Aki Ollikainen: White Hunger

‘A whore peddling her wares; thinks she’ll get bread out of it.’ The malign voice of an old woman bleats in the darkness of the room. ‘Couldn’t you get into a gentleman’s chamber? Is that why you come here to show your wares? Heheheh…’

Frost crackles in the wooden walls and, at the same time, the man disappears into the fetid air; Marja is left lying in emptiness.

A crack sounds: the man falls to the floor. It takes a moment for Marja to take in the thud. She turns to see a thin figure holding a long piece of wood.

‘You killed a man, you killed a good man,’ the old biddy screeches.

‘Shut up, grandma,’ a voice rings out from the corner.

‘In cahoots with the whore. The whore seduces and the other one strikes. They killed a man, murderers! Murderer! Whore!’

‘One more croak, you fucking toad, and you’ll get it from the same log.’

The voice belongs to a young boy. Probably not much older than Mataleena, Marja thinks. Juho has woken up and is sobbing. Marja picks him up and soothes the child and, at the same time, herself.

The door creaks open, a lantern appears and then Hakmanni’s face. ‘In God’s name, what is this racket?’

Hakmanni’s lantern lights up the room. The skeletal man lying face-down on the floor watches, eyes wide open, as straw gradually begins floating in red blood. It drifts right in front of his eyes and yet the man looks from very far away.

‘Dead,’ Hakmanni states woefully.

‘Murdered by the whore! The whore and her helper,’ the small, wizened old woman screeches. But her words drop back down from the black planks of the ceiling.

‘Shut your mouth, you crazy cow. Take no notice of her. You can see what happened: the bloke was trying feel his way through the dark with his trousers round his ankles. He tripped over and hit his head on that log.’ A man sitting in the corner joins in the conversation.

Hakmanni looks at the body, then turns to the boy holding the piece of wood.

‘I found it on the floor. I picked it up to prevent another accident happening,’ the boy says calmly.

‘You’re not yet a man and you’ve already gone down that path,’ Hakmanni says, more in sorrow than in judgement.

‘You mean a beggar’s path?’

‘You know what I mean. For the sake of your own soul you need to know that; for you, too, have a soul. Just as this poor man does,’ Hakmanni replies softly.

‘Not any more he doesn’t,’ remarks the man in the corner.

‘Perhaps not in this body, but he’s begging for God’s mercy now — as shall we all one day.’

Hakmanni passes the boy the lantern and addresses the man in the corner. ‘We’ve got to take the body away. We’ll carry it to the woodshed for the night.’

‘Let’s just throw it outside; the cold will keep it from rotting.’

‘He too was a human being. And anyway, he’ll be eaten by dogs if we leave him out in the open.’

Hakmanni and the man who was sitting in the corner lift the corpse; the boy shows them the way with the lantern.

‘You’ll have to be off in the morning, boy; you can’t stay here any longer.’ Marja hears Hakmanni’s voice before the door shuts.

Once the lantern is gone, the room is dark again.

‘Is the whore happy now? You killed a good man,’ the old woman sneers.

‘Shut your bloody mouth,’ a woman’s voice commands. ‘Let the children, at least, get some sleep. Bleedin’ hag.’

Marja presses her own cheek against Juho’s. She is too dried up to cry, but the tear on Juho’s cheek feels comforting.

A woman with four children stands outside Hakmanni’s house. The tiny old lady hobbles from the woodshed towards her; Marja hears her explaining how, during the night, a whore murdered a good man. First, she seduced him and then, having got her hands on his money, she gave the sign to her accomplice to hit him with a cosh. And the minister’s turning a blind eye because his silence has been bought. The children try to hide from the old woman behind their mother. When Hakmanni comes outside, the old woman continues her journey. She seizes the sleeve of the first person she meets and points at Marja.

Hakmanni looks at Marja gravely and slips a piece of bread into her hand. He advises her to make for the official almshouse on the other side of the town. There she will get bread in exchange for work.

‘If they’ve got any bread,’ Hakmanni goes on.

‘What do they make there?’

‘Coffins.’

A mirthless chuckle escapes Marja. Hakmanni, too, realizes the grotesqueness of the situation. An expression somewhere between a grimace and an apologetic smile spreads over his face.

‘Put your trust in Jesus,’ Hakmanni whispers, and goes off to lead the woman with the four children towards the almshouse.

At the corner of the graveyard, Marja is joined by the boy from the previous night. He is taller than Marja, almost by a head, though he is still a lad.

‘Oh, it’s you. I didn’t get to say thank you.’

‘Bah, I felt like hitting him anyway. I just didn’t get the chance before.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Ruuni.’

‘What kind of a name is that? You won’t find that in the parish register,’ Marja laughs.

‘Are any of us still in the register, the one they call the names from at the pearly gates? Doesn’t matter what name you go begging under. The one the minister gave me has no meaning; the shepherd hasn’t made much of an effort to call after his lamb. I named myself and now I’m my own master.’

‘Don’t you fear for your soul, as Hakmanni said you should?’

‘Believe me, the minister knowing your name won’t save you either. Would you share the crust of bread the sheep gave you?’ Ruuni asks.

‘I thought I’d give it to Juho.’

‘Well, will Juho share?’ Ruuni asks, bending towards the boy.

Marja laughs and digs the bread out of her pocket. Ruuni tries to amuse Juho by pretending to tear off his own thumb, but Juho stares gravely at the wiggling digit, not seeing anything funny there. They sit down on the silo steps and Marja breaks the piece of bread in three.

‘Real bark. He’s a fox, not a man, that excuse for a minister,’ Ruuni says admiringly, and sucks the bread, sighing.

‘Are you going to the almshouse to make coffins?’ Marja asks, and Ruuni shakes his head.

‘You know, I won’t ask your name. At the end of this road, the one we’re on, there is a mass grave. And there’ll be no minister holding a roll call there. When the dead climb out on Judgement Day, they won’t know whose bones they’ve gathered up. A fine fellow named Viljaami may well be carrying a common-or-garden Jussi’s shinbone. So is he now Viljaami or Jussi? The Devil will have to draw lots to see who goes up and who down. We’re part of the same heap of bones, the lot of us. In fact, we’re already in one big mass grave. How can you tell the difference between us when we all look like skeletons?’

Juho giggles, which puts Marja in a good mood.

‘Some of the landowners have got a bit of meat on their bones,’ she points out.

‘They get to Heaven, too; they know to murmur “God Almighty”, even the thin ones. The rest of us are more likely to call on Satan, where the rich folk call God’s name. Not Vaasko, though. He cursed at farmhands and maids in the Devil’s name, but Satan wouldn’t lumber himself with the nuisance: Vaasko would be such a taskmaster, even in Hell, that the Devil would begin feeling sorry for the tortured souls. So even old Vaasko will sneak in through the pearly gates.’

The boy’s stories amuse Marja. He has listened carefully to the talk of old men, and taught himself the swagger of the hired hands at big houses. The ones who sit at dances, hands clasped behind their heads, peaked caps over their eyes, jawing about masters, mistresses and the arses of maids. The next morning, they stand cap in hand before their maligned masters, as if being tested on the catechism by the vicar, and are reproached for how poorly they harnessed a horse or sharpened a scythe.