Interview with a Bear

by Elizabeth Loudon

Marc-Olivier Jodoin

We recommend arriving well in advance of your appointed hour, for you will need time to accustom yourself to the smell. The bear does not know that he smells, nor can he help it, but the reek of the shaded forest where he made his small fortune digging up the remains of bishops and kings from old mud is a shock, you will not be able to disguise your expression of disgust, you will lift your hand to cover your mouth and it is best that the bear not see this. Also we remind you that during the interview the bear may fail to ask the questions for which you’ve prepared your answers, he may merely roar, stiff and huge with memories of killings on piney paths, for the bear has led a grand and boisterous life and has witnessed many like you, timid and fragile at his door, hoping to be the chosen one who will tell him his food is spread upon the table, but nonetheless rehearse your answers out loud as you pace around your miserable small rooms with their tallow candles and dead flies along the window frame, rehearse with your whole heart for the bear might pick a question from a tangle of fur, and do not be afraid, and if you’re afraid do not show your fear, many have come before you and will come after when you’re but a rag fluttering on a mountain pass, and if you hide your fear the bear may believe for a moment that he loves you and you will feel this love, inordinate and wild, a great warmth beyond all names, be ready to receive it with graceful composure, and then he will send you away with a cold gesture as if dismissing a waiter with a dish he did not order, and you must leave without protestation, there are no locks on the doors and nobody waiting to show you out, do not look back, don’t ask if somebody will let you know how well you did. You did do well.

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Elizabeth Loudon is a fiction writer and poet, with work published in the Gettysburg Review, INTRO, Denver Quarterly, North American Review, and South Florida Poetry Journal, among others. Her debut novel, about an Anglo-Iraqi family in mid-twentieth century Baghdad, will be published in spring 2023 by a university press (announcement forthcoming). Loudon has an MA in English from Cambridge University and an MFA in Fiction from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and has taught English at Amherst, Smith, and Williams Colleges. She worked for many years as a campaign strategist, writer, and teacher for NGOs and universities on both sides of the Atlantic. She now divides her time between London and Gloucestershire in the UK.