Free The Summer Book by Tove Jansson Page A

knocked very gently, because every sound had become too large.
    “How’s it going?” Grandmother asked.
    “Good,” Sophia said. She sat on the foot of the bed and looked at the lamp and the nets and the raincoats hanging on the wall, and her teeth stopped chattering and she said, “There’s no wind at all.”
    “No,” said Grandmother. “It’s quite calm.”
    Grandmother had two blankets. If you put one of them down on the rug and got a cushion, it would make a bed. It wouldn’t be like going back to the cottage – it was almost like outdoors. No, it was indoors, it really was. But even if she wasn’t out in the tent all alone, nevertheless, she had been. She had slept outdoors.
    “So many birds tonight,” Grandmother said.
    There was another possibility: she could take a blanket and sleep on the veranda right next to the house. That would be outdoors and all alone. Oh, dear God!
    “I couldn’t sleep,” Grandmother said, “and I got to thinking about sad things.” She sat up in bed and reached for her cigarettes. Sophia handed her the matches automatically, but she was thinking about other things.
    “You’ve got two blankets, haven’t you?” Sophia said.
    “I mean it all seems to shrink up and glide away,” Grandmother said. “And things that were a lot of fun don’t mean anything any more. It makes me feel cheated, like what was the point? At least you ought to be able to talk about it.”
    Sophia was getting cold again. They had let her sleep in a tent, even though she was too little to sleep in a tent. None of them knew what it was like, and they had just let her sleep in the ravine all by herself. “Oh is that so?” she said angrily. “What do you mean it’s no fun?”
    “Oh for heaven’s sake,” Grandmother said. “All I said was that when you’re as old as I am, there are a lot of things you can’t do any more …”
    “That’s not true! You do everything. You do the same things I do!”
    “Wait a minute!” Grandmother said. She was very upset. “I’m not through! I know I do everything. I’ve been doing everything for an awfully long time, and I’ve seen and lived as hard as I could, and it’s been unbelievable, I tell you, unbelievable. But now I have the feeling everything’s gliding away from me, and I don’t remember, and I don’t care, and yet now is right when I need it!”
    “What don’t you remember?” asked Sophia anxiously.
    “What it was like to sleep in a tent!” her grandmother shouted. She stubbed out her cigarette and lay down and stared at the ceiling. “In my country, in Sweden, girls had never been allowed to sleep in tents before,” she said slowly. “I was the one who made it so they could, and it wasn’t easy. We had a wonderful time, and now I can’t even tell you what it was like.”
    The birds started screaming again – a big flock of them flew by, screaming steadily. The lamplight on the window made it look much darker outside than it really was.
    “Well, I’ll tell you what it’s like,” Sophia said. “You can hear everything much clearer, and the tent is very small.” She thought for a moment and then went on. “It makes you feel very safe. And it’s nice that you can hear everything.”
    “Yes,” Grandmother said. “You can hear everything outside.”
    Sophia realised she was hungry and pulled the food box out from under the bed. They ate hard bread and sugar and cheese.
    “I’m getting sleepy,” Sophia said, “so I think I’ll go back now.”
    “Do,” Grandmother said. She turned out the lamp, and after the initial darkness the room became lighter again and she could see everything distinctly. Sophia went out and closed the door. When she had gone, Grandmother rolled up in her blanket and tried to remember what it had been like. She could remember better now, much better, in fact. New images came back to her, more and more of them. It was cold in the first light, but she fell sound asleep in her own warmth.

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