White Hunger (Chance Encounter Series) by Aki Ollikainen Page A

sick?’
    ‘No, but the child is exhausted, hungry, cold…’
    ‘You can’t send him away, into the night,’ the woman says to her husband, who is standing on the steps.
    ‘The other one’s a grown man, I won’t take him in. He’s a thief, you can tell.’
    ‘You can stay the night with the child. In the morning, you’ll go on to the village. I don’t care whether you’re up to it or not. That one can be off now. If he hurries, he’ll make it before it’s pitch black,’ the woman says haughtily.
    ‘It’ll be dark in no time,’ Ruuni complains.
    ‘Then you’ll just walk blind, not my affair. The village is not that far.’
    ‘Are there any other houses round here we could try?’ Marja asks.
    ‘No. If there were I’d already have told you to go. You’re not that far from the village, the boy can try to get there. If he steals, it’s his own responsibility. You probably won’t be able to make it.’
    ‘I’ll go. I’ll wait for you in the village,’ Ruuni says.
    Marja turns to give the boy a farewell hug, but he is already on his way down the slope.
    Marja follows the man and woman inside, Juho in her arms. Out of the window she sees Ruuni, who has stopped at the bottom of the slope. His shoulders are hunched. Gusts of wind make him sway like a small birch. The skinny dog followed him for a little while and now yaps halfway down the slope, where the sparse pine wood begins.
    ‘Mother?’
    The voice comes from a dark corner. Once Marja’s eyes have adjusted to the dimness of the room, she makes out a boy sitting on a bench by the stove. He is Ruuni’s age.
    ‘I’m here,’ the woman answers.
    ‘Who’s there?’
    ‘Strangers. You don’t know them.’
    The boy looks at the space next to Marja as if someone were standing there. Blind, Marja realizes.
    ‘Time for bed,’ the man says to the boy.
    The boy stands up and climbs on to the warm brick ledge above the oven. When the man lights a spill, Marja sees the boy’s face. Again he looks to the side of Marja, and she cannot help making sure no one is sitting next to her.
    The farmer settles at the head of the table, glowers at Marja and blows into his moustache. There is something listless about the man, as if wind were breathing in and out of him, shifting lichen on spruce branches. The woman lights a fire in the stove and sets a pot on it. Soon, steam rises from the pot.
    When the woman places bowls before Juho and Marja,the man stands up and disappears into the bedroom. The bowls contain grey gruel. The woman settles wordlessly at the head of the table, where the man was just sitting. She has half a loaf on her lap and she breaks off chunks and hands them to Marja.
    ‘Thank you.’
    Marja again sees the blind boy’s face on the brick ledge.
    ‘Go to sleep,’ the woman barks. The face vanishes into the dark.
    ‘Was he always… blind?’
    ‘From birth. But he’s not alone with his trouble in this village,’ the woman replies.
    The grim triumph in the woman’s voice gives Marja goose pimples.
    The gruel in the bowl looks like the slushy snow on the path to the cowshed in spring. But now even the thought of spring feels gloomy. Marja does not see the summer that follows it but a long winter that goes on for ever. She raises the spoon to her lips and stares into the darkness of the brick ledge; blind eyes meet hers.
     
    Through her sleep, Marja hears floorboards creaking as footsteps approach in the dark, carrying with them a heavy panting. The click of a tinderbox, a spill ignites with a crackle, and in the dim light, a menacing silhouette rises on the wall. An unnaturally tall figure flickers spectrally, pulling off a shirt. The man bends naked over Marja andrips her shirt and skirt open before she has time to put up a fight. A scream sticks in her throat, terror freezes her voice, it is like a mass of water engulfing someone unable to swim, black and cold.
    ‘You don’t think you get to eat our last crumbs of bread for free, you