Pirjo's Death from Blood Loss and Written Confession

Pirjo’s death from blood loss begins with the loss of the child she had imagined as the continuation of her life with Atu. As the bleeding increases and her body’s signals abruptly fall silent, she understands that the baby is dead. The physical crisis becomes a final reckoning with the future she had expected: she believes Atu will not impregnate her again, and that his promise of their eventual union at the timber circle can no longer be fulfilled.

The miscarriage and the decision to die

The blood between Pirjo’s legs has increased; then the sensations that had told her about her condition stop. She is certain that labor has begun without her water breaking because the baby inside her is dead. Her tears recall an earlier childhood plea for her mother to love her as much as her sisters, a memory that sharpens her sense that grief cannot alter what has happened. In her understanding, fate has its own course, and she can only follow it.

The telephone is within reach, but Pirjo cannot make herself call for help. Hospitalization, she thinks, would not restore the child or the future she had hoped for with Atu. It would also keep her away from the men in the control room, whose bodies an electrician might discover when he returned in a few days. She fears that the bodies would expose connections she has concealed; investigators would eventually find Shirley, and both she and Atu would answer for what they had done.

Pirjo therefore turns her impending death into a deliberate sacrifice for Atu. She resolves to write everything down as she bleeds to death, accept blame for everything, and leave the men in the control room unable to contradict her account. Her decision joins confession to concealment: she intends to take responsibility, but also to prevent the other men from surviving to reveal what she believes would endanger Atu. Before writing, she gazes tenderly at the small wooden figure the policeman had brought with him, kisses it, and begins.

Atu’s departure and Pirjo’s death

As Pirjo is dying, Atu tells her, “I broke up with her and never saw her again.” She is shocked and does not know what to believe. The possibility that his account is true opens a final, bitter uncertainty: if she had known, she thinks, none of the terrible things that have happened would have happened. The revelation does not resolve their history; it reaches her when she is too weak to act on it.

Pirjo wants Atu to embrace her, say goodbye, and hold her hand until the end, but he does not even look at her. Instead, he turns his back and tells her, “You’ll have to take your punishment for this, Pirjo,” adding that there is something he has to do. These are his last words to her before he disappears. His refusal of the farewell she wants leaves her alone at the point when her devotion to him has shaped her final choices.

The sun comes out at full force, filling Pirjo’s office as brightly as floodlights. She thinks its strength will kill the men, but her body is already failing: the muscles in her neck slacken, her chin falls to her chest, and the shaking stops. The last sounds she hears are desperate voices in the courtyard shouting, “Fire!” Pirjo finally gives up, dying from blood loss as the scene closes on the alarm beyond her room.

Confession, Sacrifice, and the Limits of Control

Pirjo’s intended confession is also an attempt to control what can be known after her death. She means to assume blame for everything while ensuring that the men in the control room cannot contradict her, believing their deaths will keep the concealed connections from reaching Atu. Yet the account she plans to leave is not presented here as a completed explanation: the scene shows her beginning to write, not what she writes or how others will interpret it. That gap matters. Her final act is framed at once as devotion and as an effort to suppress other testimony, so sacrifice does not settle responsibility. Atu’s refusal to comfort her, followed by his demand that she take her punishment, further unsettles the role she has chosen for herself. She dies having tried to protect him, but without the farewell she wanted or certainty about the truth she has just heard; the shouting of fire outside her room closes the scene without confirming that her account will govern what follows.

Fate and Agency

Pirjo’s language of fate makes her grief sound like surrender, but the scene distinguishes what she cannot change from what she still chooses to do. She regards the baby’s death as beyond appeal, yet she could call for help; instead, she refuses, writes a confession, and tries to determine what others will be able to say afterward. Her fatalism therefore coexists with purposeful action: she cannot secure the future she wanted with Atu, but she attempts to shape the consequences of its loss. The childhood memory of asking her mother to love her as much as her sisters gives this pattern an earlier echo of longing that cannot compel affection. Atu’s final refusal to comfort her sharpens the gap between the sacrifice she makes in his name and the care she hopes, but does not receive, in return.