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

And the young officer did what he had to do.

A smile flickered across his face, faint but brutal. “The day I give up being a military man, I will start calling myself the Archbishop.”

“Why?” his roommates asked.

“Because the only reason I would ever quit is if it was all over anyway—if the glorious promise of the revolution was squandered. And if that day comes, I will call myself the Archbishop. You had better kill me then. Assassinate me.”

Under the Communist system, the Russian Orthodox Church was a symbol of conservative values. “Huh,” the fellow students laughed, “so you’ll take orders?” They laughed, but while they smiled, their expressions were stiff.

1958. After graduating first in his class from training school, he was assigned to the Chinese border. He was a captain now and led a defensive platoon. 1959. He created his own special forces unit and tried to control the conflicts breaking out in Central Asia—in Kazakhstan and eastern Kyrgyzstan, along the Sino-Soviet border. He revealed a talent for putting pressure on Islamic populations as well. 1960. He was promoted to become the head of the Committee for the Purchase and Rearing of Guard/War Dogs. He was a major now, twenty-six years and seven months old, and he took his position seriously. 1961. The directive was handed down. Yes, Comrade Khrushchev’s dream. Here, in this environment, in the eyes of the man responsible for carrying out the directive, the dream was reduced to a realistic strategy, political and military. The adventure lost its sparkle.

1962.

No. Year 5 Anno Canis. I’ve focused too long on the human perspective. Dogs, where are you now? You, Anubis, closest to the origin of the new era. Where are you?

You were getting close. At last.

Yes, Anubis. You still had your erections. You were an old dog now, on the cusp of your tenth year, but your spirit, your vigor, was undaunted. MY DESTINY AWAITS ME, you barked. All along, you kept your nose to the ground, following the scent. The odor of that glorious bitch whose blood, coursing through her veins, was wilder and more powerful than the rest. It was there, you felt it. Your nose led you on. And so, Anubis, you kept heading south. You had faith in the impulses stirring within you, and you continued south. Or perhaps that’s not quite right; it was less impulses in the plural than the lingering trace of a single impulse. Its echoes. That summer, you had felt something gazing down at you from the vastness of the sky. In year 3 Anno Canis. And you had understood. YES, you thought. I MUST PURSUE THAT GAZE.

Therein, you understood, lay the evolution of the canine tribe.

Woof! you barked.

I’LL SIRE THE STRONGEST BLOODLINE!

Your mind was made up; your penis was hard.

I WON’T DIE. MY SEED WON’T DIE. IT WILL LIVE… AND LIVE, FOREVER!

MY FUTURE WIFE! you barked.

Year 5 Anno Canis. At long last you arrived, your massive penis straight as a flagpole. Stirred by the sensation of that gaze from outer space, you had run to the very ends of the earth, and now here you were in the distant outliers of the Soviet Union. Here where the USSR hit up against South Siberia and Mongolia. You were in the west of the Tuvan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Grasslands and squat mountains as far as the eye could see. You emerged from a forest of white birches, and there you were.

The KGB Border Guard had set up its breeding grounds in these grasslands.

The facility, administered by the Committee for the Purchase and Rearing of Guard/War Dogs, was the largest anywhere in the USSR. It was outfitted with equipment for training inexperienced dogs before they were assigned to their units. During the past two years everything had been updated. Because there was a new man in charge. And because the five remaining children of those two dog heroes, Belka and Strelka, had been welcomed to the camp. They were no longer puppies. They were fully mature. Already they were creating the next generation. Getting pregnant, making others pregnant. The puppies were Russian laika, of course, but the facility head decided to mate them with different breeds. For the future—to create a corps of dogs loyal to the homeland. They would draw on these bloodlines, on the bloodlines of those five puppies’ parents, to establish a corps of the mightiest dogs on the planet. They had gathered magnificent males, magnificent bitches. These dogs contributed the use of their wombs, their sperm. A third generation of heroes was being brought into the world, litter after litter.

The space dogs’ grandchildren.

Woof! you barked.

I’VE ARRIVED! you announced.

Inside the breeding grounds, 213 dogs froze in their tracks. Dogs with standing ears raised their heads; dogs with floppy ears raised their tails. WHO HAS ARRIVED? they were saying. LISTEN TO HOW STRONG THAT VOICE IS! WHO IS IT WHO IS IT WHO IS IT? Each dog felt that the other dog, the one that barked, had been calling to her, or to him. YOU, YES YOU .

I’LL HAVE MY WAY WITH YOU! you barked.

I’LL MAKE YOU PREGNANT! you barked. You, Anubis, you barked.

TO LIVE!

And the dogs were afraid. Each time you barked in the breeding grounds, the dogs broke into a commotion. Some were struck with terror. Some suddenly went into heat. The bitches got wet between their legs, while the males leapt at their handlers’ legs and waists, at nearby poles, and simulated intercourse. People hurried this way and that, unsure what was happening. Woof! you barked again. And again: Woof! At last, you were almost there! But you weren’t yet inside. You were outside the fence. You stood three feet away. The fence was electrified. You had sensed that, of course. You were clever. You saw danger before it struck. You had made it this far, after all, from the Arctic Ocean. You had come, what’s more, by way of Alaska. And you had another strength too: you could read the workings of destiny before it became manifest.

So you waited.

For something… SOMETHING.

Barking all the while.

Barking. And it came.

Riding a horse.

A human.

“So you’re the one barking,” he said in Russian.

Woof! you answered.

“You want to go inside?” he asked. “Caught the scent of our bitches?”

Woof! you answered.

“You’re male?” he said, appraising you. “And I see you’re erect,” the young man who was in charge of the facility said, still atop his horse, impressed.

OF COURSE, you said.

The young man lowered his Kalashnikov automatic rifle, took aim.

But no gun was going to scare you off.

I’VE ARRIVED! you barked.

“You seem,” the young man continued in Russian, speaking entirely seriously even though you were a dog, somehow maintaining his dignity as a commissioned officer, “to be saying that you’re the dog, the breeder male, I’ve been waiting for. What confidence!”

I’VE ARRIVED! you barked.

“Is it true? Have you really come?”

IT’S TRUE! you barked.

“You’re built a bit like a wolf,” the young commissioned officer said. He had dismounted by now. You stood facing each other through the fence, which buzzed with electric current. “You’ve got wolf blood in you? Is that it? Did you know how close wolves are to German shepherds? You know about German shepherds? A breed created just sixty years ago, specifically to fight in war? They’re war dogs through and through. People wanted the perfect build for war, and they made it. That’s what a German shepherd is.”

Woof!

“Are you a natural… ideal?”

Woof! you answered.

“If you want a bitch, I’ll let you have one. She’s good. Young animal from a good line. But she’s not complete. She’s missing something. She’s not a soldier. You understand what I’m saying? I want a dog with a soldier’s pride. I’m waiting for puppies that have that. How about it? I’ll let you have her, see what happens. Shoot your sperm into her. I can see you’re special. I see that erection of yours. All right.”