Dancing Bears

by Witold Szablowski

  “It seems natural that if almost thirty bears suddenly appear on their territory, they’re bound to be interested. They should react in some way, shouldn’t they?

  “We wondered what the interaction between them would be like. Would our females attract wild males? Would they form pairs in some way across our fence? Would they try to escape?

  “There was something exciting about these considerations. Because of course that could ruin some of the plans we had, but, on the other hand, while we’d never be able to transmit knowledge of life at liberty to them, perhaps the wild bears could do it.

  “But it soon turned out that the wild bears don’t approach our bears at all. They don’t even come near the fence. They take no notice. Maybe it’s to do with scent? Maybe the captive bears smell different?

  “Perhaps the wild bears can sense that there’s nothing here for them, because the females are sterilized, and the males are strange somehow too?

  “Or maybe there are just too many people here, and no decent bear is going to come close, even if he can scent a female? A decent bear is wild, strong, self-confident, and independent. Maybe they can sense that ours aren’t like that, and that it’s not worth continuing the species with them.”

  5.

  “Unfortunately, it’s a sad but genuine conclusion—the place where our bears live only provides a semblance of freedom. It’s not our choice, because we’d be more than willing to keep them here for a year or two and then release them in the forest to fend for themselves. But any bear that’s been a captive for most of its life has no chance of coping with freedom.

  “It’s pretty much the same for people, don’t you think?

  “I have no doubt that if one day our electric fence were taken away and the bears were set loose, they wouldn’t survive a whole year. Either they’d die of cold, because they’d be incapable of finding a place to hibernate, or they’d be killed by the first male whose territory they entered. Or they’d start looking for food in trash cans and someone would shoot them.

  “In Romania, Four Paws has a rescue center for orphaned bear cubs. Hunters shoot the mothers, someone finds the cubs, and they live there for two years before being released into the wild. Unfortunately, the results are poor. Not a single one has survived to the age of five. In nature too, the cubs often die; they can also be killed by older males wanting to get rid of a rival before he grows to full size. And other predators sometimes regard a young bear as a tasty morsel.

  “But while in nature from 30 to 40 percent of them perish, every single cub from the park in Romania has died.

  “People are a whole other problem. Only a few years ago the sight of a bear in Bulgaria didn’t cause any great excitement. It’s not unusual—in the Rila Mountains there are a little over five hundred bears, and once in a while someone is bound to see one.

  “But ever since we’ve been westernizing, people have been reacting more and more negatively to contact with nature. A few years ago a guy was killed by a bear. At once there was an uproar, with people saying there were too many bears and they’d have to be shot. I was incensed. One of the TV channels asked me to comment, so I said that if someone drowns in a river, nobody insists on draining all the rivers. If you live alongside nature, you’re bound to pay the occasional price for it. And plenty of countries in the West would give a lot to change places with us, because they—the Germans or Austrians, for example—have already destroyed their own nature.”

  6.

  “The German attitude is perfectly illustrated by the situation that arose a few years ago, when the first wild bear to appear there for years was spotted. It had come across from Italy. Hysteria erupted in the media—saying it was wild, any minute now it would start killing cattle, and then people.

  “A few days later they shot it, although it wasn’t threatening anyone.

  “I’m afraid that in a few years it’ll be the same here too.”

  7.

  “Going back to our bears: As they’re toothless, and suffer from cataracts and emotional problems, they’d have no chance in the wild. Especially as they lack the education that a female bear normally provides for her offspring.

  “In the wild, a bear cub spends the first two years of its life with its mother, who teaches it everything. Scientists in Alaska have recorded entire bear lessons, during which the mothers take their cubs to the riverbank and show them how to position their paws in order to catch fish.

  “But what could our mother bears teach their offspring? Maybe just that when a truck comes along, there’s going to be food. Or that if you can’t manage to dig yourself a pit to hibernate in, a hairy-faced human will come along and build you a kennel out of planks.

  “Unfortunately, our bears not only have the smell but also the mentality of captives. For twenty or thirty years they were used to having somebody do the thinking for them, providing them with an occupation, telling them what they had to do, what they were going to eat and where to sleep. It wasn’t the ideal life for a bear, but it was the only one they knew.

  “That’s why we decided that we have to sterilize all our bears. It’s a pity for us to have to see them getting love struck every spring, and then expecting to have cubs. Then they’re surprised and frustrated when the cubs don’t appear.

  “But unfortunately it had to be done. And perhaps the problems I’m going to tell you about next have their origin right there.”

  IX. Dancing Bears

  1.

  The day when his former owner came to Belitsa was extremely stressful for a bear named Dobry.

  The Gypsy, whose name nobody at the park can remember, or wants to remember, was starring in a documentary movie about the life of the Bulgarian Roma, which was being made by a western European television company. The director had come up with the brilliant idea that, as he was dealing with a bear keeper whose bear had been taken away from him, they should be brought together again.

  “I was present at that scene,” says Dimitar Ivanov. “Dobry is blind, because although the doctor removed his cataracts, it turned out the guy used to beat him and had damaged his vision. And suddenly, after several years at Belitsa, Dobry heard his voice.”

  He froze.

  He lay down on the grass.

  He covered his snout with his paws as if pleading.

  He pricked up his ears.

  The Gypsy was shouting at him, waving his arms about and showing off. He wept as he called Dobry “my child,” “my little bear,” “my darling.” But Dobry just went on lying there with his paws on his snout and his ears pricked up, not moving a muscle.

  The Gypsy started throwing him apples. Some other bears, who didn’t know the man, came up and ate them, but Dobry didn’t.

  Dobry didn’t budge an inch.

  “Someone from the film crew asked if after all these years the Gypsy could still force him to dance,” says Ivanov. “I said that if they so much as tried, I’d force the lot of them to dance.”

  They drove away disappointed.

  2.

  Although Ivanov cares for his animals almost as well as a mother for her children; although the bears in the park have the perfect diet for each season of the year and for their biological needs; although they have pine trees, pools, and thirty acres of park all to themselves; although a professional, ideally trained team looks after them day and night, and tries to help them with every problem, even trying to guess their thoughts; although they have their freedom, and with each day they’re better able to take advantage of it—there’s one thing the park staff are reluctant to mention, and find it hard to talk about.

  I can understand why.

  The fact is, despite these excellent conditions; despite the honey, strawberries, nuts, hibernation kennels, hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in the park, public campaigns in Bulgaria and all over the world; despite the personal commitment of Brigitte Bardot, whose founda
tion covers half the park’s expenses; despite the support of other influential animal lovers; despite the food hidden under stones; despite the frequent visits by the German dentist; despite the regular blood, urine, and feces tests; despite having their cataracts treated, and their blood pressure regulated; despite being provided with the correct number of calories; despite the fact that the metal nose rings are rusting in a display case by now, and the former trainers are sick with heart disease, cancer, and cirrhosis of the liver, or are no longer alive; despite all this:

  to this day,

  almost all the bears still

  dance.

  When they see a human being, they stand up on their hind legs and start rocking from side to side. As if they were begging, as in the past, for bread, candy, a sip of beer, a caress, or to be free of pain. Pain that nobody has been inflicting on them for years.

  3.

  It happens in various situations, and—as the park staff say—it’s embarrassing.

  Sometimes the bears only have to see the shadow of a human being on the horizon.

  Sometimes they catch the smell of something, a perfume perhaps, that reminds them of their old life. Who could predict that one of the ladies visiting the park would spray herself with a scent that—let’s suppose—the trainer’s wife always wore? Or the cologne the trainer wore? Or that one of the visiting children would smell like their kid?

  For a human being, these olfactory nuances are imperceptible, but a bear’s sense of smell is the most highly developed of its senses. In the wild they can scent things from several miles away. In spring, wild bears are capable of digging a deep pit in the snow because they can smell the carcass of a chamois buried by an avalanche. In the park, it only takes a candy wrapper in someone’s pocket to awaken deeply hidden memories.

  Maybe they dance because there are too many of them in a small area. A wild bear needs at least twelve square miles to be able to preserve his solitude. Because solitude is a fundamental part of a bear’s nature. But here they have to accept that there are several of them in each sector. Most of them have a share that’s barely three hundred square yards in size.

  It’s also possible that the park doesn’t meet the bears’ needs. It doesn’t reproduce their natural state—let’s not deceive ourselves, the conditions here are not the same as in the wild, nor the state in which the bears grew up and spent their entire life until now. It’s a hybrid, suspended somewhere between freedom and captivity. And maybe that makes the bears feel confused.

  Or perhaps they dance when they’re hungry or haven’t slept enough. Or if the moment has come when their system sends signals to tell them it’s time to hibernate, but they don’t know how to respond.

  In these instances, compulsive behavior, such as walking in circles or being self-destructive, can occur. When Dobry doesn’t know what to do with himself, he bites his own paw, drawing blood. He does it when he can’t get his head around what’s happening.

  But most of them stand on their hind legs and do exactly what used to earn them bread, candy, and alcohol throughout their past lives.

  Of course, some of their behavior might look like a dance without actually being one. On one occasion a group of school students began to clap and take photos because Mima was standing on her hind legs. The children thought she was dancing, but in fact she was hungry and was trying to see if the truck bringing the food was on its way.

  But usually their behavior is so plain to see that it’s impossible to sugarcoat reality. If stress appears in the life of a bear, it will try the reaction that’s imprinted in the deepest recesses of its mind.

  “Will they ever stop?” wonders Dimitar Ivanov. “I think that with each passing year they’ll do it more and more rarely. But I can’t be certain. As I’ve already said, we’re working on living creatures. So I won’t be surprised if one day, under the influence of some sort of external factors, our bears forget what we’ve taught them, and all start to dance at once.”

  X. The End

  1.

  Fall on Pelargonium Street in the village of Getsovo is a cascade of colors that drop from the trees straight onto the house of the former bear keepers. To get here you drive along one of the roads that EU funding hasn’t reached and is unlikely to reach in a hurry. In many places the asphalt has been replaced by rocks, stone chippings, and mud.

  Although there have been no bears in the village for six years now, when I ask for the bear keepers, even the youngest children know the way. And the ones who were at preschool in those days remember standing by the gate after classes and throwing candy to the bear. Sometimes the bear keeper was in a good mood or noticed a child he knew. Then he’d untie the bear and lead it to the gate to show off a few tricks.

  So we find the gray block of the preschool, surrounded by a multicolored swirl of swings and slides.

  We find the house opposite, with peeling plaster, a green gate with a vine rambling up it, and a middle-aged Gypsy woman, who as soon as we mention the bears, starts talking in all the languages of this part of the world.

  Krasimir Krumov, the Bulgarian journalist accompanying me, insists that we’ll be better off talking in Bulgarian, and he’ll translate it all into Polish for me. The Gypsy is agitated.

  “They made animals of us,” she says, dragging on a cigarette. “My name is Ivelina and I’m the daughter-in-law and wife of bear keepers—Dimitar was my father-in-law and Veselin is my husband. And it grieves me, because it has gone out all over the world that the Stanev family torments bears. But there was no bear keeper to rival my father-in-law anywhere!”

  “The bears obeyed him like their own mother,” adds an older Gypsy woman. It’s Dimitar Stanev’s wife, Maryka.

  “He loved them, and they loved him,” adds Ivelina.

  And Dimitar’s granddaughter, Veselina, says that her happiest childhood memory is of the spring days when her grandfather would start to prepare the program for the new year with the bear.

  “They used to arm-wrestle. Sometimes Misho gave Grandpa the advantage,” says Veselina, smiling. “You could see what satisfaction it gave him—Grandpa would think he’d already won, just half an inch and he’d lay him flat, but suddenly, hardly using any strength at all, wham! that bear would lay Grandpa out. He’d be virtually laughing because his trick had worked.”

  It was Dimitar and his sons who were the last bear keepers in Bulgaria to sell their animals.

  It was he who sat staring at the window when his grandson, Veselin’s son, was shut in the cage with Misho and refused to come out.

  It was his illness that manifested itself for the first time that day.

  “Once they’d packed Misho into the cage and taken him away, my husband sat down, clutched at his heart and went on sitting there,” says his wife, Maryka. “He went a few hours without saying a word. All the women in the house—including me, our daughter, daughters-in-law, and granddaughters—were crying, but he didn’t make a sound. He didn’t bat an eyelid. We hid away from him in corners so he wouldn’t have to look at our tears, but it was all the same to him. He didn’t even notice us.”

  2.

  Dimitar’s grave is in the cemetery at the end of the village, among stone crosses dating from God knows what century, the more recent graves of respected and less respected villagers, and clumps of grass that grows on all the graves without exception.

  Daughter-in-law Ivelina gets into our car with a clay mug full of coffee and a flower picked by the roadside. She lays it under the picture of her father-in-law, and puts the mug down on the small gravestone.

  “Whenever he saw me, he’d say, ‘Dearest daughter-in-law, make me some coffee!’” she tells us. “Sometimes three or four times a day. So every time I come here, I bring him coffee. The way he liked it—one and a half spoonfuls, with no milk and no sugar.”

  “We put an accordion in the coffin for him, because he’d played it beautifully
since childhood,” says his wife, wiping her eyes. “I’m sorry, normally I don’t cry at his grave anymore. But today there are the memories of Saint Dimitar’s Day. We always had a jolly time on this day—we drank and sang. Our bears had something good to eat too. They’d dance for us. We were happy. But nowadays? The bears are gone, so is my husband, and so are our children. Our sons have had to go away to Greece because there are no job prospects here at all. Most of the former bear keepers have left. Pencho, my husband’s brother, drove a tanker truck to begin with, but now he’s in Greece, working on a building site. Stefan, our brother-in-law, is in Italy. He was working at a gas station, but now he’s sick.”

  I look at the picture of Dimitar. Stuck to the terrazzo headstone is a photograph of a well-built man with a mustache, standing next to Misho, on his hind paws, feet apart. The caption says: “For Dimitar, who entertained the children for many years from Varna to Golden Sands with his dancing bear.”

  In one hand Dimitar is holding a chain that’s tied to Misho’s nose.

  In the other, he has the fiddle he always played to accompany the bear’s dance.

  “Oh yes, a fiddle! What happened to Dimitar’s gadulka?” I ask, and Krasimir translates my question for the Gypsies.

  “He took the accordion with him. I’ll be bringing him the gadulka,” says Maryka.