Malena flees the academy after her miscarriage

Malena flees the academy after her miscarriage because Pirjo convinces her that returning could cost her life, then secretly gives her time to disappear. The escape depends on a sharp reversal: Pirjo presents herself to Malena as a warning ally, but goes back to Atu and hides Malena’s recovery and departure from him.

The warning in the hospital

Malena is still in a hospital bed when Pirjo tells her that her miscarriage is not an isolated loss in Atu’s life. She says Malena is the third woman whose pregnancy with him has ended in miscarriage; the other two are dead, and Atu, now over forty and without children, wants children more than anything. Pirjo describes him as devastated and angry, and says he feels let down and betrayed. These are Pirjo’s claims, not independently established facts in the scene, but they give Malena a frightening interpretation of her own miscarriage: to Atu, Pirjo says, it has opened an abyss of negative energy that he cannot tolerate.

Malena initially challenges the warning rather than accepting Pirjo’s account. She says Atu can tell her himself, and mocks the idea that he would sacrifice her. Pirjo answers by making the danger specific: if Malena returns to the center, Atu will drown her, as he supposedly did the other women who lost his offspring. She predicts that Malena will be found naked and bloated on a distant beach. Pirjo adds that one of the women, Claudia, was found on the Polish coast. The detail gives the threat a geographical reach beyond the academy and makes Pirjo’s account more concrete, while leaving its truthfulness uncertain.

Fear becomes an opening for escape

Pirjo’s warning is calculated to unsettle Malena. The narration makes clear that the words produce both doubt and shock, followed by powerlessness and fear; Pirjo has succeeded in making her intended impression. The scene’s turning point is therefore not a physical struggle but a change in what Malena believes is safe. She may still distrust Pirjo, yet the possibility of being killed if she returns becomes serious enough to alter her choices.

Pirjo’s intervention also complicates the apparent alliance between the women. She presents her closeness to Atu as the reason she can recognize his dark side, and insists that her affection for him has changed into something she accepted long ago. That account gives her warning an air of painful candor. But the later sequence shows that she is also managing what Atu knows: after persuading Malena to stay away, Pirjo returns to the center and tells him that Malena is recovering and will be discharged in a day or two. The lie supplies Malena with a head start. The text calls Pirjo’s visit a successful mission, confirming that the warning serves a practical purpose as well as expressing concern.

Disappearance and aftermath

Malena never returns to the center. Atu cannot obtain answers about why she has left the hospital or where she has gone, and spends several weeks trying to find her through his contacts. She seems to have vanished without a trace. The account does not disclose Malena’s destination or describe her journey; its emphasis is on the absence she leaves behind and on Atu’s inability to explain it.

Pirjo offers Atu a different explanation, citing the depression that can follow miscarriage and the irrational decisions a woman might make after such a severe experience. He listens, sad and disheartened, and eventually resigns himself to that account. Her deception thus holds: the danger Pirjo described to Malena is never confronted by Atu, while he is given a plausible explanation for her disappearance that does not expose Pirjo’s role.

The aftermath shifts back to Pirjo and Atu. One morning, after Atu has gone out early as usual to chant while looking out to sea, Pirjo brings him warm tea and a damp cloth. Without speaking, she washes and massages him, removes his trousers, and straddles him. The sequence follows Malena’s disappearance with a new intimacy between Pirjo and Atu, but does not establish that this was the purpose of her warning. What it does show is the changed situation Pirjo has helped create: Malena is gone, Atu has accepted an explanation for her absence, and Pirjo is again physically close to him. Escape brings Malena out of immediate reach, while leaving the account of Atu’s alleged violence unresolved.