by Tove Jansson
After a while Moomintroll knew that Moominmamma had gone to sleep. He brushed all thoughts aside and started to play the game he played every night. At first he couldn’t make up his mind whether to play the ‘Adventure’ game or the ‘Rescue’ game. Finally he decided on the ‘Rescue’ game, it felt more real somehow. He shut his eyes and made his mind a blank. And then he started to think of a storm.
On a deserted rocky coast, rather like the island, the Storm was Raging. They were running up and down the beach, wringing their hands – someone was in Distress out there… Nobody dared to go out, it was quite impossible. Any boat would be Smashed to Pieces in an instant.
It wasn’t Moominmamma that Moomintroll saved now, but the sea-horse.
Who was struggling out there? Was it the little Sea-horse with the Silver Shoe battling with a sea-serpent? No, that was too much. The Storm was quite enough.
The sky was all yellow, a real Storm-sky. And then he came along the beach himself. With great Determination he ran up to one of the boats… everybody started shouting: ‘Stop him! Stop him! He’ll never do it! Lay hold of him!’ He brushed them aside, got the boat out, rowed like mad. The Rocks stood out of the Sea like Great Black Teeth… but he felt no Fear. Little My was shouting something on the beach: ‘I didn’t know he was so Brave! Oh, how sorry I am for everything. But it’s Too Late!… Snufkin chewed his old pipe and murmured: ‘Farewell Old Pal.’ But he struggled on and on to where the little Sea-horse was just about to go down for the Third Time. He lifted her into the boat, and she lay there in a Heap, her wet Golden Hair round her. He took her safely to the beach, and it was remote and deserted. She whispered: ‘You have risked your Life to save mine. How Brave you are!’ He smiled distantly and said: ‘I must leave you here. Our ways must part. My Destiny calls me, Farewell!’ The sea-horse stared at him in amazement as he walked away. She was Impressed. ‘What?’ she said. ‘Would you leave me?’ He waved to her as he walked on, Alone, over the rocks in the Storm, getting smaller and smaller… All those standing on the beach were astonished and started to say to one another…
But at this point Moomintroll went to sleep. He sighed happily and curled up like a ball under the warm, red blanket.
*
‘Where’s the calendar gone to?’ Moominpappa asked. ‘I must make a cross on it, it’s very important.’
‘Why?’ said Little My as she climbed in the window.
‘Well, we have to know what day it is,’ Moominpappa explained. ‘We forgot to bring the clock with us, which was a mistake. But things are impossible if one doesn’t know whether it’s Sunday or Wednesday. No one can live like that.’
Little My drew in her breath through her nose and breathed out through her teeth in that awful way of hers which said ‘I’ve never heard anything so stupid in all my life.’
Moominpappa understood what she meant. So he was already feeling good and angry when Moomintroll said: ‘Actually, I borrowed it for a while.’
‘There are certain things which are extremely important on an island like this,’ said Moominpappa. ‘Particularly keeping the proper observations recorded in a log-book. One must observe everything – nothing must be neglected. The time, the direction of the wind, the level of the water, everything. You must hang up the calendar again immediately.’
‘All right! All right!’ said Moomintroll loudly. He swallowed his coffee and stamped down the stairs and out into the chilly autumn morning. The fog was still there. The lighthouse vanished into it like a huge pillar and the top of it was invisible. Up there, somewhere in the billowing fog, sat his family, just not understanding him. He was angry and sleepy, and just at the moment not the slightest bit interested in the Groke, the sea-horses, or his family either for that matter.
Just below the lighthouse-rock he woke up a bit. One might have thought it would happen – the Groke had chosen of all places to sit in Moominmamma’s garden. He wondered whether she had sat there for longer than an hour. He hoped not. The rosebush was quite brown. For a moment Moomintroll’s conscience hit him with its tail, but he was soon feeling angry and sleepy again. ‘Huh! Calendars indeed! Making crosses! What next!’ How could an old troll like Moominpappa possibly understand that the picture of the sea-horse was a picture of Beauty itself that only he could see.
Moomintroll crept into the thicket and took the calendar off its twig. The fog had made it all crinkled. He threw away the frame of flowers and sat down for a while, his head full of half-formed thoughts.
And suddenly he thought: ‘Why, I’ll move here! They can live in that rotten old lighthouse with its awful stairs and count the days as they go by.’
It was an exciting prospect, new, dangerous and wonderful. It changed everything. It seemed as though he was suddenly surrounded by a new melancholy, by strange possibilities.
He was stiff and cold when he got home. He put the calendar back on top of the desk. Moominpappa immediately went and made a cross in the top corner.
Moomintroll took a deep breath and said as boldly as he could: ‘I’m thinking of living somewhere else on the island by myself.’
‘Out of doors? Why, of course,’ said Moominmamma, not really paying much attention. She was sitting in the north window drawing a creeper. ‘That’s all right. You can take your sleeping-bag with you as usual.’ Now she was drawing honeysuckle, and it was very complicated. Moominmamma hoped she had remembered what it was really like. Honeysuckle doesn’t grow by the sea. It needs a warm and sheltered spot.
‘Mamma,’ said Moomintroll, and his throat felt very dry, ‘this isn’t “as usual”.’
But Moominmamma wasn’t listening. She made an encouraging sound and went on drawing.
Moominpappa was counting the crosses he had made. There was a Friday he wasn’t quite sure about. He might have made two crosses that day because he had forgotten to make one on the Thursday. Something had disturbed him so that he wasn’t quite sure about it. What had he done that day? The days floated together and went round and round in his head. It was like going round an island, walking for ever along the same beach without getting anywhere.
‘All right!’ said Moomintroll. ‘I’ll take my sleeping-bag and the hurricane lamp.’
Outside the window the fog swirled past. It seemed as though they were moving somewhere with the room.
‘I really need a little blue,’ said Moominmamma to herself. She had made the honeysuckle grow out of the window and in again on the white wall, where it boldly opened out into a very carefully drawn flower.
The Waning Moon
ONE night just before dawn, Moominmamma was awakened by the silence round the lighthouse. It had suddenly become calm, as it can do when the wind is changing.
She lay for a long time listening.
Far out over the sea in the darkness a new wind started to blow very gently. Moominmamma could hear it approaching just like somebody walking over the water. It got stronger all the time, until it finally reached the island. The open window moved on its hooks.
Moominmamma felt very small as she lay there. She buried her nose in the pillow and tried to think of an apple tree. But she could only see the sea with its driving winds, a sea that swept the island when it lay all in the darkness, that was always everywhere, taking possession of the beach, the lighthouse and the whole island. She imagined that the whole world was smooth, gliding water and that very slowly the room itself was beginning to sail away.
‘Imagine if the island came loose, and suddenly one morning was splashing in the water by the jetty back there at home. Or imagine if it glided further and further out and drifted for years and years until it fell over the edge of the world like a coffee cup on a slippery tray…’
‘Little My would appreciate that,’ thought Moominmamma, giggling to herself. ‘I wonder where she sleeps. And Moomintroll, too… What a pity mothers can’t go off when they want to and sleep out of doors. Mothers, particularly, could do with it sometimes.’ She smiled to herself, and in an absent-minded way sh
e sent Moomintroll a silent, loving greeting in the way trolls do. Moomintroll, lying awake in his glade, felt that she had done this, and, as he usually did, wiggled his ears by way of answer.
No moon was shining, and it was very dark.
No one had made any fuss at all about his leaving home, and he wasn’t quite sure whether he was relieved or disappointed.
Every evening after they had had tea, Moominmamma lit two candles and put them on the table and he took the hurricane lamp with him. Moominpappa said just for the sake of saying something: ‘Be careful not to set light to the thicket and make sure you put the lamp out before you go to sleep.’
It was always the same. They hadn’t understood one little bit.
Moomintroll lay listening to the wind, and thought: ‘The moon is on the wane. The sea-horse won’t be here again for a long time.’
But perhaps this was more of a relief than a disappointment. Now he could lie there just imagining lovely conversations with her and trying to remember what she looked like. And there was no need to be angry with the Groke any longer. She could stare at the lamp as much as she wanted to. Moomintroll told himself that it was purely for practical reasons that he went to the beach every night with the lamp: to stop the Groke going right up to the lighthouse and ruining Moominmamma’s roses. And so that the family shouldn’t discover that she was there, too. To say nothing of stopping her howling. He didn’t do it for any other reason.
Every night Moomintroll put the lamp on the beach and stood there yawning while the Groke gazed her fill.
She stared at the lamp, following a ritual of her own. After looking at it for a while she would begin to sing, or something that sounded like singing to her. It was a thin sound, something like humming and whistling together, and it penetrated everywhere, so that after a while Moomintroll felt that it was inside his head, behind his eyes, and even in his tummy. At the same time she swayed slowly and heavily from side to side, waving her skirts up and down until they looked like dry, wrinkled bats’ wings. The Groke was dancing!
She was quite obviously very pleased, and somehow this absurd ritual became very important to Moomintroll. He could see no reason why it should stop at all, whether the island wanted it or not.
But the island seemed to be getting more and more uneasy. The trees whispered and trembled, and great shudders went through the low-hanging branches, like the waves of the sea. The sea-grass on the beach shook and lay flat, trying to pull itself up by the roots in order to escape. One night Moomintroll saw something that made him feel afraid.
It was the sand. It had started to move. He could see it quite clearly, creeping slowly away from the Groke. There it was, a sparkling, glittering mass moving away from her great flat feet that were stamping the ground to ice as they danced.
Moomintroll grabbed the lamp and rushed as fast as he could into the thicket through the emergency tunnel. He got into his sleeping-bag, pulled the zip-fastener right up and tried to go to sleep. But however tightly he kept his eyes closed he could see nothing but sand creeping down the beach and into the water.
*
On the following day Moominmamma dug up four wild rose-bushes. They had twined their roots in among the stones in an almost terrifyingly patient way, and spread their leaves over the rock like an obedient carpet.
Moominmamma thought that pink roses against the grey of the rock would be perfectly lovely, but perhaps she hadn’t given it enough thought when she planted them in her garden of brown seaweed. There they were, standing in a row looking most uncomfortable. She gave each of them a handful of the soil she had brought from home, watered them and then sat down beside them for a little while.
It was just then that Moominpappa came up to her, his eyes wide with excitement, and shouted: ‘It’s the black pool! It’s alive! Come and look, quickly!’ Then he turned and ran back towards it. Moominmamma got up and followed him, not understanding a word he had said. But Moominpappa was right.
The dark water was rising and falling again – heaving itself up and then sinking down again as if it was sighing deeply. The black pool was breathing – it was alive.
Little My appeared, running over the rock. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘now something’s going to happen. The island’s coming to life! I always thought it would.’
‘Don’t be so childish,’ said Moominpappa. ‘An island can’t come to life. It’s the sea that’s alive…’ He became silent and held his nose with both paws.
‘Whatever is the matter?’ Moominmamma asked anxiously.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Moominpappa. ‘I haven’t really thought it out yet. I had an idea just now, but I can’t remember what it was.’ He picked up the exercise-book and wandered off over the rock, deep in thought.
Moominmamma stared at the black pool with a look of extreme disapproval on her face.
‘I think,’ she said, ‘that this is the right moment for us all to go on a nice picnic.’
And she went straight back to the lighthouse and started to pack.
When she had got everything together that they would need for a picnic, she opened the window and started to bang the gong. She watched them all running towards the lighthouse, not feeling the slightest bit guilty, although she knew that the gong was only supposed to be used in cases of extreme urgency.
She saw both Moominpappa and Moomintroll standing beneath her and looking up. From where she was they looked like two big pears. She held on to the window-sill and leaned out.
‘Keep quite calm,’ she cried. ‘There’s no fire! We’re going on a picnic as soon as we possibly can.’
‘A picnic?’ exclaimed Moominpappa. ‘How could you ring the bell just for a picnic?’
‘There’s danger in the air,’ Moominmamma shouted back. ‘If we don’t go for a picnic this very instant, anything might happen to us!’
And they went for a picnic. With much effort the whole family hauled the Adventure out of the black pool. Then, rowing against the wind, they made for the largest of the outlying rocks on the north-west side of the island. Shivering, they pulled themselves up the wet rock and sat down. Moominmamma made a fire between some stones and began to get coffee ready. She did everything in exactly the same way as she had always done years and years ago. A table-cloth with four stones to hold it down, the butter-dish with its lid, their mugs, their bathing-towels looking like bright flowers spread out on the rock, and, of course, the sunshade too. Just as the coffee was ready it started to drizzle.
Moominmamma was in a very good mood. She talked all the time about ordinary everyday things, rummaged in the picnic basket and made sandwiches. It was the first time that she had got her handbag with her.
The rock they had come to was small and bare; there was nothing growing there at all, and no sign of seaweed or driftwood. It was merely a bit of grey nothingness that just happened to be there in the water.
As they sat there drinking their coffee it seemed as if suddenly everything was perfectly natural and right. They began chatting about all sorts of things, but not about the sea, not about the island and not about Moominvalley.
From where they were, the island and the enormous lighthouse looked very strange, a remote grey shadow in the rain.
When they had finished their coffee, Moominmamma washed their mugs in the sea and put everything back in the basket. Moominpappa went to the water’s-edge and started to sniff into the wind. ‘I think we ought to go back home now before the wind gets up,’ he said. It was what he always said when they went anywhere for a picnic. They bundled into the boat and Little My crept into the bows. On the way home the wind was behind them.
They pulled the Adventure up the beach.
Somehow the island was quite different once they were home again. They all felt it, but they said nothing. They didn’t really know in what way it was different. Perhaps it was because they had left it for a while and then come back again. They went straight to the lighthouse, and that evening they did the jigsaw puzzle, and Moominpappa made a li
ttle kitchen shelf and nailed it up beside the stove.
*
The picnic had done the family a lot of good, but somehow it had made Moominmamma a little sad. During the night she had dreamed that they had gone to see the Hatti-fatteners on an island off the coast near their old home, a green and friendly island, and when she had woken up in the morning she had felt sad.
When she was alone after breakfast, she sat quietly at the table looking at the honeysuckle growing over the window-sill. The indelible pencil had almost all gone, and what there was left of it Moominpappa needed for making crosses on the calendar and writing his notes.
Moominmamma got up and went up to the attic. When she came down again she had found three bags of dye, brown, blue and green, a tin of lead paint, a little lamp-black and two old paint-brushes.
So she began to paint flowers all over the wall. They were large, substantial flowers because the brushes were large, and the dye soaked right into the plaster and looked intense and transparent. How wonderful they looked! This was much more fun than sawing wood! Flower after flower appeared on the wall, roses, marigolds, pansies, peonies… No one was more surprised than Moominmamma herself. She had no idea she could paint so well. Near the floor she painted long, waving green grass, and she thought about putting the sun right at the top, but she had no yellow paint.
When the others came back for lunch she hadn’t even lit the fire. She was standing on a box, painting a little brown bee with green eyes.
‘Mamma!’ exclaimed Moomintroll.
‘What do you think of it?’ Moominmamma asked, feeling very pleased with herself as she carefully finished the bee’s second eye. But the brush was much too big, she would have to find some other way of doing it. If the worst came to the worst, she could paint over the bee and put a bird there instead.
