Hideo Furukawa - Belka, Why Don't You Bark?

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.

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.”