A week later, Graham stood at the bedroom closet, putting clothes into a small suitcase. He was going to spend the weekend at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, one of the oldest academic libraries in the world, further researching the American storyteller. As he packed, Julie, his wife, leafed through the book he’d found at the market.
“What’s so interesting about this story, Graham?”
“It’s a useful academic investigation, to find out when the story was inserted into the historical records.”
“So you don’t believe it’s true?” she asked.
Graham laid a neatly ironed blue shirt atop the suitcase and looked at Julie.
“Do I believe there was somebody claiming to be from a country that didn’t exist for another seventy years? No. Obviously it’s not a true story, but by tracing references to this guy back through the history books, we can see when this story was invented and by whom. It can help us to discredit certain historians or sources. Usually, there’s some truth to these stories and then, like any game of Chinese whispers, the version that emerges a few hundred years later bears little resemblance to the kernel of truth that it originated as.”
Julie had switched her attention back to the book and was looking through the small collection of paintings and line drawings that made up the central section of the book.
“I don’t understand how people could watch a bear dancing and be entertained by it. Look at this next picture too,” she said, pointing to a different sketch. “Just a man dancing on nothing more than a wooden crate and there are hundred of people watching him. Having the time of their lives, they are! Makes no sense to me whatsoever.”
“Julie, it was a different age. The vast majority of these uneducated people were still living hard lives. These shows would roll into villages throughout the summer months and watching somebody dancing on a wooden crate was about as good as it got. Until the bear came on, of course.”