Moominpappa at Sea

by Tove Jansson

  ‘But you used to be two here, of course. What was the lighthouse-keeper like?’

  The fisherman muttered something and shifted a trifle uneasily on his seat.

  ‘Was he talkative? Did he say much about himself ?’

  ‘Everybody does,’ said the fisherman suddenly. ‘They talk about themselves. He talked about himself always. But maybe I didn’t listen to him. I forget.’

  ‘How did he come to leave here?’ Moominpappa asked. ‘Did the lighthouse go out before he left or after he’d gone?’

  The fisherman shrugged his shoulders and drew in his line. The hook was empty. ‘I’ve forgotten,’ he said.

  In desperation Moominpappa made yet another attempt. ‘But what did he do all day? Did he build something? Did he put out any nets?’

  The fisherman threw out his line with a beautiful, slow movement, making a perfect circle on the surface of the water which spread out gently and disappeared. He turned and looked out to sea.

  Moominpappa rose and walked on. Somehow it was a relief to feel as angry as he did. He cast his line out quite a way, without bothering to see whether he was observing that tactful distance which one gentleman ought to observe when he’s fishing close to another. He got a bite immediately.

  He pulled in a perch weighing a pound. He made a great deal of fuss about it, puffing and blowing and splashing about, and slapping the perch on the rock, just to annoy the fisherman as much as possible. He looked at the grey figure sitting motionless and staring out to sea.

  ‘This pike’s probably about five pounds!’ he said loudly, hiding the perch behind his back. ‘It’ll be quite a job to smoke!’

  The fisherman didn’t move an inch.

  ‘That’ll teach him!’ Moominpappa muttered. ‘Think of that poor lighthouse-keeper talking and talking about himself and that – that little shrimp not listening.’ He walked up to the lighthouse with the perch firmly in his paw.

  Little My was sitting on the steps, singing one of her monotonous wet-weather songs.

  ‘Hallo,’ said Moominpappa. ‘I’m angry.’

  ‘Good!’ said Little My with approval. ‘You look as though you’d made a proper enemy of someone. It always helps.’

  Moominpappa flung the perch on the steps. ‘Where is she?’ he asked.

  ‘Pottering about in that garden of hers,’ answered Little My. ‘I’ll give her the fish.’

  Moominpappa nodded and went off towards the western end of the island. ‘I’ll fish right under that man’s nose! I’ll catch every blessed fish there is. I’ll show them…’

  *

  The ragged nets hung under the staircase in the lighthouse and were easily forgotten. Moominmamma didn’t mention small shelves or furniture any more, and the wet patch on the ceiling got bigger and bigger every time it rained. The trap-door remained shut.

  Moominpappa didn’t bother about anything except fishing. He was out with his line all day and only came home to eat. He left very early in the morning and wouldn’t let anyone go with him. He didn’t try to provoke the fisherman any more; it’s not much fun trying to provoke anybody as small as he was and who refuses to get angry. He had only one very determined thought in his head: getting food for the family. He always placed his catch on the lighthouse steps.

  If he caught sizeable fish, he took them down to the beach and smoked them. He sat in front of the stove in the wind, slowly putting twig after twig on the fire to keep it burning evenly. He packed it down carefully with sand and pebbles, he collected juniper twigs and cut chips of alder so that the fish should be done in just the right way. The others didn’t see very much of him.

  Towards the evening he would take a turn at the black pool, but he never got a bite there.

  When they sat round in the evening drinking their tea, he talked about nothing but fish and fishing. He didn’t boast in his usual pleasant way. He gave long lectures which Moominmamma listened to in embarrassed surprise, not learning particularly much about anglers and angling.

  ‘He’s not playing at it – he’s serious,’ Moominmamma thought. ‘I’ve put salt fish in all the jars and containers we possess, and still he goes on fishing. Of course it’s grand to have so much food, but somehow it was jollier when we didn’t have so much. I think it’s the sea that’s upset him and made him like this.’

  Moominmamma wore the emerald belt every day just to show Moominpappa how much she liked it, although of course it was really something dressy which she should only have worn on Sundays. And it was a little tiresome the way the bits of glass got caught in absolutely everything, and unless one moved very carefully the rice kept falling out.

  Moominmamma’s new garden was ready, a shining circle of seaweed below the lighthouse-rock. She had put small round pebbles all the way round it as the sea refused to provide her with any shells. In the centre was the rose she had brought with her from home, standing in the soil it had come in. A rose was just about to come out, but it seemed doubtful whether to or not. This was natural, of course, as it was already well into September.

  Moominmamma often dreamed about all the flowers she would plant when spring came again. She drew them all on the sill of the north window. Every time she sat looking at the sea out of the window, she drew a flower absent-mindedly, with her thoughts on something entirely different. Sometimes she was surprised by her own flowers, they seemed to have grown all by themselves but that only made them the more beautiful.

  The seat by the window seemed lonely now that there were no swallows outside. They had flown south on a windy, drizzly day when nobody was looking. The island was now strangely silent; Moominmamma had grown accustomed to their screeching and ceaseless chatter under the eaves. Now only the gulls that swept past her window with yellow eyes that didn’t move, and sometimes the cries of cranes flying south – a long way south.

  It wasn’t actually so curious that neither Moominmamma nor Moominpappa noticed what Moomintroll was doing as they were always thinking of other things. They knew nothing about the thicket or the glade, they were unaware that every night after the moon had risen Moomintroll went down to the beach with the hurricane lamp.

  What Little My saw and thought, no one knew. Most of the time she followed the fisherman around, but they hardly ever spoke to one another. They merely tolerated each other, slightly amused and mutually independent. They didn’t bother to try to understand one another or to make any impression on one another; that is also a way of enjoying oneself.

  This is how things stood on the island the autumn night when the sea-horses came back.

  *

  There was nothing new in going down to the beach with the hurricane lamp. Moomintroll had got used to the Groke; actually she was more of a nuisance than a danger. He didn’t really know whether he went down to the beach for her sake or just in the hope that the sea-horses would come back. It was just that he woke up as soon as the moon rose and simply had to get up.

  The Groke was always there. She stood a little way out on the water watching the movements of the lamp with her eyes. When he put the lamp out, she floated off into the darkness again without making a sound, and then Moomintroll went home.

  But each night she came a little nearer. Tonight there she was sitting on the sand, waiting.

  Moomintroll stopped by the alder bushes and put the lamp down on the ground. The Groke had broken the ritual by coming up the beach; it was wrong of her. She had nothing to do with the island, she was a danger to everything growing there, everything that was alive.

  They stood in silence facing each other as they usually did. The Groke took her eyes off the lamp and stared at Moomintroll. She had never done that before. She had such cold eyes, and they looked so anxious. The beach was full of fleeting shadows as the moon went behind the clouds, then appeared again.

  Then the sea-horses came galloping along from the point. They didn’t take the slightest notice of the Groke; they chased each other in the moonlight, throwing up rainbows and jumping through them. Moomi
ntroll noticed that one of them had lost a shoe. She’d got only three. She really had flowers on her coat, some sort of daisy, a little smaller on her neck and legs. Or perhaps they were water-lilies, which were perhaps more poetic. She ran right over the hurricane lamp, and it fell over in the sand.

  ‘You’re spoiling my moonlight! My moonlight!’ cried the little sea-horse.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Moomintroll, immediately putting the lamp out as fast as he could.

  ‘I found your shoe…’

  The sea-horse stopped and put her head on one side.

  ‘But I’m afraid I gave it to my mother,’ Moomintroll continued.

  The moon disappeared, the galloping hooves came back and Moomintroll could hear the sea-horses laughing.

  ‘Did you hear that? Did you hear that?’ they shouted to each other. ‘He’s given it to his mother! To his mother! To his mother!’

  They galloped towards him, brushing up against him. Their manes brushed his face like soft silky grass.

  ‘I can ask for it back! I can go and fetch it!’ he called into the darkness.

  The moon came out again. He saw the sea-horses go into the sea side by side, their hair floating behind them. They were exactly alike. One of them turned her head and called distantly: ‘Another night…’

  Moomintroll sat down on the sand. She had spoken to him. She had promised to come back. There would be moonlight for many nights to come if only it wasn’t cloudy. And he would make sure not to light the hurricane lamp.

  He suddenly realized that his tail was freezing. He was sitting on the very spot where the Groke had sat.

  *

  The following night he went down to the beach without taking the hurricane lamp with him. The moon was on the wane now, the time when the sea-horses would soon go and play somewhere else. This he knew, and felt it instinctively.

  Moomintroll had the silver horseshoe with him. It hadn’t been an easy matter getting it back. He had blushed and behaved terribly awkwardly. Moominmamma had taken the horseshoe off its nail without asking why he wanted it.

  ‘I’ve rubbed it with silver-polish,’ she had said. ‘Look how nicely it’s come up!’

  No more than that, and in quite an ordinary voice, too.

  Moomintroll had muttered something about giving her something to replace it and taken himself off with his tail between his legs. He couldn’t explain about the sea-horse, he just couldn’t. If only he could find some shells. She would certainly like to have shells rather than a horseshoe. It would be a simple matter for the sea-horse to bring up a few of the largest and most beautiful from the bottom of the sea. That is, of course, if sea-horses cared about other people’s mothers. Perhaps it would be better not to ask.

  She didn’t come.

  The moon went down and no sea-horses came at all. Of course she had said ‘another night’ and not ‘tomorrow night’. Another night could be any night. Moomintroll sat and played with the sand and he was very sleepy.

  And of course the Groke came. She came over the water in her cloud of cold like somebody’s bad conscience, and crept up the beach.

  Moomintroll suddenly became incredibly angry.

  He backed up to the alder bushes and shouted: ‘I’ve no lamp for you! I’m not going to light it for you any more! You shouldn’t come here, this island belongs to my father!’ He walked away from her backwards, turned and started to run away. The aspens round him trembled and rustled as if there was going to be a storm. They knew that the Groke was on the island.

  When he was back in his bed, he heard her howling, and it seemed much closer than before. ‘I hope she doesn’t come in here,’ he thought. ‘As long as the others don’t know she’s there. She carries on like a fog-horn… I know somebody who’ll say I’m being stupid, and that’s the worst thing of all.’

  *

  At the edge of the thicket Little My lay listening under a low-lying branch. She pulled the moss tightly round her and whistled thoughtfully. ‘Now he’s got himself into a nice mess. That’s what happens if you start making a fuss of the Groke and imagine you can be friends with a sea-horse.’

  Then she suddenly remembered the ants and laughed heartily and loudly to herself.

  The Fog

  ACTUALLY, Moominmamma hadn’t said anything terrible and certainly nothing that should have made Moominpappa feel annoyed. Nevertheless Moominpappa couldn’t for the life of him remember what she had said. It was something about the family having quite enough fish.

  It had started by her not admiring the pike enough. They hadn’t got any scales, but anyone could see that it was a pike of over six pounds, well – five anyway. When one catches one perch after the other just because one wants to provide for one’s family, it’s quite an event to catch a pike. And then she had made that remark about having too much fish.

  She had been sitting as usual by the window, drawing flowers on the window-sill. It was quite full of flowers all over. Suddenly Moominmamma had said, not looking at anyone in particular, that she just didn’t know what to do with all the fish he caught. Or was it that they hadn’t any more jars to put them in? Or perhaps it was something about it being nice to have porridge for a change. Something like that anyway.

  Moominpappa had put his fishing-rod in the corner and gone out for a walk along the edge of the water, but not near the fisherman’s point.

  It was a cloudy and completely calm day. You could hardly see the surface of the water heaving in a slow swell after the east wind, and it was as grey as the sky and looked like silk. Some ducks were flying close to the water, very quickly and obviously going about their own business. Moominpappa walked with one paw on the rock and the other in the water, dragging his tail in the sea. The lighthouse-keeper’s hat was pulled down over his nose and he was wondering whether there would be a storm or not. A real storm. One would have to rush round saving things and making sure that the family wasn’t swept away. Then climb the lighthouse tower and see how strong the wind was… come down again and say: ‘The wind’s force thirteen. We must keep quite calm. There’s nothing to get worked up about…’

  Little My was catching sticklebacks.

  ‘Why aren’t you fishing?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve given up fishing,’ Moominpappa answered.

  ‘That must be a relief for you,’ Little My remarked. ‘You must have found it an awful bore after a while.’

  ‘You’re quite right!’ said Moominpappa, surprised. ‘It did become terribly boring. Why didn’t I notice it myself ?’

  He went and sat on the lighthouse-keeper’s little ledge and thought: ‘I must do something different, something new. Something tremendous.’

  But he didn’t know what it was he wanted to do. He was quite bewildered and confused. It reminded him of the time long ago when the Gafsan’s daughter had pulled the mat from under his feet. Or like sitting in the air next to a chair but not on it. No it wasn’t like that either. It was as if he had been taken in by something.

  As he sat there looking at the silky-grey surface of the sea that seemed to refuse to work itself up into a storm, the feeling of being taken in by somebody or something got stronger and stronger. ‘Just you wait,’ he muttered to himself, ‘I’ll find out, I’ll get to the bottom of this…’ He didn’t know whether he meant the sea, the island or the black pool. Perhaps he meant the lighthouse or the lighthouse-keeper. In any case it sounded very menacing. He shook his perplexed head and went and sat by the black pool. There he continued to think, his nose in his paws. From time to time the breakers washed in over the threshold and disappeared in the black, mirror-like water.

  ‘This is where storms have washed in for hundreds of years,’ he thought. ‘Cork floats and pieces of bark and small sticks have been carried in by the waves and then carried out again, it must have happened like that many, many times… Until one day…’ Moominpappa lifted his nose and an extraordinary idea suddenly occurred to him.

  ‘Imagine if suddenly one day something really big and h
eavy, something from a wreck, was swept in and sank there and stayed at the bottom for ever and ever!’

  Moominpappa got up. Treasure trove, perhaps. A case of contraband whisky. The skeleton of a pirate. Anything! The whole pool might be full of the most incredible things!

  He felt tremendously happy. He immediately became full of life. Something seemed to wake up inside him as if a steel spring had suddenly been released like a jack-in-the-box, setting him in motion. He rushed home, flew up the stairs two at a time, pushed open the door and shouted: ‘I’ve got an idea!’

  ‘You haven’t!’ exclaimed Moominmamma, who was standing by the stove. ‘Is it a good one?’

  ‘Of course it is,’ Moominpappa answered. ‘It’s a grand idea. Come and sit down and I’ll tell you all about it.’

  Moominmamma sat down on one of the empty boxes and Moominpappa began to tell her all about his idea. When he had finished Moominmamma said: ‘Why, it’s incredible! Only you could have thought of something like that. There might be just anything down there!’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Moominpappa. ‘Just anything.’ They looked at each other and laughed. ‘When are you going to start looking?’ Moominmamma asked.

  ‘Immediately, of course,’ said Moominpappa. ‘I shall drag the pool thoroughly. But first I must find out how deep it is. We must try and get the boat into the pool. You see, if I try to haul everything up the cliff face it might fall down again. And it’s very important to reach the middle of the pool. Obviously the best things are there.’

  ‘Don’t you want any help?’ Moominmamma asked.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Moominpappa. ‘This is a job that I must do. I must find a plumb-line…’ He went up the ladder, through the trap-door and into the lamp-room without giving the lamp a single thought and higher up to the loft above. After a while he came down again with a rope and asked: ‘Have you got anything I can use as a weight?’ Moominmamma rushed to the stove and gave him the iron.