing to give the Pope face.
But Germany was not willing to let them off easily, and deliberately forced those who converted to Christianity to personally participate in the purification ceremony, just to see to what extent the "inferior people" they called them could go in order to survive.
The Pope's good relations with Germany have also been criticized by the international community.
It is said that Churchill once expressed to Stalin his concern about the Pope's sympathetic stance towards Germany. Stalin then scoffed: "The Pope? How many divisions does he have!"
When this statement reached Pope Pius XII, he responded calmly: "You can tell my child Joseph that he will see my army walking in the sky." (Stalin's full name is Joseph Stalin, his original surname is Dzhugashvili)
After the purification ceremony, you did not leave immediately.
"Ina, look what this is?"
Hurley took out a folded manila envelope from his suit pocket, which looked like it was bulging with something.
At his gentle gaze, you opened the envelope and pulled out a small stack of photos.
The photos were taken in a variety of locations, including lawns, living rooms, dining rooms, bedrooms, piano rooms, game rooms, and so on, but the central figure is only one -
With her innocent smile, your beloved Emma, your daughter.
"Thank you... Hull, thank you so much..."
As you flip through the photos, you feel a surge of excitement yet a wave of sadness. Honora's questioning of you in Rouen is still fresh in your mind, revealing how Emma is perceived within the organization.
"She's NC's child. This is all just to complete the mission. You shouldn't have any feelings."
You don't know what Hurley's true attitude towards Emma is, nor do you know when you will be able to see your daughter again. After folding the photo and putting it back in the envelope, you looked at Hurley again.
Hurley looked at the hidden worry in those light blue eyes and understood what you were worried about. He sighed softly and gently put his arm around your shoulders.
"Ina, I know what you're worried about. I'm willing to promise you that whether it's now, before the war ends, or after it ends, Emma will have the right to grow up healthy, safe, and happy."
The man loosened his grip on your shoulders and said lovingly, "Because she's your child. It has nothing to do with anyone else."
You were originally grateful for his selfless dedication to Emma, but as soon as he said the second half of his sentence, the invisible pressure immediately tightened around you like a ring.
It's the kind of love that's so strong that it affects everyone else, like a floating duckweed. Once the foundation of this kind of love crumbles, it harms the innocent. Besides, you're not Yvette.
Hurley stood motionless, just staring at you intently with those icy blue eyes.
Your scalp tingles. You feel the need to do something for Emma, but you subconsciously resist in your heart.
Your gaze shifted as if avoiding him, but you still kept your eyes elsewhere.
On the lining of the man's navy blue suit jacket hung something similar to a necklace. It was the legendary Key of St. Peter, a token of Pope Pius XII.
The New Testament of the Bible records that Jesus once said to his disciple Peter: "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."
Hurley no longer forced you with his eyes. Instead, he held your hand with his big hand and placed it together on the key to heaven on his chest, which symbolized the privilege of dominating the fate of mankind.
"With humility and reverence, I confess my sin to God. Just now, I tried to obtain a kiss from a woman, but inadvertently put pressure on her. This was not my intention. I am guilty, I repent, and I accept God's fair judgment on me."
"You...you don't have to do this..."
You pulled your hand back awkwardly, but Hurley continued to dissect your true feelings: "Yina, I love you. It has nothing to do with you. So, please don't feel any pressure. Just follow your heart. I will respect all your choices."
"Of course," Hurley shrugged, a rare moment, and a childish expression that was never seen on his face, completely wiping away the gloomy look on your face.
"It's best to wait until we get home to discuss this."
I love you, it has nothing to do with you, even the endless longing for you at night belongs only to me.
Goethe's poems flashed through your mind as he narrated, and you silently thanked him for his tolerant love for Yvette.
"Ina, please keep these photos for yourself. You don't need to give them to Kalman. I've already given them to him separately."
You didn't refuse him and nodded: "Yeah..."
But in fact, the photo Hurley gave Feints was a group photo.
In the photo, Hurley is holding Emma, supporting the smiling child in his arms. If he wanted to crop someone out of the photo, he would inevitably have to crop some part of his daughter's body, which Fiennes certainly wouldn't do.
The only option left was to blacken Hurley's face, but that was even more low-class, and Feints would never do that.
In short, no matter what, it would annoy Feynman and make things difficult for him. Thus, his goal was achieved.
Sometimes, the secret rivalry between men is the funniest thing.
At the front, the Cardinal's purification ritual also needed to be finalized. Hurley also took out the last thing he wanted to give you, which turned out to be a signed photo from the film.
Under the setting sun, Rhett Butler kisses Scarlett affectionately, which makes people's hearts surge. And the extremely bold English signature in the lower right corner of the still is even more shocking -
Clark Gable.
Clark Gable...
"Rhett Butler!"
Hurley actually has a signed photo of Clark Gable! Did he even know you liked Rhett Butler? Oh, no, did Yvette also like "Gone with the Wind"?
Accompanied by a burst of electric sound, Hurley made a gesture to silence you who were excited, and you covered your mouth with your hand apologetically.
He explained to you, "After the Pearl Harbor attack, Major Gable joined the army and served in the U.S. Eighth Air Force in England, in Northolt, only 14 miles from the center of London. Ina, after you returned to London, I have been trying to arrange for you to meet him after the landing. And then..."
You automatically filled in the rest of the sentence for Hurley without him having to say it: "Then I insisted on returning to Paris... I didn't stay in London for long before I left."
"Major Gable also retired from the battlefield in July of this year after the Normandy Landing and returned to the United States to continue his acting career, returning to his identity as the 'King of Hollywood.'"
Hurley noticed the loss in your tone and raised his hand to touch your cheek, "My little girl, when we get home, I can take you to Hollywood, USA right away if you want."
You shook your head. Although you liked Rhett Butler very much, you only liked the character created by Clark Gable. You didn't want to know or even interfere in the actor's private life.
Of course, you have to admit that after knowing that Clark Gable had such an experience of giving up the film industry to join the army in real life, you like him even more.
Clark Gable, like Rhett Butler, chose to join the army after witnessing the destruction of his homeland, determined to defend it. It's a true-life rendition of Gone with the Wind.
…
After saying goodbye to Hurley, you went to the ration station in the German-speaking part of Theresa City to get food, and then returned to the apartment.
Not long after, I found that I had my period and my clothes were soiled. I was in a bad mood and didn't want to move in bed.
When Feynman came back, the lights in the apartment were off. He found you curled up in the bedroom. Your stomach was so upset that you didn't want to do anything, and naturally you didn't eat dinner.
He changed his clothes, searched for ingredients from the food ration bag on the coffee table, then prepared the dishes, heated the oil in a pan, and even kneaded the dough. After all the busy work, he finally poured himself a glass of Hungarian ARANYASZOK beer to quench his thirst.
You are sitting on the bed happily enjoying your dinner. On the small table on the bed are a plate of sauced bread with grilled sausage and hot vegetable soup.
A few slices of cucumber and red cabbage, a cold salad with a drizzle of olive oil and a piece of hard bread made up Feynman's dinner.
"Brother, has the situation gotten worse recently?"
Although Feints's worried demeanor faded after he returned home, you could still clearly sense when he was unhappy.
Feinz pretended not to say anything again and called you softly, "Ina, don't ask too many questions."
"That's what I want to know."
You pretended to be angry, and angrily handed him a piece of fried egg from your plate, which was not ugly in appearance, and tried to use the childish behavior of refusing to eat as some kind of handle to control him.
Sure enough, Feinz was helpless and could only shake his head helplessly.
He doesn't like to tell you everything. On the one hand, his professional ethics as a part-time employee of Gaishi TB for many years has made him develop the habit of keeping his mouth shut; on the other hand, he really doesn't want you to know too much, because knowing the truth also means pressure.
"Ina, the Hungarian Regent has recently begun to make moves again. Horthy seems to be thinking of betraying us again."
The man finally fulfilled your wish, and his frown was no longer concealed, which further showed how turbulent the conflict between Germany and Hungary was during this period.
In the war thirty years ago, Hungary was dragged into the war by Austria. After the war, the Austro-Hungarian Empire disintegrated. Austrian territory was intact, but Hungary was tragically divided due to the Treaty of Trianon, and almost lost two-thirds of its pre-war territory and one-third of its population.
Now, in the early stages of the war, Hungarian Regent Horthy allied himself with that man and joined the German side, attempting to regain lost territory and restore the glory of the Habsburg dynasty.
With that man's help, Hungary did indeed regain the northern Erdei region through the Vienna Arbitration Award. Subsequently, Hungary declared war on the Soviet Union and sent troops to the Soviet-German battlefield. In the famous Battle of Stalingrad, nearly 200,000 Hungarians were among the countless soldiers killed.
As the war progressed, Hungary began to consider withdrawing from World War II. So in March of this year, Germany invaded Hungary and established a pro-German government. But now Hungarian Regent Horthy is acting strangely again.
You listened to Feints tell you the complicated history, and a look of worry inevitably crossed your face. "So what are we going to do?"
The situation on the Western Front is bad, and it is even worse on the Eastern Front. There is also the risk of flag-changing at any time within the occupied areas.
"Yina, don't worry, your brother is here."
He pushed the vegetable soup in front of you, "Baby, eat first."
After finishing the meal, Feintz took away the dinner tray and the bedside table, brought you some mouthwash tools, and asked you to continue sitting on the bed to rinse your mouth and wipe your face and hands.
After cleaning up the kitchen, he went to the bathroom, took out your dirty underwear that had been soaked in cold water, put soap on it and rubbed the red-stained cloth.
Until your vagina is rinsed clean by him, the man still keeps his lips tightly closed, showing a heavy expression in private.
…
On Sunday, there was a mass at St. Stephen's Cathedral, where the Vatican's papal mission was located. When you were about to use this as an excuse to go find Hurley again, something unexpected happened on the way.
Someone drove a broadcast truck equipped with a loudspeaker onto the street, and a man in a dark brown coat stood on the truck.
The radio station was broadcasting a statement from Hungarian Regent Horthy in both Hungarian and German.
"I declare a complete ceasefire in Hungary! No more cooperation with Germany! Stop declaring war on the Soviet Union! Hungarian people, we are about to usher in peace! A real era of peace is about to come! ... I repeat again, Hungary has completely ceased fire and stopped declaring war! ... "
People almost all rushed to the streets, cheering and excitedly, and men, women, old people and children kept running out of the neoclassical buildings on both sides of the street.
They took down the yellow paper star on the wooden board at the door, tore off the yellow Star of David sewn on their coats, and tore off the symbols of suffering on their bodies. They ran madly around the streets, embracing freedom enthusiastically.
The broadcast vehicle drove forward, and yellow Stars of David were thrown all over the place. The whole Zhilins Street looked like a carpet covered with fallen autumn leaves.
Having learned from your previous experience, you don't want to be involved in this sudden carnival, so you don't go to St. Stephen's Cathedral and instead return to your apartment in Theresa City.
In the meantime, Yuri came to the apartment to find you and brought two guards to guard the door. You were talking to the system in the house, vaguely feeling that the variable of the failure of the second cooperation was about to come.
At night, when you were lying in bed and couldn't sleep because of your worries, you heard gunshots on Andrassy Street and the rumbling sound of some heavy vehicle rolling over the asphalt road in the distance.
You quickly got up, put on your coat, walked to the window and lifted a corner of the black curtain. There were several military trucks parked on the street. In addition to people wearing gray and black military uniforms, there were also a few soldiers wearing green shirts with some kind of party armbands.
Soldiers lined up in rows all along Andrassy Street, surrounding the building opposite you. They broke into every room in every building in small groups. The lights came on one floor at a time, and then went out again.
The crisis seems to be over. You cover your heart with one hand and lift a corner of the black curtain with the other hand and let it down. At the moment the curtain is closed again, a terrifying scream suddenly comes from the building opposite, followed by a burst of submachine gun fire.
You immediately lifted the black curtain again and witnessed a woman and her child jumping off a fourth-floor balcony, trying to escape in this most futile way.
The twisted body struggled on the ground, and the military truck started up and rolled over it lightly...
Unable to stand by and watch any longer, you sat back on the bed in disbelief, wrapped yourself in the quilt, and began talking to the system in your mind again.
An hour later, all the noise outside died down and the entire Andrassy Street fell into deathly silence.
You muster up the courage to walk to the window again, clutching a corner of the black curtain tightly. The military trucks have already withdrawn. The moonlight outside is terrifyingly bright, illuminating the empty streets and open windows, revealing a scene that is so false that it is unbelievable.
Something swirled in the air, sometimes rising silently, sometimes descending silently, but never touching the ground. They drifted all over the sky, like heavy snow, but created an atmosphere far more eerie than a blizzard.
At this moment, Andrassy Street was covered with down. Large clumps of down quilts fell out of pillows and quilts that were pierced by bayonets. When the autumn wind blew gently, they flew from the ground to the sky. Occasionally, a few clumps of down quilts failed to take off because they were stained with the blood of innocent people.
As your thoughts were lost, the bedroom door opened without warning. You turned around in panic, and the person who came in was a dusty Feintz, wearing a gray and black coat and carrying the chill of the midnight.
"elder brother……"
The man took out your luggage that you had packed long ago from the large cupboard behind the door, put it on the ground, then took down the windbreaker hanging on the hanger and wrapped it around you, his expression extremely serious.
"Yina, listen, you need to leave now."
"Now?"
You couldn't accept the sudden separation, and the tears in your light blue eyes flowed completely. Time was so tight that you didn't even have a chance to kiss.
Feynz hugged you with all his might, the moonlight poured in from the corner of the curtain, and the shadows of the two people on the wall seemed to overlap into one person.
Moments later, the Mercedes-Benz left Andrassy Street like a black land torpedo, leaving only the dim anti-aircraft lights like will-o'-the-wisp. A train bound for Switzerland started moving before dawn.
…
In the early morning of October 15, Hungarian Regent Horthy issued a ceasefire statement via radio.
That same day, it became known that the ceasefire was a blunder on Horthy's part – he had broadcast the news to the Germans before informing his own troops of his intention to cease fire.
Salahi, leader of the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party, immediately seized power, announced the dismissal of the regent, and issued a statement saying:
"We must now fight even more resolutely alongside our great German allies to win the war and purify our homeland!"
That night, the Germans, with the support of Arrow Cross Party leader Salahi, launched a retaliatory act, almost replicating the Kristallnacht seven years ago.
The broken glass sparkled like crystal.
The down filling the sky is a re-enactment of the historical St. Bartholomew's Day.
These chapters mainly describe the story of Ina and Hurley. Their story has been basically explained, and the cooperation between the male protagonist and Hurley has also been explained.
St. Bartholomew's Day refers to the massacre of Protestant Huguenots by Catholics in France in the 16th century.
The hidden ending is the next chapter preview in the archive of this chapter (the next chapter preview is at the end)
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