Belka, Why Don't You Bark - By Hideo Furukawa Page 0,101

hometown?

Sounded good.

Thus, in the middle of December, the two groups arrived in American Samoa, disguised as tourists, and met up in a hotel. The Hellhound decided to take his alter ego along —his second self, his dog, Cabron. “We’ll scare the bejeezus out of ’em,” he’d said before they left. “Show ’em that with this dog we’ve got, we’ll sniff out any funny business, diluting shit down and stuff. Sniff it out in a second. We’ll show ’em what we can do!” “Nice. I like it, Boss,” the Samoan said. “The only worry is—do you think Cabron will leave the puppies?” “Hmm…good point. He’s been fawning over them nonstop, it’s true. How about this, then? They’re six months old now, right? Why not take the little buggers along?” There were only two of them. (Two.) The Hellhound decided this was the best solution. Besides, just imagine the look on those Asian faces when they see those two roly-poly dumplings zipping around, trying to outdo each other in ferreting out carefully concealed heroine, marijuana, and speed! Hats off to the Nuevo Mundo!

“You can have a whole roast pig, Boss,” said the Samoan. The older one, the Hellhound’s bodyguard. The younger twin’s group flew from Melbourne by way of Fiji and landed in Samoa, formerly known as Western Samoa, then moved on to the final destination. The older twin’s group—including the Hellhound and the three dogs—flew first to Hawaii. They changed planes in Honolulu and headed for the South Pacific.

It was December 9, 1975, when Cabron left Mexico City. He and his alter ego. He was no longer a dog of the twentieth parallel north. He passed over Oahu, over the twenty-first parallel north. But Goodnight wasn’t there anymore. The bitch of the twenty-first parallel north was no longer living on that island.

You, dog—you, Goodnight, who no longer reside on the twenty-first parallel north. Where are you now?

You were riding in a double canoe. Taking part in a glorious adventure, heading for Tahiti using ancient maritime navigation techniques. If this magnificent project, part of the Hawaiian Renaissance, was a success, you had been told, you would be awarded a third medal to add to the Purple Heart and the Silver Star you received during your days as a military dog. Your master was the one who told you this. The former lieutenant who had taken you into his family when you retired from the military, then let you go when the family beagle had children—not your master, then, strictly speaking, but your former master. Well, you would never get that third medal. A month after the canoe set out, on November 11, 1975, you were starving. The canoe was adrift. Swept this way and that on the vast sea. Once, earlier, the humans had tried to kill you, to turn you into food. Canine cuisine. Fortunately, however, you had no master now. No new master had appeared. As far as you could see, the boat was populated with idiots.

DO YOU REALLY THINK YOU CAN SACRIFICE ME? ARE YOU FOOLS CRAZY? That was your answer to them. And so you revolted. You sank your teeth deep into one man’s biceps, tore off the hands of two others at the wrists, and that was that—you had beaten them back. All your years as a military dog came back to you, erupted within you. You ate the body parts you had taken. Then you sucked the bones. You had been starving since the second week of the voyage. The Polynesian navigator had revealed himself as a useless, run-of-the-mill fraud. Unable to read the stars in unfamiliar seas. The Hawaiian Islands and the Cook Islands were part of the same Polynesian cultural sphere, it was true, but they were just too far apart. The navigator was from Rarotonga Island, and the ocean here was nothing like the ocean there. This was too far north. To make matters worse, he couldn’t see what was happening with the waves. He wasn’t sensitive to his surroundings. By the third day, the canoe had started moving off course. You heard the humans quarreling.

“Secret techniques my ass!” the wealthy researcher shouted. “Where’s this fucking ‘wisdom of the ancients’ you were talking about, you fucking bluffer!” As it happened, the researcher’s insults were right on target: the navigator had been bluffing his way through life for years. And he didn’t stop now. “I swear to you, sir, that I will carry us onward to Tahiti using the traditional techniques I have inherited.