Late one night, the quicksilver-eyed girl returned to the river. She kneeled, relieved, to pick up the goggles from among the cold stones. With a swift hand gesture, she tucked them into her pocket, and was about to sprint away when she turned, for the last time, to look at the river. Leaves and boughs moved across the surface. Only the moon, white and round like a peeled apple, stayed put in the dark rushing water.

The next day, there was no one at the river, only the trees spreading their branches. The autumn sky was dark and low. The girls were in the village getting ready to leave. Their breath steamed. They pushed plastic bags, with goggles and towels peeking out, into the boot of a car. Then they squeezed inside, one on top of the other. The villagers observed how they organised themselves laboriously, so that everybody fitted inside with not one leg or arm sticking out. The one they called Adidas hurried the others. Urgency had been growing in her since new gifts had arrived from the place where her shoes came from. Now she sat with her hands ready on the wheel. The doors closed. The car powered away, past the villages and forests and fields, all the way to the city, where the river appeared again from behind the factories and the war memorials, holding the city on its lap.

When the girls arrived at the Captain’s sport complex, they went straight to the swimming hall. The legs of the swimming coach almost buckled when he turned to look at the newcomers: they carried the plastic bags and brushed their messy hair with their fingers. Their tracksuits were dirty. They wore rubber boots, or sandals, from which socks gushed out. Their fingernails were black. One of them was wearing glasses that made her eyes huge and idiotic and slow-blinking, like those of a cow. There were a lot of bones and flat chests. They grinned foolishly.

Though the coach didn’t hide his contempt, the girls were glowing as they gazed around. The swimming hall was turquoise and vast, and outside its windows spread the playing fields and auditoriums. Since nothing is as beneficial for both financial profit and national pride as sports, The Near Side of the River has a sports complex of which the neighbouring countries can only dream. It’s a mystery how such an amazing complex can stand on a piece of land that is but a black dot on the map. But there it is. The auditorium can fit as many people as any football stadium of a European capital. There is a five-star hotel, a living complex for the players, and a football school for children. There are also tennis courts and running tracks. And an emptiness: the best players leave as soon as they are old enough.

The Captain’s sports complex is best known for its footballers, but also for its boxers and runners. Not so much for women athletes and water sports: the pools are calm, the reflections of the ceiling unbroken.

The girls closed themselves in the changing room, where they peeled off their tracksuits, the harsh light exposing their exhausted bodies. They leaned towards the mirror. One of them took off her piercings, and carefully put them inside a matchbox. With shaking hands, they styled their hair so that not one strand could escape. The hair pins, glittery and as big as spoons, fastened with a click. The nose clips flattened their nostrils. Then the girls stepped into the hall, chins up, just as they had seen on TV. Even the short-sighted one walked straight and assertive. They stopped at the edge of the pool; the electric blue took hold of their reflections. They looked at the chipped tiles and the rectangle of tamed water, which once upon time was probably filled with promises that had now faded into only a hint of past glory. They jumped, for the first time, into water that didn’t belong to the river. Chlorine wooshed into their eyes and ears. Each toe and hair and mole and scar was perfectly visible in the clear water. The tallest of them raised her tattooed arm, whistled, and they began.

They buoyed up to the surface, then swirled in the water like ducks. Six feet whipped the air, then disappeared. Twelve feet started bending in step, accelerating and splashing until they ceased to be feet. As the bodies swung into somersaults, their bottoms flashed like mussels. Five pairs of hands threw one body horizontally into the air. The girls gathered in a circle which turned, first slowly and then quickly, growing in strength. Their eyelids and hair were covered in a thick layer of glitter, which made them sparkle. Kohl tears ran down their cheeks.

The coach didn’t wipe his face, wet from the splashing water. Watching the performance — mesmerising despite its flaws — he felt his blood course through his limbs and penis, reinvigorating it to the point of rigidity. Suddenly the water of the pool looked promising to him, too.

A few months later, the girls posed for a photograph. They stood in a row according to height. Hands on their hips. Hip bones protruding forward defiantly. Their hair flattened by water and pulled tightly back, enhancing the furrowed foreheads that did not quite match their grins. They were wearing so much makeup that at a quick glance their faces looked identical, but after close inspection one could tell that each was terrified in their own way.

The photo was printed in the newspaper under the title:

TEAM OF SYNCHRONISED SWIMMERS FORMED BY GIRLS OF CIGARETTE FACTORY.