White Hunger (Chance Encounter Series)

by Aki Ollikainen

  The road from the doctor’s house descends into a village. Retrikki rides to a church and stops in front of it.

  ‘I’ll leave you here. You’ve got to go on from here by yourselves. I don’t believe you’ll ever make it to St Petersburg. You’d be better off going back where you came from,’ Retrikki runs on. He gives a quick shout of farewell and smacks his lips to get his gelding going.

  Marja looks at the spire: a thin, powerless finger pointing accusingly at the sky. Then she takes Juho by the hand and they begin trudging along the road. She stops by the last houses. She does not know the name of the village. Where she is, where Mataleena remains. She has brought her child to utter anonymity; her name is not even recorded in the Book of Life.

  Marja stares at the deserted road ahead and presses Juho tightly to her breast. A group of beggars walks past; they join the end of the line.

  The Senator

  They are the ghosts of this winter, the statues of snow that the wind knocks up on the icy open sea. The ship never came; winter came, without warning, overnight.

  ‘No point questioning my conscience. I know who they are, those spectres herded by the wind. I too have buried a child.’

  By way of a response, the senator feels an icy breath on his face.

  He spent the whole of yesterday leafing through the Bible, reading about Joseph’s prophecy, about those seven lean and seven fat cows. Years of crop failure have now passed, one after the other, but there is no sign of the fat cows on the horizon. Has his incessant talk of Finland’s bountiful forests been in vain? Are these people good for nothing, apart from tearing bark off trees to supplement their bread?

  Somebody has to see further, beyond the horizon. Through those pallid spectres. Ultimately, it always comes down to bread; if anyone understands that, he does. He has formed the leaven; it is the size and shape of a copper coin, not to be eaten even to satisfy the worst of hungers. Because once lost, it is gone for good. His task is to make sure that the leaven is passed down to future generations, so that they will not always be reliant on foreign bread.

  It is the world’s loneliest fate, not being able to afford to take wrong decisions. There are the gentry, upset by the hordes of beggars, afraid of the disruption to their comfy little lives. They run round like dogs chasing their tails, demanding money and food from the state to put out by the roads, so all the poor devils on the move will be pacified and return to their homes.

  And then there are those who agree with him because they always agree with him. They cannot think with their own heads; he has to think their thoughts for them.

  The procession of the snowy dead vanishes. The senator looks at Katajanokka. That is where his sampo, his magic source of wealth, lies. It is a treasure trove, at the moment still surrounded by those miserable hovels, smothering dreams of future riches.

  The senator closes his eyes and imagines Katajanokka one day sinking into the waves, then, washed clean, surfacing, with proud stone houses rising into the sky.

  December 1867

  Here lies Dr Johan Berg.

  Lumps of frozen soil thud against the lid of the coffin. On the horizon, a pale-red streak wages a hopeless war against the weight of the sky, in defence of the dead man’s soul. Finally, it is sapped of strength, and heavy clouds shroud the last rays of the sun. The shadows on the mourners’ faces grow darker.

  ‘I bet the gravediggers cursed, digging this hole,’ Matias Högfors says.

  ‘I just hope that wooden lid holds,’ Teo replies.

  They interrupt their digging and wait to get their breath back. The mourners, dressed in black, had been standing motionless at the graveside. Now they turn away and begin drifting towards the cemetery gate. Only a small woman, bent over by grief, remains standing a short distance behind them. The minister approaches the woman and puts his hand gently under her elbow for support.

  Högfors lifts up more soil with his shovel. A heavy stone causes the whole load to fall off before it reaches the grave.

  ‘Let’s leave it at that,’ Högfors suggests, sighing.

  He plants the spade in the earth by the grave. It does not stay up, instead falling and, upon hitting the icy ground, releasing a sound like shattering glass.

  Teo picks up one last large, frosty lump of soil from the pile and drops it into the grave.

  At the foot of the clock tower are three iron crosses, as on Golgotha, but they are empty. Teo’s gaze wanders up to the top of the tower, as if ascertaining that Jesus and the robbers have not climbed up there to hide.

  ‘Do you believe in God, Teo?’

  ‘No, I don’t believe that this distress and misery have any purpose. That’s what you’re really asking.’

  Matias tells Teo to think of Job.

  And Teo does so. He thinks aloud of all the ragamuffins now wasting away in snowdrifts. He thinks of Johan, who lies hidden in that coffin, on which stones fall. And then he thinks of all Job’s wives and children: God let them die so Job’s faith would burn more brightly.

  ‘I think of all of them. Those Johan tried to save in vain. But by all means think of Job, Matias, so that he won’t be entirely forgotten.

  ‘If this suffering is meant to be a test, who is it aimed at? Whose faith will be sanctified through the suffering of these people? Who is Job? The beggars? No, God protected Job; only all those close to him suffered.

  ‘Do you equate your Job with these people, Matias? These people who starve as we versify: make your bread so it’s half bark, our neighbour’s grain was killed by frost. Have you ever tasted bread with bark? I haven’t. We are not of the people, Matias, and we shall never cross the boundary between them and us. Only Johan crossed it: he went among the people and died of their diseases.’

  ‘Maybe it’s the destiny of these people to fight for their existence and so get tougher,’ Matias says, and goes on after a moment’s thought: ‘But if there’s no God, as you say, there’s no destiny either. Then everything is just chance.’

  ‘And is it by chance that the poor starve to death and go begging? Was it chance that killed Johan and spared us?’

  ‘There you are, you don’t believe in chance yourself. Your faith is being tested. Perhaps you’re Job,’ Matias says.

  Teo feels like hitting Matias. The only thing God could take away from him is Cecilia. A whore’s love is all he has to surrender – or rather, his love for a whore.

  He is not clinging on to life’s hem, begging for bread. And he does not even know what makes the masses out there, his so-called compatriots, do so. For Teo, this is inexplicable, a great mystery. The mystery of life, which can only be understood through death.

  Matias Högfors has raised his spade. Now he leans on it and looks into the open grave.

  Teo pushes back his fur hat and wipes sweat from his brow with a glove. ‘I wonder: why not wait till spring?’

  ‘When you die, you die. You can’t wait for better weather,’ Matias replies.

  ‘No, the wife, I mean. Why didn’t she postpone the funeral?’

  ‘Well. Perhaps she didn’t think there would be another spring.’

  ‘There will always be a new spring, even after the harshest of winters.’ The minister joins in the conversation.

  He has left Mrs Berg swaying among the snowflakes, and he peers into the grave as if to make sure that Teo and Matias have not made a hole in the coffin lid with their rocks, causing the soul of the deceased to escape and vanish out of the minister’s reach.

  ‘And the world will burst into blossom again?’

  ‘Exactly so,’ the minister replies.

  He nods approvingly: the coffin is intact, and there is enough soil on the top acting as a weight. Coffee is being served in the rectory.

  ‘Mrs Berg wanted to bury Johan before she leaves. I’m taking her to Kokkola for the winter. There’s nothing left here for her, she doesn’t even know Finnish,’ the minister tells them.

  By the cemetery wall, bare trees rise up like bolts of lightning froz
en in their attempt to strike at the sky from the ground. Teo throws a farewell glance at the grave and sees Mrs Berg levering a large stone into it with the long-handled spade. Matias strides back, takes the spade from the wife and carries on filling the grave. She stands, shoulders hunched, and watches the earth falling into the hole.

  Teo beckons to two thin men standing by the cemetery gate. He offers them a banknote. The taller of the two shoves the note into his breast pocket.

  ‘I fucking knew it, didn’t I?’ he snorts at his companion.

  Matias offers Mrs Berg his arm and guides her through the gate.

  Teo looks up at the sky. He would like to see a sign of Johan, or even God. But there is a grey carpet covering the firmament. If God is behind it, he is not looking at Finland, and Johan has not risen from his grave but lies instead in a wooden coffin, stones thumping against its lid like church bells proclaiming the end of a life. Only endless, dreamless sleep remains.

  That is where Johan Berg is laid to rest, except there is no old friend resting there, but something that was once Johan Berg. The booming laugh he would let out, years ago, when he was sitting drunk at the table in the Green Villa, still echoes in Teo’s head, though ever more faintly.

  And when Teo no longer hears it, there will be nothing left of Johan.

  After coffee, sitting in comfortable armchairs, Teo and Matias light their pipes. The stove in the rectory parlour exhales a warmth that makes them forget the icy grave for a moment.

  Teo tells Matias of the visit he made to a small cabin on his way here. When he went in, the farmer barely glanced at him from under his dark brows.

  Teo tried to speak the man’s own language to him. When he failed to get a reply, Teo placed a banknote on the table. The man’s gaze moved along the bare surface towards it. When it reached the money, the man got up, retrieved a wooden box from the top of the stove, put it on the table and took out three identical notes. Then he sat down and stared at his money.

  ‘You eat yours, then I’ll eat mine,’ he grunted finally.

  Teo was about to stand up and leave when from some dark corner a woman appeared and brought him a bowl of gruel. The man disappeared in a huff and did not come back for as long as Teo was there. The woman kept moving her hands about apologetically and plucking nervously at her apron. She then took the money, the man’s own and the note Teo had put on the table, and placed them in the box, which she lifted back into its hiding place. She turned to face Teo and curtsied. Teo, already on his feet, curtsied back, thanked her in Swedish by mistake and left.

  Matias laughs at the story as if it were a funny anecdote. Teo, too, has to chuckle at the memory of the situation. All the same, he wonders how they can be touched by the surrounding misery, if they are merely amused by it. If they truly felt what was going on, would they still be able to laugh?

  Instead of looking at others, as they should, they look in the mirror. Look, there is your neighbour, moulded by God in His own image. What you do unto him, you do unto God; serve him, therefore, and do what good you can.

  What about Johan, what happened to him? Did the bear with his ready laugh – that manly, rumbling roar – turn into a gloomy, emaciated spectre? Did this reality touch Johan Berg with its cold fingers and rob him of all the joy he had in life?

  In his last letters to Teo, Johan had reminisced about their shared student years, repeating the same old stories as if to convince himself of their reality. Despite all the amusing memories, the letters were gloomy. Or because of them: perhaps the contrast was so great that, as he wrote, Johan finally realized that all was now lost. Was Johan’s soul deadened by what he saw to be the reality, or by what he saw to be dead and gone?

  The Book of Marja

  The yellow wall takes up the entire length of the street. Marja walks under the windows. The wooden building resembles a fortress. Frost forms a thin, limp veil over the yellow paint, unable to penetrate the great house.

  A man comes round the corner and leaps in front of Marja like a startled hare. His eyes bear the same expression as Pajula’s dog Peni after Lauri beat it senseless in a drunken rage.

  Marja stumbles against the wall. Juho sways in time with his mother, like a branch that yields to the wind’s every whim.

  The man loses his footing as he dodges Marja, but he manages to break his fall with one hand. He carries on crossing the street at the same speed, only on all fours. Three other men, who all look like landowners, catch up with him. One of them, who is dressed in wolf fur, grabs the man on all fours by his collar and tugs violently. The fugitive rears up like a horse. Then he slips, and slumps into his coat. The man in wolf fur flings him down as if he were a wild cat.

  ‘Thief, thief,’ croaks a woman in a blue shawl who has followed on the men’s heels.

  A small shrivelled man with a droopy moustache pulls the coat half off the thief.

  The thief looks at the moustached man in horror, presses his forehead to the snow and pants. He hunches his shoulders, as if expecting a blow. His pursuer digs out a lump of meat from inside the coat and holds it up like a trophy for all to see. Then, suddenly, he bashes the thief on the back of the neck with the meat. The man goes limp and just lies there. Not because of the blow, but because he has no strength to resist. The man with the moustache kicks him. Marja covers Juho’s eyes.

  The woman in the blue shawl spots Marja and points at her with a long, thin finger.

  ‘There goes another beggar, meat thief, robber, whore,’ the woman shouts.

  Marja squeezes Juho protectively, too hard. Juho tries to prise his mother’s hand away. He manages to peer through her fingers; he sees the man using his hands to drag himself forward. Bright-red blood trickles from his mouth.

  The pursuers turn towards Marja. The man with the moustache merely glances over his shoulder before turning back to watch the flogged man crawling.

  The stares are empty; they exude coldness. The woman in the shawl opens and closes her mouth. Marja sees her teeth, and the frozen breath rising from the woman’s mouth along with her words; she does not hear the voice. The town starts revolving slowly around her. Wolf fur steps closer.

  ‘Let her be. She’s got a child and all.’

  The man’s words open Marja’s ears. After the moment of deafness, she hears the sounds of the town again. They roar in the emptiness inside her head, cause shooting pains behind her eyes, but then, finally, they settle down in their proper places. Wolf fur tells her there is an almshouse on the other side of the river, at the foot of the church hill. She should go there.

  Marja cannot move her legs. She looks in the direction wolf fur indicated, then at his hand, and finally at his face. Instantly, she understands how idiotic she must appear. She begins to shiver with exhaustion.

  Wolf fur picks up Juho. Marja is alarmed; she tries to stop the man but manages only to move a hand feebly in his direction.

  ‘Very well, I’ll take you there.’

  It takes a moment for Marja to comprehend the man’s words. She calms down and her body stops trembling. The woman in the blue shawl is now standing next to the man, and she looks curiously at Juho.

  ‘Mr Gustafsson should take care. Could be the boy’s got something. Typhus.’

  ‘Could be. Could always be there, typhus.’

  The man turns and begins walking. Juho stretches out his hand towards his mother.

  ‘Come on,’ Gustafsson orders.

  Marja follows the mitten Juho extends. At the crossroads, she looks at the thief lying on the ground. The man with the moustache is already walking off, the lump of meat under his arm. The woman in the blue shawl runs to catch up with him and the man he is with. Having joined them, she looks back at Marja and Gustafsson and seems to be explaining something; she tugs at moustached man’s sleeve, but the men are more interested in the lump of meat than whatever it is the woman has to say.

  The thief has attracted curious onlookers. Muffled laughter rings out from the crowd. Marja sees a young boy thro
wing horse shit at the thief. An icy turd hits the man’s cheek. Marja stumbles, as if her own cheek had been struck. But the thief feels nothing; he breathes only blood now.

  ‘Let that be a lesson to you. That’s what happens to thieves. Times like these, no one looks kindly on people who steal food. We’ve all got the same hunger. If beggars come, we give what we can, if we can,’ Gustafsson says. ‘Take note, don’t be tempted.’

  Marja cannot see the man’s face; she is being addressed by a lifeless wolf fur. She cannot work out if the voice is friendly or hostile. She tries to force out a reply, so that the man will go on talking. It does her good to hear another person speak. When she has to exert herself and concentrate on listening, she momentarily forgets the cold and the hunger. No matter what the other person is saying, as long as he is addressing her. Then she remembers that there are other people in the world, and that people still talk to each other. And one day, maybe, there will be talk of things other than bread, the lack of it, or hunger and diseases.

  People would talk about the coming of spring, the melting of the ice. About the swans someone spotted on the Holy Lake. About the neighbouring fields being flooded, and the floodwater taking Verneri Lenkola’s sledge, and Lenkola’s dog Musti sitting on the sledge like the captain of an ocean liner bound for distant shores. About Juhani taking Mataleena to the edge of the marsh to watch the cranes perform their spring dance.

  ‘We’re here. You can ask Hakmanni, the church warden, for a piece of bread, though he’s not likely to have any. But he will have water for you to drink. He lives over there; the almshouse is further down, towards the fields.’

  Gustafsson lowers Juho to the ground and starts back in the direction of the river without saying goodbye. A young man emerges from the woodshed and comes over to Marja. He is holding firewood in his arms tightly, as if it were a child. He welcomes Marja and Juho in the name of the Lord. This is Hakmanni. He tries to smile, and a stupid, albeit gentle, expression crosses his face.