A Winter Book

  I’ll make it to Maritim, got hod of Gustafsson, van coming at 8, have redirected mail to summer address, bye kiss Tooti Take last things out of fridge

  Hi my name is Olavi. You write well but last time you didn’t make a happy ending. Why do you do this?

  We look forward to your valued reply soonest concerning Moomin motifs on toilet paper in pastel shades

  Don’t say too much if they ring, don’t promise yet. Bye Tooti

  Hi! We’re three girls in a mad rush with our essays about you could you help us by saying in just a few words how you started writing and why and what life means to you and then a message to young people you know the kind of thing. Thanks in advance

  Dear Miss Jansson, You must understand that the only way I can earn a living are panholders with Moomin figures which I design myself and make in the kitchen without any paid help at present. How would 6% be for a start

  Hi, I’m thinking of becoming a writer, can you help me with a little information? Is it all right to send your MS to several publishers simultaneously and is it better or worse with illustrations? And about contracts

  One shimmering moonlit night I got up and do you know what I did … I went out into the park and danced in my nightie! Maybe no one saw me but maybe someone … Do you understand? Write

  You are a really sinful person on top of everything else, but don’t think you’re safe, you’re being watched every moment because we’re there and we’re waiting

  My dear friend, I’ve been thinking of you so long now that it’s really time I plucked up courage to ask a little boon of you; could you sometime when you feel like it draw all your sweet little figures in colour for my granddaughter Emanuela

  Hi coming later heat the soup

  Kiss, T

  My hamsters have been named after you and your brother. I had a christening party on my fortieth birthday but Astrid Lindgren didn’t come.

  You each had a rosette round your tummy. It’s been an uncommonly cold winter and folk who are uncared for freeze to death, one morning you were both dead on the balcony. I’m thinking of having a funeral on Riddarholmen island, best wishes

  We are contacting you in connection with this year’s marmalade promotion, in the first instance wondering if there would be any chance of a previously unpublished Moomin comic strip on the theme of marmalade

  What steel pen do you use to draw your comic strips? Everything I’ve found seems old-fashioned and the new ones are useless. Can you give me a copy of the usual contract and I’d also very much like to know a little more about world rights

  Dear Miss Jansson

  I have produced Moomin pictures for my home and also for profit and pleasure and placed them for sale in art galleries and kiosks bordering busy traffic routes. Now one of my friends is saying one ought to ask permission, can this be true? If I don’t hear from you before week 5 shall go on as usual

  Insufficient address

  Father Christmas Moomin Valley.

  Please give current address and surname

  We are fully aware that you had planned a black troll for our Moomin liquorice advertisement, but for technical reasons

  What shall I do with my parents, they’re becoming more and more hopeless. Write!

  Couldn’t we meet and chat about the old days at school? I’m Margit, the one who punched you in the stomach in the playground

  We look forward to your comments concerning the foregoing account in connection with earlier uncompleted agreements and taking into account secondary effects to which our most recent market discharge may have given rise we would be glad if in urgent order

  Now don’t be afraid, but have you any understanding whatever of what your comic strips can mean for expectant mothers, how great a responsibility you bear? Have you even remotely grasped what it can mean for expectant mothers to be constantly confronted with those snouts – how do you think the next generation may look

  My cat’s died! Write at once

  Hi dear unknown fairy-tale auntie, we’re a group of young folks with Ideas! What d’you think? Are you up for it?

  Luv, Plastic Ltd, ‘Now or Never’ project

  Dear Jansson san

  I have collected money for a long time. I will come and sit at your feet to understand. Please when can I come there?

  Last night they came in again. They’re everywhere. Please come, I implore you

  Could you consider becoming patron of this constantly threatened little area of natural beauty

  How could you even consider invading this constantly threatened little area of natural beauty

  We’ve launched a discreet new mini sanitary towel – earlier design Peach Bloom Ltd – but now we’re aiming at a younger clientele with the slogan ‘Hi there, Little My always plays safe’ – a bit of fun which with your kind permission

  Can’t you draw me a Snufkin that I can have tattooed on my arm as a symbol of freedom

  I don’t know why I’m writing but I must because my heart is so big tonight throw away these lines forget them don’t bother to read them if you feel embarrassed but please be terribly kind and answer if you possibly can

  It was you who murdered Karin Boye*

  Hi, took the mail with me

  Kiss, T

  Is it OK for you to transfer my fee to Sri Lanka? My latest translation into Esperanto can’t be ready till New Year. I hope you will be patient

  In your story The Cat you change cat twice and that’s heartless. As a member of the RSPCA I must

  I thought it might make you happy to know that there is someone who has everything that life can offer. It’s true of me and I’m thankful. But the one thing I long to do is create. My therapist recommends watercolours and suggested I should phone you. It’s a matter of choice of colours and motifs

  My very dear friend you are wallowing in sin. A Voice has spoken to me and now I pray for you every night which makes me so tired. I enclose some Tracts, read them and let me know if things go better. Hold out. There is an explanation and forgiveness for everything

  This is a message in a bottle for Toffle from Australia. If the paper gets wet on the way ask your mummy to iron it dry

  Have you forgotten your baby’s fiftieth birthday? Have you read my letters? Have you got my presents? Don’t tell me you’re old and tired. I won’t stop writing – I’ll never let go of you!

  I brought the washing in, you can put the potatoes on at 6. Someone called Anttiia phoned

  Dear Jansson san

  Take good care of yourself in this dangerous world

  Please have a long life

  With love

  * Karin Boye: Swedish poet, novelist and story writer who took her own life in 1941.

  Correspondence

  Dear Jansson san

  I’m a girl from Japan.

  I’m thirteen years old and two months.

  On the eighth of January I’ll be fourteen.

  I have a mother and two little sisters.

  I’ve read everything you’ve written.

  When I’ve read something I read it one more time.

  Then I think about snow and how to be alone.

  Tokyo’s a very big city.

  I’m learning English and studying very seriously.

  I love you.

  I dream one day I’ll be as old as you and as clever as you.

  I have many dreams.

  There’s a Japanese kind of poem called haiku.

  I’m sending you a haiku in Japanese

  It’s about cherry flowers.

  Do you live in a big forest?

  Forgive me for writing to you.

  I wish you good health and a long life.

  Tamiko Atsumi

  Dear Jansson san

  My new birthday today is very important.

  Your present is very important to me.

  Everyone admires your present and the picture of the little island where you live.

  It’s hanging above my bed.

  How many lon
ely islands are there in Finland?

  Can anyone live there who wants to?

  I want to live on an island.

  I love lonely islands and I love flowers and snow.

  But I can’t write how they are.

  I’m studying very seriously.

  I read your books in English.

  Your books aren’t the same in Japanese.

  Why are they different?

  I think you are happy.

  Look after your health very carefully.

  I wish you a long life.

  Tamiko Atsumi

  Dear Jansson san

  It’s been a long time, for five months and nine days you haven’t written to me.

  Did you get my letters?

  Did you get the presents?

  I long for you.

  You must understand that I’m studying very seriously.

  Now I’ll tell you about my dream.

  My dream is to travel to other countries and learn their languages and learn to understand.

  I want to be able to talk with you.

  I want you to talk with me.

  You must tell me how you describe things without seeing other houses and with no one getting in the way.

  I want to know how to write about snow.

  I want to sit at your feet and learn.

  I’m collecting money so I can travel.

  Now I’m sending you a new haiku.

  It’s about a very old woman who sees blue mountains far away.

  When she was young she didn’t see them.

  Now she can’t reach them.

  That’s a beautiful haiku.

  I beg you please be careful.

  Tamiko

  Dear Jansson san

  You were going to go on a great long journey, now you’ve been travelling more than six months.

  I think you’ve come back again.

  Where did you go, my Jansson san, and what did you learn on your journey?

  Perhaps you took with you a kimono.

  In autumn colours and autumn is the time to travel.

  But you’ve said so often that time is short.

  My time grows long when I think of you.

  I want to become old like you and have only big clever thoughts.

  I keep your letters in a very beautiful box in a secret place.

  I read them again at sundown.

  Tamiko

  Dear Jansson san

  Once you wrote to me when it was summer in Finland and you were living on the lonely island.

  You’ve told me that post hardly ever comes to your island.

  Then do you get many letters from me at once?

  You say it feels nice when the ships go by and don’t stop.

  But now it’s winter in Finland.

  You’ve written a book about winter, you’ve described my dream.

  I’ll write a story to help everyone understand and recognise their own dream.

  How old must you be to write a story?

  But I can’t write my story without you.

  Every day is a day of waiting.

  You’ve said you’re so tired.

  You work and there are too many people.

  But I want to be the one who comforts you and protects your solitude.

  This is a sad haiku about someone who waited too long for the one they loved.

  You see how it went!

  But it’s not so good in translation.

  Has my English got any better?

  Always

  Tamiko

  Much loved Jansson san, thank you!

  Yes, that’s how it is, you don’t have to be a certain age, you just begin writing a story because you have to, about what you know or also about what you long for, about your dream, the unknown. O much loved Jansson san. One mustn’t worry about others and what they think and understand, because while you’re telling a story you’re only concerned with the story and yourself. Then you really are on your own. At this moment I know all about what it’s like to love someone far away and I will hurry to write about it before she comes nearer. I send you a haiku again, it’s about a little stream which becomes happy in spring so everyone listens and feels delight. I can’t translate it. Listen to me Jansson san and write to say when I can come. I’ve collected money and I think I’ll get a travel scholarship. What month would be best and most beautiful for our meeting?

  Tamiko

  Dear Jansson san

  Thank you for your very wise letter.

  I understand the forest’s big in Finland and the sea too but your house is very small.

  It’s a beautiful thought, to meet a writer only in her books.

  I’m learning all the time.

  I wish you good health and a long life.

  Your Tamiko Atsumi

  My Jansson san

  It’s been snowing all day.

  I’m learning to write about snow.

  Today my mother died.

  When you’re the eldest in your family in Japan, you can’t leave home and don’t want to.

  I hope you understand me.

  I thank you.

  The poem is by Lang Shih Yiian, who was once a great poet in China.

  It has been translated into your language by Hwang Tsu-Yii and Alf Henrikson.

  “Wild geese scream shrilly on muffled winds.

  The morning snow is heavy, weather cloudy and cold.

  Poor, I can give you nothing in parting

  but the blue mountains and they’ll always be with you.”

  Tamiko

  Travelling Light

  I WISH I COULD DESCRIBE THE ENORMOUS RELIEF I FELT when they finally pulled up the gangway! Only then did I feel safe. Or, more exactly, when the ship had moved far enough from the quay for it to be impossible for anyone to call out… ask for my address, scream that something awful had happened… Believe me, you can’t imagine my giddy sense of freedom. I unbuttoned my overcoat and took out my pipe but my hands were shaking and I couldn’t light it; but I stuck it between my teeth anyway, because that somehow establishes a certain detachment from one’s surroundings. I went as far forward as possible in the bows, from where it was impossible to see the city, and hung over the railing like the most carefree traveller you can imagine. The sky was light blue, the little clouds seemed whimsical, pleasantly capricious…

  Everything was in the past now, gone, of no significance; nothing mattered any more, no one was important. No telephone, no letters, no doorbell. Of course you have no idea what I’m referring to, but it doesn’t matter anyway; in fact I shall merely assert that everything had been sorted out to the best of my ability, thoroughly taken care of down to the smallest detail. I wrote the letters I had to write – in fact I’d done that as long ago as the day before, announcing my sudden departure without explanation and without in any way accounting for my behaviour. It was very difficult; it took a whole day. Naturally I left no information about where I was going and indicated no time for my return, since I have no intention of ever coming back. The caretaker’s wife will look after my houseplants; those tired living things – which never look well no matter how much trouble one takes over them – have made me feel very uneasy. Never mind: I shan’t ever have to see them again.

  Perhaps it might interest you to know what I packed? As little as possible! I’ve always dreamed of travelling light, a small weekend bag of the sort one can casually whisk along with oneself as one walks with rapid but unhurried steps through, shall we say, the departure lounge of an airport, passing a mass of nervous people dragging along large heavy cases. This was the first time I’d succeeded in taking the absolute minimum with me, ruthless in the face of family treasures and those little objects one can become so attached to that remind one of… well, of emotional bits of one’s life – no, that least of all! My bag was as light as my happy-go-lucky heart and contained nothing more than one would need for a routine night at a hotel. I left the flat without leaving instructions of any kind, but I did clean it,
very thoroughly. I’m very good at cleaning. Then I turned off the electricity, opened the fridge and unplugged the phone. That was the very last thing, the definitive step; now I’d done with them.

  And during all this time the phone never rang once – a good omen. Not one, not a single one of all these, these – but I don’t want to talk about them now, I’m not going to worry about them any more, no, they no longer occupy even a single second of my thoughts. Well, when I’d pulled out the phone plug and checked one last time that I had all the papers I needed in my pocket-book – passport, tickets, travellers’ cheques, pension card – I looked out of the window to make sure that there were some taxis waiting at the stand on the corner, shut the front door and let the keys fall through the letterbox.

  Out of old habit I avoided the lift; I don’t like lifts. On the second floor I tripped and grabbed hold of the banisters, and stood still a moment, suddenly hot all over. Think, just think – what if I’d really fallen, perhaps sprained my ankle or worse? Everything would have been in vain, fatal, irreparable. It would have been unthinkable to get ready and gather myself together to leave a second time. In the taxi I felt so exhilarated I carried on a lively conversation with the driver, commenting on the early spring weather and taking an interest in this and that relating to his profession, but he hardly responded at all. I pulled myself together, because this was exactly what I’d decided to avoid; from now on I was going to be a person who never took any interest in anyone. The problems that might face a taxi driver were nothing to do with me. We reached the boat much too early, he lifted out my bag, I thanked him and gave him too big a tip. He didn’t smile, which upset me a bit, but the man who took my ticket was very friendly.