by Tove Jansson
‘Well, if one could find it,’ Moominmamma replied doubtfully.
‘I’ll have a look,’ said Whomper. ‘There must be a pantry somewhere.’
He made his way into the darkness.
In the middle of the floor a door stood alone by itself. Whomper stepped through it just for form’s sake and was surprised to find that it was made of plywood, and had a tiled stove painted on its backside. Then he ascended a staircase and found that it ended in mid-air.
‘Somebody’s pulling my leg,’ Whomper thought. ‘Only I don’t think he’s funny. A door should lead somewhere and a staircase, too. What would life be like if a Misabel suddenly behaved like a Mymble, or a Whomper like a Hemulen?’
Further on he found heaps of rubbish. Curious frames of plaster, plywood and canvas, evidently broken things that the former family hadn’t cared to carry up to the attic or had started to make but never finished.
‘What are you looking for?’ asked the Mymble’s daughter, coming out of a cupboard that had neither shelves nor back to it.
‘Marmalade,’ replied Whomper.
‘Seems to be all kinds of things here,’ said the Mymble’s daughter, ‘so why not marmalade. It must have been a funny family.’
‘We saw one of them,’ said Little My importantly. ‘One who didn’t want to be seen himself!’
‘Where?’ asked Whomper.
The Mumble’s daughter pointed towards a dark corner where a lot of rubbish was piled up to the ceiling. A palm was leaning against the wall nearby and melancholically rustling its paper leaves.
‘A villain!’ whispered Little My. ‘Only waiting to knock us all over the head!’
‘Now, take it easy,’ said Whomper with a slight catch in his throat.
He approached a little door that stood ajar and sniffed carefully.
It led to a narrow passage mysteriously winding on into darkness.
‘I suppose the pantry would be somewhere in these parts,’ said Whomper.
They entered the passage and discovered that it was lined with small doors. The Mymble’s daughter peered at the nearest doorplate and spelled out the faded letters. ‘P, r, o, p, e, r, t, i, u, s,’ she read ‘Propertius. What a villainous name!’
Whomper braced himself and knocked. They waited, but evidently Mr Propertius wasn’t in.
The Mymble’s daughter pushed the door open.
Never before had they seen so many things at one time and in one place. The walls were all shelves up to the ceiling and down to the floor, and the shelves contained all the things that can be placed on shelves. Large bowls filled with fruit, playthings, table-lamps and china, tin helmets and flowers, tools and stuffed birds, books and telephones, fans and buckets, globes and guns, hatboxes and mantel clocks and letter-scales and…
Little My took a flying jump from her sister’s shoulder and landed on one of the shelves. She stared in a mirror and cried: ‘Look! I’m growing smaller all the time! I can’t even see myself any more!’
‘It’s not a real looking-glass,’ explained the Mymble’s daughter. ‘You’re here all right, life-size.’
Whomper hunted for marmalade. ‘Perhaps jam will do just as well,’ he said and tried to take the lid off a jampot.
‘Painted plaster,’ stated the Mymble’s daughter. She took an apple and chewed at it. ‘Wood,’ she said.
Little My laughed.
But Whomper felt worried. All the things around him were false. Their pretty colours were a sham, and everything he touched was made of paper or wood or plaster. The golden crowns weren’t nice and heavy, and the flowers were paper flowers. The fiddles had no strings and the boxes no bottoms, and the books couldn’t even be opened.
Troubled in his honest heart, Whomper pondered over the meaning of it all, but he couldn’t find any solution. ‘I wish I were just a tiny bit more clever,’ he thought. ‘Or a few weeks older.’
‘I like it here,’ said the Mymble’s daughter. ‘It’s just as if nothing really mattered here.’
‘Does anything matter anywhere?’ asked Little My.
‘No,’ her sister replied happily. ‘Don’t ask such silly questions.’
At that moment somebody gave a snort. Loudly and contemptuously.
They looked frightenedly at one other.
‘I’m going back,’ Whomper mumbled. ‘All these things make me sad.’
A loud thump resounded from the drawing-room, and a light cloud of dust rose from the shelves. Whomper snatched a sword and rushed out in the passage. They could hear Misabel squeaking.
The drawing-room was completely dark. Something large and yielding struck Whomper in the face. He closed his eyes and thrust his sword straight through the invisible enemy. There was a sharp, rending sound, as if the enemy was made of cloth, and when Whomper dared to open his eyes again he could see daylight through the hole he had made.
‘What are you doing?’ asked the Mymble’s daughter behind him.
‘I’ve killed Propertius,’ replied Whomper in a trembling voice.
The Mymble’s daughter laughed and climbed through the hole into the drawing-room. ‘And what are you up to here?’ she asked.
‘Mother just pulled a rope!’ cried Moomintroll.
‘And then something terribly big fell down from the ceiling,’ cried Misabel.
‘And all of a sudden we had a landscape in the room,’ said the Snork Maiden. ‘At first we thought it was real. Until you came in through the lawn.’
The Mymble’s daughter turned for a look.
She saw a wood of very green birches by a highly-coloured blue lake. Whomper’s face was peering out of the grass with a relieved expression.
‘Great goodness,’ Moominmamma said. ‘I thought it was some kind of curtain string. And then all this comes sailing down. What luck nobody was hurt. Did you find any marmalade?’
‘No,’ answered Whomper.
‘Well, we must have some tea in any case,’ said Moominmamma. ‘We can look at this picture meanwhile. It’s wonderful. I hope it’s going to stay where it is now.’
She began pouring out tea.
And at that moment somebody laughed.
It was a spiteful laugh that sounded immensely old, and it emerged from the dark corner behind the paper palm.
‘What are you laughing at?’ asked Moominpappa after a long silence.
The silence only lengthened.
‘Won’t you take a cup of tea?’ asked Moominmamma uncertainly.
The corner remained silent.
‘It must be someone who has lived here before us,’ she said. ‘Why won’t he step out and introduce himself?’
They waited a long time, but as nothing happened, Moominmamma said: ‘Your tea’s getting cold, children,’ and began to share out the cheese in equal pieces. Then while she spread butter on the toast a sudden shower of rain drummed on the roof.
Just as suddenly a gale started to whine and whistle outside.
They looked out and saw the sun sinking peacefully in a summer sea, smooth as a mirror.
‘Something rotten here,’ remarked Whomper. He seemed rather upset.
The gale heightened. They distinctly heard the sound of a surf breaking on a distant shore, and the rain evidently continued to pour down over their heads – but outside the weather looked just as lovely as before. And then the thunder started. At first a quiet rumbling in the distance. Then it drew closer, white lightning flashed through the drawing-room, and soon peal after peal rolled over the unhappy Moomins.
The sun was still setting, quietly and nicely.
Then the floor began to turn around. It started off on a slow pace, but soon it went faster and faster, until the tea splashed to and fro in the cups and spilled over the rims. The drawing-room behaved like a merry-go-round, and the table and chairs and all the Moomins, and the mirror-cabinet and the linen cupboard could do nothing but hang on.
In a little while everything stopped as suddenly as it had started. Thunder, lightning, rain, and wind, all w
ere gone.
‘What a very strange world the world is,’ exclaimed Moominmamma.
‘That wasn’t real!’ cried Whomper. ‘There were no clouds. And the lightning struck thrice and nothing broke! And the rain and wind and…’
‘Somebody was laughing at me all the time!’ said Misabel.
‘It’s all over now,’ said Moomintroll.
‘We’ll have to be very careful,’ said his father. ‘This is a dangerous, haunted house, and anything may happen.’ He looked around him with shining eyes.
‘Thanks for the tea,’ said Whomper.* He walked to the edge of the drawing-room and stared out in the dusk. ‘They’re all so very unlike me,’ he thought. ‘They have feelings and they see colours and hear sounds and whirl around, but what they feel and see and hear, and why they whirl doesn’t concern them in the least.’
The uppermost rim of the sun-disc disappeared in the water. And at the same moment the whole drawing-room was splendidly lit.
In astonishment the Moomins looked up from their cups of tea. An arch of burning lamps, red and blue, stretched above them. It framed the evening sea like a wreath of stars, beautiful and friendly-looking. A similar row of lamps glowed along the floor.
‘That’s to prevent people from falling in the water,’ said Moominmamma. ‘How orderly life can be. But all these exciting and wonderful events have made me just a little tired. I think I’ll retire now.’
But before Moominmamma pulled her counterpane over her snout she remembered to say: ‘Still, please wake me up if anything new happens!’
*
Later in the evening Misabel went for a solitary stroll by the sea. She saw the moon rise and start his lonesome journey through the night.
‘He’s exactly like me,’ Misabel thought sadly. ‘So plump and lonely.’
At this thought she felt so forsaken and mild that she had to cry a little.
‘What are you crying for?’ asked Whomper nearby.
‘I don’t know, but it feels nice,’ replied Misabel.
‘But people cry because they feel sorry, don’t they?’ objected Whomper.
‘Well, yes – the moon,’ Misabel replied vaguely and blew her nose. ‘The moon and the night and all the sadness there is…’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Whomper.
CHAPTER 4
About vanity and the dangers of sleeping in trees
A FEW days passed.
The Moomins were beginning to get used to their strange home. Every evening, exactly at sundown, the beautiful lamps were lighted. Moominpappa found out that the red velvet curtains could be pulled to against rain, and that there was a small pantry under the floor. It had a round little roof and was quite cool as there was water around it on three sides. But the nicest discovery was that the ceiling was filled with pictures, still more beautiful than the one with the birches. You could pull them down and back up again, just as you liked. There was one picture of a veranda with a fretwork railing, and it became their favourite, because it reminded them of the Moomin Valley.
The whole family would have felt completely happy, had it not been for the strange laugh which sometimes cut them short when they talked with each other. At other times there were just contemptuous snorts. Somebody was snorting at them but never showed himself. Moominmamma used to fill a special bowl at the dinner-table and put it by the paper palm in the dark corner, and the following day the bowl was always carefully emptied.
‘It’s someone who is very shy,’ she said.
‘It’s someone who’s waiting? said the Mymble’s daughter.
*
One morning Misabel, the Mymble’s daughter, and the Snork Maiden were combing their hair.
‘Misabel ought to change her hair-do,’ remarked the Mymble’s daughter. ‘A parting in the middle doesn’t suit her.’
‘But no fringe for her,’ said the Snork Maiden and ruffled up her soft hair between the ears. She gave her tail-tuft a light brushing and turned her head to see if the fluff was tidy down her back.
‘Does it feel nice to be fluffy all over?’ asked the Mymble’s daughter,
‘Very,’ the Snork Maiden replied with satisfaction. ‘Misabel! Are you fluffy?’
Misabel didn’t answer.
‘Misabel ought to be fluffy,’ said the Mymble’s daughter and began to tie her hair in a knot.
‘Or curly all over,’ said the Snork Maiden.
All of a sudden Misabel stamped her feet. ‘You and your old fluff!’ she cried out, bursting into tears. ‘You know everything, don’t you! And the Snork Maiden hasn’t even got a frock on! I’d never never never show myself if I weren’t properly dressed! I’d sooner be dead than have no frock on!’
Misabel hurried off across the drawing-room and into the passage. She stumbled sobbing through the dark, and then she stopped short and felt very much afraid. She had remembered the strange laugh.
Misabel stopped crying and anxiously began to feel her way back again. She fumbled and fumbled for the drawing-room door, and the longer she fumbled the more afraid she felt. Finally she found a door and pulled it open.
It wasn’t the drawing-room at all. It was quite another room. A dimly-lighted room containing a long row of heads. Cut-off heads on long and narrow necks, with an unusual lot of hair. They were all looking towards the wall. ‘If they’d looked at me,’ Misabel thought confusedly. ‘Imagine if they had looked at me…’
She was so scared at first that she didn’t dare to move a step. She could only stare, bewitched, at the golden curls, the black curls, the red curls…
*
Meanwhile the Snork Maiden was feeling rather sorry in the drawing-room.
‘Never mind Misabel,’ said the Mymble’s daughter. ‘Anything makes her fly off the handle.’
‘But she was right,’ the Snork Maiden mumbled with a glance down at her stomach. ‘I ought to have a frock.’
‘Of course not,’ said the Mymble’s daughter. ‘Don’t be silly.’
‘But you have one,’ protested the Snork Maiden.
‘Well, that’s me,’ said the Mymble’s daughter carelessly. ‘Whomper! Should the Snork Maiden put on a frock?’
‘If she’s cold,’ replied Whomper.
‘No, no, just anyway,’ explained the Snork Maiden.
‘Or of it rains,’ said Whomper. ‘But then it’s more sensible to put on a raincoat.’
The Snork Maiden shook her head. For a while she hesitated. Then she said: ‘I’ll go and have this matter out with Misabel.’ She went for a flashlight and stepped into the small passage. It was empty.
‘Misabel?’ cried the Snork Maiden in a hushed voice. ‘As a matter of fact, I like your parting in the middle…’
But no Misabel answered her. Then the Snork Maiden caught sight of a streak of light at one of the doors and pattered up to it to look through the crack.
In the room behind the door Misabel was sitting all alone. She had a wholly new hair on. Long, yellow corkscrew curls framed her worried face.
The little Misabel stared at her reflection in the glass and sighed. She reached for another beautiful mop of hair,
a red and wild one, and pulled the fringe down to her eyes.
It didn’t make matters better. Finally, with trembling paws, she seized a set of curls that she had laid aside because she loved them most. They were magnificently jet-black with little dashes of gold glittering like tears. Breathlessly Misabel fitted this splendid hair over her own. For a Jong minute she looked at herself in the mirror. Then she lifted off the hair very slowly and sat staring at the floor.
The Snork Maiden slipped back without disturbing her. She realized that Misabel wanted to be alone.
But the Snork Maiden didn’t return to the others. She went instead a bit further along the passage sniffing the air. She had noticed an enticing and very interesting scent, a scent of face powder. The small round spot from her flashlight wandered along the walls and finally caught the magic word ‘Costumes’ on a door. ‘Dresses,’ whi
spered the Snork Maiden to herself. ‘Frocks!’ She turned the doorhandle and stepped in.
‘Oh, how wonderful,’ she panted. ‘Oh how beautiful!’
Robes, dresses, frocks. They hung in endless rows, in hundreds, one beside the other all round the room – gleaming brocade, fluffy clouds of tulle and swansdown, flowery silk, night-black velvet with glittering spangles everywhere like small, many-coloured blinker beacons.
The Snork Maiden drew closer, overwhelmed. She fingered at the dresses. She seized an armful of them and pressed them to her snout, to her heart. The frocks rustled and swished, they smelled of dust and old perfume, they buried her in rich softness. Suddenly the Snork Maiden released them all and stood on her head for a few minutes.
‘To calm myself,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll have to calm down
a bit. Or else I’ll burst with happiness. There’s too many of them…’
*
A little before dinner Misabel was back again in the drawing-room and sat grieving alone by herself in a corner.
‘Hello,’ said the Snork Maiden and sat down by her side.
Misabel gave her a glance without replying.
‘I’ve been looking for a dress,’ said the Snork Maiden. ‘And I found several hundred and was so happy.’
Misabel made a sound that could have meant anything.
‘Perhaps a thousand!’ continued the Snork Maiden. ‘And I looked and looked and tried on one after the other and felt sadder and sadder.’
‘Did you!’ Misabel exclaimed.
‘Yes, what d’you think,’ said the Snork Maiden. ‘They were far too many, don’t you see. I couldn’t ever have had them all or even choose the prettiest. They nearly made me afraid! If there’d been only two instead!’
‘That’d been much easier,’ replied Misabel a little more cheerfully.
‘So in the end I just ran away from them all,’ finished the Snork Maiden.
They sat silent for a while and watched Moominmamma lay the table.
‘Just think,’ said the Snork Maiden, ‘just think what sort of a family lived here before us! A thousand frocks! A floor that goes around sometimes, pictures hanging from the
