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

The most dangerous thing they could do, they decided, was let you starve.

The humans had come to regard you as a ferocious, wild beast.

Soon the three factions became two. The Polynesian navigator died, and the others fought over his body. They battled for the “food.” The haole faction gave you the penis and testicles as an offering; the pure Hawaiians gave you the liver as theirs. The death of the single member of the Rarotongan faction meant that they had lost the only person with any experience navigating the open ocean, even if he had wildly exaggerated his abilities, but the other two factions didn’t mind. The wealthy researcher died the next day, as if he couldn’t stand to have been beaten by the navigator. You took your time gnawing on the usual parts. Now the canoe had no leader.

Still you remained at the prow, and the humans at the stern.

Two factions became one. Only three humans remained, all pure Hawaiians.

You had passed through the doldrums. But where were you? No one manned the rudder. You had drifted off course, yes, but in which direction? East? West? North? South?

Who knew?

November 11. You were starving.

The double canoe was still adrift.

Still being swept this way and that on the endless sea.

You sat at the prow, gazing, not up at the sky, but at the level horizon.

The Hawaiians caught a few fish every day. They gave you the innards. Tossed the offering to you at the prow.

You didn’t attack the humans. Why would you? You weren’t a wild, ferocious beast—you never had been. You would never have gone for them the way you did if they hadn’t tried to kill you, to turn you into food. So you sat there at the prow, starving.

Starving.

You were still starving on November 12, and on the thirteenth, and on the fourteenth. Your body felt oddly light. You couldn’t feel your weight. You were becoming invisible, you thought.

I’M INVISIBLE.

I’M AN INVISIBLE BITCH.

The fifteenth. You were almost dead. Dehydrated. You faded in and out of consciousness. But your eyes were open. The horizon. More horizon. More horizon. Finally, you became delirious. You thought of your family on Oahu. Back on that island on the twenty-first parallel north, the beagles. Four puppies. SO ADORABLE! SO CUTE! You hadn’t given birth to them yourself, true. But at that moment, in that muddled mental state, you floundered in the fantasy of being their mother. You were suckling them. Giving your teats to those four tiny pups to suck. MY DARLING CHILDREN! you shouted. FRUIT OF MY WOMB! You were growling. Uuuuurrr . And the mistaken memory was burning itself into your mind.

The sixteenth.

The seventeenth.

You felt the ocean. Yes, you could feel it. Surging beneath you. The canoe was your cradle. The Pacific Ocean occupies fully one third of the earth’s surface. You sensed its enormity. The double canoe had now drifted way off to the west of the planned route. It had passed south of the equator, but if it kept going in this direction, it would never reach Tahiti. If it kept going in this direction… it wouldn’t reach Tahiti or any of the Society Islands. It was heading for another island group. As it happened, another boat traveled regularly along more or less the same course. A cargo ship. You noticed it, way off on the horizon. AM I INVISIBLE? you asked yourself. You watched the silhouette as it grew progressively larger. AM I AN INVISIBLE BITCH?

NO, you told yourself. I’M NOT.

NO, I’M A MOTHER, you told yourself. Mistakenly.

The mistaken memory that had burned itself into your mind was what brought you to your feet, your teats aching with a mother’s love.

You stood up.

You sent out an SOS. Woof! Woof! Woof!

At three o’clock on November 17, 1975, local time, having crossed to the east of the international date line, the cargo ship picked you up. When you started barking at the prow, the sound brought the Hawaiians at the stern back to their senses—they, too, had been driven by extreme hunger into a state of delirium. For a moment they had simply gaped at the sight of hope moving across the ocean, there, right in front of them, and then they had started whistling, waving their arms. You didn’t wave, but you did wag your tail. The ship’s crew noticed you, and your thirty-eight-day nightmare voyage came to an end.

It was over. And where, Goodnight, were you now?

The cargo ship was on its way from the American mainland to a point on the fourteenth parallel south that was itself one of the United State’s unincorporated territories. The ship was headed for American Samoa. It would be taking on a large shipment of canned tuna on Tutuila, the main island in the archipelago. Approximately thirty percent of the American Samoan labor force worked in the canneries, packing and sending can after can of South Pacific tuna to the mainland. Shortly before the date changed from November 17 to November 18, the three men, now identified in the ship records as “survivors,” were taken ashore at Tutuila, after the ship docked in Pago Pago Harbor. The records noted, too, the presence of one dog, also a “survivor.” She was a German shepherd. You, Goodnight. You looked like a bag of bones. You were exhausted, both physically and spiritually. You were a dog of the fourteenth parallel south now, though it would take a few weeks for you to realize this. For the time being, you still had the illusion that you were adrift in that canoe on the wide, wide sea, exiled from Oahu island, exiled from your home on the twenty-first parallel north. But you weren’t. You had become a Tutuilan dog. A dog of the fourteenth parallel south. From the American state of Hawaii to the central island in the American territory of Samoa. The two islands were separated by a distance of 2,610 miles, and even so you had simply moved from one place to another within “America.”

Even after thirty-eight days adrift on the ocean.

The three survivors didn’t discuss the details of what they had endured. Those three pure Hawaiians would not divulge the inside story of their thirty-eight days at sea. They had violated various taboos. They had hallucinated. What were they supposed to say? And so, in the end… they said very little. It was a hellish trip, they said, and fell silent. One man added that he’d never get in a canoe again. Then they boarded a plane at Pago Pago International Airport and flew back to Hawaii.

They did. But not you.

They intentionally left you behind. The Hawaiians were terrified of you and insisted there was no need to take you back. They looked at you with horror in their eyes, as if you yourself were the embodiment of a taboo, and they abandoned you. You made no effort to follow them. Those three men who had lived until the end, gathered at the stern of the canoe, were not your masters. If anything, they had been serving you, because that was the ritual. Because the livers, the penises, the testicles had become the custom. And then, later, the innards of the fish they caught. You had no master, no new master appeared, and all you had to show for the horror you had endured was a mistaken memory. MY PUPPIES! FRUIT OF MY WOMB! And now here you were, and here you stayed, from November to December 1975.

The fourteenth parallel south. Tutuila Island.

No one took you in as a pet, and yet you were fed. Days passed. At first they kept you on the grounds of the government office. You still resembled a bag of bones. “Hey, dog! You’re alive! Eat!” the Samoans who worked for the local government called to you, tossing you scraps of taro and fish. More offerings… the same custom, you thought. You began to put on weight, but you were still living in a daze. You stood out on this island, a single pure German shepherd among a Tutuilan population made up entirely of mongrels. You had style. The local dogs felt it. And so they avoided you. You went out on the beach. You gazed at the ocean. At the horizon. The horizon, the horizon, more horizon. I’M ADRIFT, I’M LOST, THIS IS A CANOE IN THE FORM OF AN ISLAND. You felt it. Coconut crabs scuttled on the shore. Slowly you grew accustomed to the stench of rotting coconut. An island. You felt it. From the second week of December, you began to understand that the island was an island. THIS PLACE IS… AN ISLAND? You were incapable of understanding that this island lay on the fourteenth parallel south. The island had been home to an American naval base until 1951, and as a dog who had served as a sentry until just ten months earlier, you could sense that history, sense the lingering base-ness of the place like a scent buried just under the surface of the earth, and it confused you. There was too much rain here for it to be that other island on the twenty-first parallel north.