Aki Ollikainen: White Hunger

‘It’s had it for the autumn,’ Raakel says.

Lars starts and looks at his wife enquiringly. She is standing by the China rose, stroking the green leaves gently.

‘Not a single flower in over a week.’

‘Oh, really? In the past, it’s flowered beyond All Saints’ Day, isn’t that so?’

Lars forces himself to stand up, goes to his wife. The same melancholy strikes Raakel every time the China rose begins its hibernation and she is once again bereft of an object for her warmth and love. What if it doesn’t flower again? The same fear over winter, the same phrase every time, every year, when Lars comes back from work to find his wife caressing the leaves of the rose shrub.

‘There’ll be more in spring.’

‘Maybe, maybe. It’s just that these days everything beautiful seems to wither.’

A turbaned man rides across a desert, a veiled maiden in his arms; in the background, a palace is gilded by the rays of the setting sun.

Cecilia crouches naked over the basin and washes between her legs. Water runs through her dark pubic hair, straightening the tiny curls; drops fall from their tips into the bowl. She straightens up and places her hands on her knees as she squats and spreads her legs a little wider. The vulva is still open after coitus.

‘Looks stupid, your jaw hanging like that,’ Cecilia comments.

Teo passes the woman a linen cloth for her to dry herself with.

‘What’s your name? I mean your real name?’

‘Isn’t Cecilia good enough for you? It’s Elin. But Madame wanted to call me Cecilia. Or actually, Cecile.’

‘And you’re really Swedish, from Dalarna?’

‘Yes.’

An hour later, she can be Ulrika from Poland, if that is required. She shoves the basin under the table, showing Teo her bottom at the same time, lifting it rather higher than necessary. Her performance has the desired effect. Teo tries to turn his back on her but he is nailed to the spot, his eyes are glued to the bare buttocks, the pale skin that still shows pinkish indents from the mattress. She knows I have to go, Teo thinks. He becomes short of breath. Cecilia takes out a china chamber pot, next to the basin, and crouches over it in turn. The pissing woman arouses Teo, but he resolves not to let her win this game. At the very least, he will not reveal his defeat.

‘You’re a country girl, no getting away from it.’

‘This place is hardly St Petersburg. Your hometown’s a miserable village on a wretched little island.’

‘I didn’t mean to offend. I just meant, you are what you are.’

‘What’s that? A country girl? Why would I want to be that? Maybe that’s what you want; I don’t.’

Teo helps Cecilia into her corset. As he tightens the laces, he sees the woman’s bosom rising like warm bread.

Cecilia sits down before the dressing table and puts her hair back up into a bun. A bare branch scrapes against the window in the wind; grey clouds thicken slowly in the sky. The first drops hit the pane and trickle down.

‘You don’t really approve of what I do. That’s why you want to make-believe I’m just an innocent country girl. Why do you think I’m here? If you love me, you love a whore. Are you ready for that?’

Teo does not reply. He focuses on two rivulets formed by raindrops, to see if they will catch up with each other before the window frame stops them dead.

Cecilia kisses Teo lightly on the cheek.

‘You pay good money to sleep with me, though you could pick me up, take me home and have me for free.’

‘I couldn’t be seen walking around in public with a woman from the demi-monde on my arm.’

‘But I’m just an innocent country girl from Dalarna,’ Cecilia replies, her tone suddenly icy and mocking.

‘Don’t. You know what people would say. A scandal like that would mean I couldn’t practise medicine in this town again.’

‘Do you think they don’t know already? Whoever they are.’

‘And I am not paying for this,’ Teo says.

Cecilia is now fully dressed. She sits down in the room’s only armchair and lifts one leg over the other with ease. It is appropriate for a gentleman to address his servants in that position, but in Teo’s view the pose does not befit a woman. And yet, it comes naturally to Cecilia. Teo shoves his hands into his pockets so he does not have to dangle them before the proud harlot like a lowly coachman. He rocks on his feet, as he remembers Matsson and other dockers doing sometimes.

‘Yes, you provide a service for Madame. You protect her reputation; she can present the medical inspector with clean girls. And in return, I sleep with you. That, darling Teo, is known as trade.’

‘I’m doing it for you. And because I care — about you and the others.’

‘I believe you. You’re doing all this for me. It’s just that you spend so little time in my world. And I none in yours.’

She’s too sharp for a country girl, Teo thinks. That cleverness takes away from her innocence. And he can never be sure when Elin is talking and when Cecilia, and whether that makes any difference.

‘Who are you, Elin or Cecilia?’

‘Here I’m always Cecilia.’

‘Should I go and look for Elin in Dalarna?’

‘Elin is dead.’

‘Can’t she be resurrected?’

‘Only you would have the potential, but you haven’t got what it takes. You’re no Jesus. You lack the courage.’

The room around Teo shrinks, becoming cramped. The smile on the Bedouin princess’s face is vacuous: imposed by the demands of her role. That is why the rider is not laughing either. His seriousness is not the consequence of lofty serenity. The artist has drawn himself, having grasped that the scene was frozen for all eternity and the palace at the edge of the desert a mere mirage.

*

‘The postman’s skull was smashed in with a single blow. His back was slashed open, like he was going to be skinned. There was blood streaming down Gypsy Hill. Janne Halli did it — that dark, handsome brute of a man. As bad as those Ostrobothnian thugs, almost. Not quite, though — you don’t find types like that anywhere else. And that’s where I come from,’ the squat old codger concludes his tale about the killing and robbery in Kuorevesi.

Teo finds it hard to determine the man’s age. His voice and speech belong to a youngster, but his face is as creased as that of an ancient retainer. Teo remembers reading about the murder of a postman in the Dagbladet ; the crime had been a sensation in the whole of the Grand Duchy. The victim was, after all, a public servant.

‘Janne Halli’s sorrel trots on the ice of Kuorevesi…’ the Ostrobothnian begins to belt out.

The ditty is cut short when a large Pole slumps on to the bench next to the old man, throws one arm around him and starts singing something in his own language. The old man tries to shake off the Pole, who is so drunk he does not even notice the smaller man squirming.

‘Doktor, doktor, doktor, ’ babbles the Pole, staring vacantly at Teo.

Teo knows that the best way to get rid of the man is to supply him with drink. He beckons the landlady over and asks for some spirits. Hearing this, the old fellow calling himself an Ostrobothnian cranes his neck and turns his head anxiously this way and that, eyes seeking the landlady.

‘Nothing for you,’ she says tartly.

All the same, Teo asks her to serve him some too, and the old man stretches out his tankard, ecstatic.

Having got his spirits, the Pole notices a woman seated at a corner table, stands up and staggers over to her. The woman wastes no time in putting her arm round the man’s neck; she laughs loudly as he kneads her breasts. The man accompanying the woman is not bothered, merely smiling and leaning against the wall. He has a knife tucked into his boot. Teo stares at it for a moment too long.