Moominpappa at Sea (2 page)

‘It’s going out again,’ said Little My. ‘Put some more on!’ She was sitting in the shade on the veranda railings.

‘Oh, it’s you!’ said Moominpappa, and he shook the ash-tray until the fire went out. ‘I’m just watching the way fire burns. It’s very important.’

Little My laughed, and went on looking at him. Then he pulled his hat down over his eyes and took refuge in sleep.

‘Pappa,’ said Moomintroll. ‘Wake up! We’ve just put out a forest fire!’

Both Moominpappa’s paws were stuck firmly to the
floor. He wrenched them loose with a strong feeling of reluctance. It wasn’t fair. ‘What are you talking about?’ he said.

‘A real little forest fire,’ Moomintroll told him. ‘Just behind the tobacco-patch. The moss was on fire, and Mamma says that it might have been a spark from the chimney…’

Moominpappa leaped into the air and in a flash became a determined man-of-action. His hat rolled down the steps.

‘We put it out!’ Moomintroll shouted. ‘We put it out straightaway. There’s nothing for you to worry about!’

Moominpappa stopped dead. He was feeling very angry. ‘Have you put it out without me?’ he said. ‘Why didn’t anybody tell me? You just let me go on sleeping without saying anything!’

‘But, dearest,’ said Moominmamma leaning out of the kitchen window, ‘we didn’t think it was really necessary to wake you up. It was a very small fire, and it was only smoking a little. I happened to be going by with some buckets of water, so all I had to do was to sprinkle a few drops on it in passing…’

‘In passing,’ cried Moominpappa. ‘Just sprinkle. Sprinkle, indeed! What a word! And leaving the fire to burn under the moss unguarded! Where is it? Where is it?’

Moominmamma left what she was doing and led the way to the tobacco-patch. Moomintroll stayed on the veranda gazing after them. The black spot in the moss was a very small spot indeed.

‘Don’t imagine,’ said Moominpappa at last, very
slowly, ‘that a spot like this isn’t dangerous. Far from it. It can go on burning
under
the moss, you see. In the ground. Hours and perhaps even days may go by, and then suddenly, whoof! The fire breaks out somewhere quite different. Do you see what I mean?’

‘Yes, dearest,’ answered Moominmamma.

‘So I’m going to stay here,’ Moominpappa went on, sulkily digging in the moss. ‘I shall stand guard over it. I’ll stay here all night if necessary.’

‘Do you really think,’ Moominmamma began. Then she just said, ‘Yes. That’s very good of you. One never knows what will happen with moss.’

Moominpappa sat all the afternoon watching the little black spot, first pulling up the moss for quite a way round it. He wouldn’t leave it to go indoors for his dinner. He really wanted the others to think he was offended.

‘Do you think he’ll stay out there all night?’ asked Moomintroll.

‘It’s quite possible,’ said Moominmamma.

‘If you’re sore, you’re sore,’ observed Little My, peeling her potatoes with her teeth. ‘You have to be angry sometimes. Every little creep has a right to be angry. But Pappa’s angry in the wrong way. He’s not letting it out, just shutting it up inside him.’

‘My dear child,’ said Moominmamma, ‘Pappa knows what he’s doing.’

‘I don’t think he does,’ said Little My simply. ‘He doesn’t know at all. Do you know?’

‘Not really,’ Moominmamma had to admit.

Moominpappa dug his nose in the moss and was aware of the sour smell of smoke. The ground wasn’t even warm any longer. He emptied his pipe into the hole and blew on the sparks. They glowed for a moment or two and then went out. He stamped on the fatal spot and then walked slowly down the garden to have a look in his crystal ball.

Dusk was rising from the ground, as it usually did, gathering in under the trees. Round the crystal ball there was a little more light. There it stood, reflecting the whole garden, looking very beautiful on its coral pedestal. It was Moominpappa’s very own crystal ball, his own magic ball of shining blue glass, the centre of the garden, of the valley, and of the whole world.

But Moominpappa didn’t look into it straightaway. First he looked at his grimy paws, trying to collect all his vague, scattered and troubled thoughts. When he was feeling as sad as he possibly could, he looked into the crystal ball for consolation. Every evening of that long, warm, beautiful and melancholy summer he had done the same thing.

The crystal ball was always cool. Its blue was deeper and clearer than the blue of the sea itself, and it changed the colour of the whole world so that it became cool and remote and strange. At the centre of this glass world he saw himself, his own big nose, and around him he saw the reflection of a transformed, dreamlike landscape. The blue ground was deep, deep down inside, and there where he couldn’t reach Moominpappa began to search for his family. He only
had to wait a while and they always came. They were always reflected in the crystal ball.

It was only natural, because they had so much to do at dusk. They were always doing something. Sooner or later, Moominmamma would bustle over from the kitchen side of the house towards the outside cellar to fetch some sausages or some butter. Or to the potato-patch. Or to get some wood. Every time she did it, she looked as though she was walking down a completely strange and exciting path. But you could never be sure. She might just as well be out on some
secret errand of her own which she thought was fun, or playing some private game, or just walking round for the sake of it.

There she came, scampering along like a busy white ball, farthest away among the bluest of blue shadows. And there was Moomintroll, aloof, and keeping himself to himself. And there was Little My, slinking up the slope more like a movement than anything else, you could see so little of her. She was just a glimpse of something determined and independent – something so independent that it had no need to show itself. But their reflections made them all seem incredibly small, and the crystal ball made all their movements seem forlorn and aimless.

Moominpappa liked this. It was his evening game. It made him feel that they all needed protection, that they were at the bottom of a deep sea that only he knew about.

It was almost dark now. Suddenly something different happened in the crystal ball: a light appeared. Moominmamma had lit a lamp on the veranda, something she hadn’t done all the summer. It was the oil lamp. All of a sudden the feeling of safety was concentrated on a single point, on the veranda and nowhere else; and on the veranda Moominmamma was sitting, waiting for her family to come home so that she could give them all their evening tea.

The crystal ball became dim and the blue all turned to black; the lamp was the only thing that could be seen.

Moominpappa stood there for a while without really
knowing what he was thinking about, and then turned and walked towards the house.

‘Well,’ said Moominpappa, ‘now I think we can sleep in peace. The danger should be over. But just to make sure, I’ll go and check once more at dawn.’

‘Huh!’ said Little My.

‘Pappa,’ cried Moomintroll, ‘haven’t you noticed anything? We’ve got a lamp!’

‘Yes, I thought it was about time we started having a lamp now that the evenings are drawing in. At least I felt so this evening,’ said Moominmamma.

Moominpappa said: ‘You’ve put an end to the summer. No lamps should be lit until summer is really over.’

‘Well, it’ll have to be autumn then,’ said Moominmamma in her quiet way.

The lamp sizzled as it burned. It made everything seem close and safe, a little family circle they all knew and trusted. Outside this circle lay everything that was strange and frightening, and the darkness seemed to reach higher and higher and further and further away, right to the end of the world.

‘In some families it’s the father who decides when it’s time to light the lamp,’ muttered Moominpappa into his tea.

Moomintroll had arranged his sandwiches in a row in front of him in the usual way: the cheese sandwich first, then two with sausage meat, one with cold potato and sardines, and last of all one with marmalade on it. He
was completely happy. Little My was eating only sardines because she had a feeling that it was somehow an unusual evening. She gazed thoughtfully out into the dark of the garden, and her eyes became blacker the more she thought, and the more she ate.

The light from the lamp shone on the grass and on the lilac bush. But where it crept in among the shadows, where the Groke sat all on her own, it was much weaker.

The Groke had been sitting for so long on the same spot that the ground had frozen beneath her. When she stood up and shuffled a little nearer the light, the grass crackled like splintering glass. A whisper of fright rustled through the leaves, and a few curled up and fell with a shudder from a maple tree on to her shoulders. The asters leaned over as far as they could to get out of her way, and the grasshoppers were silent.

‘Why aren’t you eating?’ asked Moominmamma.

‘I don’t know,’ said Moomintroll. ‘Have we any Venetian blinds?’

‘They’re in the attic. We shan’t need them until we hibernate for the winter,’ Moominmamma turned to Moominpappa and said: ‘Wouldn’t you like to do some work on your model lighthouse for a while, now that the lamp is lit?’

‘Huh!’ said Moominpappa. ‘It’s too childish. It isn’t real.’

The Groke shuffled a little nearer. She stared at the lamp and softly shook her big, clumsy head. A freezing
white mist hung round her feet as she started to glide towards the light, an enormous, lonely grey shadow. The windows rattled a little as if there were distant thunder, and the whole garden seemed to be holding its breath. The Groke came close to the veranda and stood quite still just outside the circle of light that shone on the darkened ground.

Then she took a quick stride up to the window and the lamplight fell right on her face.

Inside, the quiet room was suddenly filled with screams and panic-stricken movement, chairs fell over and someone carried the lamp away. In a few seconds the veranda lay in darkness. Everyone had rushed inside the house, right inside where it was safe, and hidden themselves, and their lamp.

The Groke stood still for a while, breathing frost on the window-pane of the deserted room. As she slid away she merged into the darkness; the grass crackled and snapped under her feet as she passed, and slowly she moved farther and farther away. With a shudder the garden dropped its leaves, and then breathed again: the Groke’s passed.

‘But it’s quite unnecessary to barricade ourselves in and stay awake all night,’ said Moominmamma. ‘She’s probably ruined something out there in the garden again, but she isn’t dangerous. You know she isn’t, even though she may be frightful.’

‘Of course she’s dangerous,’ Moominpappa shouted. ‘Even you were frightened. You were terribly
frightened actually – but you needn’t be as long as I am in the house.’

‘But Pappa, dear,’ said Moominmamma, ‘we’re afraid of the Groke because she’s just cold all over. And because she doesn’t like anybody. But she’s never done any harm. Well, I think it’s time we all went to bed.’

‘All right!’ said Moominpappa, putting the poker back in its corner. ‘All right. If she’s not the slightest bit dangerous, you won’t want me to look after you then. That’s just fine by me!’ And with that parting shot, he went on to the veranda, grabbing some cheese and a sausage in passing, and stamped off into the darkness alone.

‘Well,’ said Little My, impressed. ‘Good! He’s blowing off steam. He’ll go and stand guard over that moss till early in the morning.’

Moominmamma said nothing. She padded up and down, getting ready for the night. As usual, she looked in her handbag, she turned the lamp down; and all the time there was a silence in the room that didn’t seem natural. When she came to Moominpappa’s model lighthouse, standing on the shelf by the washstand in the corner, she began to dust it absentmindedly.

‘Mamma,’ said Moomintroll.

But Moominmamma wasn’t listening. She went up to the big map hanging on the wall, the one showing Moominvalley with the coast and its islands. She climbed on to a chair so that she could reach right out to sea, and put her nose right on a spot in the middle of nowhere.