Belka, Why Don't You Bark - By Hideo Furukawa Page 0,48

the other end of the main hall. As it had before. There was no leather sofa like the one in her dad’s office, but there was a table and some seats. There was a mound of money on the table. Rows and rows of bundled banknotes that seemed, at first sight, to be neatly stacked but weren’t really. No rubles as far as she could see. Look at all this cash, the girl thought, glancing it over. That’s fucking American money, isn’t it? Dollars or whatever?

Yeah, she thought. It is like Dad’s office after all.

Just then, she caught sight of a shrine. Something, at any rate, that felt like a shrine in the context of this room. There were no paper lanterns, and there was no Japanese sword resting on its stands, but it had the same aura. That was it. The source of whatever it was she was feeling. The globe.

It was on a shelf. Displayed. Set out to be seen, regarded. Revered.

That, the girl sensed, was the most important thing in the room.

She knew it right away.

So she went to take it in her hands.

She walked around the table, reached out. She picked it up. She had expected it to be fairly heavy, but it was surprisingly light. It felt like metal, though. It felt old. She had assumed it would be hollow like other globes, but it didn’t seem to be. She turned it in her palms. Rotated the earth. It was bigger than her head.

She sensed it. This isn’t empty.

She sensed it. There’s something here.

She sensed it. Something alive.

But what?

Is it…inside?

She turned it in her palms, looking for a seam. The northern and southern hemispheres looked like they might crack apart. That was the line. Ever so carefully, she opened it. And out it came. Bone. An animal’s skull. It looked like it had been burned…bits of skin or something clinging to it, hanging. Skin like a mummy’s, desiccated.

…what the hell?

Are you kidding me?

Number 47 was trying to communicate something. Trying to tell her something. It had nothing to do, however, with the skull in the globe. He was trying to draw her attention to the figure now standing in the doorway. No, not the figure—the figures. Like the girl and number 47, they were two: a person and a dog.

A person and a dog, both old.

At number 47’s urging, the girl turned around.

“You have opened the coffin, have you?” the old man said.

“What…the hell?” the girl said.

“You wanted to hold it? Is that it, girl?”

The dog standing beside the old man was very old. The girl remembered him, of course—she had seen him before. He was fairly large, stately. This was the same dog that had barked down at her once before, from the roof.

“You wanted to touch the very first dog?” the old man said in Russian. Then, “But it is not Belka, you know.”

“I didn’t break it,” the girl said in Japanese. “I just opened it.” Then, suddenly realizing what was inside, she continued. “Fuck, you asshole, keeping a fucking creepy skull like this, hidden in this thing. What is it…a fucking dog? Is that what this is, you Old Fuck?”

“That is the first great Soviet hero. A dog who did not make it back to the earth alive. Those are her remains. That is not Belka.”

“What the fuck are you saying?” the girl asked.

The old man pointed to the old dog beside him. He looked the girl in the eye.

“This is Belka,” he said.

“It’s a dog, isn’t it…a fucking dog’s skull.”

“You understand, little girl? He is the one dog I did not kill, the year before the Soviet Union, the Homeland, disappeared. I let him go. This Belka. I could not bear to destroy the bloodline I helped to create with my own hands. And yet that was what they ordered me to do.”

“Why do you have a dog’s skull in a shrine? Like some dog religion…”

“That was what Russia ordered me to do. Russian history. I betrayed history. I entrusted this Belka to her, the woman who looks after you, your nurse. I wanted to let him live out his life, nothing more. I had no intention of reviving his line. I did not. I had retired. I was serious about my retirement.”

The old man advanced two or three steps into the room.

This time he pointed down at number 47.

The girl stepped closer to her dog, as if to protect him. Without thinking about what she was doing, she lifted the