Belka, Why Don't You Bark? Read online

  Belka, Why Don’t You Bark?

  Beruka, hoenainoka? © Hideo Furukawa, 2005

  Originally published in Japan by Bungei Shunju in 2005 (hardcover) and 2008 (paperback).

  English translation Copyright © Michael Emmerich 2012

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Sam Elzway

  This book has been selected by the Japanese Literature Publishing Project (JLPP), an initiative of the Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan.

  No portion of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the copyright holders.

  HAIKASORU

  Published by VIZ Media, LLC

  295 Bay Street

  San Francisco, CA 94133

  www.haikasoru.com

  Furukawa, Hideo, 1966–

  [Beruka, hoenainoka? English]

  Belka, why don’t you bark? / by Hideo Furukawa ; translated by Michael Emmerich.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-4215-4937-8

  I. Emmerich, Michael. II. Title.

  PL870.R85B4713 2012

  895.6’36--dc23

  2012028981

  The rights of the author of the work in this publication to be so identified have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Haikasoru eBook edition

  ISBN: 978-1-4215-5089-3

  This book is dedicated to Boris Yeltsin:

  Hey, Boris, I know your secret.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  “I want to set them loose.”

  1943

  “Nighty-Night, Vor.”

  1944–1947

  “Russians are better off dead.”

  1950–1956

  “What, are those fucking dog names?”

  1957

  “Don’t mess with a yakuza girl.”

  1958–1962 (Year 5 Anno Canis)

  “Woof!”

  1963–1989

  “This is not 1991.”

  1990

  “Belka, why don’t you bark?”

  You’ll say this is fiction.

  Sure, I’ll admit that. But

  then what isn’t a fiction?

  “I want to set them loose.”

  —Siberia (the sleeping land), 199X

  The snow had let up, but the temperature remained below zero. The road was hemmed in on each side by a forest of white birches. The young man trudged onward, bundled from head to toe against the cold, snow crunching underfoot. He had been walking an hour already. Then, at last, he saw a house. A cabin—made of logs, rough-hewn. Clearly inhabited. The smoking chimney proved that.

  The young man’s face brightened.

  The place looked as if it belonged to a hunter. The man noted the four skis propped against the wall. Two inhabitants, maybe? Or was one pair an extra? You’d think there’d be a guard dog, but there wasn’t. Instead, the owner himself pushed the door open, stepped outdoors. Must have heard the footsteps in the snow. Realized he had an unanticipated visitor.

  He was old. An old man. His expression softened in response to the young man’s greeting. “What are you doing way out here?” he said. “So deep in the hills, this time of year, in this no man’s land? There is not a dacha for miles. Lost your way?”

  “Does the road lead to a village?” the young man asked.

  The old man nodded. “It does, but it is a five-hour walk.”

  “The back wheels of our car got stuck in a stream,” the young man said. “We couldn’t push the car out, so I left my friend and came on alone to ask for help in the village.”

  “Come in for a bit,” the old man said. “You had better warm up.”

  The young man thanked him and stepped inside. The temperature was easily seventy degrees. Which made it at least seventy degrees warmer than outside. The young man removed his mink shapka, his heavy gloves, his coat. He scanned the room, not even trying to conceal his curiosity. Just inside the door was a hunting knife, a hatchet. Farther back in the room was a rifle. A shelf lined with bottles of vodka, a globe. A map of the world on the wall. It was old, though. The Soviet Union carpeted the Eurasian supercontinent. Tacked up around the map, several family photographs, portraits of the old “founding fathers.” It’s been ages, the young man mused, since I last saw that profile of Vladimir Lenin.

  “Never seen how a hunter lives, I take it? Here, take a chair.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I was just getting some lunch together,” the old man said. “I have stewed venison. Will you join me?”

  “That would be great, thank you.”

  Vodka appeared. They toasted.

  “It is too quiet out here,” the old man said. “You have made my day, turning up like this. It is a delight to host you.”

  “You live alone here?” the young man asked.

  “Never liked hunting with others. Not my style.”

  “No hunting dogs either?”

  “No,” the old man said. “I do not keep any.”

  The young man observed his host across the table. It was hard to gauge his exact age. He was in his sixties, maybe seventies. His hair and beard were white. The young man could tell what color it had been. It had never been black. This old man had been blond in his youth. His features were pure Slav.

  The young man was Central Asian.

  “Have another glass.” The old man poured more vodka.

  A woodpecker called outside.

  The young man kept looking around. “You shot this deer yourself?” he asked. He kept talking, scanning the room. Beside the table was a shelf crammed with jars of pickles and preserved foods. Mushrooms, cucumbers. The old man was complaining about his pension. The whole system would be bankrupt soon, he said. His tone was calm, measured; these financial issues didn’t appear to be causing him any real trouble. “Worked my whole life in the Ministry of Railroads, you know. Who would think times would get so bad?” he said. “They were always screwing with us.”

  There was a radio by the wall.

  “You get your news from that?” the young man asked.

  “Yes, though I try not to run the batteries down,” the old man said with a chuckle. “Still, I know what is happening in the world. Even here in the woods, miles from anywhere.”

  “Do you really?” the young man said.

  “You know what? I have fish too—let me get some. Smoked salmon, how could I have forgotten. Getting old, I guess, not offering you anything with your vodka.” The old man tossed back a glass and stood up. He wandered off toward the cooking area.

  The young man rose too. “Please don’t bother,” he said. Please come back to the table. Please. Too many dangerous things over there. That rifle, the axe.

  “Stop,” the young man said. “Archbishop.”

  His right hand held an Austrian pistol with a polymer frame.

  The old man froze in his tracks.

  “Hands up,” the young man ordered. “Turn around.”

  The old man did as the young man said. His face betrayed no hint of fear; he hadn’t even paled. Though he wasn’t smiling either.

  The young man walked over. He grinned.

  And then something happened. The young man was no amateur. He had kept his distance, taking care not to get too close. He had held his elbow out to one side, kept the pistol trained on the old man. He hadn’t let down his guard, he was still in his safety zone. Or so he
thought. But then, all of a sudden, he couldn’t see. He was stunned. What’s happening?! He smelled alcohol. Vodka. He spat vodka at me. He had it in his mouth.

  The young man pulled the trigger.

  But by then his knee was broken. His left kneecap had been kicked, bashed in, his leg snapped backward. He felt his body crumbling. One second his right leg was there, perfectly straight, the next it too had been kicked out from under him. His body hung in midair for a split second, then crashed to the floor. A motion so clean it was beautiful. Zero gravity. Then his weight returned. He felt the old man bring his heel down on his spine, then kick his skull. The other foot ground into his palm. The pistol was gone, kicked away.

  He felt a pressure on his back.

  He felt something knobby slam against his spinal cord.

  The old man’s elbow.

  He couldn’t move. There was an arm around his neck, his head spun.

  And there was a crack. A crack, however, that he didn’t hear.

  The young man was dead.

  “Sheesh,” the old man sighed, hoisting himself off the body he was straddling, clambering to his feet. “So you found this hideaway. Finally caught the scent,” he crooned. “You have some nose.”

  Dogs, he thought. Just like dogs.

  But what do you know about real dogs?

  The old man crossed the room. Went over to a shelf on the wall where the map of the world was hung, the family pictures, the “founding fathers.” He took the globe in his arms.

  “Impostors. You do not know shit about real dogs,” he said. “Never will.”

  Suddenly the globe was split in two, top and bottom. He lifted the metal lid from its base. A skull sat inside it. An animal skull. The skull of a medium-sized dog. It was charred, but here and there patches of skin remained. The interior of the globe had been fitted out with protective supports and foam. The globe was a case. The old man gazed tenderly at the skull.

  He said he had a friend back in the car. Guess I need to take care of him too.

  “It is true, I admit it,” he announced, evidently to the dog’s skull. “I have lost my mind. I want to set them loose. More than anything. All the old powers, before I die. Before my…before our old world disappears forever.”

  Is that not right, my darling?

  You, you great Soviet hero, the greatest dog ever to live, the only one who deserves this globe.

  By then the old man was no longer talking aloud.

  Already it had begun.

  1943

  It was forgotten.

  People forgot, for instance, that a foreign power had, in fact, seized American territory during the course of the twentieth century. In an entire century, it happened only once. In the North Pacific, Japanese forces occupied two of the Aleutian Islands. The first was Attu, at the westernmost tip of the archipelago; the second was Kiska, farther to the east. The Japanese army raised the Rising Sun over the islands in June 1942 and gave each a new Japanese name. Henceforth Attu would be called Atsuta; Kiska would be known as Narukami.

  The occupation of the two islands was part of a broader strategy to divert American attention from the Japanese offensive on Midway Atoll, in the Central Pacific. On June 4, air attacks were launched against Dutch Harbor on Unalaska Island, in the heart of the Aleutians; the Battle of Midway began the next day. Japanese forces conducted surprise landings on Attu and Kiska from the night of June 7 to the morning of June 8.

  The islands fell easily. America lost land to the enemy.

  The Japanese had no intention of holding the islands indefinitely, however. The Aleutian campaign had originally been devised as a diversion, and it was far from clear that the islands offered any strategic value. The military planned to hold them for the short term, until winter, then consider how to proceed. This plan was revised when surveys conducted in the wake of the occupation revealed that the islands would remain habitable through the winter; toward the end of June, it was decided to hold them for the long term.

  Habitable the islands were, but the climate was extraordinarily harsh. The Aleutian chain as a whole was often said to have the worst weather in the world. The frigid waters of the Bering Sea ran up against the warmer waters of the Pacific along the archipelago’s length, leaving its islands shrouded in fog that never lifted. Only rarely did the sun peek out. Ferocious winds whipped the rocks; torrential rains battered the earth. And then, of course, there was the snow.

  Soon the bitter winter set in.

  Things were bad on the islands in 1942, but true disaster had yet to strike. The Japanese lost air superiority, enabling the Americans to pound the islands from the skies, and there were delays in establishing ground defenses. And the worst was still to come. The full-blown tragedy would not occur until the following year.

  May 1943. The garrison on Atsuta/Attu was wiped out.

  As eleven thousand American soldiers rushed ashore under cover of naval bombardment, the twenty-five hundred Japanese troops stationed on the island charged into a hopeless battle, ready to meet their deaths. It was a so-called banzai attack. Not a single soldier was taken. Every last man among their number died for the Emperor.

  Kiska Island.

  Or now that it was Japanese territory, Narukami.

  Kiska/Narukami was occupied by a force twice as large as the force on Attu/Atsuta. Some way had to be found to avoid a second tragedy. And so, though the Japanese had effectively already lost naval superiority, it was suggested that the entire force be evacuated in a plan called the “Ke-gō Operation.” The first stage, involving the evacuation by submarine of sick and injured soldiers and civilian contractors, concluded in June. The second stage, in which a naval fleet was dispatched to collect the remaining units, was carried out in July, on “Zero day.” Z-Day had first been set for July 11 but had to be postponed repeatedly owing to inclement weather. Then at last, on July 29, a rescue fleet consisting of two light cruisers and nine destroyers sailed into Kiska/Narukami Harbor and safely evacuated the island’s entire fifty-two-hundred-man garrison.

  The Ke-gō Operation was a success. A heavy fog kept the Americans from noticing what they were doing.

  Everyone on the island escaped. Or rather: every human.

  The Japanese army abandoned the rest.

  They left the military dogs. Four dogs in all. Each came from a different line. One was a Hokkaido dog—or an Ainu dog, as they were once called—a breed known for its musculature and its ability to withstand the cold. His name was Kita, and he belonged to the navy. His job was to show which of the wild plants on the island were edible: he was a taster. The second and third dogs, both German shepherds, belonged to the army. One was named Masao, the other Katsu. The fourth, also a German shepherd, was neither a navy nor an army dog; she was a bitch and had been taken from an American prisoner. Her name was Explosion.

  Prior to the invasion the previous year, ten men had been operating a wireless telegraph and aerological station on the island under the aegis of the US Navy. When the Japanese military landed, eight of these soldiers escaped; the other two were taken prisoner. Explosion had been captured along with them.

  The United States was deploying vast numbers of highly trained military dogs all around the world in those days, dispatching them to the front lines. It had established its first training center in 1935 at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, the Marine Corps main base, and the next decade saw the creation of an additional five centers. By the end of World War II, some forty thousand dogs had been raised in these facilities. Explosion was one of these. After June 1942, however, she was no longer an American. Now she belonged to the Japanese.

  Japan, as it happened, had a three-decade lead on America in military dog combat. The first time Japanese dogs ever took to the field of battle was in 1904, during the Russo-Japanese War. Japanese bre
eds were used, but they were trained in Germany. Eventually the military began importing German shepherds, and a research institute at an infantry school in Chiba launched Japan’s first serious effort to breed military dogs. Following the Manchurian Incident in 1931, the army ministry helped oversee the creation of a civilian-run Imperial Military Dog Society, and the Independent Garrison Unit’s War Dog Platoon began conducting experimental canine maneuvers in Manchukuo.

  Not surprisingly, Germany had led the way in world military dog history. Systematic efforts to train German shepherds commenced in 1899 with the establishment of the German Shepherd Society. As early as the Great War (otherwise known as World War I), Germany was already deploying large numbers of modern military dogs. Indeed, the figure had climbed as high as twenty thousand by the time hostilities ended. And the dogs had performed incredibly well.

  Germany’s success was a revelation to other nations. We can let dogs fight our wars!

  Two catastrophic wars were fought during the twentieth century. The twentieth century was, it is often said, a century of war. It was also the century of military dogs.

  Hundreds of thousands of dogs were sent into battle.

  In July 1943, four such dogs were abandoned on an island. A certain island.

  The island no longer had a name. The Japanese forces had retreated, taking the Rising Sun flags and the rest of their paraphernalia with them. The island wasn’t called Narukami anymore. As far as the Americans knew, though, it was still occupied by Japan, and until it was reclaimed it would remain an illegitimate Japanese territory. So the island was no longer Narukami, but neither had it gone back to being the American territory known as Kiska Island.

  It was a nameless place, owned by four abandoned dogs.

  The island was about half the size of Tokyo. A dense fog hung over it and the surrounding waters, never clearing, isolating it from the mainland and its tundra. It was an island of white. But not the white of snow, which lingered only on the peaks. Clear springs burbled through the valleys. Grasses covered the land, their blades glistened with dew that never dried. EVERYONE’S GONE, the dogs thought. THERE’S NO ONE LEFT. They knew the Japanese had gone, that they had been forsaken. Kita, Masao, Katsu, Explosion. Yes. They understood.