Aki Ollikainen: White Hunger

The man shoves his fingers between Marja’s legs, pulls them out, spits on them, forces them back inside. Panting, he gets to work on Marja, who is pressed underwater by the cold hand of terror, which will not let go. No air. Then the man pushes himself into her.

‘Fucking dry mare,’ he grunts.

The moment feels endless, but it does end, when the man lets out a spluttering noise. Then he gives a cry and seems to float off Marja.

His wife has pulled him up by the hair. He puts on his shirt and disappears back into the bedroom, swearing at the boy whose face looms above the ledge.

Finally, Marja’s voice is released from her throat. She gulps it back down when she sees the woman’s hand, raised ready to strike, though still trembling in the air.

‘Whore, whore, whore,’ the woman hisses through her teeth.

She grabs Marja by the hair and swings her head around. Juho clings to his mother’s neck.

‘You can go into the cowshed for the night, along with all the other cows, though there’s no bull for you there,’ the woman says, finally releasing her grip.

Marja gathers together her torn clothes, dresses Juho hastily, goes to the door and opens it. It is dark outside and cold. The woman stands in the main room, in the glow of the spill, and tears now at her own hair. The head of the blind boy sticks out from the ledge, seeking the light, moving to and fro like a pendulum.

The woman lets go of her hair and her anguished expression instantly becomes a haughty one. She takes a lantern off a hook by the door, lights it and hands it to Marja.

‘Go. And in the morning you’ll be gone, whore.’

Darkness rises from the snow, along with the whirling flakes. The wind rustles in the trees; beyond, the muteness of the night is endless. The cowshed door resists Marja’s attempts at pulling, then the wind blasts it wide open and at the same time snow pours in, taking Marja with it. She hears the meek lowing of cows.

There are embers in the cowshed stove, radiating the same faint light as in the mill. Marja hangs the lantern on a hook and adds some twigs to the embers. They ignite with a small crackle, like ice on a puddle breaking underfoot. She finds a horse blanket next to the stove and wraps it round Juho.

There are three thin cows in the shed. Marja spots a pair of shears that have been pushed into the gap between the wall and the door frame. She takes them out, chooses the healthiest-looking of the animals and cuts a small wound in its neck. The cow lets out a subdued cry. Marja licks the wound and starts sucking blood. The cow lows again and butts Marja so she falls over. She lies on the floor and tries to lick tears from her cheeks, but there are no tears.

‘Mother, make me warm,’ Juho pleads.

Marja drags herself to the boy, curls up inside the blanket next to him and falls asleep. She has a dream in which she does not exist. A dream that contains no dream, only boundless, colourless darkness.

Finally, Marja is reborn in the middle of the darkness. At first, she is just a reflection on the surface of the water, then her senses fill the image mercilessly. The darkness around Marja slowly changes into a space she recognizes as a cowshed. Pallid light streams in through the doorway, then condenses into a woman, who bends to pick up a pair of bloodied shears, which hurtle towards Marja.

‘Were you sent by the Devil?’

The woman’s eyes glint with cold anger. Marja struggles to get free of the blanket and stumbles out of the cowshed, pulling Juho after her. The woman follows, holding a pail. Out in the yard, the farmer is calling the dog, which is nowhere to be seen.

‘The whore’s let blood from the cow!’

The man jumps on Marja, fells her so she lies beneath him and rubs snow in her face. ‘I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you!’

The man presses his cold palm against her face. Marja hears Juho’s cry. Between the man’s fingers, she sees the woman raising her pail with the aim of striking. A thud sounds, and the hand lets go of Marja’s face. The man collapses.

Marja grabs Juho by the shoulder and starts stumbling down the slope. Not until she reaches the bottom does she dare look back, to see the woman hitting the crouching man with the pail.

Juho drags his mother up out of the snowdrift. Panting, she begins trudging on. The gale tears snow off the field and tosses it around. It is unable to decide from which angle to attack the travellers.

Marja sees a bridge ahead: a road to another world, one that is equally white. The bridge itself is just a dark dot in the landscape.

Suddenly, Marja spots the snow-covered cadaver of a dog by the road. The veil of snow is thin — the dog has not lain there for long. Its flank has been torn open and oddly grey innards show through the opening. Teeth did the tearing. Marja does not know whether the cold shivers she feels are down to the grotesque sight or the gale. The dog is the one that barked at them yesterday as they arrived at the house.

Marja steps on to the bridge. She lifts Juho up and presses the child to her breast as hard as her feebleness will allow. The bridge is a greedy tongue, ready to transport the wanderer into winter’s gullet, to satisfy its endless, insatiable hunger.

The wind decides now on a direction and pushes Marja over the bridge. Swirls of snow lap round her feet; the current no longer flows under the bridge but along it, towards the snow plain on the other side, where the road vanishes.

Far away, she sees the trees edging the open space; they change into the silhouettes of spires and palaces in the Tsar’s city. They flee, fluttering, into nothingness, and towards this nothingness Marja crawls, Juho in her arms. The Tsar himself descends to the crown of the biggest spruce, but dressed up as death, as a black raven.

Once over the bridge, Marja sees the body. It is curled up in the foetal position, but the face is turned towards the sky, mouth open in an eternal grimace. As if the dying man had at the last moment realized that the womb where he had settled to await rebirth was the bleak womb of this barren winter.

The ears, too big for the gaunt head, make the body look like a frozen bat. The long fingers still clutch the knees desperately. Marja bends closer to Ruuni’s face. It takes her a while to grasp that it really is Ruuni. He has no eyes any more; the Tsar has inherited them, and he sits now at the top of the big spruce showing them his realm. Here you are, here is your St Petersburg, a snowy field. I cannot give you more.

Staring into the boy’s open mouth, Marja notices that hair and flesh from the dog have got stuck between his teeth.

She presses her lips tenderly against Ruuni’s. She feels the chill of death as she breathes it in, kissing the dead boy.

A gust of wind throws a thin shroud of snow over the boy. Something forces Marja up and onwards, but her strength ebbs away after a few steps. She freezes on the spot. A bottomless longing rises up from the depths of her empty stomach. Marja tries to picture the colour of life on Ruuni’s face, but sees only bluish-white ears shredded by the frost.

Longing thickens into sorrow. The sorrow fills her body, changes her into a barrel packed with heavy water that presses against the sides, so they no longer hold. Mataleena and Juhani slumber in the depths of her sorrow-water. Marja takes a few uncertain steps forward, then the hoops keeping the barrel together give way.

The water bursts out, unrestrained, wetting her feet and seeping into her legs all the way up, until she is a dirty sheet heavy with liquid. The dampness crystallizes into powdery snow, through which wind blows. Marja disintegrates into a blizzard. Snowdrifts cover Mataleena, lying on the plank. Marja calls Juhani for help, but her voice is just a rattle. Juhani as a swan is stuck to the last patch of open water, frozen; he cannot take flight, instead lowering his head on to the edge of the ice and slowly gliding into the black water as the hole closes up altogether.