by Felix Salten
“But,” Bambi had once objected, “we two are always together now.”
“Not for very much longer,” the old stag had answered quickly. That was a few weeks ago. Now it occurred to Bambi again, and he suddenly remembered how even the old stag’s very first words to him had been about singleness. That day when Bambi was still a child calling for his mother, the old stag had come to him and asked him, “Can’t you stay by yourself?”
Bambi wandered on.
Chapter Twenty-Three
THE FOREST WAS AGAIN UNDER snow, lying silent beneath its deep white mantle. Only the crows’ calls could be heard. Now and then came a magpie’s noisy chattering. The soft twittering of the titmice sounded timidly. Then the frost hardened and everything grew still. The air began to hum with the cold.
One morning a dog’s baying broke the silence.
It was a continuous hurrying bay that pressed on quickly through the woods, eager and clear and harrying with loud yelps.
Bambi raised his head in the hollow under the fallen tree and looked at the old stag who was lying beside him.
“That’s nothing,” said the old stag in answer to Bambi’s glance, “nothing that need bother us.”
Still they both listened.
They lay in their hollow with the old beech trunk like a sheltering roof above them. The deep snow kept the icy draft from them, and the tangled bushes hid them from curious eyes.
The baying grew nearer. It was angry and panting and relentless. It sounded like the bark of a small hound. It came constantly closer.
Then they heard panting of another kind. They heard a low labored snarling under the angry barking. Bambi grew uneasy, but the old stag quieted him again. “We don’t need to worry about it,” he said. They lay silent in their warm hollow and peered out.
The footsteps drew nearer and nearer through the branches. The snow dropped from the shaken boughs and clouds of it rose from the earth.
Through the snow and over the roots and branches the fox came springing, crouching and slinking. They were right; a little, short-legged hound was after him.
One of the fox’s forelegs was crushed and the fur torn around it. He held his shattered paw in front of him, and blood poured from his wound. He was gasping for breath. His eyes were staring with terror and exertion. He was beside himself with rage and fear. He was desperate and exhausted.
Once in a while he would face around and snarl so that the dog was startled and would fall back a few steps.
Presently the fox sat down on his haunches. He could go no farther. Raising his mangled forepaw pitifully, with his jaws open and his lips drawn back, he snarled at the dog.
But the dog was never silent for a minute. His high, rasping bark only grew fuller and deeper. “Here,” he yapped, “here he is! Here! Here! Here!” He was not abusing the fox. He was not even speaking to him, but was urging on someone who was still far behind.
Bambi knew as well as the old stag did that it was He the dog was calling.
The fox knew it too. The blood was streaming down from him and fell from his breast into the snow, making a fiery red spot on the icy white surface, and steaming slowly.
A weakness overcame the fox. His crushed foot sank down helpless, but a burning pain shot through it when it touched the cold snow. He lifted it again with an effort and held it quivering in front of him.
“Let me go,” said the fox, beginning to speak, “let me go.” He spoke softly and beseechingly. He was quite weak and despondent.
“No! No! No!” the dog howled.
The fox pleaded still more insistently. “We’re relations,” he pleaded, “we’re brothers almost. Let me go home. Let me die with my family at least. We’re brothers almost, you and I.”
“No! No! No!” the dog raged.
Then the fox rose so that he was sitting perfectly erect. He dropped his handsome pointed muzzle on his bleeding breast, raised his eyes and looked the dog straight in the face. In a completely altered voice, restrained and embittered, he growled, “Aren’t you ashamed, you traitor!”
“No! No! No!” yelped the dog.
But the fox went on, “You turncoat, you renegade.” His maimed body was taut with contempt and hatred. “You spy,” he hissed, “you blackguard, you track us where He could never find us. You betray us, your own relations, me who am almost your brother. And you stand there and aren’t ashamed!”
Instantly many other voices sounded loudly round about.
“Traitor!” cried the magpie from the tree.
“Spy!” shrieked the jay.
“Blackguard!” the weasel hissed.
“Renegade!” snarled the ferret.
From every tree and bush came chirpings, peepings, shrill cries, while overhead the crows cawed, “Spy! Spy!” Everyone had rushed up, and from the trees or from safe hiding places on the ground they watched the contest. The fury that had burst from the fox released an embittered anger in them all. And the blood spilled on the snow, that steamed before their eyes, maddened them and made them forget all caution.
The dog stared around him. “Who are you?” he yelped. “What do you want? What do you know about it? What are you talking about? Everything belongs to Him, just as I do. But I, I love Him. I worship Him. I serve Him. Do you think you can oppose Him, poor creatures like you? He’s all-powerful. He’s above all of you. Everything we have comes from Him. Everything that lives or grows comes from Him.” The dog was quivering with exaltation.
“Traitor!” cried the squirrel shrilly.
“Yes, traitor!” hissed the fox. “Nobody is a traitor but you, only you.”
The dog was dancing about in a frenzy of devotion. “Only me?” he cried; “you lie. Aren’t there many, many others on His side? The horse, the cow, the sheep, the chickens, many, many of you and your kind are on His side and worship Him and serve Him.”
“They’re rabble!” snarled the fox, full of a boundless contempt.
Then the dog could contain himself no longer and sprang at the fox’s throat. Growling, spitting and yelping, they rolled in the snow, a writhing, savagely snapping mass from which fur flew. The snow rose in clouds and was spattered with fine drops of blood. At last the fox could not fight any more. In a few seconds he was lying on his back, his white belly uppermost. He twitched and stiffened and died.
The dog shook him a few times, then let him fall on the trampled snow. He stood beside him, his legs planted, calling in a deep, loud voice, “Here! Here! He’s here!”
The others were horrorstruck and fled in all directions.
“Dreadful,” said Bambi softly to the old stag in the hollow.
“The most dreadful part of all,” the old stag answered, “is that the dogs believe what the hound just said. They believe it, they pass their lives in fear, they hate Him and themselves and yet they’d die for His sake.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
THE COLD BROKE, AND THERE WAS a warm spell in the middle of the winter. The earth drank great drafts of the melting snows so that wide stretches of soil were everywhere visible. The blackbirds were not singing yet, but when they flew from the ground where they were hunting worms, or when they fluttered from tree to tree, they uttered a long-drawn joyous whistle that was almost a song. The woodpecker began to chatter now and then. Magpies and crows grew more talkative. The titmice chirped more cheerily. And the pheasants, swooping down from their roosts, would stand in one spot preening their feathers and uttering their metallic throaty cacklings.
One such morning Bambi was roaming around as usual. In the gray dawn he came to the edge of the hollow. On the farther side where he had lived before something was stirring. Bambi stayed hidden in the thicket and peered across. A deer was wandering slowly to and fro, looking for places where the snow had melted, and cropping whatever grasses had sprung up so early.
Bambi wanted to turn at once
and go away, for he recognized Faline. His first impulse was to spring forward and call her. But he stood as though rooted to the spot. He had not seen Faline for a long time. His heart began to beat faster. Faline moved slowly as though she were tired and sad. She resembled her mother now. She looked as old as Aunt Ena, as Bambi noticed with a strangely pained surprise.
Faline lifted her head and gazed across as though she sensed his presence. Again Bambi started forward, but he stopped again, hesitating and unable to stir.
He saw that Faline had grown old and gray.
Gay, pert little Faline, how lovely she used to be,” he thought, “and how lively!” His whole youth suddenly flashed before his eyes. The meadow, the trails where he walked with his mother, the happy games with Gobo and Faline, the nice grasshoppers and butterflies, the fight with Karus and Ronno when he had won Faline for his own. He felt happy again, and yet he trembled.
Faline wandered on, her head drooped to the ground, walking slowly, sadly and wearily away. At that moment Bambi loved her with an overpowering, tender melancholy. He wanted to rush through the hollow that separated him from the others. He wanted to overtake her, to talk with her, to talk to her about their youth and about everything that had happened.
He gazed after her as she went off, passing under the bare branches till finally she was lost to sight.
He stood there a long time staring after her.
Then there was a crash like thunder. Bambi shrank together. It came from where he was standing. Not even from a little way off but right beside him.
Then there was a second thunderclap, and right after that another.
Bambi leaped a little farther into the thicket, then stopped and listened. Everything was still. He glided stealthily homeward.
The old stag was there before him. He had not lain down yet, but was standing beside the fallen beech trunk expectantly.
“Where have you been so long?” he asked, so seriously that Bambi grew silent.
“Did you hear it?” the old stag went on after a pause.
“Yes,” Bambi answered, “three times. He must be in the woods.”
“Of course,” the old stag nodded, and repeated with a peculiar intonation, “He is in the woods and we must go.”
“Where?” the word escaped Bambi.
“Where He is now,” said the old stag, and his voice was solemn.
Bambi was terrified.
“Don’t be frightened,” the old stag went on, “come with me and don’t be frightened. I’m glad that I can take you and show you the way. . . .” He hesitated and added softly, “Before I go.”
Bambi looked wonderingly at the old stag. And suddenly he noticed how aged he looked. His head was completely gray now. His face was perfectly gaunt. The deep light was extinguished in his eyes, and they had a feeble, greenish luster and seemed to be blind.
Bambi and the old stag had not gone far before they caught the first whiff of that acrid smell that sent such dread and terror to their hearts.
Bambi stopped. But the old stag went on directly toward the scent. Bambi followed hesitantly.
The terrifying scent grew stronger and stronger. But the old stag kept on without stopping. The idea of flight sprang up in Bambi’s mind and tugged at his heart. It seethed through his mind and body, and nearly swept him away. But he kept a firm grip on himself and stayed close behind the old stag.
Then the horrible scent grew so strong that it drowned out everything else, and it was hardly possible to breathe.
“Here He is,” said the old stag, moving to one side.
Through the bare branches, Bambi saw Him lying on the trampled snow a few steps away.
An irresistible burst of terror swept over Bambi and with a sudden bound he started to give in to his impulse to flee.
“Halt!” he heard the old stag calling. Bambi looked around and saw the stag standing calmly where He was lying on the ground. Bambi was amazed and, moved by a sense of obedience, a boundless curiosity and quivering expectancy, he went closer.
“Come near,” said the old stag, “don’t be afraid.”
He was lying with His pale, naked face turned upward, His hat a little to one side on the snow. Bambi, who did not know anything about hats, thought His horrible head was split in two. The poacher’s shirt, open at the neck, was pierced where a wound gaped like a small red mouth. Blood was oozing out slowly. Blood was drying on His hair and around His nose. A big pool of it lay on the snow which was melting from the warmth.
“We can stand right beside Him,” the old stag began softly, “and it isn’t dangerous.”
Bambi looked down at the prostrate form whose limbs and skin seemed so mysterious and terrible to him. He gazed at the dead eyes that stared up sightlessly at him. Bambi couldn’t understand it all.
“Bambi,” the old stag went on, “do you remember what Gobo said and what the dog said, what they all think, do you remember?”
Bambi could not answer.
“Do you see, Bambi,” the old stag went on, “do you see how He’s lying there dead, like one of us? Listen, Bambi. He isn’t all-powerful as they say. Everything that lives and grows doesn’t come from Him. He isn’t above us. He’s just the same as we are. He has the same fears, the same needs, and suffers in the same way. He can be killed like us, and then He lies helpless on the ground like all the rest of us, as you see Him now.”
There was a silence.
“Do you understand me, Bambi?” asked the old stag.
“I think so,” Bambi said in a whisper.
“Then speak,” the old stag commanded.
Bambi was inspired, and said trembling, “There is Another who is over us all, over us and over Him.”
“Now I can go,” said the old stag.
He turned away, and they wandered side by side for a stretch.
Presently the old stag stopped in front of a tall oak. “Don’t follow me any farther, Bambi,” he began with a calm voice, “my time is up. Now I have to look for a resting place.”
Bambi tried to speak.
“Don’t” said the old stag, cutting him short, “don’t. In the hour which I am approaching we are all alone. Goodbye, my son. I loved you dearly.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
DAWN OF THE SUMMER’S DAY came hot, without a breath of wind or the usual morning chill. The sun seemed to come up faster than usual. It rose swiftly and flashed like a torch with dazzling rays.
The dew on the meadows and bushes was drawn up in an instant. The earth was perfectly dry so that the clods crumbled. The forest had been still from an early hour. Only a woodpecker hammered now and then, or the doves cooed their tireless, fervid tenderness.
Bambi was standing in a little clearing, forming a narrow glade in the heart of the thicket.
A swarm of midges danced and hummed around his head in the warm sunshine.
There was a low buzzing among the leaves of the hazel bushes near Bambi, and a big may beetle crawled out and flew slowly by. He flew among the midges, up and up, till he reached the treetop where he intended to sleep till evening. His wing covers folded down hard and neatly and his wings vibrated with strength.
The midges divided to let the may beetle pass through and closed behind him again. His dark brown body, over which shone the vibrant glassy shimmer of his whirring wings, flashed for a moment in the sunshine as he disappeared.
“Did you see him?” the midges asked each other.
“That’s the old may beetle,” some of them hummed.
Others said, “All of his offspring are dead. Only one is still alive. Only one.”
“How long will he live?” a number of midges asked.
The others answered, “We don’t know. Some of his offspring live a long time. They live forever almost. . . . They see the sun thirty or forty times, we don’t know exactly how many. Our lives are l
ong enough, but we see the daylight only once or twice.”
“How long has the old beetle been living?” some very small midges asked.
“He has outlived his whole family. He’s as old as the hills, as old as the hills. He’s seen more and been through more in this world than we can even imagine.”
Bambi walked on. “Midge buzzings,” he thought, “midge buzzings.”
A delicate frightened call came to his ears.
He listened and went closer, perfectly softly, keeping among the thickest bushes, and moving noiselessly as he had long known how to do.
The call came again, more urgent, more plaintively. Fawns’ voices were wailing, “Mother! Mother!”
Bambi glided through the bushes and followed the calls.
Two fawns were standing side by side, in their little red coats, a brother and sister, forsaken and despondent.
“Mother! Mother!” they called.
Before they knew what had happened Bambi was standing in front of them. They stared at him speechlessly.
“Your mother has no time for you now,” said Bambi severely.
He looked into the little brother’s eyes. “Can’t you stay by yourself?” he asked.
The little brother and sister were silent.
Bambi turned and, gliding into the bushes, disappeared before they had come to their senses. He walked along.
“The little fellow pleases me,” he thought, “perhaps I’ll meet him again when he’s larger. . . .”
He walked along. “The little girl is nice too,” he thought. “Faline looked like that when she was a fawn.”
He went on, and vanished in the forest.
