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

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 tryingfeel 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 shall 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