The Summer Book by Tove Jansson Read Free Book Online Page B

Grandmother thought.
    She was right. The very next morning, the cat came in and placed a small dusky yellow bird on the doorstep. Its neck had been deftly broken with one bite, and some bright red drops of blood lay prettily on the shiny coat of feathers. Sophia turned pale and stared fixedly at the murdered bird. She sidled past Moppy, the murderer, with small, forced steps, and then turned and rushed out.
    Later, Grandmother remarked on the curious fact that wild animals, cats for example, cannot understand the difference between a rat and a bird.
    “Then they’re dumb!” said Sophia curtly. “Rats are hideous and birds are nice. I don’t think I’ll talk to Moppy for three days.” And she stopped talking to her cat.
    Every night, the cat went into the woods, and every morning it killed its prey and carried it into the house to be admired, and every morning the bird was thrown into the sea. A little while later, Sophia would appear outside the window and shout, “Can I come in? Have you taken out the body?” She punished Moppy and increased her own pain by means of a terrible coarseness. “Have you cleaned up the blood?” she would yell, or, “How many murdered today?” And morning coffee was no longer what it had been.
    It was a great relief when Moppy finally learned to conceal his crimes. It is one thing to see a pool of blood and quite another thing only to know about it. Moppy probably grew tired of all the screaming and fussing, and perhaps he thought the family ate his birds. One morning when Grandmother was taking her first cigarette on the veranda, she dropped her holder and it rolled through a crack in the floor. She managed to raise one of the planks, and there was Moppy’s handiwork – a row of small bird skeletons, all picked clean. Of course she knew that the cat had continued to hunt, and could not have stopped, but the next time he rubbed against her leg as he passed, she drew away and whispered, “You sly bastard.” The cat dish stood untouched by the steps, and attracted flies.
    “You know what?” Sophia said. “I wish Moppy had never been born. Or else that I’d never been born. That would have been better.”
    “So you’re still not speaking to each other?” Grandmother asked.
    “Not a word,” Sophia said. “I don’t know what to do. And what if I do forgive him – what fun is that when he doesn’t even care?” Grandmother couldn’t think of anything to say.
    Moppy turned wild and rarely came into the house. He was the same colour as the island – a light yellowish grey with striped shadings like granite, or like sunlight on a sand bottom. When he slipped across the meadow by the beach, his progress was like a stroke of wind through the grass. He would watch for hours in the thicket, a motionless silhouette, two pointed ears against the sunset, and then suddenly vanish … and some bird would chirp, just once. He would slink under the creeping pines, soaked by the rain and lean as a streak, and he would wash himself voluptuously when the sun came out. He was an absolutely happy cat, but he didn’t share anything with anyone. On hot days, he would roll on the smooth rock, and sometimes he would eat grass and calmly vomit his own hair the way cats do. And what he did between times no one knew.
    One Saturday, the Övergårds came for coffee. Sophia went down to look at their boat. It was big, full of bags and jerry cans and baskets, and in one of the baskets a cat was meowing. Sophia lifted the lid and the cat licked her hand. It was a big white cat with a broad face. It kept right on purring when she picked it up and carried it ashore.
    “So you found the cat,” said Anna Övergård. “It’s a nice cat, but it’s not a mouser, so we thought we’d give it to some friends.”
    Sophia sat on the bed with the heavy cat on her lap. It never stopped purring. It was soft and warm and submissive.
    They struck a bargain easily, with a bottle of rum to close the deal. Moppy was