‘Yes, you’re nice,’ he said. ‘Yes, it would be fun to have you along. But, don’t you see, there’s Moomintroll…’
The dragon yawned. It flew to his ragged hat brim and curled up to sleep on it. Snufkin sighed and cast his line into the river. His new float bobbed in the current, shining brightly red. He knew that Moomintroll wouldn’t like fishing today. The Groke take it all…
The hours went by.
The little dragon flew off and caught some flies and returned to sleep on the hat. Snufkin got five roaches and one eel that he let off again because it made such a fuss.
Towards evening a boat came down the river. A youngish hemulen steered.
‘Any luck?’ he asked.
‘So so,’ Snufkin replied. ‘Going far?’
‘Oh, well,’ said the hemulen.
‘Throw me your painter,’ Snufkin said. ‘You might have use for a few fish. Swaddle them in damp newspapers and roast them on the embers. It’s not too bad.’
‘And what do you want?’ asked the hemulen who wasn’t used to presents.
Snufkin laughed and took off his hat with the sleeping dragon.
‘Now listen,’ he said. ‘Take this with you as far as you’re going and leave it in some nice place where there are a lot of flies. Fold up the hat to look like a nest, and put it under a bush or something to make this dragon feel undisturbed.’
‘A dragon, is it?’ the hemulen asked suspiciously. ‘Does he bite? How often does one have to feed him?’
Snufkin went into his tent and returned with his old tea-kettle. He shoved a tuft of grass down into it and cautiously let the sleeping dragon down after it. Then he placed the lid firmly on and said:
‘You can poke some flies down the nozzle now and then, and pour in a few drops of water sometimes also. Don’t mind if the kettle becomes hot. Here you are. After a couple of days you can leave it.’
‘That’s quite a job for five roaches,’ the hemulen replied sourly and hauled home his painter. The boat started to glide with the current.
‘Don’t forget the hat,’ Snufkin called over the water. ‘It’s very particular about my hat.’
‘No, no, no,’ said the hemulen and disappeared round the bend.
‘He’ll burn his fingers some time,’ Snufkin thought. ‘Might serve him right.’
*
Moomintroll came after sundown.
‘Hello,’ Snufkin said.
‘Yippee,’ Moomintroll said tonelessly. ‘Caught any fish?’
‘So so,’ Snufkin replied. ‘Won’t you sit down?’
‘Oh, I just happened to pass by,’ Moomintroll mumbled.
There was a pause. A new kind of silence, troubled and awkward. Finally Moomintroll asked:
‘Does he shine in the dark?’
‘Who?’
‘Oh, the dragon. I just thought it might be fun to ask if a creep like that shines in the dark.’
‘I really don’t know,’ Snufkin said. ‘You’d better go home and take a look.’
‘But I’ve let him out,’ Moomintroll cried. ‘Didn’t he come to you?’
‘Nope,’ Snufkin said, lighting his pipe. ‘Dragons, they do as they like. They’re pretty flighty you know, and if they see a fat fly somewhere they forget everything else. That’s dragons. They’re really nothing much.’
Moomintroll was silent for quite a while. Then he sat down in the grass and said:
‘Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps it was just as well that it went away. Well, yes. I rather think so. Snufkin. That new float of yours. I suppose it looked good in the water. The red one.’
‘Not bad,’ Snufkin said. ‘I’ll make you one. Were you planning to fish tomorrow?’
‘Of course,’ Moomintroll said. ‘Naturally.’
The Hemulen who loved Silence
ONCE upon a time there was a hemulen who worked in a pleasure-ground, which doesn’t necessarily mean having a lot of fun. The hemulen’s job was to punch holes in tickets, so that people wouldn’t have fun more than once, and such a job is quite enough to make anyone sad if you have to do it all your life.
The hemulen punched and punched, and while punching he used to dream of the things he would do when he got his pension at last.
In case someone doesn’t know what a pension is, it means that you can do what you like in all the peace you wish for, when you’re old enough. At least that was how the hemulen’s relatives had explained it to him.
He had terribly many relatives, a great lot of enormous, rollicking, talkative hemulens who went about slapping each other’s backs and bursting into gigantic laughs.
They were joint owners of the pleasure-ground, and in their spare time they blew the trombone or threw the
hammer, told funny stories and frightened people generally. But they did it all with the best of intentions.
The hemulen himself didn’t own anything because he was on the side-line, which means only half a relative, and as he never could put his foot down about anything to anyone he always had to do the baby-sitting, to work the big bellows of the merry-go-round, and, most of the time, to punch tickets.
‘You’re lonely and have nothing to do,’ the other hemulens used to tell him in their friendly way. ‘So it might cheer you up a bit to lend a hand and be among people.’
‘But I’m never lonely,’ the hemulen tried to explain. ‘I can’t find the time to be. There’s always such a lot of people who want to cheer me up. If you don’t mind, I’d like so much to…’
‘Splendid,’ the relatives said and slapped his back. ‘That’s the thing. Never lonely, always on the go.’
The hemulen punched along, dreaming about a great wonderful silent loneliness, and hoped he would grow old as soon as possible.
The whirligigs whirled, the trombones trumpeted, gaffsies and whompers and mymbles shrieked in the roller coaster every night. Edward the Booble won a first prize in china smashing, and all around the sad and dreamy hemulen people danced and whooped, laughed and quarrelled and ate and drank, and by and by the hemulen grew simply afraid of noisy people who were enjoying themselves.
He used to sleep in the hemulen children’s dormitory, that was bright and nice in the daytime, and at nights when the kiddies awoke and cried he comforted them with a barrel organ.
The rest of his spare time he lent a hand anywhere it was needed in a large house full of hemulens, and so he had company around the clock, and everybody was in high spirits and told him all about everything they thought and did and planned to do. Only they never gave him time to reply properly.
‘Won’t I grow old soon?’ the hemulen once asked at dinner.
‘Old? You?’ his uncle shouted. ‘Far from it. Buck up, buck up, nobody’s older than he feels.’
‘But I feel really old,’ the hemulen said hopefully.
‘Pish, posh,’ the uncle said. ‘We’re going to have extra spot of fireworks tonight, and the brass band will play until sunrise.’
But the fireworks never were touched off, because that same afternoon a great rain started to fall. It continued all night and all the next day, and the next one after that, and then all the following week.
To tell the truth this rain kept up for eight weeks without a stop. No one had ever seen the like.
The pleasure-ground lost its colours, shrank and withered away like a flower. It paled and rusted, and then it slowly started to disperse, because it was built on sand.
The roller coaster railway caved in with a sigh, and the merry-go-rounds went slowly turning around in large grey pools and puddles, until they were swept off, faintly tinkling, by the new rivers that were formed by the rain.
All small kiddies, toffles and woodies and whompers and mymbles, and so forth, were standing days on end with their snouts pressed to the window-panes, looking at their July becoming drenched and their colour and music floating away.
The House of Mirrors came crashing down in millions of wet splinters, and pink drenched paper roses from the Miracle Garden went bo
bbing off in hundreds over the fields. Over it all rose the wailing chorus of the kiddies.
They were driving their parents to desperation, because they hadn’t a single thing to do except grieve over the lost pleasure-ground.
Streamers and empty balloons were drooping from the trees, the Happy House was filled with mud, and the three-headed alligator swam off to the sea. He left two of his heads behind him, because they had been glued on.
The hemulens took it all as a splendid joke. They stood at their windows, laughing and pointing and slapping backs, and shouted:
‘Look! There goes the curtain to the Arabian Nights! The dancing floor has come loose! There’s five black bats from the Cave of Horror on the fillyjonk’s roof! Did you ever!’
They decided in the best of spirits to start a skating rink instead, when the water froze, of course – and they tried to comfort the hemulen by promising him the ticket
punching job again as soon as they could get things going.
‘No,’ the hemulen suddenly said. ‘No, no, no. I don’t want to. I want my pension. I want to do what I feel like doing, and I want to be absolutely alone in some silent place.’
‘But my dear nephew,’ one of his uncles said with enormous astonishment, ‘Do you mean what you say?’
‘I do,’ said the hemulen. ‘Every word of it.’
‘But why haven’t you told us before?’ the perplexed relatives asked him. ‘We’ve always believed that you’ve enjoyed yourself.’
‘I never dared tell you,’ the hemulen admitted.
At this they all laughed again and thought it terribly funny that the hemulen had had to do things he disliked all his life, only because he hadn’t been able to put his foot down.
‘Well, now, what do you want to do?’ his maternal aunt asked cheerfully.
‘I’d like to build myself a doll’s house,’ the hemulen whispered. ‘The most beautiful doll’s house in the world, with lots and lots of rooms, and all of them silent and solemn and empty.’
Now the hemulens laughed so hard that they had to sit down. They gave each other enormous nudges and shouted: ‘A doll’s house! Did you hear that! He said a doll’s house!’ and then they laughed themselves into tears and told him:
‘Little dear, by all means do exactly as you like! You can have grandma’s big park, very probably it’s silent as a grave nowadays. That’s the very place for you to rummage
about in and play to your heart’s content. Good luck to you, and hope you like it!’
‘Thanks,’ the hemulen said, feeling a little shrunken inwardly. ‘I know you’ve always wished me well.’
His dream about the doll’s house with the calm and beautiful rooms vanished, the hemulens had laughed it to pieces. But it really was no fault of theirs. They would have felt sincerely sorry if anyone had told them that they had spoiled something for the hemulen. And it’s a risky thing to talk about one’s most secret dreams a bit too early.
The hemulen went along to grandma’s old park that was now his own. He had the key in his pocket.
The park had been closed and never used since grandma had set fire to her house with fireworks and moved elsewhere with all her family.
That was long ago, and the hemulen was even a little uncertain about the way to the park.
The wood had grown, and ways and paths were under
water. While he was splashing along the rain stopped as suddenly as it had started eight weeks ago. But the hemulen didn’t notice it. He was wholly occupied with grieving over his lost dream and with feeling sorry because he didn’t want to build a doll’s house any more.
Now he could see the park wall. A little of it had tumbled down, but it was still quite a high wall. The single gate was rusty and very hard to unlock.
The hemulen went in and locked the gate behind him. Suddenly he forgot about the doll’s house. It was the first time in his life that he had opened a door of his own and shut it behind him. He was home. He didn’t live in someone else’s house.
The rain clouds were slowly drifting away and the sun came out. The wet park was steaming and glittering all around him. It was green and unworried. No one had cut or trimmed or swept it for a very, very long time. Trees were reaching branches down to the ground, bushes were climbing the trees, and criss-crossing, in the luscious grass tinkled the brooks that grandma had led through the park in her time. They didn’t take care of the watering any longer, they took care only of themselves, but many of the little bridges were still standing even if the garden paths had disappeared.
The hemulen threw himself headlong into the green, friendly silence, he made capers in it, he wallowed in it, and he felt younger than he ever had before.
Oh, how wonderful to be old and pensioned at last, he thought. How much I like my relatives! And now I needn’t even think of them.
He went wading through the long, sparkling grass, he threw his arms around the trees, and finally he went to sleep in the sunshine in a clearing in the middle of the park. It was the place where grandma’s house had been. Her great fireworks parties were finished long ago. Young trees were coming up all around him, and in grandma’s bedroom grew an enormous rose-bush with a thousand red hips.
Night fell, lots of large stars came out and the hemulen loved his park all the better. It was wide and mysterious, one could lose one’s way in it and still be at home.
He wandered about for hours.
He found grandma’s old fruit orchard where apples and pears lay strewn in the grass, and for a moment he thought: What a pity. I can’t eat half of them. One ought to… And then he forgot the thought, enchanted by the loneliness of the silence.
He was the owner of the moonlight on the ground, he fell in love with the most beautiful of the trees, he made wreaths of leaves and hung them around his neck. During this first night he hardly had the heart to sleep at all.
In the morning the hemulen heard a tinkle from the old bell that still hung by the gate. He felt worried. Someone was outside and wanted to come in, someone wanted something from him. Silently he crept in under the bushes along the wall and waited without a word. The bell jangled again. The hemulen craned his neck and saw a very small whomper waiting outside the gate.
‘Go away,’ the hemulen called anxiously. ‘This is private ground. I live here.’
‘I know,’ the small whomper replied. The hemulens sent me here with some dinner for you.’
‘Oh, I see, that was kind of them,’ the hemulen replied willingly. He unlocked the gate and took the basket from the whomper. Then he shut the gate again. The whomper remained where he was for a while but didn’t say anything.
‘And how are you getting on?’ the hemulen asked impatiently. He stood fidgeting and longed to be back in his park again.
‘Badly,’ the whomper replied honestly. ‘We’re in a bad way all of us. We who are small. We’ve got no pleasure-ground any more. We’re just grieving.’
‘Oh,’ the hemulen said, staring at his feet. He didn’t want to be asked to think of dreary things, but he was so accustomed to listening that he couldn’t go away either.
‘You must be grieving, too,’ the whomper said with compassion. ‘You used to punch the tickets. But if one was very small and ragged and dirty you punched beside it. And we could use it two or three times.’
‘My eyesight wasn’t so good,’ the hemulen explained. ‘They’re waiting for you at home, aren’t they?’
The whomper nodded but stayed on. He came close to the gate and thrust his snout through it. ‘I must tell you,’ he whispered. ‘We’ve got a secret.’
The hemulen made a gesture of fright, because he disliked other people’s secrets and confidences. But the whomper continued excitedly:
‘We’ve rescued nearly all of it. We keep it in the filly-jonk’s barn. You can’t believe how much we’ve worked. Rescued and rescued. We stole out at nights in the rain and pulled things out of the water and down from the trees and dried them and repaired them, and now it’s nearly
right!’
‘What is?’ asked the hemulen.
‘The pleasure-ground of course!’ the whomper cried. ‘Or as much of it as we could find, all the pieces there were left! Splendid, isn’t it! Perhaps the hemulens will put it together again for us, and then you can come back and punch the tickets.’
‘Oh,’ the hemulen mumbled and put the basket on the ground.
‘Fine, what! That made you blink,’ the whomper said, laughed, waved his hand and was off.
Next morning the hemulen was anxiously waiting by the gate, and when the whomper came with the dinner basket he called at once:
Well? What did they say?’
‘They didn’t want to,’ the whomper said dejectedly. They want to run a skating rink instead. And most of us go to sleep in winter, and anyway, where’d we get skates from…’
That’s too bad,’ the hemulen said, feeling quite relieved.
The whomper didn’t reply, he was so disappointed. He just put down the basket and turned back.
Poor children, the hemulen thought for a moment. Well, well. And then he started to plan the leaf hut he was going to build on grandma’s ruins.
The hemulen worked at his building all day and enjoyed himself tremendously. He stopped only when it was too dark to see anything, and then he went to sleep, tired and contented, and slept late the next morning.
When he went to the gate to fetch his food the whomper had been there already. On the basket lid he found a letter signed by several kiddies. ‘Dear pleasure-puncher,’ the hemulen read. ‘You can have all of it because you are all right, and perhaps you will let us play with you some time because we like you.’
The hemulen didn’t understand a word, but a horrible suspicion began burrowing in his stomach.
Then he saw. Outside the gate the kiddies had heaped all the things they had rescued from the pleasure-ground. It was a lot. Most of it was broken and tattered and wrongly re-assembled, and all of it looked strange. It was a lost and miscellaneous collection of boards, canvas, wire, paper and rusty iron. It was looking sadly and un-expectantly at the hemulen, and he looked back in a panic.