‘My favourite researcher,’ he said, getting to his feet.
I stayed by the door. ‘Hi Yuri. My dad says thanks very much for the football sponsorship. I don’t know if you knew it was him, but the Moray Juniors are very chuffed with the new kit from UPP. I didn’t know you were on their board.’
He put his hand on his hip and waved a hand. ‘It is pleasure to be generous with someone else’s money!’ he laughed.
I wondered how false my grin looked. ‘Actually the reason I’m here is I’ve been asked to spend the next three months working full time on the bear project. We had a meeting with the minister yesterday and they want me to lead the release-site identification.’
‘Well, you’ll just have to say no.’ His desk was a barricade, behind which he refused to hear of me spending so much as a day more on the bear issue. He spread his hand flat on the file in front of him. ‘When politics and science mix, politics win always. You tell Professor Eldegard no, and you tell her I said so. It is anti-science.’
I stood gripping the door handle behind me. ‘I need to do this work.’
He shook his head.
‘It is science,’ I said. ‘It’s the best kind. It’s actually going to make a real difference in the world. I’ve never had that chance before.’
He looked away, as if not listening.
‘I think Professor Bergen will support me.’ I didn’t know where that came from.
He turned his head, slowly, but there was curiosity in his eyes, and a black glint of suspicion. ‘I doubt it. Don’t make a stupid mistake,’ he said. ‘You have a good career. Don’t throw it away.’
‘I’m not,’ I yanked open the door. ‘Thank you for nothing,’ I muttered.
I pulled the door closed behind me and took a deep breath, then stalked up the corridor to the Institute Head Office. I told the secretary, ‘I need to talk to Professor Bergen’.
‘She’s away until next Thursday. At a conference in Alaska, then at a wedding in Oslo. You could try a message?’
I nodded. ‘I’ll do that. Thanks’.
I went to my office and began working my way through my inbox, most of which I seemed to find easy to toss into the recycling bin. Unlike Yuri’s, my office was stacked with piles, no, heaps of papers relevant to the various projects I was working on, plus a few that were the result of simply emptying out my inbox on to the floor to make way for the latest influx of post. You would think I was trying to make myself believe my work was important through the sheer volume of dead trees I could amass about it. Diana would have had a fit if she saw it, I thought. And really, what was there in all of this that mattered to me as much as being on the bear panel?
Thinking of Diana led me to reflect on Frances. I thought of phoning her. Then I realised that Stig was likely to understand my dilemma better. I called him and explained the situation.
‘I can’t advise you,’ he said, rational and cautious as ever, ‘but it sounds like a brilliant thing to be involved in. Can’t you get the Oslo professor to talk your boss into it?’
This was a useful reminder. Anja had promised she could try to talk to Yuri if he was proving difficult.
‘Thanks, Stig. You’re a star.’
‘I’ve done nothing,’ he said. ‘When’ll you be in Scotland? Gi’ us a call and I’ll take you to see my lynx.’
‘Serious? That’s brilliant. Not for a few weeks, if I take this on. I’ll have to go to all the potential release sites. But I’m going to have to get back to see my dad sometime. He’s worrying me. And he’s in cahoots with my boss, and that’s worrying me even more.’
‘I got your message about the feasibility study. Let me know if it comes off, you can count me in.’
‘So you reckon someone at your research institute might be interested in collaborating? That’s magic.’
‘Aye, like I said, I’m up for it and my prof loves anything with money attached. Get yourself to Scotland and I’ll set up a meeting.’
I fired up the computer on my desk and uploaded the maps from my phone, then started plotting a route around the trial sites. I would do the work anyway, even if that meant defying Yuri.
I couldn’t get back to Scotland for the next few weeks, as I tore around Norway sizing up the sites my analysis had picked out. Most were suitable, a couple really captured my imagination, but I didn’t have long enough to really appreciate them. I vowed to go back if I could.
Anja turned out to have contacts in every region and made introductions by phone wherever I went. She said she had put the concept of the joint European study to some people and was getting a good response. There was a feeling that we should involve people from areas with high densities of bears as well, she said, and did I think Petr Scazia might take part? I agreed to contact him, and Anja promised to try to bring Yuri round to the idea of me being on the bear panel while I was away travelling, though I didn’t fancy her chances much.
A high mountainous region near Røros, remote and beautiful, stood out as the preferred site from an ecological point of view. Most of the area was owned by a co-op of farmers, so in mid-June I arranged to meet their board of directors.
I found myself seated on one side of a boardroom table faced by four substantial men, bristling with hostility. A glass of water was placed before me, as if to indicate the level of hospitality I merited.
The chairman, who was the biggest of the four and had the largest moustache, skipped any kind of welcome. ‘We will make it clear and simple,’ he said. ‘Any import of bears to here is completely impossible and we will use our right to protect our livestock and shoot any bear on sight. We have written to the minister to make this clear already and we intend to complain in the strongest possible terms. It is outrageous that we are being singled out like this.’
I slipped my hands off the table on to my legs. ‘I’m sorry. There is no intention to single you out. This is just one of twelve sites where I am exploring the ecological suitability for bears.’ I felt from some of the looks I was getting that some members of the board could well mistake me for a bear, and deal with me accordingly.
‘This is not a site. This is our home. It’s where we farm, and it is obvious to us that ecologically, and in every other way, bears and farms do not mix. They are completely incompatible. A first grade school kid could tell you that. Bears eat sheep. They are predators. What kind of ecological suitability is that?’
‘I am sure the minister will listen to you.’
‘But are you listening? No one is listening. The fact that you turn up here with your ecological nonsense means no one is listening. The newspapers are full of lies about farmers.’ The chairman’s fury met with nods from his colleagues. He was clearly referring to the boycott of the Svenson’s meat chain that had gained huge popular support as a way of protesting about the death of the bear.
I tried to think of a suitable platitude and wished I could be anywhere else.
‘We will fight this all the way. You go back and tell your minister that.’
I retreated as soon as I could. From my hotel room I called Anja in Oslo to tell her what had happened.
‘You’ll get a better reception in some of the other sites,’ she said. ‘Don’t take it personally. You’re an easy target but it’s not you they’re angry about.’
I tried to thicken my skin and carry on. I spent most days either on trains, on the road, or, where possible, walking in the chosen regions, trying to get a feel for the ecology, the potential for bears, and avoiding meetings with potentially aggressive landowners.
Just north of my preferred option, in the Blåfjella-Skjækerfjella national park, an enthusiastic ranger walked me out to some promising caves. I assured him the site would be considered, and that evening I wrote a postcard to Petr:
Spent the day looking at rock shelters. Next winter maybe a bear will be sleeping here. Thanks for all you showed me last month. I learned more about bears than I would have believed possible in 3 days! We’re planning a study of good habit
ats for bears, across Europe. Would you like to join in? I’ll email details. Ciao, Callis.
At one of the sites in the far north I met Brigid Aikio, a representative of the local Sámi organisation. She collected me from the bus station in an old Mercedes Benz and drove me out into an open land of swamps with barely any tree cover. She stopped the car at a rise with a view of low hills, on which she pointed out some distant dots: reindeer, belonging to her family.
We strolled over to a bench and sat in the sunshine. I asked about bears, and Brigid told me they had been there within her lifetime. ‘Bears here were very strong until pseudorabies came.’
‘Is that what others are calling Aujeszky’s disease?’ I asked.
‘Yes, it wiped them out. It is a tragedy. We are very sorry. We have many legends about the bears. I am a descendent of the bear, you know.’ She looked at me with a shy smile. ‘Shall I tell you?’
‘Oh, please.’
Brigid linked her hands together in her lap, and began. ‘My grandmother’s grandmother, or possibly her grandmother, was walking in the forest after she had been fruitpicking. We don’t know her name now so let’s call her Brigid, like me.’
I looked the Sámi woman up and down as she spoke. She was small, white-haired and tan-skinned and wore a checked shirt, leather jacket and rubber boots. Her voice was soft and lilting and reminded me of the way my mother used to tell fairy stories to me when I was little.
She continued, ‘Strolling along, Brigid tripped on a root and spilled her berries. A handsome hunter appeared from among the trees and helped her to refill her basket. He invited her to come with him to his house, and she was curious, so she followed him. He lived in what looked like just a simple shelter under a cliff, but once she was inside she saw that it was really a huge network of caverns and corridors under the earth. There were many other people arriving and all came wearing fur coats, which they hung up as soon as they entered. They were all very friendly to her.
‘She loved it there and she stayed for the whole winter, agreeing to become the wife of the hunter. In the spring she was pregnant by him and she was very happy. But then she noticed that the people were starting to leave, putting on their fur coats and going back out into the world above ground. Without a fur coat, she wasn’t able to leave. She was a prisoner.
‘At first she was furious, but when she gave birth to two sons she was so delighted by them and they kept her so busy she did not have time to be angry any more. Her husband brought her good food and in the autumn all of the people came back into the underground place and it was once again full of life and fun. This went on for some years, and she grew used to the lonely summers and joyful winters.
‘Eventually, by peering out of the door, Brigid discovered that these people she had been living with, when they went out into the world she came from, were bears, and she deduced that her husband must be a bear, too. What then were her sons? One summer she was so lonely she decided to escape, and so when her husband went out seeking food she tricked him by only pretending to close the door behind him. He had grown trustful of her and didn’t check. When he had gone, she opened the door and ran away, back to her village, taking her sons with her. They grew up to be great hunters, just like the bears.’
‘And one of them was your great-great-great-whatever grandfather?’ I swatted at a mosquito.
‘That’s what I was told!’ She scratched her head. ‘Come on, they’re biting. I’ll show you some more of our beautiful bogs.’
As we drove, we talked about the various compensation schemes for livestock hunted by bears in Russia, Romania, Sweden and some other countries, and Brigid explained how she thought such a system should work for reindeer. I promised I would raise the issue with the rest of the team, but I wasn’t optimistic such an area would be the chosen site.
‘Bears sometimes wander over the border from Finland or Sweden,’ Brigid said.
‘And what happens to them then?’
‘The last few have all been shot. The fear of pseudorabies is very strong.’
‘Is it also fear of them killing the reindeer?’
‘Not so much, I don’t think so, though there are some people who say why should we pay with our reindeer to feed bears. But even when they are shot deliberately, the animal is treated with respect, its eyes closed, a blessing spoken, that sort of thing. The story I told you, it’s one of many. The bear is a good guy in Sámi culture.’
‘So is there a chance they could be allowed to live if, say, they were vaccinated?’
‘Yes, possible,’ she said, ‘though there are some people who will defend their right to hunt to the very last, and remember there are many people in our community who are not Sámi or who don’t believe the legends any more. Some people, even Sámi people, would not mind if there is total decimation of the species.’
‘That’s depressing.’
‘Not everyone is like that.’ The car pulled up back at the bus station. ‘It was nice to talk with you. Good luck with your project.’
I failed to spend even one night in my own house. I had exchanged numerous messages with Karl and Michel while I had been travelling and wanted to spend an evening with them, but in the end I arrived back in Trondheim on the day of my ferry booking to Scotland. I stopped in to pick up mail and swap dirty laundry for clean clothes. It felt like someone else’s home.
It was a glorious day and I had spent so much time on trains, I decided I deserved some fresh air. Once out of the house I found myself drawn to the waterfall in the forest.
It was as delicate as macramé. The last time I had been here it had roared with meltwater. This trickle was a gentle surprise, its rhythms mesmerising. I stopped and watched it whorl and spatter, the rocks gleaming black as ink. The pool, overhung with rowan blossom, was tantalising. As my breath slowed, I edged towards it. I don’t know how long I stood there in that leafy window of warm sunshine, listening to the splashing song of the fall.
On a sudden whim, I stripped off my clothes, piling them in a heap on my jacket among the woodland flowers. Stepping on to the black slimy stones to stand under the water shower, breathless, I shrieked, then let the cold batter my face into a smile. It was enough. I was out again, and back in the sunshine. It felt glorious.
I dried myself with my shirt, regained the respectability of dress, then strolled back down the slope with a glitter in my eye. The world shone back.
There was only time for a quick dash to the office, where I ploughed through the mountain of mail that had accumulated in my absence. I hoped to avoid Yuri. When there was a knock on my door, I took a deep breath. It was his secretary, Maria.
‘Callis, it is good to see you. You are very absent recently.’ She frowned disapproval at the heaps on my desk.
‘I can’t believe what’s happened to my life. This job. It’s incredible. You won’t believe where I’ve been.’
‘I’ve heard a couple of things,’ she said. ‘How long are you back now?’
‘I’m not. I’m off on the ferry tonight to see my dad in Scotland. He’s not well. And I’ve to see if I can persuade the Scots to join in our project and look at bear reintroduction.’
‘Is that right? I am sorry about your father.’
‘What? Oh thanks. Nothing serious, he says, but I’m not so sure. Anyway, yes, we’re planning a joint project looking at using our methodology in other countries. The funders sound interested, but we need partners.’
‘Well, if you have time,’ Maria leaned forwards as if not wanting to be contaminated by the clutter, ‘you might like to attend to this.’ She handed me a brown envelope, turned on her heel and closed the door smartly behind her.
I looked at the missive. It wasn’t exactly smoking, but Maria’s manner left me in no doubt that it did not contain good news. It would have to wait, I decided, until later. I stuffed it in my bag with various other things I would need to attend to, and set off to the ferry terminal.
I opened the letter in the new departure lounge. I
t was from Professor Bergen.
Dear Dr MacArthur
I am writing to notify you that a formal grievance has been made concerning yourself by another member of staff of the Institute. In accordance with Norwegian law and Institute policy, a full investigation of the matter of the grievance must be undertaken. As part of this investigation you are entitled to an impartial hearing. I would therefore be grateful if you would contact me as soon as possible to arrange a suitable time for such a hearing. You are entitled to bring a legal representative.
Yours sincerely
Professor L Bergen
There was also a handwritten note.
Dear Callis,
It would be useful, I think, if prior to the formal hearing we could have a chat – informal and preliminary – about the allegations that have been made about you. Please could you drop into my office as soon as you can? I understand that your government work is keeping you away from the Institute a great deal, but I should like a brisk resolution of this matter.
Yours
Liza
I read both sheets of paper three times, then folded them back into the envelope, feeling my temperature rise, blood racing. It was Yuri. It had to be. What was he up to?
I found a quiet corner away from most of the throng of travellers, and called Professor Bergen’s direct line, not really expecting an answer at this time of day.
‘Liza Bergen.’ The voice was weary.
‘Professor Bergen, it’s Callis MacArthur.’ Despite the note, I couldn’t quite bring myself to call her Liza. The matriarch of the Institute might like to think of herself as an approachable woman, but she was still a distant authority figure to me.
‘Callis, thanks for calling. Are you in the building?’
‘No, I’m at the ferry terminal, on my way to Scotland. I’ve just opened your letter…’
‘Oh, that’s a shame. I was hoping we could have a quiet chat, in person, you know.’
Bear Witness Page 14
