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

You were, it almost seemed, half beast.

Because you were.

And so, for no apparent reason, the other dogs were struck with fear. WHAT’S GOING ON? they asked. WHY IS THIS ENEMY AMONG US? He smelled like a wild wolf, and their master had ordered them to watch out for wolves. He smelled just like the members of those other packs, the ones that lived on the outskirts of human territories, watching for a chance to slip in and take down a reindeer or some domesticated animal. His features were half wolf. And so—WHAT’S GOING ON? Eventually, hard as they tried to keep in line as they pulled the sled, they lost the rhythm. They fell out of sync, and the sled capsized. Other times, they might get so spooked that they would ignore their master and his whip and start running on their own. Because they were afraid, every one of them. Of him. Of you.

Anubis. It was your fault.

But you didn’t let it bother you.

As the dogs scrambled for food, you bit them, ever so calmly. You bit them as if you were their leader. You liked dried fish. You liked reindeer meat that had been boiled with barley and allowed to cool. You ate seal meat. You devoured… the peace.

That, Anubis, was your problem.

So your masters let you go. They made the trip from one town to the next, and when they headed back, you were no longer hitched to the sled. They traveled from a town to a village, and left you—only you—behind. They would never abandon you; they passed you on to a new master. “He’s a good dog,” they all said. “He just doesn’t get along with my team. I don’t know what it is. So you can have him,” they said.

You kept moving.

You crossed Far East Siberia, from one village to the next, from a village to a town, from a town to a town, from a town to a village.

Heading west.

To a village further west.

To a town further west.

Purely by chance, you kept tracing a path west across the Eurasian continent, skirting the mountains that marked the southern border of the Arctic Circle. You crossed from Chukchi lands to Koryak lands, then on into Evenk territory. You had a fifth master, and then a sixth, and after that you didn’t count. Neither, Anubis, did you care at all what ethnicity (what “traditional ethnic minority”) your successive masters belonged to.

THERE’S THE ARCTIC OCEAN AGAIN, you thought. Yes, because you had once been a dog of the Arctic Ocean. You had lived on the ice, on one of those “drifting” observation stations. For about a year, from the time you were three to sometime after your fourth birthday, you had been carried by the tides across the Arctic Sea.

I HAVEN’T LEFT THE ARCTIC OCEAN, you thought. And it was true—you were still within the Arctic Circle, still following the shore. Limning the ocean’s edge. Circling.

Circling west.

You had set out from the shores of the East Siberian Sea, which is part of the larger Arctic Ocean. Though in that season, there was no border between water and land. You had traveled for a little over a year, until you found yourself gazing out at another sea, also part of the Arctic Ocean, but with a different name. The Laptev Sea, to the west of the Novosibirsk Islands.

Then, Anubis, sometime in 1958, you left Far East Siberia.

Anubis, Anubis, where are you now? You were on the Lena Delta, in the port town of Tiksi. There, around you, the waters of the Lena River flowed. The second largest river in the USSR, 2,650 miles long—it ended in this port, fanning out into an enormous delta as it streamed into the Laptev Sea. And what, Anubis, were you doing here?

Pulling a sled, of course.

Only now you were pulling it in a different direction. You were no longer heading west. You moved along a north-south axis. It was winter, and the Lena was frozen over—a perfect way to travel. The river had been transformed into a well-equipped sledding route. That’s where you were running. That’s where you were made to run. The thick pads on your feet hit the frozen river, forelegs and hind legs, crossing the ice. The Lena River had two sources: one in the Baikal Range, the other in the Stanovoy Range. Both lay south of the Laptev Sea, the Lena Delta, and the port town Tiksi. In the interior of the Eurasian continent. And so you could tell, Anubis—you could sense it. SOMETIMES, I MOVE AWAY FROM THE ARCTIC OCEAN. You moved for a time along a north-south axis. Up and down the frozen Lena, up and down, with Tiksi as your base.

Midway along the Lena was the town of Yakutsk, capital of the Yakutia Republic, one of the members of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic within the Soviet Union. Half the town’s inhabitants were Yakuts. Your new master was one of them. Not that you, Anubis, cared who your master was. In the beginning, in Tiksi, you had a different master. Then one day your master changed; he was someone else now, only with the same face.

These two men were twins. In their late thirties. The younger brother lived just outside Yakutsk and worked as a fur hunter, using supplies provided by the kolkhoz. He could never fulfill his quota, however, and so he lived in wretched poverty. The older brother had been granted a transport license that made it possible, in an age when ordinary people, ordinary Soviets, were forbidden to travel from town to town or region to region without an “internal passport,” for him to run his dogsled up and down the Lena, from the lower reaches to the middle. He carried goods. Only specialists could do this kind of work, and the pay was good. Needless to say this was before snowmobiles became common in Siberia, when it was hard to move things fast, and he did such consistently excellent work that he had been officially recognized for his service. In short, the older brother succeeded. And his younger brother seethed with envy. So one day, when they met in Yakutsk after months apart, the younger brother secretly killed the older brother. Clubbed him to death. He buried the body in the forest, near the hut he stayed in when he went hunting. And he became his brother. He made the older brother’s privileges his own and went back to the port town Tiksi.

No one noticed.

People’s comings and goings were strictly monitored in Tiksi, which was home to a base, but the evil younger brother was easily mistaken for his good older brother; they let him right in without subjecting him to a security check or anything.

The dogs didn’t know what was what. It was precisely on occasions like this, however, that you showed your mettle. You, Anubis, helped the younger brother. You were too skilled a dog. Your new master was an amateur—though as a member of a tribe of nomadic horse riders he was used to driving horse-drawn sleighs, and he had ridden in dogsleds a few times—but you could divine his intentions, you knew in advance what it was he wanted you, your team, to do. You subjugated yourself to his will. And you led. The other dogs feared you, and because they recognized a crisis, they obeyed you. You appraised the situation, Anubis, and they fell in line.

Rather than let your stupid master’s flimsy orders play havoc with them, they recognized your authority.

The pack cohered.

The team functioned as a team.

You terrified the other dogs because you were a wolfdog. But still, a dog is a dog. Once the hierarchy was established, terror bred obedience. You inspired fear in the other dogs, not as a wolfdog, but as the leader of the pack. That, at any rate, was how they themselves, subject to their fear, understood the situation.

You ruled them, Anubis.

You brought the team into harmony.

The sled. Traveling down the Lena.

You ran. You were made to run. You were no longer pawned off on anyone else. Your new master—strictly speaking he was your fake master, the evil younger brother with the same face as the good older brother—had no intention of giving you away. “Good dog,” he said. “You get along great with the other dogs, you keep them in line so well,” he said. “I wouldn’t give this dog to anyone,” he said, “no matter how many thousand rubles I was offered.” And he ran the hell out of you. He pushed you and the other sled dogs to the limit. Show me what you can do! Show me what you can do! Move these goods! Move it! Move it! You ran. You were made to run. You understood the intentions behind your amateur master’s ambiguous commands, and you communicated them to the rest of the dogs, led the team back and forth across the frozen waters. Again and again, dozens of times, along a north-south axis.