Further to yesterday's post: will Pooh still remember?
'"Pooh!"
"Yes?" said Pooh.
"When I'm - when - Pooh!"
"Yes, Christopher Robin?"
"I'm not going to do Nothing anymore."
"Never again?"
"Well, not so much. They don't let you."
Pooh waited for him to go on but he was silent again.
"Yes, Christopher Robin?" said Pooh, helpfully.
"Pooh, when I'm - you know - when I'm not doing Nothing, will you come up here sometimes?"
"Just me?'
"Yes Pooh."
"Will you be here too?"
"Yes Pooh, I will be, really. I promise I will be, Pooh."
"That's good," said Pooh."
"Pooh, promise you won't forget about me, ever. Not even when I'm a hundred."
Pooh thought for a little. "How old shall I be then?"
"Ninety-nine."
Pooh nodded.
"I promise," he said.'
While this part of the book may strike some as sentimental, I always read it as elegiac, the huge losses of the war that ended less than a decade earlier resonating in every line.
(Footnote: I saw the original Pooh at an auction house in London once, along with the originals of some of EH Shephard's beautiful illustrations. The bear was very endearing. I seem to remember he was accompanied ny Piglet.)
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