Moominpappa at Sea (12 page)

Moominpappa came down through the trap-door in the afternoon when the belt was ready.

‘I tried it on,’ he said. ‘And then I took quite a bit off. It should be just right for you.’

Moominmamma put it over her head and it slipped down to her waist, just where it should be.

‘It can’t be true!’ said Moominmamma. ‘It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever been given!’

She was so happy that she suddenly felt very serious.

‘We couldn’t understand why you wanted rice!’ exclaimed Moomintroll. ‘It swells when it’s wet… so we thought you were using it to tighten the window in some way…’

‘It’s fantastic,’ said Little My with reluctant admiration.
‘I can hardly believe it.’ She put the wash-basin in a different place so that the drops falling from the ceiling didn’t say plip or plop but plup, and added: ‘Well, that’s good-bye to the rice pudding!’

‘I have got rather a large waist,’ said Moominmamma reproachfully. ‘We can eat gruel just as well.’

This suggestion was met by complete silence. Moominpappa could hear the drops falling from the ceiling, making a sort of melody with three notes instead of two, specially written for him. He didn’t like it.

‘Dearest, if I had to choose between a jewel and rice pudding,’ Moominmamma began, but Moominpappa interrupted her saying, ‘How much of the food is eaten?’

‘Rather a lot,’ said Moominmamma anxiously. ‘You know what sea air is like…’

‘Is there anything left?’ Moominpappa went on.

Moominmamma made a vague gesture which seemed to suggest that there wasn’t much left except porridge, but that it wasn’t so important after all.

Then Moominpappa did the only possible thing that he could do in such a situation – he took his fishing-rod, put on the lighthouse-keeper’s hat, and in proud silence selected his most beautiful trolling spoon.

‘I’m going fishing for a while,’ he said calmly. ‘It’s just the right weather for pike.’

The north-easter had blown itself out, but the water was still very high. It was drizzling, and the rock and the
water were the same colour, a grey nothingness and very lonely.

Moominpappa fished for an hour in the black pool. He didn’t get a single bite. ‘One shouldn’t talk about pike till one’s got a catch,’ he thought.

Like most fathers of a certain kind Moominpappa liked fishing. He had got his fishing-rod on his birthday a couple of years before and it was a very fine one. But sometimes it stood in its corner in a slightly unpleasant way, as though reminding him that it was for catching fish.

Moominpappa stood looking down into the black water of the pool, and the pool stared back at him with its great eye. He drew in his line and put his pipe in his hat. Then he walked over to the leeward side of the island.

There might be some pike there, little ones perhaps, but something to take home with him anyway.

Just off-shore sat the fisherman fishing in his boat.

‘Is this a good place to fish?’ Moominpappa asked.

‘No,’ said the fisherman.

Pappa sat on the rock and tried to think of something to say. He had never met anyone so difficult to talk to. It all seemed so clumsy and awkward.

‘I expect it’s a little lonely here in winter,’ he ventured, but of course he got no answer. He tried once more.

‘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. Moomintroll 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.