Aki Ollikainen: White Hunger

Outside, Teo sits down on the steps next to Matsson and lights his pipe. Matsson passes Teo a bottle of spirits; he swigs and grimaces.

‘Booze or cunt — men get the same look with both,’ Matsson says. He means to be funny, but he cannot hide the tension in his voice.

Teo stumbles on after Matsson. The figure ahead forms a black shape against the silhouettes of the houses. A few windowpanes reveal lone lights gleaming, but they yield quickly to the dark embrace of the night.

Matsson stops by the bridge. In Katajanokka, he treats Teo as a fond father would a son who is not yet a man but who needs to learn a bit about life. On the other side of the bridge, though, where the houses are made of stone, Teo is a gentleman, and when addressing the doctor, Matsson feels the urge to whip off his hat.

Having crossed the bridge, Teo turns round and looks back. Oh, you whores and vagrants of Katajanokka. Clinging to this world with those gnawed nails of yours.

The colour of death is white. At funerals, people wear black, the living, that is. Even the deceased is in black, because he is dressed in the best clothes he owned while alive, but his face is always white. When the soul leaves a human, only white remains.

The colour is being drained from Juhani’s face. The first to go was red, the colour of blood. Red changed into yellow, then yellow, too, vanished, leaving grey, which is now fading gradually into white.

Juhani reaches out his hand. A rattling sound comes out of the gaping mouth, from deep within. He tries to say something but Marja turns her face away, towards the window. Ice flowers cover the pane, ugly, mocking a summer meadow: blooms of death. Frost spreads weed-like through the window frames along the timber joints across the wall. The door is the worst: snow pushes in through the chinks and forms a frame, like a cadaver bent on settling in the cottage.

Marja lowers Juho from her arms on to the bench and wraps the blanket more tightly round the child. Then she crosses the small room and bends down close to her husband’s face. Juhani’s cheeks are shrunken, covered in a pathetic stubble that recalls seedlings attacked by frost. His eyes are two holes in the ice covering a lake with no fish. He is still alive, you can tell from the movement of his chest. The panting is soundless.

‘Jesus, Marja… Jesus… help…’

‘You’re always going on about Jesus.’

Marja goes back to the other side of the room and lifts up Juho. Mataleena adds more wood to the feeble flames.

‘Put them all on,’ Marja says wearily.

‘We should hold back if we’re not going to fetch any more.’

‘No point.’

Mataleena kneels by her father and feels his hot forehead. She tries to adjust the blanket so it is better positioned. Her father grabs the child’s wrist and manages to twist his face into a shadow of a smile.

‘Dear child, get me something to drink.’

Mataleena stands up, intending to fetch water from the saucepan on the stove.

‘Frozen,’ Marja says.

Mataleena looks at the saucepan. A small amount of water has frozen at its base. When she tilts the pan towards the light and moves her face closer, she sees her own image.

‘Get some snow,’ Marja says.

‘Sun,’ Mataleena establishes at the door.

The storm has subsided for a moment. Clouds make way for the sun, which dyes the hoar frost on the windowpane silver. Something reminiscent of life appears in the room, the window frame draws the shape of a cross on the floor.

Mataleena comes back in; she is carrying snow in a bowl formed by her hands. She plans to put the snow in the saucepan to melt, but Marja stops her.

‘It’s not worth it, put it straight into his mouth.’

Mataleena rubs snow carefully on to her father’s chapped lips; she feeds him slowly, as if giving pieces of a bun to a small child. A rattle like a cat’s purr comes out of Juhani’s mouth.

Marja lets her gaze wander around the cottage. They have to leave now, before the storm resumes. Any later and they would not even make it to the next house; they would collapse before reaching Willow Ditch and be buried under snow. It is not leaving that frightens her, but the thought of having to return. They need to get as far away as possible from their miserable patch of land. All that is left here is death.

Marja plucks a piece of straw from the corner of Juho’s mouth. They ran out of bark bread some time ago. She has not dared use lichen after Lauri Pajula died from eating bread made of it. That was in late summer — in another year, people would have been harvesting round then. The farmer at Lehto said Lauri died of poisoning. He had read in the newspaper that you need to treat lichen correctly if you are going to add it to flour.

‘Mataleena, we’ve got to go.’

‘Father’s not up to it.’

‘We have to leave Father.’

Mataleena presses her face against the blanket on Juhani’s stomach and sobs. Juhani looks at Marja and tries to say something. Marja gets up and goes to him. She bends her head and examines her husband’s face.

What is he trying to say? Juhani again only manages a rattling sound. He seizes Marja’s arm, and she does not try to shake him loose but looks her husband in the eye, curious. Is he asking for help, or mercy, or urging her to go? Does he understand anything any more? Marja looks and looks, but cannot fathom his expression.

She ties her church shawl over Juho’s ears and wraps a scarf over the top. On her own head, she puts Juhani’s fur hat. She turns it this way and that, decides in the end that it is better back to front.

‘Put on whatever you can find,’ she advises Mataleena.

Herself, she puts on Juhani’s black loden coat. It looks like funeral attire — Juhani is a tall man. Was. She takes Juhani’s mittens, gives her own to Mataleena. Mataleena’s mittens she puts on Juho, on top of the boy’s own.

‘We’ve got to fetch logs for Father,’ Mataleena says.

Marja glances at Juhani and goes out. Light rushes in through her nostrils and eyes, it forces itself under her clothes and enters all the cavities of her body, for a moment filling the emptiness that hunger has hollowed out.

The woman stands legs apart and lets the sun rub cold air over her body. Then she wades along the snow-covered path to the cowshed, thinking she might find something to burn there. She does not make it inside, instead taking hold of a rickety-looking plank that forms part of the door. She pulls with the full force of her emaciated body. A rusty nail screeches as it loosens, and Marja falls on her bottom. The snow makes for a soft landing.

Indoors, she leans the plank against the bench and breaks it in two with a kick. Mataleena strokes the back of Juhani’s hand with her mitten. Juho rests his head on his father’s forehead. The boy looks touching and funny in that pose, and Marja is filled with sorrow. She feels her chin tremble, but coughs and spits her tears into the stove.

Mataleena guides her brother to the door. Marja places the last of the straw bread in Juhani’s hand. She fills the saucepan with snow and carries it to the side of the bed, within her husband’s reach.

‘This is all I can do,’ she whispers.

Juhani grabs Marja’s shoulder and tries to lever himself up without success. He manages to grunt something incomprehensible before collapsing on to his back. Marja lifts Juhani’s hand off her shoulder and places it on her husband’s chest. She presses her lips to Juhani’s forehead and then, unexpectedly, to his lips, lets them linger, breathes in unison with her husband for the last time.

Outside, Marja wonders why they did not burn the skis, given the lack of firewood, but she is grateful they did not. A light wind rises and sweeps snow on to the grey logs of the house walls. The snow drifts slowly over the threshold, as if seeking something to eat inside. Clouds move past the sun but do not stop to conceal it.