by Tove Jansson
‘Do the fish bite at night?’ asked Moominpappa.
The fisherman turned and looked straight past them. He wasn’t going to say anything.
‘Isn’t there an island with a big lighthouse somewhere near here?’ Moominpappa continued. ‘Why isn’t it working? We ought to have seen it a long time ago.’
The fisherman glided past them in his boat. They could hardly hear him when he finally said something. ‘Can’t say, really… Go back home… You’ve come too far…’
He disappeared behind them. They listened for the sound of his oars, but could hear nothing in the silent night.
‘He was a little odd, wasn’t he?’ said Moominpappa uncertainly.
‘Very odd, if you ask me,’ said Little My. ‘Quite nuts.’
Moominmamma sighed and tried to straighten her legs. ‘But so are most of the people we know – more or less,’ she said.
The wind had dropped. Moominpappa sat bolt upright at the rudder with his nose in the air. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I have a feeling we’re there. We’re coming in on the leeward side of the island. But I just don’t understand why the lighthouse isn’t working.’
The air was warm and full of the scent of heather. Everything was completely still. And then out of the night loomed an enormous shadow: the island itself was towering over them, looking at them carefully. They could feel its hot breath as the boat struck the sandy beach and came to a standstill: they felt they were being watched, and huddled together, not daring to move.
‘Did you hear that, Mamma?’ whispered Moomintroll.
Swift feet galloped up the beach, splashed a little, and then everything was quiet again.
‘It was only Little My going ashore,’ said Moominmamma. She shook herself, as though to break the silence, and began to poke about among her baskets, trying to get the box of earth with her roses over the side of the boat.
‘Now, take it easy,’ said Moominpappa nervously. ‘I’ll look after all this. Everything must be properly organized from the beginning. The boat is always the most important thing… You sit still and take it easy.’
Moominmamma sat down obediently, trying not to get in the way of the sail as it came down, and the boom as it swung backwards and forwards, while Moominpappa scrambled about in the boat organizing things. The hurricane lamp lit up a circle of white sand and black water, and outside it there was nothing but darkness. Moominpappa and Moomintroll dragged the mattress ashore but not without getting one corner of it wet. The boat heeled over and the blue trunk pressed the rose-bushes against the side of the boat.
Moominmamma sat waiting with her nose in her paws. Everything was as it should be. In time she would probably get used to being looked after, perhaps she would come to like it. Even now she slept for a moment or two.
There was Moominpappa standing in the water and saying to her: ‘You can get out now. Everything’s ready.’ He was happy and wide-awake, and his hat was pushed right back. Higher up on the beach he had built a tent of the sails and the oars, looking like a big, squatting animal. Moominmamma tried to see whether there were any shells on this new beach of theirs, but it was much too dark. They had promised her that there would be shells, big and rare ones such as are to be found far out to sea.
‘Here you are,’ said Moominpappa. ‘Now all you have to do is to sleep. I shall stand guard outside all night, so there’s no need for you to be afraid. Tomorrow night you will be able to sleep in my lighthouse. If only I understood why it isn’t working… Is it nice and cosy inside there?’
‘It’s just fine!’ said Moominmamma, creeping in under the sail.
Little My was off somewhere on her own as usual. It didn’t matter, really, as she was the one member of the family who seemed to manage all right by herself. Everything seemed to be going well.
Moomintroll watched Moominmamma turn round once or twice on the damp mattress until she found her favourite spot, give a little sigh and fall asleep. Of all strange things, that was the strangest, the way Moominmamma could sleep in this new place without unpacking, without making their beds and without giving them a sweet before they went to sleep. She had even left her handbag behind her on the sand. It was a little bit frightening in a way, but at the same time cheering; it meant that all this was a real change, and not just an adventure.
Moomintroll lifted his nose and peeped out from under the sail. There sat Moominpappa on guard, with the hurricane lamp in front of him. He cast a very large, long shadow; the whole of him looked much larger than usual. Moomintroll rolled himself into a ball again and put his paws under his warm tummy. He gave himself up to his dreams. They were blue and rocking, like the sea had been that night.
Gradually the morning came. Moominpappa was quite alone with his island, and with each hour that passed it became more and more his very own. The sky began to grow pale and the rocks rose up in front of him in great undulating masses, and above them he could see the lighthouse. There it was at last, huge and black against the grey of the sky. It was much bigger than he had imagined it would be, for it was just the time when the first light makes one feel helpless and everything seems dangerous if one is alone and awake all by oneself.
Moominpappa turned out the hurricane lamp and made the beach disappear. He didn’t want the lighthouse to see him yet. A cold early morning wind blew in from the sea, and he could hear the cries of sea-gulls from somewhere on the other side of the island.
As Moominpappa sat on the beach, the lighthouse seemed to rise higher and higher above him. It was just like his model that he hadn’t had time to finish. Now he could see that the roof wasn’t as pointed as he had thought and that there was no rail. He gazed at the dark and deserted lighthouse for a long time, and gradually it began to grow smaller and more like the picture he had carried in his mind for so long.
‘In any case, it’s mine,’ he thought, and lit his pipe. ‘I’ll capture the lighthouse. I’ll present it to my family and say: “This is where you’re going to live. When we are safe inside, nothing dangerous can happen to us.”’
*
Little My sat on the lighthouse steps watching the dawn. Below her, the island lay in the half-light, looking like a big grey cat stretching itself, with its claws spread out; both its paws were resting in the sea and its tail was a long, narrow point at the other end of the island. The cat’s back was bristling, but its eyes were invisible.
‘Huh!’ said Little My. ‘This is no ordinary island. It goes down to the bottom of the sea quite differently from other islands. I bet things’ll happen here!’
She huddled up and waited. The sun came up over the sea and shadows and colours began to appear. The island began to take shape and draw in its claws. Everything began to shine, and the chalk-white gulls circled over the point. The cat vanished. But right across the island lay the shadow of the lighthouse like a broad dark ribbon stretching down to the beach where the boat was.
There they all were, far below her like small ants. Moominpappa and Moomintroll carrying as much as they could, striding out of the alder bushes and into the shadow of the lighthouse. There they became even smaller, and stopped, three little white dots turning their noses upwards to look at what was above them.
‘Oh! How big it is!’ said Moominmamma, and froze to the spot.
‘Big?’ shouted Moominpappa. ‘It’s enormous! It’s probably the biggest lighthouse that was ever built. And do you realize that this is the very last island, nobody lives beyond it – there’s nothing but sea. We’re looking the sea straight in the face, so to speak, and far behind us are all those people who live on islands much nearer to the mainland. It’s a wonderful thought, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, wonderful, Pappa!’ Moomintroll cried.
‘Can’t I carry the basket for a while?’ Mamma asked.
‘No, no,’ said Moominpappa. ‘You’re not to carry a thing. All you’ve got to do is to walk straight into your new house – but wait, you must have some flowers to take in with you – wait a moment…’
He disappeared in among the poplar trees and began to pick some flowers.
Moominmamma looked around. How poor the soil was! And there were so many stones everywhere, masses of them all over the place. It certainly wasn’t going to be an easy matter to make a garden there.
‘What a sad sound, Mamma,’ said Moomintroll. ‘What is it?’
Moominmamma listened. ‘Yes, it is,’ she said. ‘It does sound sad. But it’s only the aspens, they always sound like that.’
Tiny wind-swept aspens were growing between the stones, their leaves rustling in the gentle breeze blowing off the sea. They were trembling violently, and one shudder after another passed through them.
The island was different by day; it seemed to have turned its back on them. It wasn’t looking at them the way it had during the warmth of the night; instead it was gazing far out to sea.
‘Here you are,’ said Moominpappa. ‘They’re terribly small, but they’ll open all right if you put them in the sun. Now we must push on. Soon there’ll be a proper path from the beach right up to the house. And there’ll be a jetty for the boat. There’s so much to be done here! Just think! Fancy being able to build all one’s life and turn the island into a miracle of perfection!’ He picked up the baskets and hurried on ahead through the heather towards the lighthouse.
In front of them lay age-old rocks with steep and sharp sides and they stumbled past precipice after precipice, grey and full of crevices and fissures.
‘Everything’s much too big here,’ thought Moominmamma. ‘Or perhaps I’m too small.’
Only the path was as small and insecure as she was. They groped their way forward together through the boulders and came to the rock where the lighthouse stood, waiting on its heavy feet of concrete.
‘Welcome home!’ said Moominpappa.
Slowly they turned their gaze to the lighthouse. Higher and higher – it seemed to go on forever, white and gigantic, it was simply unbelievable. Right at the top, a cloud of frightened swallows flew dizzily backwards and forwards.
‘I feel a little seasick,’ said Moominmamma weakly.
Moomintroll looked at his father. Moominpappa climbed solemnly up the lighthouse steps and lifted his paw to take hold of the door.
‘It’s locked,’ said Little My behind him.
Moominpappa turned round and stared at her blankly.
‘It’s locked,’ repeated Little My. ‘There’s no key.’
Moominpappa pulled the door. He twisted and turned, he knocked and even gave it a kick. Finally, he took a step backwards and looked at it.
‘Here’s the nail,’ he said. ‘Quite obviously a nail for the key. You can see it is! I’ve never heard of anyone who locked a door without hanging the key properly on the nail. Particularly a lighthouse-keeper.’
‘Perhaps it’s under the steps,’ said Moominmamma.
It wasn’t under the steps.
‘Now everybody keep quiet. Quite quiet. I must have time to think.’ He went and sat on the rock a little way away with his nose pointing out to sea.
It was warmer now, and the south-west wind blew gently over the island. It was the right day, the perfect day for occupying a lighthouse. Moominpappa was so disappointed, he felt a sinking feeling in his stomach and he couldn’t collect his thoughts. There was no other place for a key than the nail or under the steps. There were no door-frames and no window-ledges, no flat stones in front of the steps. Everything was smooth and bare.
Moominpappa’s brain felt tired. He was conscious all the time that his family was standing behind him, waiting in silence for him to say something. Finally he called over his shoulder: ‘I’m going to sleep for a while. Problems often solve themselves while one sleeps. The brain works better if one leaves it in peace.’ He rolled himself up in a crevice in the rock and pulled his hat over his eyes. With a great sense of relief, he fell asleep.
Moomintroll went and looked underneath the steps. ‘There’s nothing here except a dead bird,’ he said. It was a tiny, frail skeleton, quite white. He laid it on the steps, where it was immediately blown down the rock by the wind.
‘I saw lots of those down there in the heather,’ said Little My, immediately interested. ‘Reminds me of “The Revenge of the Forgotten Bones”; jolly good story that.’
They stood in silence for a while.
‘What do we do now?’ asked Moomintroll.
‘I was thinking about that fisherman we met during the night,’ said Moominmamma. ‘He must live somewhere on the island. Perhaps he knows something.’ She opened the sack with the bedding in it and took out the red blanket. ‘Cover Pappa up with this,’ she said. ‘It isn’t good to sleep on the rock like that. And then you can go round the island and look for the fisherman. Bring me a little sea-water on your way back, there’s a good troll. The copper can is in the boat. And the potatoes, too.’
It was nice to get moving and have something to do. Moomintroll turned his back on the lighthouse and wandered away across the island. A sea of red heather covered the slope, and below the rock it was warm and peaceful. The ground was hard and hot. It smelt good, but not at all like the garden at home.
Now that he was alone, Moomintroll could begin to look at the island and smell it in the right way. He could feel it with his paws, prick up his ears and listen to it. Away from the roar of the sea the island was quieter than the valley at home, completely silent and terribly, terribly old.
‘It isn’t an island that’ll be easy to get to know,’ Moomintroll thought. ‘It wants to be left in peace.’
The heather disappeared in a mossy swamp in the middle of the island, came out the other side, only to vanish in a low thicket of spruce and dwarf birch. It was odd that there wasn’t a single tall tree. Everything seemed to grow so close to the ground, groping its way across the rock. It occurred to Moomintroll that he, too, should make himself as small as he could. He began to run towards the point.
*
Far out on the western end of the island stood a little house made of stone and cement. It was fixed firmly to the rock with lots of iron clamps. Its back was round like a seal’s, and it looked straight out to sea through a tiny substantial window-pane. The house was so small that you could just about sit in it if you were the right size, and the fisherman had built it for himself. He was lying on his back with his arms under his head, gazing at a cloud moving slowly across the sky.
‘Good morning,’ said Moomintroll. ‘Is this where you live?’
‘Only when it’s stormy,’ replied the fisherman vaguely.
Moomintroll nodded seriously. It was just the right way to live if one liked big waves. Sitting in the middle of the breakers, watching the waves as high as mountains coming and going and listening to the sea thundering on the roof. Moomintroll wanted to ask: ‘Can I come and watch the waves sometime?’ But this house was obviously built just for one.
‘Mamma sends her compliments,’ he said. ‘She asked me to inquire about the key of the lighthouse.’
The fisherman made no answer.
‘Pappa can’t get in,’ Moomintroll explained. ‘We thought that perhaps you might know where…’
Silence. More clouds appeared in the sky.
‘There was a lighthouse-keeper, wasn’t there?’ Moomintroll asked.
At last the fisherman turned his head and looked at him with his watery-blue eyes.
‘No. I don’t know anything about a key,’ he said.
‘Did he put the light out and go away?’ continued Moomintroll. He had never met anybody before who didn’t answer when asked a question. It worried him and made him feel uncomfortable.
‘I can’t really remember,’ said the fisherman. ‘I’ve forgotten what he looked like…’ He got up slowly and pottered off over the rock, grey and wrinkled and as light as a feather. He was very small and had not the slightest desire to talk to anyone.
Moomintroll stood watching the fisherman for a while, then turned and walked back across the narrow strip of land. He went in the direction
of the beach where the boat was in order to fetch the copper can. They would be eating soon, and Moominmamma would make a fire between some stones and lay the meal out on the steps of the lighthouse. Then somehow or other things would be all right.
*
The beach was full of completely white sand. The bay was like a half-moon stretching from one headland to the other, and it formed a trap for all that the winds swept round the island towards the leeward side. Driftwood lay piled up at the high-water mark under the alder bushes, but lower down on the beach the sand was empty and as smooth as a polished floor. It was nice to walk on. If you walked along the edge of the water, your paws left little holes that filled up immediately, like springs. Moomintroll started to look for shells for his mother, but the only ones he could see were broken. Perhaps they’d been smashed by the sea.
He saw something shining in the sand that wasn’t a shell. It was a tiny little silver horseshoe. Quite close by there were hoof-marks in the sand, leading straight into the sea.
‘A horse must have jumped into the sea just here and lost one of his shoes,’ Moomintroll observed to himself seriously. ‘That’s what it must be. A very tiny horse indeed. I wonder whether it’s made of real silver, or only silver-plate?’ He picked up the horseshoe and decided that he would give it to his mother.
A little farther on, the hoof-marks came out of the sea and went straight up the beach. ‘It must be a sea-horse – I’ve never seen one of those. I know you can only find them far out to sea where the water is terribly deep. I hope this sea-horse has a spare pair of shoes at home,’ Moomintroll thought.
