by Tove Jansson
Eventually, Flora’s letters stopped. There came a time when she sent pretty postcards from different parts of the world. Sometimes the card was a photograph – Flora in a bikini on a beach, Flora in a topee on a camel or on a horse in an equestrian helmet. Each card was signed with a flower, happy and blooming or wilting, expectantly in bud form or with withered leaves and a guilty expression and sometimes viewed by a ruffled bird with various facial expressions. “Boys and girls, this is the life! Never a dull moment. It’s simply fabulous!” Flora’s friends replied in the same style with drawings of flowers and birds, disrespectful and affectionate arabesques, by and by almost without any text. “We’re sitting here drinking white wine in the sunshine and thinking of you, you wicked flower child who has abandoned us!” And signed with all of their names. In the end it was only Papa and Mama who heard from Flora, each time with the vague promise of a visit. “Just think what fun … You really must come out here … Next time John goes to Scandinavia …”
But, before John could come to Scandinavia, the war broke out. And, before the war was over, Papa and Mama had died.
♦ ♦ ♦
Thirty-four years after Flora became Mrs Vogelsong, the world she had grown accustomed to collapsed. The tired John Vogelsong was found dead in his bed and in the classic letter on the night table he reported concisely that he was ruined and begged Flora’s forgiveness. Since he had had never burdened his wife with information about his work (work that in any case would not have interested her and that she wouldn’t have understood), he now mentioned in a postscript that she need do nothing but call Shoon & Shoon, to whom he had given instructions with regard to certain arrangements. These turned out to be a bank deposit, not exactly overwhelming, and a small apartment in San Pedro. It was really very small, and the blue ocean outside the window did nothing but make Flora feel even lonelier and sadder. She was still flowerlike – though now, perhaps, more like a slightly dusty everlasting – and her girlishness had acquired a touch of anxiety, of which she was naturally unaware.
After two months in San Pedro, Flora decided to go home. Shoon & Shoon sold her apartment and made arrangements for her trip down to the last detail. Her furniture would follow later. “You understand, my dear Mr. Shoon,” Flora explained, “that I am completely impractical! And believe it or not, I am at my absolute worst when it comes to money. Numbers! I quite simply have no head for figures. Isn’t that terrible?” She cocked her head to one side and smiled. “I’m a hopeless creature and I know it.”
Flora wrote to her friends and told them what had happened. “My darlings, I’m coming home! Just as in the old days, we’ll sit with our white wine and toss words back and forth, long happy evenings… I want to know everything you’ve been up to, including your secrets! If I know you right, you won’t have turned over a new leaf since last we met! Ciao. See you soon.” And she drew a very wilted flower stretching its arms longingly across troubled waters.
♦ ♦ ♦
It was Helen who met her bus from the airport. They embraced, and Flora wept on Helen’s shoulder. So much had happened – half a life! It was hard for them to say the customary “You haven’t changed a bit …” But Helen complimented Flora’s sable fur, and Flora said, “You’ve changed your hair! It becomes you!” And they talked about the trip over and how dreadful the weather was. Helen explained that the others were at work and that she’d thought about coming out to the airport, but, you know, a taxi all that way … In the taxi to the hotel, Flora got to hear all the news about deaths, divorces and grandchildren. It was all utterly unreal and made her anxious, more so than in San Pedro.
In her hotel room a bottle of white wine and a bouquet of forget-me-nots stood on the table, and Flora started to cry again. “Darlings,” she sobbed. “They’re my flowers, my own flowers from the old days … I knew you wouldn’t forget your Flora Vogelsong.”
♦ ♦ ♦
That evening, those still available gathered in one of the hotel’s private dining rooms. They drank champagne through the whole dinner and reminded each other of escapades they’d shared thirty-five years earlier. They were elated and loud. Almost every exchange began with “Do you remember?” They all toasted Flora, who had a wreath of flowers around her plate, and they all applauded when she put the wreath on her head and smiled. She couldn’t see her friends all that distinctly without her glasses, but she could see colour, movement, candles, and she finally experienced a warmth and a sense of security that was a genuine homecoming and a confirmation. She wore her sapphire necklace and a long blue dress. For a moment she was afraid she was overdressed, but then it seemed only natural that their lost flower child should come back from the other side of the world dressed like a princess. She confided this thought to them in a little roguish speech, spoke also of the loneliness that would never again oppress her and hinted at the rakish wedding verses they had written so long ago … Suddenly reminded of her wedding and full to the brim with emotion and champagne, Flora began to snivel and sat down helplessly in the middle of a sentence. She raised her glass. “Ciao … Children, children … Your Flora is hopeless, isn’t she? She hasn’t changed a bit!”
♦ ♦ ♦
Papa’s and Mama’s inheritance had remained in the country, and with the help of her friends Flora found an apartment, even smaller than the one in San Pedro. With a courageous laugh, she called it her little lair, sometimes her studio. Her friends came to see her, but they never managed to recapture the extravagant mood that had carried them through her welcome-home party. Memories, questions and messages had been exhausted, and it was difficult and uncomfortable to give detailed descriptions of things that had happened in the distant past. A tight group around a tiny table presupposed an intimate contact that no longer existed. They conversed rather than chatted, and at times there was silence. Flora saw her friends more clearly at this close range, and she noticed a certain shabbiness both in dress and appearance. Oh, they were changed in so many ways! Finally she told them about her travels. They listened, they laughed, they were amazed, but their comments were monosyllabic and their questions lacked the impulsive desire to know more.
Flora tried hard and kept on trying. They were always busy, there was no end to their troubles. Jobs and health and grandchildren and finances and a host of other concerns that ruled out any chance of getting together and having fun.
“You mustn’t be unhappy with us,” Helen said. “We can’t be the same people we were then.”
“Of course not,” Flora said. “It would be childish to expect you to. But all the same … there must be something left, if we only try …”
In the end she called old school friends, old fogies who could hardly remember who she was. She tried to read, but she wasn’t used to it and found it made her uneasy and depressed. The people in books were unreachable, and all she got from them was an even stronger sense of life passing her by.
♦ ♦ ♦
Flora got into the habit of keeping several bottles of champagne at home. A glass or two made her happy and indifferent. And flowers, always flowers. Sometimes she didn’t bother to go out and eat. She would open a bottle with that festive pop that always gave her the same sense of expectation and, reclining on her sofa, smiling, eyes half closed, she would drink toasts with the incomprehensible world that had left her in the lurch. She discovered that champagne in the morning gave the day a promising lustre. She gradually populated her room with people she remembered or might have met, and finally she began talking to them. Not much. She welcomed them and offered them a glass of champagne. It amused her to have whispered conversations with people who came and went at her pleasure.
Flowers grew less expensive now in spring, and she could buy large bouquets. She had only to call the store around the corner. She had her champagne delivered as well, a case at a time. She avoided going out into the city, which had acquired so many new, unfamiliar buildings and was so much uglier than the cities she had seen around the world. The few times Flor
a saw her friends, she was distant and mysterious, a little unsteady on her legs and rather quiet. They worried about her for a while and then sent Helen to talk sense to her. Flora responded that she was happy and touched by their concern but that they shouldn’t worry about their wicked flower child.
More and more, the world shrouded her in a friendly fog. It grew easier and easier to fall asleep, an hour here, several hours there; dusk and dawn and night no longer marked the implacable passage of time, and she never needed to wait. Flora Vogelsong spread her sable coat over the sofa, received her invisible guests in her blue dress and told them about her life. “When you look at me,” she whispered, “you might suppose that I have always been a rather proper little wife. Oh, far from it! You don’t believe me? Reclining on this sable coat, I would receive my lovers …”
“You are so fragile,” they said. “You’re like a porcelain flower, one dares hardly touch you …”
“Ciao! A little more champagne? Have you ever been in Juan les Pins? Now there’s an amusing spot! They stay open all night, of course only during the season … Suddenly someone gets an idea, everyone runs down to the beach and goes bathing in the moonlight, naked … Or we hop in a car and barrel off to Monaco over the border, the casino never closes … But must you really go? No, of course if you must you must. In fact I’m expecting someone, someone very special … And maybe I’ll sleep for a bit.” And Flora fell asleep on her fur coat and the day passed into evening and she awoke and drank a little champagne, just one glass so she could experience everything with that much greater clarity.
A Memory from
the New World
In a large American city, Johanna from Finland sat mending underwear in the room she had rented for herself and her two younger sisters. It was a March evening, and outside in the early spring dusk the street lights came on.
It had been hard in the beginning. They had missed the silence and couldn’t sleep. None of them got any rest in this foreign city. But they grew accustomed and eventually stopped hearing the traffic. It became like the murmuring of the forest or the rain. Johanna was the first who stopped listening and slept. She had to save her strength, for each new day had to be dealt with as it came along. She was the strongest of them, heavy and well built. It was she who had found jobs and a place to live for all three of them in the new country, and she gave herself credit for that effort. No one knew how hard it had been, least of all Maila and Siiri, who just followed and let things happen. But then they were made of weaker stuff and were born later, when their parents were already worn out. It isn’t easy to ask for work and humble yourself in a foreign language that you don’t know, while the days go by and the money runs out and you know it’s impossible to go home again. Now she and Maila had steady jobs as cleaning women in a factory, and Siiri did the bidding of a housewife in town as a maid. This evening, Johanna was working the night shift.
As she sat and sewed, her thoughts went far back, all the way to the old country, to her father who’d said, “Johanna, now that you’re going to America, I’m counting on you to take care of your younger sisters and see that they don’t go to the devil. You know better than anyone that they are weak and vacillating, especially Siiri.”
“Father,” she had answered, “you can rest easy.” And he had nodded and gone back to his work.
That was the time of the great emigration to America, when many homesteads were abandoned and animals were sold off for less than they were worth. The crossing was ghastly. When Johanna remembered the storm, she saw the family’s Illustrated Bible in her mind’s eye, with its terrifying pictures of the end of the world when sinners and innocents were cast higgledy-piggledy into darkness to be sorted out on Judgment Day. The family Bible had been very important to her. It would have been a comfort to her here in the new world, but of course a book like that must go to the sons, who carry on the family name. Anyway, the worst part of the trip was that people were ill and vomited and couldn’t help themselves. Before it got really bad, she had tried to get Maila and Siiri to sing. Later she settled for holding them by the forehead when they gave in. The stench in the hold grew so strong that she herself was on the verge of letting go, so she wrapped a cloth around her stomach and made it fast with a belt and pretended that she was steering the ship and was responsible for all of them. Then it passed and she grew calm. She was equally calm at Immigration, when their papers weren’t in order and the officials wouldn’t let them enter. She sat there all day like a rock and wouldn’t budge until finally the Americans gave in. That’s the way it had been. Now she wrote to Father once a month and gave an account of their lives. Father never answered, because he had other things to do.
When the clothes were mended, Johanna began cooking supper. She closed down her memories and let them rest. Maila was always the first to get home. She was a quiet person and was happiest alone. She had been so even as a child. Now she went in behind the curtain in the corner and changed out of her work clothes into clean ones, then she spread a tablecloth and set the table.
“Why are you setting only two places?” Johanna asked.
“Siiri said to tell you she won’t be coming to supper today,” Maila answered.
“She could have said so this morning. Is she out with him now again?”
“I don’t know,” Maila said.
That’s the way she was. She wanted to know nothing, take responsibility for nothing, get involved in nothing. “You should try to keep track of what your sister does,” Johanna said when they sat down to eat. “She’s younger than you and prettier, and she can be led astray so easily. She tells me nothing, but it’ll be me who has to clear up any mess she gets into.”
Maila was silent.
“I’ve got the night shift at the factory,” Johanna said. “You’ll have to tell me what time she comes home and where she’s been. I need to know what’s going on. I’ve mended your clothes and put them in the bottom drawer. Have you rubbed butter on your hands?”
“Yes.”
“Good. The skin will crack from all that scrubbing, and then they won’t be of any use to anyone.”
I know that, Maila thought. After doing the dishes, she lay down on her bed.
“Take a blanket,” said her sister. “You shouldn’t sleep without something over you.”
“I’m not sleeping,” Maila said.
Johanna sat by the window and worried about Siiri. If only it hadn’t been an Italian. Americans were foreign enough, but she had to go and find herself an Italian, a dark-skinned little good-for-nothing who was shorter than she was. Johanna had seen them down on the street saying good night. Siiri would never have dared bring him up to the room. He had the wrong religion, too. Everything about him was wrong. And when asked, she was snappish and gave flippant, evasive answers and then went and lay on her bed and pretended to sleep. And now Maila lay there the same way, with her face to the wall though it was still early. Suddenly Johanna felt very tired. How am I to cope with them? she thought. I can’t even talk to them, they just crawl into their shells. How am I supposed to help them if they don’t even hear what I say?
She said, “I’ve got our folk costumes ready for the Finnish Festival. Now, this time, don’t leave the apron at home. Are you asleep?” She waited a moment and said, “We’ll have a good time at the Society. Are you asleep or are you awake?”
But Maila didn’t answer.
When Johanna came home towards morning, Siiri lay in bed, but she’d thrown her clothes in a pile and her blanket lay on the floor. Johanna picked it up and covered her, and when she bent down over the bed she smelled wine. Siiri lay with her arms thrown over her head like a child, and her round face with its half-open mouth was also that of a child, now, as she slept.
Johanna sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at her sister. She’s not pretty, she thought. She has a perfectly ordinary face that no one would look at twice back home. Her legs are too short, and her eyes are very small. But she’s young and round and laug
hs a lot. What am I to do with Siiri, who’s throwing herself away without a thought for her future?
She went for a glass of water to put beside the bed and found flowers in the sink, a bouquet in the process of wilting. When she came back with the water, Siiri had turned and her hand lay across her breast. Two wedding rings shone on her finger. God have mercy, Johanna thought. She hasn’t been to work today, she’s run off and married her Italian. As quietly as she could, Johanna opened her cot, made it up, and lay down, but she couldn’t sleep. She could only think about the future. She knew that the Italian lived with his three brothers in a room somewhere near the harbour and that he wasn’t worth having. She knew Siiri had acted out of spite and that she would be unhappy. And she was immeasurably hurt at not having been allowed to help with the arrangements. If misfortune had to occur, they could at least have dressed it up, a party at the Society with coffee and music. Somehow the marriage could have been explained away and given an honourable if pitiful place. Now it was all wrong from beginning to end. Siiri had had no faith in her sister and had not asked for her advice. They could have talked about it. They could have made plans together, and Johanna would have decided what was best for each of them without doing any of them the least harm. For the first time since the hard journey from the old country, Johanna began to cry. Maila no doubt heard her, but she was a coward and pretended to sleep.
When Johanna woke up the next morning, her sisters were up getting ready for work. She got out of bed and sat on the edge of her cot for a while. She was terribly tired.
