Moominvalley in November (15 page)

'I won't!' exclaimed Toft. 'Moominmamma was never like that! She was the same all the time!' He pulled open the drawing-room door and slammed it behind him. Mymble was lying. She didn't know anything about Moominmamma. She didn't know that it was impossible for a mamma to behave badly.

*

Fillyjonk hung up the last streamer, a blue one. She stepped backwards and looked at her kitchen. It was the dirtiest and dustiest in the whole world, but oh! how artistically itwas decorated! They were to have an early dinner on the veranda, a heated-up fish soup, and after seven o'clock there were to be Welsh rarebits and cider. She had found the cider in Moominpappa's wardrobe and the tin with the cheese rinds on the top shelf in the pantry. It was labelled 'for field mice'.

Fillyjonk put the napkins on the table with great elegance, each napkin was shaped like a swan (not for Snufkin of course, he always refused to use a napkin). She whistled softly, her forehead was covered with a mass of tight little curls and it was easy to see that she had put make-up on her eyebrows. Nothing was crawling behind the wallpaper, nothing was scuttling along the wainscot, the death-watch beetle had stopped ticking. She had no time for them just now, she had to think of her number on the programme. A shadow-play: 'The Returning Family'. It'll be very dramatic, Fillyjonk thought calmly. They'll love it. She latched the kitchen door and the drawing-room door. She laid out some cartridge-paper on the draining-board and started to draw. The picture was to show four people in a boat. Two big people, one smaller and one quite tiny. The tiny one sat in the prow of the boat. The drawing didn't turn out quite as Fillyjonk had imagined it and she hadn't got a rubber. But the idea was the important thing. When the picture was ready she cut it out and nailed the boat to the broom handle. She worked quickly and deliberately, whistling all the time, not Snufkin's songs but her own. Actually, Fillyjonk whistled much better than she could draw or knock in nails.

Then she lit the kitchen lamp, it was dusk. But today it wasn't a melancholy twilight, it was full of promise. The lamp threw a faint light on the wall, she lifted up the broom with the silhouette of the family in the boat and the shadow appeared on the wallpaper. Now she must get a sheet, the white surface on which they were going to sail out across the sea...

'Open the door!' shouted Grandpa-Grumble outside the drawing-room. Fillyjonk opened it a crack and said: 'Too early!'

'Things are happening here!' Grandpa-Grumble whispered. 'He's been invited and got an invitation card! In the clothes-cupboard. And you must put this in the place of honour.' He shoved in a big wet bouquet tied up with leaves and moss. Fillyjonk looked at the withered plants and wrinkled her nose. 'No bacteria in my kitchen,' she said.

'But it's maple! They've all been washed in the brook,' objected Grandpa-Grumble.

'Bacteria love water,' Fillyjonk pointed out. 'Have you taken your medicines?'

'Do you think that one needs to take medicine at a party?' said Grandpa-Grumble scornfully. 'I have forgotten them. And do you know what has happened? I've lost all my glasses again!'

'Congratulations,' said Fillyjonk dryly. 'I suggest you send this bouquet straight to the clothes-cupboard. It would be politer.' She shut the door with a bang.

CHAPTER 18
Absent Friends

THE
lanterns were all lit, red ones, yellow ones and green ones, all admiring their soft reflections in the dark window-panes. The guests came into the kitchen, greeted each other solemnly and sat down. But the Hemulen remained standing behind his chair. He said: 'This is "an evening at home" held in the spirit of the family. I beg to be allowed to commence this evening with a poem I have written particularly for this unique occasion and which I have dedicated to Moominpappa.' He took out a piece of paper and began to declaim, he was very moved:

'Oh say, where lies true lasting happiness?

In evening rest? In friendly glance? 'Tis more:

In sailing from the mire, the reeds, the mass,

The mighty ocean's vastness to adore.

Oh what is life? 'tis nothing but a dream,

A vast and enigmatic flowing stream.

Such tender feelings fill my heaving breast

I know not how or where they'll come to rest;

My cares are multitudinous and sore,

I long to feel the friendly rudder in my paw.'

They all clapped.

'Multitudinous,' Grandpa-Grumble repeated. 'That's nice. Just the way people used to talk when I was young.'

'Wait!' the Hemulen said. 'It's not me you should applaud. Let us observe half-a-minute's silence to show our appreciation of the Moomin family. We are eating their food - or rather, what is left of it - we walk beneath their trees, it is in the spirit of tolerance, companionship and
joie de vivre
created by them that we are living. A minute's silence!'

'You said half-a-minute,' Grandpa-Grumble muttered and began to count the seconds. They all stood up and raised their glasses, it was a solemn moment. 'Twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six...' Grandpa-Grumble counted, his legs felt a little tired today. They ought to have been his seconds, it was his party and not the family's after all. They hadn't had a stomach-ache. And he was annoyed with the Ancestor for not coming on time.

While the guests were honouring the Moomin family in silence, a faint thumping sound could be heard outside somewhere near the kitchen steps. It sounded as though something was groping its way up the wall. Fillyjonk shot a glance at the door - it was latched. She caught Toft's eye. They both lifted their noses and sniffed, but said nothing.

'Cheers!' the Hemulen exclaimed. 'Here's to good companionship!' They all drank. The glasses were the smallest and the best ones, the ones with decorated rims. Then they sat down.

'And now,' said the Hemulen, 'the programme will continue with the least significant of us. It's only fair that the last shall be first, eh, Toft?'

Toft opened his book somewhere towards the end. He read, rather quietly, pausing every time before a long word: 'Page two hundred and twenty-seven. It is exceptional that a form of life of this species we have attempted to reconstruct has retained its graminivorous nature in a purely physiological sense simultaneously with a continuing ag-gressivity of attitude towards its environment. No changes occurred with regard to the sharpening of its reflexes, its speed, its strength, or any of the other aspects of the predatory instincts normally associated with the development of carnivores. The teeth show blunt mastication surfaces, the claws are completely rudimentary and vision negligible. On the other hand, the total volume of the individual of this species has increased to an astonishing extent, which must, quite simply, have subjected it to certain inconveniences, bearing in mind the fact that it had for millennia dreamed away its life in concealed cracks and crevices. In this case we are faced with the astonishing phenomenon of a form of development which unites all the identifiable characteristics of the indolent graminivorous species with an ineffective and completely inexplicable aggressivity.'

'What was that last word?' Grandpa-Grumble asked, having been sitting with his paw to his ear the whole time. There was nothing wrong with his hearing as long as he knew what people were going to say. One almost knows what people are going to say.

'Aggressivity,' Mymble answered rather loudly.

'Don't shout at me, I'm not deaf,' Grandpa-Grumble said automatically. 'And what's that?'

'It's what one shows when one is angry,' explained Fillyjonk.

'Aha,' said Grandpa-Grumble, 'then I understand the whole thing. Has anyone else written anything or are we going to start the programme soon?' He started to feel uneasy about the Ancestor. Perhaps he, too, was tired and stiff, perhaps he hadn't managed the stairs. Perhaps he felt insulted, or perhaps he had fallen asleep. Anyway, something must be wrong, Grandpa-Grumble thought, somewhat vexed. They're always impossible when they pass a hundred. Rude, too...

'Mymble!' the Hemulen announced loudly. 'Allow me to present Mymble!'

Mymble walked to the middle of the floor, looking very shy and self-conscious. Her hair reached to her knees, and it was obvious that the hair-washing had been a success. She nodded briefly to Snufkin and he started to play. He played very softly. Mymble raised her arms and circled with short, hesitant steps. Shoo, shoo, tiddledidoo, said the mouth-organ; imperceptibly the music moved into a tune, became more and more lively and Mymble quickened her steps, the kitchen was full of music and movement and her long red hair looked like flying sunshine. It was all so

beautiful and jolly! No one heard the Creature, huge and heavy, creeping round and round the house without knowing what it wanted. The guests beat time with their feet and sang tiddledidi, tiddledidoo, Mymble kicked off her boots, threw her scarf on the floor, the paper streamers fluttered in the warmth from the stove, everybody clapped their paws and Snufkin stopped playing with a loud cry! Mymble laughed with self-satisfied pride.

Everybody shouted: 'Bravo! bravo!' and the Hemulen said with genuine admiration: 'Thank you ever so much.'

'Don't thank me,' Mymble answered. 'I can't stop myself. You ought to do the same thing!'

Fillyjonk stood up and said: 'Not being able to stop doing something and having to do it don't go together. I don't think that what one should do is the same thing as not being able to stop oneself doing it...' They all reached for their glasses, thinking that Fillyjonk was going to make a speech. When nothing came of it they all started to shout for more music. But Grandpa-Grumble was no longer interested, he sat fiddling with his napkin, rolling it up until it became thicker and smaller. The most likely thing was that the Ancestor felt hurt. A guest of honour ought to be escorted to a party, as people used to do in the old days. They had all behaved very badly.

Suddenly Grandpa-Grumble stood up and banged on the table. 'We have behaved very badly,' he said. 'We've started the party without our guest of honour and we haven't escorted him down the stairs. You're all too young and know nothing about style. You haven't even seen a charade once in your lives! What is a programme without a charade? I'm merely asking you. Now listen to what I have to say to you! Taking part in a programme means giving one's best and now I propose to show my friend the Ancestor. He is not tired. He's not weak at the knees. He's angry!'