Belka, Why Don't You Bark? (11 page)

The old lady didn’t use any of this when she made jam.

She had masses of gooseberries and strawberries. She dropped them into wide-mouthed
jars with an equal amount of sugar. And that was it. A very simple task.

Strawberries
, the girl thought.

Is it the season for strawberries?

The girl had explored large swaths of the Dead Town on her walks, but she hadn’t seen
a garden anywhere. Maybe the Old Bag gathered them in the forest? Was there a market
nearby? She had no idea. When the fuck do you make jam anyway? What season? Before
winter? This is fucking Russia, though. It’s fucking endless winter here.

There are no seasons, asshole. I’m X years old.

She kept thinking about the strawberries.

Needless to say, she and the old lady didn’t speak. A few minutes later, the girl
was outside. She had left the kitchen to wander around the Dead Town as she always
did. Two blocks away from the building was a concrete wall. One of the walls that
cut this place off from the outside world. One of the barriers that made it all too
apparent that this place was her prison. As she walked, she happened to catch sight
of WO and WT. They were wheeling a motorcycle out of a garage. This was unexpected.
It looked like they were going to ride it together, sitting in its tandem seat. One
of them, either WO or WT, was going to drive that thing. They were going to buy food.
She knew, she could sense it. And so she started
observing
them, the way she always did. Except that this time she took a different approach—this
time, she didn’t act as though she were invisible. Without even thinking, she concealed
herself behind a building.
Strawberries
, she thought. Shadowing people had become part of her daily routine, but this time
she wanted to go further: she wanted to see where they went. Did they pick the strawberries
themselves? Or buy them? And where? The two middle-aged women, WO and WT, opened the
gate to the outside world. One of the exits from the Dead Town, an iron gate that
opened out to both sides. One of the
exits
. The girl had never considered trying to escape. If this were her prison, she might
have struggled to scale the walls, tried to find some way out into the world beyond,
the
shaba
, but she never had, not once. Because it would be a total fucking pain in the ass.
What the fuck would she do once she was out? Gather fucking mushrooms in the forest,
wrestle with bears? Like hell she was going to do that shit. But now she found herself
wanting to see outside. WO and WT straddled the motorcycle. She was sneaking toward
them. Keeping in their blind spot, creeping down the street, hugging the wall. She
poked her head out from behind the wall of the building closest to them, low down.
Strawberries
, she thought.

Can I run after the motorcycle?

The door. There was no click.

There was no lock.

So she decided to try and see where WO and WT went. To get a good look, see what direction
they went, and where they were going.

A forest? A garden? A market?

She rested her hand on the door. She was almost beyond the concrete wall. Half her
foot was past the edge.

Just then, there was a tremendous explosion behind her. A gunshot. Not a blank this
time. It was an actual bullet. A sliver of concrete burst from the wall. Blasted off.
A deep hole appeared. Not that the girl noticed. She couldn’t have. The bullet had
whizzed by so close she could have reached out and touched it. The air had trembled
as the bullet passed; she could still feel it under her skin.

She was quaking.

…was he aiming for me?

She stiffened. All over her skin, her hair was standing on end.

Her face began to flush. She was still shaking, and her face kept turning redder and
redder, the redness moving quietly, ever so quietly up and up, like water rising,
until it reached her ears. At the same time, a new expression appeared on her face.
She was biting her bottom lip. Biting down. Hard. Very slowly, she turned around and
looked behind her.

Straight behind her.

Just three meters away, the old lady who she had thought was in the kitchen stood
holding a pistol with both hands. Her apron covered with juice from the berries.

“Old Bag,” the girl said.

The old lady didn’t reply.

“So you were watching me, huh? I’m not the invisible girl after all.”

The old lady’s thick-lensed glasses made it hard to read her expression. Her true
feelings.

And those same lenses were watching her. Observing. Like a machine.

“Pleased with yourself, aren’t you, Old Bag? Firing your fucking pistol at me. You
fucking asshole, dicking around with me. I’m used to this kind of shit, you know.
Even more than the dogs. You think a fucking gunshot can scare me? Don’t mess with
a yakuza girl.”

She spat this out. These words.

And yet she had wet herself.

The stain was spreading even now across the crotch of her jeans. She could feel it.
And she suspected the old lady could see it too. So she said what she had to say.
To the old lady standing there with the pistol, posed just as she had been when she
fired that warning shot.

“Shit…I swear I’m going to stab you one day. You and the rest of the world.”

Ten minutes later, the girl was back in the room she had been given, changing her
clothes. She put on new underwear. She threw away the pissed-on jeans. She put her
feet through into a pair of pants she had been given as a spare—the old lady had provided
these too. The girl had never worn them before. Look at these cheap-ass shitty pants,
she thought, resenting them, hating them. Are you fucking making fun of me? Don’t
try to fucking make me wear little kid’s clothes. Those jeans I just tossed aren’t
for fucking middle class losers, you know. Those were Gucci. Those were brand-name
jeans, you assholes. That’s why I kept wearing them, even if I never washed them.
Those were my favorite fucking jeans. Fucking Gucci washed denim.

And now they’ve got piss on ’em.

The girl felt it. A feeling she couldn’t name. Humiliation.

She put on her coat. She put on her hat. She dressed herself against the cold as if
she were donning some sort of armor, shielding her raging emotions from view, disguising
herself as an ordinary Russian child. She could have been a member of some mongoloid
Siberian minority. Except that the words brimming inside her were Japanese. Japanese
imprecations. Expressions of boundless rage. She could no longer contain it. She needed
to let it out, and in order to do that, she needed the puppies.

Those puppies.

Number 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 113, and 114.

That cage. The time she spent, day after day, standing before it.

But the puppies weren’t in the cage that afternoon. The girl knew why. Three or four
days earlier, things had changed. Already, the dramatic new developments that would
take place in her daily routine had been hinted at, foreshadowed. The puppies weren’t
being trained to fight and attack like the other dogs, not really. They had been taken
out to the grounds, leaving the cage empty, for only a short time. During that period,
the old man checked them out. Checked to see whether they were naturally inclined
to fight. To see how they reacted to gunfire. How they responded to smoke. They were
being tested, in other words. They had moved on from playing with balls to the next
stage. One stage before he began training them in earnest.

Would these puppies imitate the “finished” dogs, the adults the old man had already
trained? Or rather, would they one day learn to imitate their seniors?

Did they listen to human commands? Would they eventually?

These were the questions the old man had to answer.

Already, then, in a small way, their training had begun.

And already the results were in. All seven were suitable. Of course. The old man had
known to expect this. Considering their breeding, their lineage. So naturally he increased
the difficulty of the tests. Two or three days earlier, he had started testing their
ability to respond to basic commands like “Go,” “Stop,” and “Down,” and having them
play, for instance, at attacking a target.

Of course, out here on the grounds they had models to follow. They could imitate the
adult dogs. They had to catch their scent, grasp the mood. What was it like to attack?
What precisely was required of them? The puppies’ every movement radiated youth, but
that was okay, that was only natural. It was all a game. Indeed, the fact that they
were only playing made it more clear how well, or how poorly, they were suited to
the task that awaited them.

And so she knew.

She understood the situation. There was no point going to stand before the cage. Because
the puppies weren’t there. They were on the grounds. Fucking asshole, after all the
time I spent taming them, now that I’ve finally succeeded, you drag the fuckers out
to train them? Don’t fucking steal them. Don’t fucking steal my doggies, you dick.
She knew they would be back in the cage soon, in a half hour, maybe an hour. But she
didn’t feel like waiting. She understood the situation, and so she headed out to the
exercise grounds.

Directly.

Her coat buttoned up all the way, her hat pulled down low over her eyes, her head
full of hatred, taking form in Japanese.

The girl saw what was happening. The old man gave the word, and the puppies responded.
I fucking showered them with Japanese, fucking shit-ass Japanese. And now the Old
Fuck is teaching the little doggie-shits Russian. What’s the fucking idea? He doesn’t
want them to hear my voice, is that it? She listened. She focused on each command
as it was given. Disgusted, annoyed, she nevertheless let the words soak into her
brain. As sounds. Just sounds. Soon she found herself unable just to stand there watching
as he trained the puppies. She couldn’t hang back, observing from several yards off.
She went up right behind the old man, not hesitating at all, not at all afraid of
the dogs. She was confrontational. She was filled with raw, real hatred. She saw Opera
off in the distance. The Old Fuck’s buddy, Opera. He was playing the role of the target,
his torso and arms swaddled in protective padding, but without the helmet. He was
the target in this game the puppies were playing. You’re training them, the girl thought,
I know. Training them to kill. I realize what you’re fucking doing, assholes. She
was feeling emotions she couldn’t have expressed in words. Destruction. That’s what
they were doing. She wanted it to happen.
Yeah, do it! Bring it all down!
The old man paid no attention to her. He wasn’t exactly ignoring her, but he was
focused on the puppies, on seeing how well they suited his needs. He spoke only to
them. Gave them commands in Russian. The girl was able to remember them. That Old
Fuck spoke to me. I never asked to have a conversation with him, he just did it. SHE-neh,
he said. Drop dead. Yeah, well two can play that game. I’ll fucking get in your way.
This time, it’s my turn, right?

The seven puppies were waiting for the next command.

All of a sudden, she shouted. Imitating the sounds of Russian.

Sic him! She was thinking. Attack that asshole!

And those were the words she yelled: “Go! Sic him!” In Russian. The accent wasn’t
perfect, but she had absorbed the sounds well enough.

There were the seven puppies. They had been doing these tests for days, they were
used to the commands. They had a vague understanding of the concept—that these words
the people spoke were instructions. And they were used to the girl’s voice. She had
come and talked to them every day, after all. That had been part of her routine. And
so.

The smartest puppy responded to her command.

One puppy started running.

It was number 47. He sprinted off at full speed. His little hind legs bending, their
joints creaking. He ran faster. Heading for the target. Because a voice he knew had
ordered him to attack. He was supposed to do something, he knew.
THROW YOURSELF AT THE TARGET
, that was it, maybe. Or maybe it was,
RUN AT HIM
. And then,
BITE HIM
,
KILL HIM
.

Number 47 understood the girl’s words.

He leapt at Opera.

He sprang at him and kept attacking until Opera pushed him down, and when the old
man shouted “Down,” he turned and looked first at the girl.

The girl stared, dumbstruck, at number 47.

“I did it, right?” the puppy was asking.

Number 47 was a boy.

And then the girl…nodded. She nodded at number 47.

It had started. She’d had a conversation. For the first time since she had been brought
here as a prisoner to the Dead Town, she had willingly communicated with another living
creature. Not with a person, with a dog. But still, it had happened. This Japanese
girl had spoken to a dog, and the dog had understood. True, the medium had been a
monkey-see-monkey-do imitation of Russian, but that didn’t matter: the linguistic
gap between the original Russian and her fake Russian was no more than a few millimeters.

A minute later, ten minutes later, an hour later, the shock was still sinking in.

Sinking in.

Night fell. At the dinner table, the girl had an announcement to make. The Old Fuck,
the Old Bag, Opera, WO, and WT were all sitting there around the table when she made
it. “That dog is mine,” she told them, speaking very clearly, in Japanese. Naturally
no one understood. None of them had the slightest idea what she had said, at least
not at this stage. But she didn’t care.

“You heard me, right? I asked for permission, and I got it,” she declared.

The old man sensed something.
You made some kind of announcement, didn’t you?
he asked.

In Russian. And that was it. He didn’t pursue the matter.

The rest of the meal was like any other. A salad with beets in it, cold kidney beans,
borscht, some sort of sour bread.