Moominvalley in November (3 page)

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 her 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.

The duster! It had got caught in the window-frame... Fillyjonk's heart began to pound - she could see a little bit of the corner of the duster sticking out, she took hold of it, oh so carefully, and pulled it gently... Oh, please don't let it break, let it be my lovely new duster and not the old one... I shall never save old dusters again, I shall never save anything again, I shall be extravagant, I shall stop cleaning up, I do too much of it anyway, I'm pernickety... I shall be something quite different but not a fillyjonk... This is what Fillyjonk thought, imploringly, but hopelessly, because a fillyjonk can never, of course, be anything but a fillyjonk.

The duster held. Slowly the window opened again and the wind banged it against the wall and Fillyjonk flung herself headlong into the safety of the room and lay on the floor and her stomach started going round and round and she felt terribly sick.

Above her head the lamp in the ceiling swayed to and fro in the wind, all its tassels swinging at a uniform distance from one another, each with a little bead on the end. She

looked at them attentively, quite taken by surprise by the little tassels which she didn't remember ever having seen before. And never before had she noticed that the lampshade was red, a very beautiful red reminding her of the sunset. Even the hook in the ceiling had a new and unusual shape.

She began to feel a little better. She began to think how strange it was that everything that hangs from a hook really goes on hanging downwards and not in any other direction, and wondered what it depended on. The whole room had changed, everything looked new. Fillyjonk went up to the mirror and looked at herself. Her nose was covered in scratches on one side and her hair was dead straight and wet through. Her eyes looked different: fancy having eyes to see with, she thought, and how
does
one see...?

She began to feel cold because of the rain, and because she had tumbled all the way through her life in a single second, and she decided to make herself a cup of coffee. But when she opened the cupboard in the kitchen, she saw for the first time that she had far too much china. Such an awful lot of coffee cups. Far too many serving dishes and roasting dishes, and stacks of plates, hundreds of things to eat from and eat on, and only one fillyjonk. And who would have them all when she died?

I'm not going to die at all, whispered Fillyjonk, and shut the cupboard door with a bang. She ran into the living-room, she staggered round among the furniture in her bedroom and out again, she dashed into the drawing-room and drew back the curtains and then went up to the attic, and it was just as quiet everywhere. She left all the doors open, she opened the wardrobe where her suitcase lay, and at last she knew what she was going to do. She would go and stay with someone. She wanted to see people. People who talked and were pleasant and went in and out and filled the whole day so that there was no time for terrible thoughts. Not the Hemulen, not Mymble, certainly not Mymble! But the Moomin family. It was about time that she went to see Moominmamma. You have to decide these things when you're in a certain mood, and quickly, too, before the mood vanishes.

Fillyjonk took out her suitcase and put her silver vase in it, Moominmamma must have that. She threw the water out on to the roof and closed the window. She dried her hair and put it in curlers, and then she drank her afternoon tea. The house had calmed down and was quite itself again. When Fillyjonk had washed up her tea cup she took the silver vase out of the suitcase and put a china one in instead. She lit the lamp in the ceiling because the rain had made it get dark early.

What on earth came over me, Fillyjonk thought. That lamp-shade isn't red at all. It's a little brownish. But in any case, I'm going away.

CHAPTER 4
Rain

I
T
was late in the autumn. Snufkin continued towards the south, sometimes he pitched his tent and let the time pass as best it might, he walked around and contemplated things without actually thinking or remembering anything, and he slept quite a lot. He was attentive but not in the least curious, and didn't worry much about where he was going - he just wanted to keep moving.

The forest was heavy with rain and the trees were absolutely motionless. Everything had withered and died, but right down on the ground the late autumn's secret garden was growing with great vigour straight out of the mouldering earth, a strange vegetation of shiny puffed-up plants that had nothing at all to do with summer. The late blueberry sprigs were yellowish-green and the cranberries as dark as blood. Hidden lichens and mosses began to grow, and they grew like a big soft carpet until they took over the whole forest. There were strong new colours everywhere, and red rowan berries were shining all over the place. But the bracken had turned black.

Snufkin got a feeling that he wanted to write songs. He waited until he was quite sure of the feeling and one evening he got out his mouth-organ from the bottom of his rucksack. In August, somewhere in Moominvalley, he had hit upon five bars which would undoubtedly provide a marvellous beginning for a tune. They had come completely naturally as notes do when they have been left in peace. Now the time had come to take them out again and let them become a song about rain.

Snufkin listened and waited. The five bars didn't come. He went on waiting without getting impatient because he knew what tunes were like. But the only things he could hear were the faint sounds of rain and running water. It gradually got quite dark. Snufkin took out his pipe but put it away again. He knew that the five bars must be somewhere in Moominvalley and that he wouldn't find them until he went back again.