Bambi was silent. But he, too, felt a slight, anxious curiosity. He wanted to ask. About Faline, about Aunt Ena, about Ronno and Karus, about everyone he had known as a child. But he was silent.
The squirrel continued to sit in front of Bambi and examined him. “Look at that crown!” he exclaimed in admiration. “What a crown! Apart from the old prince, no-one has a crown like that, no-one anywhere in the forest!”
Earlier, Bambi would have felt very pleased and flattered by an observation like this. Now he just said wearily, “Yes ... I suppose so ...”
The squirrel nodded his head vigorously. “It really is!” he said in astonishment. “Really. You’re beginning to go grey.”
Bambi walked away.
The squirrel saw that the discussion was at an end and swung up into the branches. “Bye then,” he called down. “Look after yourself! I enjoyed seeing you again. If I see any of your old friends I’ll tell them you’re still alive ... they’ll all be glad to hear it.”
Bambi heard this and once again felt those slight stirrings in his heart. But it said nothing. You have to stay alone, the elder had taught him when Bambi was still a child. And the elder had shown him many things, told him many secrets, and continued doing so up to the present day. But of all the things he had been taught, this was the most important: You have to stay alone. If you’re going to preserve your life, if you want to understand existence, if you want to become wise, you have to stay alone!
“But,” asked Bambi one time, “but what about the two of us, we’re always together nowadays ...?”
“We soon won’t be,” the elder had retorted.
That had only been a few weeks earlier.