When we were seventeen or sixteen
and sat in the tennis courts
under the Magnolia Campbellii
-- one of the largest flowering trees in the world --
we had lost our senses and we talked our heads off.

Two were to be doctors!
Two students of literature!
One was about to die
and so could not make plans
to heal the world.

Except for her
I forgot the whole lot of you
and of what we spoke
in those hours between
Study Hall and Benediction.

And the good nuns --
if they only knew what
I remember
in the nights of this runaway exile -

the sweet, rich scent,
the cream and white of the magnolia blossom
eight inches across
and blooming strong
way above my head --

they would cut that tree down.

THE FIR TREE
by
Tove Jansson

One of the Hemulens was standing on the roof, scratching at the snow. He had yellow woolen mittens that after a while became wet and disagreeable. He laid them on the chimney top, sighed, and scratched away again. At last he found the hatch in the roof.

“That’s it,” the Hemulen said. “And down there they’re lying fast asleep. Sleeping and sleeping and sleeping. While other people work themselves silly just because Christmas is coming.”

He was standing on the hatch, and as he couldn’t remember whether it opened inwards or outwards, he stamped on it, cautiously. It opened inwards at once, and the Hemulen went tumbling down among snow and darkness and all the things the Moomin family had stowed away in the attic for later use.

The Hemulen was now very annoyed and furthermore not quite sure of where he had left his yellow mittens. They were his favorite pair.

So he stumped down the stairs, threw the door open with a bang, and shouted in a cross voice: “Christmas is coming! I’m tired of you and your sleeping, and now Christmas will be here almost any day!”

The Moomin family was hibernating in the drawing-room as they were wont to do. They had been sleeping for a few months already and were going to keep it up until spring. A sweet sleep had rocked them through what felt like a single long summer afternoon. Now all at once a cold draught disturbed Moomintroll’s dreams. And someone was pulling at his quilt and shouting that he was tired and Christmas was coming.

“Is it spring already?” Moomintroll mumbled.

“Spring?” the Hemulen said nervously. “I’m talking about Christmas, don’t you know, Christmas. And I’ve made absolutely no arrangements yet myself and here they send me off to dig you out. I believe I’ve lost my mittens. Everybody’s running about like mad and nothing’s ready…”

The Hemulen clumped upstairs again and went out through the hatch.

“Mama, wake up,” Moomintroll said anxiously. “Something’s on. They call it Christmas.”

“What d’you mean?” his mother said and thrust her nose out from under her quilt.

“I don’t really know,” her son replied. “But nothing seems to be ready, and something’s got lost, and everyone’s running about like mad. Perhaps there’s a flood again.”

He cautiously shook the Snork Maiden by the shoulder and whispered: “Don’t be afraid, but something terrible’s happening.”

“Eh,” Moominpappa said. “Easy now.”

He rose and wound the clock, which had stopped somewhere in October.

Then they followed the Hemulen’s wet trail upstairs and climbed out on to the roof of Moominhouse.

The sky was blue as usual, so this time it couldn’t be the volcano. But all the valley was filled with wet cotton, the mountains and the trees and the river and the roof. And the weather was cold, much colder than in April.

“Is this the egg whites?” Moominpappa asked wonderingly. He scooped up some of the cotton in his paw and peered at it. “I wonder if it’s grown out of the ground,” he said. “Or fallen down from the sky. If it came down all at the same time, that must have been most unpleasant.”

“But, Pappa, it’s snow,” Moomintroll said. “I know it is, and it doesn’t fall all at the same time.”

“No?” Moominpappa said. “Unpleasant all the same.”

The Hemulen’s aunt passed by the house with a fir tree on her sleigh.

“So you’re awake at last,” she observed casually. “Better get yourself a fir before dark.”

“But why…” Moominpappa started to reply.

“I haven’t time now,” the Hemulen’s aunt called back over her shoulder and quickly disappeared.

“Before dark, she said,” the Snork Maiden whispered. The danger comes by dark, then.”

“And you need a fir tree for protection,” Moominpappa mused. “I don’t understand it.”

“Nor I,” Moominmamma said dismissively. “Put some woolen socks and scarves on when you go for the fir. I’ll make a good fire in the stove.”

Even if disaster was coming, Moominpappa decided not to take one of his own firs, because he was particular about them. Instead he and Moomintroll climbed over Gaffsie’s fence and chose a big fir she couldn’t very well have any use for.

“Is the idea to hide oneself in it?” Moomintroll wondered.

“I don’t know,” Moominpappa said and swung his axe. “I don’t understand a thing.”

They were almost by the river on their way back when Gaffsie came running towards them with a lot of parcels and paper bags in her arms.

She was red in the face and highly excited, so she did not recognize her fir tree, glory be.

“What a to-do, what a fuss it all is!” Gaffsie cried. “Badly brought-up hedgehogs should never be allowed to…And as I’ve told Misabel, it’s a shame…”

“The fir,” Moominpappa said, desperately clinging to Gaffsie’s fur collar. “What does one do with one’s fir?”

“Fir,” Gaffsie repeated confusedly. “Fir? Oh, what a bother! Oh, how horrid…I haven’t dressed mine yet…How on earth can I find the time…”

She dropped several parcels in the snow, her cap slipped askew, and she was near to tears from pure nervousness.

Moominpappa shook his head and took hold of the fir again.

At home Moominmamma had dug out the verandah with a shovel and laid out life-belts, aspirin, Moominpappa’s old gun, and some warm compresses. One had to be prepared.

A small woody was sitting on the outermost edge of the sofa, with a cup of tea in its paws. It had been sitting in the snow below the verandah, looking so miserable that Moominmamma had invited it in.

“Well, here’s the fir,” Moominpappa said. “If we only knew how to use it. Gaffsie said it had to be dressed.”

“We haven’t anything large enough,” Moominmamma said worriedly. “Whatever did she mean?”

“What a beautiful fir,” the small woody cried and swallowed some tea the wrong way from pure shyness, regretting already that it had dared to speak.

“Do you know how to dress a fir tree?” the Snork Maiden asked.

The woody reddened violently and whispered: “In beautiful things. As beautifully as you can. So I’ve heard.” Then, overwhelmed by its shyness, it clapped its paws to its face, upset the teacup, and disappeared through the verandah door.

“Now keep quiet a moment, please, and let me think,” Moominpappa said. “If the fir tree is to be dressed as beautifully as possible, then it can’t be for the purpose of hiding in it. The idea must be to placate the danger in some way. I’m beginning to understand.”

They carried the fir out in the garden and planted it firmly in the snow. Then they started to decorate it all over with the most beautiful things they could think up.

They adorned it with the big shells from the summertime flowerbeds, and with the Snork Maiden’s shell necklace. They took the prisms from the drawing-room chandelier and hung them from the branches, and at the very top they pinned a red silk rose that Moominpappa had once upon a time given to Moominmamma as a present.

Everybody brought the most beautiful thing he had to placate the incomprehensible powers of winter.

When the fir tree was dressed, the Hemulen’s aunt passed by again with her sleigh. She was steering the other way now, and her hurry was still greater.

“Look at our fir tree,” Moomintroll called to her.

“Dear me,” said the Hemulen’s aunt. “But then you’ve always been a bit unlike other people. Now I must…I haven’t the least bit of food ready for Christmas yet.”

“Food for Christmas,” Moomintroll repeated. “Does he eat?”

The aunt never listened to him. “You don’t get away with less than a dinner at the very least,” she said nervously and went whizzing down the slope.

Moominmamma worked all afternoon. A little before dark she had the food cooked for Christmas, and served it in small bowls around the fir tree. There was juice and yoghurt and blueberry pie and eggnog and other things the Moomin family liked.

“Do you think Christmas is very hungry?” Moominmamma wondered, a little anxiously.

“No worse than I, very likely,” Moominpappa said longingly. He was sitting in the snow with his quilt around his ears, feeling a cold coming on. But small creatures always have to be very, very polite to the great powers of nature.

Down in the valley all the windows were lighting up. Candles were lit under the trees and in every nest among the branches, and flickering candle flames went hurrying through the snowdrifts. Moomintroll gave his father a questioning look.

“Yes,” Moominpappa said and nodded. “Prepare for all eventualities.” And Moomintroll went into the house and collected all the candles he could find.

He planted them in the snow around the fir tree and cautiously lighted them, one after one, until all were burning in a little circle to placate the darkness and Christmas. After a while everything seemed to quiet down in the valley: probably everyone had gone home to await what was coming. One single lonely shadow was wandering among the trees. It was the Hemulen.

“Hello,” Moomintroll called softly. “Is he coming?”

“Don’t disturb me,” the Hemulen replied sullenly, looking through a long list in which nearly every line seemed to be crossed out.

He sat down by one of the candles and started to count on his fingers. “Mother, Father, Gaffsie,” he mumbled. “The cousins…the eldest hedgehog…I can leave out the small ones. And Sniff gave me nothing last year. Then Misabel and Whomper, and Auntie, of course…This drives me mad.”

“What is it?” the Snork Maiden asked anxiously. “Has anything happened to them?”

“Presents,” the Hemulen exclaimed. “More and more presents every time Christmas comes around!”

He scribbled a shaky cross on his list and ambled off.

“Wait!” Moomintroll shouted. “Please explain…And your mittens….”

But the Hemulen disappeared in the dark, like all the others that had been in a hurry, and beside themselves over the coming of Christmas.

So the Moomin family quickly went in to look for some presents. Moominpappa chose his best trolling-spoon, which had a very beautiful box. He wrote “For Christmas” on the box and laid it out in the snow. The Snork Maiden took off her ankle ring and sighed a little as she rolled it up in silk paper.

Moominmamma opened her secret drawer and took out her book of paintings, the one and only coloured book in all the valley.

Moomintroll’s present was so lavish and private that he showed it to no one. Not even afterwards, in the spring, did he tell anyone what he had given away.

Then they all sat down in the snow again and waited for the frightening guest.

Time passed, and nothing happened.

Only the small woody who had upset the cup of tea appeared from behind the woodshed. It had brought all its relations and the friends of these relations. Everyone was small and grey and miserable and frozen.

“Merry Christmas,” the woody whispered shyly.

“You’re the first to say some such thing,” Moominpappa said. “Aren’t you at all afraid of what’s going to happen when Christmas comes?”

“This is it,” the woody mumbled and sat down in the snow with its relations. “May we look? You’ve got such a wonderful fir tree.”

“And all the food,” one of the relations said dreamingly.

“And real presents,” said another.

“I’ve dreamed all my life of seeing this at close quarters,” the woody said with a sigh.

There was a pause. The candles burned steadily in the quiet night. The woody and its relations were sitting quite still. One could feel their admiration and longing, stronger and stronger, and finally Moominmamma edged a little closer to Moominpappa and whispered: “Don’t you think so, too?”

“Why, yes, but if…” Moominpappa objected.

“No matter,” Moomintroll said. “If Christmas gets angry we can close the doors and perhaps we’ll be safe inside.”

Then he turned to the woody and said: “You can have it all.”

The woody didn’t believe its ears at first. It stepped cautiously nearer to the fir tree, followed by all the relations and friends with devoutly quivering whiskers.

They had never had a Christmas of their own before.

“I think we’d better be off now,” Moominpappa said apprehensively.

They padded back to the verandah, locked the door, and hid under the table.

Nothing happened.

After a while they looked anxiously out of the window.

All the small creatures were sitting around the fir tree, eating and drinking and opening parcels and having more fun than ever. Finally they climbed the fir and made fast the burning candles on the branches.

“Only there ought to be a star at the top,” the woody’s uncle said.

“Do you think so?” the woody replied, looking thoughtfully at Moominmamma’s red silk rose. “What difference does it make once the idea’s right?”

“The rose should have been a star,” Moominmamma whispered to the others. “But how on earth…?”

They looked at the sky, black and distant but unbelievably full of stars, a thousand times more than in summer. And the biggest one was hanging exactly above the top of their fir tree.

“I’m sleepy,” Moominmamma said. “I’m really too tired to wonder about the meaning of all this. But it seems to have come off all right.”

“At least I’m not afraid of Christmas any more,” Moomintroll said. “I believe the Hemulen and his aunt and Gaffsie must have misunderstood the whole thing.”

They laid the Hemulen’s yellow mittens on the verandah rail where he’d be sure to catch sight of them, and then they went back to the drawing room to sleep some more, waiting for the spring.