Behind the Russian Church there is an abyss.
The moss and the rubbish are slippery and jagged old tins glitter at the bottom. For hundreds of years they have piled up higher and higher against a long dark-red house without windows. The red house crawls round the rock and it is very significant that it has no windows. Behind the house is the harbour, a silent harbour with no boats in it. The little wooden door in the rock below the church is always locked.
Hold your breath when you run past it, I told Poyu. Otherwise Putrefaction will come out and catch you. Poyu always has a cold. He can play the piano and holds his hands in front of him as if he were afraid of being attacked or was apologizing to someone. I always scare him and he follows me because he wants to be scared.
- Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
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I made my golden calf in the arbour because it was a pagan place and a circle is always a good setting for sculpture.
It was very difficult to get the legs to stay upright but in the end they did and I nailed them to the socle just to make sure. Sometimes I stood still, listening for the first rumble of the wrath of God. But so far he had said nothing. His great eye just looked right down into the arbour through the hole between the tops of the spruce trees. At last I had got him to show some interest.
- Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
#dailydrawing #tovejansson
