At first I thought that to be a vegetarian in a country where many people could not afford to eat meat — where such a diet was not a matter of taste or choice — was an extraordinary, enlightened decision. You have to be really high-minded and spiritually oriented. Because vegetarianism is more than a diet — for example, as when an ill person is prescribed vegetarian food. It is also more than a taste preference, like when you do not enjoy the taste of meat. It is an ideology, and it fit well with her other ideologies. But apparently I was wrong. Long after Lyudmila was gone I understood how easy it had been for her to be a vegetarian. She defended the rights of other living beings, mostly mammals, because animals are like people; they feel pain, they feel fear. Therefore, she appeared more human herself. On the other hand, she did nothing to change their conditions. Her activity in our favor was restricted to just that — not eating meat. And hoping that one day everybody would come to the conclusion that it is not moral to feed on creatures that endure as much pain as humans do.
I naively imagined how, for example, she could have given the order to ban the capture and torture of wild bears. Or, for that matter, to let people travel abroad and then decide for themselves what beauty and light and harmony are. But this would have required much more from her than grand words. It would have also been more dangerous to deal with human than with animal rights. At the time, human life was seldom perceived in its single form; it was usually seen as only a mass, a crowd. Our princess fled to the safe sphere of the spirit and light. When she spoke, it was in the lofty language of symbols and poetic metaphors. There was no real change; there could not be any. In the end, even if her intentions were good, our life went on without change. Freedom — be it for animals or for humans — was not her priority. How could it be? She had little or no contact with real life, with real underdogs and underbears. She simply did not see us as being enslaved. The simple truth was that socialist leaders could not care for us animals because they did not care for people either. We were all the same to them.
As far as my life was concerned, darkness fell upon it, too. And so it remained until a year ago, when activists from the Free Bears Now! organization come to rescue me from Angel. They saw that fatal TV footage of me dancing in Sofia and tracked us down. Apparently, I was one of the last dancing bears in the Balkans to be saved. Now I see that it was about time for my rescue, because I am old, exhausted, and in pain.
Anyway, at first I did not want to leave Angel for a better (but unknown) life in a resort. So when two activists visited us, both Angel and I tried to reason with them. Angel swore on his life that I am to him like his own child, that he feeds me the very food he eats. Of course, he was exaggerating. He fed me mostly stale bread and leftovers from their disgusting, unhealthy, sometimes carnivorous meals. He even shed a tear or two for me. Angel could shed tears whenever; I never understood this ability of people and how tears could be taken seriously as an argument among their kind. I, on the other hand, tried to verify his story in a way these young people might perhaps understand, so I displayed my figure and fur and bared my poor teeth as proof. But the iron ring in my nose, and the fact that Angel kept me chained to a mulberry tree in front of his shack, spoke strongly against him. In the end, the older of the two, a serious, businesslike young man, gave Angel an offer he could not refuse: a lump sum of money as compensation. He actually was not in a position to argue, because dancing bears had become outlawed, anyway. Plus, Angel badly needed to repair his roof. Even though Gypsy Roma people are famous for their disregard of the law, my transfer was duly arranged. I was not asked for an opinion, of course. Democracy yes, but not for bears!
Ah, the wheel of fortune — or, perhaps, the wheel of history? — turns in unpredictable ways.
Before they left, and while Angel was signing the papers for my release, the young activist said, “We especially care about these poor beasts because they symbolize the Bulgarian people, whom Todor Zhivkov kept chained!” Well, he couldn’t resist an ideological statement, could he? I guess he meant that people under Zhivkov did what he wanted and never rebelled against him. True, very true! The other side of this picture was, however, reflected in Angel’s case, where the socialist government provided the basic (bare) necessities for them. Most people, not only this Gypsy Roma, valued that. I know it from my own experience: however meager the provisions you get, if you get them regularly, they make you feel safe. Before, it was a simple trade-off: One traded one’s freedom for security. After all, what is freedom without anything to eat? I must add that my friend Evelina strongly disagreed with me. She repeatedly shook her head, exclaiming that never, ever would she trade freedom for anything. But saying “never” in such an adamant way is so typical of young people, simply because they have no idea what they are talking about.
Was I truly rescued as a symbol of a society? Then and there, I understood that it is hard for past and present to meet. The bear-rescuing mission was some kind of a new dogma for these youngsters. While people are left to struggle for survival in the jungle of the market economy, it is the turn of the animals to be taken care of and sheltered. A new, free generation just assumes that in a democracy people should take care of themselves.
Seriously speaking, it was not easy to leave the old man, his people, and his village. “You obviously repressed the fact that he was actually your torturer. You developed a Pavlovian reflex,ʺ said Evelina. She learned about that at school, I guess.
“This is why even today you start dancing whenever you hear the godoulka or any other kind of music playing.” She was talking about a recent event when she had brought her iPod and let me listen to some rock music. I started to dance with the iPod in my paw and the headset on. It was grotesque, I know, but the urge to dance was stronger than my will to resist it. She was saddened by this episode, and so was I. Indeed, I think that she might be right. A hot-metal training plate had been installed in my brain forever. This might be the reason why I don’t think that I can fully understand and appreciate the new freedom I enjoy. Besides, every freedom has its limits. But I am an old bear; there is no salvation for old bears trained to dance even when no one is yanking their chain.
As if that diagnosis were not enough, Evelina concluded that I had probably developed the “Stockholm syndrome” as well. This is when a victim identifies with his captor, and even feels grateful to him. The young man from Free Bears Now! was definitely right. In that respect, I surely represent the Bulgarian people from the time of socialism. Except, perhaps, for the Gypsy Roma people, who never really fit into that system. They were indifferent to the government ideology, they just got used it — and I respect them for that. By the way, I noticed that Angel and his family have not been saved by anyone so far. There are not many — in any case, not enough — special organizations I know of that protect the rights of Gypsies Roma, even if they are the most discriminated against minority in Europe today. Unlike us, they are humans, and they are supposed to integrate into the society. But as Angel once said to me, “What if I don’t want to integrate? What if we want to go on and live the way our people have lived for thousands of years? Who is going to protect our right to live as we want?” Today, when I know more about the outside world, I could tell him: not many. You have to protect your rights yourself, because you Gypsy Roma, it seems to me, are a kind of modern-day wild bear. And the hunt is on.