by Tove Jansson
‘But it’s all so life-like!’ exclaimed Moominpappa. ‘I can recognize all those flowers! That one is a rose.’
‘No it isn’t,’ said Moominmamma, very hurt. ‘It’s a peony. Like the red ones we had at the bottom of the steps at home.’
‘Can I paint a hedgehog?’ cried Little My.
Moominmamma shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘This is my wall. But if you’re good, I’ll paint one for you.’
At lunch everybody was very cheerful.
‘You can lend me a little of that red-lead,’ Moominpappa said. ‘I must paint a low-watermark on the rock before the sea starts to rise again. I really must keep a serious check on the level of the water. You see, I want to find out whether the sea works to a system of some kind or whether it just behaves as it likes… It’s very important.’
‘Have you made a lot of notes?’ asked Moominmamma.
‘Yes, lots. But I need a lot more before I can start writing my book.’ Moominpappa leaned across the table and said confidentially: ‘I want to know if the sea is really obstinate, or whether it obeys.’
‘Obeys whom?’ asked Moomintroll, opening his eyes wide.
But Moominpappa was suddenly very busy eating his soup, and muttered: ‘Oh… something… rules of some kind or another.’
Moominmamma gave him a little red-lead in a cup and he went out immediately after lunch to paint a low-watermark.
*
The aspens had turned quite red, and in the glade the ground was covered with a yellow carpet of birch leaves. When the south-west wind blew it carried both red and yellow leaves out over the water.
On three sides of the hurricane lamp Moomintroll had painted the glass with lamp-black, just like some villain up to no good. He left the lighthouse by a roundabout way. It seemed to be following him with its vacant eyes. Evening was falling and the island was beginning to wake up. He could feel it stirring and hear the gulls crying round the point.
‘I can’t help it,’ he thought. ‘Pappa would understand if he knew. I don’t want to see the sand moving tonight. Perhaps I’ll go to the eastern end of the island this time.’
Moomintroll sat on the rock and waited, with the hurricane lamp turned towards the sea. The island behind him was lost in the darkness, and there was no sign of the Groke.
Only Little My saw him. She saw the Groke too, sitting waiting on the beach.
Little My shrugged her shoulders and crept back under the moss. She had often seen people waiting for one another in the wrong place, looking foolish and lost. ‘Well, there’s nothing to be done about it,’ she thought. ‘That’s how it is.’
The night was overcast. Moomintroll could hear invisible birds flying overhead and the sound of splashing behind him in the black pool. He turned, and in the ray of light from the lamp he could see them. It was the sea-horses, swimming below the cliff. Perhaps they had come here every night and he had known nothing about it.
The sea-horses were giggling and splashing each other with water and they made eyes at him from behind their fringes. Moomintroll looked from one to the other; they both had exactly the same eyes, the same flowers on their necks, and they both had the same saucy little heads. He had no idea which of them was his sea-horse.
‘Is it you?’ he asked.
The sea-horses swam towards him and stood at the edge of the water so that he could just see their knees.
‘It’s me! It’s me!’ they both replied and giggled like mad.
‘Won’t you rescue me?’ one of them asked. ‘Won’t you rescue me, my fat little sea-urchin. Do you gaze at my picture every single day? Do you?’
‘He’s not a sea-urchin,’ said the other one reproachfully. ‘He’s a little egg-shaped mushroom who’s promised to rescue me if it gets stormy. He’s a little egg-shaped mushroom who collects shells for his mummy! It’s charming, isn’t it. Charming!’
Moomintroll felt himself blushing.
Moominmamma had polished the horseshoe with silver polish. He knew that one of the silver shoes was much brighter than the others.
And he knew, too, that they wouldn’t lift their hooves out of the water, and that he would never know which of them was his sea-horse.
And they waded out to sea. He could hear them laughing, and as they got farther and farther away the sound of their laughter seemed to be nothing more than the wind sweeping gently over the beach.
Moomintroll lay on the rock and stared at the sky. He couldn’t think of his sea-horse any more. Whenever he tried to he could see two sea-horses, two little sea-horses, both laughing and both exactly alike. All they did was leap up and down in the sea, until his eyes grew tired of looking at them. And there were more and more of them, so many he couldn’t be bothered to count them. He just wanted to go to sleep and be left in peace.
*
Moominmamma’s mural was more and more beautiful, and it stretched as far as the door. She had painted big green apple trees full of flowers and fruit, and the grass under the trees was full of windfalls. There were rose bushes all over the place, most of them red – just like the ones that grow in everybody’s gardens. And each of them had a border of little white shells. The well was green and the woodshed was brown.
One evening when the sun was streaming into the room, Moominmamma was painting a corner of the veranda.
Moominpappa came into the room to have a look.
‘Aren’t you going to paint in some rocks?’ he asked.
‘There are no rocks,’ said Moominmamma absently. She was in the middle of painting the railings, and it was very difficult to get them straight.
‘Is that the horizon?’ continued Moominpappa.
Moominmamma looked up. ‘No. It’s going to be the blue veranda,’ she said. ‘There’s no sea here at all.’
Moominpappa looked at it for a long time, but said nothing. Then he went and put the kettle on.
When he turned round again, he saw that Moominmamma had painted a large blue patch and above it something that was obviously meant to be a boat. It didn’t look right at all.
‘That’s not so good,’ he said.
‘It didn’t turn out quite as I meant it to,’ admitted Moominmamma sadly.
‘Well, it was a very nice idea,’ Moominpappa said consolingly. ‘But I suggest you try to change it into a veranda after all. It’s no good trying to paint something you don’t want to paint.’
From that evening on Moominmamma’s mural began to look more and more like Moominvalley. She found it difficult to get the perspective right sometimes, and sometimes she had to take something out of its proper setting and paint it all by itself. The stove and things out of the drawing-room, for example. And it was quite impossible to include every room. One could only paint one wall at a time, and somehow it looked unnatural.
Moominmamma found that the best time to paint was just before sunset. The room was empty then, and she could see Moominvalley much more clearly.
One evening the western sky was on fire with the most beautiful sunset she had ever seen. It was a tumult of red, orange, pink and yellow flames, filling the clouds above the dark and stormy sea with smouldering colours. The wind was blowing from the south-west towards the island from the sharp, coal-black line of the horizon.
Moominmamma was standing on the table painting apples on the top of a tree with red-lead paint. ‘If only I had these colours to paint with outside,’ she thought. ‘What lovely apples and roses I should have!’
As she gazed at the sky, the evening light crept up the wall, lighting up the flowers in her garden. They seemed to be alive and shining. The garden opened out, and the gravel path with its curious perspective suddenly seemed quite right and to lead straight to the veranda. Moominmamma put her paws round the trunk of the tree; it was warm with sunshine and she felt that the lilac was in bloom.
Like a flash of lightning a shadow passed across the wall. Something black had flown past the window. An enormous black bird was circling round and round the lighthouse, past one w
indow after another, the west, the south, the east, the north… like a fury, beating its wings relentlessly.
‘We’re surrounded!’ Moominmamma thought in confusion. ‘It’s a magic circle. I’m scared. I want to go home and leave this terrible, deserted island and the cruel sea…’ She flung her arms round her apple tree and shut her eyes. The bark felt rough and warm, and the sound of the sea disappeared. Moominmamma was right inside her garden.
The room was empty. The paints were still on the table, and outside the window the black bird went on circling round the lighthouse. When the colours in the western sky disappeared, it flew away across the sea.
When it was time for tea, the family came home.
‘Where’s Mamma?’ Moomintroll asked.
‘Perhaps she’s just out getting some water,’ Moominpappa said. ‘Look, she’s painted a new tree since we went out.’
Moominmamma stood behind the apple tree and watched them making tea. They looked a little misty, as though she had been watching them moving about underneath the water. She wasn’t at all surprised by what had happened. Here she was at last in her own garden where everything was in its proper place and everything was growing just as it should grow. Here and there something hadn’t been drawn absolutely right, but it didn’t matter. She sat down in the long grass and listened to the cuckoo calling from somewhere on the other side of the river.
When the kettle boiled for tea Moominmamma was fast asleep with her head leaning against the apple tree.
The South-West Wind
AT dusk, the fisherman had a feeling that the beautiful big waves were coming. He dragged his boat high up the point and turned it over, and bound up his fishing-rods. Then he crept into his little house and curled himself up so that he looked like a wrinkled little ball. He lay there and allowed perfect solitude to surround him.
Of all winds the south-wester was his favourite. It had really settled in to blow and had not died down that evening at all. It was an autumn south-wester and could go on for weeks and weeks until the waves became high grey mountains heaving round the islands.
The fisherman sat in his house watching the sea swell. It was so marvellous not to have to care about a blessed thing. No one to talk and no one to ask questions, and no one to feel at all sorry for. Only the mystery and unfathomable vastness of the sea and the sky flooding over him and past him that could never disappoint him.
It was nearly dark when his perfect solitude was destroyed by Moomintroll coming over the slippery rocks. Moomintroll waved, made a loud noise and finally started to bang on the window. He shouted as loud as he could that Moominmamma was lost. The fisherman smiled and shook his head. The window-pane was much too thick to hear anything.
Moomintroll staggered on in the wind, waded back across the point through the breakers and went towards the heather to search there.
Moomintroll could hear his father calling, and he could see the hurricane lamp swinging to and fro as Moominpappa groped his way over the rock. The island was restless and uneasy, full of strange whispers and cries, and as Moomintroll ran he was sure he could feel the ground moving beneath his paws.
‘Mamma’s vanished,’ he thought. ‘She was so lonely, she just disappeared.’
Little My sat huddled up among the stones. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘the stones are moving.’
‘I don’t care,’ cried Moomintroll. ‘Mamma’s lost!’
‘Mammas don’t get lost as easily as all that,’ said Little My. ‘You can always find them in a corner somewhere if you only look. I’m going to have a nap before the whole island starts to slide away. Mark my words, there’s going to be a devilish to-do here before long!’
The hurricane lamp was over by the black pool, and Moomintroll went over to it. Moominpappa turned round, holding the lamp in the air.
‘I do hope she hasn’t fallen in…’
‘It’s all right, Mamma can swim,’ said Moomintroll.
They stood in silence for a moment, looking at each other. The sea thundered on the lighthouse-rock.
‘By the way,’ said Moominpappa. ‘Where have you been living all this time?’
‘Oh, just here and there,’ Moomintroll muttered, looking in the other direction.
‘I’ve had so much to see to,’ said Moominpappa vaguely.
Moomintroll could hear the stones turn themselves over. It was a strange, hard sound. ‘I’m going to look in the thicket,’ he said.
But just then two candles appeared in the window of the lighthouse. Moominmamma had come home.
When they came into the room she was sitting at the table making a towel.
‘Where on earth have you been?’ exclaimed Moominpappa.
‘Me?’ said Moominmamma innocently. ‘I was just taking a little stroll to get some air.’
‘But you mustn’t frighten us like that,’ said Moominpappa. ‘You must remember that we’re used to your being here when we come home in the evening.’
‘That’s just it,’ Moominmamma sighed. ‘But one needs a change sometimes. We take everything too much for granted, including each other. Isn’t that true, dearest?’
Moominpappa stared doubtfully at her, but she just laughed and went on sewing. So he went over to the calendar and made a cross on it to show that it was Friday. Below it he wrote: ‘Wind – force 5’.
Moomintroll thought that the picture of the sea-horse had changed somehow. The real sea wasn’t as blue as that, and the moon was a little overdone. He sat down at the table, and whispered as softly as he could: ‘Mamma. I’m living in a glade in the thicket.’
‘Are you?’ said Moominmamma. ‘Is it nice there?’
‘Yes, very. I thought perhaps that you might like to come and see it sometime.’
‘I’d love to,’ said Moominmamma. ‘When will you take me there?’
Moomintroll looked round quickly, but Moominpappa was deep in his exercise-book. Then he whispered: ‘Now. Straight away. Tonight.’
‘Ye–es,’ said Moominmamma. ‘But wouldn’t it be nicer if we all went together in the morning?’
‘It wouldn’t be the same thing,’ said Moomintroll.
Moominmamma nodded her head and went on sewing.
Moominpappa wrote in his exercise-book: ‘Some things may change at night. For investigation: what does the sea do at night? Observations: my island is quite different in the dark because of (a) certain curious sounds, and (b) certain unmistakable movements.’
Moominpappa lifted his pencil, hesitating for a moment. Then he continued: ‘Can strong emotional disturbance in a person transfer itself to his surroundings? Example: I was really very upset because we couldn’t find Mamma. Investigate this.’
He read through what he had written, and tried to come to some conclusion. But he couldn’t, so he gave it up and pottered over to his bed.
Before he pulled the blanket over his head, he said: ‘Make sure you turn the lamp out properly before you go to bed. We don’t want it to smell.’
‘Of course, dearest,’ said Moominmamma.
*
When Moominpappa had gone to sleep, Moomintroll took the hurricane lamp and guided Moominmamma across the island. She stopped in the heather and listened.
‘Is it always like this at night?’ she asked.
‘Yes, it does make you feel a little uneasy at night,’ Moomintroll said. ‘But you don’t want to let that worry you. It’s only the island. You see, it wakes up at night just when we’re all asleep.’
‘I see,’ said Moominmamma. ‘Is that what it is.’
Moomintroll led the way through the main entrance to his glade. From time to time he looked round to make sure that Moominmamma was still following. She got stuck in the branches, but somehow she managed to reach the glade.
‘So this is where you live!’ she exclaimed. ‘How lovely it is here!’
‘The roof has lost most of its leaves,’ Moomintroll explained. ‘But you should see it when it’s green. It looks just like a cave at the moment, with the lamp shi
ning.’
‘Yes it does, doesn’t it,’ said Moominmamma. ‘We ought to bring a mat and a little box to sit on…’ She looked up and saw the stars and the clouds sailing past. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘sometimes I get a feeling that this island is moving, with us on it. We’re drifting somewhere…’
‘Mamma,’ said Moomintroll suddenly. ‘I’ve met the sea-horses, but they don’t seem to be interested in me at all. I only wanted to run along the beach beside them, and laugh with them, they’re so beautiful…’
Moominmamma nodded her head. ‘I don’t really think it’s possible to be friends with a sea-horse,’ she said gravely. ‘It’s not worth while being disappointed with them. I think one is only meant to feel happy when one just looks at them in the way that one looks at pretty birds or beautiful scenery.’
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ said Moomintroll.
They listened to the wind blowing through the thicket. Moomintroll had quite forgotten the Groke.
‘I’m sorry I’ve nothing to offer you,’ said Moomin-troll.
‘We’ve time for that tomorrow,’ said Moominmamma. ‘We can have a little party in here, and the others can come too if they want to. Well, it was nice to see where you live. Now I think I shall go back to the lighthouse.’
*
After he had taken Moominmamma home, Moomintroll put out the hurricane lamp. He wanted to be alone. The wind was getting up. The darkness, the thundering of the sea, and something that Moominmamma had said, made him feel safe.
He came to the place where the rock fell away towards the black pool. He could hear the sound of the water splashing at the bottom of the cliff, but he didn’t stop. He strolled on, feeling as light as a balloon and not the least bit sleepy.
And then he saw her. The Groke had come right up on to the island and she was nosing around below the lighthouse-rock. There she was, shuffling up and down, sniffing in the heather, and staring short-sightedly all round her. Then she wandered off towards the swamp.