White Hunger (Chance Encounter Series)

by Aki Ollikainen

  ‘I have no bread, unfortunately, or maybe a small piece for the child. But you can stay the night in the outhouse. Or perhaps I can let you have my own… bread, I mean – I can’t have you in the main house. It’s forbidden, because of epidemics. But that’s just my house – you can go to the almshouse, naturally, as I just said. These logs, I’ll take them later. Or no: wait here, I will take the logs, we’ll find some bread afterwards. That way, there won’t be a fight. Because everyone should have some, but there isn’t enough.’

  Half-running, Hakmanni makes for the almshouse. The logs seem ready to spill from his arms, and he has to contort himself so his gait becomes awkward.

  The sky is the colour of a snake’s eye. The first star lights up and Marja feels the snake watching her and Juho. She looks back at the snake, eye to eye, but she cannot fool it.

  At last, Hakmanni’s figure slowly comes into view on the snowy slope, bent and black. Marja hopes the man will banish the snake, but she realizes that Hakmanni is not up to it. The snake smiles.

  Marja stands on the step. Hakmanni starts upon seeing her, wakes from his stupor and puts the key in the lock.

  ‘Is this where I left you, outside the door in the freezing cold? The vicar tells me to keep the door locked as a precaution. These days, there are all sorts of folk wandering about. I should have let you inside, where it’s warm. Although I don’t see what I’ve got that’s worth stealing. Bread, maybe, but then we must give to those in need, you can’t call it theft. You must be frozen stiff.’

  Indoors, Marja sits down on the edge of the couch. Hakmanni shoves small pieces of wood into the stove. In the warmth, Juho falls asleep on his mother’s lap. Hakmanni wipes his hands on his coat-tails and disappears into another room. Marja lifts Juho on to the couch and goes to drink some water from a pot. Hakmanni returns with half a loaf and a crate not quite full of small potatoes, bitten black by frost.

  ‘I shouldn’t really give these to almshouse residents… Aren’t they small these days?’ Hakmanni lets out a mirthless laugh.

  ‘You can’t tell them apart from blueberries.’ Marja remembers the comparison.

  ‘They’re what I eat myself; there isn’t anything else, we’ve got to make do with what there is,’ Hakmanni mumbles apologetically.

  ‘That’s a lot – I can’t remember when I last saw a potato,’ Marja hastens to say.

  Hakmanni sighs, as if with relief. He turns the crate this way and that, and watches the small, black marbles rolling from one side to the other.

  ‘They’re a little like these years. Black and modest… Though you can’t really call this time modest. It’s taking a heavy toll. Hardest hit are those who’ve already been given the least. The harvests are meagre; these are like the harvests these days, small and black…’

  I’m glad he’s talking, at least, Marja thinks. Hakmanni’s words float in the small room like great snowflakes. They fall gently on Mataleena and Juhani, tenderly covering the memories of them, and Mataleena smiles under the veil of snow.

  ‘The child sleeps so blissfully. It’s a pity to wake him.’

  The flakes vanish. Marja wakes up to the twilight of the room and looks at Hakmanni wonderingly. He has stopped moving the crate around and poured the potatoes into a small saucepan.

  ‘But he’s got be woken up to eat – I can’t let you take any food with you. Everyone is hungry in the outhouse, and hunger makes people desperate. I’ve seen bread taken from the mouth of a child,’ Hakmanni continues. He points at Juho, resting on the couch.

  ‘They killed a thief at the crossroads on the other side of the bridge,’ Marja tells him.

  Juho chews a potato for a long time, until it dissolves and trickles out as saliva from the corners of his mouth. Hakmanni says nothing, merely stares at Juho, whose jaws continue their endless movement.

  ‘Well, I don’t know if he was dead, but he was as good as,’ Marja goes on.

  ‘We should try to understand,’ Hakmanni whispers finally. ‘Given there’s a shortage of food everywhere. People will chase a lump of meat like a pack of wolves and tear each other to pieces.’

  ‘It was a lump of meat he stole, in fact.’

  The snake has disappeared. The stars shine, bright and dead, in the darkened sky. Marja walks, holding a lantern, along a path in the snow towards the almshouse. Hakmanni comes after her, carrying the sleeping Juho.

  From inside the cabin, a heavy, smoky blast of air hits them. Marja discerns an oven made of blackened stones, and reddish firelight shimmering and rippling feebly towards the dirty floor, to withdraw again behind the stones after hitting the ragged people lying there. ‘God bless you,’ Hakmanni says, and shuts the door. Marja picks up Juho and seeks a vacant spot. She settles down on a bench under the window and lays Juho on the floor, as close to the oven as possible.

  The small windowpanes are covered with soot on the inside and frost on the outside, but Marja sees the stars through them, still staring cruelly. Then bony fingers curl round her neck and tear her to the floor. A repugnant panting penetrates Marja’s hunger and exhaustion, terrifying her. She tries to shout, but cannot breathe. Finally, the hands let go of her throat, only to begin tearing at her clothes. The cold fingers grope her, seeking either bread concealed about her person, or flesh, wizened with hunger. Desperate, Marja tries to clutch at Juho’s sleeve, but the fingers squeeze her wrist and wrench her hand loose.

  ‘A whore peddling her wares; thinks she’ll get bread out of it.’ The malign voice of an old woman bleats in the darkness of the room. ‘Couldn’t you get into a gentleman’s chamber? Is that why you come here to show your wares? Heheheh…’

  Frost crackles in the wooden walls and, at the same time, the man disappears into the fetid air; Marja is left lying in emptiness.

  A crack sounds: the man falls to the floor. It takes a moment for Marja to take in the thud. She turns to see a thin figure holding a long piece of wood.

  ‘You killed a man, you killed a good man,’ the old biddy screeches.

  ‘Shut up, grandma,’ a voice rings out from the corner.

  ‘In cahoots with the whore. The whore seduces and the other one strikes. They killed a man, murderers! Murderer! Whore!’

  ‘One more croak, you fucking toad, and you’ll get it from the same log.’

  The voice belongs to a young boy. Probably not much older than Mataleena, Marja thinks. Juho has woken up and is sobbing. Marja picks him up and soothes the child and, at the same time, herself.

  The door creaks open, a lantern appears and then Hakmanni’s face. ‘In God’s name, what is this racket?’

  Hakmanni’s lantern lights up the room. The skeletal man lying face-down on the floor watches, eyes wide open, as straw gradually begins floating in red blood. It drifts right in front of his eyes and yet the man looks from very far away.

  ‘Dead,’ Hakmanni states woefully.

  ‘Murdered by the whore! The whore and her helper,’ the small, wizened old woman screeches. But her words drop back down from the black planks of the ceiling.

  ‘Shut your mouth, you crazy cow. Take no notice of her. You can see what happened: the bloke was trying feel his way through the dark with his trousers round his ankles. He tripped over and hit his head on that log.’ A man sitting in the corner joins in the conversation.

  Hakmanni looks at the body, then turns to the boy holding the piece of wood.

  ‘I found it on the floor. I picked it up to prevent another accident happening,’ the boy says calmly.

  ‘You’re not yet a man and you’ve already gone down that path,’ Hakmanni says, more in sorrow than in judgement.

  ‘You mean a beggar’s path?’

  ‘You know what I mean. For the sake of your own soul you need to know that; for you, too, have a soul. Just as this poor man does,’ Hakmanni replies softly.

  ‘Not any more he doesn’t,’ remarks the man in the corner.

  ‘Perhaps not in this body, but he’s begging for God’s mercy now – as sh
all we all one day.’

  Hakmanni passes the boy the lantern and addresses the man in the corner. ‘We’ve got to take the body away. We’ll carry it to the woodshed for the night.’

  ‘Let’s just throw it outside; the cold will keep it from rotting.’

  ‘He too was a human being. And anyway, he’ll be eaten by dogs if we leave him out in the open.’

  Hakmanni and the man who was sitting in the corner lift the corpse; the boy shows them the way with the lantern.

  ‘You’ll have to be off in the morning, boy; you can’t stay here any longer.’ Marja hears Hakmanni’s voice before the door shuts.

  Once the lantern is gone, the room is dark again.

  ‘Is the whore happy now? You killed a good man,’ the old woman sneers.

  ‘Shut your bloody mouth,’ a woman’s voice commands. ‘Let the children, at least, get some sleep. Bleedin’ hag.’

  Marja presses her own cheek against Juho’s. She is too dried up to cry, but the tear on Juho’s cheek feels comforting.

  A woman with four children stands outside Hakmanni’s house. The tiny old lady hobbles from the woodshed towards her; Marja hears her explaining how, during the night, a whore murdered a good man. First, she seduced him and then, having got her hands on his money, she gave the sign to her accomplice to hit him with a cosh. And the minister’s turning a blind eye because his silence has been bought. The children try to hide from the old woman behind their mother. When Hakmanni comes outside, the old woman continues her journey. She seizes the sleeve of the first person she meets and points at Marja.

  Hakmanni looks at Marja gravely and slips a piece of bread into her hand. He advises her to make for the official almshouse on the other side of the town. There she will get bread in exchange for work.

  ‘If they’ve got any bread,’ Hakmanni goes on.

  ‘What do they make there?’

  ‘Coffins.’

  A mirthless chuckle escapes Marja. Hakmanni, too, realizes the grotesqueness of the situation. An expression somewhere between a grimace and an apologetic smile spreads over his face.

  ‘Put your trust in Jesus,’ Hakmanni whispers, and goes off to lead the woman with the four children towards the almshouse.

  At the corner of the graveyard, Marja is joined by the boy from the previous night. He is taller than Marja, almost by a head, though he is still a lad.

  ‘Oh, it’s you. I didn’t get to say thank you.’

  ‘Bah, I felt like hitting him anyway. I just didn’t get the chance before.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Ruuni.’

  ‘What kind of a name is that? You won’t find that in the parish register,’ Marja laughs.

  ‘Are any of us still in the register, the one they call the names from at the pearly gates? Doesn’t matter what name you go begging under. The one the minister gave me has no meaning; the shepherd hasn’t made much of an effort to call after his lamb. I named myself and now I’m my own master.’

  ‘Don’t you fear for your soul, as Hakmanni said you should?’

  ‘Believe me, the minister knowing your name won’t save you either. Would you share the crust of bread the sheep gave you?’ Ruuni asks.

  ‘I thought I’d give it to Juho.’

  ‘Well, will Juho share?’ Ruuni asks, bending towards the boy.

  Marja laughs and digs the bread out of her pocket. Ruuni tries to amuse Juho by pretending to tear off his own thumb, but Juho stares gravely at the wiggling digit, not seeing anything funny there. They sit down on the silo steps and Marja breaks the piece of bread in three.

  ‘Real bark. He’s a fox, not a man, that excuse for a minister,’ Ruuni says admiringly, and sucks the bread, sighing.

  ‘Are you going to the almshouse to make coffins?’ Marja asks, and Ruuni shakes his head.

  ‘You know, I won’t ask your name. At the end of this road, the one we’re on, there is a mass grave. And there’ll be no minister holding a roll call there. When the dead climb out on Judgement Day, they won’t know whose bones they’ve gathered up. A fine fellow named Viljaami may well be carrying a common-or-garden Jussi’s shinbone. So is he now Viljaami or Jussi? The Devil will have to draw lots to see who goes up and who down. We’re part of the same heap of bones, the lot of us. In fact, we’re already in one big mass grave. How can you tell the difference between us when we all look like skeletons?’

  Juho giggles, which puts Marja in a good mood.

  ‘Some of the landowners have got a bit of meat on their bones,’ she points out.

  ‘They get to Heaven, too; they know to murmur “God Almighty”, even the thin ones. The rest of us are more likely to call on Satan, where the rich folk call God’s name. Not Vaasko, though. He cursed at farmhands and maids in the Devil’s name, but Satan wouldn’t lumber himself with the nuisance: Vaasko would be such a taskmaster, even in Hell, that the Devil would begin feeling sorry for the tortured souls. So even old Vaasko will sneak in through the pearly gates.’

  The boy’s stories amuse Marja. He has listened carefully to the talk of old men, and taught himself the swagger of the hired hands at big houses. The ones who sit at dances, hands clasped behind their heads, peaked caps over their eyes, jawing about masters, mistresses and the arses of maids. The next morning, they stand cap in hand before their maligned masters, as if being tested on the catechism by the vicar, and are reproached for how poorly they harnessed a horse or sharpened a scythe.

  Juho is still giggling. The child’s laughter ploughs a path through grey despair. And it leads not to white death but to yellow-green, vernal St Petersburg. In the hungry, hollow emptiness in Marja’s stomach, clutched by a cold, bony fist, the Tsar’s city seems to rise. Now the fist yields and a cobbled street emerges. Beautiful green birches line the street, along which Marja walks, holding Juho’s hand. They go into a shop and buy a loaf. The fat shopkeeper smiles and praises Juho, calling him a bonny lad. The smiling face of the shopkeeper’s wife appears from the back room. She agrees he’s bonny and the man hands Juho a pastry.

  ‘Give me your name, all the same. I can put in a good word for you at the pearly gates – I’ll get there before you.’ Ruuni interrupts Marja’s thoughts.

  ‘My name’s Marja. You’re not heading for Heaven. But I can speak to the Tsar on your behalf when I get to St Petersburg.’

  ‘Aha. God’s nothing, then. Let’s carry on together. I could come to St Petersburg, too, and be a soldier. Hang on a second, I’ve got to see to something,’ Ruuni says, and vanishes behind the silo.

  Outside town, they get a lift in an old man’s sledge. The journey progresses in silence; the only sound is that of snow crunching sadly under the runners. The farmer stops the sledge by a field.

  ‘This is where you get off. Go along the track across the field; there are some dwellings there,’ the man says.

  Marja realizes he does not want to put them up for the night. She tries to catch the old man’s eye, but he looks either across the field or at the snow, never straight at her.

  The brief period of daylight has not yet run its course. In the middle of the field stands a barn and Ruuni suggests they rest there a short while and eat.

  ‘What have we got to eat, then?’ Marja wonders.

  Ruuni pulls out a loaf from inside his coat.

  ‘Did you steal it?’ Marja is horrified.

  ‘I did indeed.’

  The barn walls are gappy, but there is some hay inside. Marja wonders whether they could spend the night here.

  Ruuni divides the bread in three and hands the smallest piece to Juho.

  ‘How did you end up a beggar?’ Marja asks.

  ‘Vaasko threw me out the minute his belly began to rumble. A fat, greedy old man. If he so much as glimpses hunger out the corner of his eye, he’s got to get food down him right away. He worked out that if he didn’t throw out the hired hands, he’d have less to chomp on. Wouldn’t have done the fatty any harm, mind you.’

  ‘You’re an orp
han?’

  ‘Mother died of typhus in the workhouse. That was in spring. I’ve been on the move ever since. No good standing still. I’m not a kid any more, all big eyes. I’ve had to learn to thieve. Nobody’s going to take pity on someone like me, and I haven’t got round to having a little one yet. If I had, I could put it on show when I’m out begging. You could lend me that Juho of yours – I could live like a lord. I bet you only have to turn up at people’s doors and they go all misty-eyed and hand over their bread.’

  ‘It’s not that easy,’ Marja says, and thinks of Mataleena.

  Ruuni sees from Marja’s expression that she is swallowing tears along with the bread. He places his hand on her shoulder. Marja puts her own hand on top of Ruuni’s and squeezes it tenderly. For a moment, she feels as if all the beggars in the world were one family, as if they felt the same pain and were grieving over Mataleena, sharing her burden.

  Juho, Marja and Ruuni curl up to sleep in the scant hay, as close to each other as baby mice in their nest. Marja strokes Ruuni’s ears, which stick out like the wings of a fledgling learning to fly. It is hard to imagine the boy with the protruding ears as a skeleton, though his face is wizened with hunger and his eyes are sunken and ringed with black. Juho and Ruuni are already snoring gently. Marja, too, closes her eyes.

  Marja rises from the hay. The barn walls have become even gappier. The wind sighs hoarsely, like someone suffering from pneumonia. Through the wall, Marja sees a three-legged figure approaching from far away in the field. Suddenly, she recognizes him as the man Ruuni bludgeoned.

  The man walks trouserless in the snow; a long member hangs between his legs, like a gigantic icicle. It ploughs a furrow in the icy field. The furrow fills with red blood.

  Marja is terrified. She presses herself against the wall and hopes the man will not see her. He is dragging himself past the barn when suddenly he stops and turns to stare with dead eyes, tongue hanging out indecently. And his eyes smoulder with something that makes Marja freeze with horror.