Letters from Tove

by Tove Jansson

  Tove

  Aschehoug: TJ’s publisher in Norway.

  Carroll: see Letters to Åke Runnquist.

  TOVE JANSSON AND TOOTI CHANGED THEIR TRAVEL PLANS once they realised the crossing to Santorini would take nineteen hours. They decided to go to Mykonos instead, arriving in the middle of the night and walking along the beach until they found a small hotel. Tove Jansson wrote to Ham: “it feels safe, being on an island, a bit like at home.”

  MYKONOS 15.11.59.

  Dearest Ham,

  The Mykonos tub has changed to her winter timetable so she didn’t put in at the island with the post after all.

  For two days the Greek autumn (they call it winter) has put in a guest appearance here, with torrential rain and gales. The few tourists blow down to the harbour and sit in the cafés drinking hot chocolate with cognac or ouzo, a kind of white Pernod. And they’ve all caught colds. Including me.

  The local gossip gets an airing. There’s the American group with existentially long-haired girls and men in shaggy sweaters, and the English one, pleasant, strict and inaccessible. Then the Swedes, still more decimated (each group only comprises 4–5 people) with a charming and boastful star photographer, among other things, and a sidelined Kerstin (that really is her name) who is in love with a Greek, has terrible problems with her parents and is considered an amateur by “the others”. She’s always offering to buy people coffee, has no money and reads out her letters from home.

  And now all the palms are being blown out of shape and the town’s pelicans are sheltering at the restaurant and everything is wet. We are wrapped up warm and tuck ourselves into walled corners to sketch, and our paper flaps about and the whole Aegean is green and angry.

  Somehow I can believe in it all much better now the picture-postcard weather’s over (perhaps only for the time being?), everything seems more genuine and one has a sense of actually living here.

  One day we climbed up onto the much higher ground of the island and looked inland. The ground is barren and eroded into huge, grim indentations, with a network of primitive walls, a few cactuses, and here and there a tiny white church or a house huddled between the boulders. There are only a few thousand people here at most (1600, I think) but 360 churches. When sailors narrowly escaped shipwreck they often promised God a church if he saved them. He clearly did that quite often!

  The police, a few lonely fellows who always stick together, are not liked. They go in wherever they fancy and eat and drink for free – and anyone who objects is made to regret it bitterly.

  Women are never seen at the café, but later in the evening the men dance to the bouzouki, which is a big, banjo-like sort of instrument, skilfully taking up the rhythm on two spoons, which they wield like castanets. The song is a monotonous whine, and as the mood gets more excitable the dance is performed by two men, one of them very obviously taking the woman’s role with belly gyrations and deliberate coquetry.

  The best weaver is called Viennola, a very proud and self-assured woman who holds a coffee salon in her workshop among the narrow alleyways. The fact that she can speak English means the tourists gather there to buy and gossip. Her beautiful daughter fell in love with a Dane a few weeks ago and is going to marry him and move north. So she’s questioning all the Scandinavians and trying to get a picture of her new country.

  The days pass in a peaceful, humdrum way, with work, an ouzo, a bit of chat with some colleague over dinner, and an early bedtime. We sleep in woolly tops and long johns. They are more tolerant here than in Athens, so everyone goes around in jeans and looks however they want to. The shops are few and the souvenir sellers zero now the summer is over.

  It’s brightening up outside. Big hugs to you my darling. All good wishes to Lasse. And Impi. And be [the end is missing]

  MYKENES [MYCENAE], PELOPONNESOS 25.11.59.

  Happy “Little Christmas”! Just imagine, artificial Little Christmas trees are on sale in Athens. They are slimmer than cypresses and have snow on them, and they come in all sizes, wrapped in cellophane!

  Dearest Ham,

  This evening I’m sitting in a rather dreary café (the only one in the village) in Mykenes, writing by the light of a carbide lamp. Sheep and chickens and turkeys and donkeys are making are making a hell of a racket and the last tourist bus has just come round the corner in a cloud of dust. (Tooti is trying to draw a donkey and getting its legs the wrong way round)

  We came here by train from Athens, had to get up at six in the morning – and arrived some time after 10 in a large and peaceful valley surrounded by vast mountains. Nobody else got off the train. No buildings, just a long road to a village (smaller than Söderby) with one small hotel. Then another long road in among the mountains and there, after an enormous climb, the ruins of the fortifications and palace where the Mycenaean kings lived and were buried, and created the oldest and most important epoch in Greek history.

  There wasn’t much left of the splendour of 1660 years BC – except the lion gate, you know, and pieces of wall composed of gigantic blocks. Agamemnon’s huge grave was inside a hill, with little excavation shafts here and there. It’s strange to think that this was once the capital of Greece and that this deserted valley was the centre of artistic life. Even I could feel History tingling up and down my spine.

  All around there were sombre grey-brown mountains, line after line of them, and the ground was grey dust and splinters of rock. This is where they found the biggest and most beautiful gold treasures in Greece.

  We were due to leave yesterday morning, but the day before I got a message about a telephone call from Stockholm. They hadn’t been able to reach me, and asked me to take the call at 10 the next morning. So I had to cancel the tickets and waited anxiously to find out what the call was about, while we made all sorts of guesses. It turned out to be Moomintroll of course.

  Nyman & Schultz rang to ask if they could use him on a brochure. Can you believe it? I gave them your address and hope you and Lasse will be so good as to pick a passable troll from one of my drawings and let them use that. Maybe a Moomin in a boat – from the lighthouse synopsis? The one where he’s starting the motor, or something like that.

  Otherwise they’ll have to wait until I get home. And I reckon they could pay, say, 10,0000, or what do you two think?

  Uca is the only one who has my address apart from you. If anyone asks you for it, please could you tell them while you are at it that they are to write, not ring or telegraph.

  Talking of Nyman & Schultz, perhaps they ought to ask permission from Bulls. If they write to me as they promised, I shall ask them to do that.

  Today we did a serious dash through the Athenian museums, sorted out our finances (the Basel money is fixed at last) and paid for the three nights in wagons lits to Paris. After the rain the city was sunny and warm again but as soon as it clouds over it’s freezing cold. One never knows what to wear. But it was even colder on the islands. I forgot to tell you that I saw the first real cockroach invasion of my life in the cabin on the boat from Mykonos. They came in all sizes, and my goodness they could run fast!

  If I send a package from here before we go to Paris, that means it’s a Christmas parcel (or at least part of one) so you people mustn’t open it until I’ve had time to send instructions!

  Hugs and kisses and a thousand greetings!

  Your own Tove – who misses you.

  P.S. Tomorrow we’re moving on to Olympos and Delphi.

  Söderby: A village in Pellinge.

  Nyman & Schultz: A travel agency in Sweden.

  the lighthouse synopsis: The strip cartoon “Moomin and the Sea”.

  WEDNESDAY. [Undated, September 1965, Klovharun]

  Dearest Ham,

  Abbe & co. might come out today; the weather has suddenly turned fine – so I’ll be able to get a few words off to you. Maybe they’ve even heard something by telephone.

  I’m naturally wondering how your trip back to town went. The stairs must have felt like a trial after you’d been
been horizontal for so long – I’m sure you’re still terribly tired after the whole move and might be staying in bed.

  Has the young man turned up and settled in? That blanket of autumn melancholy came down over the archipelago once you’d left. At nine that evening I was close to getting up and looking out towards abandoned Bredskär, but I didn’t. Because just think if I’d seen a light, out at the point.

  I’ve been working exclusively on Alice and have moved over to the colour pictures. I’ve done three. It’s more fun than I expected but awfully hard, perhaps I’ll gradually accumulate enough insight to redo the whole lot once all 14 are finished.

  The palette is restrained, almost sober, with a single bright colour as the dominant. But perhaps that’s too cautious a technique.

  The first evening I really was a bit scared of the dark although I sat there reading for ages and didn’t set up any kind of curtain arrangement the way I usually do on Bredskär. But the next night it had passed and I even went out in the storm with a torch to see if the water had risen in the ravine.

  It was quite some gale and it blew up suddenly as darkness fell. Remarkable how a storm can flush away all melancholies and fears, it was so nice lying there and hearing the crashes on the copper roof.

  For a moment I felt a prickling in my hands and feet, when the ship’s bell started ringing outside the door. But then I realised it was only Sjöberg testing out the wind gauge and left it to clang while I carried on reading my murder mystery.

  Today I spread out all the mats to air and saw that he, Sjöberg that is, had snatched away the smallest verandah mat.

  I switched on the radio last night and all of a sudden there was somebody talking about my book. It was the arts programme “Kulturspegeln”, some kind of résumé of Pappan with a few chunks of the text, summed up at the end with the view that I’d lost the Groke as (a useable and expressive) manifestation of evil but gained a new dimension by taking the family down from their pedestal of niceness and bringing them closer to the reader. And that I would very probably never get them back into that position again – or into the valley, I forget exactly which. I missed the beginning. But they seemed to be taking the book very seriously, so I was pleased about that.

  We’ve reached Friday and I’ve still had no company but Alice. There’s a row of curious little pictures propped on the bureau and I wish you were here to give me your verdict.

  Today I polished copper jugs and cleaned the cooker and the floor around it and brought in fresh flowers – apart from that I’ve just been pressing on with my work for as long as it keeps stumbling forward. The house and island will have to take a break.

  I’ve eaten my way through Bredskär’s three packs of bacon with my own new potatoes and will soon have to come up with something new.

  I suppose this weekend will bring some kind of news from town, anyway. I think about you all the time and wonder how you are. And whether you really will let me know if you start feeling worse. I shall come like a shot, if so, Alice can very well continue in town and this mournful autumnal archipelago isn’t too hard to leave. We’ve had the summer, we’re grateful for it, and pretty much ready for winter life.

  Saturday. Brunström came past, going out fishing, so I’ll give this letter to him. Bye and hugs!

  Best wishes to Tooti!

  Tove.

  résumé of Pappan: Pappan och havet, 1965 (Moominpappa at Sea).

  IN 1966, TOVE JANSSON RECEIVED THE PRESTIGIOUS CHILDREN’S literature award, the Andersen Medal, awarded by the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY). The award was presented at a congress in Ljubljana.

  29.9.66 [LJUBLJANA]

  Dearest Ham,

  The congress is in full swing now and we spend our days sitting in a curlicued town hall with a patio and a fountain in the middle, listening to talks in lots of different languages. If we can’t understand them we put on a sort of Talky Walky that can tune in to 8 different translations. All done on the spot. (and they sound like the cacophony of announcements at a railway station) Sometimes they say I can skip a meeting, and then I dash happily out into town, or sleep, or read through my speech. Tooti mooches around museums while I’m busy congressing. We are in very smart accommodation in a skyscraper called The Lion, which even has its own hairdresser and nightclub.

  Naturally all the Scandinavians wanted to go to the nightclub – the others were too jaded or had been warned in advance. The line-up was pathetically bad – except for an acrobat and a sexbomb who did a high-speed strip-tease, galloping round with her curves swinging, and the act culminated in her standing on her head to the accompaniment of a police siren. It was great fun. (Inger, a female Swedish colleague, said they were post-natal exercises)

  My head gets in a complete whirl from trying to speak so many languages at once, and sometimes a blank curtain comes down. On one of the most chaotic days they suddenly dragged me in front of the TV cameras completely unprepared, for a discussion with my translator here (who is a surgeon). I was so petrified – as was she – that we asked for a slivovitz on the spot, and things went relatively smoothly after that.

  1.10 And now I’ve got the medal which is very lovely but unfortunately also very big (!) and when I, completely shattered and happy and terrified and worn out, got home after the whole affair, there was your card which was as good as a whole letter. Thank you dearest – how nice that it came at just that moment! So Lasse & co. have gone now, assuming they got away all right – especially Nita … there must have been so much upheaval lately but I really hope most of the mess has been in my studio.

  No, we didn’t get ill after all and I suspect it was the flying that made us feel like that, plus the flumidin. And although I seemed to shed all manner of my possessions as time went by, I did somehow hang on to my speech and my glasses.

  My presentation went really well and I spoke (thanks to it being in English) very slowly. People were actually moved – though I can’t fathom which parts had that effect. After me came a white-haired Swiss who’d won the big illustration prize they’ve set up this year, a whole series of authors got their diplomas, the choir sang a triumphal madrigal and small children handed out carnations with silk ribbons in national colours. Before all that there was a long speech about the main prizewinners and much to my surprise I found myself listening to accounts of Harun and Bredskär, your and Faffan’s work, Ängsmarn, Peo and Lasse, Lotsgatan and above all the hurricanes in the Gulf of Finland. It was extremely odd.

  After the triumphal madrigal everyone raced round congratulating everyone else and talking rapidly in nineteen languages, publishers and journalists asked for details and addresses, all at the same time, I even had a caricature drawn of me and camera flashes in my face from all directions. Then in a trice the whole lot vanished and Tooti and I were left standing there in a mass of carnations and asparagus fern with no recollection (that is, I had no recollection) of where we would be eating the official meal.

  We went back to the hotel where they eventually tracked us down – the supper was formal and a bit weary – nothing but super-bigwigs who, moreover, were distracted by Internal Congress Intrigues à la Artists’ Guild – all the younger, merrier and less Important types were having a knees-up at some cheaper venue. That’s the way it goes!

  But so what, not a single soul could have had such an exciting and glorious time as I have done, and I’m very grateful and happy about the whole thing, though now flagging.

  The most splendid thing of all (apart from the medal of course) was the Caves. The country invited the congress to a three-hour coach trip to some stalactite caves, formed in the course of 6,000 years – they are utterly indescribable. For nearly two hours we walked through a Dante landscape of tremendous, surreal formations in strange subterranean hues – some of the caverns were as tall as cathedrals and had been adorned with chandeliers by nineteenth-century romantics. Lots of the leading lights of the congress got panicky and claustrophobic and wanted to escape, and most of
the group felt some unpleasant effects, but I could have lived there for weeks! In the company of little red salamanders, bats and – well – rats, but even with them! The outside world felt totally banal afterwards – despite the beautiful rolling landscape.

  One evening there was a cocktail party hosted by a minister, very formal, but the Scandinavian breakfast the first day, by contrast, was really good fun and full of Nordic temperament. I’ve tried my best to be amiable and say the right things in the right language to the right people – and now that we’re sitting in a peaceful, everyday fashion on the train to Venice I can feel that it’s been quite a strain. I mean to say, we were thrust into the midst of this almost straight from Harun! Nobody wore long dresses here in Ljubljana, the Swiss woman was wearing a kind of Marimekko with red embroidery.

  It’s been raining most of the time, but perhaps the scenery here looks even better in the mist, it’s so earnest. Houses, roads, gardens are so well-tended, everything looks freshly painted and genteel – not at all like when we once travelled through here to Greece.

  People we asked for advice in the streets of Ljubljana were helpful, one of them even came with us to hunt out Yugoslavian records in a shop. It’s nice to feel the kindliness following us as we leave.

  When we see each other I’ll give you more details and show you all the conference papers and the little curios we’ve bought. I hope you’ve got the two cards we sent. Perhaps your greetings will be waiting for me in Vienna. Warmest wishes to everybody. And a hug from Tooti!

  I think we’re getting near the border, where I will be able to post this. Look after yourself, my dear one.

  A big

  from your bemedalled Tove