The Union of Synchronised Swimmers

by Cristina Sandu

But my little flower … Blue Flame blabbers awkwardly. His wings drag miserably on the floor.

  I don’t put the book down. He paces indignantly around the flat. He stops in front of the open window, stretches, and climbs onto the window sill. Slowly, he starts to bend himself into the position I’ve seen him do at the Senate Square. Soon half of his body is outside the window. I scream, rush to him, and force him back in. We stand opposite each other: he hugs me, I slouch.

  You’ve become very cold, he says, in a deeply wounded voice.

  I lean my head against his shoulder and whisper how sorry I am. I breathe in, trying to fill my lungs with the sweet smell of apples before it disappears.

  Little flower, Blue Flame says again, cringing.

  He puts the mask on and we fuck on the floor, like stray dogs do back home, on the edge of the field. I hear my voice from far away when I suggest that we change positions. I’m too old for this, I laugh. That’s when he clutches my hair and bends my head back. He seizes me from the hip. My knees scratch against the floor and his fingers dig into my skin. I stay still like furniture, so it hurts less.

  I’ve decided to leave, Blue Flame mumbles.

  I’m chopping chanterelles I picked from the island during the solstice. The movement of the knife slows down but doesn’t stop.

  Oh, really?

  He clears his throat. First to Denmark, then Norway, he says. And then home. My visa expires soon. I will probably never be back.

  Chop, chop, says the knife, and stops. A clod of butter sizzles in the pan.

  Blue Flame takes his costume from the hanger and begins to fold it with exceedingly slow movements. Something twists inside me. I throw the chunks of mushroom into the pan. Before you leave, do tell, has the city grown, the river shrunk?

  But I don’t say that. Even if something inside me is seething, I calmly shake the pan. My voice doesn’t even tremble when I say: Иди нахуй.

  What? he asks.

  He takes a few steps towards me. His whole demeanour is alert. Then something painful spreads across his face. His eyes narrow, lips squeeze together, and he raises his fist.

  I’m ready to take whatever is coming, but something pierces Blue Flame’s anger and makes his hand fall.

  Bitch, he says, closes his bag, and leaves.

  I can see him walking down the street, smaller and smaller. I put the knife down. I’m about to open the window to call him. Then I notice a sprout in the pot among the cigarette buds: tiny, pale green, and askew.

  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.

  PAULINA, SAN LUIS OBISPO

  Paulina stands on the deck of the boat. She watches the diminishing port of San Luis Obispo: her almost-home looks strange from this perspective, tiny houses squeezed between the sky and the sea. The wind is pulling at her black, high ponytail, entwining it around her neck. She thinks she
must look like a plump raspberry in her pink raincoat — one that is about to roll into the sea.

  This morning she stormed out of her house just to be anywhere else for a day, but now she realises that she’s enjoying it. The sea gives her a thrilling feeling that has something to do with escape. For a few hours, she has nothing to care about. She imagines the boat leaving behind not only the port but also the small rooms of her house, the wrinkled sheets still damp with the sweat of bodies.

  The port is eventually swallowed up by the horizon. Spume shoots up from under the boat towards the sky. A sailor walks along the deck collecting money in a can. At the end of the day, the one who has caught the biggest fish will win the whole pot. They call it the lottery.

  Paulina peels the rod out of the bag and weighs it in her hands. Her fingers close around it. The gesture feels familiar, even if she was a child the last time she did this, standing by a brown river. Now the ocean is tossing the boat about. She likes it: the intensity of the new experience.

  She places the rod back in the bag and fetches a burrito from below the deck. One of the sailors started preparing them as soon as the boat left the harbour. The burrito is included in the price of the fishing trip. She devours the soft, steaming roll, facing the open sea. Oil drips down her forearms and into her sleeves. Coriander gets stuck against the roof of her mouth. The sweet taste of chilli lingers in her throat.

  The passengers on the deck look relaxed and relieved. They have left behind their routines today, exchanging the straight asphalt lines of the city for the rolling water of the sea. Some of them come often, perhaps every Saturday. Paulina knows this from the way they take over the deck, like it belongs to them.

  Close to Paulina, a group of passengers wearing near-identical windbreakers are drinking beer, the foam catching on their chins. They laugh loudly. They discuss how big the cod are here: huge, strong, and meaty. Paulina can’t prevent a complacent smile when she looks at them. The feeling of solidarity lasts only a second. A woman’s tipsy eyes rest on Paulina. Her lips pucker. Heads turn, and they go on talking quietly. With the back of her hand, Paulina wipes her cheeks, greasy from the burrito. Of course they can smell her difference. And there it is again: the shame, that old acquaintance she thought she had rid herself of, who has found its way back and — but actually, no, they aren’t talking about her after all. Their eyes are directed somewhere behind her back. She turns her head quickly. Two young men are standing on the prow, the only black passengers on the boat. One is wearing a bright red quilted jacket, the other a green one. They don’t have scarves, and their necks rise naked and thin out of the puffy jackets. They smile a lot and gesture enthusiastically as they speak.

  Paulina can’t help the relief washing over her. Relief doesn’t come alone, though; it drags guilt behind it like a broken suitcase. She hastens to smile at the two men, the object of the other passengers’ hostile looks, and stretches out her hand. The men are brothers and come from Cameroon.

  We’ve lived here for a few years, one says.

  A year and eight months, the other specifies.

  Paulina nods, moved by the earnestness with which the first man hastened to correct his brother. Her eyebrows arch and her lips spread into a smile, as if effusive kindness could make up for the rudeness of others. The brothers don’t seem to notice what’s going on around them, though — or they don’t care.

  With renewed excitement, Paulina turns to face the sea. Petrol blue and steel grey. Gigantic clouds group together and disperse, their shadows following suit upon the water. She leans against the railing, her breasts pressing against the cold metal, to be as close as possible to the water. She isn’t from here either. But she doesn’t say this to the Cameroonians: that she moved to California three years ago. That during the first months she cleaned shopping centres, studied English, and planned her ‘business’. She put aside as much money as she could. She walked from one shop window to the other, looking at everything she would soon be able to buy. She would send some of the money home, of course; the bundles of bank notes would travel proudly across the Atlantic to the cottage, a validation of her departure; hurt feelings would be soothed. She bought a car and rented a house not too far from the harbour. Customers came to her like ants in search of honey. One of them, an old energetic man, gave his rod to Paulina. His overgrown nail poked her cheek as he commented how she was pale as dough, even anaemic, and that the sea would do her good.

  Two hours after leaving the dock, the motor of the boat goes quiet; the ocean becomes louder. The Cameroonians don’t manage to throw at first. The bait drops at their feet or rises too high in the air. Paulina takes the fishing rod from the bag, places the line against the handle with her index finger, opens the lock, bends the rod back, throws, frees the line, and watches the bait disappear into the water. Then she starts to reel quickly. She waits for the rewarding feeling of weight and thinks about the lottery. How much money is there in the can?

  At least half an hour goes by before she feels a tug. The blue of the sea condenses. She doesn’t have time to wipe the tears that the brightness squeezes out from her eyes. Her knuckles are white now, and the veins on the back of her hand swell as she reels the heavy catch. Suddenly the weight is gone and the rod swings back. The bait flickers and shimmers in the air, taunting her: Ha, and you thought you had it!

  Around her, lines start to tug, first one and then another. The hands feel the weight and begin to pull, but no fish appear. The boat’s captain paces up and down the deck and restrains the tourists: Damas y caballeros, por favor, he pleads. He taps their shoulders and orders who should pull and who shouldn’t, to prevent everybody from tugging the fish towards themselves. The tangled lines try to detach. The men and women shout and push each other. They resemble the hippos that Paulina recently saw on Animal Planet, fighting for territory.

  Finally, the tangled lines are cleared. Only the Cameroonian with the red jacket reels in his line triumphantly, his body leaning towards the sea until the surface of the water breaks and the fish bites at the light. The cod flies across the air towards the deck, eyes bulging in horror. The others aren’t happy; everyone feels the fish belongs to them. The woman who was drinking herself tipsy a few hours ago looks around, bewildered. The black kohl has spread under one eye like an exclamation mark.

  What the fuck, that’s my fish! she snaps.

  Somebody places a soothing hand on her shoulder, but she slaps it away like she would a gadfly.

  Stay out of this, Roddy, someone has to teach them how things are done, she barks. How you should behave here, she adds, and thrusts her hands on top of her hips, lifting her chin like the lessons are about to start.

  The Cameroonian’s hand doesn’t shake when it holds the rod. The hanging fish’s body glistens in the sun, turning first in one direction and then the other.

  Paulina holds on to the railing. Her fingernails have the vestiges of scarlet nail polish, tiny stains at the top. Her hands are worn from continuous washing, and yet they always feel dirty. She takes quick breaths and tries to control the shaking.

  She bends over the side of the boat like a branch snapped from a tree, squeezing the railing so hard the metal digs into the soft skin of her palms. Pungent, the chilli rushes to her throat. She gags until her stomach is empty and her mouth is filled with a sour taste. She won’t eat another burrito for at least a hundred years. She drops to the ground next to the cabin, pulls her knees to her breast, and leans her shoulder blades against the wall.

  Even if she has only dozed for a second, something has changed. Then she notices it: at the bottom of the erstwhile empty cool box is a cod. It looks stupefied. Paulina gazes around her for the Cameroonians but they are somewhere on the other side of the cabin.

  If she has the energy, she’ll make a soup with the fish tonight. She and her strange companions will gather around the table to eat. They will discuss their day, what was in the news, and what the
animals did in the nature documentary.

  She’d already had the idea before moving to California. She’d heard that taking care of the elderly is a profitable business here. It’s possible to earn 3,000 dollars per month, just for hosting one old person. That would never happen in her own country. Old people die at home, inside a house which generations inhabit together. If they aren’t blessed with children — or if their children have heartlessly abandoned them in search of their own happiness — they die alone, God forbid.

  But there were regulations Paulina wasn’t prepared for. To register her house as an official elder care home, she needed to prove it had all the facilities and a certain amount of square metres. Her house was too small, the rooms too narrow. And what about those treacherous thresholds and stairs? Still, it was easy for her to find a way around the rules. Word spread and people began to contact her. Usually it was a husband and a wife who came, two siblings, or a widowed parent. Even if the adult children were holding gently on to the arm of the elderly, there would be something urgent in their eyes. Paulina invited them to sit on the porch. The way she held the porcelain coffee pot between her hands would make you think it was a trophy, as she told them how much care and love the residents would receive. The longer they sat and chatted, the more the confidence between them grew, its shape becoming as defined as that of the coffee pot, at the mouth of which, if light hit it at the right angle, you could distinguish a chink.

  The money did not stream into Paulina’s hands. Taking care of the elderly was not easy. And the fear of things going really wrong accrued in the corners of the house, much in the same way snails spread around a fish tank: one slimy centimetre at a time.

  The lines whip through the air many times and then the last time. A thin cloud wipes across the sun. The boat heads back towards the harbour. The passengers sit on the deck drinking beer; a few doze under their caps. The Cameroonians look content. After a clumsy beginning, they started to catch fish like they knew exactly where in the dark sea they were swimming, the precise point at which they shifted their silver bodies.