Fair Play by Tove Jansson Page A

huge sums of money! But he never did that. He let me go with him to search the beaches, young as I was. I’ll never forget it. We hid the canisters in seaweed. He was adventurous.”
    â€œWrong,” said Jonna. “He was an adventurer. There’s a big difference.”
    â€You mean your father?”
    â€œOf course, that’s who I’m talking about. You know what I mean. He dug for gold, cut down enormous redwoods, built railways ... You saw the gold watch he got in Nome when he was guarding fish, the one with the inscription?”
    â€œYes,” Mari said. “A genuine Hamilton.”
    â€œPrecisely. A genuine Hamilton.”
    It had now started to rain, and that wasn’t good. A heavy rain could weigh down Viktoria and hamper her movements in the heavy seas. Mari tried to be funny. “And then it started to rain and everyone went home.” But Jonna didn’t laugh. After a while Mari asked, “Didn’t he ever get homesick?”
    â€œYes. But when he came home he wanted to be off again.”
    â€œMine, too,” Mari said.
    The rain got worse and worse—a real downpour.
    Mari chattered on. “You know what he did when he got his government prize? He bought a paletot, you know—an overcoat. It was long and black and new, and he didn’t like it. He said it made him feel like one of his own statues, so he went to Hesperia Park and hung it on a tree.”
    They listened to the rain.
    â€œShe’ll get too heavy,” Mari said. “And we can’t get out to her to bail.”
    Jonna said, “Don’t tell me things I already know.”
    They both knew well enough. The rain would go on, the boat would grow heavy, the waves would come in over the stern, she’d sink in her lines. But how deep would she sink, and would the rocks on the bottom knock her to pieces, or was it calm down there despite the storm, and how deep was it, how many meters ...?
    â€œDid you admire him?” Jonna asked.
    â€œNaturally. But being a father wasn’t easy for him.”
    â€œNot for mine, either,” Jonna said. “It’s funny. You actually know very little. We never asked, never tried to find out about the things that were really important. We didn’t have time. What was it we were so busy with?”
    Mari said, “Work probably. And falling in love—that takes an awful lot of time. But we still could have asked.”
    â€œLet’s go to bed,” Jonna said. “She’ll probably make it. And anyway, it’s too late to do anything about it.”
    The wind died toward morning. Freshly bathed and shiny, Viktoria lay at anchor as if nothing whatever had happened.

STARS
    J ONNA had a matter-of-fact relationship with Mari’s brother Tom. They rarely saw each other in town, more often on the island, and then their discussions were practical. Tom would motor over to talk about lumber, special tools, maybe a generator that didn’t want to work. It was barely three miles between their islands. Generally they got their machines running again, which gave Mari a secure feeling that most things here in life can be made to work.
    She would stand for a long time and stare down his arrowstraight wake every time he drove back home. In June, Tom’s island lay right in the sunset. Later the sun went down behind islands further south.
    Once upon a time—astonishing but true—Tom and Mari had planned to emigrate to Tonga in the Pacific Ocean. They displayed neither disappointment nor relief when Her Majesty’s Service replied very politely that as a result of the recent typhoons they could not at the moment give any attention to immigration. Tom and Mari searched out a more northerly island and built a cottage and spent their summers there for many years. Tom wanted a skylight so he could look at the stars before he went to sleep, but the window leaked when it rained. Then they bought a telescope from