Moominpappa at Sea

by Tove Jansson

  The boat lay on her side with her sail rolled up, looking as though she never wanted to sail again. She had been pulled so high up the beach that she seemed to have nothing to do with the sea any more. Moomintroll stood still and looked at the Adventure. ‘I do feel sorry for her,’ he thought, ‘but perhaps she’s asleep. Anyway, we shall be putting a net out one of these nights.’

  The clouds were coming up over the island, calm blue-grey clouds in parallel lines across the sky, stretching right to the horizon. The beach seemed very lonely. ‘I’m going home,’ thought Moomintroll. Home for him suddenly meant the steps in front of the lighthouse. The valley where they had lived seemed a long way away. Besides, he had found a silver horsehoe that belonged to a sea-horse. Somehow that settled the matter.

  *

  ‘But he can’t have forgotten everything!’ said Moominpappa, for the second time. ‘He must have known the lighthouse-keeper. They lived on the same island. They must have been friends!’

  ‘He doesn’t remember a thing,’ said Moomintroll.

  Little My breathed in through her nose, and then breathed out between her teeth.

  ‘That old fisherman is an old fool with a head full of seaweed. I knew it as soon as I set eyes on him. If two men like that live on the same island, either they know all there is to know about each other or else they don’t want to have anything to do with each other at all. Probably both. One as a result of the other, I mean. Believe you me, I know. I’m pretty sharp when it comes to things like that.’

  ‘I do hope it doesn’t rain,’ murmured Moominmamma.

  They stood round Moomintroll in a circle. It was quite chilly now that the sun was behind the clouds. Moomintroll felt a little confused and didn’t want to tell them about the house built looking at the waves. And it was quite impossible to give Moominmamma the horseshoe just then, with them all standing and staring at him like that. He made up his mind to give it to her later when they were alone.

  ‘I do hope it doesn’t rain,’ Moominmamma repeated. She carried the copper can to the fireplace and put the flowers Moominpappa had picked for her in water. ‘If it rains,’ she said, ‘I ought to scrub one of the pots to collect rainwater in. That is if there are any pots here…’

  ‘But I’m the one who’s going to do all that sort of thing,’ exclaimed Moominpappa plaintively. ‘Just be patient. Everything must be done in the right order. We can’t bother about food and rain and small trifles like that before I’ve found the key.’

  ‘Huh!’ said Little My. ‘That old fisherman has thrown the key into the sea, and the lighthouse-keeper along with it. Frightful things have happened here, and there’s worse to come!’

  Moominpappa sighed. He went round the lighthouse to the rocks overlooking the sea, where the others couldn’t see him. The family got on his nerves at times – they could never stick to the matter in hand. He wondered whether all fathers found the same thing.

  Well, there was no point in searching for the key or trying to produce it by going to sleep. He must feel where it was. He must try getting in the right mood, like his father-in-law used to do. All her life, his mother-in-law had gone round dropping things everywhere or leaving them behind and forgetting where she had left them. Then his father-in-law would turn on something in his brain. That’s all that was needed. He always found things after that. Then he used to say: ‘Here’s your old junk,’ but in a kind way.

  Moominpappa tried. He sauntered about aimlessly among the rocks and tried to turn something on in his brain. In the end he felt that everything he had up there was rattling about like peas in a tin. But nothing happened.

  His paws had found a well-worn path that twisted in and out of the boulders in the short sunburnt grass. While he was walking and trying to turn something on in his brain, it occurred to him that perhaps it was the lighthouse-keeper who had gone up and down this path. He must have gone up and down here many times a long time ago. And he must have come to exactly the same spot on the cliffs overlooking the sea where Moominpappa had come to. The path came to an end. Here there was nothing but the great empty sea.

  Moominpappa went up to the edge and looked over. Here the cliff fell away in precipice after precipice, a mass of playful dancing lines and curves that bent out of sight deep, deep down. At the foot of the cliff he could hear the murmur of the breakers, the water rose and fell, heaved against the rocks and then sank back like a clumsy great beast. The water lay in the shadow, and it was very dark.

  Moominpappa’s legs trembled and he felt distinctly giddy. He sat down quickly, but he couldn’t stop himself looking down. This was the great ocean, who knows how many fathoms deep, and it was quite unlike the sea and the waves that played round the jetty back there at home. Moominpappa leaned a little further forward and caught sight of a little ledge just beneath the crest. It seemed quite natural to let oneself slide down to the smooth shelf in the cliff-face, it was hollowed out and as round as a chair. Suddenly Moominpappa was completely alone and cut off; there was nothing but sky and sea around him.

  This is where the lighthouse-keeper must have sat. He must have sat there often. Moominpappa shut his eyes. Everything around him was so huge that he felt giddy, and the peas in his head rattled worse than ever. The lighthouse-keeper must have come down here when a high sea was running… He had seen the gulls flying in the wind against a stormy sky, like a cloud of snow in front of his eyes. Drops of water, like little pearls, had reached him, hanging suspended for a moment in the air in front of him before plunging down into the thundering black water down there…

  Moominpappa opened his eyes and shook himself. He pressed his back and his paws against the wall of rock behind him, where he could see that little white flowers were growing in the cracks in the rock. Imagine! Flowers! And in the widest crack there was something shining rust-red; a key, a heavy iron key.

  Something clicked inside Moominpappa’s head. Of course, everything was as clear as day. This was the place where the lighthouse-keeper came when he wanted to be entirely alone. A place for thought and meditation. And it was here that he had left the key so that Moominpappa should find it and take over the lighthouse. With great ceremony and the help of magic forces, Moominpappa had been chosen as the owner of the lighthouse and its keeper.

  *

  ‘Oh, how wonderful! You’ve found it then!’ said Moominmamma.

  ‘Where was it?’ exclaimed Moomintroll.

  ‘Oh, I don’t really know,’ said Moominpappa mysteriously. ‘The world is full of great and wonderful things for those who are ready for them. Perhaps it was the biggest and whitest gull that presented it to me…’

  ‘Huh!’ said Little My. ‘On a silk ribbon, with a military band playing, I suppose.’

  Moominpappa went up the steps and put the key in the lock. Slowly and with a great deal of creaking the huge door opened. Inside all was darkness. Little My dashed in like a flash, but Moominpappa caught her by the hair and pulled her back. ‘Oh no you don’t!’ he said. ‘You shan’t be first this time. I’m the lighthouse-keeper now, and I must go in first and carry out an inspection.’ He disappeared into the darkness with Little My at his heels.

  Moominmamma came slowly up to the door, and looked in. The lighthouse was quite hollow, like a rotten tree trunk, and from top to bottom there was a rickety winding staircase. With what seemed like an awful effort, the staircase climbed up and up in smaller and smaller spirals, creaking and groaning as Moominpappa went up it. A little daylight filtered through holes in the thick walls, and in each hole the silhouette of a large, motionless bird could be seen. The birds stared down at them.

  ‘You must remember that it’s cloudy,’ whispered Moomintroll. ‘You know that everything looks a little gloomy when the sun’s not shining.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Moominmamma. She stepped over the threshold and stopped. It was very cold and damp inside. Between the puddles of water the ground was dark and wet, and a few planks had been put down to get to the stairs. Moominmamma hes
itated.

  ‘Look!’ said Moomintroll. ‘I’ve got something for you.’

  Moominmamma took the silver horseshoe, and looked at it for a long time.

  ‘It’s beautiful!’ she said. ‘What a lovely present! I never knew that such small horses existed…’

  ‘Come along in, Mamma,’ cried Moomintroll. ‘Come in and we’ll run right to the top!’

  Moominpappa was standing in the doorway at the top, wearing an entirely different hat. It had a soft, floppy brim and a lumpy crown.

  ‘What do you think of it?’ he said. ‘I found it on a nail inside the door. It must have belonged to the lighthouse-keeper. Come in! Come in! Everything’s exactly as I imagined it would be.’

  It was a large round room, with a low ceiling and four windows. In the middle of the floor there was an unpainted table and some empty boxes. Over by the fireplace stood a bed and a little desk. An iron ladder led up to a trap-door in the ceiling.

  ‘Up there is the light,’ explained Moominpappa. ‘I shall light it this evening. Isn’t it lovely to have such white walls? It makes the room seem so big and airy. If you look out of the window it’s the same – big and free and airy!’

  He looked at Moominmamma, who began to laugh, saying: ‘You’re quite right! It’s overpoweringly big and airy up here!’

  ‘Someone’s got real mad in here,’ observed Little My. The floor was covered with splinters of glass and above them on the white wall there was an oily stain which had run down the wall forming a pool on the floor below it.

  ‘I wonder who broke his lamp,’ said Moominmamma, picking up a brass lamp-holder which had rolled under the table. ‘And then had to sit here in the dark.’ She ran her paws over the top of the table. Its surface was covered with hundreds, perhaps thousands of tiny scratches, six in a row, with the seventh drawn straight through the others. Seven? There were seven days in a week. Week after week, all the same, except one which had only five scratches. Moominmamma continued her inspection. She picked up cups and saucepans, read what was written on the empty boxes: raisins from Malaga, whisky from Scotland, and ordinary Finnish crisp-bread; she lifted the blankets on the bed and saw that there were still sheets underneath, but she didn’t open the desk.

  The others looked at her in suspense. Finally, Moominpappa said: ‘Well?’

  ‘He must have been a very lonely man,’ said Moominmamma.

  ‘Yes, but what do you think of it?’

  ‘I think it’s very nice here,’ said Moominmamma. ‘We can all live together in the same room.’

  ‘Yes, that’s it!’ exclaimed Moominpappa. ‘I’ll collect some driftwood from the beach and build beds for us all. I’ll make a path and a jetty – there’s so much to be done here… But first we must bring in the luggage in case it rains. No, no. Not you, dear. You must take things easy and feel yourself at home.’

  Little My turned in the doorway and said: ‘I’m going to sleep outside. I don’t want a bed, beds are stupid.’

  ‘All right, dear,’ said Moominmamma. ‘You can come inside if it starts raining.’

  When Moominmamma was alone, she hung up the silver horseshoe on a nail above the door. Then she went over to the window and looked out. She went from one window to another. Sea everywhere, nothing but sea and the cries of swallows. The mainland wasn’t visible at all.

  In the last window she found an indelible pencil, some bits of string and a needle for mending fishing-nets. She stood playing with the pencil. Absent-mindedly, she started to draw a little flower on the window-sill, shading in the leaves nicely, but not thinking about anything in particular.

  *

  Moominpappa stood in the fireplace with his head up the chimney. ‘There’s a bird’s nest here,’ he shouted. ‘That’s why it won’t burn.’

  ‘Are there any birds in it?’ Moominmamma asked.

  Moominpappa was quite black when he emerged from the chimney. ‘Some poor little bald coot, I expect,’ he said. ‘But she isn’t at home. She’s probably flown south.’

  ‘But she’ll be back in the spring!’ exclaimed Moomintroll. ‘She must be able to find her nest when she comes home. We can cook outdoors!’

  ‘What? For the rest of our lives?’ asked Little My.

  ‘Well, we could move the nest after a while,’ Moomintroll muttered.

  ‘Huh! Typical!’ said Little My. ‘Do you think the bald coot will know whether her nest has been moved immediately or only after a little while? You only say that so you can chuck her out with a clear conscience.’

  ‘Shall we really eat outdoors for the rest of our lives?’ Moominpappa asked in amazement. They all looked at Moominmamma.

  ‘Take it down,’ she said. ‘We can hang it out of the window. Sometimes trolls are more important than bald coots.’

  *

  Moominmamma pushed the dirty dishes under the bed to make the room tidier, and then she went out to look for soil.

  She stopped by the lighthouse steps to throw a little sea-water on the rose-bush. It was still waiting in its box with the earth from home. The garden must be made on the leeward side and it must be as near the lighthouse as possible, where it would get the sun most of the day. But above all, it should have plenty of deep, rich soil.

  Moominmamma looked and looked. She searched along the rock where the lighthouse stood, through the heather down towards the moss, she went into the aspen thicket, she wandered over the warm peaty ground, but there was still no soil anywhere.

  She had never seen so many stones before. Behind the clump of aspen trees there was nothing but stones, a desert of round grey stones. In the middle of them someone had lifted some up, making a hole. Moominmamma went and looked into the hole, but there was nothing but more stones in it, just as grey and just as round. She wondered what the lighthouse-keeper had been looking for. Nothing in particular, perhaps. Maybe he had done it just to amuse himself. He had picked up one stone after another, but they had rolled back and he had got tired of the whole thing and walked away.

  Moominmamma went on towards the sandy beach. Down there she found soil at last. A dark belt of rich soil lay along the line of the beach under the alders. Tough green plants were growing between the stones, opening in bursts of gold and violet, a sudden jungle of richness.

  Moominmamma dug her paws in the ground. She could feel that it was full of millions of growing roots that mustn’t be disturbed. But it didn’t matter, there was soil after all. Now for the first time she felt that the island was real.

  She called to Moominpappa, who was collecting pieces of wood in the seaweed, ran towards him with her apron waving in the wind, and shouted: ‘I’ve found soil! I’ve found soil!’

  Moominpappa looked up. ‘Hallo there!’ he said. ‘What do you think of my island?’

  ‘It’s not like anything else in the world!’ Moominmamma assured him enthusiastically. ‘The soil’s down on the beach instead of somewhere in the middle of the island!’

  ‘I’ll explain it for you,’ said Moominpappa. ‘You must always ask me if there’s anything you don’t understand – I know about everything connected with the sea. It’s like this: what you found was seaweed thrown up by the waves. After a time it becomes soil, real soil. Didn’t you know that?’ Moominpappa laughed, and with his paws out-stretched he seemed to be giving her all the seaweed in the sea.

  Moominmamma started to gather seaweed. She carried it all day, laying it in a crevice in the rock. She would have a patch of garden there by and by. The seaweed had the same warm, dark colour as the soil back home, and its very own touch of purple and orange as well.

  Moominmamma felt calm and happy. She dreamed of carrots, radishes and potatoes, and of how they grew fat and round in the warm soil. She could see green leaves appearing in strong, healthy clusters. She saw them waving in the wind against the blue sea, heavy with tomatoes, peas and beans for the family to eat. She knew that none of this would come true until the following summer, but it didn’t matter. She had something to dream about. An
d deep down inside she dreamed most of all of having an apple tree.

  The day was coming to a close. The sound of the hammer up in the lighthouse had stopped long ago, and the swallows were much quieter now. Moominmamma whistled to herself as she walked home through the heather, her arms full of driftwood. Moominpappa had built a hand-rail for her to hold on to, and there were two little beds made of wood in front of the doorway. There was a barrel he had found in the sea, too. It was quite whole, and looked as though it had been green once.

  Somehow, the winding staircase was less frightening now. You just had to be careful not to look down, and it was best to think about something else. Moomintroll was sitting at the table, arranging small round pebbles in little heaps.

  ‘Hallo,’ said Moominmamma. ‘Where’s Pappa?’

  ‘He’s up above, lighting the lamp,’ Moomintroll answered. ‘I wasn’t allowed to go up with him. He’s been there an awful long time.’

  The empty bird’s nest stood on top of the desk. Mamma went on whistling as she piled up the wood by the stove. The wind had died down and the sun was shining through the western window, throwing a warm light over the floor and the white wall.

  When the fire was beginning to glow, Little My crept in through the door and jumped up on the window-sill like a cat. She pressed her nose against the window-pane and made ugly faces at the swallows.

  Suddenly the trap-door opened with a loud noise and Moominpappa climbed down the iron ladder.

  ‘Is it burning well?’ asked Moominmamma. ‘You’ve made some lovely beds for us. And I thought that barrel would be just the thing for salt fish. It seems a pity to use it only for rain-water…’

  Moominpappa went to the window facing south and peered out. Moominmamma looked up quickly and noticed that his tail was quite stiff and the end of it was wagging with irritation. She put some more wood on the fire and opened a tin of herrings. Moominpappa drank his tea without saying a word. When Moominmamma had cleared away, she put the hurricane lamp on the table and said: ‘I remember hearing once that some lighthouses use gas. When the gas is finished it’s quite impossible to light them.’