White Hunger (Chance Encounter Series) Read Online Free PDF

The horse does not turn into the rectory road, instead continuing along the river. Lehto remains silent, merely smacking his lips angrily from time to time and occasionally striking Voima. The horse’s gait grows heavier but itdoes not pick up speed. Then the river widens into a lake; a peninsula cuts into it. In the middle of the peninsula stands a manor house, even bigger than the rectory; the road ends in the front garden. This is Viklund manor house.
    A man stands outside, a hired hand. Lehto greets him; he responds faintly, then snarls that beggars will not be admitted. Lehto strides past him up the steps. Mataleena follows but turns back when she realizes that Mother and Juho are still standing by the sledge. The hired hand also disappears through the door.
    After a while, a young woman opens the door and waves Marja and the children inside.
    The large room is bright. A white cloth covers the table. Old Mr Viklund sits in a rocking chair, smoking a porcelain pipe. Mataleena looks at the man’s bushy sideburns. One of his eyes is covered by a cataract and this frightens her. It is as if the old farmer’s eye were inhabited by frost. She has to be careful to avoid looking at that eye of frost: the coldness could burst out and wrap a too-curious child up in its shawl, keeping her captive there for ever.
    But the landowner’s smile is gentle, and so is his good eye, with which he looks at Mataleena. The frosty eye stares past her, into the distance somewhere.
    ‘The visitors must take their coats off. Ella will put something on the table.’
    Ella, who let Marja and the children in, curtsies, glances at Mataleena with a friendly smile and crosses the large room.
    Mataleena tiptoes to a mirror with a gilded frame. Beyond the glass lies an identical room, from which Mataleena looks back at herself. There are black circles round the eyes, deep lines at the corners of the mouth. The Mataleena looking out from the mirror is like a tiny old lady, and that amuses the Mataleena looking in the mirror.
    ‘I’m a child, you’re an old woman,’ Mataleena whispers to her reflection.
    Then she spots Ella in the mirror; the maid is carrying a big, white tureen.
    ‘We’re short of food, too, though we’re one of the wealthiest houses in the parish. We’ve had to dismiss some of the servants because we can’t afford to keep on extra mouths to feed,’ old Mr Viklund tells Lehto.
    Mataleena strokes the china soup tureen with her fingertip. It is as white as snow, but warm. The most beautiful thing about it is the pink rose with gilt-edged petals. She moves her finger over the raised rose, a living, beating heart blooming amid snow, unvanquished even by winter.
    Ella lifts the lid of the tureen and a cloud of steam rises up. A china bowl with a rose identical to the one on the tureen is placed before Mataleena. Ella ladles broth into the bowl. Mataleena can still make out the rose.
     
    In the morning, Lehto hands Viklund a banknote. Briefly, he bids Marja farewell, pats both Juho and Mataleena on the head and steps outside. Through the window,Mataleena watches Lehto’s sledge leaving the yard, then riding the narrow road away from the peninsula, turning to the river bank and lingering for a long time in the landscape, shrinking all the while as Voima trots on, as if fleeing them. Ella takes Mataleena in her arms, and the girl wishes they were staying here in the manor house.
    She would never tire of admiring the pink flower at mealtimes. Looking at the rose, she would remember Father. Father is happy for them, but Father will not come to Viklund; he is sitting on the edge of a cloud, and whenever it rains in summer and she looks out of the window and sees water trickling down the glass, she will know Father’s tears of joy are falling to earth.
    But Ella puts Mataleena down by the door next to Juho and wraps the shawl tightly round the girl’s head. Mataleena understands that they must leave now.
    The hired hand who was