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

He felt how cold she was.

How stiff.

He sensed that he was losing her.

Guitar was too old to drink his mother’s milk now, but he groped for her teats, nuzzling them one by one. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. The last two had never meant anything. But now, even when he sucked the others, no milk streamed forth. There was no warmth.

He sucked furiously.

Twenty minutes later, Cabron, you stumbled upon the scene. There, in a corner of the hall surrounded by the tumult of an estate still in chaos, was your wife, the bitch whose ass you had pursued with such passion, stretched out in the solemnity of death, with one of your children, a puppy with stripes like a guitar, beside her—beside her body, trying to suck her teats. You stood stunned, you hung your head. Soon another of your children padded over, and a second, then three more. They all, one after the other, followed Guitar’s lead, clustering around their cold mother’s teats, to suck.

The third trial continued through the rest of August and into September. Slowly your children began to die. The reason was simple: their mother was gone. The shock of her sudden death was more than they could bear. By the last week in September, only two puppies were alive. It wasn’t as though you weren’t trying to help—you were doing everything you could. Ever since “Bloody Sunday” you were spending all your time looking after the puppies. You were unbelievably careful. You never let them out of your sight, you kept watch over them twenty-four hours a day. You had, in fact, started raising them yourself. Even though you were a male dog, not a bitch.

MY CHILDREN, you thought.

MY RIGHTFUL DESCENDANTS.

LIVE. STAY ALIVE. LIVE.

Of course, you weren’t tending to them in the right way. You couldn’t call on your “motherly instincts” because you didn’t have any. Half of what you did was just horsing around. Though even then you were serious. The other half was education. That’s okay, you can do that, don’t do this, remember. You did all you could. And what sort of education did you pour most of your energy into? Into the very same trick you had devoted most of your energies to learning. In order to impress their mother. That, naturally, you had to teach them. You gave them an elite education. Your children, still under three months old.

Learn to smell the difference between these drugs.

Learn to identify their purity .

You taught them all the tricks a drug-sniffing dog needed to know. Almost as though you were engraving their mother’s memory onto their minds.

In November, the last two puppies were alive and well. Guitar was one of the two. One day, the Samoan shouted to your master, his eyes wide with surprise. “Hey, Boss! Boss!” The Hellhound, your master, practically shrieked when he realized what was happening. “What the hell are you hollering for… huh? Wait a sec, he’s… OH MY GOD !” “Amazing, huh, Boss? Look at Guitar there, scratching at the shoe with the marijuana hidden inside, just like his old man, Cabron.” “Looks like a real police dog, huh?” “Seriously. And look, his brother is doing it too!” “He… he can tell the difference between the marijuana and cocaine!” “They’ve totally turned into drug dogs!”

Your master turned and stared at you. He was moved. “Incredible… raising them all on your own, without their mother… and you taught them to do this?”

You sensed that he was praising you. You barked confidently.

Woof!

In the human world too, the same amount of time had passed since that first Sabbath in August. Three months. During that period, as the two puppies had learned how to be drug dogs, similarly momentous changes had occurred in the two-legged world as well. First of all, the conflict with the Colombians was over. So much blood had been shed on “Bloody Sunday” that one of the bosses in Panama, unwilling to stand by and watch the carnage, stepped in to mediate. The conditions of the truce weren’t bad. So a bargain was struck. For the first time in ages, the Hellhound’s Mexico City estate went back to being just that—an ordinary organized crime boss’s compound, not a fort. The security detail was reduced to a few men, though they still carried light machine guns and ammunition belts at all times. Now that there was no need to man the fort, the Hellhound lost no time in flying off to Texas. He wanted to pay his respects to the Don. “I’m real sorry, Dad. Quite a commotion I caused.” “You idiot! You idiot! You idiot!” the Don said, berating him a touch too dramatically. “You sure as hell caused a commotion! You gotta be sharper than that, right? Listen, I want you to remember this. World War II is long over. This is 1975, there are no ‘gangsters’ anymore, not like they used to have ’em in the old days. You’re part of the new generation. I invested in you, right? You’re part of the new guard in this business. So you gotta learn to be a businessman. Wise up. Learn to make it look legal, okay? Look legal.” This exchange with the Don left the Hellhound feeling kind of blue. He hadn’t just been told off, of course—the Don had been trying to impart some serious knowledge—but he hadn’t expected to be bawled out. Not at all. Maybe I’m just not cut out for this, he thought glumly as he stood in the courtyard of La Familia’s compound, chucking bread to the dozen ducks bobbing on the pond. Just then, he heard a bright voice at his back. “Hey, it’s my favorite brother-in-law! Long time no see!” It was his ex-wife’s younger sister, the Don’s third daughter. She was eighteen now. He hadn’t seen her for three years because she had been sent to get an education in Vienna when she was fifteen. The Hellhound gasped. She had grown into quite a woman. A real beauty. A beauty of the slim, big-breasted type.

“Uh… yeah… long time no see.”

“What’s wrong? Feeling blue again?”

“No, no. Just… feeding the ducks.”

“The ducks?”

“Yeah. Bread, see?”

“Bread?”

Soon they were embroiled in a heated discussion concerning the most appropriate food for ducks. Then they left the courtyard to take a stroll through the orchard, and two hours later they were kissing passionately. The Hellhound had fallen in love with the young woman at first sight—though technically this was the second time he’d encountered her—and the Don’s third daughter, then in the throes of puberty, had a megacrush on the Hellhound. They started going on dates. North of the border, south of the border. The Hellhound had gotten back into his work as a luchador by this time, and the young woman actually came to see him in the ring. His ex had never once done that. The Hellhound was so bowled over he devised a brand new killer move that he called the “Love Love Dog-Drop.” They were both sure of their feelings, so in the last week of November the Hellhound broached the matter with the Don. “I’d like to ask for your daughter’s hand in marriage,” he said.

“Yeah, I guess my other daughter turned out to be a loser, huh.”

“No, no! That’s not the point. I’m really serious about her, and I—”

“Sure.”

“What!”

“With one condition. This is going to be the second time I’ve given you a daughter, so I want you to expand your operations a bit for me, all right? Think of it as a wedding present to La Familia.”

Nothing wrong with that. And so, once again, twos came into play. The Hellhound had to start running around, east and west, trying to rummage up some big new game he could bag for his second wife. As it happened, the biggest tip of all came from a source very close to home: his bodyguard. “I’ve got a good route, Boss.” “Hmm, I don’t know. Where does it lead? I’ve had enough of these South American connections.” “You can trust this one, Boss. It’s my brother.” “What? You mean your twin brother?” “I told you he’s in the same business, right?” “Come to think of it, you did.” “He’s in Asia. Works for the head of an organization that deals drugs. He’s the guy’s secretary .” “His secretary? You mean his bodyguard?” “You got it, Boss. Brraahahahahah! And this organization, seems they’ve got some fields out in Pakistan, out in the middle of nowhere.” “Fields growing… poppy seeds?” “Bingo.” “I seem to recall that your brother’s a Muslim?” “Sure is. It’s all Allah, Allah , every day. Anyway, this organization…” “All right, I hear you.”