Belka, Why Don't You Bark - By Hideo Furukawa Page 0,74

human milk. Multiply, multiply! But summer came, and still there was no sign that you were pregnant. Then it was autumn. November. Early in the month, something happened. You raised your head to the heavens. You didn’t know why, it was just an impulse that came over you. SOMEONE’S LOOKING AT ME, FROM ABOVE. IT’S A DOG, A DOG’S GAZE. You lifted your head and peered up into the vastness of the sky.

You thought you had seen a star there, shooting by.

Not falling, but shooting.

You realized how starved you were. Your procreational abilities came one hundred percent back on track. They were turbo-charged. And you gave birth, Jubilee, in 1958—not once, but twice. You bore fifteen puppies in total. You gave birth twice more in 1959. Twelve more puppies. Then, in 1960, you managed to give birth one last time in what could only be considered a super-advanced-age pregnancy. At the same time, in the vast lands up north, on the same continent—in another communist state by the name of the USSR—a wolfdog named Anubis with an erection strong beyond his years kept forcing it into bitches, planting his seed. He was a father beyond his years. You, Jubilee, were a mother beyond your years. This time you gave birth to four puppies. When all was said and done you had brought thirty-one puppies into the world.

In winter 1958, your first litter gave birth to another generation.

In spring 1959, your second litter gave birth to another generation.

By autumn 1959, the children of the dogs in your first litter were themselves getting it on. Their numbers increased. Your bloodline thrived. And over time your descendants proved the superiority of your lineage, its wonderfully modern superiority, and they were urged, males and bitches both, to get raunchy. Finally, in 1963, the day came when the entire platoon was composed of dogs belonging to your family tree. Their number: 801.

And how was Mao’s China doing?

It becomes necessary to touch on the nuclear issue. China’s strategic vision required that it possess nuclear capability. The decision had been made. This was a perfectly natural stance for Red China to take; it was, after all, the third player in the game, along with America and the Soviet Union. In 1958, a telling incident took place: the so-called “Second Taiwan Strait Crisis.” In August, China, under Mao’s direction, initiated a large-scale shelling of the small island Quemoy that belonged to Taiwan. Quemoy was located in Amoy Bay, off the coast of Fujian Province, and the Kuomintang had stationed members of its regular army there. Chiang Kai-shek’s forces intended to use it as the base for their counteroffensive against China. At the time, the only China America recognized as a state was the Republic of China on Taiwan, led by Chiang Kai-shek’s forces and the Kuomintang government. Obviously America couldn’t allow this reckless violence. Mao’s China was red. If Red China were to expand, red patches would start bleeding onto the rest of the Asian page in that ideological coloring book. Warning! Beware of Mao Zedong! The situation became critical. From summer to autumn, the United States considered the possibility of using nuclear weapons. The American military had spread nuclear arms across the entire Pacific. Bases on Guam, Okinawa, and Taiwan had been outfitted with secure installations to handle them. All right, then, why don’t we use these things? To contain Maoist China! America had boiled the complex situation down to a simplistic vision of “communism vs. capitalism,” and if nuclear weapons were what it would take, well, gosh darn it America was ready to do it. Mao, on the other hand, had summed up the situation in his own simplistic way: “Chinese socialism vs. American imperialism.”

That, basically, was how Sino-American relations stood.

In the end, actual conflict was avoided. But Mao had learned his lesson: fight nuclear with nuclear. There was simply no other way to push back against the American menace. And there was more. In an earlier age, when China had been on good terms with the USSR, it had been solidly protected by the Soviet Union’s “nuclear umbrella.” Yes—it had been a satellite nation. But now?

Can’t rely on ’em, Mao thought.

In fact, my dear Khrushchev, Mao thought. Nikita…your nuclear bombs are a menace from behind!

Khrushchev, for his part, wondered what Mao was getting all worked up about.

What’ll you do if nuclear war actually breaks out? What then? Man, this guy’s unbelievable. Here I am blahblahblahing about “US-USSR cooperation” to make sure we don’t end up