The Exploits of Moominpappa (Moominpappa's Memoirs) (14 page)

'Still awake?' she said. 'Did I hear somebody cry for mother?'

'It was me,' Sniff said and jumped out of his bed. 'Just think of it! Here we've heard lots and lots about daddies, and then suddenly one learns that one has had a mother as well!'

'But that's natural, isn't it?' replied Moominmamma blandly. 'Aren't you glad to learn it, Sniff?'

'Glad?' Sniff said and stopped in the middle of the floor. His frown disappeared. He stared at Moominpappa and suddenly he cried: 'Of course I'm happy! Did she have a button collection too?'

'She had,' Moominpappa said.

'A moment, please,' said Snufkin. 'Did I possibly have a-er-mother also?'

'Yes, yes, of course,' exclaimed Moominpappa. 'I was just coming to it. Dear me, yes. The Mymble, of course!'

'Then little My's my sister,' Snufkin said wonderingly.

'Certainly, certainly,' replied Moominpappa. 'But dearest children, please let me finish this chapter. Still, they're
my
memoirs, you know, and I'm not very keen on genealogy.'

'May he?' Moomintroll asked.

'Well,' Sniff and Snufkin consented.

'Thanks,' said Moominpappa and continued his reading.

*

The Muddler and the Fuzzy received wedding presents all through the day. At last the coffee tin was filled to the brim, and the rest of the buttons, stones, shells, door-knobs, and other things (too many to enumerate) had to be heaped beside it.

The happy couple sat holding hands on the heap. 'It's grand to be married,' the Muddler exclaimed.

'Possibly,' Hodgkins remarked. 'But listen, please. Just a detail. Why did you invite the Hemulen Aunt? And why the Niblings?'

'Excuse me, but I was so afraid to hurt their feelings,' the Muddler said.

'But the aunt?' I cried.

'Well,' answered the Muddler, 'to be frank I haven't missed her terribly. But excuse me! I've such a guilty conscience! Remember I wished somebody would be kind enough to eat her?'

'Mphm,' Hodgkins said. 'Yes. I see.'

On the following day, when the packet boat was due to arrive, the pier, the hills, and the beaches were thronged with the Autocrat's subjects. Daddy Jones's throne was placed on the highest hill, and the Hemulic Brass Band were polishing their instruments.

The Muddler and the Fuzzy sat holding hands in a special wedding boat, designed as a swan.

Everybody was feeling excited and a little uneasy, because the rumours of the Hemulen Aunt's energy and terrific sense of duty had spread like wild-fire over the kingdom. And moreover everybody wondered if the Niblings would undermine the country and gnaw the woods to pieces. But nobody said a word about their apprehensions to the newly-wedded couple who sat peacefully sorting buttons in their boat.

'Perhaps she could be scared off with thread and resin?' asked the Island Ghost. He was embroidering skulls on a teacosy for the Fuzzy.

'Not she,' I replied.

'We'll have a multiplication contest before evening,' the Joxter prophesied. 'And very possibly she'll remain over winter and make us
ski!'

'What's that?' the Mymble's daughter asked.

'It's a way of overcoming the friction of atmospheric precipitation,' Hodgkins explained.

'Dear me,' the Mymble said.

'We'll die of it,' said little My.

A great shout rose from the crowd.

The packet boat was coming nearer.

The Hemulic Band launched into the anthem 'Save Our Silly People' and the wedding swan put out to sea. Two Mymble kiddies fell into the water from pure excitement, the fog horns blared, and the Joxter lost his nerve and fled.

Only then we noticed that the packet boat was empty, and it dawned upon us that it couldn't have held as many as seven thousand Niblings. Cries of relief mixed with disappointment were heard along the beach.

One single little Nibling jumped down in the wedding swan that now turned back towards the quay.

"What's this?' the Autocrat said. He hadn't been able to remain on his throne. 'Another party's spoiled! One single Nibling!'

'It's our own old Nibling,' I said. 'He's carrying a big parcel.'

'So she was eaten after all,' Hodgkins said.

'Silence! Silence! Silence!' shouted Daddy Jones and blew his pocket fog horn. 'Make way for the Nibling ambassador!'

The crowd made room for the bridal couple and the Nibling who shyly waddled up to us and laid his parcel on the ground. The edges and corners were slightly gnawed but in good condition.

'Well?' said the Autocrat.

'The Hemulen Aunt sends her compliments...' said the Nibling, wildly searching his pockets.

Everybody jumped with impatience.

'Hurry, please,' said the King.

Finally the Nibling found a crumpled letter, straightened it out and began laboriously to read as follows:

'Dear Children,

It is with the deepest regret, with a guilty conscience and a feeling of having failed in my Duty, that I write you this letter. I am really not able to come to your wedding, and I understand that I can hardly hope for your forgiveness. Believe me, I felt happy and quite flattered to hear that you longed to see me again, and I have shed torrents of happy tears, I was so moved to hear about the little Muddler's decision to take one of the most serious steps there are in life. Dear children, I really do not know how to thank you, first that you saved me from the Groke, and secondly that you acquainted me with the delightful Niblings. It is my Duty to tell you the bare truth: the Niblings and I have such fun together that not even a wedding party can draw us away from home. We are holding quizzes and multiplication contests every day for several hours at a stretch, and we are expectantly looking forward to the winter with its healthy exercise in the snow. To console you in your disappointment, I am, however, sending you a valuable wedding present, and hope it shall find a permanent place in the Muddler's tin.

With 6,999 greetings from my friends!

Yours very, very gratefully,

Hemulen Aunt.'

There was a long silence when the Nibling had finished.

'Do you like multiplication?' Hodgkins asked cautiously.

'Enormously!' replied the Nibling.

I sat down and didn't know what to say.

'Open it, please!' the Muddler cried.

The Nibling solemnly gnawed at the string and produced a full-size photograph of the Hemulen Aunt dressed as Nibling Queen.

'Her snout's all there!' the Muddler cried. 'I'm so glad!'

'Darling, look at the frame,' said the Fuzzy.

We all looked at the frame.

It was made of pure Spanish gold set with small roses of topaz and chrysolite in the corners. Small diamonds formed an inner fringe around the photograph. The back was all turquoises.

'Do you think they can be prised loose?' the Fuzzy asked

Surely!' replied the Muddler ecstatically. Didn't somebody give us a pricker?'

And at that moment a terrible voice was heard by the shore and it said: 'Well! You grokely dish-rags! I've waited and waited for my morning tea at the island, but not a soul seemed to remember old Uncle Edward!'

*

A couple of days after Moominpappa had read about the Muddler's wedding he was sitting on the verandah with his family. It was a windy August night. Moominmamma had made them some hot rum punch and treaclebread, and all were dressed in their very best and had combed their tails.

'Well?' asked Moominmamma expectantly.

'The Memoirs were finished today,' Moominpappa announced in a thick voice. 'At six-forty-five. And the closing sentence - it's - well, you'll hear.'

'Haven't you written anything about your wicked life with the Hattifatteners?' Snufkin asked.

'No,' replied Moominpappa. 'I want this to be an instructive book.'

'Exactly,' Sniff cried.

'Hush, hush,' Moominmamma said. 'But won't I come into the picture at all?' And she flushed pink.

Moominpappa took three large swigs from his glass and answered:

'You certainly do. Listen carefully, my son, because this last part tells of how I found your mother.'

*

Autumn came.

The gales began to howl around our lonely island and the weather was cold. All of us now lived in my house where there was naturally a good porcelain stove and where we intended to sleep through the winter.

The singular event I am about to relate took place one evening when the weather was really terrific.

The building creaked and groaned, the rain came rushing over the verandah roof with a patter like small running feet, and at times the roaring south-western gale puffed a little cloud of smoke back down the chimney and out into the room where we sat in front of the fire.

'Please read to us, mother!' said the Mymble kiddies from their beds.

'Yes,' said the Mymble. 'Where did we stop?' 'Inspector-Twiggs-silently-crept-to-the-door,' the kid dies chorused.

'All right,' said the Mymble. 'Inspector Twiggs silently crept to the door. He was barely able tocatch the gleam from a pistol in the moonlight. Coldly determined he advanced on the feet of Avenging Justice, stopped dead, and....'

Abstractedly I listened to the Mymble's tale. I had heard it many times.

'I like that story,' said the Island Ghost. He was embroidering a pen-wiper (crossbones on black flannel) while keeping an eye on the clock.

The Muddler and the Fuzzy sat nearest to the fire holding hands as usual.

It could hardly have been cosier. But I was intrigued by a strange and uneasy feeling.

Every now and then a gust of foam from the sea washed over the black and rattling window panes.

'To be out at sea on a night like this...' I said.

'A good hundred and fifty yards a second,' Hodgkins concurred.

'I'm going out for a breath of air,' I mumbled and opened one of the leeward doors.

For a moment I stood listening on the doorstep.

The dark night was filled with the menacing crash and tumble of the surf. I sniffed at the wind, turned back my ears and went over to the windward side.

The gale rushed at me with a devilish howl and I closed my eyes to avoid seeing all the fiendish things that are on the move on such nights. Things that are better ignored...

I stumbled down to the beach that was made faintly visible by the gleaming edge of white foam. When the moon appeared through the flying clouds it made the wet sand shine like a metal disc. The sharp-edged waves came rolling in with a deafening roar, rose high with claws and fangs bared, crashed blindingly down and crept crackling and hissing back into the dark again.

My memories overcome me!

What made me defy the cold and the dark (that all Moomins loathe) to struggle down to the beach at the exact moment when the sea carried Moomintroll's mother to our island?

Clinging to a spar she came shooting with the surf, was carried into the cove and sucked out again with the backwash.

I rushed out in the water and shouted at the top of my voice: 'I'm here!'

She came back. She had lost hold of her spar and floated helplessly on her back with her legs in the air.

I did not bat an eyelid before the black wall of seething water. I caught the shipwrecked beauty in my arms, and the next second I was swept off my feet in the boiling surf.