Aki Ollikainen: White Hunger

Juho is still giggling. The child’s laughter ploughs a path through grey despair. And it leads not to white death but to yellow-green, vernal St Petersburg. In the hungry, hollow emptiness in Marja’s stomach, clutched by a cold, bony fist, the Tsar’s city seems to rise. Now the fist yields and a cobbled street emerges. Beautiful green birches line the street, along which Marja walks, holding Juho’s hand. They go into a shop and buy a loaf. The fat shopkeeper smiles and praises Juho, calling him a bonny lad. The smiling face of the shopkeeper’s wife appears from the back room. She agrees he’s bonny and the man hands Juho a pastry.

‘Give me your name, all the same. I can put in a good word for you at the pearly gates — I’ll get there before you.’ Ruuni interrupts Marja’s thoughts.

‘My name’s Marja. You’re not heading for Heaven. But I can speak to the Tsar on your behalf when I get to St Petersburg.’

‘Aha. God’s nothing, then. Let’s carry on together. I could come to St Petersburg, too, and be a soldier. Hang on a second, I’ve got to see to something,’ Ruuni says, and vanishes behind the silo.

Outside town, they get a lift in an old man’s sledge. The journey progresses in silence; the only sound is that of snow crunching sadly under the runners. The farmer stops the sledge by a field.

‘This is where you get off. Go along the track across the field; there are some dwellings there,’ the man says.

Marja realizes he does not want to put them up for the night. She tries to catch the old man’s eye, but he looks either across the field or at the snow, never straight at her.

The brief period of daylight has not yet run its course. In the middle of the field stands a barn and Ruuni suggests they rest there a short while and eat.

‘What have we got to eat, then?’ Marja wonders.

Ruuni pulls out a loaf from inside his coat.

‘Did you steal it?’ Marja is horrified.

‘I did indeed.’

The barn walls are gappy, but there is some hay inside. Marja wonders whether they could spend the night here.

Ruuni divides the bread in three and hands the smallest piece to Juho.

‘How did you end up a beggar?’ Marja asks.

‘Vaasko threw me out the minute his belly began to rumble. A fat, greedy old man. If he so much as glimpses hunger out the corner of his eye, he’s got to get food down him right away. He worked out that if he didn’t throw out the hired hands, he’d have less to chomp on. Wouldn’t have done the fatty any harm, mind you.’

‘You’re an orphan?’

‘Mother died of typhus in the workhouse. That was in spring. I’ve been on the move ever since. No good standing still. I’m not a kid any more, all big eyes. I’ve had to learn to thieve. Nobody’s going to take pity on someone like me, and I haven’t got round to having a little one yet. If I had, I could put it on show when I’m out begging. You could lend me that Juho of yours — I could live like a lord. I bet you only have to turn up at people’s doors and they go all misty-eyed and hand over their bread.’

‘It’s not that easy,’ Marja says, and thinks of Mataleena.

Ruuni sees from Marja’s expression that she is swallowing tears along with the bread. He places his hand on her shoulder. Marja puts her own hand on top of Ruuni’s and squeezes it tenderly. For a moment, she feels as if all the beggars in the world were one family, as if they felt the same pain and were grieving over Mataleena, sharing her burden.

Juho, Marja and Ruuni curl up to sleep in the scant hay, as close to each other as baby mice in their nest. Marja strokes Ruuni’s ears, which stick out like the wings of a fledgling learning to fly. It is hard to imagine the boy with the protruding ears as a skeleton, though his face is wizened with hunger and his eyes are sunken and ringed with black. Juho and Ruuni are already snoring gently. Marja, too, closes her eyes.

Marja rises from the hay. The barn walls have become even gappier. The wind sighs hoarsely, like someone suffering from pneumonia. Through the wall, Marja sees a three-legged figure approaching from far away in the field. Suddenly, she recognizes him as the man Ruuni bludgeoned.

The man walks trouserless in the snow; a long member hangs between his legs, like a gigantic icicle. It ploughs a furrow in the icy field. The furrow fills with red blood.

Marja is terrified. She presses herself against the wall and hopes the man will not see her. He is dragging himself past the barn when suddenly he stops and turns to stare with dead eyes, tongue hanging out indecently. And his eyes smoulder with something that makes Marja freeze with horror.

Until suddenly she realizes that it is Juhani. Her Juhani. But the relief is short-lived, for Juhani’s eyes are snowballs that crumble in the wind, leaving only black holes behind. Then a gust of wind blows Juhani, who has become mere snow, out of existence; slowly, her beloved is scattered all over the white field. Alarmed, Marja glances at Juho, who is lying in the hay. It is not Juho, though, but Ruuni, with whom she has just slept.

And yet it is Juho, Ruuni never existed. Rather, her little Juho has grown up without her noticing and she has mistaken him for a man. She cries out, but the scream does not emerge — an invisible hand pushes it back into her mouth, which stays open. Marja cannot breathe.

She realizes this is the same barn where she left Mataleena, and when she turns to look, Mataleena is lying next to her, white as snow, on a grey plank.

Marja wakes up with a start and gasps for air. Cold penetrates her body from all directions. There is Juho by her side, and, pressed up against the boy, Ruuni. Marja tries to exhale the nightmare but it takes a long time for the images to leave her in peace. Then she shakes Ruuni awake.

‘We’ve got to be on our way. It’s too cold to stay the night here. It’ll be getting dark soon.’

Ruuni wakes reluctantly. When he half-opens his eyes, cold rushes at him. When he closes them again, something drags him down deeper into the treacherous warmth of sleep. But Marja forces Ruuni and Juho to get up.

Shadows lengthen. They begin spreading over the landscape, soon swallowing it up. The snow is deep; Ruuni and Marja take it in turns to carry Juho. Marja tries to hold on to the image of St Petersburg, but the city shrinks. A field of snow and a dark forest spring up around it, and finally the trees conceal the palaces, which flee into the distance.

In the end, all that remains before her is a white track meandering between gloomy spruces. The snow casts a cruel light: teasingly, it reveals a road that does not shorten as you walk. Until suddenly, past a bend, there appears a narrow, frozen river with a wooden bridge, and a mill and mill-house looming on the other side.

Without knocking first, Ruuni pushes the door of the mill-house open. The room is small. The miller lies wheezing on the couch. The bed is too short for him; the man lies oddly bent. The weak light draws deep shadows on the miller’s deathly pale face. He turns his face towards the door and looks at the visitors with empty eyes.

‘Scurvy,’ a voice says from the corner.

Marja sees a grey-haired woman. On her head she wears a large woollen sock, which is unravelling above her forehead. Her tangled hair tumbles out from underneath. Marja looks at the miller’s foot. Long. He is a tall man. Was — he is not any more.

‘Shut the door,’ the woman orders. ‘There’s nowhere else to go in these parts. You won’t necessarily catch what he’s got, if you don’t get too close, but the frost will surely kill you if you run off into the night.’

The woman promises Juho alone something to eat. The room is dim; the open fire flickers with a strange light. The woman seems one moment to vanish in the dark and the next to reappear in the corner, when the embers direct their red light towards her.