by Tove Jansson
At present we’re drinking rum toddy and have sawed up a dry fir that blew over E. of the path to the sandy beach. I’ve excelled myself with the wood chopping and started amassing a pile of knotty Tooti blocks that need attention, and I’ve gathered twigs from the forest to fill the basket, of course.
The oil spill has avoided the red rocks but edged all the bays around our island in black. The worst things are the clumps of oil-clogged reeds and all the bits of wreckage from the Colaroo. I’m gathering them into piles as best I can and burning them. The sandy beach has been left untouched and has shifted west in the most remarkable way, while the potato patch has vanished into thin air. I suppose I’ll have to make a new one.
The boys left the place very neat and tidy (or Kiki?). Abbe, Greta and Max brought me out and had a snifter while the fire got going. We had the little boat in tow but its boards had dried right out and it came close to sinking before we got here. I spent the first night in my sleeping bag because the bedclothes just wouldn’t get warm. I kept the stove alight all night.
Now the temperature is normal in here, all the windows are steamed up, and there’s a nasty northerly blowing outside. I wonder whether you’ve been up to anything special – or managed to avoid the awkward Walpurgis Night celebrations and 1st of May entirely. Have the wild Norwegians been letting their hair down? And what is happening at 26 Kaserngatan? I’m so pleased about it that I have to break into a little dance sometimes – just think, your studio! On the same block as mine! I’m finding it hard to believe it’s really true.
It’s going to be twice as much fun moving in and getting my Serena Castle in order now I know you’ve got a decent amount of space, too, and are putting up Shelves and feeling happy! Darling Tooti – isn’t it great.
And the Awful Numbers will sort themselves out somehow, won’t they.
Guess what, a swallow just came sweeping by to take a look at us. [ … ]
I’m reading Atos’s Strindberg book at the moment and it confirms what I already knew, namely that he’s brilliant and that I don’t like biographies.
I’ve raked and tidied all round the house outside, the roses have shoots like tiny red dots, but nothing green has dared come up yet. Just a few hepatica leaves …
The island is sodden, with patches of snow here and there. And I can’t get to the supplies of jam until the hatch cover warms up and the wood shrinks.
2.5. See below for a little oil-spill greeting from Psipsina … I’m dreading the paw prints this summer …
Last night there was a ferocious wind from the north and I had to go down about 4 in my pyjamas and wellies to rescue the boat. As usual! Sleety snow.
Now it’s greyer – but it doesn’t matter!
Regards to everybody!
From your cheery Tooooosla
4th May.
And here it just keeps raining and blowing a gale, so I’ve started painting. As soon as it brightens up even slightly we’re out like a shot, Psipsu and I, burning stuff from the wreck and other rubbish caught in clefts in the rock, salvaging seaweed, chopping wood … and then the Weather sweeps in again from some angry direction and drives us indoors. It’s at its most vicious now, from the north, and the whole island is a palette of wet, earthy colours, with splashes of white snow and black oil.
At the northern point of Tunnis, the oil has formed huge pools, and the driftwood is the kind not even our friend from Glosholm would bother himself with. I made a few minimal heaps and thanked God for the stocks we’ve laid in.
But I found pussy willow and alder catkins and the birds were singing like crazy in the branches. We miss our third Doj. And neither of us likes Corned Beef.
Doj: This was the nickname TJ and Tuulikki Pietilä took to using for one another – and also their cat – at around this time. There is no evidence that the word had meaning or special reference beyond its affectionate sound.
Psipsu: Tuulikki Pietilä’s and TJ’s cat. Her full name is Psipsina (Greek for “cat”) but she is also sometimes called by other names, such as Pipsu.
Colaroo: A misspelling on TJ’s part. The Swedish cargo vessel the Coolaroo sank in the Gulf of Finland in October 1961.
Kiki: Kiki Hielm.
Max: Abbe and Greta Gustafsson’s son.
26 Kaserngatan: Tuulikki Pietilâ moved into this building on the same block as TJ.
IN 1963, TOVE JANSSON RECEIVED THE FINLAND-SWEDISH cultural prize awarded by the newspaper Stockholms-Tidningen for her 1962 story collection Det osynliga barnet och andra berättelser (published in English as Tales from Moominvalley). Eminent Swedish author Per-Olof Sundman wrote a long article in the paper under the title “The anger and beauty of life” (5.2.1963). For the award ceremony, held at the Grand Hotel, Tove Jansson travelled to Stockholm with Signe Hammarsten. They also paid a visit to Sankt Jakobs kyrka (St James’s church) in Kungsträdgården Park, where Fredrik Hammarsten had been the rector.
6.2.63 [Stockholm]
Darling Doj,
The official world has finally turned its polite back on me to concentrate on other topical events – I think.
It feels that way. And it’s such an incredible relief that if you didn’t know your Toosla inside out you’d think I was ungrateful.
I’m not, not at all.
But has it occurred to you how dangerous it is to constantly be obliged to repeat what one knows – it gets so threadbare! Inevitably the spontaneity goes – and in the end one is nothing but a repetition, a reproduction, a representation.
How sorry I feel for those folk whose job is representation, official limelight people who’ve deliberately chosen exhibitionist professions. In parenthesis: One repetition that only grows deeper and more intense: I love you. I love you …
Well, anyway. Just back from an embassy breakfast. Prawns in pears with advocaat. Loads of people, and a hat was the right choice. The hostess wasn’t well, but put a brave face on it, insubstantial conversations, keeping things vaguely in the air on all sides, very consciously (except when gentlemen take refuge in, say, fishing and hide in a corner) and a single honest and anxious dorga, an under-secretary something-or-another, who insisted on talking about his divorce.
Then we were rapidly transferred to the Stockholms-Tidningen where I continued expressing my thanks and was rushed through dozens of basements and up and down stairs, where the newspaper presses were spitting out the latest news with a great thunder and crash.
Ham is lying down, a contented wreck. The whole week is fully booked, a worse prospect than the flight in a snowstorm. We waited and hung about in Helsingfors, onto a bus to Åbo, off again, more waiting, sent home, another flight in the evening, rang you, Ham turned grey with travel nerves, we found some tinned food, off again, felt a bit queasy, were welcomed with flowers and a photographer, and taken straight to Dr Näsström’s supper party in our snow boots and without our luggage, reached the hotel in the middle of the night.
The next day more radio, but the press conference had been dissolved by the snowstorm, thank goodness.
We padded round Kungsträdgården freezing our socks off and went into Sankt Jakob’s where the organ was playing. I don’t know what Ham made of it all, she stomped along pluckily with her stick, staggered around the streets of her youth and said very little. We changed into our best and answered the telephone to a string of interviews with the same questions and, God help me, the same answers and then we were shovelled off to the Grand, where a TV crew was lying in wait with its cameras and neon and unprepared questions, and there was a great deal of filming for what I fear were pretty meagre results. It went on until the rest of the party were having their dessert and was brought to a halt by various socially engaged busybodies wanting this that and the other for the Sweden–Finland town-twinning movement, Save the Children, Pro-Peace, the scouts, the library association, collectors of ex libris and every old Tom, Dick and Harry.
Before that I delivered my speech, slowly and impeccably but scared stiff, from the big lectern in
the hall with the golden curlicues.
There was a heck of a pause after they handed over the prize, while several hundred ancients, the great and the good of the arts establishment, sat there waiting, and then I finally twigged that the moment was now and not at the dinner (as I’d been instructed), so I didn’t even remember to take my crib sheet up with me.
Afterwards it was rather nice for a while. I danced with loads of white-haired barons and commodores and drank loads of whisky and everybody thought I was wonderful, even me – almost.
Then the exhaustion hit Hamsie and I remembered the polite thing is to leave early, so we went.
Early the next morning I was woken by another TV crew wanting a comment on the cultural situation and panicked and blurted out, I regret to say, but I’m flying home any minute now …
I’m not, of course – I’ve still got masses to sort out with family and cousins and children’s culture reps and translators and art galleries and old mymbles.
This is certainly one way to live one’s life … and I’m sure there are people who do. I’m feeling pretty cocky but also trying to maintain my image: gentle, cultivated, enraptured child of nature …
They didn’t have any of those long-sleeved white nightshirts left, but I’ve bought a new, earth-shattering shade of eye shadow that makes me look sophistical. And by the way, I dream of islands every night.
You know what, it’s exactly like in the Zonta Club, one feels one is occupying a place that could be taken by someone who would do it better and enjoy it more.
What a long and unbroken silence it would take, actually, to be able to seize pictures, and words, by the tail. And you, how many days have you had “to yourself”?
Spring will soon be here, and things will calm down, you’ll see. They’re tying to lure me back over again for A Thousand Important Tasks – but the only important thing just now is a shoe-and-studio life at a nice slow pace. Let’s do it.
Regards to everyone. All the best –
Tove.
dorga: This word occurs from time to time in TJ’s letters, sometimes with the spelling dårga. She uses it in a general, non-pejorative sense for a person of the male gender, young or old.
Stockholms-Tidningen: One of the main Stockholm daily papers.
Zonta Club: An international organisation for professional women.
12.5.63 [Bredskär]
Darling Tooti!
It feels all wrong to be here without you. And to know you’re feeling lousy (and will have to see the dentist). The fact is that this island needs three shoes. Or any island, for that matter …
But as it happens, I do feel quite at ease on Bredskär this year, calm and benign. I think it’s because all at once I find myself taking the island without ambitions, envy or an owner’s sense of responsibility – waiting and not demanding too much, not getting upset about oil spills, broken branches or scuffed up moss, you know.
Just padding about and feeling fine, using my ears, nose and eyes, with comfortably crumpled clothes and my hair a mess. I do what needs doing with a certain leisurely satisfaction.
It’s a love affair that has turned into friendship, if you like – after all the violent disappointments and aversions. Funny. Have you read “The Man Who Loved Islands”? How about “The Woman Who Fell in Love with an Island”?
The journey out went well. Psipsu said her goodbyes in all the food shops. At Jungfrustigen an indulgent Peo, paying a Mother’s Day visit (oh the darling traditional dårga), was on hand to carry our cases down! Then we were whisked to Borgå at 90 km an hour, at least intermittently, and as usual we honoured Café Succes with our presence. By that point Psipsu was so worked up (she sang her lament on the journey) that she wriggled out of her harness, but instead of running away she climbed onto a chair and sat at the table just like at home, to the Café’s delight.
Then we got out the map and compass (Pakarinen sniggered) and were whizzed off to Tirmo. On the way the car ran right over a big adder. And wasn’t it just like Pakarinen to stop the car and walk the long way back to see if the snake was dead (it wasn’t) and make sure it didn’t go on suffering?
Then I had a bright idea and asked whether he felt like coming out to the island with us and going back with Holmberg. Pakarinen leapt at the chance – “haven’t seen the sea for ages, and it’s Friday today, all day!” [ … ]
Everything as usual at Viken with coffee, presents, lots of people. Pakarinen most impressed with Abbe’s boat which is almost finished now, peering into every corner and wanting to know all about everything.
Out on the island we plied him with cognac, and the luggage (including yours) came up in a trice, carried by three strapping fellows. I hardly had a chance to lend a hand. We shut Psipsu in the guest room and only saw her reaction after the others had gone. She came out, as stiff as a board, stared around her for a long time and then went over to her old sharpening stump and got busy on her claws. She did a circuit of the house, sniffing at everything, eating grass, and after that she was a vanished cat. And happy!
We’d barely got all our kit indoors and taken the little boat round to the sandy beach when the rain started, with great crashes of thunder. Very gratifying.
The wood was soaking wet, the snow must have drifted into the woodshed – and there was so little of it that by the time I’d filled under the stove, the shed was empty. I must have been so angry with my poor island last year – didn’t even chop wood! Now I’ve set to work, and am enjoying it. Again. (thankyougod). For now we’ll have to make our fires with the dryish sticks I’ve found on the beaches round the island.
In a wild burst of energy, Ham has cleaned the stove and the little frigate on the ceiling. She coped well with the journey, blissfully happy, but now she’s flagging and spends most of her time dozing. (but still happy)
We fell asleep at 8 the first evening – I was up at ½ 6 this morning. It’s so warm here that I haven’t even had to get out the oil stove.
Very little seaweed this year, only enough for the potato patch. The big pine on the sandy beach has lost about ten of its thickest branches and looks bald. So that’s going to make a good bonfire for you. No more oil has washed ashore, but the old stuff is just as sticky as last year.
The hepaticas are in flower and the willow’s got catkins, but nothing else has come up. The “sacred rose” looks a bit peaky.
Today May and Max came out with a pike for us and some roach for Psipsu. I’ve sunk them in the sound, temporarily.
We couldn’t face putting out the proper boat rollers but winched it up on planks and duckboards. I had to lever the hatch cover open with an iron bar. Ah, that was Psipsu “ringing” at the door to come in. It’s strange, she seems to remember everything. She slept in my bed, and kicked around in her sand tray last night and woke us up. The strapping fellows had trouble prising your built-in cardboard box from under the bed, but it stayed in one piece, anyway.
The old beds have gone to Viken now. The new ones are first-rate, and your box fits. If you’d like to be able to roll it out when you need to get to your papers, then bring 6 little castors with you. There’s room for them.
Bumblebees and butterflies are here already, and the ants formed a caravan to the sweet tin (I’ve put a tragic stop to it now). All is as usual, only we’re missing a Tooti.
How I hope your trip to Sweden is enjoyable – and flu-free – and that moving Mamu goes splendidly!
Goodness only knows when this letter will get on its way – I couldn’t believe the youngsters would come out the very first morning! But at least I’ve been able to talk to you for a while, and tell you how we’re getting on.
A big hug and all the very best!
Your Tosla.
P.S. Ham sends you many good wishes. She says it’s empty here without you.
[ … ] 17th.
I’m sending this letter to Mamu’s address. Give her my warmest regards! You leave the day after tomorrow, and I’m agog to know how it will all go, with over-o
rganised speeches, discussions and socialising grand-house style or with friends. Merde!
It’s utterly silent here and entirely still, unbelievable. No horizon, dead calm.
That rackety outboard motor wouldn’t start, though I even studied its instruction book. So I took to the oars and set off on my own to Klovharun.
It took me ½ an hour to row there. The island is larger than I remember it, and the plateau for the house is wider than I recalled. If the shack’s going there we won’t need to touch the big stone in its decorative black hollow, there’ll be room anyway.
Imagine one of the house “legs” on a concrete stilt. That would create a nice cellar space. The pool is nearly always milky white and opaque later in the summer, of course, but at present the water’s clear and to my disappointment revealed neither skeletons nor smugglers’ liquor, only very ordinary stones! It wasn’t even deep.
On the other hand there seem to be a deep hollow or two that could be set up for drinking-water collection and the meadow where we could plant things is a decent size. A big cleft right up on the island would make a lovely plage if one filled it with sand.
And the rock at the harbour inlet is so low and flat that one could easily pull up a boat on duckboards. If we cleared some of the stones we could even get the boat into the pool. At present the water’s extremely low and it shows on the beaches … the vegetation is at its puniest. But in spite of that, it all seemed very hopeful. – There were already gulls’ eggs.
A hug and all the very best! Write and tell me about your trip and long for me now and then.
Tove.
May and Max: Abbe and Greta Gustafsson’s children.
that rackety outboard motor: TJ’s term for it is “baksmälla”, a pun on the word normally used for a hangover, which literally means “the crash at the back”.
