The Last Temptation of Winnie-the-Pooh
Behold the bear. Heavy feet and an empty head lead the bear to a quiet place in the middle of the Wood where a large tree stands, and from the top of the tree, hangs the body of a boy.
Based upon the works of A. A. Milne.
The Last Temptation of Winnie-the Pooh.
or
The Passion of Christopher Robin
This chapter is part of Literary Salon issue #2.
You can read the serial weekly, but all twelve chapters are available now.
Chapter One
Behold the bear. Heavy feet and an empty head lead the bear to a quiet place in the middle of the Wood where a large tree stands, and from the top of the tree, hangs the body of a boy. The bear looks at the boy and listens, just as hard as his stuffed ears can listen, and what he hears is a nothing-noise.
He sits at the foot of the tree, puts his head between his paws, and begins to think. First, he says to himself: ‘That nothing-noise means something. You don't get a nothing-noise like that, just nothing and nothing, without its meaning something. If there's a nothing-noise, then nothing's making a something-noise, and the only reason for not making a something-noise (that I know of) is because you're playing hide-and-seek.’
Then he thinks another long time, and says: ‘And the only reason for playing hide-and-seek is so someone will come seeking.’
And then the bear stands up and says: 'And the only reason for hiding is to be found.' Having thus reasoned with himself, and finding himself very reasonable, indeed, he climbs the tree.
He climbs and he climbs and he climbs a little farther... and a little farther... and then just a little farther. And soon, he’s thought of something more to say.
‘Christopher Robin,’ he says, for this is the boy’s name. 'All our friends are hiding, and I thought to myself, if there’s a boy who can find a friend who’s lost, that boy is Christopher Robin.'
The bear’s getting rather tired by now, which is why he talks to Christopher Robin, even though Christopher Robin isn’t talking back. He stops on a branch just a little too low to reach Christopher Robin’s feet, and he listens just as hard as he listened before. Christopher Robin doesn’t answer. The bear hears only the nothing-noise and nothing else in the whole wide Wood. Even the birds have taken the brethren’s vow of silence.
The branch on which he stands is stained with the dried red fluff which flows from a boy when a boy is cut. It stains the length of the branch and much of the trunk, and down below, the fluff speckles more and more branches red. When it still flowed, it must have run like a waterfall, but it isn’t flowing now.
The bear watches the feet swing in the wind that runs through the tops of the trees, and he feels a great emptiness, as if it were his fluff that’s stained the tree. 'It all comes of being loved so much,' he says.
And Winnie-the-Pooh has been loved. Christopher Robin loved him with all his heart.
Pooh sits on the branch and begins to think again. But the first person he thinks of is Christopher Robin. Poor Christopher Robin. It’s an empty world without him in it.
Pooh climbs down that very tall tree in the middle of the Wood. In its shadow, he feels littler than littler-than-little, and when he feels littler than littler-than-little, his problems seem very very big. His friends are gone, and if there was ever a time he needed a friend, this is it. No one’s there to sit beside him and remind him he isn’t alone, and that, he supposes, is because he is alone.
Friends don’t have to know what to say. They don’t have to know what to do. They only need to be there, and they aren’t. Maybe they hide because they know the truth, a truth Pooh is only now suspecting. He’s been the bear whom Christopher Robin loved best, and without that love, without Christopher Robin, who is he? The whole world answers with all its nothing-noise. He isn’t anything at all, not anymore, and never will be again.
Pooh walks round and round the tree, and the earth beneath him becomes a rut. The rut grows into a valley, and the tree sways in the wind. Its wood moans like Eeyore. It cries like Piglet when Piglet is scared, and Piglet is always scared. The tree looms above, and Pooh can feel the threat of its weight as the roots spring free, one by one by one. He thinks he’ll walk until the world collapses and crushes all those bad feelings that burn in his chest.
Only, the very tall tree makes Pooh feel small, and when Pooh feels small, when he feels littler that littler-than-little, the person he thinks of most is Piglet. Circling the tree reminds Pooh of circling the Spinney with Piglet, and he thinks, if he has to carry these feelings of being alone and friendless, it would be friendlier to carry them with a friend. If that friend isn’t coming to Pooh, Pooh will have to go to him.
There was a party the day before in the upstairs room at Piglet’s house, a big party with food and Christopher Robin and Christopher Robin’s closest friends. After that party, and after the very long night that followed, all his friends went hiding.
‘And if Christopher Robin can’t help me find them,’ says Pooh, ‘I shall have to do it, myself.’
Wow — I am impressed with the simple depth captured from the originals and the impossibility of how you got it here in this story.
Damn. Whoever told you that you capture the voice of the original stories needs to get paid, because they are right and this is fantastic