I want to tell you of beautiful things

I want to tell you of beautiful things

like how the leaves on the cherry trees hang in the autumn air as if they've been pasted on to the sky

or the way she jumps in puddles with both red gum boots.

The days are colder now that we're nearing winter but in the morning the sun hits the treetops and I think

we'll go to the park today. She goes so high on the climbing frame

I get scared but I don't let her know.

s'like flying

she says on the swings

i can kick the clouds with my red boots.

The well at the end of the world

The river went deeper than Brim's head, and wider than he could swim. Mam had taught him in the shallows when he grew big enough to collect the water by himself. The river mud felt squidgy between his toes, and little dark fish darted away from his thrashing feet as he churned up the silt and gravel at the bottom. 

In the hot months, clouds of insects hung above the brown water. The shallows became a dry bed of river-pebbles with mud in-between and lank green grass. During the cold months, the river was a roaring black streak against the hoar-frost spikes that coated the bank. At all times it stretched out beyond sight on either side of the well-trodden path from the cottage. The river, the dead forest and the endless cliffs - all three were boundaries that marked the edge of the world. 

That morning, the well was dry.  Brim put his whole weight on the pump handle, swinging his feet free from the ground, but not a drop came from the spout, only a horrible sucking gurgle from far below.

'Oh leave off, Brim...' Mam called from the cottage door. 'Take the buckets and run to the river instead.'

 It was hot. The tall grass moved listlessly in the light breeze and his feet thudded on the dusty path. It would be cooler at the river. He could fill the buckets first and go for a swim after. He could swim first and wait for the water to settle before dipping the buckets into the water. There would be fish to guddle for, and maybe a dragonfly. 

The last bit of the path crossed the ghost track. He jumped over the marker and touched the post for luck. Now he was definitely going to catch a fish, he felt sure of it; something was different about today. Just a few more steps and he'd be at the river.

But the river was gone. The hollowed out scoop of the land where the river had been was there, but nothing else. He shaded his eyes and squinted at the emptiness. No, it wasn't all empty. The fish were the same colour as the dried out mud. They looked like the stone fish he had dug up out of the endless cliffs - grey, shrunken, and dead.

He ran all the way back to the cottage, the chains that held the empty buckets jangling fiercely.

***

As Brim clambered into bed that night he could hear the wind batter around the cottage. The outer door creaked on its hinges with the force of the storm, but the shutters on the windows were strong, and the blankets stopped any dust from blowing through the cracks. Really bad storms were rare, maybe two or three a year, but it was best to be prepared. This one had whipped up just after he'd got back from the river. He had seen it coming over the dead forest - a grey cloud that swarmed like insects, growing larger as it neared the endless cliffs.

He was used to the wind. Sometimes he would crawl to the edge of the cliffs and lie on his stomach, stretching his hand over the side to push against the updraught. If he closed his eyes it was like he was flying. Scraps of bark or dead leaves would be tugged from his hands and whisked away into the nothingness. He watched them fall and wondered what was at the bottom.

Every year since he could remember, the winds had been increasing. The cliff was crumbling away, and with each inch that it vanished, the nothingness crept closer to the cottage. The winds that came from the cliffs were strong and cold and clean - they dried the clothes on the line and blew the dust from the roof, and sang Brim to sleep as he lay on the other side of the wall.

The winds that came from the dead forest brought dust that settled on the garden, turning everything grey, and making Mam and Brim cough if they breathed it in. Sometimes the two winds met each other overhead, and then there was nothing to do but sit in the house until it passed.

***

It was quiet when Brim woke. Mam was still sleeping in the bed opposite, the sheet tangled around her legs. He pulled the blanket away from the bottom of the door and slid the bolts back. Sunlight and warmth poured into the dark cottage from outside. He curled his toes back from the pile of dust that fell over the threshold. His boots were right by the door and he shoved his feet inside. As an afterthought he grabbed the broom from the cupboard and carefully swept the chalky dust away from the door, covering his mouth with the sleeve of his pajamas.

After he'd finished sweeping the area around the door he stopped to rest. The dust from the dead forest covered the area around the house, sitting in clumps on top of the tarp draped over the vegetable patch and piled up in little heaps and drifts on the other side of the fence. Everything was very still. When he glanced over at the dead forest he could see the haze spreading out from the trees, tendrils reaching towards the cottage. He shivered, despite the heat.

'Work before breakfast?' Mam joined him, putting an arm around his shoulders and pulling him close for a hug.

He pointed at the dead forest, 'I don't think we've got time for breakfast - look.'

She squinted at the haze, putting up her hand to shield her eyes. 'Nah, it'll be fine. Them old ghosts won't bother us in this sunlight.'

'But...'

She clapped him on the shoulder, ' Come on - there's blueberry pancakes.'

***

After breakfast they both began the regular garden clear-up. All the dust had to be swept up and taken outside of the garden boundary. Normally they would take it as far as the dead forest, but with the ghosts so close they just tipped it in a heap on the other side of the fence.

Brim swept the area around the well. This wasn't strictly in the garden boundary, but it was safest to keep the well clean too - even if it had run dry.

He heard a noise from inside the well, under the heavy wooden boards. The pump came up through the middle of the boards, which meant that the water that wasn't there now never had to be exposed to the dust. The noise came again. It sounded like something knocking on the side of the metal pipe that ran right down to the water level. He looked over to where Mam was adding more dust to the heap, and walked across to the well-cover. It was still securely fastened and the padlock on it was strong.

Bang, bang, bang! BANG.

He jumped back. Even Mam had heard that.

'You OK?'

'There's something in the well!' he shouted back.

'Water -- I hope.'

Mam fetched the key from inside the cottage. When they hauled the boards off the stone base the knocking stopped. They both gazed down the dark hole in silence.

'Some help would be nice.' The voice was old and cross. Brim peered over the side of the well. He could see some sort of hunched-over figure clutching onto the pipe.

***

Brim sat on the bed, hands clasped round his knees.  Mam was fussing over the old lady; draping her in blankets and offering her hot soup.

'Is there anything else I can get you?'

The old lady shook her head, and let her eyes wander all over the inside of the cottage: looking at the faded labels on the seed drawers, the battered pans hung up by the stove, and the trapdoor leading down to the food store. Finally she turned her gaze to Brim. He raised his chin slightly and tried to out stare her. She raised one arm from out of the bundle of blankets and crooked a finger at him. Brim glanced at Mam. She nodded, and he reluctantly unfolded his legs from the bed and slumped over to the stove.

'You have a strong young man for a son. Looks a mite sulky though.'

Mam looked up from stirring the soup, 'We don't...we don't get many visitors. He's just shy.'

'Hmph.' said the visitor, looking Brim up and down as if she could see right through to where his heart thudded in his rib-cage, as if it was a frightened bird trapped under the tarp. 'More like we don't get ANY visitors. Who are you? Mam - why did you let her in? She could be from the forest for all we know.'

Mam shushed Brim and sent him down to the food store to fetch the wheat crackers for sprinkling on the soup.

The old lady chuckled to herself. 'I like this one. He'll do.'

'But don't let it go to your head, mind,' she continued,raising her voice. 'I'm only choosing you because I got no one else.'

Mam shoved a bowl of soup and a spoon into the old lady's lap. 'Boy's got a point. Eat.' She stood between Brim and the visitor, arms folded, still holding the soup ladle. 'I've given you food and shelter, and that's all I've a mind to give you until you explain. What were you doing in our well? And what's all this talk of choosing?'

The old lady nodded her head appreciatively, 'That's good soup. Any more?' She rattled her spoon against the side of the empty bowl.

Brim, helping himself from the pot, curved a protective arm around his soup and shook his head quickly.

Mam brandished the ladle at him, and glared at the visitor. 'Brim, give her your bowl.'

'Aw, but...'

'Don't argue.' She poked the lady with the ladle. 'Talk. Now. Or I open that door, push you out, and let the ghosts get you.'

The visitor cackled again. 'Ghosts! Is that what you call them? Them's not ghosts, dearie me, no. Them's memories.' The spoon clattered in another empty bowl. 'Soup finished? Got anything else?'

***

[tbc]

international translation day

The 30th of September is International Translation Day. It's also the feast day of St Jerome, who translated the Bible and is the patron saint of translators. I thought I would honour this by reading a translated book, which also happens to be one that has been sitting on my TBR pile for quite some time. I've chosen The Summer Book by Tove Jansson, translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal in 1974. The original title was Sommerboken.

Thomas Teal has translated at least four of Jansson's works into English, and has even won awards for doing so (2009, Best Translated Book Award; 2011, Bernard Shaw Prize for translation from the Swedish). So it shouldn't really be surprising that his work is described in the Acknowledgements as a 'flawless translation'. I just thought it was odd that they went out of their way to add the 'flawless', as I've never seen that before. It's usually just a standard 'Translated by ...' or sometimes, 'Translated by ... and ...'

Publishing digressions aside - and without intending to disparage the work of Teal -  can any translation be described as 'flawless'? Surely something is always lost when words are picked apart, analysed and set down again in a foreign tongue. Perhaps you could argue that something is gained too - the perspective of a different culture, or the clarity that comes with hindsight, when a work is translated many years after being written. Whatever comes of this give and take, the words are not the same as those set down by the author. This is why we have Definitive Editions, either where the author can approve the translation as as accurate as possible, or where a panel of subject experts (in the case of classic works of fiction) can agree that the meaning has been  conveyed accurately.

Returning to the book I've chosen, my copy is a modern paperback, published by Sort Of Books in 2003. It's a slim book, not even two hundred pages long. The front cover has a colour photograph of an island, which is the actual island in the book: flat, rocky and covered with pine trees. Prior to the text there is a black and white photograph of the 'real' Sophia and Grandmother - looking at each other, oblivious to (or ignoring) the photographer, absorbed in their own world.

And there you have the main characters of the novel. Others may come and go - the father is always napping, or appears as Sophia is on the edge of sleep to add more wood to the stove. The mother is dead, and this is why Sophia and her father have returned to the island for the summer. This is a book about many things, but to me this is a book about being a child, and about seeing the world the way a child does. It's as if someone has cut a window into the past and through it I can feel the wind from the sea whipping onto my face. And because this is Tove Jansson, each word has an isolated beauty to it - a feeling of realness that makes you feel that, yes, this is how it is.

The rain during the summer nights that dries up in the morning, swimming in icy cold water on a hot day, the way the seaweed looks when it's floating, the ground under pine trees being 'shiny with brown needles'...these are all things that make me think of childhood holidays Up North (always Up North, even when sometimes it really should have been Out West or Away East) with aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents - a sort of organised chaos that is quite different to the world inhabited by Sophia and Grandmother (but not so different from the world of the Moomins).

I can't write about Tove Jansson without mentioning the Moomins, and I don't need to - bits of them are scattered throughout The Summer Book, which is Jansson's first book for adults. There is a bit where Sophia imagines that 'all their luggage floated out in the river of moonlight' that brings to mind The Moomins and The Great Flood (written in 1945 and only translated into English in 2005) or the flood in Moominsummer Madness. Driftwood and bones and bits of ship are found along the shore, just as in Finn Family Moomintroll when the Moomins and friends are shipwrecked on the Island of the Hattifatteners. Grandmother even makes bark boats while sitting on the veranda, just like Moominmamma does.

There is no plot. Nothing much happens, apart from the sort of ordinary things that make up each day. Grandmother loses her false teeth, Sophia is still scared of swimming in deep water, Berenice is scared of everything. There is moss that mustn't be walked upon, the magic forest, and visitors to hide from. Grandmother and Sophia talk about Hell, and Venice sinking, and the Latin names of plants. It's about love, for people and places, and about seeing the beauty in sea-weathered tree roots and blades of grass. It's the story of a summer spent on an island by the sea - a window cut into a different world.

Bibliography: The Summer Book, Tove Jansson; Sort Of Books, 2003
Thomas Teal -  http://www.nybooks.com/books/authors/thomas-teal
International Translation Day -  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Translation_Day

blog link-up, beautiful people, villains

So this is September's BP link-up, and it's question time for a villain. For this one, I have chosen Mirren Jones, also known as Doctor Mirren Scott, who is a villain to half of my main characters. She's not your typical 'villain' - but Dee, Kay, Zed, Abe and Ade would disagree...

1. What is their motive?
Creating a strong society and protecting her family.
2. What do they want, and what are they prepared to do to get it?
She wants her family to be together, happy and healthy. To do this, she is prepared to: kidnap and isolate children, work for an organisation with somewhat dodgy aims and morals, destroy a way of life because she doesn't understand it, and then possibly commit an act of terrorism.
3. How do they deal with conflict?
Not violently. With words and conversation - when that doesn't work, then she sends someone else to deal with it. Probably violently, but she doesn't ask, and doesn't want to know.
4. Describe their current place of residence.
It's a two-level house in Residential Sector 3 of Garden City. Bedrooms upstairs, kitchen and washroom on the ground floor. The kitchen is large, and has a stove that heats the house and the water, as well as being used for cooking. At the back of the house there is a plot of land used for growing food, and the front door leads out onto the bridge over the canal.
5. If they were writing this story, how would it end?
She'd be living in Garden City with her husband and two children, continuing her work at the hospital, and would be able to keep her collection of Outsider objects on display. Her husband would be able to keep working on the new train line, and Garden City would become an Exchange rather than a Terminus.
6. What habits, speech patterns, etc. are unique to them?
She's very precise, and quite self-effacing, in a way. She'll gesture with her graphite stylus while she's working, or use it to scratch an itch, which leaves marks that her husband Ander will wipe away with his thumb.
7. How do they show love? What do they like to do with/for people they love?
She kisses her daughters on the top of the head in the morning before they go off to school. She likes to give people little bundles of flowers that she's grown around the outside of her vegetable patch. Even though she doesn't like cooking, she discovered Ander's favourite food and will cook it for him sometimes (it's a spicy tomato soup with pickles and sour cream).
8. Do they have any pets?
No. No one in the Cities has pets. Here is Mirren when faced with a dog: "The dog is with him too – a large bitch with a brindle coat and ears that come to a point. Before coming Outside I’d only ever seen a dog in the testing facility, and before that, only in books. I suppose out here they are useful for hunting and guarding. Garm seems to have the animal well-trained, but it still makes me nervous."
9. Where would they go to relax/think?
Her garden. Mirren loves gardening - she has to grow most of the vegetables that they eat, but she also grows flowers just because she loves them. For appearances sake they are 'useful' flowers too - such as dill flowers, lavender, or marigolds.
10. What is their weapon of choice? 
She doesn't use violence as a rule, but she threw a chair at someone once. Also, I reckon she'd be pretty comfortable with swinging a garden spade if she felt threatened.

[North 7] the princess discovers the market

The square was filled with tables, laid out in straggly rows, and loaded with all manner of things, from bowls stacked three apiece to sacks full to brimming with smooth shelled nuts. Where there wasn't a table, stuff was simply spread on the ground instead, filling every available space that wasn't needed for the passage of people. Irena wandered in and out of the tables, unnoticed. She saw fragrant-scented, pale yellow apples laid out in trays, fluttering song birds caught in thin woven baskets, and bite-sized, fragile looking fruits the colour of a bruise. She remembered they tasted grainy, but sweet, and picked one up as she walked past. Juice ran down her chin as she bit into it, and she wiped it away with the heel of her hand.

[North fragment] sleeping

Asa was snoring in the bottom bunk. Berit burrowed her head under the blanket. It was scratchy, but warm.

'Ugh, Ber....stop hogging the cover...' her elder sister Frith pulled the top blanket away and wrapped herself up in it.

Shivering, Berit aimed a kick at her sister. A howl came from the other end of the bed and someone tugged hard on Berit's foot. Inge's face hovered above Berit.

'What did you do that for!' 

Berit made a face and pushed her back to the end of the bed. Below, Asa continued to snore. Inge bounced up and down on Berit's legs. 'I wasn't doing anything and you kicked me for nothing and then you pushed me...'

Sighing, Berit felt for the edge of the bed. Her hand batted at the smooth wood and then fell away into space. Pulling her legs out of the reach of Inge, she slowly lowered herself over the side, feeling with her bare feet for the wooden floorboards. 

Inge stopped bouncing, ' Where are you going?'

'To get some peace.'

Curling her toes against the cold, she pulled away the rough sacking that covered the lower bunk. Asa lay on his back, mouth open, and Erdan was bunched up at the other end of the bed, fast asleep, his dark hair falling over his eyes. Berit reached out and pinched the fleshy part of Asa's nose between her finger and thumb.

'One, two, three....' she counted under her breath. On the fourth count, Asa's eyes opened and he let out a gasp of air. Berit smiled and drew her hand away. His eyes flickered shut again, and his breathing became clearer. 

'Oh thank the ancestors for that...' Frith drawled from the darkness, as Berit swung herself back up onto the bed. She took the under blanket as a peace offering from Frith, and Inge burrowed into a nest of her own making at the other end of the bed.

[North 6] the princess explores the gardens

'Just stay still...' She wasn't sure herself quite why she wanted the bird, only that it was something alive, and undemanding. Underneath the soft feathers it felt tough and wiry, but also fragile - as though if she held too tightly it would break. She loosened her grip, and the chicken, sensing weakness, tried to flap away. She curved her arm around it, feeling the brush of feathers against her wrist, and the comforting warmth from its body through her coat.