The Summer Book (16 page)
Authors: Tove Jansson
Tags: #Fiction, #Family Life, #Literary, #Biographical
She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and waited for a moment. She took the four careful steps to the door and opened the latch. The night was black, but no longer so warm; there was a fine, sharp chill. She went down the stairs very slowly, turned away from the house, and let go of the railing. It wasn’t as hard as she’d expected. As she crouched in the woodyard, she knew exactly where she was, and where the house and the sea and the woods were. From far off in the channel came the thump of a boat sailing past, but she couldn’t see the channel lights.
Grandmother sat down on the chopping stump to wait for her balance. It came quickly, but she stayed where she was. The coastal freighter was headed east to Kotka. The sound of its diesel motors gradually died, and the night was as quiet as before. It smelled of autumn. A new boat approached, a small boat, probably running on petrol. It might be a herring boat with an automobile engine – but not this late at night. They always went out right after sunset. In any case, it wasn’t in the channel but heading straight out to sea. Its slow thumping passed the island and continued out, farther and farther away, but never stopping.
“Isn’t that funny,” Grandmother said. “It’s only my heart, it’s not a herring boat at all.” For a long time she wondered if she should go back to bed or stay where she was. She thought that she would stay for a while.
Other Tove Janssson titles
published as eBooks by Sort Of Books
A Winter Book
The True Deceiver
Fair Play
Travelling Light
Copyright
The Summer Book. Copyright © 1972 by Tove Jansson. First published in Swedish as
Sommerboken
.
English translation by Thomas Teal © 1974 by Random House, Inc.
Foreword © Esther Freud 2003.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher except for the quotation of brief passages in reviews.
Published in 2003 and in eBook 2012 by
Sort Of Books, PO Box 18678, London NW3 2FL.
Typeset in Goudy and GillSans to a design by Henry Iles.
176pp
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Print ISBN 9780954221713
ePub ISBN 9781908745194
Table of Contents