Aki Ollikainen - White Hunger

Then Mataleena is again sitting with Father in the boat, and when she finally comes to, she has already crossed the lake.

‘The house has got to be beyond that hill,’ Mother gasps in front of her.

Mataleena looks back. No sign of Father, only the open lake, covered by snow; Father has rowed out of sight, into the whiteness.

All of a sudden, the sun drops down to the horizon from behind the curtain of clouds. Only now does Mataleena spot the house and the outbuilding, which are inflamed as light sweeps away the blizzard. Juho falls out of Marja’s arms and stays sitting in the snowdrift. Mataleena tries to pull him up. The boy stands, but at the same time Mataleena falls.

Marja stares at the gaping, hungry jaws on the grey barn wall.

‘Pike heads.’ She finally realizes what they are.

Snow stuck to the skulls has sculpted strange expressions, and the reddish rays of the setting sun cause the eye sockets to glow uncannily. Mataleena sees a dark figure approaching; at the same time, the whole world turns red.

Small trickles of water flow in through both corners of her mouth. Mataleena comes to. She feels the warmth of a hand supporting the back of her neck. The grey planks of the ceiling above her undulate for a moment, then settle down. The thin face of a woman comes into view. Mataleena turns her head and sees Mother and Juho sitting on a bench by the door.

‘Make gruel, thin gruel for the beggars,’ a man’s voice says.

‘Surely we can find some real food, at least for the children. They look so hungry,’ the woman says.

‘Gruel is fine, even thin gruel,’ Marja whispers.

‘Everybody looks hungry these days. When did you last see someone with a bit of meat on their bones, apart from in a pulpit?’

‘Shame on you — such talk at a time like this. When did you last go to church?’ the woman retorts.

She ladles gruel out of a saucepan into a wooden bowl. Juho is already seated at the table, and he begins to devour the grey gruel. Mataleena awaits her turn. She gets her share after Juho, in the same bowl. The girl is still eating when Juho falls asleep on the bench by the wall.

‘The beggars can stay. We’re not in the habit of turning people out into the night here at Vääräjärvi, particularly not women and children. But you’ve got to leave in the morning. I’ll give you a lift to the church in the sledge; I’m going to see if there’s any flour left in the communal silo, from the emergency supply,’ the man says.

Marja nods in response. The woman brings her the bowl. Marja slurps down the contents before the woman has time to bring a spoon. Then she falls asleep. Juhani is calling her.

*

Juhani is a bird, a loon. It is summer, autumn and spring, all the snow-free seasons. Marja wanders around in a pine forest. She sees a pond, flashing between the trees; the water is black but bright. Even so, Marja cannot find the way to the edge. New trees keep appearing in front of her and she has to dodge them. Finally, she realizes she has turned in the wrong direction.

She does not recognize the forest but she knows the pond. Juhani took her there years ago. She hears Juhani’s call: u-uui, u-uui, u-uui.

Marja tries to make her way towards the sound, but the echo travels around the wilderness so the direction is unclear. Soon Juhani takes off, leaving her alone, the pond abandoned. If Juhani gets away, the children will not be born.

Suddenly, the black pond water glimmers far ahead. Too far. Marja begins to run towards it, keeping the pond in sight. But the setting sun blinds her for a moment and soon she cannot see the water. Juhani’s call comes from afar, from another direction. U-uui, u-uui.

Marja freezes. She hears the weeping and wailing of the ghosts of dead children ahead. Winter is near. It is closing in, already twisting and turning, restless and angry, inside a pike skull. Soon the pike will open its jaws. The cry of ‘u-uui’ is now far, far away.

Mataleena wakes before the others, but she stays lying on the bench, looking at the room, which has gone topsy-turvy: the wall with the door is now the floor, the floor and the ceiling have become walls, and the stove sits on the ceiling.

‘Don’t you forget: only give beggars gruel. Thin gruel,’ the man says.

Mataleena laughs softly; the man and woman are flies, sitting on the wall in summer. Then she sits up, and the room assumes its normal position. The man and the woman turn to look at her.

‘Poor child,’ the woman says, sighing.

The man comes and sits down next to Mataleena.

‘My name is Retrikki and my wife is called Hilta. We’ve no children of our own, they died years ago, long before these lean years. But we can’t feed you here. And soon new beggars will come. Folk with no bread, they’re all on the move. Though there’s nothing to be found elsewhere, wherever you’re thinking of going. You’re chasing a will-o’-the-wisp; still, you can’t do anything else,’ the man says.

Mataleena nods. Retrikki strokes her hair; clumps of it come off and cling to the man’s mitten.

Retrikki stands up and says he is going to harness the sledge.

‘Don’t you worry about that old ogre, child, we’ll find you something,’ Hilta says.

‘My name’s Mataleena.’

‘That’s a beautiful name. Christian. That’s good.’

Hilta fills the wooden bowl from the previous day. The gruel is thicker this time, porridgey. Hilta also brings half a loaf of bark bread to the table, and some dried pike, which she stirs into the porridge.

‘Eat, child.’

And Mataleena eats. She wolfs down the porridge before Retrikki can come in and take the bowl away. The woman gives her watery milk, which helps wash down the bread in a flash. Hilta refills the bowl. When Retrikki comes back in, Hilta snatches the empty bowl from Mataleena. The girl smiles at Hilta, whose eyes well with tears.

The slamming of the door wakes Juho and Marja. Hilta makes them some thin gruel. She breaks off small pieces of bark bread and hands them to the three visitors. Then she glances at Retrikki and hands out small pieces of dried pike too. Retrikki remains silent.

Juho puts a piece of pike in his mouth, digs it out with his fingers, looks at it briefly. He places the morsel back on to his tongue for a moment, then takes it out again to squeeze it tightly in his fist. Retrikki observes the boy’s antics and laughs.

‘You’ll be back on the road soon. Where are you off to, actually?’

‘St Petersburg.’

St Petersburg. Marja cannot imagine anyone being permitted to starve in the Tsar’s city. There is enough bread for everyone in St Petersburg. And it contains no bark or lichen, let alone straw. But St Petersburg is a long way away. Not beyond the next hill, not even after the next village, but far away, in Russia.

‘How will you ever make it to St Petersburg?’ Retrikki sighs.

Marja looks out of the window, through the ice flowers. The sun glints, among clouds of snow. The same sun that gilds the Tsar’s palace in St Petersburg.

‘First we have to get to Helsinki. St Petersburg’s beyond Helsinki,’ Marja states.

Mataleena stares silently ahead. Her stomach is hurting. At first the pain pinches, but soon there is an angry cat scratching, scraping, sinking its teeth into the pit of her stomach. Claws push through to her ribs from inside and the animal mauls her so brutally that she starts to writhe. The cat raises its mangy tail and comes out of her mouth, bloody porridge. An angry hurricane blows in her head and hits her eyes, making them roll.

Mataleena collapses on the floor.

From Marja’s mouth comes an animal cry, subdued at first but then slowly gathering strength. Retrikki is the first to recover. He lifts Mataleena up off the floor and carries her to the bedroom, where he lays her down.