Teo.
‘Boy’s a relative. I’m taking him to Helsinki; his parents have passed away,’ Teo explains.
Dr Löfgren looks at Juho’s ragged clothes and twirls the tip of his pointed beard.
‘We should find him something better to wear,’ Löfgren says. ‘Seeing as he’s headed for the city,’ he adds, laughing.
He says this to Juho, but the boy’s expression does not change. He looks at the doctor’s shoes as if there were something magical about them.
The boy falls asleep between the clean sheets. Teo wonders if the child has ever seen anything so clean. Not that Juho marvelled at the bedlinen; he seemed to take the world as it came. Hunger and cold, a bowl of soup and a warm bed: none of these could alter the solemn expression on the boy’s face.
Löfgren hands Teo a glass. Teo gets up from the armchair and walks to the window. Snow whirls beyond the pane. The scene seems somehow unreal to Teo, watching the blizzard from the warmth of the room. The thin glass is a film between two worlds; Teo does not dare touch it lest he break the spell and allow the outside to intrude into his own reality.
He thinks of the woman left lying in the snowdrift. How the snow fell over her, in the end not tenderly tucking her in, but devouring her, like a raging sea dragging a castaway into its depths. The woman was Juho’s mother. Now the boy has no one. He is in Teo’s hands; it is up to Teo what kind of future awaits him.
Teo has seen several bodies by the side of the road during this journey, but the woman is the only one he saw die. It happened quickly, without drama. The woman just fell and failed to get up again. As if theground had swallowed her up and left an empty shell behind.
But can the soul penetrate this frozen earth? Teo wonders. Perhaps what was inside the woman just disappeared. The soul waned, as it will for everyone. In some, it burned in an instant, flared up like a piece of paper thrown into the fire. In others, as in that woman, it burned slowly to ash and vanished in the wind. If anything remained of the woman, it was the boy. Only Teo and Juho still remember her. And although Teo knows nothing about the woman beyond the manner of her dying, he knows he will remember that longer than the boy’s own recollections of his mother will live. The boy is still so small he will not carry those memories for very long. When Juho is a man, he will wake nightly from terrible dreams on damp, sweaty sheets, calling for his mother, not knowing for whom he is calling.
‘In better weather, we’d see the church over there.’ Löfgren interrupts Teo’s thoughts.
Löfgren tells Teo he used to know Berg, and Berg will not be the only doctor to be killed by an epidemic this winter.
‘In that respect, workhouses are the right solution. The poor must be confined to the areas where they live. The worst thing that could happen would be an increase in the hordes of migrant beggars.’
‘They will increase.’
‘How can they be made to understand how hopeless a chance it is?’ Löfgren laments.
‘Hopeless, yes, but a chance all the same, as you say.’
‘They bring unrest. The parish grain silo has already been plundered here. Typhus is the worst danger, though. Weak, hungry people are the most susceptible, but it can get healthy folk, too.’
Löfgren says that there has been a workhouse in the village for almost two months now.
‘Aren’t diseases passed around there?’
‘One in three of the occupants is sick.’
‘What do they do in the workhouses?’
‘Handicrafts.’
‘And do the products sell?’
‘Not terribly well. And even if they were sold, you couldn’t buy food with the proceeds. But the situation is easier to control if everyone stays put. Just imagine all the sick people roaming round the country.’
‘True. Forgive me if I sounded harsh. The boy’s fate has made me melancholy.’
‘I understand. And it is perfectly true that, in this situation, the only alternatives are
‘Boy’s a relative. I’m taking him to Helsinki; his parents have passed away,’ Teo explains.
Dr Löfgren looks at Juho’s ragged clothes and twirls the tip of his pointed beard.
‘We should find him something better to wear,’ Löfgren says. ‘Seeing as he’s headed for the city,’ he adds, laughing.
He says this to Juho, but the boy’s expression does not change. He looks at the doctor’s shoes as if there were something magical about them.
The boy falls asleep between the clean sheets. Teo wonders if the child has ever seen anything so clean. Not that Juho marvelled at the bedlinen; he seemed to take the world as it came. Hunger and cold, a bowl of soup and a warm bed: none of these could alter the solemn expression on the boy’s face.
Löfgren hands Teo a glass. Teo gets up from the armchair and walks to the window. Snow whirls beyond the pane. The scene seems somehow unreal to Teo, watching the blizzard from the warmth of the room. The thin glass is a film between two worlds; Teo does not dare touch it lest he break the spell and allow the outside to intrude into his own reality.
He thinks of the woman left lying in the snowdrift. How the snow fell over her, in the end not tenderly tucking her in, but devouring her, like a raging sea dragging a castaway into its depths. The woman was Juho’s mother. Now the boy has no one. He is in Teo’s hands; it is up to Teo what kind of future awaits him.
Teo has seen several bodies by the side of the road during this journey, but the woman is the only one he saw die. It happened quickly, without drama. The woman just fell and failed to get up again. As if theground had swallowed her up and left an empty shell behind.
But can the soul penetrate this frozen earth? Teo wonders. Perhaps what was inside the woman just disappeared. The soul waned, as it will for everyone. In some, it burned in an instant, flared up like a piece of paper thrown into the fire. In others, as in that woman, it burned slowly to ash and vanished in the wind. If anything remained of the woman, it was the boy. Only Teo and Juho still remember her. And although Teo knows nothing about the woman beyond the manner of her dying, he knows he will remember that longer than the boy’s own recollections of his mother will live. The boy is still so small he will not carry those memories for very long. When Juho is a man, he will wake nightly from terrible dreams on damp, sweaty sheets, calling for his mother, not knowing for whom he is calling.
‘In better weather, we’d see the church over there.’ Löfgren interrupts Teo’s thoughts.
Löfgren tells Teo he used to know Berg, and Berg will not be the only doctor to be killed by an epidemic this winter.
‘In that respect, workhouses are the right solution. The poor must be confined to the areas where they live. The worst thing that could happen would be an increase in the hordes of migrant beggars.’
‘They will increase.’
‘How can they be made to understand how hopeless a chance it is?’ Löfgren laments.
‘Hopeless, yes, but a chance all the same, as you say.’
‘They bring unrest. The parish grain silo has already been plundered here. Typhus is the worst danger, though. Weak, hungry people are the most susceptible, but it can get healthy folk, too.’
Löfgren says that there has been a workhouse in the village for almost two months now.
‘Aren’t diseases passed around there?’
‘One in three of the occupants is sick.’
‘What do they do in the workhouses?’
‘Handicrafts.’
‘And do the products sell?’
‘Not terribly well. And even if they were sold, you couldn’t buy food with the proceeds. But the situation is easier to control if everyone stays put. Just imagine all the sick people roaming round the country.’
‘True. Forgive me if I sounded harsh. The boy’s fate has made me melancholy.’
‘I understand. And it is perfectly true that, in this situation, the only alternatives are
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