Moominpappa at Sea (10 page)

It was them. The sea-horses,
his
sea-horses. Now he understood everything. The silver shoe he had found in the sand, the calendar with the moon dipping its feet in the mounting wave, the call he had heard while he
was asleep. Moomintroll stood in the trees and watched the sea-horses dance.

They leapt up and down the beach with their heads high, their hair flying and their tails floating behind them in long glistening waves. They were indescribably beautiful, and they seemed to be aware of it. They danced coquettishly, freely and openly, for themselves, for each other, for the island, for the sea – it seemed to be all the same to them. Sometimes they turned suddenly in the water so that the spray rose high above them, making rainbows in the moonlight. Then they would leap back through their own rainbows, looking up and bowing their heads to emphasize the curve of the neck and the line of the back down to the tail. It was as if they were dancing in front of a mirror.

Now they were standing still, stroking each other, obviously thinking only of one another. Both were wearing grey velvet which looked very warm and soft and which never got wet. It looked as if it was patterned with flowers.

While Moomintroll was watching them, something curious but quite natural happened. He suddenly thought that he, too, was beautiful. He felt relaxed and playful and light-of-heart. He ran down the beach crying: ‘Look at the moonlight! It’s so warm! I feel I could fly!’

The sea-horses shied, reared and sprang away in the moonlight. They dashed past him with their eyes staring and their hair streaming and their hooves beating the ground in panic, but he knew all the time that they were
only pretending. He knew that they weren’t really frightened and he didn’t know whether he ought to clap or try to calm them down. He just felt small, and fat and clumsy again. As they flew past him into the sea he shouted: ‘You’re so beautiful, so beautiful! Don’t leave me!’ A cloud of spray rose in the air, the last rainbow disappeared and the beach was deserted.

Moomintroll sat down in the sand to wait. He felt sure they would come back. They were certain to come back if he was only patient enough.

The night passed and the moon went down.

‘Perhaps they would like to see a light on the beach, a light to tempt them back here to play,’ thought Moomintroll. He lit the hurricane lamp and put it in front of him on the sand, staring intently at the dark water. After a while he got up and began to swing the lamp backwards and forwards. It was a signal. He tried to think of only ordinary soothing things and went on swinging the lamp. He was very, very patient.

It began to get cold on the beach, perhaps because it was getting on for morning. The cold floated in from the sea and Moomintroll’s paws began to freeze. He shivered and looked up; there was the Groke sitting on the water in front of him.

Her eyes were following the movements of the hurricane lamp, but otherwise she didn’t move. But he knew she would come nearer. He didn’t want to have anything to do with her. He wanted to go away from the coldness and motionlessness of her, far away
from the terrifying loneliness of her. But he couldn’t move. He just couldn’t.

He stood there swinging the hurricane lamp slower and slower. Neither of them moved and time began to drag. In the end Moomintroll started to walk backwards very slowly. The Groke stayed where she was on her little island of ice. Moomintroll went on walking backwards without taking his eyes off her, up the beach, into the aspens. He turned the lamp out.

It was very dark and the moon had gone down behind the island. Was that a shadow moving across the water? – he couldn’t be sure. Moomintroll went back to the lighthouse, his head full of things to think about.

The sea was quite calm now, but in among the aspens the leaves whispered with fright. He could smell paraffin strongly, coming from the thicket. But it didn’t seem to belong to the island somehow, or to the night.

‘I’ll think about that tomorrow,’ said Moomintroll to himself. ‘I’ve more important things on my mind now.’

JUST before sunrise, the wind got up. It was a vile, stubborn wind, blowing from the east. The family woke at about eight o’clock, and by then the wind was blowing in showers from the east and gusts of rain were sweeping round the lighthouse.

‘Now we shall get some water,’ said Moominmamma. ‘Thank goodness I found that barrel and cleaned it!’ She put some wood on the fire and lit it.

Moomintroll was still in bed. He didn’t want to talk to anyone. A wet patch had appeared on the ceiling, and a drop of water was getting larger in the middle of it. Then it fell on to the table and another one started to form immediately.

Little My crept in through the door. ‘This is no weather for the lift,’ she said, squeezing the water out
of her hair. ‘The wind’s blowing it straight off the lighthouse wall.’

They could hear the wind howling round the tower and the door shut with a bang.

‘Is coffee ready?’ asked Little My. ‘Weather like this makes me feel ravenous. The sea’s swept right into the black pool and the old man’s point has become an island! He’s blown inside out and is lying under his boat counting raindrops.’

‘The nets!’ said Moominpappa, jumping out of bed. ‘We’ve got the nets out.’ He went to the window but couldn’t see a trace of the float. The east wind was blowing in right over the point. It would be a ghastly job pulling them up with the wind blowing from the side. And the rain, too.

‘They can stay where they are,’ decided Moominpappa. ‘There’ll just be more fish in them, that’s all. After I’ve had my breakfast I’ll take a turn up above and see if I can get the hang of this gale. It will have blown itself out by this evening, you’ll see.’

The gale looked just the same from up above. Moominpappa stood looking at the lamp, unscrewed a nut and then screwed it up again, and opened and closed the lamp door. It was useless, he still didn’t know how it worked. How utterly thoughtless not to leave proper instructions in a lighthouse like this! Unforgivable, really.

Moominpappa sat on one of the gas cylinders and leant against the wall. Above him the rain was beating on
the window-panes, lashing and whipping them as each gust blew past. The green pane was broken. On the floor beneath it a little lake had formed. Moominpappa looked at it absently, and imagined it was a delta with long, winding rivers, and let his eyes wander across the wall. Someone had written something that looked like poetry with a pencil. Moominpappa leant closer and read it:

‘The lighthouse-keeper must have written that,’ Moominpappa thought. ‘He thought of it one day when he felt miserable. Imagine lighting the lamp for ships that never go past.’ Higher up the wall he had been feeling more cheerful, and had written:

Moominpappa started to creep round the walls looking for things the lighthouse-keeper had written. There were many notes about the strength of the wind. Apparently the worst storm had been one with a south-westerly wind, force ten. In another place the lighthouse-keeper had written some more verses, but they had been crossed out with heavy black lines. All he could pick out was something about birds.

‘I must find out more about him,’ thought Moominpappa. ‘As soon as it clears up I must go and find the fisherman. They must have known one another. They lived on the same island. Now I’m going to shut this trap-door. I shan’t come up here any more. It’s too depressing.’

He climbed down the ladder, and said: ‘It’s moving a little towards the north-east. Perhaps it will die down. By the way, we ought to ask that fisherman to coffee some day.’

‘I bet he doesn’t drink coffee,’ said Little My. ‘I’m sure he only eats seaweed and raw fish. Perhaps he sucks up plankton through his front teeth.’

‘What did you say?’ exclaimed Moominmamma. ‘What curious taste he has!’

‘He looks as if he didn’t eat anything else,’ added Little My. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me in the least. But he knows his own mind, and never asks questions,’ she said appreciatively.

‘Doesn’t he tell you anything either?’ asked Moominpappa.

‘Not a thing,’ said Little My. So saying, she climbed up the chimney-piece and curled up against the warm wall to sleep off the rain.

‘Anyway, he’s our neighbour after all,’ said Moominmamma vaguely. ‘One has to have neighbours, I mean.’ She sighed, and added: ‘I think the rain’s coming in.’

‘I’ll put that right,’ said Moominpappa. ‘By and by, when I’ve got a moment.’ But he thought: ‘Perhaps it’ll
clear up. I don’t want to go up there. There’s too much there that reminds me of the lighthouse-keeper.’

The long, rainy day drew to a close, and towards evening the wind had dropped so much that Moominpappa decided to take up the nets.

‘Now you can see I know something about the sea,’ he said, very pleased with himself. ‘We shall be back in good time for evening tea, and we shall bring the biggest fish with us. The rest we’ll throw back into the sea.’

The island was wet everywhere. It seemed to be drooping, and had quite lost its colour in the rain. The water had risen so much that little could be seen of the beach, and the boat was rolling from side to side with its stern in the sea.

‘We must pull her right up the beach to the alder bushes,’ said Moominpappa. ‘Now you can see what the water can do when autumn comes. If I’d waited till tomorrow morning to take the nets up we shouldn’t have had any boat left. You can’t be too careful with the sea, you know! I wonder,’ Moominpappa added, ‘I wonder why the sea rises and falls like this. There must be an explanation…’

Moomintroll looked around. The beach had changed completely. The sea looked swollen, it heaved wearily and sulkily and had flung up a heap of seaweed all over the beach. ‘It’s no beach for sea-horses any longer. Imagine if they only like sandy beaches and don’t bother to come back again! What if the Groke has
scared them away…’ thought Moomintroll. He threw a timid glance in the direction of the tiny islands offshore, but they had disappeared in the drizzle.