The girls’ bodies mingled in the water. Hand touched hand, foot grazed foot, fingers entwined. A pair of glasses lay in the grass, purposeless. The sun bounced off their metal rims and off the haughty earrings the bathers hadn’t removed. One of the girls had extremely long, thick black hair that wrapped around her neck and arms like a net. Another had a ring on her ring finger: a silver-red circle that sank into her plump flesh. She was called Adidas because she had a pair of red trainers from across the border.

They were not yet in possession of their movements. The river did what it wanted with them. Algae reached for their legs from the bottom. They swallowed a lot of water which tasted like mud and fish.

The land across the river was known as The Far Side of the River. For a while, The Far Side had tried to hold on to The Near Side, but it refuses to belong to anyone to this day, and hence does not really exist.

The Near Side of the River is governed by the Captain, who ensures that the shops have food and clothes, and the cars have petrol. That the metal factory keeps running. That there’s news on the TV and light in the lamps. The Captain owns the prolific tobacco factories. These produce an incredible amount of quality cigarettes, which in the neighbouring countries are as popular as fish eggs and brandy. They are called Cheap Whites.

The girls worked in the factory where the tobacco leaves were crushed, condensed, and swirled into excellent cigarettes. In the evenings, their weary eyes fixed on the TV: melodramas the whole town followed. Sex, tears, murder. Then, one day, when it was still winter and everything smelled of burnt wood and the girls were nibbling at salami and drinking spritz, a swimming pool appeared on the screen. The girls poured more spritz and turned the volume up. On the TV played a documentary about a new sport involving women who were no ordinary swimmers. First, they floated separately, looking at each other from different sides of the vast pool, and seemed to mimic each other’s movements: arms lifted, crooked, opened. Their legs pedalled the water, keeping the rest of their bodies afloat. Then, calculated gestures began to cut through the water and the blue between them shrank until they formed one body: it plunged deep and started to rotate, slowly, with no need of air.

The day The Near Side of the River celebrated its anniversary, the girls weren’t singing the national anthem in flowery dresses, nor were they doing cartwheels in front of tanks decorated with flags. They were performing in another kind of show: they skipped rope by the river, touched their toes with their fingers, and leaped into the water, splashing furiously. Every once in a while, they turned on their backs and floated. They were as inseparable from the river as the reeds and the stones.

As summer advanced, there began to be something determined and aggressive about their movements, no longer mere play. The girls honed their bodies relentlessly. Their skin shaded into bruises. They ran along the riverbank, bend after bend. They stretched into new positions in the water; sometimes hands, sometimes feet above the surface.

Maybe they imagined they were stars, or angels, or insane birds. Sometimes they grabbed each other’s hands and legs and twisted them so harshly that it was a miracle nothing broke. They tried to straighten their ankles, which curled instead. The bodies, striving to float, sank helplessly. They cursed their breasts, heavy in water.

The girls spent more and more time underwater. The pressure in their ears started to disappear. To the uninitiated, it seemed they were trying to drown themselves. When they all squatted in the water with just their hands above the surface, it looked like they were praying.

Then the black swimming suits appeared. Goggles and bathing caps. Waterproof lipstick. In a non-country, there’s nothing one can’t buy or sell. Goods come and go; hidden at the bottom of cars, inside the wheels, and between the doors. The only limit is one’s imagination, especially with Cheap Whites as currency. Would you like red or blue tennis shoes? A Winchester rifle? A Glock? A censored novel? Weight-loss infusion? Morning-after pills, a puppy of a noble breed, a peacock, the seed of a rare orchid? The most flexible bathing caps and compact goggles?

The swimming suits fit perfectly. When their thin fabric settled on the girls’ sunburnt skin, something clicked.

They were sitting by the river, swinging their legs in the water and sucking on the tips of their hair. They knew how to do this — they had seen it on TV. They took a deep breath, tensed their bodies, and dived. Like fish, they vanished under the water. Then, six pairs of feet appeared above the surface, but this time with nicely stretched ankles. Their legs bent, back and forth, like herons.

They gasped.

The air was heavy. The voice of a rooster broke the silence, then quickly grew quiet. The smell of mud, water lilies, and dung condensed. Around the river, the parched land radiated thirst. Something dark and heavy was looming in the sky. The girls pulled up onto the bank, dried themselves, and dressed. The glasses returned to the freckled nose and details became clear again. Before leaving, they gathered behind a tree and whispered cheerfully, glancing around. The swimming suits hung from the branches like crows — like fateful omens, people would say, but only afterwards.