Bambi: Felix Salten Omnibus Read online

  But Bambi was speechless. He could not find his tongue and only stammered, “Look over there.”

  His mother looked over. “I see,” she said, “that’s my sister, and sure enough she has a baby too, now. No, she has two of them.” His mother spoke at first out of pure happiness, but she had grown serious. “To think that Ena has two babies,” she said, “two of them.”

  Bambi stood gazing across the meadow. He saw a creature that looked just like his mother. He hadn’t even noticed her before. He saw that the grasses were being shaken in a double circle, but only a pair of ­reddish backs were visible like thin red streaks.

  “Come,” his mother said, “we’ll go over. They’ll be company for you.”

  Bambi would have run, but as his mother walked slowly, peering to right and to left at every step, he held himself back. Still, he was bursting with excitement and very impatient.

  “I thought we would meet Ena sometime,” his mother went on to say. “Where can she have been keeping herself? I thought I knew she had one child, that wasn’t hard to guess. But two of them! . . .”

  At last the others saw them and came to meet them. Bambi had to greet his aunt, but his mind was entirely on the children.

  His aunt was very friendly. “Well,” she said to him, “this is Gobo and that is Faline. Now you run along and play together.”

  The children stood stock-still and stared at each other, Gobo close beside Faline and Bambi in front of him. None of them stirred. They stood and gaped.

  “Run along,” said Bambi’s mother, “you’ll soon be friends.”

  “What a lovely child,” Aunt Ena replied. “He is really lovely. So strong, and he stands so well.”

  “Oh well,” said his mother modestly, “we have to be content. But to have two of them, Ena! . . .”

  “Oh yes, that’s all very well,” Ena declared; “you know, dear, I’ve had children before.”

  “Bambi is my first,” his mother said.

  “We’ll see,” Ena comforted her, “perhaps it will be different with you next time, too.”

  The children were still standing and staring at each other. No one said a word. Suddenly Faline gave a leap and rushed away. It had become too much for her.

  In a moment Bambi darted after her. Gobo followed him. They flew around in a semicircle, they turned tail and fell over each other. Then they chased each other up and down. It was glorious. When they stopped, all topsy-turvy and somewhat breathless, they were already good friends. They began to chatter.

  Bambi told them how he talked to the nice grasshopper and the butterfly.

  “Did you ever talk to the goldbug?” asked Faline.

  No, Bambi had never talked to the goldbug. He did not even know who he was.

  “I’ve talked to him often,” Faline declared, a little pertly.

  “The jay insulted me,” said Bambi.

  “Really,” said Gobo astonished, “did the jay treat you like that?” Gobo was very easily astonished and was extremely timid.

  “Well,” he observed, “the hedgehog stuck me in the nose.” But he only mentioned it in passing.

  “Who is the hedgehog?” Bambi asked eagerly. It seemed wonderful to him to be there with friends, listening to so many exciting things.

  “The hedgehog is a terrible creature,” cried Faline, “full of long spines all over his body and very wicked!”

  “Do you really think he’s wicked?” asked Gobo. “He never hurts anybody.”

  “Is that so?” answered Faline quickly. “Didn’t he stick you?”

  “Oh, that was only because I wanted to speak to him,” Gobo replied, “and only a little anyhow. It didn’t hurt me much.”

  Bambi turned to Gobo. “Why didn’t he want you to talk to him?” he asked.

  “He doesn’t talk to anybody,” Faline interrupted; “even if you just come where he is he rolls himself up so he’s nothing but prickles all over. Our mother says he’s one of those people who don’t want to have anything to do with the world.”

  “Maybe he’s only afraid,” Gobo said.

  But Faline knew better. “Mother says you shouldn’t meddle with such people,” she said.

  Presently, Bambi began to ask Gobo softly, “Do you know what ‘danger’ means?”

  Then they both grew serious and all three heads drew together. Gobo thought a while. He made a special effort to remember for he saw how curious Bambi was for the answer. “Danger,” he whispered, “is something very bad.”

  “Yes,” Bambi declared excitedly, “I know it’s something very bad, but what?” All three trembled with fear.

  Suddenly Faline cried out loudly and joyfully, “I know what danger is—it’s what you run away from.” She sprang away. She couldn’t bear to stay there any longer and be frightened. In an instant, Bambi and Gobo had bounded after her. They began to play again. They ­tumbled in the rustling, silky green meadow grass and in a twinkling had forgotten all about the absorbing question. After a while they stopped and stood chattering together as before. They looked toward their ­mothers. They were standing close together, eating a little and carrying on a quiet conversation.

  Aunt Ena raised her head and called the children. “Come, Gobo. Come, Faline. We have to go now.”

  And Bambi’s mother said to him, “Come, it’s time to go.”

  “Wait just a little longer,” Faline pleaded eagerly, “just a little while.”

  “Let’s stay a little longer, please,” Bambi pleaded, “it’s so nice.” And Gobo repeated timidly, “It’s so nice, just a little longer.” All three spoke at once.

  Ena looked at Bambi’s mother, “What did I tell you,” she said, “they won’t want to separate now.”

  Then something happened that was much more exciting than everything else that happened to Bambi that day. Out of the woods came the sound of hoofs beating the earth. Branches snapped, the boughs ­rustled, and before Bambi had time to listen, something burst out of the thicket. Someone came crashing and ­rustling with someone else rushing after him. They tore by like the wind, described a wide circle on the meadow and vanished into the woods again, where they could be heard galloping. Then they came bursting out of the thicket again and suddenly stood still, about twenty paces apart.

  Bambi looked at them and did not stir. They looked like his mother and Aunt Ena. But their heads were crowned with gleaming antlers covered with brown beads and bright white prongs. Bambi was completely overcome. He looked from one to the other. One was smaller and his antlers narrower. But the other one was stately and beautiful. He carried his head up and his ­antlers rose high above it. They flashed from dark to light, adorned with the splendor of many black and brown beads and the gleam of the branching white prongs.

  “Oh,” cried Faline in admiration. “Oh,” Gobo repeated softly. But Bambi said nothing. He was entranced and silent. Then they both moved and, turning away from each other, walked slowly back into the woods in opposite directions. The stately stag passed close to the children and Bambi’s mother and Aunt Ena. He passed by in silent splendor, holding his noble head royally high and honoring no one with so much as a glance.

  The children did not dare to breathe till he had disappeared into the thicket. They turned to look after the other one, but at that very moment the green door of the forest closed on him.

  Faline was the first to break the silence. “Who were they?” she cried. But her pert little voice trembled.

  “Who were they?” Gobo repeated in a hardly audible voice. Bambi kept silent.

  Aunt Ena said solemnly, “Those were your fathers.”

  Nothing more was said, and they parted. Aunt Ena led her children into the nearest thicket. It was her trail. Bambi and his mother had to cross the whole meadow to the oak in order to reach their own path. He was silent for a long time before he finally asked, “Didn’t they see us?”
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  His mother understood what he meant and replied, “Of course, they saw all of us.”

  Bambi was troubled. He felt shy about asking questions, but it was too much for him. “Then why . . .” he began, and stopped.

  His mother helped him along. “What is it you want to know, son?” she asked.

  “Why didn’t they stay with us?”

  “They don’t ever stay with us,” his mother answered, “only at times.”

  Bambi continued, “But why didn’t they speak to us?”

  His mother said, “They don’t speak to us now; only at time. We have to wait till they come to us. And we have to wait for them to speak to us. They do it whenever they like.”

  With a troubled heart, Bambi asked, “Will my father speak to me?”

  “Of course he will,” his mother promised. “When you’re grown up he’ll speak to you, and you’ll have to stay with him sometimes.”

  Bambi walked silently beside his mother, his whole mind filled with his father’s appearance. “How handsome he is!” he thought over and over again. “How handsome he is!”

  As though his mother could read his thoughts, she said, “If you live, my son, if you are cunning and don’t run into danger, you’ll be as strong and handsome as your father is sometime, and you’ll have antlers like his, too.”

  Bambi breathed deeply. His heart swelled with joy and expectancy.

  Chapter Five

  TIME PASSED, AND BAMBI HAD many adventures and went through many experiences. Every day brought something new. Sometimes he felt quite giddy. He had so incredibly much to learn.

  He could listen now, not merely hear, when things happened so close that they struck the ear of their own accord. No, there was really no art in that. He could really listen intelligently now to everything that stirred, no matter how softly. He heard even the tiniest whisper that the wind brought by. For instance, he knew that a pheasant was running through the next bushes. He recognized clearly the soft quick tread that was always stopping. He knew by ear the sound the field mice make when they run to and fro on their little paths. And the patter of the moles when they are in a good humor and chase one another around the elder bushes so that there is just the slightest rustling. He heard the shrill clear call of the falcon, and he knew from its altered, angry tones when a hawk or an eagle approached. The falcon was angry because she was afraid her field would be taken from her. He knew the beat of the wood doves’ wings, the beautiful, distant, soaring cries of ducks, and many other things besides.

  He knew how to snuff the air now, too. Soon he would do it as well as his mother. He could breathe in the air and at the same time analyze it with his senses. “That’s clover and meadow grass,” he would think when the wind blew off the fields. “And Friend Hare is out there, too. I can smell him plainly.”

  Again he would notice through the smell of leaves and earth, wild leek and wood mustard, that the ferret was passing by. He could tell by putting his nose to the ground and snuffing deeply that the fox was afoot. Or he would know that one of his family was somewhere nearby. It might be Aunt Ena and the children.

  By now he was good friends with the night and no longer wanted to run about so much in broad daylight. He was quite willing to lie all day long in the shade of the leafy glade with his mother. He would listen to the air sizzling in the heat and then fall asleep.

  From time to time he would wake up, listen and snuff the air to find out how things stood. Everything was as it should be. Only the titmice were chattering a little to each other, the midges, who were hardly ever still, hummed, while the wood doves never ceased declaiming their ecstatic tenderness. What concern was it of his? He would drop off to sleep again.

  He liked the night very much now. Everything was alive, everything was in motion. Of course, he had to be cautious at night too, but still he could be less careful. And he could go wherever he wanted to. And everywhere he went he met acquaintances. They too were always less nervous than in the daytime.

  At night the woods were solemn and still. There were only a few voices. They sounded loud in the stillness, and they had a different ring from daytime voices, and left a deeper impression.

  Bambi liked to see the owl. She had such a wonderful flight, perfectly light and perfectly noiseless. She made as little sound as a butterfly, and yet she was so dreadfully big. She had such striking features, too, so pronounced and so deeply thoughtful. And such wonderful eyes! Bambi admired her firm, quietly courageous glance. He liked to listen when she talked to his mother or to anybody else. He would stand a little to one side, for he was somewhat afraid of the masterful glance that he admired so much. He did not understand most of the clever things she said, but he knew they were clever, and they pleased him and filled him with respect for the owl.

  Then the owl would begin to hoot. “Hoaah!—Ha!—Ha!—Haa!—ah!” she would cry. It sounded different from the thrushes’ song, or the yellowbirds’, different from the friendly notes of the cuckoo, but Bambi loved the owl’s cry, for he felt its mysterious earnestness, its unutterable wisdom and strange melancholy.

  Then there was the screech owl, a charming little fellow, lively and gay with no end to his inquisitiveness. He was bent on attracting attention. “Oi! yeek! oi! yeek!” he would call in a terrible, high-pitched, piercing voice. It sounded as if he were on the point of death. But he was really in a beaming good humor and was hilariously happy whenever he frightened anybody. “Oi! yeek!” he would cry so dreadfully loud that the forests heard it for a mile around. But afterward he would laugh with a soft chuckle, though you could only hear it if you stood close by.

  Bambi discovered that the screech owl was delighted whenever he frightened anyone, or when anybody thought that something dreadful had happened to him. After that, whenever Bambi met him, he never failed to rush up and ask, “What has happened to you?” or to say with a sigh, “Oh, how you frightened me just now!” Then the owl would be delighted.

  “Oh, yes,” he would say, laughing, “it sounds pretty gruesome.” He would puff up his feathers into a grayish-­white ball and look extremely handsome.

  There were storms, too, once or twice, both in the daytime and at night. The first was in the daytime and Bambi felt himself grow terrified as it became darker and darker in his glade. It seemed to him as if night had covered the sky at midday. When the raging storm broke through the woods so that the trees began to groan aloud, Bambi trembled with terror. And when the lightning flashed and the thunder growled, Bambi was numb with fear and thought the end of the world had come. He ran behind his mother, who had sprung up somewhat disturbed and was walking back and forth in the thicket. He could not think about nor understand anything. The rain fell in raging torrents. Everyone had run to shelter. The woods were empty. But there was no escaping the rain. The pouring water penetrated even the thickest parts of the bushes. Presently the lightning stopped, and the fiery rays ceased to flicker through the treetops. The thunder rolled away. Bambi could hear it in the distance, and soon it stopped altogether. The rain beat more gently. It pattered evenly and steadily around him for another hour. The forest stood breathing deeply in the calm and let the water drain off. No one was afraid to come out any more. That feeling had passed. The rain had washed it away.

  Never before had Bambi and his mother gone to the meadow as early as on that evening. It was not even dusk yet. The sun was still high in the sky, the air was extremely fresh, and smelled sweeter than usual, and the woods rang with a thousand voices, for everyone had crept out of his shelter and was running excitedly, telling what had just happened.

  Before they went on to the meadow, they passed the great oak that stood near the forest’s edge, close to their trail. They always had to pass that beautiful big tree when they went to the meadow.

  This time the squirrel was sitting on a branch and greeted them. Bambi was good friends with the squirrel. The first time he met him he took him
for a very small deer because of the squirrel’s red coat and stared at him in surprise. But Bambi had been very childish at that time and had known nothing at all.

  The squirrel pleased him greatly from the first. He was so thoroughly civil, and talkative. And Bambi loved to see how wonderfully he could turn, and climb, and leap, and balance himself. In the middle of a conversation the squirrel would run up and down the smooth tree trunk as though there was nothing to it. Or he would sit upright on a swaying branch, balance himself comfortably with his bushy tail that stuck up so gracefully behind him, display his white chest, hold his little forepaws elegantly in front of him, nod his head this way and that, laugh with his jolly eyes, and, in a ­twinkling, say a lot of comical and interesting things. Then he would come down again, so swiftly and with such leaps that you expected him to tumble on his head.

  He twitched his long tail violently and called to them from overhead, “Good day! Good day! It’s so nice of you to come over.” Bambi and his mother stopped.

  The squirrel ran down the smooth trunk. “Well,” he chattered, “did you get through it all right? Of course, I see that everything is first rate. That’s the main thing.”

  He ran up the trunk again like lightning and said, “It’s too wet for me down there. Wait, I’m going to look for a better place. I hope you don’t mind. Thanks, I knew you wouldn’t. And we can talk just as well from here.”

  He ran back and forth along a straight limb. “It was a bad business,” he said, “a monstrous uproar! You wouldn’t believe how scared I was. I hunched myself up as still as a mouse in the corner and hardly dared move. That’s the worst of it. Having to sit there and not move. And all the time you’re hoping nothing will happen. But my tree is wonderful in such cases. There’s no denying it, my tree is wonderful! I’ll say that for it. I’m satisfied with it. As long as I’ve had it, I’ve never wanted any other. But when it cuts loose the way it did today you’re sure to get frightened no matter where you are.”

  The squirrel sat up, balancing himself with his handsome upright tail. He displayed his white chest and pressed both forepaws protestingly against his heart. You believed without his adding anything that he had been excited.