Moominpappa at Sea (8 page)

‘I think you’re right,’ said Moominmamma. ‘Have you missed anything? One can’t hear the trees in the forest any more.’

Moominpappa listened. He could hear the sound of the sea murmuring round the island, and remembered how the trees used to whisper round their old home at night.

‘Actually it’s rather pleasant,’ said Moominmamma, drawing the blanket up round her ears. ‘It’s different. You won’t have any more terrible dreams, will you?’

‘I don’t expect so. A sandwich
does
taste good in the middle of the night!’

MOOMINTROLL and Little My lay on their stomachs in the sun looking into the thicket. It was low and tangled; tiny angry-looking spruce trees and even smaller birches battling with the wind all their lives. They grew very close together for protection. The tops of the trees had stopped growing, but the branches held on tight to the ground wherever they could reach it.

‘Who would have thought they could be so ferocious,’ said Little My, full of admiration.

Moomintroll peeped under the thick mass of struggling trees, bent and twisted like snakes. On the ground he could see a whole carpet of creeping brown spruce twigs and needles, and above them cave-like holes of gaping darkness.

‘Look!’ he said. ‘There’s a spruce holding a little birch tree in its arms to protect it.’

‘Do you think so?’ said Little My sinisterly. ‘I think she’s strangling it. This is just the sort of forest where people get strangled. I shouldn’t be surprised if there’s somebody in there being strangled right now. Like this!’

– She threw her arms round Moomintroll’s neck and began to squeeze him.

‘Give over!’ screamed Moomintroll and shook himself loose. ‘Do you really think there’s someone in there…?’

‘You take me too literally,’ said Little My with contempt.

‘No I don’t,’ exclaimed Moomintroll. ‘It’s only that I can
see
someone sitting in there! It seems so real, but I never know if people are serious or just pulling my leg. Are you being serious?
Is
there really someone there?’

Little My laughed and got up. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ she said. ‘So long. I’m off to the point to take a look at that queer old fisherman. He interests me.’

After Little My had gone, Moomintroll crept a little closer to the forest and stared in, his heart beating fast. He could hear the waves breaking gently on the beach and the sun was warm on his back.

‘Of course there’s nobody there,’ thought Moomintroll angrily. ‘She just made it up. I know she’s always making things up and getting me to believe them. Next time she does it I’ll say: “Huh! Don’t be silly!” A bit superciliously, and in passing, of course. This forest isn’t dangerous, it’s just scared. Every single tree is bending backwards as though it wanted to pull
itself by the roots and run away. You can see it.’ And still angry, Moomintroll crept right into the thicket.

The sunshine disappeared and it grew cold. The branches tore at his ears and the twigs pricked him, and hollow bits of wood snapped under his paws. There was a smell of cellars and dead plants. And it was quiet, quite silent, and the noise of the sea could no longer be heard. Moomintroll thought he could hear someone breathing and he felt himself choking with panic, shut in and being strangled by the trees. He wanted terribly to get out into the sunshine again, quickly, quickly – and then he thought: ‘No. If I turn back now, I shall never dare to go in again. Little My has frightened me, that’s all. I shall say to her: “Oh, by the way, there’s nothing in the thicket at all. I looked. You were bluffing!”’

Moomintroll sneezed and crept a little further, groping between the trees. Now and again there was a crack and a tree-trunk fell to the ground, a soft, velvet-brown mass of decaying wood. The ground was like elastic and as smooth as silk, and was covered with millions of dead needles.

As he crept farther and farther in, the unpleasant shut-in feeling vanished. He just felt protected and hidden by the chilly darkness; he was a tiny little animal who was hiding and wanted to be left in peace. Suddenly he could hear the sea again and feel the warmth and dazzling brightness of the sun. He had come upon a glade in the middle of the thicket.

It was a very small glade, about as big as two beds placed side by side. Inside it was warm and there were
bees buzzing round the flowers. On all sides the forest stood guard. Above his head the birch trees waved to and fro, a thin green roof which the sun could look through. It was complete. Moomintroll had found perfection. Nobody had been here before him; it was all his own.

He sat carefully down in the grass and shut his eyes. To have a really safe hiding-place had always been one of his most serious ambitions, he had always been looking for one, and had found quite a number in the past. But none of them had been as good as this. It was both hidden and open. Only the birds could see him, the ground was warm and he was protected on all sides. He sighed.

Something bit Moomintroll’s tail. It stung like mad. He jumped up and he knew at once what it was. Ants. Tiny, vindictive red ants. There were swarms of them in the grass. They were running in all directions – another one bit him in the tail. Moomintroll withdrew slowly, his eyes red with disappointment; he was terribly offended. Naturally, they were living here before he had appeared on the scene. But if one lives in the ground, one just doesn’t see anything of what’s up above; an ant has no idea of what birds or clouds look like, or for that matter doesn’t know anything about the things which are important to a Moomintroll for instance.

There were many kinds of justice. According to one kind, which was a little complicated perhaps, but absolutely fair, the glade belonged to him and not to the ants. ‘But how can I get them to understand?’ he
thought. ‘They could just as easily live somewhere else. Just a little way off, only a few yards. Was there no way of explaining to them? If the worst came to the worst, couldn’t one just draw a boundary line and divide the glade?’

They were back again. They had located him and started to attack. Moomintroll fled. He was fleeing from paradise in disgrace, but he was fully determined to return. The place had been waiting for him all his life, perhaps for several hundred years! It was his because he liked it more than anybody else did. If a million ants all loved it at the same time, they couldn’t feel as strongly as he did. Or so he believed.

‘Pappa,’ said Moomintroll.

But Moominpappa wasn’t listening, because just at that moment he had got the right grip on a big round boulder, and with a great thud it rolled down the slope. It made two very clear sparks and left a faint but enchanting smell of gunpowder behind. Now it was lying at the bottom, just where it should lie. It was wonderful to roll stones, first pushing with all one’s might, then feeling them beginning to move, just a little at first – then a little more – and then giving way and rolling into the sea with a colossal splash, leaving one standing there trembling with effort and pride.

‘Pappa!’ shouted Moomintroll.

Moominpappa turned round and waved to his son. ‘It’s lying just where it should lie!’ he exclaimed. ‘This is going to be a jetty, a kind of breakwater.’ He waded into the sea and with a great deal of puffing and blowing, began to roll another, even larger boulder along the bottom, with his nose right under the water. It was much easier to lift and roll stones under the water. Moominpappa wondered why. But the great thing was that it made one feel tremendously strong…

‘I want to ask you something!’ shouted Moomintroll. ‘About red ants! It’s important!’

Moominpappa lifted his nose out of the water and listened.

‘Red ants!’ repeated Moomintroll. ‘Can one talk to them? Do you think they would understand if I put up a notice for them? Could they read it?’

‘Red ants?’ said Moominpappa in amazement. ‘Of course they can’t read. They wouldn’t understand a thing. Now I must find a three-cornered stone to put in between these two large ones. A breakwater has to be strong – it must be built by someone who knows all about the sea…’ Pappa went on wading, with his nose in the water.

Moomintroll went higher up the beach and stood where he could see Moominmamma crawling about in her garden. She was spreading out seaweed. Her paws and apron were quite brown and she radiated happy concentration.

Moomintroll went up to her and said: ‘Mamma, just try and imagine a perfectly marvellous spot that you’ve found and made your very own, only to discover that there are crowds of other people there who don’t want to move away. Have they the right to stay put, although they don’t understand how beautiful the place is?’

‘Yes, of course they have,’ said Moominmamma, sitting down in the seaweed.

‘But what if they would be just as happy in a rubbish-heap?’ exclaimed her son.

‘Well, then one would have to reason with them,’ said Moominmamma. ‘And perhaps give them a hand with the moving. It’s very trying to have to move if one has lived in the same place for a long time.’

‘Oh, bother!’ said Moomintroll. ‘Where’s Little My?’ ‘She’s somewhere up at the lighthouse, building some sort of lift,’ answered Moominmamma.

Little My was hanging perilously out of the open north window as bold as brass. She was knocking a nail into a block of wood on the window-ledge. On the floor there was a whole pile of grey-looking things and the trap-door was open.

‘What do you think Pappa will say about this?’ Moomintroll asked. ‘No one’s allowed up there. It’s his private room.’

‘There’s a loft above his private room,’ said Little My nonchalantly. ‘A jolly nice little loft where you can find all sorts of things. Hand me that nail. I’m fed up with climbing up those stairs every time we have to eat, so I’m building a lift. You can haul me up in a basket, or else lower the food down to me. That would be even better.’

‘How she carries on!’ Moomintroll thought. ‘She does exactly what she feels like doing, and no one opposes her. She just does it.’

He said: ‘By the way, that thicket. There’s no one there. No one at all. Possibly a few ants.’

‘Really,’ said Little My. ‘I can well believe it.’

So that was that. She banged a nail right in, whistling between her teeth.

‘You’ll have to clear up all this mess before Pappa comes back,’ shouted Moomintroll in between hammer-strokes. But he had a feeling he hadn’t made any impression at all. He poked about dejectedly in the pile of old paper, tins, old fishing-nets, woollen gloves and bits of sealskin – and that’s how he found the calendar. A large wall-calendar with a wonderful
picture of a sea-horse riding on a wave in the moonlight. The moon was dipping into the sea and the sea-horse had long golden hair and very pale, unfathomable eyes. How could anyone paint so beautifully! Moomintroll put the picture on the desk and gazed at it for a long time.

‘It’s five years out of date,’ said Little My, jumping down to the floor. ‘The days are quite different now, and someone’s torn them off anyway. Hold the rope, and I’ll go down and see if this lift works.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Moomintroll. ‘There’s something I want to ask you. What does one do to get ants to move?’

‘Dig them up, obviously,’ said Little My.

‘No, no,’ exclaimed Moomintroll. ‘I mean, to get them to go away.’

Little My looked at him. After a while she said: ‘Ah! I see. So you’ve found a spot you like in that thicket. And it’s full of ants. What will you give me if I get rid of them?’

He felt his nose turn red.

‘I’ll fix it for you,’ said Little My calmly. ‘You can go there and look after a day or two. And you can look after the lift for me instead. I’m off.’

Moomintroll stood still, feeling miserable. The secret was out. His hide-out was now just any old place. He looked quickly at the calendar, straight into the sea-horse’s eyes. ‘We’re alike, you and I,’ he thought. ‘We understand each other, we only care about beautiful things. I shall get my glade, and
nothing else matters. But just at the moment I don’t want to think about it.’

Little My pulled on the rope down below. ‘Pull me up!’ she shouted. ‘And don’t let go! Think of your ants.’