Chapter 11: The Last Temptation of Winnie-the-Pooh
Christopher Robin is out of sight, but the friends stand together, waving, until Rabbit says, ‘Well, maybe it’s time we think about heading home.’
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The Last Temptation of Winnie-the-Pooh.
Chapter Eleven
Christopher Robin is out of sight, but the friends stand together, waving, until Rabbit says, ‘Well, maybe it’s time we think about heading home.’
‘I’ll go,’ says Pooh, ‘when I’m out of goodbyes.’
‘When will that b-be,’ asks Piglet.
‘Not for some time, I should think. It’s lonely enough to say goodbye, but it’s ever so much lonelier when the goodbyes are done.’
‘Then I’m never going to say goodbye again!’ says Roo.
‘Toodle-loo, Roo,’ says Rabbit. ‘Toodle-loo, Pooh.’
‘Cheers, dears,’ says Kanga as she picks up Roo.
Piglet watches the others leave. ‘What other words are there for goodbye, P-Pooh? I want to learn them all.’
‘It won’t matter, I’m afraid. Christopher Robin says loneliness keeps a thesaurus.’
‘What’s a thesaurus, Pooh?’
‘It’s like a heffalump, only scalier.’
Piglet swallows hard. ‘It’s time to be in bed.’ As he runs away to his beech tree, he calls back. ‘See you later, Pooh.’
‘Godspeed, Piglet, or very nearly so.’
Pooh still waves when he’s all alone. He’s waving when Eeyore walks up beside him.
‘What are you doing, Pooh?’
‘Waving goodbye to Christopher Robin.’
Eeyore squints into the darkness. Pooh squints, too, but the night hides her secrets behind pine pickets and black drapes.
‘There’s nobody there,’ says Eeyore.
‘But there was somebody there before.’
‘Not Christopher Robin,’ says Eeyore.
‘It looked like Christopher Robin.’
‘Of all the notions you’ve ever notioned,’ says Eeyore, ‘why would you believe Christopher Robin was walking through the wood in the middle of the night?’
Pooh scratches his head and thinks before answering. ‘Because he was the first to leave the party.’
Eeyore shakes his head. ‘Christopher Robin’s gone.’
‘He’ll always be here.’
‘Not really he won’t,’ says Eeyore. ‘At least you're not blocking the grave. Maybe I can finally say goodbye.’
‘We’ve all decided we’re not saying goodbye,’ says Pooh. ‘It attracts big scaly things.’
Eeyore plods off, and Pooh follows.
At the grave, Eeyore sticks his head in and then pulls it out again. ‘It’s the wrong hole.’
‘I don’t think so,’ says Pooh. ‘This is where we left it.’
‘But there’s no Christopher Robin.’
‘Christopher Robin went home,’ says Pooh. ‘When I popped out, he was the one to catch me, and then we had a party.’
‘Just the two of you and nobody else?’ asks Eeyore.
‘Just the two of us and everyone else.’
Eeyore’s head drops. ‘Not everyone.’
‘Oh, Eeyore. I’m sorry. I didn’t think.’
‘You rarely do. We have to take the world as it is, not the way we wish it to be. Christopher Robin is gone, and no one can tell me otherwise until he tussles my hair with his own two hands.’
‘He tussled my fur,’ says Pooh.
‘So you say, but you’re a bear of very little brain.’
Pooh tries to understand what his brain has to do with his fur, but he doesn't. Not one bit.
Eeyore leaves, and Pooh tries to let him go. He’s ready now to sleep in his own home and in his own bed, but Eeyore looks lonelier than usual, like a dog in a house full of cats, which is as lonely as lonely gets.
Pooh follows into the wood.
The trees grow dense and dark, and Pooh doesn’t know which way to follow Eeyore. There’s neither sight nor sound of him.
‘Eeyore has lost himself,’ says Pooh, ‘and wherever he’s lost, it isn’t here.’
Nearby, he hears a buzzing sound. It’s a familiar sort of buzzing sound, the kind of buzzing sound a bee makes when a bee is making honey.
‘Just a bite, if you don’t mind,’ says Pooh and wanders off after it. Soon, though, the trees look strange and the ground unfamiliar. Pooh turns around twice just to be sure, but there’s not a recognizable sight anywhere. The bees are every bit as lost as Eeyore.
‘Doesn’t anyone know where they are?’ asks Pooh. ‘Even this patch of woods is out of place. I’ve certainly never seen it before.’
The electric crackle of bees fades. Susurrant sounds prick the hackles of Pooh’s hindermost fears. He eyes the trees with a squint but sees no rooster.
‘Well,’ says Pooh, ‘if lost is ahead, then found is behind.’ He turns around to walk out the way he came in, but instead of finding himself back at the grave, he steps into a clearing.
‘The honey misled me somewhere I don’t want to be,’ says Pooh. He looks up, expecting to see the rooster, but only empty space stares back wherever a rooster might have been. He’s alone in the woods without honey or bees, without Eeyore, and without a rooster. He supposes somewhere in the world, roosters still exist, and if he waits until morning, he could hear one call for the dawn. Pooh doesn’t want to wait, and slowly, he realizes there’s nothing to wait for, really.
‘It never was the rooster, was it?’ asks Pooh.
‘No, I don’t think it was,’ says Pooh.
‘Then who?’
‘You,’ says Pooh.
'Me?' asks Pooh rather dolefully. ‘Oh, dear. Christopher Robin must be terribly disappointed.’
‘It really was in poor taste, you know.’
‘I just needed a little comforting.’
‘It was more than a little, wasn’t it, Pooh?’ asks Pooh.
Pooh lowers his head. ‘Maybe a littler-than-little more than a little.’
‘What will you do now?’
Pooh is just beginning to say he doesn’t know, when he comes upon a set of tracks. They look familiar.
‘These tracks,’ says Pooh, ‘could be Eeyore tracks.’
‘You’re changing the subject,’ says Pooh.
‘I’ll find Eeyore. He’s the bravest donkey I know.’
‘Brave enough to tell you the truth,’ says Pooh.
Pooh begins to answer. He wants to say that everything is right again, now that Christopher Robin is home, but he doesn’t. Christopher Robin being home doesn’t undo the past. He wants to say that he only kept Christopher Robin company through a lonely night, but he doesn’t say that, either.
Winnie-the-Pooh doesn’t say anything. He only walks. He follows the tracks, and he walks and walks.
Soon, the one set of tracks joins another.
‘Well,’ says Pooh, ‘at least Eeyore isn’t alone anymore.’
But Pooh feels more alone than ever.
Poor Pooh