Notes from an Island by Tove Jansson & Tuulikki Pietilä

Author:Tove Jansson & Tuulikki Pietilä [Jansson, Tove & Pietilä, Tuulikki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Timber Press
Published: 2024-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

6

Summer after summer, I marvel at Tooti’s rapport with machines. She genuinely loves them, and so she knows what they can do and what you can’t subject them to.

Many years ago, I had a 1½ horsepower Archimedes. It was a present from my family, so I couldn’t very well tell them that I really preferred rowing.

The first spring on Haru, Brunström brought us a surprise – a Penta 3½ HP that he’d come across in Hattula. But Tooti never really liked the Penta because she hadn’t found it herself.

After the Penta, we had a Johnson 5 HP and an Evinrude 7½, all of them with starter ropes. And then, at a happy moment, Tooti found the Yamaha.

The Yamaha is beautiful, and she starts electrically. She obeys Tooti without hesitation and in any weather. Tooti turns the key and the Yamaha starts to purr, Victoria digs in, 9½ horsepower, and they round the point together in a bold arc and dash out across the water!

But maybe the Honda was our most personal machine. She was a bright red generator of the smaller kind, brand new and, as they told us, equipped with the latest improvements – but almost impossible to start. We used to pick a day and devote it entirely to the Honda, nothing else would matter, nothing except getting her running. It took hours. I’d throw my arms around the Honda and hold her tight and brace myself with all my strength, because with every attempt she’d shake and jump and try to throw herself on the ground, and Tooti would pull the starting rope over and over and over again till her arm was almost broken, and now and then we’d jump in the lagoon and swim across and back and then begin again. And so it went, until – triumph! The Honda started.

She’d make an ear-splitting racket while she filled the whole house with electricity. The walls shook and all the birds rose into the air. Down in the cellar, the mine lamp came on in its metal grating, and now Tooti’s Black & Decker was totally on alert and ready to make everything possible – boring, sawing, polishing, engraving, just about anything you can imagine.

It was an exhilarating time.

The Honda could handle anything, until a neighbour borrowed her to run a cement mixer.

Another faithful machine was our refrigerator, which we bought for the cat’s sake. It was specially made for house trailers and was therefore called Safari. It ran on propane. Every autumn, we had to turn the Safari upside down and in the spring turn it right side up again and shake it. Then came the hard part. One of us would lie on her stomach in front of the fridge with a raincoat over her head and press on a certain inaccessible button, and the other would get in behind the stove, over the hose that runs through the wall to the propane tank, and try to find the hole and light it with a Christmas-tree candle.

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