Moominvalley in November Read online

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Moominvalley in November

  Tove Jansson was born in helsingfors, finland, in 1914. Her mother was a caricaturist (and designed 165 of finland’s stamps) and her father was a sculptor. Tove Jansson studied painting in finland, Sweden and france. She lived alone on a Small island in the gulf of finland, where most of her books were written.

  Tove Jansson died in june 2001.

  Other books by Tove Jansson

  FINN FAMILY MOOMINTROLL

  COMET IN MOOMINLAND

  THE EXPLOITS OF MOOMINPAPPA

  MOOMINLAND MIDWINTER

  MOOMINSUMMER MADNESS

  TALES FROM MOOMINVALLEY

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  www.penguin.com

  Sent i November first published 1971

  First published in English by Ernest Benn Ltd 1971

  Published in Puffin Books 1974

  17

  Copyright © Tove Jansson, 1971

  English translation copyright © Ernest Benn Ltd, 1971

  All rights reserved

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-0-14-191567-8

  TO

  MY BROTHER

  LASSE

  NARRATIVE

  CHAPTER 1

  Snufkin

  CHAPTER 2

  Toft

  CHAPTER 3

  Fillyjonk

  CHAPTER 4

  Rain

  CHAPTER 5

  Hemulen

  CHAPTER 6

  First Encounter

  CHAPTER 7

  Grandpa-Grumble

  CHAPTER 8

  Lady in a Muddle

  CHAPTER 9

  Mymble

  CHAPTER 10

  Late That Night

  CHAPTER 11

  Next Morning

  CHAPTER 12

  Thunder and Lightning

  CHAPTER 13

  Music

  CHAPTER 14

  Looking for the Family

  CHAPTER 15

  Nummulite

  CHAPTER 16

  Picnic

  CHAPTER 17

  Peparations

  CHAPTER 18

  Absent Friends

  CHAPTER 19

  First Snow

  CHAPTER 20

  Going Home

  CHAPTER 21

  Coming Home

  CHAPTER 1

  Snufkin

  EARLY one morning in Moominvalley Snufkin woke up in his tent with the feeling that autumn had come and that it was time to break camp.

  Breaking camp in this way comes with a hop, skip and a jump! All of a sudden everything is different, and if you’re going to move on you’re careful to make use of every single minute, you pull up your tent pegs and douse the fire quickly before anyone can stop you or start asking questions, you start running, pulling on your rucksack as you go, and finally you’re on your way and suddenly quite calm, like a solitary tree with every single leaf completely still. Your camping-site is an empty rectangle of bleached grass. Later in the morning your friends wake up and say: he’s gone away, autumn’s coming.

  Snufkin padded along calmly, the forest closed round him and it began to rain. The rain fell on his green hat and on his raincoat, which was also green, it pittered and pattered everywhere and the forest wrapped him in a gentle and exquisite loneliness.

  There were many valleys along the coast. The mountains rolled down to the sea in long stately curves to promontories and bays which cut deep into the wild country. In one of these valleys a fillyjonk lived all by herself. Snufkin had met many fillyjonks in his time and knew that they had to do things in their own way and according to their own silly rules. But he was never so quiet as when he went past the house of a fillyjonk.

  The fence had straight and pointed posts and the gate was locked. The garden was quite empty. The clothes-line had been taken in and the woodpile had gone. There was no hammock and no garden furniture. There was none of the charming disorder that generally surrounds a house in summer, no rake, no bucket, no left-behind hat, no saucer for the cat’s milk, none of the other homely things that lie around waiting for the next day and make the house look welcoming and lived in.

  Fillyjonk knew that autumn had arrived, and she shut herself up inside. Her house looked completely closed and deserted. But she was there, deep deep inside behind the high impenetrable walls and the dense fir-trees that hid her windows.

  The quiet transition from autumn to winter is not a bad time at all. It’s a time for protecting and securing things and for making sure you’ve got in as many supplies as you can. It’s nice to gather together everything you possess as close to you as possible, to store up your warmth and your thoughts and burrow yourself into a deep hole inside, a core of safety where you can defend what is important and precious and your very own. Then the cold and the storms and the darkness can do their worst. They can grope their

  way up the walls looking for a way in, but they won’t find one, everything is shut, and you sit inside, laughing in your warmth and your solitude, for you have had foresight.

  There are those who stay at home and those who go away, and it has always been so. Everyone can choose for himself, but he must choose while there is still time and never change his mind.

  Fillyjonk started to beat carpets at the back of her house. She put all she’d got into it with a measured frenzy and

  everybody could hear that she loved beating carpets. Snufkin walked on, lit his pipe and thought: they’re waking up in Moominvalley. Moominpappa is winding up the clock and tapping the barometer. Moominmamma is lighting the stove. Moomintroll goes out on to the veranda and sees that my camping-site is deserted. He looks in the letter-box down at the bridge and it’s empty, too. I forgot my goodbye letter, I didn’t have time. But all the letters I write are the same: I’ll be back in April, keep well. I’m going away but I’ll be back in the spring, look after yourself. He knows anyway.

  And Snufkin forgot all about Moomintroll as easily as that.

  At dusk he came to the long bay that lies in perpetual shadow between the mountains. Deep in the bay some early lights were shining where a group of houses huddled together.

  No one was out in the rain.

  It was here that the Hemulen, Mymble and Gaffsie lived, and under every roof lived someone who had decided to stay put, people who wanted to stay indoors. Snufkin crept past their backyards, keeping in the shadows, and he was as quiet as he could be because he didn’t want to tal
k to a soul. Big houses and little houses all very close to each other, some were joined together and shared the same gutters and the same dustbins, looked in at each other’s windows, and smelt their food. The chimneys and high tables and the drain-pipes, and below the well-worn paths

  leading from door to door. Snufkin walked quickly and silently and thought: oh all you houses, how I hate you!

  It was almost dark now. The Hemulen’s boat lay pulled up under the alders, and there was a grey tarpaulin covering it. A little higher up lay the mast, the oars and the rudder. They were blackened and cracked by the passing of many a summer, they had never been used. Snufkin shook himself and walked on.

  But Toft curled up inside the Hemulen’s boat heard his steps and held his breath. The sound of Snufkin’s footsteps got farther and farther away, and all was quiet again, and only the rain fell on the tarpaulin.

  The very last house stood all by itself under a dark green wall of fir-trees, and here the wild country really began. Snufkin walked faster and faster straight into the forest. Then the door of the last house opened a chink and a very old voice cried: ‘Where are you off to?’

  ‘I don’t know, ‘Snufkin replied.

  The door shut again and Snufkin entered his forest, with a hundred miles of silence ahead of him.

  CHAPTER 2

  Toft

  TIME passed and the rain went on falling. There had never been an autumn when it had rained so much. The valleys along the coast sank under the weight of all this water that was streaming down the hillsides and the ground rotted away instead of just withering. Suddenly summer seemed so far away that it might just as well have never been and the distances between the houses seemed greater and everyone crept inside.

  Deep in the prow of the Hemulen’s boat lived Toft. No one knew that he lived there. Only once a year in spring was the tarpaulin lifted off and someone gave the boat a coating of tar and tightened the worst cracks. Then the tarpaulin was pulled over again and under it the boat just went on waiting. The Hemulen never had time to take it out to sea and anyway he didn’t know how to sail.

  Toft liked the smell of tar and he was very particular about living in a place which had a nice smell. He liked the coil of rope that held him in its firm grasp and the unceasing sound of the rain. His big overcoat was warm and a very good thing to have on during the long autumn nights.

  In the evening, when everyone had gone home and the bay was silent, Toft would tell himself a story of his own. It was all about the Happy Family. He told it until he went to sleep, and the following evening he would go on from where he had left off, or start it all over again from the beginning.

  Toft generally began by describing the happy Moomin-valley. He went slowly down the slopes where the dark pines and the pale birch-trees grew. It became warmer. He tried to describe to himself what it felt like when the valley opened out into a wild green garden lit by sunshine, with green leaves waving in the summer breeze, the green grass all round him with patches of sunlight in it, and the sound of bees, and everything smelling so nice, and he walked on slowly until he heard the sound of the river. It was important not to change a single detail: once he had placed a summer-house by the river, but it had been a mistake. All that had to be there was the bridge and the letter-box. Then came the lilac-bushes and Moominpappa’s woodshed, both with their own smells of summer and safety.

  It was very quiet and rather early in the morning. Now Toft could see the ornamental ball of blue glass which stood on a pillar at the bottom of the garden. It was Moominpappa’s crystal ball and it was the finest in the whole valley. It was a magic ball.

  The grass grew tall and was full of flowers, and Toft described them to himself. He told himself about the raked paths neatly bordered with shells and nuggets in gold, and dallied when he came to the little spots of sunlight that he was particularly fond of. He let the wind sigh high above the valley and through the forest on the hillside and then die down again so that the stillness was perfect again. The apple-trees were in bloom. He put apples on some of the

  trees, but then took them away again, he put up a hammock and scattered yellow sawdust in front of the woodshed, and now he was quite near the house. There was the peony bed and now came the veranda… The veranda lay basking in the morning sun, and it was exactly as Toft had made it, the rail in fretsaw work, the honeysuckle, the rocking-chair, everything.

  Toft never went into the house, he waited outside. He waited for Moominmamma to come out on the steps.

  Unfortunately, at that point he usually went to sleep. Only once had he caught a glimpse of her nose in the doorway, a round friendly nose, all of Moominmamma was round in the way that mamas should be round.

  Now Toft wandered through the valley again. He had done this hundreds of times before and each time the excitement of going over it again became more and more intense. Suddenly a grey mist descended over the landscape, it was blotted out, and he could see only the darkness inside his closed eyes and hear the endless autumn rain falling on the tarpaulin. Toft tried to get back to the valley, but he couldn’t.

  This had happened quite a few times during the past week and every time the mist descended earlier. The day before it had come down at the woodshed, and now it was already dark by the lilac-bushes. Toft huddled up inside his coat and thought tomorrow perhaps I shan’t even get as far as the river. I don’t seem to be able to describe things so that I can see them any longer, everything’s going backwards.

  Toft slept for a while. When he woke up in the dark he knew what he would do. He would leave the Hemulen’s boat and make his way to Moominvalley and walk on to the veranda, open the door and tell them who he was.

  When Toft had made up his mind, he went to sleep again and slept all night without dreaming.

  CHAPTER 3

  Fillyjonk

  ON Thursday in November it stopped raining and Fillyjonk decided to wash the windows in the attic. She heated some water in the kitchen and sprinkled a little soap into it, but only a little, then she carried the bowl upstairs, put it on a chair and opened the window. Then something came loose from the window-frame and fell close to her paw. It looked like a little bit of cotton fluff but Fillyjonk knew immediately what it was; it was a horrid chrysalis and inside it was a pale white caterpillar. She shivered and drew in her paws. Wherever she went, whatever she did, she always came across creepy-crawly things, they were everywhere! She took her duster and with a quick movement she swept the chrysalis out watching it roll down the roof, jump over the edge and disappear.

  Horrid, whispered Fillyjonk, and shook out her duster. She lifted up the bowl and climbed through the window to wash it from the outside.

  Fillyjonk was wearing her carpet slippers and as soon as she was on the steep wet roof she started to slide backwards. She didn’t have time to feel afraid. She flung her skinny body forwards as quick as lightning, and in a giddy-making flash slid down the roof on her stomach, her slippers met the edge of the roof, and there she lay. Now she was scared. Fear crept through her and stuck like an inky taste in the throat. She blinked, but her eyes saw the ground far below, her jaws were locked tight with horror and astonishment and she couldn’t scream.

  Anyway, there was no one there to hear her. Fillyjonk had at last got rid of all her relatives and tiresome acquaintances. She had as much time as she wanted to look after her house and her solitude and fall off her own roof all by herself among the beetles and indescribable maggots in the garden.

  Fillyjonk made an agonized creeping movement upwards, her paws groped over the slippery metal roof but she slid back again and ended up where she had started from. The open window was banging in the wind, the wind sighed below in the garden, and time passed. A few drops of rain splashed on the roof.

  Then Fillyjonk remembered the lightning-conductor which went up to the attic on the other side of the house. Very, very slowly, she began to drag herself along the edge of the roof, first a little bit with one foot and then a little bit with the other. With h
er eyes tight shut and her stomach pressing against the roof, Fillyjonk crawled round her big house and all the time she kept remembering that she suffered from dizziness and what it was like when it came over her. Then she felt the lightning-conductor under her paw, grabbed it for dear life, and with her eyes tight shut, carefully pulled herself up to the floor above; there was nothing else in the whole world now except a thin wire with a fillyjonk suspended from it.

  She caught hold of the narrow wooden edging which went round the attic, pulled herself up and lay quite still. Gradually she got up on all fours and waited until her legs stopped shaking, and didn’t feel the slightest bit ridiculous. Step by step she began to go a little farther, her face against the wall. She came to window after window, but they were all closed. Her nose was too long and got in the way, her hair fell over her eyes and tickled her nose: I mustn’t sneeze, if I do I shall lose my balance… I mustn’t look and I mustn’t even think. The heel of one of my slippers is all twisted, nobody cares what happens to me, my corset is all wrinkled up somewhere and any second now of all these awful seconds…

  It started to rain again. Fillyjonk opened her eyes and saw the steep roof over her shoulder and the edge of the roof and the fall below it through nothing and her legs started to shake again and everything began to go round and round – the dizziness had come. It pulled her away from the wall, the edge she was standing on became as thin and narrow as a razor, and in one interminable second she tumbled all the way back through the whole of her fillyjonkish life. Very slowly she leant backwards, away from safety and towards the inexorable angle at which she would fall, was suspended there for what seemed like another eternity, and then sank forwards again.

  Now she was nothing at all, just something that was trying to make itself as flat as possible and move on. There was the window. The wind had slammed it tight shut. The window-frame was smooth and bare and there was nothing there to catch hold of and pull on, not even the smallest little nail. Fillyjonk tried with a hairpin, but it just bent. There inside she could see the bowl with the soapy water and the duster, an impassive picture of a commonplace, an unattainable world.