Pirjo’s Rivalry with Malena

Pirjo’s rivalry with Malena is a struggle over intimacy, status, and the future of Atu’s community. When Malena’s pregnancy and miscarriage make their connection impossible for Pirjo to ignore, Pirjo’s private jealousy turns into a direct effort to remove her. At the hospital, money and an appeal to supposed concern become instruments of that effort; Malena refuses to go quietly, and the encounter leaves their competing claims on Atu exposed.

A Rivalry Built Around Atu

The conflict begins in Pirjo’s interpretation of Atu’s attention to Malena. At an assembly, Atu speaks of feeling Malena’s pain and drawing together to help her, although Malena is not present. Pirjo searches the gathering for her, then privately wonders what Atu means. She imagines Malena in his chamber and fears the two may be attaching themselves to each other more deeply than Pirjo can permit. These are Pirjo’s suspicions, not confirmed knowledge, but they show how she reads even a communal expression of concern as evidence of a private bond.

When Atu tells Pirjo that Malena has miscarried and reproaches her for not accompanying Malena to hospital, Pirjo’s attention shifts immediately to the possibility that Atu had made Malena pregnant. She then frames the situation in terms of her own future: her fertility is waning, time is passing, and she wants the child Atu fathers to be hers, the successor and new savior. Her ambition is not simply to keep Malena away from Atu; it is also to secure a place for herself and her hoped-for child in the community’s future.

That expectation has an agreed-upon dimension. Pirjo protests that Atu should at least have told her he was ready to impregnate one of his disciples, reminding him that they had agreed she would be the first to know when he made that decision. Atu replies by turning the matter toward their agreement to speak directly when something troubles her. Their exchange reveals a partnership with acknowledged expectations, but also a mismatch: Pirjo treats the decision as one that should have been disclosed to her, while Atu does not confirm her understanding of what has happened with Malena.

The Hospital Confrontation

Pirjo appears at Malena’s bedside in the gynecological ward on the fourth floor of Kalmar Hospital. Malena is pale, and Pirjo recognizes that she had hoped Atu would come to show compassion. Pirjo’s observation sharpens the rivalry: the visit she makes is also a reminder that she is the person who has arrived, while Atu has not.

Malena’s body recoils when Pirjo takes her hand; she tries to pull away, but Pirjo holds on. Malena asks whether Pirjo has come to gloat. Pirjo answers with an expression of regret and carefully managed concern. The narration makes clear that her performance is strategic: she wants Malena confused and needs her to trust Pirjo long enough to hear what comes next. The gesture of holding her hand therefore carries two meanings at once, outward sympathy and an attempt to control the encounter.

Pirjo tells Malena to go as far away as possible once discharged. She offers eight thousand euros, enough, she says, to keep hardship at bay for a few months, and says she has packed Malena’s belongings in a suitcase in the corridor. The concrete arrangements make the offer an attempted expulsion rather than an abstract suggestion. Pirjo is trying to make leaving easy, immediate, and financially possible.

Malena pushes the money away. She identifies the offer as an effort to get rid of her and refuses the premise that she can be bought out of her position. She insists that Atu is hers and claims he has told her that he wants nothing to do with Pirjo, whom she describes as his servant. Her account directly contradicts Pirjo’s private conviction that she knows what Atu has always felt. The scene does not independently settle which woman’s understanding is accurate; it establishes that each sees the other as a rival for a relationship whose terms remain contested.

Concern as Tactic, Rejection as Counterattack

After Malena refuses the money and declares that she will return to the center, Pirjo does not disclose what she believes about Atu’s feelings. Instead, she maintains a worried expression and lets Malena’s anger continue, because her plan depends on Malena believing she is acting in good faith. She then says she has been happy for Malena and Atu, presents her own fondness for Atu as something that has changed over the years, and claims that her long experience with him has shown her a dark side Malena should fear.

The confrontation therefore turns on rival forms of knowledge. Malena invokes what she says Atu told her; Pirjo invokes what she claims to have learned through years beside him. Neither account is verified in this exchange. Pirjo’s warning may sound like care, but it follows her failed attempt to send Malena away, making concern inseparable from her effort to control who remains close to Atu. Malena, for her part, answers the attempted removal with refusal and a threat to return to the center within hours.

Significance and Unresolved Outcome

The relationship moves from Pirjo’s uneasy interpretation of Atu’s attention to an overt contest over access, belonging, and the community’s future. Malena’s miscarriage intensifies Pirjo’s fear that another disciple may share the future she imagines for herself; Pirjo’s offer of money converts that fear into action. Malena’s rejection prevents the rivalry from being settled by a discreet departure and forces the conflict into the open.

The hospital scene ends with Pirjo preparing Malena for a warning about Atu, not with evidence that Malena accepts it or leaves. The rivalry’s decisive feature at this point is thus not a confirmed account of Atu’s loyalties, but the incompatible claims the two women make upon him—and Pirjo’s willingness to disguise an attempt at removal as compassion.