White Hunger (Chance Encounter Series)

by Aki Ollikainen

  He is relieved when they finally reach the district of Siltavuori. Once in the city, the driver pushes back his hat and steers the sledge with exaggerated calm.

  *

  Lars comes to the door himself. The maid is at some charity event. Lars notices Juho and bends down to look at the boy, puzzled. The boy returns the look, head tilted back.

  ‘Would you take him?’

  Lars draws himself upright so fast that Teo fears he will fall backwards. Lars affects to have misheard, as if Teo has said something extremely funny.

  ‘Would you take the boy?’ Teo persists. ‘Rear him?’

  Teo tells Lars where and how he found the boy, and everything he knows about the child. It is not a great deal, but still more than Juho himself knows about his journey.

  When Lars finally manages to expel the air out of his lungs, the exhalation sounds like an objection. ‘You can’t take a child just like that.’

  ‘You can’t leave him just like that either.’

  Teo asks Lars to seek Raakel’s opinion. Lars does not think that matters. He makes the decisions in their family. At least, decisions of this sort. Teo asks his brother to seek his wife’s view on that, too.

  ‘Come on in,’ Lars finally gets round to saying.

  They sit in the living room, all except Juho, who stands before the large China rose, pushing his finger into the soil. Teo tells Raakel what he has just told Lars. Raakel gives her husband a long look. Teo takes Juho with him to Lars’s study. He selects The Tales of Ensign Stål from the shelf and shows the boy the pictures. Juho gazes at them solemnly, and leaves a muddy fingerprint next to each illustration. The print gets fainter on every page.

  When they come back to the sitting room, Lars still seems hesitant. But when Raakel kneels down by the boy, the matter is settled.

  She strokes Juho’s fair hair; the boy tilts his head after each touch.

  ‘Mama,’ Raakel says, and points at herself.

  The boy looks at her wonderingly with his small, ice-grey eyes, then the ice suddenly breaks: Juho smiles, and tears run down Raakel’s cheeks.

  April 1868

  Every now and then, the soft babbling of a brook takes you by surprise. The snow is melting. In the Old Church cemetery, crosses are uncovered. They peer round to see if it is yet time to emerge and remind man of his transience in the face of the cycle of the seasons.

  Lars Renqvist enters the park through the Bulevardi gate. He walks with his hands behind his back, looking at the cloudless sky. A flock of sparrows catches his eye, and he remembers the previous July, and a sparrow pushing a copper disc along the paving stones of Senate Square. The poor bird moved its head this way and that, trying to grip the flat piece of metal with its beak, and, when it failed, nudging again.

  ‘Where are you going, Sisyphus?’ the senator said. He picked up the ten-penny copper coin. The bird flitted off, but not far, and puffed up its feathers crossly.

  Together they had disparaged people’s carelessness, sowing cash like barley-corns as if a crop were going to spring up from between the cobblestones of the marketplace. Then the senator lifted up the coin and they examined it in the sunshine, the flourishes of the imperial ‘A’. The senator told Lars to note the fact that it was dull, having passed through many hands. This, in the senator’s view, signified one thing only: the economic vitality of these people. Who could have guessed? So this was a seed, in a way, the seed of a nation, the germ of its wealth, the senator said. He punched Lars’s shoulder in a chummy way, and Lars was happier than he had ever been before. Like Goethe and Eckermann, he thought – that is how they would be remembered. And nothing could go wrong any more; summer had finally come, and the cupola of St Nicholas’ Church was bathed in sunlight. As late as June, there were rumours of sledges still riding over icy lakes inland; it had seemed as if the winter would never end. One lean year had succeeded another, but then, in July, Lars felt that everything would take a turn for the better. The rye would have time to ripen. But autumn came, much too early, and an endless winter in its wake.

  All the same, spring is here now.

  ‘You’re like the senate, squabbling over grain,’ Lars says to the sparrows.

  He claps his hands, trying to chase the flock away. The birds have begun to interfere with his train of thought. Too busy fighting, they pay him no heed. Lars wonders who can afford to carry sheaves around the park at a time like this, when there is not a single straw left on the ground for the ordinary people to clutch at. He thinks of 1711, the plague year, and stares over to the other side of the park, as if seeing an old acquaintance there. Hundreds who died then are buried here; crop failures and epidemics visit this people regularly.

  Two years after the plague, the Russians destroyed the city. But the inhabitants returned and rebuilt it. On the same site. We have survived plague and war, and so we are likely to get through this year, too, Lars thinks, but he hears a voice in his head: perhaps we shall, many others will not. Teo’s voice.

  ‘The House of the Estates is so dead when the senator is away.’ Sighing, Lars addresses a sparrow that has hopped right up to his shoe to peck at a husk.

  The advice, or order, from Governor-General Adlerberg to the senator – to apply for a three-month break from his duties – means him leaving the senate. His political career is over and Lars knows it. The senator was not ready for retirement. Spring may come on time this year, but that in itself means nothing. A desolate truth will emerge from under the snow. For the people, the bloodletting will carry on well into the autumn.

  Lars stops by the corner of the Old Church. He tilts his head slightly, like a wooden puppet operated by invisible strings. He looks past the ridge of the church roof at the blue sky. From the direction of Katajanokka comes the sound of the cannon shot that is fired every noon from the navy barracks.

  *

  The boom of the cannon shot lingers in the lanes of Katajanokka, seeking a way through their maze to the bay and the sea.

  The muddy snow under Teo’s feet flees the path to the shadow of the houses, and the protection of the paltry stone foundations. Cruel winter seeks refuge in the very hovels it was only recently battering from all sides. But the crude shacks of Katajanokka withstood the onslaught; still they stand, as crooked as the teeth of their occupants.

  Spring sunshine strikes; snow melts into rivulets that babble along the lane. Three children place a wheel in the biggest brook.

  If the forces of nature are not up to hurling these miserable dwellings into the sea, what could destroy them?

  Matsson sits on a rock opposite the open door of his cabin and fills his pipe. Teo notices that the man has lost weight since they last met. Matsson’s face is more lined. He is a pine tree that has been growing on the tip of a rocky isle for a hundred years: every knock, every ordeal leaves its mark on his trunk, but he only looks stronger than before.

  Saara comes out of the cabin, empties a pail of waste into a long depression that serves as a ditch and goes back in. If Matsson has lost weight, Saara’s cheeks have shed every bit of fat they may once have had. But her pregnancy shows more clearly than before. Her stomach is round, a hill rising behind a clear lake.

  *

  During his previous visit, Teo had smiled inwardly and wondered if he should congratulate Matsson on the child. Matsson, in turn, had looked at him as if evaluating a hand of cards.

  ‘Ice’s breaking,’ Matsson said finally. He told Teo he was planning to go to sea once the ships were moving again. Teo asked what Matsson was going to do about Saara. In fact, that was precisely what Matsson wanted to talk to him about. Teo had already begun smiling, assuming Matsson was going to entrust him with the delivery of the baby. But then he remembered that he had slept with Saara, too, and he counted the months.

  ‘You live on your own. Why not take the girl on as a domestic? She’s capable. Of course, she knows nothing of the fine dishes you gentlefolk eat, but she’ll learn.’

  Matsson was silent for a moment
, staring at his shoes. He blew a thin streak of smoke down towards his knees and appeared to hesitate.

  ‘And she’s not totally knackered,’ he said in the end, grinning stupidly.

  ‘Does a street wear out through being walked on?’ Teo replied with an attempt at swagger that was not very successful.

  Matsson glanced at Teo, as a master would at a half-grown apprentice trying to talk like a man.

  ‘And the child? Is it yours?’ Teo asked.

  ‘Mine, yours… the Pole’s, who knows? It’s hers in any case, Saara’s. They’re all the same when they’re born, children of the same world. But if one’s born in a hovel and one in a mansion – that makes a difference. That depends on the Lord. Not necessarily the Lord in Heaven; a doctor can sometimes play a role.’

  Matsson’s gaze drilled a hole into Teo, through which the south-westerly wind blew. Teo realized that Matsson thought he was the father of the child. Indignantly, he reflected that the man himself had led him to Saara’s bed and was therefore fully responsible, but he could not even convince himself. Next, he wondered anxiously why Matsson had allowed the situation to get this far, why he had not called for him in winter, when something could still have been done. Matsson saw into Teo’s thoughts through the opening his eyes had drilled.

  ‘I’d have taken her to an angel maker, but she guessed and wouldn’t come along. Put up a fight.’

  Teo thought of the scandal that would ensue were he to take a pregnant domestic into his home. That is where matters were left.

  Now Teo is carrying Saara’s few belongings in a small suitcase he has brought with him. Saara walks behind Teo; she does not chatter idly, and that pleases him. But he feels the girl’s gaze on his back, warming him, pretending to be merely the spring sun. On the market square, it seems to Teo that all the heads bearing top hats turn to follow their progress.

  Teo shows Saara the few rooms of his apartment. He promises to get her a couch tomorrow; tonight she will have to sleep in Teo’s bed. He hastens immediately to add that he himself will sleep in the armchair.

  ‘You’ll only give yourself backache, for no good reason,’ Saara replies.

  She sits down on the edge of the bed. She opens the case, peers inside and shuts it straight away, without removing her things.

  Teo stares out to the street, then at his own reflection in the windowpane. The coal merchant’s cart travels through the image. A woman stops to look at the sky.

  He has not been to see Cecilia since he came back from Johan Berg’s funeral. In March, he heard that Cecilia had left. Madame said she had gone to St Petersburg after some wealthy businessman. But that did not sound like Cecilia, Teo thought. Why else could she have left? Another reason occurs to him, a much grimmer one.

  Teo has decided not to worry about the gossip caused by the appearance of a pregnant housekeeper in his home. He has no future in this city anyway. He is more concerned for Lars; his brother will be worse affected by the talk.

  Teo sits down at his desk, opens his diary and writes: ‘When all this is over, when the situation is calmer and the roads are no longer filled with hordes of beggars, I shall travel to Vyborg and settle there. And when Adlerberg’s railway is completed, I shall get on a train and ride to St Petersburg to seek out Cecilia.

  ‘What will happen then, I do not know. What would I say to her? If my worst fears prove to be founded, is there anything that can be done? Perhaps I could try to treat her. Alleviate her suffering, so that her end will not be so painful.’

  Saara is still sitting on the edge of the bed, stroking her stomach. She is going to be a mother, Teo thinks, and at that moment he recalls the woman who died in the snow and the boy whom he rescued. By now, Juho has learned to call Raakel ‘Mama’, but he never says ‘Mother’. That word is missing, lost somewhere far away in his mind. Sometimes, it will breathe into his dreams, prompting a deluge of cold, hunger and fatigue that not even sleep can relieve.

  ‘It kicked. Come and feel.’

  Teo places his palm on Saara’s stomach. The child kicks again.

  Perhaps, Teo reflects, the baby is already longing for freedom, thinking to find that outside the womb, and desiring to shake off the chain binding it to its mother. Who will divulge to the child that no real freedom exists? The closer to liberty we slide, the more frantically we grope for all the shackles we can lay our hands on. We are chasing will-o’-the-wisps, each driven by our own compulsion. The length of the shackles demonstrates the boundaries of our freedom; only by being content with our lot can we live without them troubling us. Our own desires are the heaviest constraints. When we deaden those, we no longer need to struggle.

  The Senator

  His posture has changed; he stoops slightly as if the heavy burden of responsibility were still weighing down on his shoulders. The senator looks at Lars Renqvist, who has come to the door, wondering whether his loyal underling feels guilty for being taller and more upright than him.

  But once seated in an armchair, the senator straightens up.

  ‘Just as I predicted, the railway construction site is fast becoming the most disastrous emergency-relief project of them all,’ he bemoans.

  The ghost of a supercilious smile forces the corners of his mouth up. The senator detects a similar smile flickering on Renqvist’s face, before quickly vanishing. At that moment, the senator, too, thinks of the thousands of dead bodies. Hunger and epidemics are at their most efficient in large crowds.

  And yet a faint but emphatic voice in his head points out that the railway still represents a step forward for this country, with its frost-ravaged scraps of land: something permanent, a base on which can be founded progress towards industry and capitalism. Something bigger than the workshops he himself promoted. But the old schoolmaster within him thumps the table with his fist, silences such talk and sends the voice into the corner covered in shame.

  ‘It is indeed too costly in human terms.’ Renqvist goes along with him.

  ‘And not merely in human terms. We cannot prioritize the happiness of an individual over the future of the nation. But those conditions – the national economy can’t take them. We’ll be paying off those debts for a long time.’

  The senator closes his eyes and sighs deeply. ‘Tell me, Renqvist, do you think of me as a cold man?’

  ‘No, absolutely not. You are far-sighted. Leadership demands strength of character; you were the only one in the senate to show that.’

  ‘Yes. I don’t know whether I’ve been surrounded by wolves or sheep. There were no real alternative ways to manage the budget. No one could have foreseen devastation like this. If I were in the same situation now as I was a year ago, I wouldn’t do anything differently,’ the senator says.

  And yet he feels guilty. Guilt enters his dreams every night. He fears he will be pursued to the grave. Every night, the same faceless figure in rags trudges along a snowy road, and he knows it to be the past year.

  The drawing-room door opens and Raakel comes in, leading a little boy by the hand. The May sunshine, falling in through the window, lights up half of the senator’s lined face as he turns towards them. His expression becomes gentler.

  ‘Aha, so this is my namesake.’

  ‘Yes, our Johan.’

  The boy is wearing a sailor suit that would suit a child with angelic curls perfectly. This boy has thin, straight hair, and the clothes cannot disguise his peasant features. He has learned to carry his outfit, though. The dark circles the boy had round his eyes when he first came to the Renqvists are still visible, but only as pale shadows of themselves. His naturally pallid skin has acquired a hint of colour, and his small eyes possess a new warmth in addition to the old melancholy gravity.

  The table has been laid. A china bowl is placed before Johan. He says thank you and picks up his spoon nicely, to take soup from the bowl. And suddenly his eyes glaze and he seems oblivious to everything else around him. He spoons the food solemnly into his mouth, as if he were enacting a sacred mystery.

/>   ‘Well, now he can neither hear nor see anything,’ Lars says with a sigh, ashamed of the boy’s behaviour.

  ‘Quite right, too.’ The senator chuckles and strokes one of his side whiskers. ‘He’s got to eat so he’ll have the strength to study and build the nation’s future.’

  The senator seizes his glass and wine spills on to the tablecloth. The old man flushes. Raakel gets up briskly, flashes a forgiving smile at her embarrassed guest and spoons salt over the patch. White crystals cover the red-wine stain and gradually begin to darken.

  Epilogue

  The side of the boat has given in. It did not survive the winter; the planks could not withstand the weight of the snow. A goldeneye darts out of its nest and flies over the damaged boat, the flapping sound of the bird’s wing-beats spreading over the lake until the wind blends all the sounds into a silence that remains unbroken. But then the mating call of a lonely loon sounds.

  A tall, lean man stands at the water’s edge. He allows his gaze to wander over the waves and as far as the opposite shore. His body, ravaged by hunger and disease, sways in the wind; the man can only stand upright with the help of his stick. Then the long, thin fingers let go of the stick, which falls over just as a pike splashes in the reeds. The man lowers himself cautiously into a sitting position on a stone near the water. He takes off his shoes, removes his ragged jacket, shirt and trousers, and steps naked into the lake. The water is still chilly, but the man barely notices, for he has experienced a cold so incomprehensibly vast that in the end it amounted to nothing but emptiness.