White Hunger (Chance Encounter Series) by Aki Ollikainen Read Free Book Online Page A

her stomach all over her body, changing into grief and sweeping everything else aside: hunger, cold, fatigue. It fills her hollow body with a heavy emptiness that leaves room for nothing else. Inside is a marsh pond full of black, lifeless water. A goldeneye swims before her eyes. It changes into a velvet scoter, which tries to take flight. Then a snowy gale freezes everything and emptiness reigns, the bird vanishes. After the blizzard, all is white, dead. Marja stands up and walks to Juho, asleep on the bench. She lifts the boy’s head on to her lap and drifts into sleep.
     
    Morning comes, grey. Retrikki, Dr Berg and Marja trudge across the yard to the sauna, where Mataleena lies alone on a bench. The wind tries to tear Juhani’s old hat off Marja’s head. Retrikki goes in.
    Dr Berg stops by the door. Marja looks at his overcoat, which hangs loose. Berg’s face is gaunt, but she can see from his clothes that at one time he was sturdier. The man has lost weight. Gentlemen starve, too, Marja thinks. The thought does not console her for long, for she realizes: if gentlemen have no bread, how can there ever be enough for the poor folk?
    Thoughts of bread and hunger disappear when Berg stands aside and she sees Mataleena. She takes a step backwards, stumbles and falls in the snow. Berg stretches out his hand to her. The man’s face is exactly the same as Juhani’s was just before they left.
     
    Mataleena’s body has been lifted into the sledge. The doctor sits up at the front with Retrikki; Marja and Juho are next to Mataleena. Retrikki smacks his lips and jerks the reins, and the horse springs into motion. Hilta remains standing on the steps. She does not wave. She plucks at her shawl, drawing it more tightly round her head. Marja and Hilta look at each other until the sledge descends the slope and the house disappears from view.
    The sun stays behind a grey curtain for the whole of the journey. They reach an open field. At the edges, snow-covered trees cast a grey shadow like the boundary between the lands of the living and the dead. Marja no longer trusts that boundary. The shadow fades and fades until it can contain the white wilderness within its borders no more, and the two worlds become one.
    A rickety, grey wooden building stands in the middle of the field, constantly tempted by the wind to fly away. Retrikki directs the sledge towards the barn. Marja spots a few derelict dwellings further away, at the edge of the forest.
    Retrikki gets off the sledge and opens the barn door. Marja sees people sleeping inside. Before she can marvelat the scene, Retrikki tells her that Mataleena will stay here.
    ‘There are others here awaiting burial.’
    Berg turns to look at Marja and promises to make sure the girl will get a decent funeral in good time.
    ‘She’ll be thrown into a mass grave,’ Marja cries.
    ‘No doubt,’ Berg concedes.
    ‘There’ll be no name on the cross.’
    Berg and Retrikki carry Mataleena into the barn on a plank. Marja does not want to get off the sledge.
    ‘Where’s Mataleena going?’ Juho asks.
    ‘To Father,’ Marja replies.
    ‘I want to go in the barn, to Father,’ Juho says.
    Marja gently presses her hand against Juho’s mouth.
    ‘Mataleena goes to Father, Juho stays here to keep Mother company. Else Mother will be on her own.’
    Retrikki and Berg come back to the sledge. They get on their way immediately.
    Marja stares at the diminishing barn. She thinks of her daughter, left there on a plank. She does not cry. The grief is hidden, concealed in the egg of a goldeneye, which Marja cannot find. Snow flurries in the field, or inside her.
     
    After a while, the sledge comes to a halt. Dr Berg says something to Marja, shakes her hand. She nods. It is not until the sledge jerks back into motion that Marjanotices the doctor has been dropped off outside a small manor house.
    The road from the doctor’s house descends into a village. Retrikki rides to a church and stops in front of