Time passes, and Bambi learns how good grass tastes, how tender the
buds of leaves are, and how sweet clover is. When he presses himself
against his mother to get some refreshment she often pushes him
away. “You’re not a little child any more,” she says. Sometimes she
will be even more direct and say, “Go away, leave me in peace.”
Sometimes his mother would even stand up in the middle of the day in
their little place in the wood and just walk away without looking to
see whether Bambi is following her or not. There are even times when
she is walking along the familiar paths when she seems not to notice
whether Bambi is trotting behind her like a good boy. One day his
mother was not there, and Bambi does not know how that is possible,
cannot understand it. But his mother is gone and Bambi, for the first
time, is alone.
He is bewildered, he becomes uneasy, he becomes nervous and anxious,
and he begins to long for her quite pitifully. Very sadly he stands
there and calls to her. No-one answers, no-one comes.
He listens, he smells the air. Nothing. He calls again. Gently, inside
himself, imploringly, he calls, “Mother ... Mother ...” All in vain.
Now he is gripped with doubt as to whether he can endure it, so he
begins to walk.
He wanders along all the paths he knows, stops and calls out, walks on
with hesitant steps, fearful and unable to understand. He is very sad.
He carries on walking and finds himself on paths where he has never
been before, he finds himself in parts of the wood which are strange
to him. He is lost.
Then he hears the voices of two children who are calling out like him:
“Mother ... mother ...!”
Surely that is Gobo and Faline. It must be them.
He runs quickly towards the voices and soon sees their red coats
shining through between the leaves. Gobo and Faline. There they stand
next to each other under a dogwood, looking forlorn and calling,
“Mother ... mother ...!”
They’re glad that they can hear something rusting in the undergrowth,
but they are disappointed when they see it is only Bambi. But they are
a little bit glad to see him. And Bambi is glad that he is not quite
so alone any more.
“My mother’s gone away somewhere,” says Bambi.
“Ours is gone too,” lamented Gobo.
They look at each other in their dismay.
“But where could they be?” asks Bambi, almost in tears.
“I don’t know,” sighs Gobo. His heart is beating fast and he is
feeling quite miserable.
Suddenly, Faline says, “I think ... they’re with our fathers ...”
Gobo and Bambi look at each other in astonishment. They are
immediately gripped by a sense of awe. “You mean ... with our
fathers?” asked Bambi and shudders.
Faline shudders too, but she makes a face that seems to be saying a
lot. She looks like someone who knows more than he is willing to
say. She does not really know anything at all of course; she does not
even know where she got the idea from. But as Gobo repeats, “Do you
really mean that?,” she makes herself look clever and says each time,
“Yes, I think so.”
That is, of course, a guess, but it is at least worth thinking
about. It does not make Bambi any less uneasy though. He is not now
capable of thinking, he is too anxious and too sad.
He moves away. He does not like to spend too much time on one
spot. Faline and Gobo go with him a little way; all three of them call
“Mother ... mother ...” But now Gobo and Faline have stopped; they do
not dare to go any further. Faline says, “Where are we going? Our
mother knows where we should be. So let’s stay there so that she can
find us when she comes back.”
Bambi walks on by himself. He wanders through a thicket where there is
a little bare patch. In the middle of the bare patch Bambi stops. It
is as if he is held there by his roots and cannot leave the spot.
There, at the edge of the bare patch, in a tall hazel bush, he could
make out a form. Bambi has never seen a form like this. At the same
time a scent came to him in the air, a scent he has never smelt
before. It is a strange aroma, heavy and sharp and exciting, enough to
make you mad.
Bambi stares at the form. It is remarkably erect, exceptionally
narrow, and it has a pale face which is quite naked on the nose and
around the eyes. Horribly naked. This is a face that projects a
dreadful horror. Cold and gruesome. This face has a monstrous power to
it, a power that could leave you crippled. This face is painful to
behold, hardly bearable to behold, but Bambi nonetheless stands there
and stares at it, captivated.
The form remains there motionless for a long time. Then it reaches one
leg out, a leg that is positioned high up, and puts it near its
face. Bambi has not noticed that it was there at all. This terrible
leg stretches right out into the air, and it is merely this gesture
that sweeps Bambi away like a candle in the wind. In an instant he is
back in the thicket he has just left. And he runs.
Suddenly his mother is back with him. She leaps through bush and
undergrowth next to him. The two of them run as fast as they can. His
mother leads the way, she knows the path, and Bambi follows. In this
way they keep running until they are at the entrance to their chamber.
“Did you ... did you see that?” asks his mother gently. Bambi cannot
answer, he has no breath left. He merely nods.
“That was ... that was Him!” she says.
The two of them shuddered in horror.