Moominvalley in November (16 page)

While Grandpa-Grumble was talking, Fillyjonk was seeing to the serving of the Welsh rarebits, discreetly, but doing it all the same. Grandpa-Grumble followed each Welsh rarebit as it arrived with his eyes, saw them land up on their plates and then yelled: 'You're spoiling my turn!'

'Oh, I'm sorry,' said Fillyjonk, 'but they're
hot,
they've just come out of the oven...'

'Bring them with you, bring them with you,' said Grandpa-Grumble impatiently. 'But hide them behind your backs so that he won't feel even more hurt. And take your glasses, too, so that you can drink his health.'

*

Fillyjonk held up a paper lantern and Grandpa-Grumble opened the clothes-cupboard. He bowed deeply. The Ancestor bowed, too.

'I can't be bothered to introduce them all to you,' Grandpa-Grumble said. 'You'd forget their names, and it's not all that important anyway.' He held out his glass towards the Ancestor and it clinked as they drank each other's health.

'But I don't understand,' exclaimed the Hemulen.

Mymble kicked him in the leg.

'You must all drink his health,' said Grandpa-Grumble, and stepped to one side. 'Where did he go to?'

'We're much too young to drink with him,' said Fillyjonk hastily, 'he might be angry...'

'Three cheers for the Ancestor!' the Hemulen exclaimed. 'One, two, three, hip hip hooray!'

As they were going back to the kitchen, Grandpa-Grumble turned to Fillyjonk and said: 'You're not all that young...'

'Yes, yes,' said Fillyjonk absently, and lifted her nose and sniffed. There was a musty smell, a nasty smell of decay. She looked at Toft. He turned away and thought: electricity.

It was nice to be back in the warm kitchen again.

'Now I want to see some conjuring tricks,' Grandpa-Grumble declared. 'Can anyone produce a rabbit out of my hat?'

'No, it's my turn now,' said Fillyjonk with dignity.

'I know what it is,' cried Mymble. 'It's going to be that awful business of hers where one of the guests goes out of the room and is eaten up, and then another goes outside and is eaten up...'

'It's a shadow-play,' said Fillyjonk unmoved. She went up to the stove and turned and faced them. 'It is a shadow-play, called "The Return".' She hung the sheet over the bread-rack in the ceiling. Then she placed the kitchen lamp on the log-basket behind the sheet and went round blowing out the lanterns one after the other.

'And when the lights went on again, the last one had been eaten up,' Mymble said under her breath.

The Hemulen hushed her. Fillyjonk disappeared behind the sheet, shining big and white, everybody looked and waited and Snufkin started to play softly, almost in a whisper.

Then a shadow appeared on the white sheet, a black silhouette, it was a. boat. There was somebody very small sitting in the prow who had an onion-shaped little knot on top of her head.

It's Little My, Mymble thought. She looks just like that. I must say this is well done.

The boat glided slowly on across the sheet, over the sea, never before had a boat sailed so silently and so naturally, and there sat the whole family, Moomintroll and Moominmamma with her handbag leaning against the gunwale and Moominpappa with his hat on sat in the stern and steered; they were sailing home. (But the rudder didn't look right.)

Toft could only look at Moominmamma. He had time to take in every detail, for him the dark shadow took on colours, the silhouettes seemed to move and all the time

Snufkin went on playing so fittingly that no one was conscious of the music until it stopped. The family had come home.

That was a real shadow-play, Grandpa-Grumble said to himself. I have seen many shadow-plays in my time and I can remember them all, but that was the best.

The curtain came down, the play was over. Fillyjonk blew out the kitchen lamp and the room was plunged in darkness. They all sat still in the dark, waiting, a little taken aback.

Suddenly Fillyjonk said: 'I can't find the matches.'

The darkness immediately took on a different character. They could hear the wind whistling, and it seemed as though the kitchen had expanded, the walls sliding out into the night beyond, and their legs felt cold.

'I can't find the matches!' Fillyjonk repeated shrilly.

There was a scraping of chair legs and something fell over on the table. They had all stood up, they bumped into each other in the dark, somebody got all tangled up in the sheet and fell over a chair. Toft raised his head, the Creature was outside now, a great heavy body rubbing along the wall by the kitchen door. There was a rumble of thunder.

'They're outside!' Fillyjonk screamed. 'They're crawling in here!'

Toft put his ear against the door and listened, he couldn't hear anything except the wind. He raised the latch and went out, and the door closed noiselessly behind him.

At last the lamp was alight. Snufkin had found the matches. The Hemulen gave an embarrassed laugh. 'Look!' he said, 'I've stuck my paw into the Welsh rarebit!'

The kitchen looked normal again, but no one sat down. And no one noticed that Toft wasn't there.

'We'll leave things just as they are,' said Fillyjonk nervously. 'Don't move anything, I'll wash up in the morning.'

'But you don't mean you're going home?' Grandpa-Grumble exclaimed. 'The Ancestor has gone to bed and now the fun can begin!'

But no one felt like going on with the party. They said good night to each other, hastily and very politely, shook paws, and in a little while all the guests had disappeared. Grandpa-Grumble stamped on the floor before he left. He said: 'Well, I was the last to leave at any rate!'

*

When Toft got outside in the darkness he stood and waited on the steps. The sky was a little lighter than the mountains, whose undulating contours rose above Moomin-valley. The Creature was silent, but Toft knew that it was looking at him.

Toft called softly: 'Nummulite... little Radiolaria, Protozoa...'But it couldn't recognize the strange names in the book. It was probably just bewildered and didn't even know why it growled.

Toft was more worried than afraid. He was uneasy about what the Nummulite might do on its own, it was too big and too angry and not used to being either big or angry. He took an uncertain step and felt that the Creature immediately moved backwards.

'You needn't go,' Toft explained. 'Just move a little farther away.' He continued over the grass and the Creature retreated, a clumsy, shapeless shadow, the bushes cracked and snapped where the Creature passed.

It has become too big, Toft thought. It's so big that it can't move properly.

There were cracking sounds from the jasmine-bush. Toft stopped and whispered: 'Take it easy, easy...'

The Creature growled at him. He could hear the faint

swish of the rain, the thunder was a long way away now. They went on. Toft talked softly all the time to his Creature. They arrived at the crystal ball, tonight it was clear blue and the heavy swell could be seen quite clearly in its depths.

'It's no good,' said Toft. 'We can't hit back. Neither of us will ever learn to hit back. You must believe me.'

The Nummulite listened, perhaps it was only listening to Toft's voice. He was cold and his shoes were wet, he grew impatient and said: 'Make yourself tiny and hide yourself! You'll never get through this!'

And suddenly the crystal ball became overshadowed. A dizzy vortex opened in the heavy blue swell and then closed itself again, the Creature of the Protozoa group had made itself tiny and returned to its proper element. Moomin-pappa's crystal ball, which gathered everything and took care of everything, had opened up for the bewildered Nummulite.

Toft went back to the house and crept up to his box-room. He curled up in the roach-net and went to sleep straight away.

*

After the others had all left, Fillyjonk remained standing in the middle of the floor, lost in thought. Everything was upside down, the streamers had been trodden on, the chairs overturned and the lanterns had dripped candlewax over everything. She picked up a Welsh rarebit off the floor, bit a piece off distractedly and threw the rest in the rubbish bucket. A successful party, she said to herself.

It was raining outside. She listened carefully but could hear only the rain. They had disappeared.

Actually, Fillyjonk was neither happy nor upset and not a little bit tired. It was as though everything had come to a standstill, and she went on listening. Snufkin had left his mouth-organ on the table, she picked it up, held it in her paw and waited. There was only the rain outside. She raised the mouth-organ and blew into it, she moved it backwards and forwards listening to the sound. She sat down at the kitchen table. How did it go? Toodledi, toodledoo... It was difficult to get it right, she tried and tried again, moved very carefully from one note to the next and found the right one, the next came of its own accord. The tune slipped past her, but then came back. Obviously one had to feel for it, not search here and there. Toodledoo, toodledi, a whole string of notes came, each undeniably in the right place.

Hour after hour Fillyjonk sat at the kitchen table playing the mouth-organ, tentatively but with great devotion. The notes began to resemble tunes and the tunes became music. She played Snufkin's songs and she played her own; she couldn't be got at, nothing could make her feel unsafe now. She didn't worry whether the others could hear her or not. Outside in the garden all was quiet, all the creepy-crawly things had disappeared, and it was an ordinary dark autumn night with a rising wind.

Fillyjonk went to sleep at the kitchen table with her arms under her head. She slept very well until half past eight in the morning, and when she woke up she looked round and said to herself: what a mess! Today we're going to have a thorough clean-up!

CHAPTER 19
First Snow

AT
eight thirty-five, with the morning still quite shrouded in darkness, all the windows were flung open one after the other, mattresses, bedcovers and blankets poured out over every window-sill and a wonderful draught rushed through the house and raised the dust in thick clouds.

Fillyjonk was cleaning. Every single pan was on the stove heating water, brushes and rags and bowls were dancing out of their cupboards and the veranda railings were decorated with carpets. It was an enormous cleaning up, the most enormous that anyone had ever seen. The others stood on the slope outside in amazement, watching Fillyjonk going in and out, backwards and forwards, with a scarf round her head and Moominmamma's apron on, which was so big that it went round her three times.