Bear Witness

by Mandy Haggith

  Callis played with the ring she had slipped on to her little finger, a Celtic knot she had not worn for years. She bit back her response that the ‘Institute of Truth’ had an Orwellian ring to it. She could almost pity him, he seemed so desperate to persuade her.

  ‘I’m going with an open mind,’ was all she said.

  After their plates were cleared away, he refused to let her chip in for the bill. ‘It is my pleasure.’ He helped her into her jacket like some nineteenth century gentleman and picked up her luggage.

  She was tense as wire as they walked towards the train. At the end of the platform he put her bag down and gave a little bow to her. ‘Perhaps some other time we can be more…’ he paused, ‘longer together. Good night.’ He turned, without waiting for a reply, and paced out into the darkness.

  Professor Eldegard met Callis off the train, somehow picking her out of the crowd and pouncing on her with a jocular shout of ‘Callis, velkommen!’ She was tall, with short grey hair, and dressed in plain, loose brown slacks and jerkin. But over them she wore a calf-length knitted coat, in a traditional red, blue, black and white pattern, with big bone buttons. As they marched to the Storting, Callis had found herself needing to jog to keep up with the professor’s stride, her swinging cloak sweeping aside anyone who might obstruct her way.

  She was physically intimidating, without doubt, standing a head taller than most men, but this was offset by her wide, easy smile and when she turned her shrewd dark eyes on Callis, the younger woman felt an instant sense of protection. At the Storting, people stood aside to let her sign Callis in at the security gate, and they coursed on downstairs and through underground passages to another building, then up to the pine-lined committee room. Professor Eldegard sprawled into a lavishly padded seat indicated by a nervous-looking official, who nodded a terse acknowledgement as Callis was introduced and seated next to her. With winks and waves, the professor greeted many of the others already gathered.

  Minister Thorsinn marched into the committee room at two minutes past nine, took the seat reserved for her at the head of the oval table, laid her file down and started proceedings without drawing breath. She was open to all and any suggestions to reduce the public outcry. If a programme to release some ‘replacement’ bears into the wild would help then she would have no objection in principle. She was willing to support Bjørn Bakker’s bill. She nodded acknowledgement to the MP who nodded back. There would be those who would oppose this move, arguing that persecution of the bears had been inevitable, and any future bears would meet the same fate as the last. She believed they were wrong and bears had a future in Norway. The Environment and Energy Committee and the Storting would take any actual decisions but she hoped that they would be guided by the expert group and agree to an accelerated expansion of the residual population, and possibly also an introduction of some new genetic material.

  She paused and circled her gaze around the table, meeting the eye of each person as if gauging them. ‘I have full Prime Ministerial backing. If we can bring bears back, we will.’

  Callis noticed herself holding her breath, and let it out in a long slow exhalation, blinking at the minister’s performance. She guessed that what was going on was the closest thing to resurrection any normal human being, particularly a politician, could achieve. The symbolism was incredible.

  Those seated closest to the minister responded, turning the general thrust of what she had said into suggestions of specifics. There was a proposal to set a release date of the following Easter. A nice addition to the symbolism, Callis thought, but that would mean less than a year to find some bears, decide where and how to release them and plan a monitoring and protection programme for the ensuing years. It was a tall order, but the table was stuffed with power and eminence. The country’s greatest scientists, most famous naturalists and broadcasters, and environmental activists Callis had only dreamed of meeting one day, were all there around the table. It did not seem quite real that she was among them.

  ‘Our vegetation specialist, Callis MacArthur, will identify some suitable locations for release,’ she heard Professor Eldegard say to the minister, ‘taking into account both historical factors and future pressures such as climate change.’ She glowed. I get to choose the site, she thought. How cool is that? And then she remembered Yuri. He would be scornful of the proceedings.

  ‘Very good.’ The minister and professor nodded to each other.

  ‘How long will that take?’ They both looked at Callis. Suddenly she wished that she had not got on the train to Oslo. She had no idea what such a task might involve. It could easily be several years of work; a team of PhD students could devote themselves to the question for much of the next decade; a whole new institute would be required for trans-European collaboration involving hundreds of scientists. And they had eleven months for the whole thing.

  She swallowed. ‘Two months should be sufficient,’ she replied. ‘Perhaps three to be realistic, allow a bit of slack.’ A bit of slack? She must be insane.

  The grey heads bobbed with approval, moved on to the tricky matters of farmers and funding. There was much consideration of the compensation to be used to pay farmers for any livestock used, and the benefits of the Swedish incentive scheme that required farmers to protect their livestock and paid them to do so. Callis intervened at one point suggesting grants to upland farmers for bear habitat enrichment measures such as planting fruit or nut trees. This was noted with agreement. Otherwise, she sat, hands sweating, stomach churning at the utter ridiculousness of even thinking of surveying Norway’s entire land cover and determining the most welcoming places for bears in a mere ninety days. At all, for that matter.

  They broke for lunch and Professor Eldegard, (‘Anja, please, we’re colleagues now,’) led Callis along to the dining room.

  ‘We are glad to have you in the team, Callis. Not afraid to speak your mind, that’s what we like. Positive input, good, very good. It’s going well. We’ve got the farmers on the defensive, the public’s all on our side. If we can keep it positive for a few months we’ll get the Bill through Parliament.

  ‘You and I can put our heads together about locations. We’ll need a methodology to put before the Executive. Can you put some thought into that? Evidence from other countries will be important, most important. I can give you all the leads you need: Romania, Slovakia, Russia, Sweden, Finland, France. A whirl around some of those will be essential for you to make a strong case, don’t you think? Are you free later? I should run you through some names. It would be good to have you out there straight away, really, before we meet again in a fortnight. Yes. If you could at least visit Romania – they have more bears than anyone else, you know – size up the habitat ideals, and hit Finland and France to find out about their experiences with bear range expansion…’ The professor reached for her notebook and scribbled names down in it. ‘My secretary will give you contact details, and do travel arrangements if that would help. Make sure you mention me, the panel, all that. Yes? And if you could sketch out a methodology for site identification by, say, next Monday?’

  Callis wondered how forced her smile looked. ‘I’ll do my best,’ she said.

  ‘Excellent. Look, I’d better eat with the minister. Good to have you on the team.’ She pumped her arm, sighted her next target and was off.

  Callis had two weeks to visit Finland, France and Romania. The names she was given by Anja were in obscure corners of each country: Kuhmo on the Russian border with Finland; Evian on Lake Geneva in the French Alps; and Brasov, in the Carpathian mountains, Transylvania. If she had three months, it would have been an adventure, three weeks might have been fun. Two was a logistical nightmare.

  She perched on a chair in Anja’s office, scanning travel websites on her phone. ‘I suppose flying’s out of the question?’

  ‘Callis, what’s it going to look like?’ the professor said. ‘Government climate change advisor flies to Romania on bear research. I don’t think so. We have to be squeaky clean, I’m
afraid. Ask one of the office staff to book you on a train.’

  They tried every route they could think of but couldn’t fit all three into a fortnight, so Callis dropped the French trip. She headed back home to Trondheim on the night train, knowing she would have barely thirty-six hours to persuade Yuri that her role on the Bear Panel was a credible interpretation of her job description and to get leave to devote the next three months to choosing the bears’ reintroduction site.

  The next morning, she went straight from the train to her office at the Institute. She was ploughing her way through unanswered mail when Yuri knocked on the door and entered without waiting for an answer. He looked pink-cheeked and flustered. He asked her how the meeting had been.

  ‘Fascinating,’ she said.

  He raised his eyes.

  ‘I need to go to Romania and Finland to find out about bear habitat.’

  ‘I will not stop you taking leave.’ He sat on the arm of the chair nearest to the door.

  ‘Can this role not be considered part of my job here?’

  ‘Of course not. You are hired as palaeobiologist, not wildlife tourist.’ The tone of his voice was light, as if he might be joking, but his eyes were steel.

  ‘Oh.’ Callis wondered how to crack open this statement, wishing she had asked a less direct question. ‘I’ll be going tomorrow. For two weeks. I guess I’ll take it as leave, then.’

  ‘Will you have dinner tonight?’

  She looked at him. He had a fake look of nonchalance, but under it she sensed something else. What was it? A kind of longing? Was he hoping their drunken fling might be repeated?

  ‘I’ve got to pack for tomorrow and sort out all this!’ She pointed at the mountain on her desk. ‘I’ve the same at home.’

  ‘So I bring you something and we eat at your house. You must eat.’

  She relented and he grinned. Callis felt as if she was sitting on an Aberdeenshire beach, sun on one side, cold breeze on the other.

  ‘Give Maria any work she can do. She is happy to help,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks, Yuri. See you at eight.’

  After tackling the urgent work, she wasted an hour on Fem-Comm, where Diana had posted an animated polar bear, ‘to watch over you’. It was wearing a T-shirt with ‘Independence’ on it, chanting ‘Freedom, freedom’. Callis silenced it, deleted its shirt, and gave it a heart-shaped balloon saying ‘Love’. Within minutes Diana had posted her another Independence Bear, but this time it was saying ‘Fe-Phi-Pho Freedom’. Callis silenced it and stripped its T-shirt, but this time gave it a white dove cooing ‘peace’. Diana turned it straight back into the Independence Bear, now stamping its feet in time with the chant. Callis sighed, gave up, and went home.

  Yuri arrived at her flat wearing pointy shoes and jeans, a woollen sweater and a crisp collar, failing to look casual. She handed him a bottle of beer and he sat watching her sorting her mail. Shortly after he arrived a delivery man knocked at the door with rice, curries, samosas and popadoms.

  She had called Karl and Michel, not wanting to face Yuri alone for the whole evening, and they arrived with a crate of chilled Kingfisher. Yuri kept the food warm while Callis got herself organised. Then she sat down and filled them in on the previous day, winding Karl and Michel up into glee at the reality of having to choose a site for the bears’ return. They tucked into their curries with gusto, clinking beer bottles for the return of the bears. Yuri was quiet.

  ‘It sounds like something is really going to happen,’ Karl said.

  Callis nodded. ‘There’s definitely political will. But the crunch will be after the recess when the Environment Committee looks at the detail. There are lots of people out there who think it’s a crazy thing to do. It’ll be a fight between Grizzly and Teddy.’

  ‘Let’s hope Teddy wins,’ said Michel.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Yuri looked at him, shaking his head.

  Michel started explaining as if Yuri hadn’t understood the words. ‘The farmers’ argument is that bears are grizzly, big, scary and fierce, and the conservationists want to remind us of how much we love teddy bears.’

  ‘Will the bears eat your children or cuddle them?’ Karl said.

  ‘Exactly. Do we love them or fear them most?’

  Yuri gave Michel a withering look. ‘There’s a long way between love and fear.’ He emptied his bottle and got up to get another from the fridge. ‘Don’t you think, Callis? Anyone want more beer?’

  ‘Why not.’ Callis left the first question unanswered.

  After beers and eating, they did the Russian thing and started working on a vodka bottle. Yuri’s toasts became more personal, his banter more suggestive. Eventually Karl hauled Michel to his feet and they made a boisterous exit.

  Yuri caught Callis as their wave of hilarity receded, kissing her full on the mouth in the hallway.

  She pushed him away hard. ‘No,’ she said. She remembered the night they had spent together. She had kissed him, touched him and felt nothing but the rub of flesh on flesh, the heat of mere friction. Scrape against him as she might, no flames kindled at all, not even a spark.

  He tried to put his arm around her and she heard herself saying, in a voice more confident than she was used to, ‘Yuri, I need to make it clear that night was a one-off.’

  ‘Oh.’ He looked at his feet, then at a point just above her head. There was a long silence, during which he seemed to turn to bronze.

  Callis thought of Diana. This was how it was done in Fe-Phi-Pho: direct and to the point. She felt hollow inside. Now she had to deal with the job issue. It wasn’t a good moment, but there was no time. ‘About this bear panel...’ she began.

  ‘No, not about it. Nothing about it. I do not agree. Am I clear?’

  ‘But...’

  ‘No but.’

  ‘My job description says only that I need to do research on vegetation dynamics. Which is what I am doing for the panel. And it will be good for the Institute.’

  He switched his gaze to the cupboard to the right of her head. ‘In my country we learn difference between vegetation and animals quite young.’ He pronounced vegetation as if with a double ‘g’. ‘I see education in your country is defective. Bears are not veggetation.’

  Callis stared at him hard, wondering what he was thinking, sensing his anger and feeling a twinge of fear.

  Suddenly he met her gaze, and smiled. ‘Callis. Don’t make this mistake. We have new pollen from Finnmark, it is important development on climate change impacts. You are needed here for our analysis work.’

  ‘I can still help with it. The technicians know what to do and I’m not going to be vanishing off the earth, I just need some time for the panel.’

  His smile remained but seemed to thin. ‘It is not only time. What about commitment? Focus?’

  He reached towards her but she stepped aside. ‘You should go. I need to get my head together before the train, make sure I’ve got everything,’ she said. He offered to take her to the station to see her off, but she refused.

  Sighing relief as she shut the door behind him, she leaned her back against it and shook her head. She wondered if she should feel guilty, but didn’t. More than anything she felt like chuckling. No regrets. For once in her life, she was clear about what she did not want. Once was quite enough, thank you, just like it should be, according to Fe-Phi-Pho. And as for the job, the more he pushed her, the more certain she became.

  The journey to Romania began with the night-train to Oslo, then a twenty-hour ferry trip to Kiel followed by two more days and nights on the train. The bear committee budget stretched to a first class berth so Callis had peace to sketch out some ideas about a methodology for site identification. Fortunately communications were good for most of the journey, and she discovered that the government’s entire data library was available to her with no access constraints. She spent half the trip downloading data layers and brushing up on her geographical information system skills, wishing she had spent some time to spend face-to-face with
the geeks in Oslo before she had left. Still, they seemed to be able to perform miracles via cyberspace.

  Her plan took shape. The basic methodology would be to decide where the bears would like to live, then rule out where people wouldn’t like the bears. Hopefully there would be somewhere left, to focus in on other factors like climate robustness, ecosystem integrity and landscape connectivity; the hard stuff that might make all the difference for their long-term survival. The challenge for the next fortnight was to come up with the six priority habitat attributes for the bears. After that she would crunch the maps and look at geopolitical constraints.

  Brasov was a shock after Oslo. Callis felt as if she’d gone back in time as she got off the train into the crumbling concrete station, and swayed like a mariner on solid earth after seventy-two hours of constant motion on the rails.

  She was met by Valentina, a bleached blonde who shook her hand firmly, welcomed her in strongly accented English, and whisked her to a parked car with shaded windows. They sped out of town, Valentina gesticulating ambiguously at landmarks as they hurtled by. Callis felt vertiginous and exhausted.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked, as Valentina swerved to avoid an oncoming log truck while overtaking a bus.

  ‘You go to hunter cabin. You want to see bears?’ She sounded impatient.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. And I need to meet with Petr Scazia.’ She had vaguely recognised this name when Anja had recommended him, and wondered, not for the first time, if it was him she had heard on the radio talking about the shooting of the bear the morning after her mother died.