28-03-2019, 03:30 PM
Helen stepped into Castle Finzione's central courtyard and frowned at what she saw.
Instead of the flag of San Finzione flying overhead, a red, white, and black Swastika flag was blowing in the breeze. Banners with the same symbol were hanging from the walls around gallows that had been constructed. Men in gray uniforms carried rifles and sub-machine guns and patrolled around it. A 1930s radio transmitter and tower had been set up, flanked by a Panzer tank and a German officer's car. Beyond them, she saw the film crew milling about the set, getting ready to shoot the scene.
Generalissimo Hernando Ramirez was being told by a man with a clipboard that he wasn't allowed on the set. The man stiffened when he saw La Contessa approach. Ramirez saw this, turned and saw her as well, and saluted. Helen saluted back.
"Contessa," the man stammered out. "I was... explaining to the Generalissimo that this is a closed location."
"He's with me." Helen replied. "And La Contessa is welcome everywhere in San Finzione, especially closed locations."
"Si, Contessa." The functionary apologized. "You are, as they say, the boss."
"Technically," Helena corrected. "We're both your servants; but yes, I'm ultimately the one who pays you, so let us through."
He stood aside. The Generalissimo began walking with La Contessa onto the set.
"You don't seem thrilled with the décor either." Ramirez told her after they were a few feet away.
"Can't do an accurate World War II movie without it, I suppose. Doesn't mean I have to like it."
"Nor do I." The Generalissimo agreed. Helena produced a cigarette as they walked and lit it. The Generalissimo did the same.
"But you also came to watch the hanging." She countered.
"I live on an army base named for the man whose murder is being re-enacted." Ramirez answered. "And it is an important event in San Finzione's history. I wanted to be here."
Helena nodded at that. She saw a group of actors standing and talking. The actor and actress portraying Count Ernesto and Contessa Louisa de San Finzione were talking with the actor who was portraying Werner Schell, the Nazi general who'd tortured and executed them for failing to give up the resistance cell that was hiding young Lord Vincenzo. It was the scene that they were shooting that day, in the castle courtyard where the real Executions of Count Ernesto and Contessa Louisa took place. The Count and Contessa, despite their formal garb, looked as if they'd been beaten horribly. Helen, having seen her father beat her mother to death, remembered to compliment the make-up artist if she ran into them.
General Schell had broadcast the original execution live over the radio to give the resistance incentive to surrender the last member of La Familia Royale's bloodline, and young Vincenzo had heard it; and every student of San Finzione's history had heard the recording at least once in their lives. Helena understood the Generalissimo's feeling of grim duty to witness the filming, because she'd been feeling her own.
Helen had only known Vincenzo Ramon de San Finzione intimately for the last two-and-a-half years of his life. Like most American collegechildren, she'd only encountered his name during an extra credit college assignment. One she'd been helping her first boyfriend do, about a man who'd saved his country's post-war economy by merging his family's business interests with the government, turning his country into the world's most prosperous tourist destination and the government's corporation into an international business concern worth hundreds of billions. By the time the report was finished, she'd filed the name away in her head with Paul Bunyan and Davy Crockett as someone who probably existed and may have done some cool things, but there was no fucking way all these stories about him could be true.
She'd thought that the stories about him as barely still a boy leading his people to take back his country were "feel-good stories." He couldn't have possibly inspired the resistance to create enough small disasters at once to force Schell and his officers into an emergency meeting in the castle that the young man he'd made Count knew well enough to sneak a squad into and capture them without firing a shot. And when Vincenzo had the man who'd murdered his parents at the end of his gun barrel, he forced him to order his troops to surrender to the People over that same radio.
In her own mind, Helen couldn't fathom that Vincenzo never pulled that trigger. Surely that was something that only heroes in movies didn't do. And then a second later, the guy would pull out a hidden gun and THEN it would be OK to shoot him! You didn't have the fucker who did all that to your family at your mercy and let him go, even if it was to deliver your badass message to Hitler: He'd get his tanks and planes back; as soon as they were painted Emerald Green, they'd be pointed right at him. Such a person couldn't possibly exist.
Instead of the flag of San Finzione flying overhead, a red, white, and black Swastika flag was blowing in the breeze. Banners with the same symbol were hanging from the walls around gallows that had been constructed. Men in gray uniforms carried rifles and sub-machine guns and patrolled around it. A 1930s radio transmitter and tower had been set up, flanked by a Panzer tank and a German officer's car. Beyond them, she saw the film crew milling about the set, getting ready to shoot the scene.
Generalissimo Hernando Ramirez was being told by a man with a clipboard that he wasn't allowed on the set. The man stiffened when he saw La Contessa approach. Ramirez saw this, turned and saw her as well, and saluted. Helen saluted back.
"Contessa," the man stammered out. "I was... explaining to the Generalissimo that this is a closed location."
"He's with me." Helen replied. "And La Contessa is welcome everywhere in San Finzione, especially closed locations."
"Si, Contessa." The functionary apologized. "You are, as they say, the boss."
"Technically," Helena corrected. "We're both your servants; but yes, I'm ultimately the one who pays you, so let us through."
He stood aside. The Generalissimo began walking with La Contessa onto the set.
"You don't seem thrilled with the décor either." Ramirez told her after they were a few feet away.
"Can't do an accurate World War II movie without it, I suppose. Doesn't mean I have to like it."
"Nor do I." The Generalissimo agreed. Helena produced a cigarette as they walked and lit it. The Generalissimo did the same.
"But you also came to watch the hanging." She countered.
"I live on an army base named for the man whose murder is being re-enacted." Ramirez answered. "And it is an important event in San Finzione's history. I wanted to be here."
Helena nodded at that. She saw a group of actors standing and talking. The actor and actress portraying Count Ernesto and Contessa Louisa de San Finzione were talking with the actor who was portraying Werner Schell, the Nazi general who'd tortured and executed them for failing to give up the resistance cell that was hiding young Lord Vincenzo. It was the scene that they were shooting that day, in the castle courtyard where the real Executions of Count Ernesto and Contessa Louisa took place. The Count and Contessa, despite their formal garb, looked as if they'd been beaten horribly. Helen, having seen her father beat her mother to death, remembered to compliment the make-up artist if she ran into them.
General Schell had broadcast the original execution live over the radio to give the resistance incentive to surrender the last member of La Familia Royale's bloodline, and young Vincenzo had heard it; and every student of San Finzione's history had heard the recording at least once in their lives. Helena understood the Generalissimo's feeling of grim duty to witness the filming, because she'd been feeling her own.
Helen had only known Vincenzo Ramon de San Finzione intimately for the last two-and-a-half years of his life. Like most American collegechildren, she'd only encountered his name during an extra credit college assignment. One she'd been helping her first boyfriend do, about a man who'd saved his country's post-war economy by merging his family's business interests with the government, turning his country into the world's most prosperous tourist destination and the government's corporation into an international business concern worth hundreds of billions. By the time the report was finished, she'd filed the name away in her head with Paul Bunyan and Davy Crockett as someone who probably existed and may have done some cool things, but there was no fucking way all these stories about him could be true.
She'd thought that the stories about him as barely still a boy leading his people to take back his country were "feel-good stories." He couldn't have possibly inspired the resistance to create enough small disasters at once to force Schell and his officers into an emergency meeting in the castle that the young man he'd made Count knew well enough to sneak a squad into and capture them without firing a shot. And when Vincenzo had the man who'd murdered his parents at the end of his gun barrel, he forced him to order his troops to surrender to the People over that same radio.
In her own mind, Helen couldn't fathom that Vincenzo never pulled that trigger. Surely that was something that only heroes in movies didn't do. And then a second later, the guy would pull out a hidden gun and THEN it would be OK to shoot him! You didn't have the fucker who did all that to your family at your mercy and let him go, even if it was to deliver your badass message to Hitler: He'd get his tanks and planes back; as soon as they were painted Emerald Green, they'd be pointed right at him. Such a person couldn't possibly exist.
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