Moominpappa at Sea

The lighthouse was working.

‘Do you know, all the time we’ve been living here like this, I’ve had the feeling that we’re on an expedition somewhere. Everything is so different all the time, as if it was Sunday every day. I’m beginning to wonder whether it’s a good feeling after all.’

The others waited for her to go on.

‘Of course we can’t always be on an expedition. It has to come to an end sometime. I’m terribly afraid that it will suddenly feel like Monday again and then I shan’t be able to feel that any of this has been real…’ She was silent and looked at Moominpappa a little hesitatingly.

‘But of course it’s real,’ said Moominpappa, amazed. ‘And it’s fine to feel that it’s always Sunday. It’s just that feeling that we had lost.’

‘You’re much too grown-up to show off like this, it’s unworthy of you. Is it really so important to you to frighten a poor little island like this? It has a tough enough time right out here as it is. You ought to be happy that it’s here. What fun would you have without its rocks to wash your breakers over? Think carefully, now! Here’s a little tuft of trees, growing all bent for your sake. And a handful of scanty soil which you do your best to wash away, and a few rugged rocks which you polish so smooth that there’s hardly anything left of them. And then you’ve the nerve to frighten them!’

Moominpappa leaned forward and stared sternly at the fuming sea. “There’s something you don’t seem to understand,’ he said. ‘It’s your job to look after this island. You should protect and comfort it instead of behaving as you do. Do you understand?’ Moominpappa listened, but the sea made no answer.

‘You’ve tried it on with us, too,’ he said. ‘You’ve pestered us in every way you can, but it hasn’t worked. We’re getting along somehow, in spite of you. I’ve learned to understand you, and that’s what you don’t like, do you? And we haven’t given up, have we? By the way,’ Moominpappa continued, ‘to be perfectly fair, it was jolly decent of you to give us that crate of whisky. I know why you did, you know when you’re beaten, don’t you? But to get your own back by taking it out of the island was a petty thing to do. Now, I’m only saying all this because - well - because I like you.’

Moominpappa was silent. He felt tired, and leaned back against the cliff and waited. The sea said nothing. But a large shiny plank of wood was drifting towards the shore, bobbing up and down on the waves.

Moominpappa regarded it excitedly.

‘Mamma,’ said Moomintroll suddenly. ‘I’ve met the sea-horses, but they don’t seem to be interested in me at all. I only wanted to run along the beach beside them, and laugh with them, they’re so beautiful…’

Moominmamma nodded her head. ‘I don’t really think it’s possible to be friends with a sea-horse,’ she said gravely. ‘It’s not worth while being disappointed with them. I think one is only meant to feel happy when one just looks at them in the way that one looks at pretty birds or beautiful scenery.’

‘Where on earth have you been?’ exclaimed Moominpappa.

‘Me?’ said Moominmamma innocently. ‘I was just taking a little stroll to get some air.’

‘But you mustn’t frighten us like that,’ said Moominpappa. ‘You must remember that we’re used to your being here when we come home in the evening.’

‘That’s just it,’ Moominmamma sighed. ‘But one needs a change sometimes. We take everything too much for granted, including each other. Isn’t that true, dearest?’

Moominpappa stared doubtfully at her, but she just laughed and went on sewing.

‘Mamma’s vanished,’ he thought. ‘She was so lonely, she just disappeared.’

Little My sat huddled up among the stones. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘the stones are moving.’

‘I don’t care,’ cried Moomintroll. ‘Mamma’s lost!’

‘Mamma’s don’t get lost as easily as all that,’ said Little My. ‘You can always find them in a corner somewhere if you look.’

The fisherman sat in his house watching the sea swell. It was so marvellous not to have to care about a blessed thing. No one to talk and no one to ask questions, and no one to feel at all sorry for. Only the mystery and unfathomable vastness of the sea and the sky flooding over him and past him that could never disappoint him.

‘That’s not so good,’ he said.

‘It didn’t turn out quite as I meant it to,’ admitted Moominmamma sadly.

‘Well, it was a very nice idea,’ Moominpappa said consolingly. ‘But I suggest you try to change it into a veranda after all. It’s no good trying to paint something you don’t want to paint.’

‘Won’t you rescue me?’ one of them asked. ‘Wont you rescue me, my fat little sea-urchin. Do you gaze at my picture every single day? Do you?’

‘He’s not a sea-urchin,’ said the other one reproachfully. ‘He’s a little egg-shaped mushroom who’s promised to rescue me if it gets stormy. He’s a little egg-shaped mushroom who collects shells for his mummy! It’s charming, isn’t it. Charming!’

What a pity mothers can’t go of when they want to and sleep out of doors. Mothers, particularly, could do with it sometimes.’ She smiles to herself, and in an absent-minded way she sent Moomintroll a silent, loving greeting in the way trolls do. Moomintroll, lying awake in his glade, felt that she had done this, and, as he usually did, wiggled his ears by way of answer.

‘Things are impossible if one doesn’t know whether it’s Sunday or Wednesday. No one can live like that.’

‘Hallo,’ said Moominpappa. ‘I’m angry.’

‘Good! said Little My with approval. ‘You look as though you’d make a proper enemy of someone. It always helps.’

‘Perhaps one shouldn’t try to change things so much on this island,’ said Moominmamma. ‘Just leave it as it is. Back home it was easier somehow… But I’m going to try and make a new garden, higher up.’

Moominpappa said nothing.

‘And there’s so much to do in the lighthouse,’ Moominmama went on. ‘One could make lots of little shelves, and nice furniture! Couldn’t one? And mend that awful staircase… and the roof…’

‘I don’t want to mend anything,’ thought Moominpappa. ‘I don’t want to pick seaweed… I want to build big things, strong things, I want to so terribly much… But I don’t know… It’s so very difficult being a father!’

‘Isn’t life exciting!’ Moomintroll thought. ‘Everything can change all of a sudden, and for no reason at all!

‘Have you ever seen a sea-horse?’ asked Moomintroll. ‘Are they as beautiful as those in the picture?’

‘Possibly,’ said Moominmamma. ‘I don’t know. They do say that the painters of pictures exaggerate.’

Moomintroll nodded thoughtfully. What a pity it was that you couldn’t tell from the picture whether the little sea-horse had silver shoes or not.

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.’

‘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.’

‘The world is full of great and wonderful things for those who are ready for them.’

Moominpappa sighed. He went round the lighthouse to the rocks overlooking the sea, where the others couldn’t see him. The family got on his nerves at times - they could never stick to the matter in hand. He wondered whether all fathers found the same thing.

‘If two men like that live on the same island, either they know all there is to know about each other at all. Probably both. One as a result of the other, I mean.’

‘I’m going to sleep for a while. Problems often solve themselves while one sleeps. The brain works better if one leaves it in peace.’

‘It’s strange,’ Moominmamma thought. ‘Strange that people can be sad, and even angry because life is too easy. But that’s the way it is, I suppose. The only thing to do is to start life afresh.’

‘We could have left immediately after lunch. But on an occassion like this we must wait for sunset. Setting out in the right way is just as important as the opening lines in a book: they determine everything.’

‘If youre 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.