The seven puppies were waiting for the next command.
All of a sudden, she shouted. Imitating the sounds of Russian.
Sic him! She was thinking. Attack that asshole!
And those were the words she yelled: “Go! Sic him!” In Russian. The accent wasn’t perfect, but she had absorbed the sounds well enough.
There were the seven puppies. They had been doing these tests for days, they were used to the commands. They had a vague understanding of the concept—that these words the people spoke were instructions. And they were used to the girl’s voice. She had come and talked to them every day, after all. That had been part of her routine. And so.
The smartest puppy responded to her command.
One puppy started running.
It was number 47. He sprinted off at full speed. His little hind legs bending, their joints creaking. He ran faster. Heading for the target. Because a voice he knew had ordered him to attack. He was supposed to do something, he knew. THROW YOURSELF AT THE TARGET, that was it, maybe. Or maybe it was, RUN AT HIM. And then, BITE HIM, KILL HIM.
Number 47 understood the girl’s words.
He leapt at Opera.
He sprang at him and kept attacking until Opera pushed him down, and when the old man shouted “Down,” he turned and looked first at the girl.
The girl stared, dumbstruck, at number 47.
“I did it, right?” the puppy was asking.
Number 47 was a boy.
And then the girl… nodded. She nodded at number 47.
It had started. She’d had a conversation. For the first time since she had been brought here as a prisoner to the Dead Town, she had willingly communicated with another living creature. Not with a person, with a dog. But still, it had happened. This Japanese girl had spoken to a dog, and the dog had understood. True, the medium had been a monkey-see-monkey-do imitation of Russian, but that didn’t matter: the linguistic gap between the original Russian and her fake Russian was no more than a few millimeters.
A minute later, ten minutes later, an hour later, the shock was still sinking in.
Sinking in.
Night fell. At the dinner table, the girl had an announcement to make. The Old Fuck, the Old Bag, Opera, WO, and WT were all sitting there around the table when she made it. “That dog is mine,” she told them, speaking very clearly, in Japanese. Naturally no one understood. None of them had the slightest idea what she had said, at least not at this stage. But she didn’t care.
“You heard me, right? I asked for permission, and I got it,” she declared.
The old man sensed something. You made some kind of announcement, didn’t you? he asked.
In Russian. And that was it. He didn’t pursue the matter.
The rest of the meal was like any other. A salad with beets in it, cold kidney beans, borscht, some sort of sour bread.
Already her routine was disrupted. After dinner, the girl left the building. This was the first time since her arrival that she had been out after dark. She headed straight for the area with the kennels. She had no trouble finding her way. She carried something in her hand: the remains of a mutton rib roast that she had walked off with without even trying to hide what she was doing, as the old lady watched, while she was cleaning up the kitchen and getting things ready for the following day. The girl had taken what was left after the meat was carved, the extras.
She came to the puppies’ cage.
The seven puppies welcomed her, yelping. One was half asleep, but the smell of the meat woke it up. In the other cages, the adult dogs began making noise as well, attracted by the odor. The girl ignored them, gave all the meat to the puppies.
The mutton rib roast.
She waited for her eyes to get completely used to the dark. She didn’t have a flashlight, of course. She waited until she could recognize the puppies gathered around the roast.
“Hey,” she said. In Japanese, as always. “That’s mutton. I told you before, right? When you gnaw on mutton, your body gets hot. So how the fuck is it, huh? That’s why I brought it.”
The girl rested her hands on the cage door. A rectangle of iron pipes covered with chain-link. The lock was just a latch. All that mattered was that the dogs couldn’t open it and run out. The girl raised the latch. She stepped into the cage, gingerly scooped up one of the puppies. She cradled number 47 in her arms.
“Hey, fucker. Come keep me warm,” she said.
Number 47 didn’t struggle.
“You’re okay coming to my room? Being my heater?”
Number 47 didn’t struggle.
That night, the bed in the girl’s cell became a double bed for one girl and one puppy. Her cell was now a cell for two. She hugged number 47 tightly in the narrow bed, five feet wide at most, petting him roughly but with profound emotion. She couldn’t have put her feelings into words. Number 47 didn’t struggle. Far from it, he jumped at her. Burrowed under her squishy stomach.
One girl and one dog slept.
Nice and warm.
She got up right away when she woke the next morning. Already her new routine had been established. The old schedule had fallen apart, she knew that. Everything was just beginning. Something was just beginning. She was no longer the invisible girl, and she no longer had to observe the Old Fuck, the Old Bag, WO, WT, and Opera. She had realized that they were, in fact, observing her. And so… what?
She, along with her dogs, would find a third position.
Making adjustments along the way.
So she got up the next morning and went outside with number 47. They went to the bathroom. It was a good thirty feet away from the building, and she went there every morning to wash her face. She peed, as she always did. Number 47 found a place to pee too. After that, they headed over to the kennels. This time the girl didn’t pick number 47 up; she let him walk, and they made their way together toward the cages. They stopped before the puppies’ cage. Number 47’s siblings looked out, puzzled, through the chain-link fence. WHAT ARE YOU DOING OUT THERE? they asked number 47. “I picked him,” the girl said. “He’s the one I chose.” YOU DID? the six puppies asked. “He’s my guard, this guy. Forty-seven,” the girl said. Number 47 confirmed her statement with a silent yelp. SO THAT’S WHY YOU WEREN’T AROUND LAST NIGHT? IS THAT TRUE, BROTHER? the six puppies asked. “Listen to me. He’s going to stay here in the cage with you in the morning and during the day and stuff. I’ll bring Forty-seven back every morning. He’ll stay here and play with you, and he’ll train with you too. You got that? So I’m telling you, don’t you fucking ignore him. You do that, and I’ll fucking kick the shit out of you. I’ll get a bat and I’ll fucking pulverize you. I mean it. Because he’s going to be my guard…” The girl turned to number 47. “I’m gonna make you top dog, you hear? I’m gonna turn you into a real fucking dog. You got that, Forty-seven? You hear what I’m saying? But when you’re with the other dogs, you’ll just be a dog. A little doggie-shit. That’s how you’re gonna live.”