Chapter 6: The Last Temptation of Winnie-the-Pooh
Behold the boy. His friends beheld; they beheld from a place beyond the understanding of grownups, where bees fled from shadows so great, even the heavens surrendered nightly.
The Last Temptation of Winnie-the-Pooh.
Chapter Six
Behold the boy.
His friends beheld; they beheld from a place beyond the understanding of grownups, where bees fled from shadows so great, even the heavens surrendered nightly. Beneath this darkness, the animals of the wood peppered Christopher Robin with their insults and accusations. They called him the child of a man and thus a man-to-be; and it is man, they said, who places upon himself the charge of owning and shaping the world. He molds and defines the very space in which all creatures must exist, and by his definitions, they find their existence narrowed.
‘Pettiness and piety live in the whole breadth of this world’s creatures,’ said the European robin, ‘but it’s man who makes a virtue of his violence and a conviction of his cruelty.’
‘I’ve done you no harm,’ said Christopher Robin. ‘I’m your friend.’
The greenfinch hopped closer. ‘You’ve cleared the land of everything but our small patch of trees. Do you now claim this as your playground?’
The words fell like hailstones upon the stuffing in Winnie-the-Pooh’s ears. He shook his head, and the words rattled, echoing within that soft-walled chamber, refusing to fall out again. Defiler of nature, they said. Destroyer of worlds.
These echoes bounced off thoughts and dislodged memories. One memory looked lovely and sweet, but as it rolled closer, it made Pooh all teary inside. In it, he saw a place on the very top of the forest. From there, Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin sat and watched the whole world spread out until it reached the sky, and whatever there was, all the world over, was with them, there, in Galleons Lap. One by one, Christopher Robin told Pooh about all the wondrous things that filled the wide world, and it seemed an awful lot.
‘Is it a grand thing?’ Pooh asked. ‘To be king of the Hundred Acre Wood.’
Christopher Robin laughed. ‘It’s not really a hundred acres, did you know that?’
Pooh said he didn’t.
‘It’s just a clever way of saying everything,’ said Christopher Robin.
‘Oh, well that’s different,’ said Pooh.
‘How is it different?’
Pooh gestured to the world before them. ‘There’s everything, right now. You can be king without going away.’
Christopher Robin was silent as he sat looking out over the world, and Pooh wished the moment wouldn't end. Then he thought of all the things Christopher Robin would tell him when he came back from wherever he was going.
Christopher Robin, who was looking at the world with his chin in his hands, called out, ‘Pooh!’
‘Yes?’ said Pooh.
‘When I'm-- when-- Pooh!’
‘Yes, Christopher Robin?’
‘When I'm gone, will you promise to love the others?’
‘Which others?’
‘Everyone who’s not you, Pooh.’
‘Oh good,’ said Pooh. ‘That’s easy to remember, as long as I don’t forget, but if I forget, you’ll have to remind me. When you’re gone, Christopher, you’ll still be here, won’t you? You’ll be here too?’
‘Yes, Pooh, I will be really. I promise I will be.’
‘That's good,’ said Pooh.
‘Pooh, promise you won't forget about me, ever.’
Pooh looked at Christopher Robin, and Christopher Robin looked at Pooh. How long was Christopher Robin to be away? he wondered. It had to be very long, if Christopher Robin thought there was a chance Pooh would forget.
Pooh promised never to forget and to remember always.
With his eyes on the world, Christopher Robin put out a hand and felt for Pooh's paw. ‘Pooh, if I-if I'm not quite—’ He stopped and tried again. ‘—Pooh, whatever happens, you will understand, won't you?’
‘Understand what?’ asked Pooh.
Christopher Robin never explained what it was he hoped Pooh would understand, and now that the moment had come, Pooh knew he hadn’t understood, not at all.
Rabbit and Kanga came up beside them. Kanga scooped up Roo, and Rabbit patted Piglet and told him it was time to go.
Christopher Robin stood before a tempest of wings and teeth and claws. Red boy stuffing painted the ground.
It took three tries to pull Piglet away, and as Kanga, Roo, and Piglet slipped through the crowd, Rabbit hesitated, her eyes on Christopher Robin and her hand on Pooh. There she stayed, moving only to wipe her eyes.
The animals pulled Christopher Robin high into the tree, like Tigger when he’d captured a toy.
‘Come on, Pooh,’ said Rabbit.
‘Is it finished then?’ asked Pooh.
Rabbit stared up long and hard at the top of the tree where they hanged Christopher Robin. ‘It isn’t meant to be,’ she said and then slipped away, her shoulders and her back bent.
She looked sad but not grumpy, Pooh thought, and he supposed it was because she no longer knew what needed to be done, and not knowing, could do nothing at all.
#
Night became morning. Morning became afternoon, and now the day approaches evening, as Pooh walks beneath that great oak. All around him, he hears the nothing-noise, and high above he sees Christopher Robin’s shoes which are tied to Christopher Robin’s feet.
‘All our friends are hiding,’ says Pooh to himself, ‘and if Christopher Robin can’t help, I shall have to find them myself.’
He covers his eyes and counts backwards from ten, in no particular order. Many minutes later, when he lands on seven, he announces, ‘Here I come!’ and climbs up out of his rut.
The first place Winnie-the-Pooh looks is Piglet’s house in the beech tree. The sofa still sits in the lane. The sign by the door still says ‘Trespassers W’. Inside, a snack bowl of haycorns is half-full of water, and upstairs the table and buckets are as they left them, which is to say, a mess.
Pooh tries to tidy, but there are no honey pots to arrange from tallest to smallest. Many minutes later, when everything looks a little worse than before, he sits in a chair and sighs.
‘This would be easier with Piglet,’ he says to himself. ‘Everything’s easier with Piglet.’
Very timidly and none-too-sure, Pooh calls out Piglet’s name. No one answers.
Next, Pooh goes down by the boggy place where Eeyore lives and finds Eeyore’s stack of sticks, but no Eeyore.
‘Someone really needs to build Eeyore a proper house,’ says Pooh. He waits to see if anyone will agree, but when no one does, he walks on again.
The sandy pit where Roo plays is empty and lonely, and so is Kanga’s house where she, Roo, and Tigger live.
Pooh walks to Rabbit’s house and the garden behind it. There are many footprints going in many directions but nobody making new ones.
The wind whistles through the hickory tree, and Pooh whistles back. He waits a moment for someone to pick up the tune, but the tune lies where he left it and soon is gone. Pooh keeps walking.
Last of all is the Potter’s Field where Owl lives, and on the way he finds a set of tracks. At first, he hardly notices. After all, he’s just left many Other tracks behind, but these look like Tigger tracks. They aren’t bounding but walking tracks, with feet dragging in the dirt, and the tracks are headed to Owl’s house.
‘Oh, goody,’ says Pooh. ‘Maybe I’ll find them both at once, and we can sit down to a spot of tea with biscuits and honey.’ After a moment’s thought, he adds, ‘And extract of malt.’
Tigger loves extract of malt, and Pooh hopes Owl might have some in his pantry, for Owl has a very grand house in a very grand tree. As he walks, Pooh picks thistles for Eeyore and haycorns for Piglet and anything that anyone might like, just in case he finds them just a bit peckish.
He follows the tracks and finds a very sad Tigger plodding through Potter’s Field and a grief-stricken Owl nervously circling the tree where he lives.
And as Owl walks, he mutters a sad little song.
‘I have betrayed an innocent boy, the fount of my hope, the source of my joy.’ And ‘What’s that to us? See to it yourself. The wrong is on you and nobody else.’
Tigger stops with a start at the sound of the hoot and watches a wandering Owl wear a rut through the roots.
‘My heart is so heavy,’ says Tigger, and he falls in behind, and they circle in circles in a single-file line.
‘Whatever its weight in silver troy ounces, it withers my wings...’
‘And batters my bounces!’
And as they cry about errors, failings, and wrongs, their pain weaves together in a sad little song.
They cry out in woe, and walk their circular path, until they sink to their ankles and down to their calves, and Pooh stands on the bank and calls out as they pass, ‘This rut that you’ve run is a valley by half, and if you don’t turn and walk your way out, you’ll soon be buried right up to your snout.’
‘My bestest buddy boy!’ cries a heart-broken Tigger.
Then, as if not to be beaten, Owl cries out bigger:
I was the best friend
That a boy ever knew,
And if he can’t see that.
Then the boy can’t rule.
What’s that to us?
See to it yourself.
The wrong is on you,
And no one will help.
We watched out for woozles
And let roosters right in.
They plucked out my heart,
When I denied he’s my friend.
What’s that to us?
Go hunting yourself.
Shoot the wrong from the blind,
Hang its head on a shelf.
We’re tracking our wrongs
And we’re bagging our prize,
And the wrongs that we did,
Won’t get out alive.
What’s that to us?
See to it yourself.
The wrongs are on you,
And nobody else.
Their words drift to the woods, and the bitter wind cries. And their sad song tugs, to Pooh Bear’s surprise, on the fluff of his heart where loneliness lies, and tempts him to take a place in their line, digging the rut beneath Owl’s great tree, bringing it down, and crushing all three.
