by Tove Jansson
Silly children come up to Daddy and ask him if he’s sitting crying because the monkey has bitten him. What an idea! Poppolino is always biting Daddy but Daddy never cries and he’s never angry with Poppolino because they are such great friends.
Although they were eaten, the canaries multiplied until there were twenty-four of them. Then Mummy and Daddy put an advertisement in the paper which said that anyone could get a canary for nothing if they came to our house.
Females started to arrive at half-past seven in the morning and they went on coming all day until dark.
One Female had her own motor-car and another had her own servant who carried the bird-cage for her and they all said that we had terrible stairs and told us all about the canaries they had owned earlier, the ones that had died and the ones that had flown away. Some of the Females burst into tears and Daddy ran around catching canaries for them and when there weren’t any more left then the Females were given an egg wrapped in cotton wool to take home, and when the eggs were finished they just came in and burst into tears.
Poppolino rattled his cage and didn’t feel sorry for the Females because he could see that they were only crying because they liked crying.
No work got done that day and afterwards the whole place was very quiet and we regretted having got rid of the canaries.
But Mousey was still in his box. Mousey was Daddy’s friend in a quiet almost secretive way. The box was full of turf and had a wall of glass. Behind the glass you could see an underground tunnel which Mousey had dug. But he hardly ever came out himself.
Daddy stood outside the box and waited and tapped with his modelling stick and said: come to Daddy little sweety. After a while a quivering little nose appeared out of the tunnel but never more than the nose. Then Daddy was happy and went back to work. When one is working it’s a good idea sometimes to take an interest in something that’s friendly but doesn’t talk.
We shouldn’t have let a charwoman into the studio, and we never shall again. She took a fistful of cotton waste and rubbed the glass and then threw the cotton waste into the box. Mousey didn’t like the glass being cleaned and never showed his nose again. But he liked the cotton waste and made himself a nest out of it which none of us ever saw.
Daddy got depressed about it. For a time he threw fish out of the bedroom window to the gulls instead but it didn’t feel as nice and could never be the same after Pellura. Anyway, the police came and made a fuss. We never understood why.
Daddy has had trouble with pets all his life. Take Midge for example, who died of food poisoning. Granny found him in a dustbin during the 1918 war. His tail had been cut off and he looked awful. He was so tiny and ghastly and everybody who saw him was upset and wanted to get rid of him as quickly as possible. That was why Granny was given some beef stew for Midge whenever she took him to the kitchen door of a restaurant, which meant that the family had something to eat every day.
Daddy and Mummy always tell the story of Midge, sometimes several times over to the same people. Sometimes they say that Midge got some of the stew and sometimes they say that he didn’t get any at all. I never tell the same story over again to the same person.
All dogs are loyal. They remind one a lot of men, with the exception perhaps of pug-dogs. There’s something wrong about having a pug-dog. If a Female has a pug-dog you know at once that she’s on the shelf. This happened particularly when Daddy was young. But it isn’t a good thing to get married and desert the pug-dog, either. Many have done that and gone from the frying-pan into the fire, Daddy says. Even if one has a pug-dog, one must be loyal. It’s all very difficult.
Actually, things are difficult for me, too. I don’t think about Females very much because they only drive you out of your mind if you are a sculptor. But I think about Daddy’s pets all the time. There have been so many of them that it has been difficult to keep count of them all and there’s always the same trouble with them whether they are furry or not. I get so tired thinking about them.
Poppolino is Daddy’s friend once and for all just as much as Cavvy is. It’s a fact and Mummy and I can’t do anything about it. He’ll live until he’s a hundred years old.
But all the others! The sheep, for example. It walked on to the veranda without wiping its feet first. It stamped and banged around and got everything it took a fancy to. Then it took itself off again on its stiff legs and with its silly bleating and its silly dirty backside wobbling as it went down the steps and it had no idea of all the love that it had been given!
Cats! They didn’t understand either. They were either podgy puddings that just slept or they were beautiful and wild and took no notice of Daddy at all.
And the squirrels! He was never allowed to stroke them. They snapped and were quick and independent. They just wanted to grab and grab and grab and then jump away and look pretty in peace and quiet on their own.
But I tell you that the worst of all was the crow. My goodness, that crow was artful! She knew all about Daddy and she liked being stroked. She was much more dangerous than Poppolino. Poppolino lives by his feelings and can’t tell the difference between right and wrong.
But the crow knew. She worked things out and was calculating. She looked at Daddy and then she looked at me. You could see that she was sizing things up carefully. Then she croaked in a very deep voice, plaintively and tenderly and hung her head and went up to Daddy’s legs. She rubbed herself against him, gently and helplessly, because she knew that that was what he liked.
But when she was alone with me she said caw! caw! suddenly and shamelessly, like the crow she was, and we stared at each other and never became reconciled, and I knew that she had fleas!
Daddy never saw them because he didn’t want to. He let her croak and gurgle in her usual simpering way and said: now listen, do you know it’s three o’clock in the morning? Do you imagine I’ve got something here for you? Do you think I’ve got time to bother with every little crow?
You have, you have, you have, I lay in bed and thought, biting the sheets and hating the crow. Of course you’ve got time and you worked out last night what you were going to give her to eat. Then they went out to have a look.
One day she was sitting on the railing by the steps picking and plucking herself. Caw! caw! said Daddy enticingly from the veranda, but the crow just went on picking for fleas.
Can’t you hear him calling? I said, and pushed her and she got her leg caught in the railings and it snapped in two. Crows’ legs are very thin. Human beings don’t realise how thin they can be. She flapped her wings and screeched, but this time she was screeching naturally and not just to attract Daddy’s attention.
Then she died and was buried. Daddy said nothing. I went and sat behind the cellar and worked out a funeral elegy. It went like this: Ah! little crow, how short was your life! Over for you is all trouble and strife! There in your breast struck the life-taking shot, Ending for ever your terrestrial lot. Now you may sit on some far-distant star, White as a swan – oh! I pray that you are! Sunset now glows, the horizon’s all gold, Eider and swallow her rays bright enfold, Bullfinch and eagle, but not little crow – silent she lies in her grave here below! See where the full moon looks down from on high, Peaceful and calm on the spot where you lie!
I heard Daddy say to Mummy that it was a talented bit of poetry. Perhaps my poem has helped him to grieve less. If it hasn’t, then the crow’s ghost will haunt me until I die. Who cares, anyway? I was the one who won!
And another thing. Daddy doesn’t love flies. Is there such a big difference between crows and flies? Both fly. Both are greyish-black. Both have children, flies quite obviously. They sit on top of each other and carry on just like the canaries and make lots and lots of babies all the time. But Daddy doesn’t like them and just wants to kill them. He catches them in a net and when the net is full and there are about six million innocent flies in it crawling around and crying for help he ties the top of the bag and drops it into boiling water. How can he!
I walk two mil
es as far as the village before I let the flies out. Otherwise they would be drowned in boiling water. I wonder whether they like flies in the village? I’m the only one who takes pity on them and no one will help me save them. I asked Alan, who is a temporary visitor for the summer. Don’t be silly, he said. You know that I only bother about animals after they’re dead. I bury them.
Well, I said, how about flies when they are dead? Do you put each of them in a separate grave or all in the same one? But he just stared at me and said again: you’re silly.
Alan has five graveyards full of crosses and he collects corpses all day long and everybody is fed up with him.
The only person who helps him is Fanny. She’s good at finding corpses and lines them up on the steps every morning. A row of pretty pebbles, a row of shells and a row of corpses.
Alan doesn’t dare learn to swim and he can’t play games. He’ll be going away soon, which is a jolly good thing. A funeral is interesting every now and then, but not the whole time.
In any case I shall visit his graveyards sometimes in the evening and sing a hymn or recite my funeral elegy; one should always maintain tradition, Daddy says.
The Spinster Who Had An Idea
WEEK AFTER WEEK SHE SAT making steps with cement outside Old Charlie’s little house. But it was very slow work. They had to be terribly pretty and unlike any other steps in the whole world. They were to be her present to us for being allowed to live in our attic.
She woke up earlier and earlier in the morning. We heard her squeaking terribly slowly down the stairs because she was so afraid of waking us up. Then she started moving her buckets and her stones outside the veranda just as slowly, and occasionally we heard a little clanking sound and then a scraping noise and a thud and a splash and in the end we were wide awake and lay waiting for the next cautious movement.
Sometimes she creaked across the veranda to fetch something she had forgotten and opened the door, put her fingers to her lips and whispered: sleep soundly, ssh! Don’t worry about me. And then she smiled sadly and secretively. She was tall and thin and had anxious eyes set close together and she had reached that certain age. What exactly that certain age was and why she had reached it, no one would tell me, but in any case life wasn’t easy for her and the steps were all she cared about. That’s why we admired what she was doing so much.
When we came out on the veranda she shouted No! no! no! no! wait a moment! She jumped to her feet quickly and began to haul up a plank and lifted one end of it onto the threshold and the other end onto a box. While we were balancing ourselves on the plank she looked terrified and implored: I’ve only just cemented it! Do be careful and please don’t tread anywhere near it!
Then Daddy picked up the plank so she could go on cementing and she thanked him much too profusely for his help.
Day after day she was on her knees trying to fit stones into the cement and round her she had buckets of cement and water, and sand and rags and trowels and small sticks and spades. The stones had to be flat and smooth and pretty in colour. They lay there arranged in piles according to a very well thought-out plan and on no account were they to get mixed up. The smallest stones were red and white and were kept separately in a box.
She cemented and thought and then worked away and made a mistake and then thought again and sometimes she just sat and stared at the whole thing.
We started to get out through the bedroom window, but only when she wasn’t looking. Once when Mummy was carrying some pails of water over the plank, she spilled a few drops and a very important part of the concrete was spoiled. Then we started lifting the pails of water through the window too.
I knew that I wasn’t allowed to help her because she wanted to play on her own. So I just stood and looked on.
She had begun with the small red and white stones and was poking a long row of them into the cement. It was supposed to be some kind of saying, and every time a little stone got into the wrong place she gave a little wail.
Don’t you like playing? I asked.
She didn’t understand what I meant. It’s so difficult, she said. You mustn’t look! So I went away.
She had thought that she would put Bless All Those Who Cross This Threshold on the steps but she forgot to measure it. So when at last she got to the end there wasn’t enough room for Threshold. Thresh was all that she could fit in.
You ought to have measured it before you started, Daddy said. And used a bit of string to keep it straight. I could have shown you how to do it.
It’s easy to say that when it’s too late! She cried. I don’t think you care one bit about my steps! I know you climb in the window just to show me I’m in the way!
Dammit, what other way should we go with your pots and pans all over the place, Daddy said. Then she started to cry and rushed up to the attic. Daddy was left standing there looking miserable and said, oh damn!
The steps never really got finished. She lost interest in them and moved all her things down to the big rock instead in order to cement stones in the big tub. The plank was taken away. But the hole in the concrete where she had started to cry was still there staring at us.
All the next day she emptied the big tub with buckets. When she had almost reached the bottom she borrowed the scoop. Then she used a tea cup and a sponge. But right at the bottom there were nasty creepy-crawly things living in the slime and she was afraid of them although she felt sorry for them. It was so awful getting them up from the bottom she was on the point of screaming but she said, it’s got to be done, and she carried them over to another tub and in between tea cups she put her arms in the sea and waved them about while her tears fell into the water.
When the tub was quite empty she started to put rows of stones at the bottom and then cemented them. She twisted and turned each stone in order to get it to fit but she couldn’t do it. She tried one stone after another but none of them would fit. Then she noticed that I was standing by the woodpile. You mustn’t look! she shouted. So I went away again.
She looked for new stones in the bay, but they were either the wrong shape or the wrong colour. But the hardest thing was to get the stones clean when they were finally in place. She washed them and wiped them and rinsed her rag again and again but when the stone was dry it still had a little fleck of cement on it and then she had to start from the beginning again. And in the winter the tub froze at the bottom and the whole thing cracked. It was very difficult being a spinster.
When she came back the following summer I was terribly afraid that everything would go wrong for her again. We had filled the hole on the steps with sand and poured a little milk into the tub so that she wouldn’t be able to see how awful the bottom looked. But she wasn’t interested in cement any longer. She had brought with her a whole suitcase full of her scrapbooks with glossy cut-out pictures and she put them to soak in the washtub. Then she peeled off all the glossy pictures and laid them out to dry on the slope. It was a beautiful calm Sunday and the slope was dotted with pictures of roses and angels by the thousand and she was happy again and carried them up to her room in the attic. It was such a relief to see that she was happy!
Things seem to be a bit better this time, Mummy said.
But Daddy said: do you think so? I’m not so sure, but as usual I’m not saying anything.
And she started sticking boxes together. She sat in her room in the attic making little boxes with lots of little compartments which she covered with glossy pictures both on the inside and on the outside. The glossy pictures stuck straightaway and kept their colour and didn’t have to fit because she stuck them on top of each other.
The room in the attic was full of paper and pots of paste and boxes and big piles of glossy pictures that one wasn’t allowed to touch. She sat down in the middle of it all, sticking and sticking and in the end the pile of scrap paper reached up to her knees. But she never put anything in the boxes and never gave any of them away.
Are they always going to be empty? I asked.
She looke
d at the box she was making and didn’t answer. Her long face had an anxious look and there was a glossy picture sticking to her fringe.
I got fed up with her because she wasn’t happy. I don’t like it when people find life difficult. It gives me a bad conscience and then I get angry and begin to feel that they might as well go somewhere else.
But Granny liked her because she had been a good customer at the button shop and they used to read Allers’ Family Magazine together during the winter.
Granny had a lot of little boxes with lots of compartments but at least she put buttons in them. While Granny’s button business was a glorious success each kind of button was kept separate but when the business went bust the buttons got into the wrong compartments, which was actually much more fun.
Before the police came to the shop Granny managed to rescue a lot of button boxes which she hid under her skirts just as she had hidden guns during the 1918 war. She also rescued tons of Allers’ Family Magazines and little porcelain dogs and velvet pin cushions and a quantity of nightcaps and silk ribbons and then she sighed and said, bless me; now we shall have to draw crosses on the ceiling again! And she carried everything to Daddy’s and Mummy’s studio.
Mummy hid all the Allers’ Family Magazines but Granny and I found them, particularly the ones with the whole-page pictures of sad things. A Young Witch Being Led to the Stake. A Heroine’s Death.
And every copy of the magazine was kept for the spinster. Granny and she used to read them in secret in the bedroom.
Once she came to read Allers’ Family Magazine on the worst possible day she could have picked. Daddy was busy making a plaster cast. And it was a particularly large and difficult one that had to be made in sections.
