Page 64 - Fanget I Tiden oversættelse - caught in time (komplet)-converted

Chapter 18

Germany, a little outside of Augsburg northwest of Munich / Berlin, June 1943

The sound of the camera's flash was metallic and penetrating. The moment the
blitz had shone a bright light over the bunker, a dumb sound sounded when the

spring that triggered the flash fell back. Uno had taken today's last picture and

sat heavily on a chair in the warm bunker. Sometimes he took pictures just
outside of the bunker entrance, but today he had giving up on moving around

with the camera and tripod. The temperature of the bunker was his biggest
problem. The fans that were supposed to keep it free of dampness worked

infrequently, starting and stopping with a loud pealing sound. With his hand he

removed a layer of sweat on his forehead and sighed. He only had to catalog ten
paintings today.

The work of cataloging and systematizing art was laboriously. First, he carefully

unpacked a painting or artwork, and then he had to find the name of the artist. At
times it was easy, on other occasions he had to look for a long time in art books

and lexicons. Seldom, he had to abandon finding the author.
In total, he created three directories. One with an overview of the name of

the work and the artist. One where he described the individual work. And a third

catalog, where he glued a photo of the work, gave it a number and a date, and
provided references to where you could read more about the artwork.

After a while, he had to leave the hot concrete bunker. He got up and took

his folding chair under his arm and sat out in front of the bunker's two big iron
doors. It wasn’t really cooler during the midday sun, but that was nearly over

now, so he figured he’d go outside.

There were exactly 30 meters to the nearest team of construction workers, who
were building another bunker. Machines did most of the hard labor; apparently

building the entire complex was going to be fast.