Despite the fabulous sports complex that The Near Side of the River has, its athletes don’t get to show their skills to anyone except their own countrymen. But, if they are good enough, they cross the bridge to the neighbouring country on The Far Side of the River, where they get a new passport and membership to a sports club that is internationally recognised. Sports is important on both sides of the river: a fragile link between two countries looking away from each other. In fact, in international competitions, the athletes of one side carry the flag of the other, and even sing their national anthem.

The girls arrived in the country they had thus far seen only as a bushy landscape behind the river bank. The city smelled of snow melting under car wheels, and of exhaust fumes and chestnuts cooked in huge pans in the middle of the street. Unlike at home, the chimneys of the factories did not puncture the horizon; instead, rows of sturdy, rough apartment blocks pushed the sky up further. The girls recognised the McDonald’s from afar, even if they had never visited one before.

They walked, the burger wrappings rustling in pace with the snow under their shoes, making them advance slowly, tip-toeing between excitement and anguish. They ended up in a park, where they greeted the stony face of an exiled poet. The snow was mostly grey and yellow. Only the cathedral boasted a clean white. Next to the cathedral, a scrawny dog was sniffing the frozen core of an apple.

From that day on, the girls’ view of the country that now owned them was limited to the windows of the swimming hall: first, new layers of snow one after the other; then, when the snow melted, a faceless street corner. What happened inside the swimming hall was all that mattered. For the first time, this side of the river would be part of the Synchronised Swimming Championship, and all because of the girls who had stretched their languid bodies on a river bank not so long ago.

The coaches stood by the pool, stone-hard determination on their faces, shouting when one toe pointed in the wrong direction. The toe straightened quickly. Insubordination would be a sign of disloyalty, so the girls did as they were expected. They tore their legs into splits even more impressive than before. They made propellers out of their hands. Their bodies became masts rising above the water’s surface. The smallest of them was thrown into the air, darting like a cannonball, at which point she would spread her arms and legs like a five-pointed star. The black swimming suits changed to canary yellow. A music compilation was put together for them, a balance of classical and modern music with some local folk melodies, during which they ploughed across the surface of the pool.

In the evenings, when they fell on their beds like lumbered trees, the girls felt the movement of water inside their bodies. It rocked them to a place that belonged neither to this nor to that side of the river. The beauty of the threshold: on the other side of it, everything was still possible. Perhaps they were happier then, more complete and satisfied, than they ever have been or would be.

When the visas arrived, they were elegantly folded in between the girls’ passports, like they had always belonged there.