Belka, Why Don't You Bark? (10 page)

You didn’t yet understand what that meant. But you acknowledged him, just as he did
you. And so you became his pet. You felt no hesitation about being a pet. It was only
natural: your nest belonged to him.

You slid along the iron rails. Traversed the continent without ever leaving home.

Heading south.

The man who claimed ownership of the train belonged to the transport underworld: he
ran a smuggling operation, bribing conductors and overseeing a vast network of migrant
laborers. He shipped goods brought in from across the continent south of the border.
The operation was much larger than he could have managed on his own. He had a sponsor:
a prominent Mexican-American who lived in Texas. His family had been living on the
same land since before the Mexican-American War; they were Catholics, and they ran
an orchard of orange and lemon trees, the product of sophisticated irrigation techniques.
The orchard was harvested by gringo laborers the man in the train provided, and by
illegal workers brought up over the border from Mexico. Since at the time United States
law didn’t prohibit the employment of illegal immigrants, the Texan had no need to
conceal what he was doing, hiring men and women who would have been his compatriots
in the last century—until the 1840s, at any rate. The illegality lay, not in employing
the immigrants, but in “shipping” them into the country in the first place, and this
task was left to the man in the train. That was how he had developed his underworld
transport network.

The man hadn’t been lying: the train was
his
. Usually, it carried products destined to be sold. Sometimes it carried people. Even
now, the other cars in the train were full. Only this boxcar was different: there
was nothing here but a family of dogs, lying in the corner.

On October 26, the nest stopped moving. The man, Sumer, and the puppies were close
to the border now. Listen here, the man said to Sumer. I’m going to see you live a
good life, okay? You’re not like other dogs, you’re smart—I can see that. So here’s
what I’m going to do. You listening? I’m going to give you to the Don and you’ll be
his guard dog, watch his orchard. The puppies too, of course. You’ll do a good job,
right? You can do it? You do that, and he’ll be grateful to me, see, and that’ll be
your repayment. You can do that, right?

You won’t let me down, will you?

When the man, Sumer, and the seven puppies descended from the nest at the station,
the Don’s men were waiting, rifles in their hands. And after that, Sumer, you took
your children and went to work at the orchard. You understood what was being asked
of you. You spent a day on the orchard, a second day, a third day, and gradually you
got used to it. A fourth day, a fifth day, a sixth day. Your children were growing.
They were doing fine. All seven survived to the end of their second month.

November. November 1957.

Horses whinnied. Frogs croaked. Roosters crowed in the mornings. A dozen ducks swam
in the pond in the mansion’s courtyard. There were times when the orchard misted over,
and you were struck by its beauty. Your children too, with the high concentration
of northern blood in their veins, loved these moments.
THE MIST IS GOOD
, they thought.
COOL AND GOOD
.

The beauty of an orchard in November.

In 1957—a year that would go down in the history of a race of dogs that first came
into being here, on this earth, more than ten thousand years ago.

It was night. There was a television in the Don’s mansion, and the whole family was
inside staring at its screen. They were in the living room, gasping in wonder. In
awe, in disbelief. The servants were in the garden, gazing up at the sky. Their expressions
focused, intent, as if they were hoping, somewhere up there, to find the truth. Is
that it? No, no. How about that, over there? Hey, we’re not looking for a falling
star, okay?

And you, Sumer, and your children—you felt it.

A kind of buzzing in your hearts that made you lift your heads to the clear, starry
sky.

A man-made satellite flew overhead. It took about 103 minutes for it to orbit the
earth. The previous month, the Soviet Union had beaten America in the Space Race.
The Soviet Union, having poured astonishing amounts of money into the program, had
succeeded in launching into orbit the very first man-made satellite: Sputnik 1. Now,
less than a month later, in an effort to demonstrate the overwhelming superiority
of Communism to the entire world, it had done something even more extraordinary. Sputnik
2 had been outfitted with an airtight chamber, and a living creature had been loaded
inside. The first Earthling to experience space flight. The creature was not human.
It was a dog. A bitch.

The airtight chamber had a window.

The bitch looked down at the earth.

She was a Russian laika. In the initial reports of her flight, conflicting information
was given regarding her name. She was said to be named Damka, Limonchik, and Kudryavka,
but within a few days Laika had stuck. She was Laika, the laika. Laika the space dog.
One of the USSR’s top-secret national projects. A dog.

She orbited the globe, alive.

Gazing out, down, in zero gravity.

You felt her gaze.

You, Sumer, and your children: you felt it. And so, there on the Mexican-American
border, you raised your heads to look up at the sky. You and several thousand others.
On November 3, 1957, all at once, 3,733 descendants of a Hokkaido dog named Kita and
2,928 descendants of a German shepherd named Bad News, scattered across the surface
of the globe, unaware of the lines that separated communist and capitalist spheres,
all those dogs raised their heads to peer into the vastness of the sky.

Who the fucking hell do you think I am?

The girl ponders the question she asks. Age X, stranded between eleven and twelve,
trapped in this fucking cold Stone-Age country, Russia. Fucking dicks, fucking around
with me like this.

Are you planning to keep me hostage forever?

What am I, fucking invisible?

Something had changed, ever since that day when she went out onto the grounds to watch
the old man train the dogs. Somehow, suddenly and inexplicably, the situation had
shifted in that moment when she told the old man to drop dead, and he handed her the
word right back:
Shi-ne.
SHE-neh. She often put on her coat and went outside. She left the building that contained
her little room—her cell, at least in theory—and the kitchen and dining room and other
rooms and went out to wander through the Dead Town. She did this every day. This,
the girl thought, was her job, the daily grind. Until then she had spent the better
part of every day lying on her bed, shouting, cursing, making a show of her rage.
During meals she would hurl imprecations at the Russians who sat around the table
with her, spit her hatred at their faces. No longer. She went out now, all the time.
On her own, of her own free will, she wandered the Dead Town, inspecting it and the
concrete walls that enclosed it. One by one she walked the paved roads that segmented
the expanse of land within the walls. She left footprints in the snow that filled
the potholes. This was her routine, now, and no one objected.

Hey, I’m a fucking hostage, right? You
need
me.

Fucking around with me.

Why don’t you guard me, you dicks? What am I, the invisible girl?

And so she decided to fight back. All right then, she thought. If I’m invisible, let’s
see what it’s like to be invisible. I’ll do the seeing. She began following the other
inhabitants of the Dead Town, observing them at close range. She gave all five of
them names. The old man was “Old Fuck,” of course. The old lady with the glasses who
managed the kitchen was “Old Bag.” Or, alternatively, “Russian Hag.” She came to think
of the two middle-aged women who looked so alike and were always with the Old Bag
as Woman One and Woman Two, because they had no distinguishing characteristics. Soon
these were shortened to WO and WT. The last of the five, the bald middle-aged man,
was Opera. Because he sometimes hummed to himself. He favored old workers’ songs,
revolutionary marches—melodies the girl found unnerving. He could belt them out at
considerable volume.
What the fuck, go to a karaoke place if you want to sing. You creep me out.
So that was his name: Opera.

Old Fuck, Old Bag, WO, WT, and Opera. And me.

These were the residents of the Dead Town.

This was how she catalogued them.

And these were the people she observed.

On some level, she was actively engaging with them. But at the same time, she made
zero effort to communicate—to convey anything at all, feelings or intentions. She
simply put herself in the same spaces and watched their every move. She stared at
the five Russians.

And then there were the dogs.

A few dozen dogs, the
other
residents of this Dead Town unmarked on any map from the time it was built and now
forgotten by history.

There was time in her schedule for observing the dogs.

Every day, she watched the old man train them. Once in the morning, once in the afternoon.
He was teaching them more advanced techniques now, fighting and attacking, on a field
that gradually came to encompass the whole of Dead Town. The dogs moved frequently
from place to place, covering an enormous territory, rehearsing their destructive
maneuvers; and the girl followed. Rehearsing—yes, because this was only a
rehearsal
. A dry run for some sort of field day of the dogs, a fucking preview of the Great
Doggie Festival. She understood, more or less, what was happening. That they were
practicing. That one day they would take to the streets.

She kept her distance. She always stayed a few yards away, watching. Watching the
dogs do their exercises. I don’t go in for this fucking gym class shit, thanks, I’d
rather sit out. Look at these shitheads, fucking scampering around like maniacs.
Woof--woof-woof-woof-woof-woof!
Don’t you ever get tired? Actually, the dogs seldom barked. For the most part, they
darted off and sprang at their simulated targets in total silence. They’d had it pounded
into their heads that this was the way to do it: covert attacks. The old man, their
trainer—the Old Fuck—had made this clear. And yet there was such ferocity in their
movements that you almost seemed to hear them barking, baying, their voices rich and
loud.

If one actually heard a sound, it was more likely to be a gunshot.

The bullets weren’t real, they were blanks. But they accustomed the dogs to the sound.

The dogs no longer regarded the girl as an intruder, no longer growled. Because the
old man scolded them that first time. The dogs remembered. And so they kept quiet.
A few had barked at her the second time, when she came to watch, to
study
them, and she herself had told them off.

“Shut the fuck up,” she said, glaring. “You’re annoying me.”

She stared straight at them as she spoke, and they shut up.

The old man laughed when he saw this.

Upwards of forty dogs would participate in these exercises, learning specialized techniques.
Honing their abilities. Seven or eight would take the day off. The old man let them
rest before they got too worn out. He took stock of each dog’s condition individually
and based his decision on his assessment, though for the most part he followed a fixed
order. The dogs he released from training spent the day in their cages.

In the doghouse.

Outside, exposed to the air.

The girl went by the cages too. It was only natural that she incorporated a visit
to this area, given over entirely to the dogs’ use, into her daily schedule. Every
so often, a new dog would join the ranks. The newcomers tended to be young; they must
have been captured outside. The new dogs stayed for some time in the cages with the
dogs that had been released from training, all day every day. And there were puppies
too. Little dogs, natives of the Dead Town, who had only just been removed from the
cage they had shared with their mother, where they had sucked at her teats.

Now the whole litter was kept in a large cage of its own.

During the day, at least, it was
theirs
.

Only six or seven weeks old, these puppies had not yet learned caution. The girl watched
them through the chain-link fence. The first time she saw the little bastards in their
cage, she had a thought. There were old dogs here, and little ones. She remembered
the old dog that had appeared on the roof and barked at her that time when the Old
Fuck spoke in Japanese, “SHE-neh,”
drop dead
—that dog, she thought, was a senile old fuck himself. The thing is, she sensed, whether
they’re dogs or people, I fucking hate old fucks.

“Don’t get any ideas, though,” she told the puppies, speaking through the chain-link
fence. “That doesn’t mean I think you’re cute.”

This too, she said in Japanese.

After that, she came every day to grumble outside the puppies’ cage. Objectively speaking,
they were adorable. Roly-poly with ears that poked out from their round heads, bodies
covered with light, soft hair. That wasn’t how the girl saw it. “Morons. Idiots. Fuckheads.
Fucking little doggie-shits,” she said. She twined her fingers around the chain-link
fence. “Look at you. So fucking tame. Some fuck feeds you and you’re his.” Each puppy
had a tag. She couldn’t read the names, of course, because they were written in the
Cyrillic alphabet, but she could read the numbers. Arabic numerals were okay: 44,
45, 46, 47, 48, and then 113, 114. Seven in all. As far as she was concerned the numbers
might as well have been names, and so she added them to her list.

She recognized the puppies through the numbers they had been assigned.

This, in part, was what allowed her to focus so intently on them. This, in part, was
why she sometimes looked so enchanted as she stood before their cage. Though at the
same time, there was something in the unpredictability of their actions that fascinated
her, kept her from getting tired of standing there
looking
.

So she went on visiting the cage, grumbling to the puppies.

“Look at you, tripping like that,” she said. “Can’t even walk right.”

“Little doggie-shits, fucking gnawing on each other,” she said.

“Think you’re so grown up, huh?” she said. “Fucking think again.”

“Assholes,” she said.

There was something good about this part of her schedule. She felt better.

One day, she decided to see how dumb the puppies were. She searched the kitchen and
the stores of dog food. She knew what they were fed.
Obviously. I watch the Old Bag preparing the shit.
She had a hypothesis she wanted to test. “All people have to do is feed you and you’re
theirs, right? You fucks. Yeah, I’m talking to you Forty-four. And Forty-five, Forty-six,
Forty-seven, Forty-eight, One hundred thirteen, and One hundred fourteen, all of you.
Fuckers. I bet you’ll let me feed you too.”

This was her hypothesis.

The result was a chorus of yelping.

Number 44:
FEED ME
!

Number 114:
FEED ME
!

Number 45, number 46, number 47, number 48, and number 113:
FEED ME
!
FEED ME
!
FEED ME
!
FEED ME
!
FEED ME
!

The second she pushed the food through the fence, they gathered around and began going
for it, snapping at it, not even bothering to sniff it and see what it was.

No, they hadn’t yet learned to be wary—not at all. And since they had already been
weaned from their mother’s milk, they had no problem eating the sort of “Russian dog
food” the girl gave them. She gave them sheep hooves. Leftovers. But they chewed them
all the same, licked them all over. There was a bit of meat and gelatin left, if only
a little.

“Happy?” the girl asked. “You like that?”

They looked happy.

“You like stinky crap like that?”

WE
’
RE HAPPY
, the dogs replied.
WE LIKE IT
.

“See, I knew it,” the girl said, the pride in her words not entirely matched by the
unusual stiffness and, simultaneously, the slight relaxation of her expression. “I
can make you mine as easily as they can. Look at you, wagging your fucking tails.
Fucking morons. Fucking shitheads. That’s Russia for you. Eating this foul-smelling
mutton crap because you’ll take any nutrition you can get.”

From that day on, she worked to prove her hypothesis. Each time she visited the puppies’
cage, she took food—stolen food. And she fed them. The seven puppies were always overjoyed
to see her. They started wagging their tails the second they saw her.
Woof woof, woof woof
, they said. And the girl, watching them tear into the food, kept grumbling. In Japanese.
Monotone. “Sometimes they feed me mutton too. Disgusting crap. Tastes so fucking strong.
You seem to like it though, huh? Sure looks that way. But not me…fucking ass. It’s
winter food, this crap. It makes your body feel toasty when you eat it, right? You
know? That’s something I learned. Shit. I’m learning all kinds of fucking shit. Hey,
c’mere,” she said, sticking her hand into the cage near the bottom of the chain-link
fence.

Four or five puppies gathered around.

Licking her hand.

The girl gave one of their heads a rough pat.

“See how hot you are? Right, One hundred fourteen?”

One or two of the others rubbed their heads and bodies against her, evidently eager
to be petted too. Rubbed up against her hand. Her fingers.

You’re hot, right?

YES
.

Right?

FEED ME
.

That was the end of the girl’s schedule. With this—for the time being at least—her
job
was over. Watch the tagged puppies, secretly feed them, fill their ears with Japanese.
Lots of Japanese, complaining in Japanese. Monotonal Japanese. She had to accustom
the puppies to the sound and rhythms of her speech.

The daily grind continued. And then one day, it ended.

Dramatically. It was unclear how many days…or weeks the new monotony of her routine
had continued by then, in the Dead Town, from the beginning to the moment when it
ended. She herself couldn’t have said. She wasn’t counting the days. What day was
this? The question didn’t exist.
I’m X years old. I don’t fucking need time.

So the day it happened was just another day.

They had finished lunch. The old lady was in the kitchen making jam. The girl observed
her from behind. She was the invisible girl, monitoring the Old Bag. Reverse monitoring.
You get what that means, Old Bag? Maybe, just fucking maybe, you’re
my
hostage. The girl hadn’t said anything. She spoke the words to herself. Silent Japanese.
She snuck food from the kitchen all the time, for the puppies—she knew what went on
in the kitchen was important. So she monitored the kitchen. She planted herself there
in the same space as the old lady, day after day, and regarded her. Long and hard.
Taking it all in. The old lady’s trunk, shaped like a barrel. Her thick glasses. Ingredients.
Vegetables, herbs. Beets. Dill. Scallions. Heaped in baskets. Not the dill: it was
in a glass. A bouquet. Buckwheat seeds, flour. Oil…sunflower seed oil. The girl could
tell because of the enormous yellow flower on the label. And then the kitchen supplies.
Pots, of course. Some with handles on both sides. Frying pans. Bowls. Ladles. Carving
knives.