by Tove Jansson
You were right – everything is insanely expensive (except the hotel) and our money just goes sailing off in all directions.
We have been rather spendthrift in these first days, but so be it – after Moomintrolls and academies, among other things. Black dollars will no doubt see us through to the end of the month. M.me Marabella came padding out of her lair in ecstasy at our arrival. She was pleased that we wanted to stay with her, told us about her life, embraced Tooti, and only once we’d brought in all our things by mutual agreement did it emerge that she hadn’t got a room – she’d given it away. After some hullabaloo and conferring with the local concierges we got a poky little room on the 6th floor at 6 rue Blainville just next door, in a ramshackle hotel with the proud name of Hot. De la Paix. Furnished mostly with mirrors and plush rugs and very, very French. So if you feel like dropping a line to let me know how you are …? We often think of you, and fondly. We send you our very best wishes – and a big x from your friends
Tove and Tooti
Kalimera sass and parakalo: Good morning and please.
Skillnaden: (Finnish Erottaja), a public square in central Helsinki.
7 JUNE 61. [Bredskär]
Dearest Maya,
A hug for you from the island, where our all-female household is running as usual, tranquilly and amiably. We’ve been living in the house, all three of us + cat – and it was only today Tooti moved into the self-contained guest room.
We were in a rather sorry state here for a week. Ham mostly stayed in bed and ate barely anything – the growth obstructing her diaphragm was very troublesome. And Tooti went and lifted a log that was too heavy, something gave way in her back and we were barely able to get her up to the house. I was really scared – slipped discs and so on – but evidently it was only a badly pulled muscle. She had to lie flat for a week.
They’re a bit livelier again now. Tooti’s started a silkscreen print but she’s not allowed to lift anything – Ham is up and pottering around, but still hasn’t the energy for her maps. I’m illustrating Tolkien at top speed, all the vignettes and thumbnails are done and now I’m onto the whole-page illustrations. I drew some of the smaller pictures 60–80 times before they started to “flow”. It’s damned depressing how one can get so stuck on something one is “expert” at.
One day we drove the boat out to Klovharun and found a dead seal at the harbour entrance. It was on the bottom, looking very beautiful in the clear water – a little way off there was some torn drift net. Clearly the poor thing had been choked to death – and very recently. We rolled it up the sloping beach a little way with the oar, and before it could fall into the deep water I went in and grabbed hold of its tail. It was awfully hard getting it into the boat, which was also full of driftwood from the beaches.
So Abbe can have the jawbone, which is worth 2000, and Tooti the skin because she “saw it first”. Ah, such Christian tomfoolery. Incidentally, after a long time with no catches at all we’ve been blessed with lots of pike. Things had got so bad that we even borrowed roach from the cat net when we got too sick of tinned food.
Tooti’s made a new oak table for the verandah and a little bench, and done plenty of other general knottywooding. Abbes paid a couple of visits – and a huge Sutton disagreement erupted, with hysterical, 100-word telegrams – I had to go back and forth with 8 years’ business correspondence in a big macaroni tin, and call London and wade through contracts and lose my temper. The story is too long and dull to repeat, but I found the letter that proved I was neither the big baddie nor the little idiot.
Map of Storpellinge drawn by Signe Hammarsten Jansson.
Finance companies, television and what not.
Lasse is currently in London and will be on his way home soon. They had a nice honeymoon “with no sightseeing at all” and the car was fine. Two little postcards, brief and happy.
I expect before we know it he’ll be here with his strip cartoons – and Nita’s coming in August. Uca and Kirsten after midsummer and then Uncle Harald and family from Sweden.
I couldn’t get hold of you the day before we came out, felt like a chat and some nice bits of gossip. Wasn’t it a remarkable wedding! The next day we waved them off at Bore and Lasse had taken every single flowerbud to decorate their cabin.
Off Villagatan in the roadstead the ship stopped for some reason, and Uca was seized with a terrible premonition of disaster – Margit might have fallen overboard and Lasse jumped in after her, or something – and she called the harbourmaster’s office, the steamship company, the pilots, and finally the ship itself.
We got hold of Lasse who was mildly surprised and hadn’t noticed a thing – but thought maybe they’d run aground. They were drinking beer and were absolutely fine.
And how are you?
The heat in town must have been awful. The island is as dry as hay and everything’s wilting, we sleep under just a sheet and keep all the windows open. Send me a few words so I know how you are! The others send their best regards!
Kisses and hugs –
Tove.
Tolkien: TJ was illustrating Bilbo. En hobbits äventyr, the Swedish edition of The Hobbit, published in 1962 by Rabén & Sjögren in Stockholm.
TOVE JANSSON AND TUULIKKI PIETILÄ SPENT THE SUMMER OF 1963 on Bredskär with Signe Hammarsten and Lars Jansson, his wife Nita and daughter Sophia. It was a summer full of friction, tensions and “guilt–melancholy”. The following year, work started on their house on the other island, Klovharun.
14.7.63 [Bredskär]
Dearest Maya,
I feel I have some kind of summary of our archipelagic situation clear in my mind now – and want to write that letter I’ve been thinking of for a long time. That is, thinking of you and the contact I owe you, especially after the fragmented and slightly overwrought insights into island life that you had from me at Lehtovaara.
Which I’d now like to supplement.
Well, over the first ten days with Tooti on Bredskär, something resolved itself for me, something important, and I don’t really know how – but I felt I was on the right lines with it all. I calmly started “doing things” on the island again, almost enjoying it, seemed to have got over my resignation and lack of initiative and instead of (with some effort) “being nice” I had a nice time myself.
You know how seismographic it gets on an island when you live close together; every tiny change in atmosphere is registered and has an effect. I think I only realised things were on the up for me when everyone suddenly seemed happy rather than amicable. And then I directed my anxiety solely towards Tooti and her reaction to the Change.
Initially everything seemed fine, she rootled happily among her bits and pieces from last year, organised, had a good shout about dirty nappies in the toolbox but was cheerful again a minute later – you know – mended Sophia’s shoes and hung a swing from the ceiling, applied mustard plasters to the child’s cough morning and night, got cross with Ham in the card game as usual, mended the steps and everything appeared to be going well.
Nita was scared of her for the first few days and tidied away the messiest baby pants and had the coffee ready (!!) when we came in from the tent in the mornings, had made the bed, was dressed (!!!) – then those worrying symptoms abated and everything went back to normal. Lasse sat there doing his cartoon strips, silent and charming and a bit distant, Ham let herself be ordered around by Sophia and occasionally hid in the guest room, worn out.
Then Tooti turned very subdued and just spent all her time reading in a deckchair, day after day, and I knew something was seriously wrong; there wasn’t a hope of her being able to start her work in the benign but unbelievable muddle all around us. So when ten days had passed I quietly asked Tooti if she felt like five days on Klovharun. She said nothing for a couple of hours but then she leapt on the idea and we were both seized by a kind of pre-move panic (God knows how that happened) and dashed round throwing things in baskets (forgetting loads of stuff, of course) to everybody’s mild astonishment.
Then off we went with tent, pots and pans, wood and pickaxes and the whole caboodle.
And it was only once Tooti was out on Klovharun that the infectious Enthusiasm which periodically grips her (God bless her) blazed up and she went scurrying round, delighted with absolutely everything on that fierce little skerry, and it wasn’t until then I felt myself transferring my love to that rock and believing in it – and Bredskär turned into a friendly place without yearning or rancour.
We had a rather wonderful time out there, and I’m afraid we indulged in orgies of scouting, constructing hearths and primitive furniture and height gauges and incredible arrangements for securing the tent and organising our hastily assembled provisions.
All at once I felt the sort of eagerness for activity that I thought middle age had definitively taken from me, and hacked up reed roots, emptied hundreds of buckets out of the deep rock hollow that we’re going to build our house on top of and use as a huge cellar, lugged stones around at the harbour entrance, wrote some couplets for Lasse and swam in the ice-cold water.
The paradise weather lasted for two days, then this summer’s first area of low pressure came crashing over us with pelting rain, thunder and a force-six gale.
Oh my, it was a very different matter from what we’re used to on the “inner island”! The surf boomed like cannon fire, the water rose and the little “lagoon”, the lake, was a boiling whirlpool with no inlet or spit to be seen. We saved the boat nipin napin and bits of the tent blew apart. The poor baby seabirds who had peacefully come into the world and grown up around us tumbled head over heels like peas and blew out to sea when they tried to get across the lagoon.
The storm taught us a lot about our harbour, the location and design of our house and the possibilities for the little meadow and the ravine. We’ve now decided to have the giant rock that the ice age left in the hollow “under our house” blasted apart this summer and not wait.
And start building (getting the builders in) next summer. We’ve simply got to, even if it only amounts to a week on Klovharun now and then.
When the wind dropped they came out from Bredskär after us, Lasse, Ham and Uca who had already been on the inner island for three days – that was a surprise. And the day after she went to Kalvholmen for a fortnight, taking Lasse and family with her.
Tooti threw herself straight into her work right away and she’s still hard at it, happily carving woodcuts. I was so pleased about everything that I rashly started making models of the house on Klovharun and collecting seaweed so I’d eventually be able to grow flowers in the reedy ravine.
And then it was Ham’s turn to have all the life go out of her. “We ought to leave, Bredskär was done for, she was alone, she was in the way”, the whole saga.
That was yesterday, a difficult conversation, back to front, with a greater sense of distance than ever and a black wave of the guilt–melancholy I’ve been struggling with for so long.
Today we’re doing our best again, but I’ve put away the model of the house. Peo and co. have started their month’s holiday and the youngsters came canoeing over from Viken with bilberries, post and milk. They brought a parcel from Impi, which turned out to contain vodka for me and the dearest little jar of caviar for Ham. Impi’s trip to Leningrad was a great success; she described it in the happiest and most touching terms in lots of letters. So here we sit with a vodka each (the house had run completely dry), while outside there’s pouring rain and loud claps of thunder but our own atmospheric pressure is easing.
So there you have the essentials of my island report.
[ … ] I’d so much like to hear a few words from you about how you are. Hot – and very busy, I fear? Ham and Tooti send their very best regards. The thunder has stopped now, and the rain, which filled our empty barrel in half an hour. The fishing boats that were waiting out the storm in the lee of the island are on their way to sea again.
Fondest wishes – a big hug from your Tove.
Lehtovaara: Restaurant in Helsinki.
nipin napin: (Finnish) by the skin of our teeth.
Kalvholmen: The Frenckells’ summer place at Pernå.
17.8.63 [Bredskär]
Darling Maya,
Thank you so much for a long and affectionate letter, so considerate in the midst of your own dull summer – a letter that made me happy and concerned at the same time. And for the clever little birthday card, which arrived on the exact day, just think, with doves and gold, and – thank goodness – news that your teeth are going to be all right.
Teeth problems are, I “somehows” think (to quote Tooti) worse than anything else one can suffer, physical or mental. Of course one’s friends have been visited by all manner of afflictions in the lifetime one has known them – but nothing else seems as ghastly as your tooth troubles. So it feels just like a birthday present that you are better.
Thank you for your wise words about our island triangle. I’m sure you are right. But still – it seems insoluble. Maya, believe me, even if I hoisted every sail in my (rather pitiful) rigging, I wouldn’t be able to steer this one safely to shore. It goes its own way, regardless of what I do. And of course I’ve tried – and keep trying.
It’s dark outside, Tooti’s gone down to the tent on the beach and Ham has retired to the “guest room” with Psipsina, who she likes to have with her.
Lasse went into town this afternoon to see Staffan (who was here for a few days) and meet Nita who is coming home from Sweden with Sophia after the special family occasion.
Just after Tooti’s and my camping trip to Klovharun, Lasse & co. went to Kalvholmen with Vivica and stayed for three weeks. Tooti got straight down to her work and has been steadily at it ever since. Woodcuts, and then some silkscreen prints. I’m pleased she’s been able to work – if my gaggle of relations had sabotaged her working routine it would have been ten times worse than them making her feel personally uncomfortable on the island.
In due course Lasse came back, on his own, and sat there quietly and obligingly in the house, drawing his cartoons, writing his musical for Uca, dealing with his Aero photo correspondence. That didn’t disturb Tooti – they’re used to each other.
He’s off again now, so I’ve moved into the house in his stead, so Ham won’t feel lonely in the August darkness. I know how it makes her feel, mortally melancholy, like being totally shut off, a harbinger of ultimate isolation from everything.
I haven’t felt like letter writing for so long (though I’ve had to write plenty) but tonight, now I’m suddenly alone, I had the urge to write to you. (And you are someone I like far too much to think of writing to simply out of duty)
First of all, congratulations on passing the technical part of your driving test, which must have been pretty difficult? What colour car will you have? Just imagine, Maya, never having to freeze on your way to work, never having to wait for a bus! When you actually get the car isn’t so important – it will definitely come, now you can drive. It’s just a question of time.
Tooti’s talked of nothing but cars since she heard about your plans. I’m sure you’re right that she could do with a more active existence than this stagnant island life. Some of our troubles may well arise from that. Now she’s pinning her hopes on Portugal this winter.
Ham has been invited to Ibiza – meanwhile, we’re flying our separate ways – I shall meet Ham there for the journey home, and spend a few happy weeks with her in Paris. That sounds splendid, doesn’t it? Not that Ham seemed particularly pleased when we unveiled our excellent plans. Perhaps she thinks the whole thing has been devised not for her sake but for ours. I expect one grows distrustful with age and illness. [ … ]
It’s really dark outside now – and it still feels just as fascinating to be utterly alone.
No, I didn’t do any work at all this summer, apart from six paintings of dubious appearance and a dozen couplets I painstakingly welded together for Lasse’s musical “Crash”.
He took them into town with him to show Uca, I hope they pass m
uster. I do hope his play will be a success.
I also did a bit of charity crap, of course, Save the Children and the Red Cross and letter-from-Father Christmas-to-Children-of-the-World, but I don’t count that as work. It’s as if I’ve lost all my drive and things are just closing in all around me – I don’t know what to do.
You see I’ve finally accepted Bredskär again, the way you take back an unfaithful friend. I potter and prettify and arrange and keep house as usual and feel at ease – (though I’d rather be in town of course) but it’s as if there’s no point to it any more.
It’s the same with work, with everything I do, as if I’m desperately trying to play a role I’m unsuitable for, and haven’t even learnt my lines properly. And Klovharun, my refuge, is now like a guilty conscience – we haven’t been there once since those five happy days with Tooti.
You realise, I’m sure, that if Ham views Klovharun as an enemy and just hopes she’ll die before I move there, then it puts quite a dampener on the spontaneous sense of pleasure one would associate with a dream finally coming true. I’ve started feeling scared of the whole lump of rock, and I’m having to develop and refine our plans for the house there, to encourage Tooti.
It’s awful that everything I touch turns into a matter of conscience – and it explains why nothing feels like a pleasure any more.
You can see that if everything I’ve tried and sacrificed and battled with, and given with all my heart, has only resulted in Ham feeling she’s in the way, feeling lonely and sidelined, being unhappy and wishing she could die, then it’s all been totally in vain. Everything is just one big disaster, not helped by the fact that Tooti is also uncomfortable and as nervous as a kitten, and feels I’ve chosen Ham over her. One relief, naturally, is that Tooti is adamant she won’t spend another summer here.
