The Bishop, the Gypsy and the Dancing Bear

In fact, The Bishop, the Gypsy and the Dancing Bear is not a story about bears at all, but a story about mankind.  It is a story about borders, migration and freedom.  No doubt, there are now many novels about the concepts of refuge and asylum, but this novel casts the reader into the future, a future left trammelled by the passage of xenophobia and exclusion.  It is a parable, of sorts, not only relevant in this country (thinly disguised as the country of Incognita), but to the developed world at large.  It considers the biggest questions and insecurities of our age, one of the most poignant being this one:  When we exclude the outsider, are we, in fact, imprisoning and impoverishing ourselves? 

 

Philomena van Rijswijk is a Tasmanian novelist, poet and writer of short stories.  She has been compared to both Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Ursula le Guin.  Her most recent novel, The World as a Clockface, was published by Penguin Books Australia in 2001.

The Bishop, the Gypsy and the Dancing Bear

“Reminiscing over his breakfast of grapefruit, the bishop found it almost impossible to believe that he remembered such a strange phenomenon as a gypsy boy and a dancing bear.  […]Surely, that was not in his lifetime?

It was, perhaps, in another century, was it not? the poor old bishop worried.  Was it in a dream that the boy bear-trainer had leaned toward him and whispered: His name is Veshengo.  It means man of the forest.  He is the last of the wild bears.”