by Tove Jansson
“A little welcome-home party for him?” Lydia suggested. “That would be just your style … If I were you …”
Mama interrupted her. “But you’re not me, you’re a completely different person. You’ve made it very clear that I decide too much. Very well. You decide.”
Monsieur Bonel waited, stared out the window, shuffled aimlessly among his papers, and reflected with concern on how foreign languages can sound. You understand a little from tones of voice and silences, but nevertheless … And he thought about these poor Scandinavians who lived where it was so cold and dark, which could explain a great deal …
Suddenly Lydia stood up and said, “Monsieur Bonel. Would you be so kind as to call the airline and book two tickets? For tomorrow, if that’s possible. We’ll need to get our suitcases as quickly as possible, and the Dubois boys can take the dog home with them. Maybe they can help us move. And tonight we’ll sleep in the double room, whether it’s dry or not.”
“Thank you, Mademoiselle. I will call at once.”
“Wait a moment. I believe Madame spent too much time in the sun. Do you have a medical guide?”
“Only a brochure. For tourists.”
Lydia read it and said, “Cold compresses. If it’s sunburn, she should drink juice and salt water. By the way, we have an unpaid bill at Women’s Dreams … Mama, how are you feeling? I don’t think it’s anything serious.”
“You never know. What was the name of that man who died on Capri? How did they get him home? Wasn’t there anyone to worry about him?”
“Of course,” Lydia said. “Now try to sleep for a while.”
By evening, Mama felt fine and declared that she wanted to make a farewell visit to her garden. On their way there, they met the Dubois boys with Mignon. When the dog caught sight of Mama, he reared up on his hind legs with his nose in the air and howled.
Le patron explained. “He is not angry, he is grieving. He’s going to miss you, Madame.”
They sat down by the well and le patron opened his basket and served wine.
“Lydia,” said Mama, “what about the hat?”
“It’s been paid for.”
“But where is it?”
“Dear Mama,” Lydia said, “you’ll never have to see it again.”
“Madame,” said Monsieur Bonel, “everything has been taken care of. Mademoiselle has thought of everything.”
“Remarkable. Lydia, remember to look up the phrase ‘changing of the guard’ in our dictionary. It might interest le patron. But of course it’s only a dictionary for tourists …”
The evening was cool and lovely. The garden looked more secret than usual.
“Mesdames,” said le patron, “I have a message. The Englishman has wired again.” He handed the telegram to Lydia and shrugged his shoulders. “You see. He’s not coming after all. He’s on his way to Egypt.”
“Highly irrational,” Mama remarked. “Too bad, actually. It would have amused me to meet him.”
The next morning, Monsieur Bonel drove his friends to the airport in his pickup truck.
They returned to their own country just in time for the very beginning of spring. So they had spring twice over – if it’s fair, that is, to count them both.
Other Tove Janssson titles
published by Sort Of Books
Art in Nature
Fair Play
The Listener
Sculptor’s Daughter
The Summer Book
Travelling Light
The True Deceiver
A Winter Book
Moomin novels
Comet in Moominland
The Exploits of Moominpappa
Finn Family Moomintroll
Moominland Midwinter
The Moomins and the Great Flood
Moomin picture books
The Book About Moomin, Mymble and Little My
The Dangerous Journey
Who Will Comfort Toffle?
Copyright
Letters from Klara (Brev från Klara) by Tove Jansson
This English translation first published in 2017 by
Sort Of Books
PO Box 18678, London NW3 2FL
www.sortof.co.uk
Distributed in all territories excluding the United States and Canada by
Profile Books
3 Holford Yard, Bevin Way
London WC1X 9HD
First published as Brev från Klara by Schildts Förlags Ab, Finland)
© Tove Jansson 1991
English translation © Thomas Teal and Sort Of Books 2017
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher except for the quotation of brief passages in reviews. Typeset in Goudy and Gill Sans to a design by Henry Iles.
Printed in Italy by Legoprint.
Sort of Books gratefully acknowledges the financial
assistance of FILI – Finnish Literature Exchange
144pp.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1908745613
e-ISBN 978-1908745620
THE SUMMER BOOK
“The Summer Book is a marvellously uplifting read, full of gentle humour and wisdom.” Justine Picardie, Daily Telegraph
An elderly artist and her six-year-old granddaughter while away a summer together on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland. As the two learn to adjust to each other’s fears, whims and yearnings, a fierce yet understated love emerges – one that encompasses not only the summer inhabitants but the very island itself. Written in a clear, unsentimental style, full of brusque humour, and wisdom, The Summer Book is a profoundly life-affirming story. Tove Jansson captured much of her own life and spirit in the book, which was her favourite of her adult novels. This edition has a foreword by Esther Freud.
A WINTER BOOK
“As smooth and odd and beautiful as sea-worn driftwood, as full of light and air as the Nordic summer. We are lucky to have these stories collected at last.” Philip Pullman
A Winter Book features thirteen stories from Tove Jansson’s first book for adults, Sculptor’s Daughter (1968), along with seven of her most cherished later stories (from 1971 to 1996). Drawn from youth and older age, this selection by Ali Smith provides a thrilling showcase of the great Finnish writer’s prose, scattered with insights and home truths. It is introduced by Ali Smith, and there are afterwords by Philip Pullman, Esther Freud and Frank Cottrell-Boyce.
FAIR PLAY
“So what can happen when Tove Jansson turns her attention to her own favourite subjects, love and work? Expect something philosophically calm – and discreetly radical. At first sight it looks autobiographical. Like everything Jansson wrote, it’s much more than it seems … Fair Play is very fine art.” From Ali Smith’s introduction
What mattered most to Tove Jansson, she explained in her eighties, was work and love, a sentiment she echoes in this tender and original novel. Fair Play portrays a love between two older women, a writer and artist, as they work side by side in their Helsinki studios, travel together and share summers on a remote island. In the generosity and respect they show each other and the many small shifts they make to accommodate each other’s creativity, we are shown a relationship both heartening and truly progressive.
THE TRUE DECEIVER
“I loved this book. It’s cool in both senses of the word, understated yet exciting … the characters still haunt me.” Ruth Rendell
In the deep winter snows of a Swedish hamlet, a strange young woman fakes a break-in at the house of an elderly artist in order to persuade her that she needs companionship. But what does she hope to gain by doing this? And who ultimately is deceiving whom? In this portrayal of two women encircling each other with truth and lies, nothing can be taken for granted. By the time the snow thaws, both their lives will have changed irrevocably.
TRAVELLING LIGHT
“Jansson’s prose is wondrous: it is clean, d
eliberate; an aesthetic so certain of itself it’s breathtaking.” Kirsty Gunn, Daily Telegraph
Travelling Light takes us into new Tove Jansson territory. A professor arrives in a beautiful Spanish village only to find that her host has left and she must cope with fractious neighbours alone; a holiday on a Finnish island is thrown into disarray by an oddly intrusive child; an artist returns from abroad to discover that her past has been eerily usurped. With the deceptively light prose that is her hallmark, Tove Jansson reveals to us the precariousness of a journey – the unease we feel at being placed outside of our millieu, the restlessness and shadows that intrude upon a summer.
ART IN NATURE
An elderly caretaker at a large outdoor exhibition, called ‘Art in Nature’, finds that a couple have lingered on to bicker about the value of a picture; he has a surprising suggestion that will resolve both their row and his own ambivalence about the art market. A draughtsman's obsession with drawing locomotives provides a dark twist to a love story. A cartoonist takes over the work of a colleague who has suffered a nervous breakdown only to discover that his own sanity is in danger. In these witty, sharp, often disquieting stories, Tove Jansson reveals the faultlines in our relationship with art, both as artists and as consumers. Obsession, ambition and the discouragement of critics are all brought into focus in these wise and cautionary tales.
THE LISTENER
Aunt Gerda – the good listener – fears the encroaching forgetfulness of old age. Her solution is to create an artwork that will record and, inevitably, betray the secrets long confided in her. So begins Jansson’s short story debut, a tour de force of scalpel-sharp narration that takes us from a disquieting homage to the artist Edward Gorey, to perfect evocations of childhood innocence and recklessness, to a city ravaged by storms, or the slow halting thaw of spring. These stories are gifts of originality and depth.
