“He is Belka,” the old man said, nodding at the old dog, to the girl.
And right away, the girl replied, “BEL-kah.”
“That is right. And you know what? I had a feeling. In this new litter there is no bitch who is fit to be the next Strelka. Number forty-seven might be the next Belka, but there is no Strelka—not, at any rate, among the dogs. None of them will take that name. And you know why not? Because—” For the third time he pointed, this time at the girl. “Because I am giving that name to you.”
Hey, dick, the girl, X years old, barked. She glared at the old man. Don’t fucking point your finger at me.
“Because you are Strelka,” the old man said, chuckling.
He had given the girl a dog name.
1958–1962
(Year 5 Anno Canis)
Dogs, dogs, where are you now?
1958. Still the world was divided along the same lines. Every patch of ground across the surface of the earth had been categorized as belonging to one of two ideologies. Either you were communist or you were capitalist. Or else you wanted to be one or the other. Except for you, dogs—you belonged to both sides.
First of all, four dogs entered communist territory. Three became Chinese. Originally American, these purebred German shepherds were captured on the Korean Peninsula by the People’s Liberation Army. They had been the pride of the US Army, part of the military dog elite: Jubilee, News News (aka E Venture), and Ogre, siblings by different mothers. They had been fathered by Bad News, which meant that their grandparents, on their father’s side, were Masao and Explosion. That was their lineage. And now they were Chinese. The last of the four dogs belonged to Kita’s line. But while his lineage could be traced back to Kita, a Hokkaido dog, his blood was far from pure; he was an Arctic mongrel, a “hybrid breed.” A wolfdog. And so far, he belonged to no nation. He was on Soviet land and was destined eventually to become a Soviet dog, but for now, in 1958, he still had no experience of the thing we call a nation.
Anubis, there you were on the Eurasian continent.
On that vast expanse of land, in Soviet territory.
But this was the Arctic. You hadn’t yet left Far East Siberia, though it was only a matter of weeks before you would. Already you had moved away from the coast of the East Siberian Sea, crossing the Kolyma River. You, Anubis, were pulling a dogsled. And in a little more than a year—between December 1956 and the beginning of 1958—you had passed from your fourth master to your fifth, and from your fifth to your sixth. Why? Because there was something wrong with you. It had nothing to do with your abilities; you were extraordinarily capable. Your senses were more acute than those of any ordinary dog, and you could anticipate all kinds of danger before they appeared. You identified passable routes faster than your masters, dashed easily over the most arduous terrain. You were a magnificent sled dog. The problem, Anubis, was that the dogs you ran with feared you. Most of the dogs in Far East Siberia were Russian Laikas. You weren’t at home in that environment. Or rather, you were—but only at first. In the beginning, things went smoothly. Because people trusted you and you communicated well with them. Because you always tried to do your duty. The problem was that face of yours… your mien. You were nothing like the others. You were no ordinary dog. Something in you was decidedly different.
You were, it almost seemed, half beast.
Because you were.
And so, for no apparent reason, the other dogs were struck with fear. WHAT’S GOING ON? they asked. WHY IS THIS ENEMY AMONG US? He smelled like a wild wolf, and their master had ordered them to watch out for wolves. He smelled just like the members of those other packs, the ones that lived on the outskirts of human territories, watching for a chance to slip in and take down a reindeer or some domesticated animal. His features were half wolf. And so—WHAT’S GOING ON? Eventually, hard as they tried to keep in line as they pulled the sled, they lost the rhythm. They fell out of sync, and the sled capsized. Other times, they might get so spooked that they would ignore their master and his whip and start running on their own. Because they were afraid, every one of them. Of him. Of you.
Anubis. It was your fault.
But you didn’t let it bother you.
As the dogs scrambled for food, you bit them, ever so calmly. You bit them as if you were their leader. You liked dried fish. You liked reindeer meat that had been boiled with barley and allowed to cool. You ate seal meat. You devoured… the peace.
That, Anubis, was your problem.
So your masters let you go. They made the trip from one town to the next, and when they headed back, you were no longer hitched to the sled. They traveled from a town to a village, and left you—only you—behind. They would never abandon you; they passed you on to a new master. “He’s a good dog,” they all said. “He just doesn’t get along with my team. I don’t know what it is. So you can have him,” they said.
You kept moving.
You crossed Far East Siberia, from one village to the next, from a village to a town, from a town to a town, from a town to a village.
Heading west.
To a village further west.
To a town further west.
Purely by chance, you kept tracing a path west across the Eurasian continent, skirting the mountains that marked the southern border of the Arctic Circle. You crossed from Chukchi lands to Koryak lands, then on into Evenk territory. You had a fifth master, and then a sixth, and after that you didn’t count. Neither, Anubis, did you care at all what ethnicity (what “traditional ethnic minority”) your successive masters belonged to.
THERE’S THE ARCTIC OCEAN AGAIN, you thought. Yes, because you had once been a dog of the Arctic Ocean. You had lived on the ice, on one of those “drifting” observation stations. For about a year, from the time you were three to sometime after your fourth birthday, you had been carried by the tides across the Arctic Sea.
I HAVEN’T LEFT THE ARCTIC OCEAN, you thought. And it was true—you were still within the Arctic Circle, still following the shore. Limning the ocean’s edge. Circling.
Circling west.
You had set out from the shores of the East Siberian Sea, which is part of the larger Arctic Ocean. Though in that season, there was no border between water and land. You had traveled for a little over a year, until you found yourself gazing out at another sea, also part of the Arctic Ocean, but with a different name. The Laptev Sea, to the west of the Novosibirsk Islands.
Then, Anubis, sometime in 1958, you left Far East Siberia.
Anubis, Anubis, where are you now? You were on the Lena Delta, in the port town of Tiksi. There, around you, the waters of the Lena River flowed. The second largest river in the USSR, 2,650 miles long—it ended in this port, fanning out into an enormous delta as it streamed into the Laptev Sea. And what, Anubis, were you doing here?
Pulling a sled, of course.
Only now you were pulling it in a different direction. You were no longer heading west. You moved along a north-south axis. It was winter, and the Lena was frozen over—a perfect way to travel. The river had been transformed into a well-equipped sledding route. That’s where you were running. That’s where you were made to run. The thick pads on your feet hit the frozen river, forelegs and hind legs, crossing the ice. The Lena River had two sources: one in the Baikal Range, the other in the Stanovoy Range. Both lay south of the Laptev Sea, the Lena Delta, and the port town Tiksi. In the interior of the Eurasian continent. And so you could tell, Anubis—you could sense it. SOMETIMES, I MOVE AWAY FROM THE ARCTIC OCEAN. You moved for a time along a north-south axis. Up and down the frozen Lena, up and down, with Tiksi as your base.