by Tove Jansson
There are only two weeks to go now, which I’m glad of. Around 1st September we’ll be heading to town with cat and child and the whole crowd, and then at least it will be a different kind of emotion.
Maya, nothing on earth (not even toothache!) can be worse than being old and ill and awaiting your demise. Believe me, I’m trying to understand, putting myself in her shoes to the point where I think of precious little but death. But one can’t keep laying that ace of spades, that trump which grinds down everything else, too often. It isn’t fair play. I’m writing all this now so we don’t have to talk about it when we meet.
You need to know, in any case, you and I are too close for me not to tell you. And a letter that you burn – please! – is better than talking, I think.
Maya, it’s so awful, these two women I love, one of whom wants to die and the other to live at any price – and I can’t help either without making things worse for the other. Sometimes I think I hate them both and it makes me feel ill.
And I can’t bear the bloody sight of islands any more, big or small.
Things will be better when Nita gets here with her amiably non-chalant sloppiness and the whole house is full of nursery and clutter and nappies – then there’s no time to think, only to get on with it.
And it will be better still when we’re back in town. Then we’ll go to Lehtovaara and eat crayfish, won’t we?
I so look forward to seeing you again. I’ll ring as soon as I’m back.
Bye,
Tove.
P.S. And for heaven’s sake, you surely won’t go off to Egypt until I’ve had time to see you!?
Later. All three of us went out to Klovharun on Tooti’s initiative and marked out crosses for metal mooring rings. It defused the situation a bit. Now I’m transporting seaweed for the flowers on Bredskär and Ham will put it out next year.
They send warm wishes.
DURING THE SUMMER OF 1964, TOVE JANSSON WORKED ON Pappan och havet (Moominpappa at Sea), a book in which she “let off steam”, as she expressed it in a letter to Maya Vanni. Maya Vanni read the manuscript and Tove Jansson was grateful for her comments. She reached her fiftieth birthday on 9 August.
JULY –64 [Bredskär]
Darling Maya,
Thank you for your nice long letter, which I’ve read many times. I’m as glad as you are about the trip to the Mediterranean! The boat seems good. And I’m sure it’s very sensible not to make any detours that are too exotic this time – you’ll be able to concentrate more cool-headedly, with a sense of having plenty of time. And North Africa certainly is exciting enough. Algiers and Morocco are supposed to be much more colourful than Tunis, where I went. And that was pretty exciting in itself. Then you’ll fly home from some suitable city. I know no one else with your capacity for delighting in preparations and plans. And you certainly need it when you’re being frazzled in town.
We’re wickedly well off out here – and the easy, affable atmosphere is holding. At the moment we’re sitting on the sandy beach. Tooti’s pulling nails out of a navigation mark, (it’s illegal to salvage them, but they’re so handy for pulling boats up) Ham is reading detective novels. She’s a bit sorry for herself after having some pains in her heart. The first time this summer.
With the patience of an angel and two fingers, Tooti has typed out my book, and I’m now busy illustrating it.
I’m terribly glad you feel the book is up to scratch, thinking back over it afterwards. I’ve done quite a lot more work on it and lightened the parts that are too grown-up and dull, refined the language and tried to distil it down.
[ … ] The first ten days of our free working month were entirely taken up by unexpected guests – Salme and Harry – Assendelft – Uca – Gylling, my lawyer, plus wife – a gifted young fellow from Gothenburg who came to complain that the girl’s parents had refused to him let him into the house in Borgå (Moomin fans) and another lad who is going to write his dissertation on Moomintroll. And a few Abbe invitations with the Pellinge folk.
So things have been pretty topsy-turvy, as you can imagine. I’ll fill you in on the details when I see you.
Though quite how much news one can fit into a fiftieth birthday I’m not sure. Maybe the event itself will be quite good fun. Lots of people and booze and feelings and fruit cordial for the children. It’s very nice that you actually want to come and join the throng. Don’t forget sheets. And the occasion will be cat-free!
We’re expecting Reima and family for a week, before long. It’s going to be a veritable island of aunties. As you can see, Tooti can hardly gear herself up for a spell of work with all this social life in full swing; the gaps between interruptions are too short.
I can fit in some illustrating – that’s different (though it can be a struggle at times). But she takes it in her stride, gets on with some knottywooding and is placid and agreeable.
The Uca sojourn was a great success. – I can just imagine how it was with her invitations and plaintive telephone calls about feeling abandoned – you describe them to a tee. Thank goodness you can take it as you do.
But unfortunately – the gloss inevitably wears off a friendship over time if there are too many repetitions of that sort of behaviour.
Ah, so you didn’t write. I’m sure that was a good decision. And the most important thing was for you to regain your composure afterwards. I’ve been waiting eagerly to hear – not what you did, exactly – but how you reacted.
As I haven’t heard from you since then, I realise nothing can have happened on that score – perhaps a note scribbled while travelling. How I hate getting those!!!
You know what, sometimes – at long intervals – I also experience that sense of gloom – at times even anguish– that something has been irretrievably lost, has slipped by. One tells oneself with a degree of amused indulgence that it’s all part of the ageing process and will pass. But it’s horrible. Ah well.
Now it’s another day, towards evening, with gentle, long-overdue rain. The island is tinder-dry and with much cursing I dutifully water the Spaniards’ pathetic little salad patches with seawater, their snowball trees, delicate chromosome blueberry plants, myrtle and other touching idiocies. Dill growing in seaweed!
Good grief, it’s like going back to the first years we lived here and tried to establish tender plants from the inner archipelago. I realise now that I must have been too dominant and snatched the initiative away from Lasse. Now he can start settling in here in his own way at last. Nasturtiums! So I’m watering frantically and restoring the balance (or trying to, anyway) by at least not offering any good advice. – One day we saw great columns of smoke rising up, over beyond Viken, and dashed to the boat with all our buckets.
There was quite a stretch of forest burning and I set about extinguishing it with Fillyjonkian delight, the most satisfying part of all being when I found someone’s axe on a tree stump in the smoke and cut down a spruce sapling to use as a beater at the fire line. Unfortunately the Pellinge hoses arrived pretty quickly.
I shouldn’t say that. The people of Vik were white in the face and I’ve never experienced a real forest fire. I’m sure it’s indescribably awful.
Ham’s started some illustrations. Delicate little vignettes for a book we’re publishing with Schildts (words by me) – a book for people in love, with space for them to do most of the writing. It’s so nice to see her working.
We’re both drawing like mad; in a week we’ll have a nursery here, hopeless from a work point of view. Tooti’s given up. She’s knottywooding, as I said. And waiting for Klovharun.
We had 5 ½ days out there in our tent this year. They were perfect. I toiled away, crazily hacking out reeds and carting away sharp pieces of rock after the blasting, and was completely and blissfully happy. Perhaps there’ll be a few more days in August, once Lasse gets back to look after the other island and my fiftieth is over, on the ninth.
Abbe’s got his traditional birthday do on the 15th, there’ll scarcely be time for Klovharun i
n between. Or perhaps there will. Tooti’s going back to town to work after Abbe’s special occasion.
Have I ever told you how much I detest birthdays and all family parties, anniversaries and High Days and Holidays generally? They’ve always ruined my private life and racked me with guilt, they’re simply deadly. Maybe I’ll get through the wretched business better with you here.
Perhaps I could go out to Klovharun on my own when it’s all over and everybody’s gone …? But I shan’t tell a soul, they’d only worry about me not coping on my own. Who worries about me not coping in company?
Now that we haven’t had anybody here for a while, island life has slipped into a peaceful, recurring rhythm that gives me a calm, blunted feeling of safe continuation with no responsibility or presentiments of disaster.
Tooti and I wake up early, always simultaneously though we sleep in separate beds. I slither over and we lie close, close for a while, and she switches on the radio.
Then I let the cat out and observe the weather and put the coffee on. Clean my teeth and throw the contents of my tooth mug at Psipsina with a yell, it’s a ritual. The damn cat streaks off like a lunatic.
(we’re sleeping in the house so Ham’s not left alone up here at nights. While the Spaniards are away, that is) After that I take coffee and toast to Ham in the guest room, serve Tooti and myself and read crime novels while I drink mine. Later in the day I move on to “a better class of book”. Then the cat comes in and howls so we go down to the beach for some fish from the cage. I’m very attached to these morning activities. Then it’s time for the washing up and bringing in wood and water. We rarely clean the house and only have the occasional wash, with much brouhaha and pans of hot water on the ground outside. Then we do our own private thing until dinner, which we eat sometime in the middle of the day, our noses in our books. We get on with our work.
After dinner Ham takes a nap – in the evening we have tea and then read, set out nets or play cards. We bring the cat indoors and I go in to light Ham’s lamp. Always the same. If we’ve any drink, we tend to have one around four. Or several, in fact. We don’t talk much. And so the days pass in blessed tranquillity.
Yet I’m always longing for the Outer Island, longing to build and plan and move up into higher gear – you know what I mean.
It will be built now – next year at the latest – and Ham’s going to live out there with us for part of each summer. I’ve discussed it with Tooti. My heel-dragging over the new building project has now turned into a panic to get started, but the blueprints are taking their time and I can’t find anyone to shift the blast rubble.
I must start soon before the State gets wind of my building permit. Or Dr Vallgren reports me. You know what, he boasted to Gylling that he imposed conditions on Klovharun the way he did (on that list with his name at the top) specifically in the hope that those non-legal documents would wreck my building permit! You remember how he snatched Kummelskär away and set the Pellinge residents against me! Why does he hate me, can you understand it? He’s got lots of islands of his own, bought at below market value, among which he spreads his multitude of relations. This Klovharun business has become a kind of secret mania for me – I’ve simply got to get there, all the more so when everything and everybody conspires to prevent me.
Last summer on Bredskär was hell – this year I’ve sort of atoned for all that and put it to bed – left things clean and tidy behind me, as it were. I finally feel I can move with a clear conscience and I’ve got to do it before everything gets grubby again.
It feels like when I was 17 and agonising over how to leave home without upsetting anyone. Isn’t that topnotch – as they say in Sweden!
I shall so enjoy reading the new book in your “secret library”.
Dusk is falling. All the best and bye for now – I shall write some more if I can’t get the letter off to the post
Guess what, I went out with Abbe one day to all the lighthouses to study them for the book. It was great fun!
Your Tove.
the Spaniards: Lars, Nita and Sophia Jansson spent the winter in Ibiza.
a book for people in love: Vi. En romantisk bok för älskande (Us. A Romantic Book for Lovers). With words by TJ and illustrations by Signe Hammarsten Jansson, Schildts, 1965.
25.8.65 [Klovharun]
Darling Maya,
It’s a long time since June, when I got your warm letter – we’d had our usual amicable and slightly haphazard midsummer, but it’s still pleasant to recall it – you were off to Jväskylä and were finding your job dreary – and sometime in July a film script was going to be ready. By now you’re probably planning your autumn trip, but I know nothing at all about how you’ve been because I didn’t get round to writing myself. It’s possible I was rather thrown by the Margareta affair attracting so much ink – as tends to be the way with me, a tiny bit of mild thoughtlessness led to a terribly involved reckoning, with sympathy the main sum on the account sheet.
You ought to come along to that “association” sometime; it’s good fun and for once there’s an opportunity to dance. If you also want to pay for a slap-up dinner at the Restaurant with a private violinist and a rose seller before the dance, for half a dozen scattered ghosts, that’s OK – but just beware of doing any irregular dancing afterwards. I’ve never had to write so many soothing letters in such a short space of time before – and the matter wasn’t settled until Bitti took her new friend to Lundby, where Margareta fell head over heels with the countess and was no longer friends with Bitti but intensely interested in agriculture. After that we had a succession of ghost-hypocritical cries for help until I was able to calm down the whole colony and find some peace myself, without showing how relieved I was.
The house wasn’t finished until 15th July and our pirates went back to Kråkö after a strange four-man farewell party, which I’ll tell you about when we meet.
So Tooti and I were no longer builders’ mates and didn’t have to do all that cooking any more, but instead we had half of Nyland’s coastal population swarming out here to look at the remarkable house that took so long and cost so much, and to wonder how and where we actually slept when we were there with our Kråkö gang. All sorts of rumours seem to be blossoming about Harun and Schrünkel-Krünkel’s original halo is well on its way to sliding over to us.
The invasion is still going on – but we’ve had a few days of gales when we’ve actually been left in peace to get on with our work. Tooti’s done sketches for the triennial exhibition and will be going to town at the end of August for an intensive bout of work in the weeks she’s got left and I shall stay here for the time being and try to lick the Alice in Wonderland illustrations into shape. Bonniers wants them idealised to fit in with the people’s home, but I feel more and more convinced that the only appropriate illustrator for this pathological nightmare would have been Hieronymus Bosch.
Ham has been terribly ill, and still is. While the Kråko gang was building she came to Harun for three- or four-day weekends, then for slightly longer periods. Lasse rebuilt the whole guest room, put insulation in the roof, walls and floors – but it still seems the little hut won’t be warm enough. The stove was really hot, so she threw the window open in the middle of the night – the wind changed and she fell asleep with it open – and after that the pneumonia she had in the spring came back. When Ham was finally restored to health with penicillin those freezing nights set in and the whole wretched thing started all over again.
Now she’s here on Harun with a violent reaction to penicillin, hives all over, rheumatic headache and vomiting everything back up. She’s a little bit better than yesterday.
I rang a doctor who refused to come and said we were breaking the law and should take the patient to hospital immediately. We had Gylling’s big swish car all ready to go but Ham refused point blank; she didn’t want to be moved anywhere.
So now I’m trying to fix her without knowing anything about medicine or nursing and as you’ll appreciate I’m even m
ore petrified than usual. I console myself that she likes it here on Harun and that Tooti is being kind. (that is, after some earlier and unfortunately understandable eruptions which rather shook us = me and Tooti)
Oh well – it’s been a positive summer and quite marvellous in parts – but not easy. The old triangle in a new way, you know. I still think all three of us have come through it pretty well, especially Ham. Tooti and I have sniped at each other a few times, but we can be forgiven that. We could have been worse.
Be that as it may, we’re pleased with our beautiful house and love the island as much as we ever did Bredskär. One day I slipped off with Peo & co who were heading for my coveted Kummelskär, my isle of dashed hopes, you know – where I’d sworn never to set foot again, and it was over; I just confirmed that the island was wonderful – but that it was Harun I loved. Just like some bitter old infatuation that had faded away. (incidentally I read somewhere that ghosts have pronounced island complexes, which interest me. Some form of identification, isolation trauma, the devil only knows)
By 9 o’clock it’s completely dark out here. Then one goes out onto the rocks with a completely new Gadget: a Talky Walky, and telephones Bredskär. Lasse’s voice is always very clear, but mine never is. It feels very desolate, I can tell you, to stand there shouting about how Ham is and not being heard. Sometimes I hear snatches of conversations from unknown ships in unintelligible languages, sometimes I can hear Lasse talking to Peo in Viken even though they can’t hear a word I’m yelling. That’s the way it is with gadgets. By the way, Brunström persuaded me to swap our old 3 ½ horsepower for a 7 H.P. Penta (a mere 100,000 difference in old marks, haha) but starting this new speed monster is beyond me. And now they want a plastic boat too, flat-bottomed. And we’ve a gas ring in the kitchen – but that’s a hangover from our November adventure of course, when I had to be builder’s mate and head cook in the open air.
