Moominland Midwinter (14 page)

Moomintroll went to the main door and felt it. Didn't it give, ever so little? He dug his hind paws in the carpet and applied all his muscle.

Slowly, very slowly the door opened, pushing a large mass of snow outwards before it.

Moomintroll didn't give up until the door stood wide open against the night.

Now the strong wind blew straight into the drawing-room. It shook the dust off the gauze around the chandelier, and it fanned the ashes in the porcelain stove. It flapped the transfers that were pasted on the walls. One of them came off and was carried away.

The room was filled with a smell of night and firs, and Moomintroll thought: 'Good. A family has to be ventilated at times.' He went out on the steps and stared out into the damp darkness.

'Now I've got everything,' Moomintroll said to himself. 'I've got the whole year. Winter too. I'm the first Moomin to have lived through an entire year.'

*

Really, this winter's tale ought to stop exactly at this point. All this about the first spring night, and the wind rushing about in the drawing-room makes a magnificent ending. And then everybody could think what they pleased about what happened afterwards. But that wouldn't be right.

Because one still couldn't be absolutely sure of what Moominmamma had to say when she awoke. Nor would one know whether the ancestor was allowed to settle down for good in the porcelain stove. Nor whether Snuf-kin was back again before the story ended. Nor how the Mymble had managed without her cardboard box. Nor where Too-ticky would move when the bathing-house became a bathing-house again. Nor a lot of other things.

I suppose it's better to go on.

Especially as the break-up of the ice is an important event and much too dramatic to be left out.

*

Now followed the mysterious month of bright sunny days, of melting icicles, and winds, and rushing skies - and of sharply freezing nights with a snow-crust and a dazzling moon. Moomintroll explored every nook of his valley, dizzy from expectation and pride.

Now came spring, but not at all as he had imagined its coming. He had thought that it would deliver him from a strange and hostile world, but now it was simply a continuation of his new experiences, of something he had already conquered and made his own.

He hoped for a long spring, so that he could have his happy, expectant feeling as long as possible. Every morning he almost dreaded for the second-best that could happen: that someone of the family would awaken. He moved cautiously and tried not to bump into things in the drawing-room. And early in the morning he went scuttling out in the valley, to sniff the new smells and to look at the changes since the day before.

By the south wall of the woodshed an ever-widening spot of earth was becoming bare. The birches were showing a faint shade of red, but it could be seen only at a distance. The sun had burned right through the snowdrifts, and made them honeycombed and brittle. And the ice was darkening, as if the sea was beginning to show through.

Little My still went skating about far out. She had changed her tin lids for kitchen knives and managed to fasten them edgewise under her boots.

Now and then Moomintroll came across a figure eight she had made in the ice, but very seldom did he see her. She had always had the gift of having fun on her own, and whatever she might have been thinking about spring she felt no need to talk about it.

Too-ticky was having a spring cleaning in the bathing-house.

She rubbed all the green and red panes bright for the first summer fly, she hung out the bath-gowns in the sun and tried to repair the rubber Hemulen.

'Now the bathing-house'll be a bathing-house again,' she said. 'When the summer's hot and green, and you lie on your tummy on the warm boards of the landing-stage and listen to the waves chuckling and clucking...'

'Why didn't you talk like that in winter,' said Moomintroll. 'It'd have been such a comfort. Remember, I said once: "There were a lot of apples here." And you just replied: "But now here's a lot of snow." Didn't you understand that I was melancholy?'

Too-ticky shrugged her shoulders. 'One has to discover

everything for oneself,' she replied. 'And get over it all alone.'

The sun was more and more burning every day.

It bored the ice full of small holes and channels, and one could see that the sea was becoming restless below.

Beyond the horizon great gales were wandering to and fro.

Moomintroll lay awake late at nights, listening to the creakings and crackings in the walls of the sleeping house.

The ancestor was very quiet. He had closed the shutters behind him and perhaps retired again a thousand years back. The damper cord had disappeared into the cranny between the stove and the wall, tassels, embroidery and all.

'He liked it,' Moomintroll thought. He had moved from the basket of wool and was sleeping in his own bed

again. In the mornings the sun shone farther and farther into the drawing-room, looking embarrassedly at cobwebs and dust pellets. The bigger dust wads, those that had grown round and full of personality, Moomintroll used to carry out on the veranda, but the small ones he allowed to roll about as they liked.

The earth under the south window was becoming quite warm in the afternoon. It looked slightly bulging

from brown, bursting bulbs and from the many small root threads that were eagerly sucking at the melting snow.

And then one windy day, a little before dusk, a strong and majestic report was heard far out to sea.

'Well,' said Too-ticky and put her teacup down. 'The spring cannonade's starting.'

The ice heaved, and more reports thundered.

Moomintroll ran out from the bathing-house to listen in the warm wind.

'Look, the sea's coming in,' said Too-ticky behind him.

Far out a white border of waves was hissing, angry and hungry waves biting off piece after piece of the winter ice.

A black crack came shooting in along the ice, it wove to and fro, and then it tired and disappeared. The sea heaved again and new cracks formed. They broadened.

'I know someone who'd better hurry up and come home,' said Too-ticky.

Little My of course had noticed that something was about to happen. But she simply couldn't leave off. She had to take a look, out where the sea had broken free. So

she had skated up to the outermost edge and cut a proud figure of eight in the face of the sea.

Then she turned about and went back at top speed over the cracking ice. At first the cracks were quite thine 'Danger', they were writing all over the ice, as far as she could see.

The ice sagged, heaved and sank again, and every now and then thundered the cannon salute of festivity and destruction that sent delightful cold thrills up her back.

'I hope the silly asses won't be hopping out here to save me,' she thought. 'That'd spoil everything.' She went full speed ahead, nearly doubled up on her kitchen knives. The shore didn't seem to come any nearer.

Now some of the cracks were widening and becoming streams. An angry little wave lashed out.

And then suddenly the sea was filled with rocking ice islands that knocked against each other in confusion. On one of them stood Little My, looking at the stretches of water all around her, and she thought without any special alarm: 'Well, this is a pretty go.'