When spring came, the girls were the first at the river. They left their clothes in bundles on the bank, stretched their bodies in the sand, and ran into the water. The coldness was sharp. They smoked with just their heads above the surface, blew smoke into the sky, and laughed with their necks bent back. Ash scattered on the water, which held their white breasts like doves.

There were empty soda bottles, egg shells, chicken bones gnawed bare, bread crusts, and cheese that had melted, cooled, and then congealed, all scattered across the picnic blanket. A yellow tractor stood in the mud close to the bank. A hen was laying eggs behind the wheel. A pig was bathing in the river. Farther out were six other swimmers.

The girls started to play, though they were too old; their movements aimless at first, like they could’ve been doing anything else. They plunged into the water and sprang up, parting the surface with their hands. They crept among the reeds and made birds scatter from their nests. They tore flowers growing by the river and drew shapes in the air. They pushed each other’s heads under the surface and kept them there, as if performing a baptism. They stood on their hands in the water, their feet swinging madly against the branches of the trees.

Now, there are places that are on the wrong side of the river and places that are on the right side. When the girls sat on the shore, they looked from the wrong side across to the right side, on the bank of which a wharf reached forward.

The land where the girls lived didn’t belong to any country. Its name meant The Near Side of the River. Its beauty was the only kind they knew. The cement buildings of the city, the blue-roofed monastery at the top of the only hill, the war memorials and the stony Lenins that had escaped demolition after the fall of the Republic. The profiles of the metal and cigarette factories which would grow huge at night and loom over the houses. The pigeons and dogs that ambled through the streets. The town belonged to them, too. It was surrounded by green and yellow fields, other towns with little cottages, forests, meadows, and the river.

But a silence pervaded the land: for most of the year, the men were gone. They grabbed any kind of work they managed to get in a neighbouring country. They sent letters and packages home, and came to visit when they had enough money or their homesickness had become too great.

Only the women stayed. They kept life going. They worked the land, fed and slaughtered the animals, raised the children. They ensured that the metal factory filled the sky with red smoke. They prepared the cigarettes, crammed neatly into elegant white packs, which then went on to fill glistening cartons to be shipped far away, by land or by sea.