Aki Ollikainen: White Hunger

Marja feels her body collapsing. Her grip on Juho’s hand loosens. The falling goes on for ever; she sees everything change into an endless field of snow.

Then, eternity ceases. The earth does not receive her gently. A merciless cold awaits, never-ending snow, which bursts into a cloud as Marja tumbles.

The colour of death is white. His sledge stops by Marja. Death himself occupies the driver’s seat. Even the Tsar has come down from the tree and sits with Death. The sledge vanishes, a white darkness descends and buries everything.

‘Mother…’

Juho’s voice. Then nothing.

The bark of a lone dog echoes in the street, intensifying to become a howl. Somewhere further away, in the direction of Kamppi, another dog offers accompaniment. The senator walks hesitantly up Yrjönkatu. He stops at his house and looks at the dark windows.

A third dog joins the concert. The desolate howling rises and sinks, like a wave dying on the shore and disappearing into the sand to make way for another. The moon has risen; against its light, the senator sees his breath steaming. He is alone. His supporters in the senate have faded away. Adlerberg will have his way and the construction of the St Petersburg railway line will begin. A debt will be incurred for this purpose, one that will cost the nation dear.

The house looks deserted; the shadows cast by the dark curtains emphasize the emptiness. No one is awake now, just when he needs someone to talk to.

Every night during the last few months, he has walked halfway to meet his wife, and every morning woken alone, back at the beginning of the path. And again in the evening, when he closes his eyes, he sees Jeannette, lying in bed writhing, trying to push out a premature baby, as the bed is flooded with blood. He himself is standing helplessly by, holding the body of two-year-old Magdalena. Sweet little Magdalena needs to be buried, and now Jeannette, too, is leaving him and taking the tiny newborn with her.

Ten years ago those dreams tormented him and now they have returned. A frosty night early in September brought them back. After that it was clear that this winter would be a catastrophe for the country.

And at the end of October, Adlerberg had returned to his post as governor-general. The senator had got on with Indrenius, Indrenius had given him a free hand. Adlerberg had seized the reins from those hands and now drove the cart himself: carelessly, like a rogue on a village track in Ostrobothnia.

The construction of the railway will be expensive. The loan negotiated with the Germans will take the national economy to the brink of bankruptcy. And a vast number of workers will be required. Hungry people will have to be dragged from their homes to carry out building work, and it is obvious diseases will spread. Many will die.

A light comes on in the house. Someone is still awake after all. The senator goes in through the gate. Hearing noises in the hall, the housekeeper comes out of the kitchen.

The senator goes to light the lamp on the table in the reception room. He turns the flame down so it barely illuminates the two armchairs and the small portraits on the wall in the alcove.

‘Has the butcher’s bill been seen to?’

‘Hanna’s a good girl, she takes care everything’s done on time. Don’t you concern yourself with that.’

‘Good. You may go to bed now, Ulrika. I’ll stay up for a little longer.’

Ulrika says goodnight and leaves.

The senator walks around the dimly lit room, out of habit straightening the pleats in the curtains. He hung them himself, while Jeannette was still alive.

After pouring himself a drink, he sits down in one of the armchairs and stares at the empty chair opposite. If only some old friend were sitting there, someone he could discuss the state of the world with.

The senator turns up the flame in the lamp so that it lights the pictures on the wall properly. He examines Jeannette’s face, studies it again to be sure it will never fade from his mind. That serious expression and the dark eyes that squint just a tiny bit, charmingly.

The moon has gone behind a cloud. The street lies in darkness. The senator opens the curtain a little and sees his own reflection in the window. He puffs on his pipe and the face shimmers for a moment in the glow, a deep furrow visible between the eyes.

People seem terribly interested in details, he thinks. The most important thing, however, is to see the whole; only the big picture gives the details their significance. Otherwise, they are left hanging in the air, just as if the furrow on his brow were merely a scratch on the windowpane.

The child is the first to fall. He manages to get back up on to his knees, but when the woman collapses, it is as if she is disintegrating into the snow. Teo tells the driver to stop. The man curses as he tugs at the reins.

The woman is already dead. Teo removes his fur hat and kneels down to press his cheek into the snow next to her face and look into her eyes. They are covered by a pale gauze, like curtains drawn before a window; behind the gauze is desolate emptiness of the kind one always sees in the eyes of the dead. Teo tries to conjure up one last, dying flame in the woman’s gaze, but there is none. The fire has been transferred to the boy; he would not survive long without that borrowed light.

The driver from the inn says they are not locals.

‘What should we do with them?’ Teo asks.

Not Teo’s problem, the driver thinks. The driver himself would leave them here, the boy too, next to his mother; he won’t make it anyway. Teo picks up the boy and carries him to the sledge. He separates him from his mother. Though death has already done so; Teo is merely trying to prevent the Grim Reaper from rectifying the mistake.

They have gone some distance before the boy looks back; only then does he realize what has happened, and he stretches out his hand and whispers, ‘Mother.’ The woman remains lying in the middle of the field. The snow tucks her in tenderly. By the time the sledge reaches the forest, the travellers would no longer be able to tell woman and snow apart if they did not know to look for her.

If the boy falls asleep, he will not wake up. Perhaps the driver knew best after all, Teo thinks. Perhaps the boy would be better off dying next to his mother, rather than in an unfamiliar sledge. They would end up in the same mass grave; they could stay together, neither having to sleep their eternal slumber alone.

But the boy is alive.

He starts once, and asks for his mother. Teo’s gaze roams over passing trees. The light on the snowy branches is gradually turning blue. The fur hat chafes unpleasantly at his forehead.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Juho.’

‘I’m Teo… Uncle Teo. Where’s your father?’

‘Asleep.’

‘Where is Father asleep?’

‘Mataleena went to Father in the barn.’

‘And who’s Mataleena?’

‘My sister.’

‘Is your sister asleep, too?’

‘Yes, she is,’ Juho whispers.

Father, Mother and Mataleena are no more; there is only Juho. The boy stares long and hard at the driver’s tattered hat.

‘Where do you come from? I mean, where do you live… or where did you live?’ Teo tries. He encounters only the boy’s uncomprehending eyes. He realizes how hopeless it is to try and work out where the boy and his mother set out to beg from.

‘Will Mother go to the barn, too?’ Juho asks.

‘Yes, for sure… But Uncle will take you to the city now.’

‘To a church?’

‘Yes, a really big church.’

‘But Mother’s not coming?’

In the village, Teo seeks out the local doctor, one Löfgren. When Teo offers to pay for a room, even though they have never met, Löfgren absolutely refuses to take any money and insists on offering his colleague a bed for the night. They can stay as long as they need, Löfgren assures Teo.