another night went by, and the following day something else happened.
the sky was cloudless, and the morning was full of dew and freshness. all the leaves on the trees and the bushes suddenly had a more vivid scent. the meadow breathed the air in broad waves and lifted it up to the tree tops.
‘peep’ said the tits as they woke up. they said it quite quietly, but as it was still twilight and the sky was grey they said nothing more for a little while. for a time there was silence. then the raucous, rasping sound of a crow came from high up in the air. the crows had woken up and were visiting each other in the tree tops. the magpie answered straight back: “shakerakshak ... can you believe this, i’m still asleep?” then hundreds of calls, here and there, far and near, tentatively began: peep! peep! tiu! these sounds still had something of sleep, something of the twilight about them. and yet they were actually all quite distinct from each other.
suddenly a blackbird flew up to the top of a fir tree. he flew right up to the very highest, thinnest point, reaching into the air. he sat high up there and looked out over all the other trees, near and far while the pale grey sky, still tired from the night, began to glow in the east and come to life. then the bird began to sing. she was only a tiny dark spot if you glimpsed her from the ground. in the distance her little black body looked like a wilted leaf. but her song spread out all over the forest in great celebration. and then everything came to life. the finches struck up and the robins and the goldfinches made their voices heard. pigeons rushed from one place to another with wide flapping and swishing of their wings. the pheasants shouted out loud as if their throats would burst. the sound of their wings was gentle but powerful as they swooped down to earth from the trees where they had been sleeping. on the ground they repeated their metallic, bursting cry many more times, and then they would coo gently. high in the sky, the falcons called out their sharp and joyful ‘yayaya!’ .
the sun had risen.
‘diu-diyu!’ rejoiced the oriole. as he flew back and forth between the twigs and branches his round, yellow body shone in the beams of the morning sun like an exhilarated ball of gold.
bambi stepped under the big oak tree on the meadow. it sparkled in the morning dew, had a scent of grass, flowers and wet earth, it whispered of the thousand lives it had led. there sat bambi’s friend, the hare, and he seemed to be thinking about something very important. there was a haughty pheasant there, walking slowly. he pecked at the stalks of grass and looked carefully all around himself. his dark blue neck sparkled in the sunlight like a jewel necklace. but close in front of bambi there stood one of the princes, very near to him. bambi had never seen him before, had never even seen any of the fathers this close up. he stood there before him, very close to a hazel bush and still slightly concealed behind its twigs. bambi did not move. he hoped the prince would come out fully from behind the bush, and he wondered whether he could dare to speak to him. he wanted to ask his mother and glanced around for her, but his mother had already gone ahead and stood a long way away with auntie ena. just then, gobo and faline came out of the woods and ran onto the meadow. bambi did not move but wondered about what he should do. if he wanted to get over to his mother and the others he would have to pass by the prince. he thought that would be unseemly. so what? he thought, i don’t need to get my mother’s permission first. it was the old prince who spoke to me first and i didn’t tell my mother anything about it. i will speak to the prince, i’ll see if i can. i’ll say to him: good morning your highness. there’s nothing about that that might make him cross. and if he is i can just run away. bambi wondered whether he had made the right decision, and it kept on making him feel unsteady on his feet.
now the prince stepped away from the hazel bush and onto the meadow.
now ... thought bambi.
just then there was a loud clap of thunder.
bambi recoiled and did not know what had happened.
he saw how the prince jumped high into the air in front of him and saw him rush past him into the woods.
bambi looked hard all around himself, he felt as if he could still hear the thunder clap. he saw his mother, auntie ena, gobo and faline, some way away, had fled into the woods, he saw his friend the hare rush away in a panic, saw the pheasant run away with his neck stretched out ahead of him, and he could not understand what it all could be about. the prince lay there, a broad wound had torn his shoulder open, he was bloody and dead.
“don’t just stand there!” came a shrill cry from beside him. it was his mother who was running at a full gallop. “run!” she called, “run as fas as you can!.” she did not stop, but rushed on, and her command pulled bambi along with her. he ran with all his strength.
“what is that, mother?” he asked. “what was that, mother?”
his mother, gasping for breath, answered, “that ... was ... him!.”
bambi shuddered, and they ran on.
finally, out of breath, they stopped.
“what do you say? please, what do you say?” called a thin voice from above them. bambi looked up and saw the squirrel hurrying down to them through the branches of the tree. “i jumped all the way here beside you” he called. “no, it’s terrible!”
“were you there when it happened?” asked bambi’s mother.
“well of course i was there” the squirrel replied. “i’m still shaking from it, all my limbs are shaking.” he sat upright, his magnificent flag against his back, showing his slender, white breast and pressing both his front paws against his body to reassure himself. “i’m quite beside myself with fear.”
“i’m afraid too, and it’s made me quite numb” said bambi’s mother. “i can’t understand it. none of us saw anything.”
“really?” the squirrel became excited. “you’re wrong there, you know. “i’d been watching him for a long time!”
“so had i!” called another voice. it was the magpie; she flew up to them and sat down on a branch.
“and me!” called another screeching voice from even higher in the ash tree. there was the jay sitting there.
and from the very tops of the trees there was a pair of crows who cawed angrily. “we saw him too!” they interjected.
they all sat round in earnest discussion. they were exceptionally agitated and, it seemed, full of anger and fear.
who, thought bambi, who have they seen?
“i did everything i possibly could do,” the squirrel assured them as he pressed both his forepaws to his heart. “really everything, to bring him to the attention of the poor prince.”
“so did i,” the jay screeched, “i don’t know how many times i shouted to him! but he just didn’t want to hear me.”
“he didn’t hear me either,” the magpie said with a laugh. “ten times it was i called to ‘im. just as i was going to fly over to him, i thought to meself; well if ‘e can’t hear me i’ll fly over onto that hazel bush, just where he’s standing; he’s got to hear me from there. but that was just when it happened.”
“but my voice is louder than yours, and i did all i could to warn ‘im,” said the crow in a bitter tone. “but you posh lot never give enough attention to birds like us.”
“yes, never enough at all,” agreed the squirrel.
“we do what we can,” thought the magpie, “but it’s not our fault if somebody’s unlucky.”
“he was such a handsome prince,” the squirrel lamented, “and in the prime of life.”
“ach!” the jay screeched, “if he hadn’t been so stand-offish and paid a bit of attention to us.”
“he was certainly not stand-offish!” the squirrel contradicted him.
the magpie added, “na, no more than the other princes like him.”
“stupid then!” the jay laughed.
“you’re pretty stupid yourself!” a crow called down from above them. “you can’t talk about being stupid. the whole forest knows how stupid you are.”
“me?” retorted the jay in astonishment. “no-one can accuse me of being stupid. a bit forgetful sometimes, but i’m certainly not stupid.”
“suit yourself,” said the crow, now serious. “don’t forget what i’ve just said, but bear in mind that it wasn’t being haughty or stupid that cost the prince his life, it’s ‘cause you can’t get away from him.”
“ach!” screeched the jay. “i don’t like talking like this!” he flew away. the crow continued speaking. “there’s even a lot in my family who he’s tricked. he kills anyone ‘e feels like killing. there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“you’ve just got to keep a watch out for him,” the magpie added.
“yeah, you certainly do,” said the crow sadly. “cheerio.” she flew away and her family went with her.
bambi looked around. his mother was no longer there.
what are they talking about? he thought. i can’t understand everything they’re saying. who is this ‘he’ they’re talking about? it must be that ‘he’ that i saw in the woods that time ... but he didn’t kill me ...
bambi thought of the prince whom he had just seen lying in front of him with a bloody, shredded shoulder. he was now dead. bambi walked on. the forest was again in song with a thousand voices, the sun drove its broad beams of light through the tree tops, everywhere was light, the leaves began to steam, high in the air called the falcons, and here, close by, a woodpecker was laughing out loud as if nothing had happened. bambi did not become cheerful. he felt under threat from something dark, he could not understand how the others could be so gay and carefree when life was so hard and so dangerous. at that moment he was gripped by the desire to get a long way away from there, to go deeper and deeper into the woods. he felt the urge to go to a place where the trees were at their densest, where he could find a corner to slide into, a place surrounded broad and far by the most impenetrable undergrowth, where he could not possibly be seen. he did not want to go back out onto that meadow.
something gently moved in the bushes beside him. bambi was greatly startled. there, in front of him, stood the elder.
there was something twitching in bambi; he wanted to run away but he took control of himself and remained. the elder looked at him with his big, deep eyes. “were you there when it happened?”
“yes,” said bambi quietly. his heart was beating so hard he could feel it in his mouth.
“where is your mother?” the elder asked.
bambi answered, still speaking quietly, “i don’t know.”
the elder continued to look at him. “and you’re not calling out for her?”
bambi looked into that venerable, ice-grey face, looked up at the elder’s majestic crown, and suddenly found himself full of courage. “i can be by myself, too,” he said.
the elder looked at him for a while and then, softly, he said, “are you not the little one who, not very long ago, was crying for his mother?”
bambi felt slightly ashamed, but continued to be courageous. “yes, that was me,” he admitted.
the elder looked at him in silence, and it seemed to bambi that these deep eyes were watching him with more tenderness. “you told me off for it, elder prince,” he exclaimed, “for not being able to be by myself. i can do now, though.”
the elder looked at bambi, examining him, and smiled, very slightly, barely noticeably, but bambi did notice it. “elder prince,” he asked trustingly, “what happened back there? i can’t understand it ... who is this ‘he’ they’re all talking about ...?” he stopped, shocked at the dark look that bade him to be silent.
they said nothing for a while. the elder stopped looking at bambi and stared into the distance, then he said, slowly, “listen for yourself, smell for yourself, watch for yourself. learn for yourself.” he raised the crown on his head even higher. “farewell,” he said. then nothing more. and then, he had disappeared.
bambi, dismayed, stayed where he was and wanted to give up hope. but the prince’s farewell was still in his ears and gave him some comfort. farewell, the elder had said. so he wasn’t cross with him.
bambi was filled with pride, felt that he had been lifted out of something that was formal and serious. yes, life was hard and full of danger. let it bring whatever it wants, he would learn somehow to bear all of it.
slowly, he walked deeper into the woods.
