Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson

Author:Tove Jansson [Unknown]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Biographies
ISBN: 9780510044114
Publisher: Hacklet
Published: 2011-12-30T08:00:00+00:00

Jeremiah

ONE YEAR TOWARDS AUTUMN A GEOLOGIST WAS living in the pilots’ hut. He couldn’t speak either Finnish or Swedish, he just smiled and flashed his black eyes. He would look at people and immediately make them feel how surprised and happy he was to meet them at last and then he just walked on with his hammer and hammered a rock here and there. His name was Jeremiah.

He borrowed a boat to row out to the islands and Old Charlie stood and sniggered at Jeremiah because he rowed so miserably. One felt embarrassed for Jeremiah when he took to the water and Daddy wondered what the pilots thought when they saw him rowing.

Jeremiah and I were together every day. We walked round the bays and I was allowed to carry his little box while he hammered away at the rocks. Sometimes I was allowed to stand guard over the boat.

It was very sensible of me to look after Jeremiah. He couldn’t even tie a proper half-hitch—when he tried to it looked more like some kind of bow. Sometimes he even forgot to tie the boat up. But it was because he didn’t care about anything else in the world except stones. They didn’t have to be pretty and round or odd in any way. He had ideas of his own about stones and they were quite different from anybody else’s.

I never got in his way and I only showed him my collection of stones once. Then he put on such a great show of admiring them that I was embarrassed. He overdid things in the wrong way. But later on he learned better.

We walked along the beach, him in front and me behind. When he stopped, I stopped and stood still and watched while he hammered away, but I never came too close. He hadn’t often got time for me. But sometimes when he turned round and caught sight of me he pretended to be terribly surprised. He bent forward and screwed up his eyes and tried to look at me through his magnifying glass, then shook his head as though it was impossible that anyone could be as tiny as I was. Then he saw me anyway and stepped backwards in surprise and pretended that he was holding something very very small in his hands and we both started to laugh.

Sometimes he would draw both of us in the sand, one very tall and one very small, and once I was allowed to borrow his jersey when the wind got up. But otherwise he mostly hammered away at the rocks and forgot all about me. I didn’t mind. I always walked behind him and in the morning I waited outside the pilots’ hut until he woke up.

We played a game. I put a present on his doorstep and then hid myself and when he came out he found the present and was delighted. He puzzled over it and scratched his head and threw his arms in the air and then began to look for me.

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