Moominvalley in November

by Tove Jansson

  ‘These are real ship’s biscuits,’ he explained. ‘They remind me of my boat. Eat, Toft! You’re too thin.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said Toft.

  The Hemulen was in high spirits. He leant over the kitchen table and said: ‘My sailing boat is clinker-built. Is there anything to compare with getting a boat into the water when spring comes?’

  Toft dunked his biscuit in his coffee and said nothing.

  ‘You wait and wait,’ said the Hemulen, ‘and at last you set sail and you’re off.’

  Toft looked up at the Hemulen from under his fringe. Finally all he said was: ‘Yes.’

  The Hemulen was suddenly gripped by a feeling of loneliness, it was too quiet in the house. He said: ‘It isn’t always that one has time to do just what one wants. Did you know them?’

  ‘Yes, Moominmamma,’ Toft answered. ‘The others are a little hazy in my mind.’

  ‘They are in mine, too,’ the Hemulen exclaimed, relieved that Toft had at last said something. ‘I never looked at them very closely, they were just there, you know…’ He fumbled for words, and went on tentatively: ‘They were just like things that are always around, if you see what I mean… Like trees, eh?… or… things.’

  Toft retired into himself again. After a while the Hemulen got up and said: ‘Perhaps it’s about time to go to bed. Tomorrow’s another day.’ He hesitated. The beautiful image of the summer and the guest room facing south had vanished, now he could only see the staircase leading up to the dark attic floor with empty rooms. He decided to sleep in the kitchen.

  ‘I’m going outside for a while,’ Toft muttered.

  He shut the door behind him and stood on the kitchen steps. It was as black as jet outside. He waited until his eyes got used to the dark and then walked slowly through the garden. Something blue and radiant appeared out of the night, he’d reached the crystal ball. He looked right into it, it was as deep as the sea and was flooded with a tremendous swell. Toft looked deeper and deeper and waited patiently. At last, deep down inside the ball, he could see a faint point of light. It shone and then disappeared, shone and disappeared at regular intervals, like a lighthouse.

  What a long way away they are, Toft thought. He felt the cold creeping up his legs but he stayed where he was staring at the light which came and went, so faint that one could only just see it. He felt as though they had deceived him somehow.

  *

  The Hemulen stood in the kitchen holding the lamp in his paw and thinking what an impossible and unpleasant task it was hunting for a mattress, finding a place to put it, and then to undress and confess that yet another day had become yet another night. How did things get like this, he thought, quite dumbfounded. I have felt so happy all day. What was it that was so simple?

  While the Hemulen stood there wondering, the veranda door opened and someone came into the drawing-room and knocked over a chair.

  ‘What are you doing in there?’ the Hemulen asked.

  No one answered. The Hemulen lifted up the lamp and shouted: ‘Who’s there?!’

  A very old voice answered mysteriously: ‘That I have no intention of telling you!’

  CHAPTER 7

  Grandpa-Grumble

  HE was frightfully old and forgot things very easily. One dark autumn morning he woke up and had forgotten what his name was. It’s a little sad when you forget other people’s names but it’s lovely to be able to completely forget your own.

  He didn’t bother about getting up, and the whole day he let pictures and thoughts come and go in his mind just as they pleased; he slept sometimes and woke up again still not knowing who he was. It was a peaceful and very exciting day.

  Towards evening he tried to find a name for himself so that he would be able to get up. Crumby-Mumble? Grindle-Fumble? Grandpa-Grumble? Gramble-Fimble? Mamble…?

  There are so many people you’re introduced to who immediately lose their names. They always come on Sundays. They shout polite questions because they can never learn that you’re not deaf. They try to talk as simply as possible so that you’ll understand what it is they’re on about. They say good night and go home and play and dance and sing until the next morning. They’re all relations of yours.

  I am Grandpa-Grumble, he whispered solemnly. I shall get up now and forget all the families in the world.

  Grandpa-Grumble sat by his window most of the night and looked out into the darkness, he was full of expectation. Someone passed his house and went straight into the forest. A lighted window was reflected in the water on the other side of the bay. Perhaps there was a party going on and perhaps there wasn’t. The night passed quietly while Grandpa-Grumble waited to know what he wanted to do.

  There came a moment in the darkness of early dawn when he knew that he wanted to go to a valley where he had once been a very long time ago. It was just possible that he had only heard about this valley, or perhaps he had read about it, but it made no difference really. The most important thing was the brook that ran through the valley. Or perhaps it was a river? But certainly not a stream. Grandpa-Grumble decided that it was a brook, for he liked brooks much more than streams. A clear, flowing brook, with him sitting on the bridge and dangling his legs as he watched the little fish swimming round each other. No one to ask him whether he ought to go to bed. No one to ask him how he was and then start talking about other things without giving him time to work out whether he felt well or not. There was a place there, too, where one could play and sing all night, and Grandpa-Grumble would be the last to go home at dawn.

  Grandpa-Grumble didn’t leave straightaway. He had learnt the importance of putting off the thing you’re longing for and he knew that an excursion into the unknown must be prepared with the proper consideration.

  For several days he wandered in the hills surrounding the long, dark bay, sinking deeper and deeper into forget-fulness, and he began to feel that the valley was getting nearer and nearer.

  The last red and yellow leaves fell off the trees and gathered round his feet as he walked (Grandpa-Grumble still had very good legs) and from time to time he stopped and picked up a leaf with his stick and said to himself: that’s maple. I shan’t forget that. He knew perfectly well what he wanted to remember.

  It was incredible how much he succeeded in forgetting during those few days. Every morning he woke up with the same secretive expectation, and immediately started about the business of forgetting in order to make the valley come nearer. No one disturbed him, no one told him who he was.

  Grandpa-Grumble found a basket under his bed and packed it with all his medicines and the little bottle of brandy for his stomach. He made six sandwiches and dug out his umbrella. He was getting ready to escape, he was running away from home.

  Over the years many things had accumulated on his floor. There are so many things you never bother to pick up, and so many reasons for not picking them up. These objects lay scattered all over the place like so many islands, an archipelago of lost and unnecessary things. Out of habit he stepped over them and round them, they gave his daily walks round the room a certain excitement and at the same time a feeling of repetition and permanence. Grandpa-Grumble decided that they weren’t needed any longer. He took a broom and made a storm sweep through the room. Everything, scraps of food, lost slippers, bits of fluff, pills that had rolled into corners, forgotten shopping-lists, spoons and forks and buttons and unopened letters, he brushed them all into a heap. From this great heap he picked out eight pairs of spectacles and put them in his basket: I shall be looking at quite new things, he thought.

  The valley was now quite close, just around the corner, and he had a feeling that it wasn’t even Sunday yet.

  On Friday or Saturday Grandpa-Grumble left his house, and naturally he couldn’t help writing a farewell note. ‘I’m going away now and I feel fine,’ he wrote. ‘I’ve heard everything you’ve said for a hundred years because I’m not deaf at all and I know you have parties on the sly all the time.’ No signature.

  Then Gr
andpa-Grumble put on his dressing-gown and his gaiters, he picked up his little basket, opened his door and closed it behind him, shutting in a hundred old years. Strengthened by his determination and his new name he headed due north towards the Happy Valley and nobody in the bay knew that he had gone. Red and yellow leaves danced round his head and from far away in the hills came another autumn downpour to wash away the last of everything he didn’t want to remember.

  CHAPTER 8

  Lady in a Muddle

  FILLYJONK’s visit to Moominvalley was postponed a little because she couldn’t decide about the moth-balls. Putting moth-balls in everything is a big operation, with airing and brushing and all that, not to mention the wardrobes themselves, which had to be scrubbed with soda and soap. But as soon as Fillyjonk touched a broom or a duster she felt dizzy, and a giddy feeling of fear started in her stomach and got stuck in her throat. She couldn’t do any cleaning, it was no good. Not after that business of washing the window.

  This won’t do, poor Fillyjonk thought. The moths will eat up everything I possess!

  She had no idea how long her visit would last. If she didn’t enjoy it the whole thing might be over in a couple of days. But if she was enjoying herself it might last a month. And if it was a month, her clothes might be full of moths and carpet-beetles when she got home. With horror she imagined their little jaws eating through her clothes, her carpets – and their wicked delight when they found her feather-boa!

  In the end Fillyjonk was so tired and overcome with not being able to make up her mind that she flung her feather-boa round her neck, locked the house and started off.

  Moominvalley wasn’t far from her house but when she arrived her suitcase felt as heavy as lead and her boots hurt her. She went up on the veranda and knocked on the door, waited a little and then went into the drawing-room.

  Fillyjonk saw immediately that no one had cleaned up there for a long time. She took off one of her cotton gloves and ran her finger along the edge of the stove, making a white line in the grey dust. It can’t be true, she whispered, and a shudder of agitation went through her. To stop cleaning, and of your own free will, too… She put her suitcase down and went over to the window. It was dirty as well, the rain had left long melancholy streaks all over the pane. Only when Fillyjonk noticed that the curtains had been taken down did she understand that the family wasn’t at home at all. She saw that the chandelier had been wrapped in muslin. And all of a sudden the chilly smell of the deserted house enveloped her and she felt utterly deceived. She opened her suitcase and took out the china vase, the present for Moominmamma, and put it on the table. It stood there as a silent reproach. It was terribly quiet everywhere.

  Suddenly Fillyjonk dashed upstairs. It was even chillier there, the kind of stagnant cold you find in a summer-house that has been closed up for the winter. She opened one door after another, all the rooms were empty and in semi-darkness with the blinds down. She became more and more uneasy and began to open the wardrobes, tried to open the clothes-cupboard but it was locked, and suddenly she went quite crazy and hammered on the cupboard door with both paws, then she rushed up to the box-room and pulled the door open.

  There inside sat Toft, staring at her. He had a big book in his lap and looked frightened.

  ‘Where are they? Where are they?’ shouted Fillyjonk.

  Toft dropped his book and crept against the wall, but when he caught the smell of this strange, excited fillyjonk he knew that she wasn’t dangerous. She smelt of fear. He said: ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But I’ve come to see them!’ Fillyjonk exclaimed. ‘I have

  a present with me. A very fine vase. They can’t have moved away just like that without saying a word!’

  Toft just shook his head and went on staring at her. Then Fillyjonk shut the door behind her and went away.

  Toft crept back into the roach-net that lay rolled up on the floor and made a fresh comfortable hollow for himself and went on reading. It was a very big book which had no beginning and no end and the pages were all faded and had been nibbled by rats at the edges. Toft wasn’t used to reading and it took him a long time to spell his way through every line. All the time he was hoping that the book would explain to him why the family had gone away and where they all were. But the book was about quite different things, curious beasts and murky landscapes and nothing had a name that he recognized. Toft had never known before that deep down at the bottom of the sea lived Radiolaria and the very last Nummulites. One of the Nummulites wasn’t like his relatives, there was something of Noctiluca, about him, and little by little he was like nothing except himself. He was evidently very tiny and became even tinier when he was frightened.

  ‘It is impossible for us to express sufficient amazement,’ read Toft, ‘at this raro variant of the Protozoa group. The reason for its peculiar development naturally evades all possibility of well-founded judgement, but we have grounds for conjecturing that an electrical charge was a crucial necessity of life for it. The occurrence of electrical storms at that period was exceptionally abundant, the postglacial mountain chains described above being subjected to the unceasing turbulence of these violent electrical storms, and the adjacent ocean became charged with electricity.’

  Toft let the book fall. He didn’t really understand what it was all about and the sentences were so long. But he thought all the strange words were beautiful, and he had never had a book of his own before. He hid it under the roach-net and lay still, thinking. A little bat was hanging from the broken skylight, sleeping upside down.

  He heard Fillyjonk’s shrill voice in the garden, she had found the Hemulen.

  Toft felt very sleepy. He tried to describe the Happy Family, but he couldn’t. Then he told himself all about the solitary creature instead, the little Nummulite who had something of Noctiluca about him and liked electricity.

  CHAPTER 9

  Mymble

  MYMBLE was walking through the forest and she thought: it’s nice being a mymble. I feel absolutely splendid from top to toe.

  She liked her long legs and her red boots. On top of her head sat her haughty mymble hair-do, glossy and tight and a soft reddish-yellow like a little onion. She went through swamps and up hills and through the deep hollows that the rain had transformed into under-water landscapes, she walked quickly and sometimes she broke into a run just to feel how light and thin she was.

  Mymble had got an urge to go and see her little sister, Little My, whom the Moomin family had adopted some time ago. She imagined that Little My was just as down-to-earth and bad-tempered as ever and that she could still squeeze into a sewing-basket.

  When Mymble arrived Grandpa-Grumble was sitting on the bridge fishing with a home-made contraption. He was wearing his dressing-gown, gaiters and hat, and holding an umbrella. Mymble had never seen him close to, and she scrutinized him carefully and with a certain curiosity. He was surprisingly small.

  ‘I know who you are all right,’ he said. ‘And I am Grandpa-Grumble and nobody else! And I know you have parties on the sly because I can see the lights on in your windows all night!’

  ‘If you believe that, you’d believe anything,’ Mymble answered unconcerned. ‘Have you seen Little My?’

  Grandpa-Grumble pulled his contraption out of the water. It was empty.

  ‘Where’s Little My?’ Mymble asked.

  ‘Don’t shout!’ Grandpa-Grumble yelled. ‘There’s nothing wrong with my ears, and the fish may get scared and swim away!’

  ‘They did that long ago,’ said Mymble, and ran off. Grandpa-Grumble sneezed and crept further in under his umbrella. His brook had always been full of fish. He looked down into the brown water rushing under the bridge in a glistening swollen mass, carrying with it thousands of floating, half-drowned objects which sped past and disappeared, all the time passing and disappearing… Grandpa-Grumble’s eyes started to ache and he shut them in order to be able to see his own brook again, a clear brook with a sandy bottom and full of darting shiny fish…


  There’s something wrong here, he thought anxiously. The bridge is all right, it’s the right one. But I’m what’s quite new… His thoughts drifted away and he fell asleep.

  *

  Fillyjonk sat on the veranda with blankets over her legs and looking as though she owned the whole valley and wasn’t very pleased about it.

  ‘Hallo,’ said Mymble. She could see at once that the house was empty.

  ‘Good morning,’ Fillyjonk replied with the chilly charm she used for mymbles. ‘They’ve all gone away. Without a word. One should feel grateful that the door wasn’t locked!’

  ‘They never lock their doors,’ Mymble said.

  ‘Yes they do,’ Fillyjonk whispered and leant forward confidentially. ‘They have locked doors. The clothes-cup-board upstairs is locked! Of course, that’s where they keep their valuables, things they’re afraid of losing!’

  Mymble looked at Fillyjonk, her anxious eyes and her hair all in tight curls with a hair-grip in each and her feather-boa. Fillyjonk hadn’t changed. The Hemulen came up the garden-path, he was raking leaves into a basket.

  ‘Hallo,’ said the Hemulen. ‘So you’re here too, are you?’

  ‘Who’s that?’ Mymble asked.

  ‘I brought a present with me,’ Fillyjonk said behind her.

  ‘Toft,’ the Hemulen explained, ‘he’s helping me a bit in the garden.’

  ‘A very fine china vase for Moominmamma! ‘said Fillyjonk shrilly.