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

And fairly early on, you discovered a storeroom. Preserved food the commies had stashed away. The cave held enough to keep you alive for a few weeks down there, underground—besieged, as it were. Enough, perhaps, for a few dogs to survive for a few weeks. But how many? The North Vietnamese Army and the Vietcong, incidentally, had left the fourth layer untouched for almost a year, ever since the attack the previous summer, assuming it was beyond salvage. And intense combat continued along the McNamara line, rendering it impossible to dig down again. As long as the first and second layers remained functional, they decided, thinking strategically, those two layers would have to suffice. And this strategy affected the dogs too, as they fought their own Vietnam War. The supplies hadn’t been gathered in one place in the fourth layer, of course; they were dispersed. There were a few of these caves. And just as you, DED, and your fellows had found a storeroom, so too had the enemy pack. Right around the same time. So you were even. You had equal portions. And so a territorial dispute began.

How did you mark off your realms of influence?

You were dogs, so you claimed space with your scents.

The front lines were the areas covered with your piss and shit. And through the process of marking the ground, you created your own canine military map. Here, in this still new world, in the fourth layer, deep underground, coordinates were organized in terms, not of latitudes and longitudes, but of shititudes and pissitudes. In those terms—carefully, ever so carefully—you grasped the contours of a place that rendered vision useless. Scent spoke eloquently, telling you, for instance, that war had been declared. Or that the enemy was constrained. It was all on the map. An ambush was planned at a certain location. And then there was the canine version of a search-and-destroy mission. The deadly struggle continued. How many bruises did you acquire? Not only from your explorations, but from grappling with the enemy, and from overhead, the repeated cave-ins. You kept adapting, though. Your right front leg was bent, yes—you had broken a bone and there were no splints down here. SO WHAT? You had power. Your enemies’ fear had empowered you, and you had been emboldened ever since. Needless to say, you were the leader of your pack. BEAT THEM BACK! you shouted. KILL THE ANTI-AMERICAN DOGS!

Attack. Defend. Strengthen defenses. Turn danger to victory. Attack and win.

A canine Vietnam War.

Pure subtraction.

You acquired a sixth sense, suited to the new world in which you lived. It can’t be named. The point is that you adapted. Not all your fellows could. Not all your enemies could. One dog turned to skin and bones. Another went mad at seven o’clock on the seventh day of the seventh week. He barked ferociously, endlessly, and was mauled by the other dogs, had both his eyes gouged out and one ear and his tail torn off, yet he managed to survive seventeen more weeks. You lapped water from a pool, listening to him howl hoarsely in a very distant sector of the map. There were springs. In the floor, in the walls. In the deepest regions of certain paths. You had been aware of the underground stream’s rumbling for a long time. Your nose caught the faintest whiff, almost an illusion, of the South China Sea. No, it wasn’t your nose, it was that unnameable sixth sense. You sensed the motion of the tide. There was water and disease. One dog came down with scabies. There was diarrhea. Colds. Avitaminosis. There were all kinds of worms and insects and parasites, and though some could cause illness—one of the parasites had caused the scabies—some of those creatures that came wriggling out of the earth were rare delicacies. They were fresher than the preserved foods. Naturally, DED, you took the initiative in trying them. TO LIVE, you told yourself. LIVE, you told your fellows. DIE, you told your enemies.

Sometimes you waited motionless for moles and mice to emerge from their holes.

A few times, your new world was visited by catastrophe brought on by the human Vietnam War raging aboveground. One day a storehouse in the second layer, crammed full of munitions the North Vietnamese Army and the Vietcong shared, caught fire and exploded. This changed the terrain of your world. Made it even more complex, into a labyrinth of new branches. This happened once, then again, a third time.

But you, DED, you were alive.

The subtraction continued until, a year later, it was one vs. one.

You had no way of knowing the time or the season, living underground, but it was summer. Summer 1968.

And suddenly, subtraction became addition.

There came a point when you realized that all your fellows were gone, and simultaneously that only one of your enemies was left. A moment later, you were prepared to shift gears, to make the switch to addition. Yes, you grasped what had happened, didn’t you? You did indeed. Here in this new world, which was no longer new—here in the fourth layer, underground, in the general area of the seventeenth parallel north, on the border between North and South Vietnam, only two dogs remained. One was you, and the other…? That smell… that odor?

A bitch.

In the beginning there was darkness, and then there were your enemies. Then came hunger. You killed your enemies, ate them, became the embodiment of your name. And then… you were seized by desire.

You lusted. The new world was populated by one male and one bitch. And you knew what was happening. I HAVE TO LIVE, you thought. To live. What did that mean? It was a matter of lineage, its continuation. Your… family tree. So your instinct for self-preservation kicked in, issued a command. DED, get hard.

The underground war was over. It was time to take the bitch.

Don’t kill her.

There was food. Enough for two dogs, now that there were only two, to survive at least a few months. You began sending signals. Signs in shit and piss, barks, whispers. COME TO ME, you said. COME, THE WAR IS OVER.

This is the reconciliation, you announced.

And she felt the difference. You, in turn, understood, by means of your unnameable sixth sense, that she had understood.

You came together. In your storeroom. On your—American—territory. I’M THE ONLY MALE LEFT, you barked. THERE’S ENOUGH FOOD, WE HAVE WHAT WE NEED, you barked. THE TIME HAS COME TO MATE.

WE WILL BE THE ORIGIN OF THIS WORLD.

Did she understand your words?

Three days later, the red dog was wet, in heat. For the first time, this “anti-American dog” as you had thought of her, last among her fellows, grew wet between her legs. She had eaten her fill in the storeroom on your—American—territory, running in, rooting around, sleeping, waking, and running in again, spreading food around with her nose as she gobbled it down, sleeping, waking, making a mess, and then, finally, she was ready, she assumed the position. You were ready, you were hard. You straddled her. You were on top of her, panting, shaking your butt.

Not once.

Twice.

A third time.

The bitch was obedient.

Your sperm dribbled from between her legs. Your seed.

You were calm again.

And then, five days after you and the bitch met up, late at night—late at night aboveground, that is, and in Vietnam—you were murdered in your sleep. You had your testicles bitten off and your throat ripped open.

You died.

Just like that.

Yes, DED, you were dead.

From here on out, it was the bitch’s story. She wouldn’t let the body of a fellow dog go to waste. She tore into it with her fangs. It was warm. She gobbled down the liver, the spleen. She took mouthfuls of the meat. She lapped the still uncoagulated blood. Because she required it. She needed the nutrition. Lots of it—vitamins, minerals, proteins, everything. Because she had a litter of puppies growing inside her.