Moominpappa at Sea (4 page)

‘You don’t feel the cold, do you?’ he shouted happily. ‘Have you wrapped the blanket round you?’ he asked Moominmamma. ‘Look, we’ve left the last island
behind us now, and soon it will be the darkest part of the night. Sailing at night is very difficult. You have to be on the look-out all the time.’

‘Why of course, dear!’ said Moominmamma, who was lying curled up in the bottom of the boat. ‘This is all a great experience,’ she thought. The blanket had got a little wet and she moved gingerly towards the windward side. But the ribs of the boat got in the way of her ears all the time.

Little My sat in the bow of the boat, humming monotonously to herself.

‘Mamma,’ whispered Moomintroll. ‘What happened to her to make her like that?’

‘Who?’

‘The Groke. Did somebody do something to her to make her so awful?’

‘No one knows,’ said Moominmamma, drawing her tail out of the water. ‘It was probably because nobody did anything at all. Nobody bothered about her, I mean. I don’t suppose she remembers anyway, and I don’t suppose she goes around thinking about it either. She’s like the rain or the darkness, or a stone you have to walk round if you want to get past. Do you want some coffee? There’s some in the thermos in the white basket.’

‘Not just now,’ said Moomintroll. ‘She’s got glassy eyes just like a fish. Can she talk?’

Moominmamma sighed and said: ‘No one talks to her, or about her either, otherwise she gets bigger and starts to chase one. And you mustn’t feel sorry for her.
You seem to imagine that she longs for everything that’s alight, but all she really wants to do is to sit on it so that it’ll go out and never burn again. And now I think I might go to sleep for a while.’

Pale autumn stars had come out all over the sky. Moomintroll lay on his back looking at the hurricane lamp, but he was thinking about the Groke. If she was someone you mustn’t talk to or about, then she would gradually vanish and not even dare to believe in her own existence. He wondered whether a mirror might help. With lots and lots of mirrors one could be any number of people, seen from the front and from the back, and perhaps these people might even talk to each other. Perhaps…

Everything was silent. The rudder creaked softly, and they all slept. Moominpappa was alone with his family. He was wide-awake, more wide-awake than he had ever been before.

Far away, the Groke decided towards morning that she would set off. The island under her was black and transparent with a sharp bowsprit of ice pointing south.
She gathered up her dark skirts, hanging round her like the leaves of a faded rose. They opened out and rustled, lifting themselves like wings. So the Groke’s slow journey over the sea began.

She moved her skirts upwards, outwards and downwards, like slow swimming-strokes, in the frozen air. The water drew back in scared, choppy waves, and she floated on into the dawn with a cloud of drifting snow behind her. Against the horizon she looked like a large reeling bat. She found it slow-going, but somehow she managed. She had time. She had nothing else but time.

The family continued all night and all the next day until it was night again. Moominpappa still sat at the rudder waiting to catch sight of his lighthouse. But the night was just deep blue, and no lighthouse could be seen flashing on the horizon.

‘We’re on the right course,’ said Moominpappa. ‘I know we’re set on the right course. With this wind we ought to get there by midnight, but we should have seen the lighthouse when it began to get dark.’

‘Maybe some rotter’s put it out,’ suggested Little My.

‘Do you think anyone would put a lighthouse out,’ said Moominpappa. ‘You can depend on it that the lighthouse is working all right. There are some things one can be absolutely sure of: sea currents, the seasons, the rising of the sun, for example. And that lighthouses always work, too.’

‘We shall see it soon,’ said Moominmamma. Her
head was full of little thoughts that she couldn’t really get organized. ‘I do hope it’s working,’ she thought. ‘He’s so happy. I do hope there really is a lighthouse somewhere out there, and not just a bit of fly-dirt after all. We can’t possibly go home now, particularly after such a grand start… You can find big pink shells, but the white ones look very nice against black soil. I wonder whether the roses will grow out there…’

‘Shush! I can hear something,’ said Little My from the bow. ‘Be quiet all of you! Something’s happening.’

They all lifted their noses and stared into the night. The sound of oars reached their ears. The unknown boat gradually came nearer, gliding out of the darkness. It was a little grey boat, and the man rowing it was resting on his oars looking at them quite undismayed. He looked very scruffy, but appeared to be quite calm. The light shone on his large blue eyes, which were as transparent as water. He had some fishing-rods in the bow of his boat.

‘Do the fish bite at night?’ asked Moominpappa.

The fisherman turned and looked straight past them. He wasn’t going to say anything.

‘Isn’t there an island with a big lighthouse somewhere near here?’ Moominpappa continued. ‘Why isn’t it working? We ought to have seen it a long time ago.’

The fisherman glided past them in his boat. They could hardly hear him when he finally said something. ‘Can’t say, really… Go back home… You’ve come too far…’

He disappeared behind them. They listened for the sound of his oars, but could hear nothing in the silent night.

‘He was a little odd, wasn’t he?’ said Moominpappa uncertainly.

‘Very odd, if you ask me,’ said Little My. ‘Quite nuts.’

Moominmamma sighed and tried to straighten her legs. ‘But so are most of the people we know – more or less,’ she said.

The wind had dropped. Moominpappa sat bolt upright at the rudder with his nose in the air. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I have a feeling we’re there. We’re coming in on the leeward side of the island. But I just don’t understand why the lighthouse isn’t working.’

The air was warm and full of the scent of heather. Everything was completely still. And then out of the night loomed an enormous shadow: the island itself was towering over them, looking at them carefully. They could feel its hot breath as the boat struck the sandy
beach and came to a standstill: they felt they were being watched, and huddled together, not daring to move.

‘Did you hear that, Mamma?’ whispered Moomintroll.

Swift feet galloped up the beach, splashed a little, and then everything was quiet again.

‘It was only Little My going ashore,’ said Moominmamma. She shook herself, as though to break the silence, and began to poke about among her baskets, trying to get the box of earth with her roses over the side of the boat.

‘Now, take it easy,’ said Moominpappa nervously. ‘I’ll look after all this. Everything must be properly organized from the beginning. The boat is always the most important thing… You sit still and take it easy.’

Moominmamma sat down obediently, trying not to get in the way of the sail as it came down, and the boom as it swung backwards and forwards, while Moominpappa scrambled about in the boat organizing things. The hurricane lamp lit up a circle of white sand and black water, and outside it there was nothing
but darkness. Moominpappa and Moomintroll dragged the mattress ashore but not without getting one corner of it wet. The boat heeled over and the blue trunk pressed the rose-bushes against the side of the boat.

Moominmamma sat waiting with her nose in her paws. Everything was as it should be. In time she would probably get used to being looked after, perhaps she would come to like it. Even now she slept for a moment or two.

There was Moominpappa standing in the water and saying to her: ‘You can get out now. Everything’s ready.’ He was happy and wide-awake, and his hat was pushed right back. Higher up on the beach he had built a tent of the sails and the oars, looking like a big, squatting animal. Moominmamma tried to see whether there were any shells on this new beach of theirs, but it was much too dark. They had promised her that there would be shells, big and rare ones such as are to be found far out to sea.

‘Here you are,’ said Moominpappa. ‘Now all you have to do is to sleep. I shall stand guard outside all night, so there’s no need for you to be afraid. Tomorrow night you will be able to sleep in my lighthouse. If only I understood why it isn’t working… Is it nice and cosy inside there?’

‘It’s just fine!’ said Moominmamma, creeping in under the sail.

Little My was off somewhere on her own as usual. It didn’t matter, really, as she was the one member of the
family who seemed to manage all right by herself. Everything seemed to be going well.

Moomintroll watched Moominmamma turn round once or twice on the damp mattress until she found her favourite spot, give a little sigh and fall asleep. Of all strange things, that was the strangest, the way Moominmamma could sleep in this new place without unpacking, without making their beds and without giving them a sweet before they went to sleep. She had even left her handbag behind her on the sand. It was a little bit frightening in a way, but at the same time cheering; it meant that all this was a real change, and not just an adventure.

Moomintroll lifted his nose and peeped out from under the sail. There sat Moominpappa on guard, with the hurricane lamp in front of him. He cast a very large, long shadow; the whole of him looked much larger than usual. Moomintroll rolled himself into a ball again and put his paws under his warm tummy. He gave himself up to his dreams. They were blue and rocking, like the sea had been that night.

Gradually the morning came. Moominpappa was quite alone with his island, and with each hour that passed it became more and more his very own. The sky began to grow pale and the rocks rose up in front of him in great undulating masses, and above them he could see the lighthouse. There it was at last, huge and black against the grey of the sky. It was much bigger than he had imagined it would be, for it was just the time when the first light makes one feel helpless and
everything seems dangerous if one is alone and awake all by oneself.

Moominpappa turned out the hurricane lamp and made the beach disappear. He didn’t want the lighthouse to see him yet. A cold early morning wind blew in from the sea, and he could hear the cries of sea-gulls from somewhere on the other side of the island.

As Moominpappa sat on the beach, the lighthouse seemed to rise higher and higher above him. It was just like his model that he hadn’t had time to finish. Now he could see that the roof wasn’t as pointed as he had thought and that there was no rail. He gazed at the dark and deserted lighthouse for a long time, and gradually it began to grow smaller and more like the picture he had carried in his mind for so long.

‘In any case, it’s mine,’ he thought, and lit his pipe. ‘I’ll capture the lighthouse. I’ll present it to my family and say: “This is where you’re going to live. When we are safe inside, nothing dangerous can happen to us.”’

Little My sat on the lighthouse steps watching the dawn. Below her, the island lay in the half-light, looking like a big grey cat stretching itself, with its claws spread out; both its paws were resting in the sea and its tail was a long, narrow point at the other end of the island. The cat’s back was bristling, but its eyes were invisible.