by Tove Jansson
‘The sun’s coming back again,’ Moomintroll thought in great excitement. ‘No darkness, no loneliness any more. Once again I’ll sit in the sun on the verandah and feel my back warming…’
Now he was up on the top. The air was hot around the fire. The invisible shrew was blowing another and wilder tune.
But the dancing shadows were already gliding away, and the drums were thudding on the other side of the fire.
‘Why did they go away?’ asked Moomintroll.
Too-ticky looked at him with her calm, blue eyes. Still, he wasn’t quite sure that she really did see him. She was looking into her own private winter world that had followed its own strange rules year after year, while he had lain sleeping in the warm Moominhouse.
‘Where’s he that lives in the bathing-house cupboard?’ Moomintroll asked.
‘What did you say?’ said Too-ticky, absentmindedly.
‘I’d like to meet him that lives in the bathing-house cupboard!’ repeated Moomintroll.
‘Oh, but he’s not allowed to come out,’ said Too-ticky. ‘You can’t tell what such a one would find in his head to do.’
A herd of small creatures with spindly legs came blowing like a wisp of smoke over the ice. Someone with silvered horns walked stamping past Moomintroll and over the fire flapped something black with large wings, and disappeared northwards. But everything happened a little too quickly, and Moomintroll never found time to introduce himself.
‘Please, Too-ticky,’ he asked, pulling at her sweater.
She said kindly: ‘Well, there’s the Dweller Under the Sink.’
He was a rather small one, with bushy eyebrows. He sat by himself, looking into the fire.
Moomintroll sat down beside him and said: ‘I hope those biscuits weren’t too old?’
The little beast looked at him but didn’t reply.
‘May I compliment you on your exceptionally bushy eyebrows?’ Moomintroll continued politely.
To this the beast with the eyebrows replied: ‘Shadaff oomoo.’
‘Eh?’asked Moomintroll, surprisedly.
‘Radamsah,’ said the little beast fretfully.
‘He has a language all his own, and now he believes that you’ve hurt him,’ Too-ticky explained.
‘But that wasn’t my intention at all,’ said Moomintroll anxiously. ‘Radamsah, radamsah,’ he added imploringly.
This seemed to make the beast with the eyebrows really overcome by rage. He rose in great haste and disappeared.
‘Dear me, what shall I do?’ said Moomintroll. ‘Now he’ll live under our sink for a whole year more without knowing that I just wanted to be friends with him.’
‘Such things happen,’ said Too-ticky.
The garden sofa crumbled to pieces in a shower of sparks.
Nearly all the flames had died down by now, but great embers were still smouldering, and the water was bubbling in the crevices. But the shrew suddenly stopped playing, and everybody looked out towards the ice.
The Groke was sitting there. Her round little eyes reflected the glow, but otherwise she was just a large shapeless greyness. She had grown a lot since August.
The drums ceased while the Groke came shuffling up the hillside. She went straight to the fire. And without saying a word she sat down on it.
There was a sharp hissing sound, and the hilltop was wrapped in mist. When it passed away again, no embers were to be seen. Only a big grey Groke blowing snow-fog about her.
Moomintroll had fled down to the shore with many others. He found Too-ticky there also and shouted:
‘What happens now? Has the Groke made the sun stay away?’
‘Take it easy,’ replied Too-ticky. ‘She didn’t come to extinguish the fire, you see, she came to warm herself, poor creature. But everything that’s warm goes cold when she sits down on it. Now she’s disappointed once more.’
Moomintroll saw the Groke rise again and sniff at the frosted charcoal. She then went over to his oil-lamp that was still alight in the snow. He saw it go out.
The Groke remained immobile for a moment. The hill was empty, everybody had left. Then she glided down to the ice again and back into the dark, as she had come, alone.
Moomintroll went home.
Before he went to bed he cautiously pulled Moomin-mamma’s ear and told her: ‘It wasn’t a very funny party.’
‘Really, dear me,’ mumbled Moominmamma in her sleep. ‘Perhaps next time…’
But under the sink sat the beast with the bushy eyebrows, grumbling to himself.
‘Radamsah!’ he said crossly. ‘Radamsah!’ and shrugged his shoulders violently. Probably no one in the whole valley would have understood what he was saying.
*
Too-ticky was sitting under the ice with her fishing-rod. She liked the sea’s habit of sinking a bit now and then. At those times she could easily climb down through a hole by the landing-stage and seat herself on a boulder to fish. Then one had a nice green ceiling of ice overhead, and the sea at one’s feet.
A black floor and a green ceiling, both stretching away into the darkness.
Beside Too-ticky lay four small fish. One more, and she’d have her soup.
Suddenly she heard impatient steps coming nearer on the landing-stage. Up there Moomintroll rapped at the bathing-house door. He waited a moment and knocked again.
‘Hο!’ shouted Too-ticky. ‘I’m under the ice!’
The echo raised its head somewhere to the left of her and shouted: ‘Hο!’ It went sliding back and forth several times and cried: ‘Under the ice!’
After a while Moomintroll’s snout cautiously appeared in the opening. His ears were decorated with limp gold ribbons.
He looked at the steaming, black water and at Too-ticky’s four fish.
He shivered, and said: ‘Well, he didn’t come.’
‘Who didn’t?’ asked Too-ticky.
‘The sun!’ cried Moomintroll.
‘The sun,’ repeated the echo. ‘Sun, sun, sun…’ farther and farther off, weaker and weaker.
Too-ticky hauled on her line.
‘Don’t be in such a hurry,’ she said. ‘He’s been coming on this day every year, so probably he’ll do it now again. Pull up your snout so I can come out of here.’
Too-ticky clambered up to the surface and sat down on the bathing-house steps. She sniffed lightly and listened. Then she said: ‘Soon now. Sit down and wait.’
Little My came skating over the ice and sat down beside them. She had tied tin lids under her shoes for better speed.
‘So here we’re waiting for something wonderful again,’ she said. ‘Not that I wouldn’t like a little daylight.’
Two old crows came flapping from the wood and alighted on the roof of the bathing-house. The minutes passed.
All at once the fluff on Moomintroll’s back bristled, and in great excitement he saw a red light gathering on the dusky sky just over the horizon. It thickened to a narrow, red sliver of fire that threw long, red rays of light along the ice.
‘There he is!’ cried Moomintroll.
He lifted Little My in his arms and kissed her smack on the nose.
‘Golly, what a fuss,’ said Little My. ‘What’s all this to make such a noise about?’
‘Of course!’ cried Moomintroll. ‘Spring! Warmth! Everybody’ll wake up! How splendid.’
He took the four fish and threw them high in the air. He stood on his head. He had never felt so happy in his life.
And then the ice became dark again.
The crows took off and went slowly flapping over the shore. Too-ticky gathered up her fishes, and the little red strip had hidden itself under the horizon.
‘Did he change his mind?’ Moomintroll asked, horrified.
‘No wonder after taking a peep at you,’ said Little My, and skated off on her tin lids.
‘He’ll return tomorrow,’ replied Too-ticky. ‘And then he’ll be a tiny bit bigger, about like a piece of cheese rind. Take it easy.’
And Too-tic
ky crept back under the ice to fill her soup-kettle with sea-water.
Of course she was right. It can’t be done in a trice for a sun to appear in the sky. But you won’t be less disappointed just because other people are right and you are not.
Moomintroll sat staring down at the ice, and suddenly he felt that he was becoming angry. It started down in his tummy like all strong feelings. He felt that somebody had pulled his leg.
And he felt a fool for having made such a noise, and tied gold ribbons about his ears. That made him angrier still.
Finally he felt that he had to do something really terrible, and forbidden, to be able to calm down again. And at once.
He started to his feet, ran over the landing-stage and into the bathing-house. He went straight to the cupboard and threw the door wide open.
There hung the bath-gowns. There lay the rubber Hemulen that wasn’t quite air-tight. Just as they had been last summer. But on the floor a grey little thing was sitting and staring at him, very hairy and grey and snouty.
Then it came to life and whizzed past him like a draught, and disappeared. He saw its tail slide out through the chink at the bathing-house door like a piece of black string. The tuft caught for a fleeting moment but was pulled free, and then the beast was gone.
Too-ticky came in with the kettle between her paws and said: ‘So you couldn’t keep from opening the door?’
‘There was only a sort of old rat,’ Moomintroll replied surlily.
‘That was no rat,’ said Too-ticky. ‘It was a troll. A
troll of the kind you were yourself before you became a Moomin. That was how you looked a thousand years ago.’
Moomintroll found no reply. He went home and sat down in the drawing-room to think.
After a while Little My dropped in to borrow some candles and sugar. ‘I hear terrible things about you,’ she said happily. ‘They say you’ve been letting your own forefather out of the cupboard. You resemble each other, I hear.’
‘Shut up, please,’ said Moomintroll.
He went up to the attic and found the family album.
Page after page of dignified Moomins, most often reproduced standing in front of porcelain stoves, or on fretworked verandahs. Not a single one of them resembled the cupboard troll.
‘Must be a mistake,’ Moomintroll thought. ‘He can’t be any relation of mine.’
He went down and looked at his sleeping Daddy. Only
the snout bore some resemblance to the troll’s. But possibly, a thousand years ago…?
The cut-glass chandelier started jingling. It was slowly swaying back and forth, and something was moving about inside the gauze. Something small and hairy. A long, black tail was hanging straight down among the prisms.
‘There he is,’ Moomintroll murmured. ‘My ancestor has set himself up in the chandelier.’
But now this didn’t seem so very bad. Moomintroll was getting accustomed to the bewitched time of winter.
‘How are you?’ he asked softly. The troll looked at him through the gauze and wiggled its ears.
‘Be careful with the chandelier,’ Moomintroll continued. ‘It’s a family piece.’
The troll tilted its head and looked intently at him, obviously trying to listen.
‘Now he’s going to speak,’ thought Moomintroll. All at once he felt terribly afraid that his ancestor might try to tell him something. What if he spoke some foreign language, like the little beast with the eyebrows? If he became angry and said ‘radamsah’ or something? And then they’d perhaps never be friends afterwards.
‘Hush!’ whispered Moomintroll. ‘Don’t say anything,’
Perhaps they were related after all. And relatives who have come on a visit may stay for any length of time. If it’s an ancestor he may stay for ever. Who can tell? If one weren’t careful he might misunderstand one and be angry. And then the family would have to live with an angry ancestor all their lives.
‘Hush!’ repeated Moomintroll. ‘Hush!’
The ancestor slightly the prisms slightly but said nothing.
‘I’ll show him about the house,’ Moomintroll thought. ‘That’s what Mother’d have done if a relative had come on a visit.’
He took the lamp and held it before a beautiful hand-painted picture called ‘Fillyjonk at window’. The troll looked at it and shrugged his shoulders.
Moomintroll went on to the plush sofa. He showed the troll all the chairs, one by one, the drawing-room mirror and the meerschaum tram, everything of beauty and value that the Moomin family possessed.
The troll looked attentively at it all but it was clear that it didn’t understand the use of the things. Finally Moomintroll sighed and placed the lamp on the mantelpiece. But this caught the troll’s interest very strongly.
It dropped down from the chandelier and went scuttling round the porcelain stove like a little grey bundle of rags. It stuck its head inside the shutters and sniffed at the ashes. It showed great curiosity in the embroidered cord that hung from the damper, and nosed for a long time in the cranny between stove and wall.
‘It must be true then,’ Moomintroll thought agitatedly. ‘We are related. Because Mother’s always told me that our forebears lived behind stoves…’
At that moment the alarm clock went off. Moomintroll used to have it ring at dusk because that was the time when he longed most for company.
The troll stiffened visibly, and then it whizzed inside the stove in a cloud of ashes. A moment later it started. rattling the damper in no very friendly way.
Moomintroll shut off the alarm clock and listened with a thumping heart. But nothing else was to be heard.
A few specks of soot came falling down the chimney, and the damper cord was swaying.
Moomintroll went out on the roof to calm himself.
‘Well, how d’you like Grandfather!’ Little My shouted from her sledge-slide.
‘An excellent person,’ Moomintroll remarked with dignity. ‘In an old family like ours people know how to behave,’
Suddenly he felt very proud of having an ancestor. And it cheered him no little to think that Little My had no pedigree at all, but rather had come into the world by chance.
*
That night Moomintroll’s ancestor rearranged the house, quietly enough, but with surprising strength.
In the morning he had turned the sofa towards the porcelain stove and hung all the pictures anew. Those
that he liked least he had hung upside-down. (Or perhaps they were those that he thought best of, who knows?)
Not a single piece of furniture stood in its old place, and the alarm clock lay in the slop-pail. Indeed he had carried down a heap of old junk from the attic and piled it high around the stove.
Too-ticky came over to look. ‘I believe he’s done that to feel more at home,’ she said and rubbed her nose. ‘He’s tried to build himself a nice thicket around his house. So that he can be left alone.’
‘But what’ll Mother say?’ said Moomintroll.
Too-ticky shrugged her shoulders. ‘Well, why did you have to let him out?’ she said. ‘In any case this troll never eats anything. Very practical for him, and for you. You’ll have to think the whole matter’s fun, I suppose.’
Moomintroll nodded.
He thought for a while. Then he crawled inside the thicket of broken chairs, empty boxes, fishing nets, cardboard tubes, old baskets and gardening tools. Very soon he discovered that it was a cosy kind of place.
He decided to sleep the night in a basket of wool that stood under a useless rocking-chair.
As a matter of fact he had never felt really secure in the dim-lit drawing-room with its empty windows. And to look at the sleeping family made him melancholy.
But here, in the small space between a packing case, the rocking-chair and the back of the sofa, he felt at ease and not at all lonely.
He could see a little of the blackness inside the stove, but he was careful not to disturb his ancestor and built walls around his nest as quietly as he cou
ld.
In the evening he took the lamp there with him and lay for a while listening to the ancestor’s rustling in the chimney.
‘Perhaps I lived like this a thousand years ago,’ Moomintroll thought happily.
He half thought of shouting something up the chimney. Just a word of secret concord. But then he thought better of it, blew out his lamp and curled up deep in the wool.
CHAPTER 5
The new guests
EACH day the sun rose a little higher in the sky. Finally it had reached high enough to throw a few cautious rays into the valley. That was a most important day. It was remarkable also because a stranger arrived in the valley shortly after noon.
He was a thin little dog with a tattered woollen cap pulled deep over his ears. He said that his name was Sorry-oo, and that there was no food left in the valleys to the north. Since the Lady of the Cold had passed people had had next to nothing to eat. A desperate Hemulen was even rumoured to have bolted down his own beetle collection, but this was probably untrue. Possibly he had eaten some other Hemulen’s collection, however. Anyway, lots of people were now on their way towards the Moomin valley.
Somebody had told everybody that rowan-berries and a whole cellar of jam were to be found here. But probably the jam-cellar was just a rumour too…
Sorry-oo sat down in the snow on his thin tail, and all his face wrinkled up at his worries.
‘We live on fish-soup here,’ Too-ticky said. ‘I’ve never heard about any jam-cellar.’
Moomintroll threw a sudden look at the round snowdrift behind the woodshed.
‘There it is!’ said Little My. ‘There are such lots of jam in it that it makes you sick just to think of it, and all the jars are dated and tied with red string.’
‘I’m kind of keeping an eye on the family’s things while they sleep,’ Moomintroll said, and blushed a little.
‘Of course you are,’ mumbled Sorry-oo resignedly.
