Tove Jansson: The True Deceiver

Anna Aemelin is an artist and somewhat of a recluse. She paints pictures of the forest ground, in minute details then sends them to the publisher, who adds the text. The books are published once every two years. Anna is rich. She lives in what the villages calls 'rabbit house.' And she sketches rabbits, scattered with flowers, on the otherwise realistic pictures. But she does not do that by choice, but because the publisher requests it. How else will he be able to sell the books as children's books? She receives letters from these children, her avid readers, and replies to them diligently and compassionately. Up until Katri, Mats and their nameless dog come into her life.

Katri is not a local, nor, of course, is her brother. But what's striking about Katri are her yellow eyes, their yellow disconcerting in a village where everyone has blue eyes, and where its citizens wonder “what sin [they have] committed that things can't be normal.” But Katri does numbers. She is brilliant with numbers. She calculates. She analyzes. You go to her with your financial affairs and she advises you on how to manage these finances. Her advice is always to the point. Accurate and always proven fruitful. Taxes. Severance pays. Retirement plans. Employment issues. Katri takes care of it all. Flawlessly. “A remarkable woman,” according to Anna, because not only does she have a head for maths, but she reads literature.

Katri's brother, on the other hand, like Anna, only reads adventure books. And through these adventure books he develops a taste for designing boats, as most of the adventures he reads happen at sea. His designs are brilliant and made with precision. In that, he seems to be the connection between Katri and Anna. He sketches creatively, like Anna, but is very methodical, like Katri.

Through calculated, deliberate and cunning planning, Katri manages to secure herself a place in Anna's house, along with her brother. It is around that time that the village children start chanting 'witch, witch, witch' whenever she passes. And in their life there, she also manages to save money to get her brother's boat sketches turned into an actual boat, her way of making her brother happy. But to do this, she convinces Anna that she has been cheated by the shopkeeper, the publisher, even the children whose letters she answers, and in this Anna begins to change from the trusting gentle artist to one who mistrusts everything, much like Katri does, and eventually struggles in her inability to paint or write her letters to the children. But in this money saved for Anna through managing her finances, Katri also secures a small fund herself, towards Mat's boat. Because she believes that “without money, a person's thinking does narrow. It shrivels.”

In her introduction, Ali Smith writes that it is a book “concerned with locality, money, winter, wildness, social unacceptability and power,” but also about “whether there's such a thing as objectivity.” Katri's methodical objectivity becomes the backbone of the novel. But Katri is also the true deceiver in the book, even though her deception rests on utter truths and completely well-calculated arithmetics. Katri's calculations are based on her own assumption, often proven accurate, that “every household was naturally hostile towards its neighbours.” And trusting nothing but her own accurate calculations, Katri manages to get Anna to trust her. In a cunning exchange about how to treat her dog. Katri tells Anna that obedience means “believing in a person and following orders that are consistent.” She insists: “It's a relief, it means freedom from responsibility. It's a simplification. You know what you have to do. It's safe and reassuring to believe in just one thing.” And although Anna blatantly rejects Katri's doctrine, we see gradually her observing it in her own life affairs.

But the true deceiver is also Anna, who paints the forest floor in exact measures, then adds unrealistic rabbits and flowers to please her readers. The novel poses the question of this line between what is true and what is right, a line that begins to blur when Katri and Anna's characters begin to evolve. What Anna sees in the beginning as social niceties and acts of kindness, Katri sees as deception. What Katri sees as truth and absolute decisions, Katri sees as cruelty. And in the merging of these two absolute worlds, the novel weaves itself in beautiful and simple language that is set against the dark unrelenting Scandinavian winter.

This is a beautiful book, very endearing in its presentation of plot and characters, very straightforward in the line it draws between truth and justice, but one that leaves the reader no solutions. Anna's world eventually falls back into its pattern, but we know Anna is not the same person. Katri also eventually displays characteristics that are not typically hers. The characters change to a noticeable degree. But we are not sure what the book is saying about these changes. I don't like books that preach. Do you? And this one doesn't. It just tells a very beautiful story set in a very cold and treacherous weather.