“Now we’ve got there ...” Bambi heard the elder say. He walked the length of the beech trunk and Bambi followed him, nearly falling into a hole in the ground.
“Alright!” said the elder. “You can lie down here.”
Bambi sank down and did not try to move any more.
He saw that the hole in the ground under the fallen beech trunk was deeper than it had seemed, creating a small chamber. The bushes at the edge of it closed over him as he entered so that nobody could see in. Once he was down there it was as if he had disappeared.
“You’ll be safe here,” said the elder. “Stay here and don’t go anywhere.”
Days went by.
Bambi lay in the warm earth, the bark of the fallen tree slowly rotting above him, it listened to his pain as it grew inside his body, became stronger, then abated, became weaker and went down, steadily softer and softer. Sometimes he would struggle outside where he would stand, weak and unsteady, on his tired and unreliable legs, and take a few steps to look for food. He began to eat herbs that he had never before noticed. Now they had suddenly begun to offer themselves to him, called to him with their scent that had a strange and tempting sharpness. What he had until then despised, what he would have thrown away if he inadvertently got it between his lips, now seemed tasty and spicy. Many little leaves, many short stalks continued to seem unappetizing even now, but he nonetheless ate them under some kind of compulsion, and his wounds healed more quickly and he could feel how his strength was coming back to him.
He had been saved. But he still did not leave his chamber. He would only come out at night and take a few steps around, but in the daytime he would remain quietly in his bed. It was only now, when his body was feeling no more pain, that Bambi realized all that had happened to him, he was able to think once more, and a feeling of great horror arose within him, his character had been shattered. He was not able to simply wipe it away, not able to stand up and run about as he had before. He lay there and felt many emotions, alternately disgusted, ashamed, astonished, disheartened, but soon afterwards full of melancholy, soon afterwards full of happiness.
The elder was nearby at all times. At first he was at Bambi’s side day and night. Then there were times when he left him alone for short periods, especially when he saw that Bambi was lost in his thoughts. But there was no time when he was not close by.
One day there had been storm and thunder and lightning, the sky had been swept clean and that evening the sun, as it went down, shone over a sky that was blue. The blackbirds sang out loudly from the tree tops, the finches flapped their wings, the tits whispered in the undergrowth, in the grass and under the bushes close to the ground the metallic bursts of the pheasants’ cries could be heard, the woodpecker laughed in loud celebration and the pigeons cooed from the yearning for love that was inside them.