Atu and Malena's Relationship

Atu and Malena’s relationship moves from Malena’s place in his life at the center to a sudden, fearful break after her miscarriage. The pregnancy exposes the importance Atu attaches to having children, while Pirjo’s warning turns that loss into a question of Malena’s survival: she tells Malena that returning to the center could mean being sacrificed. Malena does not return, and the relationship ends not in a direct conversation between the two but in unanswered questions, a search, and Pirjo’s private approach to Atu.

Pregnancy, Affection, and Competing Claims

Pirjo presents Malena as the third woman whose pregnancy with Atu has ended in miscarriage. She tells Malena that Atu is over forty, has no children, and wants them more than anything. In Pirjo’s account, the miscarriage therefore strikes at a central hope for him: he feels let down and betrayed. This describes the relationship through the gap between what Malena has lost and what Atu believes the pregnancy might have fulfilled. Pirjo also says she knows how much Atu has felt for Malena, and insists that she has been happy for them. Her claim is complicated by her admission that she, too, has been deeply fond of Atu, though she says that feeling changed over the years into something different from what others might feel.

Malena does not accept Pirjo’s account without resistance. When Pirjo offers her money to leave, Malena pushes it away and insists that Atu belongs with her, that he wants nothing to do with Pirjo, and that she has fought her way to her position at the center. Her confidence sets up a pointed contrast: Malena sees herself as Atu’s chosen partner, while Pirjo describes herself as someone who has watched him closely and knows a dangerous side of him. The exchange reveals that Malena’s understanding of the relationship rests on her trust in what Atu has told her, whereas Pirjo claims authority through years of proximity and privileged knowledge.

The Miscarriage and Pirjo’s Warning

Pirjo turns the miscarriage into a warning about what she says has happened to Atu’s previous partners. She claims that he sees Malena’s loss as the beginning of an abyss of negative energy and cannot tolerate it. She then tells Malena that if she returns to the center, Atu will sacrifice her to the sea and drown her, as he supposedly did to the other women whose pregnancies ended in miscarriage. The threat is presented as Pirjo’s account and prediction; the scene does not independently establish that Atu drowned those women. Its immediate force lies in the details Pirjo supplies: one woman, Claudia, was found on the Polish coast, while Pirjo says she does not think the other was ever found.

Pirjo further tells Malena that Atu had calmly confided in her about sending the first woman back into the cycle of nature because she could not fulfill their bodily mission. She says she tried to warn the second woman, Lonny, but Lonny did not listen. These claims give Pirjo’s warning a history and frame childbearing as more than a private wish: in her telling, it is tied to the center’s bodily mission and to a punishment for failing to complete it. Malena’s response changes from mockery to silence. Pirjo’s story has made her doubt and fear possible, even though its most serious accusations remain Pirjo’s testimony.

Departure and the Search for Malena

Pirjo’s warning succeeds in keeping Malena away from the center. After leaving her, Pirjo returns and tells Atu that Malena is recovering and will be discharged in a day or two. The false reassurance gives Malena time to get away. She never turns up at the center, and Atu is left wondering why she has left the hospital and where she has gone. For several weeks, he tries to find her through various contacts, but cannot locate her.

The separation is thus carried by a sharp asymmetry of knowledge. Malena leaves because Pirjo has told her that returning may be fatal; Atu, who does not know where she is, searches for her without learning the reason for her disappearance. Pirjo occupies the space between them, having both induced Malena’s flight and misled Atu about her condition. The relationship is not shown ending through a mutual decision or an explicit exchange between Malena and Atu. Instead, the same miscarriage produces two incompatible experiences: danger for Malena and bewilderment, followed by grief, for Atu.

Aftermath and the Relationship’s Uneasy Ending

Pirjo offers Atu accounts of the depression and irrational decisions that can follow a miscarriage. He listens, sad and disheartened, and eventually resigns himself to Malena’s absence, accepting an explanation that allows him to stop searching. The narrative does not show him discovering Pirjo’s deception or learning what Malena was told. His resignation therefore closes his pursuit without resolving the truth between him and Malena.

The final scene shifts attention from the missing relationship to the one Pirjo has long claimed with Atu. One morning, after he has gone out early to chant while looking toward the sea, Pirjo brings him warm tea and a damp cloth. Without speaking, she washes and massages him, then removes his trousers and straddles him. The physical intimacy follows Malena’s disappearance and Pirjo’s successful concealment of her role in it. It does not establish what becomes of Malena or whether Atu learns the truth; it does show Pirjo taking advantage of the opening left by her rival’s absence. In that contrast, the relationship’s ending is defined less by a confirmed break between Atu and Malena than by the secrecy that prevents them from confronting what happened.