Daddy climbed down again and called Poppolino. He called in his kind and treacly voice that made me very cross. Now they were both in the studio.
Poppolino was sitting on a plaster bust close to the ceiling, gaping. Daddy stood below calling him enticingly. Then it happened again.
Poppolino started swinging on the bust and then sprang. It was a big bust of an alderman and there was a frightful noise as it smashed to smithereens all over the floor. Poppolino clung to the curtains and shrieked with fright and Daddy said nothing. Then something just as big crashed to the floor, but I only heard the noise as I daren’t look any longer.
When all was quiet again I assumed that Poppolino had taken refuge on Daddy’s shoulder and was being consoled. In a while they would go out for a walk in the park. I listened carefully. Then Daddy put on Poppolino’s velvet jacket and hat. Daddy talked the whole time he was doing up the buttons and the hat ribbon, and Poppolino was saying how rotten and beastly everything was. Now they were out in the hall. The door made a clicking noise as they went out.
I got out of bed and took all my plaster animals and threw them down into the sitting-room. I climbed down the steps and fetched the hammer and bashed them to powder and rubbed the plaster into the carpet with my feet. Then I climbed up and crept into Poppolino’s cage. I sat in his bits of newspaper and breathed German measles on everything as hard as I could.
When they came home again I could tell that they had been to the shop and bought liquorice and herrings. I lay under the bedclothes and heard Daddy put Poppolino back into his cage. He talked away in a cheerful voice and I took it that Poppolino had been given some liquorice. Then Daddy came over to my bunk and tried to give me some liquorice too.
“Monkey food!” I said. “I don’t want to eat the same things as someone who smashes statues.”
“But it wasn’t a good one,” Daddy said. “It was good that Poppolino knocked it over. How do you feel now?”
“I shall soon be dead,” I answered, and crept lower down the bed.
“Don’t be silly,” Daddy said. When I didn’t answer he went into the studio and started working. He was whistling. I heard him walking up and down in front of the modelling stand, whistling and working.
I felt my guilty conscience in my toes, and before it could creep any higher I sat up quickly and started to crochet. I wasn’t going to make a kettle-holder any longer. It would be a pullover for Poppolino.
It’s difficult to tell why or how people cheer up and get the feeling they want to work. It’s not easy to be sure about germs, either. Best not to think about it too much but try and put everything right as quickly as possible with a good deed.
Flying
I DREAMED THAT THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE WERE RUNNING in the street. They weren’t shouting but you could hear the sound of their boots on the pavement, many thousands of boots, and there was a red glow in the studio from outside. After a while there weren’t so many of them running, and in the end there were only the steps of the last one, who was running in such a way that he fell over and then picked himself up and ran on.
Then everything started shrinking. Every piece of furniture became elongated and narrow and disappeared towards the ceiling. There was something crawling under the rag rugs in the hall. It was also narrow and thin and wriggled in the middle, sometimes very quickly and sometimes very slowly.
I tried to get into the bedroom where Mummy had lit the oil lamp but the door was shut. Then I ran up the steps to the bunk. The door of Poppolino’s cage was open and I could hear him padding round somewhere in the dark and whining, which is something he always does when it is very cold or when he feels lonely.
Now it came up the steps, grey and limping. One of its legs had come off. It was the ghost of the dead crow. I flew into the sitting-room and bumped about on the ceiling like a fly. I could see the sitting-room and the studio underneath me in a deep well that sank deeper and deeper.
I thought more about that dream afterwards, particularly about the flying part, and decided to fly as often as possible.
But it didn’t work and I dreamed about all the wrong things, and in the end I made up my own dreams myself just before I went to sleep or just after I had woken up. I started by thinking up the most awful things I could, which wasn’t particularly difficult. When I had made things as awful as possible I took a run and bounced off the floor and flew away from everything, leaving it all behind me in a deep well. Down there the whole town was burning. Down there Poppolino was padding around in the studio in the dark screaming with loneliness. Down there sat the crow saying: “It was your fault that I died.” And the Unmentionable Thing crawled under the mat.
But I just went on flying. In the beginning I bumped about on the ceiling like a fly, but then I ventured out of the window. Straight across the street was the farthest I could fly. But if I glided I could go on as long as I wanted, right down to the bottom of the well. There I took another leap and flew up again.
It wasn’t long before they caught sight of me. At first they just stopped and stared, then they started to shout and point and came running from all directions. But before they could reach me I had taken another leap and was up in the air again laughing and waving at them. They tried to jump after me. They ran to fetch step-ladders and fishing-rods but nothing helped. There they were, left behind below me, longing to be able to fly. Then they went slowly home and got on with their work.
Sometimes they had too much work to do and sometimes they just couldn’t work, which was horrid for them. I felt sorry for them and made it possible for them all to fly.
Next morning they all woke up with no idea of what had happened and sat up and said: “Another miserable day begins!” They climbed down from their bunks and drank some warm milk and had to eat the skin too. Then they put on their coats and hats and went downstairs and off to their work, dragging their legs and wondering whether they should take the tram.
But then they decided to walk in any case, because one is allowed to take a tram for seven stops but not really for five, and in any case fresh air is healthy.
One of them came down Wharf Road and a lot of wet snow stuck to her boots. So she stamped a little to get rid of the snow – and, sure enough, she flew into the air! Only about six feet, and then came down again and stood wondering what had happened to her. Then she noticed a gentleman running to catch the tram. It rang its bell and was off so he ran even faster and the next moment he was flying too. He took off from the ground and described an arc in the air up to the roof of the tram and there he sat!
Then Mummy began to laugh as hard as she could and immediately understood what had happened and cried “Ha! ha! ha!” and flew onto Victor Ek’s roof in a single beautiful curve. There she caught sight of Daddy in the studio window rattling nails and coins in the pockets of his overall and she shouted: “Jump out! Come flying with me!”
But Daddy daren’t until Mummy flew over and sat on the windowsill. Then he opened the window and took hold of her hand and flew out and said: “Well, I’ll be damned!”
By that time the whole of Helsinki was full of amazed people flying. No one did any work. Windows were open all over the place and down in the street the trams and the cars were empty and it stopped snowing and the sun came out.
All the new-born babies were flying and all the very old people and their cats and dogs and guinea-pigs and monkeys – just everybody!
Even the President was out flying!
The roofs were crowded with picnickers undoing their sandwiches and opening bottles and shouting: “Cheers!” to one another across the street and everyone was doing precisely what he or she wanted to do.
I stood in the bedroom window watching the whole thing and enjoying myself no end and wondering how long I should let them go on flying. And I thought that if I now made everything normal again it might be dangerous. Imagine what would happen if the following morning they all opened their windows and jumped out! Therefore I decided that they could be allowed to
go on flying until the end of the world in Helsinki.
Then I opened my bedroom window and climbed onto the window-ledge together with the crow and Poppolino. “Don’t be afraid!” I said. And so off we flew.
Annie
IT WAS SO NICE LOOKING AT ANNIE. ANNIE’S HAIR GREW like luscious rough grass; it looked as if it had been cut any old how and was so full of life that it crackled. Her eyebrows were just as thick and black and met in the middle, her nose was flat and she had very pink cheeks. Her arms plunged into the washing-up water like pillars. She was beautiful.
Annie sings while she’s washing up and I sit under the table and try to learn the words. I’ve got to the thirteenth verse of Lord Henry and Fair Hilda and that’s where things actually start to happen.
The sound of a charger was heard in the hall and harpist and fiddler and wedding guests all were filled with such horror, for yea it is told Lord Henry rode in clad as warrior bold. Lo! Vengeance be mine and in blood for this day oh Hilda so fair you our love do betray pale ghost of a bride on your penitent knee the wrath of my upraised arm you shall see. It makes you shiver it’s so beautiful. It’s the same for Annie when she says: “You must go out for a while because I want to cry, it’s so beautiful.”
Annie’s lovers often come clad as warriors bold. I liked the dragoon in red trousers with gold braid on his jacket; he was so handsome. He took off his sword. Sometimes it fell on the floor and I could hear it rattle from all the way up on my bunk – and thought of the wrath of his upraised arm. Then he disappeared and Annie got another lover who was a Thinking Man. So she went to listen to Plato and despised Daddy because he read newspapers and Mummy because she read novels.
I explained to Annie that Mummy had no time to read any books other than those she had to draw the jackets for so that she could find out what the book was about and what the heroine looked like. Some people just draw as they like and don’t give a fig for the author. That’s wrong. An illustrator has to think of the author and the reader and sometimes even of the publisher.
“Huh!” said Annie. “It’s a rubbishy old firm that doesn’t publish Plato. Anyway, everything the mistress draws for she gets free and on the last jacket the heroine didn’t have yellow hair although it was yellow in the book.”
“Colour is expensive!” I said and got angry. “Anyhow, she has to pay fifty per cent for some of the books!” It was impossible to explain to Annie that publishers don’t like to print in many colours and that they go on about two-colour printing although they know that one of the colours must be black anyway and that one can draw hair without using yellow and make it look yellow all the same.
“Is that so?” said Annie. “And what has that to do with Plato, if I might ask?”
Then I forgot what it was I had to say. Annie always got things mixed up and was always right in the end.
But sometimes I bullied her. I made her tell me about her childhood until she started to cry and then I just stood in the window, rocking backwards and forwards on my heels and staring down at the yard. Or I stopped asking questions although her face was swollen and she threw the dustpan right across the kitchen. I could bully Annie by being polite to her lovers and asking them questions about things that interested them and just not going away and leaving them alone. And a very good way was to put on a haughty drawling voice and say, “The mistress wants roast veal on Sunday,” and then leave immediately as if Annie and I had nothing else to say to each other.
Annie got her revenge with Plato for a long time. Once she had a lover who was a Man of the People, and then she got her revenge by talking about all the old women who got up at four o’clock in the morning to deliver newspapers while the master lay lounging in bed waiting for the morning paper. I said that no old woman in the world who delivered newspapers worked all night making a plaster cast for a competition, and that Mummy worked till two o’clock every night while Annie lay in bed lounging, and then Annie said, “Don’t mix me up in all this, and anyway the master didn’t get a prize last time!” Then I shouted that it was because the jury had been unfair and she shouted that it was easy to say that and I said that she didn’t understand a thing about it because she wasn’t an artist and she said that it was all very well to get all superior when some people hadn’t even been taught to draw, and so we didn’t speak to each other for several hours.
When we had both had a good cry, I went into the kitchen again and Annie had hung a blanket over the kitchen table. This meant that I was allowed to play houses under the table provided that I didn’t get in her way or block the pantry door. I built my house with logs and chairs and stools. I only did it out of politeness because actually you could build a much better house under the big modelling stand in the studio.
When the house was ready, she gave me some crockery. I took this out of politeness, too. I don’t like pretending to cook. I hate food.
Once there was no bird-cherry in the market for the first of June. Mummy has to have bird-cherry for her birthday; otherwise she will die. That’s what a gypsy told her when she was fifteen years old and since then everyone has always made a terrible fuss about bird-cherry. Sometimes it comes out too early and sometimes too late. If you bring it into the house in the middle of May, it goes brown round the edges and the flowers never really come out.
But Annie said: “I know there is a white bird-cherry in the park. We’ll go and pick some when it gets dark.”
It was terribly late when it got dark, but I was allowed to go with her in any case and we didn’t say a word about what we were going to do. Annie took my hand – her hands are always damp and warm – and as she moved there was a smell about her that was hot and a little frightening. We went down Wharf Road and across to the park and I was scared stiff and thought about the park keeper and the Town Council and God.
“Daddy would never do anything like this,” I said.
“No, he wouldn’t,” Annie said. “The master’s far too bourgeois. You just help yourself to what you want, and that’s all there is to it.”
We had climbed over the fence before I had really grasped the unthinkable thing she had said about Daddy being bourgeois. I was so taken aback that I didn’t have time to be offended.
Annie strode up to the white bush in the middle of the grass and began picking. “You’re doing it wrong!” I hissed. “Do it properly.”
Annie stood upright in the grass with her legs apart and looked at me. She opened her big mouth and laughed so that you could see all her beautiful white teeth and she took me by the hand again and crouched down and we ran under the bushes and began to creep away. We sneaked up to another white bush and Annie was looking over her shoulder the whole time and sometimes she stopped behind a tree. “Is it better this way?” she asked.
I nodded and squeezed her hand. Then she started picking again. She reached up with her enormous arms so that her dress stretched tight all over and she laughed and broke off the boughs and the flowers rained all over her face and I whispered “Stop, stop, that’s enough,” and I was so beside myself with fright and ecstasy that I almost wet my knickers.
“If you’re going to steal you might as well steal properly,” Annie said calmly. Her arms were full of bird-cherry, it lay across her neck and shoulders and she clasped it firmly with her red hands. We climbed back over the fence and went home and there was no sign of a park keeper or a policeman.
Then they told us that the bush we had picked from wasn’t a bird-cherry at all. It was just white. But Mummy was alright, she didn’t die.
Sometimes Annie would get mad and shout: “I can’t stand the sight of you! Get out!” Then I would go down into the yard and sit on the rubbish bin and burn old rolls of film with a magnifying glass.
I love smells. The smell of burning films, the smell of heat and Annie and the box of clay in the studio and Mummy’s hair and the smell of parties and bird-cherry. I haven’t got a smell yet; at least I don’t think so.
Annie smelt differently in the summer – o
f grass – and even warmer. She laughed more often and you could see more of her arms and legs.
Annie could really row. She took a single pull and then rested on the oars in triumph and the boat glided forward over the sound so that there was a splashing round the bows in the still water of evening and then she took another pull and the boat splashed again and Annie showed how strong she was. Then she would laugh loudly and put one oar in the water so that the boat swung round to show that she didn’t want to go in any particular direction but was just amusing herself. In the end she just let the boat drift, and lay in the bottom and sang, and everybody on the shore heard her singing in the sunset and they knew that there she lay, big and happy and warm and not caring a fig for anything. She was doing just what she wanted to do.
Then she would stroll up the slope, her whole body swaying to and fro, and now and then she would pause to pick a flower. Annie used to sing when she was baking, too. She kneaded the dough, rolled it out, patted it, shaped it and threw her buns into the oven so that they landed exactly in the right place on the tray and then she slammed the oven door and cried, “Oh! It’s so hot!”
I love Annie in the summertime and I never bully her then.
Sometimes we went to Diamond Valley. It’s a beach where all the pebbles are round and precious and beautiful colours. They’re prettier under the water, but if you rub them with margarine they’re always pretty. We went there once when Mummy and Daddy were working in town, and when we had gathered enough diamonds we sat and rested on the hill slope. In the early summer and autumn there are always streams coming down the slope. We made waterfalls and dams.
“There’s gold in the stream,” Annie said. “See if you can find it.” I couldn’t see any gold.
“You have to put it there yourself,” said Annie. “Gold looks wonderful in brown water. It multiplies. More and more gold.” So I went home and fetched all the gold things we possessed and the pearls as well, and put them all in the stream and they looked terribly beautiful.