Belka, Why Don't You Bark? (25 page)

Secretly built in California, it had been transported to Oahu in July. The humans
had gotten into a dispute. Since the techniques for navigating long sea voyages had
not survived in Hawaii, a Micronesian—a man from Satawal, an atoll of the Central
Caroline Islands—had been brought in to steer the vessel. There was a faction who
disapproved. The first project was being led by a California-born surfer and professor
of anthropology, but he had a competitor: a researcher who was jealous of him. Who
was, in addition, a wealthy brat. At the same time, another navigator turned up asking
to be chosen. He was a Polynesian from Rarotonga, one of the Cook Islands, and all
he wanted was the fame.

Thus, a group of people angry with the Polynesian Voyaging Society made up their minds
to break away, to try and beat the original adventurers at their own game.

Indeed, the wealthy researcher decided that he would go a step further and outdo the
professor who made him insanely jealous. To crush him once and for all. Long ago,
when the first sea voyagers immigrated en masse to Hawaii, they had taken twenty or
thirty plant species along with them for cultivation. They had also taken pigs, intentionally,
and rats, unintentionally. And chickens. And dogs.

At the time, the oldest dog fossils that had been unearthed on the Hawaiian Islands
dated from sixteen hundred years earlier.

That was exactly when the ancient Polynesians were thought to have immigrated.

Well then, why not include that element in the experiment—in this essay in experimental
archaeology? That would really prove that it could be done!

Yes, the wealthy researcher thought, stunned by the brilliance of his idea. A
dog
.

Hey, dog!

This time you didn’t bark in response to the call, you just cocked your head.

The wealthy researcher was moved, now, by the engine of his ambition. He knew a dog
that wouldn’t be afraid to cross the sea in a canoe. And the dog was a strong, healthy,
purebred German shepherd. And it had gotten friendly with everyone on the project,
the entire crew. And…and…

Your owner immediately agreed to let him have you. The negotiations occurred in October.
“Are you serious? That’s quite a promotion,” the former lieutenant said. “He’s really
going to be an important player in this project, part of the great Hawaiian Renaissance?”
The researcher assured him you would with a terse, “He will have that honor.” And
that was all it took to sell the former lieutenant. “Oh my god! Oh my god oh my god
I can’t believe it!” he yelled. “The honor! The glory! I was a military man, you know,
and so was she! Well, she was a military dog. Honor above everything! Right? Isn’t
that right, girl?” he asked you. “Besides, she really likes to go out and enjoy the
ocean. I’m sure she’ll love it, I’m happy to let her go. What an adventure! Go out
and bring us something back to show for it!” he told you. “A third medal! You know
what I’m saying? You understand?”

Though your master didn’t mention this, his family had grown too large. There were
too many of you. The beagle’s pregnancy had been entirely unexpected, and in the past
six months the four puppies had grown almost into adult dogs. The family had been
unable to find anyone to take them. That, ultimately, was what mattered. You were
a burden, so he got rid of you. He didn’t have to feel guilty, and he got a $500 reward
to boot.

“I hear in Tahiti,” your master told you at the end, “they’re going to welcome you
as a hero, back after 1,600 years, and you’ll live out the rest of your life as a
canine king.”

October 11. You set out from Oahu. A crew of sixteen men and a dog sitting in the
double canoe. You were riding the great, wide sea. You, Goodnight, were no longer
a dog of the twenty-first parallel north. You were headed south of the equator. But
the Polynesian navigator you were all counting on was, it turned out, a fraud who
had only joined the crew to get his name in the newspapers. “If worst comes to worst,”
he thought, “someone will rescue us with whatever modern equipment they’ve got.” He
hadn’t totally mastered the traditional navigation techniques, which were by then
being passed down in Polynesia only in secret, to a select few. He was all bluster,
just like the researcher. Still, when night fell the sixteen human members of the
crew gazed up at the sky. They read the stars. During the day, they watched which
way the birds flew. You, Goodnight, didn’t look up at the blue sky; you kept your
gaze trained rigidly on the flat horizon. By October 12, you were already growing
homesick. You missed the little beagles. Those four puppies you had mothered, and
whom you had kept caring for even after they were grown. Your teats tingled. Five
pairs of teats that had never lactated.

1975. And the other dog—the male on the twentieth parallel north? Cabron, in Mexico
City. He had acquired an alter ego. An alter ego that was simultaneously human and
canine. But only when his face was covered; then, and only then, was this man transformed
into a dogman. He was thirty years old, a
mestizo
, and they called him the Hellhound. That, at any rate, was the name he used in the
ring. The Hellhound was a
luchador
.

The Hellhound was active in entertainment wrestling, known as
lucha libre,
“free fighting,” a sport that had been practiced in Mexico since 1933.

Of course, he donned a dog mask in the ring and fought as a dogman. His special maneuvers
were the Dog-Hold and the Dog-Bite, the latter delivered to the top of his opponent’s
head. He also did a torpedo kick called the St. Bernard.

The numeral two had a special meaning for the Hellhound. He had two faces, for instance:
his outer and his inner face. In the 1970s, there were approximately two thousand
luchadores
in Mexico, seventy percent of whom wore masks. A certain number of these wrestlers
maintained a policy of total secrecy and lived without revealing their true names
or places of birth. The Hellhound was one of these. From the time of his debut, he
had paid the company that created his mask a huge sum to keep all information regarding
his countenance, his unmasked face, under wraps. Two faces: one outer, one inner.
The vast majority of luchadores, eighty percent of whom also had other jobs, treated
their everyday, unmasked faces as their public faces; the masks were the hidden identities
they assumed only in the ring. The Hellhound was different. For him, the masked self,
the dogman, was the public self.

The reason for this was obvious: he appeared without his mask, his ordinary face exposed,
whenever he had underworld dealings. He had a position in one of the two cartels competing
for domination in Mexico. And not just any position—the Hellhound was the boss. He
had a special token to prove it. A dog. The dog on the twentieth parallel north. Yes,
that’s right, the mongrel Cabron was his. The Hellhound, in other words, was Cabron’s
alter ego. The Hellhound looked after Cabron—he owned Cabron, he was owned by Cabron—and
so, for precisely that reason, he was acknowledged throughout the underworld, from
North America all the way down into Central America, as an official member of La Familia.
Texas’s La Familia.
The family
.

Once again, two. Having an alter ego, being an alter ego.

What’s more, the Hellhound was the second generation in his family to work in this
business. He had taken over from his father, who had changed the course of his life.
His father had been the first to initiate a relationship with La Familia, and he’d
had his own dog. A mongrel the Don had given him. The dog’s father—his seed, that
is to say—had been a giant St. Bernard, incredibly brave, fabled throughout the region
for having saved no fewer than seven lives. The Hellhound had been born in 1945; his
father’s dog joined the household in 1949. Almost as far back as the Hellhound could
remember, the dog had been there. The Hellhound had loved to pet the dog, and he would
ride him—he had gone in for dog-riding, you might say, not horse-riding—and he would
sleep with his head pillowed on the dog’s fluffy, roly-poly stomach, tug on his ears,
and pet him some more. The Hellhound had hardly any childhood memories in which this
dog did not figure. When he grew older, he used to grapple with the dog, pretending
to fight. It was a sort of pseudo- wrestling and also a sort of pseudo-dogfighting.
Dogfighting, incidentally, was big in Mexico too. As a boy, the Hellhound had never
once managed to get the upper hand on his mongrel opponent. Of course not. The mongrel
was a master. On the night of his seventh birthday, frisking around with the dog on
the patio, he realized that he would never win. He shed tears of humiliation at his
weakness, but at the same time he felt a new respect for the dog welling up within
him. From now on, he decided, the dog really would be
his
master.
Master!

Ever since he was a boy, the Hellhound had tended to run with his passions. If he
wasn’t as good as the dog, he would learn from the dog. And so his relationship with
the mongrel La Familia had given his father deepened; the dog became his family, his
teacher, his closest friend. It was during those days that he perfected his killer
St. Bernard Kick. The Hellhound had always been an outstandingly physical child, ever
since he was born, and he was always landing flying kicks in his classmates’ stomachs
at school whenever he flew into a rage. He’d been doing this since almost the first
day, even attacking the older tough-guy types.

At the same time, going to school introduced a new worry into his life. Until then,
he always assumed his family’s business was perfectly above board, but now it began
to dawn on him that the activities they were involved in were criminal. His classmates’
parents weren’t involved in organized crime. What? You mean we’re doing
illegal
things? Drug dealing and stuff? Killing people? But…isn’t that…isn’t that
bad
? The boy began to be tormented by moral qualms. Then it was 1957. The year the dog
died. The boy’s family, teacher, and closest friend—gone. The boy was twelve, and
it hit him hard. He felt as if a hole had opened up in his heart. He visited the local
Catholic church every day to pray for the repose of the dog’s soul. Then one Sunday
three months after the dog’s death, something happened. During the sermon. The pastor,
as it happened, had spent the previous night with a cousin who had come up to the
city from their hometown, and since the two men hadn’t seen each other for four-and-a-half
years, the pastor imbibed a bit too much tequila. So he wasn’t doing too well. His
voice, as he stood declaiming from the pulpit, was so toneless that most of the congregation
started nodding off. The boy, too, felt himself falling under a sort of spell, as
if he were succumbing to hypnosis. Only in his case, it wasn’t hypnotism of the
You’re getting very, very sleepy
type. He was having an actual hallucination. Hearing a mysterious message. First,
he heard a voice. A male voice: “Hello? Hello? Hel-
low
!” It was an adult voice. What? Who is that? The boy glanced around the church, then
froze. Up there behind the priest, a little to his right, at the rear of the pulpit,
the statue of the crucified Christ was moving its lips. Their gazes met. And
BAM
, a bolt of spiritual lightning slammed through his body.

“Hey!” Jesus Christ’s voice bellowed in his brain. “Don’t you think you’ve got some
things to take care of before you come here to pray for a dog? What about all this
immorality you’re part of? You gotta make amends for that stuff first!”

All at once, just like that, the boy felt the hole the dog’s death had left in his
heart close up, plugged by the wisdom he had been granted.

Whoosh.
In it went, just like that.

Bear in mind that the Hellhound had always been unusually passionate. He was particularly
susceptible to hallucinations. Physically prepared, you might say, to receive the
word of God.

Age fourteen. The young man made his first appearance in the ring. He was a luchador
now. He had spent the last two years training four hours daily, and expectations were
high for this newcomer able to pull off impeccable high-flying moves. In Mexico, fourteen
was not considered a young age to debut as a wrestler. And of course lucha libre was
the preeminent form of popular entertainment. People watched, captivated, as the struggle
between good and evil played itself out in the ring. Cheering for (or jeering at)
the luchador who stood for goodness and jeering at (or cheering) the luchador who
stood for evil offered a means of letting out the stress that accumulated in day-to-day
life. Wrestling was a world of fantasy. And so the boy entered the ring.
Watch me
.
Be happy!

This was his solution to the moral dilemma that plagued him.

His family’s business was evil. Well then, he would serve the public by becoming a
luchador, showing his audiences a good time!

Thus he assuaged the prickings of his conscience.