Malena

Malena is a disciple at The Academy whose pregnancy by Atu Abanshamash Dumuzi ends in miscarriage, making her both the object of Pirjo’s jealousy and a target of Pirjo’s calculated intervention. Her attachment to Atu is strong enough that she resists an attempt to buy her departure, but Pirjo’s warning about the fate of other pregnant women persuades her to leave the hospital. Malena never returns to the center, and the circumstances of her disappearance remain unresolved in the evidence surrounding her story.

Identity and Place at The Academy

Malena is part of the community gathered around Atu at The Academy. In October 2013, she is conspicuously absent from a gathering in the hall when Atu leads the crowd in a ritual of shared feeling. He tells the assembly that they feel Malena’s pain and are joining together to draw it out of her. Pirjo looks around for Malena and cannot find her. The public invocation gives Malena a place in the community even while she is not physically present: her suffering is made into a collective concern, and Atu’s words suggest an intimacy Pirjo fears may be growing between them.

Pirjo privately interprets the ritual through her own suspicions. She wonders whether Malena is with Atu in his chamber and whether the two are becoming more attached than Pirjo can tolerate. These are Pirjo’s conjectures, not confirmed facts about Malena’s whereabouts. Her reaction nevertheless establishes the pressure Malena’s relationship with Atu exerts on Pirjo, who concludes that Wanda Phinn had to disappear and that nothing could have been done differently. Malena is therefore introduced not simply as a member of the center, but as someone whose closeness to Atu intensifies an already dangerous rivalry.

Pregnancy and Miscarriage

Atu later tells Pirjo that Malena has miscarried a few hours earlier and criticizes Pirjo for not accompanying her in the ambulance to the hospital. Pirjo’s response turns immediately toward the implications of the pregnancy: she wonders whether Atu had made Malena pregnant, then imagines the child she herself wants to have with him. In her mind, her own child should become his successor and a new savior. Malena’s loss thus sharpens Pirjo’s fear that her place beside Atu—and her hope of bearing his child—is under threat.

Malena is recovering in a gynecological ward on the fourth floor of a hospital in Kalmar when Pirjo visits. The ward is described as sterile-looking, and Malena appears paler than the nurses’ white lab coats. Pirjo recognizes that Malena may have hoped Atu would come to show compassion, but instead Pirjo is the one at her bedside. The contrast matters: Malena has suffered a physical and emotional loss, while the person who arrives is also the rival with a reason to exploit her vulnerability.

Pirjo’s Offer and Threat

Pirjo first tries to make Malena leave by offering her eight thousand euros and saying that her packed belongings are waiting in a suitcase in the corridor. Malena pushes the money away. She accuses Pirjo of trying to get rid of her, insists that Atu is hers, and claims that he has told her he wants nothing to do with Pirjo. She describes Pirjo as his subordinate and says she will return to the center within a few hours, determined to reclaim the position she has fought for. Her refusal shows that money alone cannot sever her attachment to Atu or her sense of belonging at The Academy.

Pirjo changes tactics. She presents herself as someone who understands how much Atu has cared for Malena, then claims that Malena is the third woman whose pregnancy with him has ended in miscarriage. According to Pirjo, Atu wants children desperately and is devastated and angry at the loss. She describes the miscarriage as an opening to negative energy that Atu cannot tolerate, and warns that if Malena returns he will sacrifice her to the sea. Pirjo says two other women who lost his children were drowned and claims that one, Claudia, was found on the Polish coast. The narrative establishes this as Pirjo’s threatening account, not as independently verified fact.

Malena initially mocks the idea of being sacrificed. Pirjo makes the threat more explicit, saying Malena will be drowned and found naked on a distant beach. The warning lands: Pirjo recognizes that doubt and shock have given way to fear and powerlessness, and believes Malena is now vulnerable to persuasion. By using an invented or unverified history of violence alongside claims about Atu’s grief, Pirjo turns the hospital visit from a failed bribe into a successful deception.

Departure and Disappearance

After leaving the hospital, Pirjo returns to the center and tells Atu that Malena is recovering and will be discharged in a day or two. The false reassurance gives Malena a head start. Malena never appears at the center again. Atu cannot find out why she left the hospital or where she went, and spends several weeks trying to trace her through his contacts. Her absence becomes a mystery even within the community where she had expected to resume her place.

Pirjo supplies Atu with accounts of the depression and irrational decisions that can follow miscarriage. He listens, sad and disheartened, and eventually resigns himself to Malena’s apparent departure. The explanation protects Pirjo’s deception by giving Atu a plausible reason for her disappearance without revealing that Pirjo frightened Malena into leaving. Malena’s escape is therefore achieved not through the money she rejected, but through Pirjo’s manipulation of the danger she believed she faced.

Later Connections and Narrative Role

Malena’s disappearance returns as a significant detail when Valentina reflects on Wanda Phinn and the events around Malena’s hospital admission. Valentina remembers that she and Malena had been Latin soul mates and had many things in common. She cannot understand why Malena gave her no warning before disappearing, and wonders whether Malena had been unable to do so. Valentina also connects what Shirley told her about Wanda with the day Malena went to the hospital. This recollection does not establish what Malena knew or what happened to her; it makes the timing of her disappearance newly suspicious.

Malena’s story is marked by a gap between what others say about her and what she is able to disclose. Atu publicly names her pain, Pirjo uses that pain to control her movements, and Valentina later searches for a message that never came. Malena is last seen in the hospital scene resisting Pirjo, asserting her claim to Atu, and preparing to return to the center. Instead, she vanishes from it. That reversal leaves her fate unsettled while tying her personal crisis to the wider pattern of women whose connections to Atu and the center become dangerous.