The Union of Synchronised Swimmers

by Cristina Sandu

  Behind a plastic table on the deck, two sailors begin to clean the fish. Eyes, fins, tails spatter around. The hard wind does nothing to dispel the smell. The city is outlined against the sky. Paulina is never usually gone this long. It’s been days since morning.

  She places the rod in its bag and decides to give it to the man’s children when they visit next. It’s a good rod — it might have been very expensive or at least of sentimental value. The old man probably mistook Paulina for his daughter or granddaughter.

  The sailors gut the fish quickly and Paulina gets her cod back — or what’s left of it, that is: a hollow, torn trunk. From its grey underside the pale orange meat peeps out.

  When the boat is close to the port, the sailor gives the lottery can to one of the Cameroonian brothers. He says something, maybe ‘Oh wow’ or ‘Oh well’. He shrugs and looks amused that it is he who caught the biggest fish.

  The first noise tears the sky. Paulina, sitting curled up against the cabin, shades her eyes with her palms and tips her head to see. They are pouring down, dozens of them, maybe a hundred, squawking ravenously. Their white wings flap against the wind. Even though her neck is throbbing with pain, Paulina sits with her face up. There are so many wings that the sky is barely visible. The pelicans are gyrating in tighter and tighter circles above her. She scrambles to the cool box and covers the carcass of the fish.

  Around midsummer, the fiancé of one of the girls paid her a visit from across the border. He arrived at the little cottage on the edge of the village. He knocked many times. Finally, he kicked the door down with his Nikes. He was received by silence. He sat on the couch and waited, holding a present for his sweetheart: a first-rate deodorant.

  While he waited, he looked around and didn’t like what he saw: the tables and the floor were covered with dust and there was a pile of dirty clothes on the armchair. The wallpaper was peeling off. Flies were feasting on the dining table. It smelled of rotten meat. Annoyance made his heart beat rapidly.

  When he opened his eyes and saw the girl standing in front of him, he realised he had fallen asleep. She had a towel in a bundle under her arm and her red trainers were full of sand. The man thought that her face looked somehow distorted, until he realised it was smudged with makeup. Her hair was wet.

  Have you started working in the circus? he snorted.

  No. I swim now.

  He laughed, but in a way that betrayed his irritation, and called his future wife a fucking duck.

  She shrugged. To his shock, she started to hum. She took out a pack of cigarettes, shook it with a tiny hand gesture, and gave him a calculating look, as if deciding whether to tell him something. She lifted a cigarette to her lips but didn’t light it. She hung the towel on the back of a chair and straightened it carefully. The gesture said: If only you knew. But the man didn’t know. He took a lighter from his pocket, flicked it alight, passed the flame towards the girl, and said softly: Come here. His arm did not drop as the flame flickered between them.

  In the evenings, once they were done practising, the girls roamed the streets of the village. Their tracksuits made whooshing sounds as one leg brushed the other. They didn’t speak to anyone. One of the girls carried her towel over her back like a cape, holding her face high, the piercing at her nose gleaming proudly. Another one wrapped her towel around her neck, capturing her black fluttering hair, and stroked it the way she would a mink fur. Sometimes they opened their jackets to stretch the shoulder straps of their swimming suits, making them slap arrogantly against their skin.

  They stormed inside the tavern and ordered large portions of meat and French fries. They gorged quickly, faces glinting with grease, expressions focused yet blasé, and left as soon as they were done.

  At the cigarette factory, too, their behaviour had changed. They made a lot of mistakes which they didn’t apologise for. More Cheap Whites disappeared during their shifts than at other times. They stretched their lunch breaks. They sang. One of them got yet another tattoo — a shamelessly visible stain above her shoulder blades.

  All this raised suspicion of course, and the girls began to be watched. But they were always at the river, always together, and the only thing that seemed to interest them was the impact of water on the movements of their bodies. They were seen sitting on the muddy shore, content like piglets, shaving their legs while soap flew merrily around them. The locals viewed them as harmless, if somewhat unbalanced, so they were left alone.

  Meanwhile the sky grew cold, the chimneys spat smoke, and the river wrinkled.

  Water polished the girls’ skin the way the sea washes shells clean in its tides year after year, smooth and hardened. Off came everything redundant and hindering, breasts included. Still, the girls struggled to get rid of their weaknesses: their small lungs, their hasty need for oxygen, and their fear of the dark bottom water.

  One morning they succeeded: they sank to the riverbed and remained there. Their bodies curled. It was quiet and dark. They watched the shadows and lights oscillating above. They forgot the need to breathe and talk. There were no pearls in these shells. They remained there, without moving, until even the river forgot them.

  SANDRA, THE PYRENEES

  Sandra gets into the man’s car. She chooses the back seat; the front would be somehow too intimate. Through the rear mirror, she notices the scar on his face: a pale red line from forehead to lips across the left eye.

  My name is Sandra, she says after they have been driving in silence for a while.

  Gustave, the man grunts and stretches his hand towards the back seat without taking his eyes off the road. The hand is surprisingly small for such a large body.

  Thank you for stopping.

  Gustave does not answer or look at Sandra. She is just another piece of luggage riding in the back seat. She hopes he did not get offended about her informal way of addressing him. The French are so sensitive about these things.

  His head, sparsely covered with patches of brown hair, moves slightly. The sun has burnt the bald spots and the skin is peeling. His sunglasses look strangely thin for such a wide face. His red Coca-Cola t-shirt is too tight.

  Suddenly his back starts to shake and he chuckles: Thank yoo.

  Sorry?

  Thank yoo, that’s what you said. Thank yoo and stouping.

  After chuckling for a while, Gustave becomes serious and says: We have a long journey ahead of us, mademoiselle. I hope you’re not easily car sick, the road is winding.

  I’ll be all right, Sandra snaps.

  Okay then. I’ll drop you off in the next town. From there on you’ll have to figure out something else.

  That’s fine.

  Iz it fine? Gustave turns his face towards the backseat, his mouth and eyes filled with mirth.

  Sandra looks for an answer, something witty to say, but she is afraid her French will just amuse Gustave further. She crosses her arms across her chest and stares, stubbornly, at the landscape.

  Gustave sneezes and the laughter is gone.

  The houses become scarcer and disappear behind the hills, which soon deepen into mountains. Sandra has never seen mountains before. They are amazing. The farthest ones are deep green-blue, the colour of a lake, even if nothing seems to flow or ripple in this hot landscape. Her quicksilver eyes take on their colour.

  Gustave stretches his arms and leans backwards so that his seat pushes against Sandra’s knees.

  Now the landscape is made of yellowing meadows on one side and a thickening forest on the other. Grassland slides down the valley; forest climbs up the mountain. Sandra wipes her sweaty face with her shirt, and quickly smells her armpit. She closes her eyes and imagines she’s already there, in the big city.

  When she opens her eyes, she notices Gustave staring at her through the rear-view mirror. He has said something; the raised eyebrows reveal the question. He places his sunglasses in the cup holder.

 
Why are you carrying such a big bag with you? he repeats, impatient. His voice is hard, and it bends into laughter when he adds: Looks like you are on the run.

  I’m moving. To Paris.

  He raises his eyebrows. To Parrhis! Ambitious then.

  Yes, Sandra sighs, trying to hold on to her smile despite feeling increasingly annoyed. I need a change, she says, pronouncing each word extremely carefully. She scratches the purple polish of her fingernails. Pieces of it rain down on her thighs, which are bare beneath a pair of blue shorts.

  Well that is some change, Gustave says and rubs his eyes, looking bored.

  Sandra blows her fringe aside and looks at Gustave intently, but he seems to have lost interest. Now it is Sandra’s turn to stare: she lingers on his scar. It divides his face neatly in two. He notices her gaze and responds to it with a fierce look. Her face flushes. She is just about to turn her eyes away when he lifts a finger to his forehead and runs it, very slowly, along the scar.

  A blind lion did this, Gustave says when his hand is back on the wheel. Suddenly his voice is low and solemn.

  A lion?

  My old man was one of those, you know, exterminators. He would drive from one customer to the other, pesticide equipment and all. One couple, both of them circus animal trainers, hired him to get rid of ants in their house. I went along with him. The house was big and white, like a castle, you know, and there was a lot of colourful stuff growing in the garden. We waited.

  He slows the car down and crouches over the wheel as the branches of big chestnut trees claw the windshield.

  A guy came to greet us, walking a blue-eyed lion which he closed in a big cage next to the swimming pool, Gustave says. A woman, the man’s wife I guess, waved at us from the balcony.

  Every now and then Gustave lifts his face to see Sandra through the mirror, like he’s weighing the effect his words have on her.

  They went inside the house, the guy and my old man, he says. I wanted to stay outside.

  The treetops from both sides of the road form thick greening arches. Their large leaves do not let any light through.

  Didn’t the lion scare you? Sandra asks. All of a sudden she is cold, despite the heat.

  Scare! No, she was amazing. She was the most beautiful animal I’d ever seen.

  His words boom in the car, dark in the leafy umbrage. Suddenly he seems to remember something that softens his face. Light floods the road and washes over an army of orange flowers, gleaming the way only mountain flowers do.

  I saw all kinds of things with my father. But none of the animals were as beautiful as that lion.

  His voice is even louder than before when he says: I just couldn’t help it. Stay on the porch, they said, but I had to go to her. Real close. He uses his thumb and index finger to show how close to the lion he had dared to go.

  Sandra nods vigorously to show she understands the significance of what he is telling her. She feels sticky. Tree roots bulge out of the road, causing the car to bounce. Some leaves are burnt yellow by the sun, and they make Sandra wonder whether the trees in Paris turn red in autumn and —

  I can’t really see with my left eye!

  Sandra refocuses her gaze on the front mirror. When observed carefully, the surface of his left eye seems cloudier than the right one.

  Isn’t it difficult? Isn’t driving, for example, difficult … with one eye?

  Just then, the car reaches an abrupt curve, and Gustave serenely steers the wheel, making it turn very softly.

  All my other senses have sharpened, he says. I hear, taste, smell better than before. When I’m in the forest, I can even hear all kinds of little animals, far away.

  There are no more flowers beyond the trees, but instead a bleak, rocky hill coloured by lichen. The hills radiate a heat which condenses inside the car.

  I was supposed to take over the company, after my old man died. But it wasn’t my thing.

  And now you …?

  I drive.

  The road pulls itself into a straight line, and Gustave’s grip on the wheel relaxes, his hands barely touching the brown plastic. Despite the open window on Gustave’s side, the car smells of perfume and sweat. It smells of the two of us, Sandra thinks, and pulls the hem of her shirt down. The torn, fake leather of the seat makes her thighs itch.

  How come you’re all alone? Gustave asks suddenly, as if this detail has been bothering him.

  As I said, I’m moving.

  But all alone, and such a young woman, all kinds of bad things can happen, he says. Then he points his thumb at his chest and declares cheerfully: You’re very lucky I saved you.

  Sandra is thrown back when the car drives over a big hole. Her hair glues onto her cheeks. Leaning against the front seat, she notices what’s lying next to Gustave. She opens her mouth, but her voice is stuck in her throat. It must have been hidden under the magazines when she got into the car, or maybe it had always been visible, lying there naked, a third traveller. The blade isn’t that of a little knife but some sort of scythe.

  The car mounts higher, advancing increasingly slowly. Down in the valley the fields are tiny. Gustave holds the wheel with one hand and with the other, groaning, rummages for something in a plastic bag. A water bottle appears in front of Sandra. She grabs it stiffly. She doesn’t look at the blade next to him, but it thrusts into her field of vision: a crescent shining in the undernight of the front seat.

  She takes a tiny gulp. Most of the water streams down her chin. She locks eyes with Gustave through the mirror. Sweat makes his scar glow.

  Thank you.

  You were thirsty, he chortles, taking the bottle. He drinks, his eyes on the road, lips protruding like those of a child.

  The car stops suddenly. They are now completely away from the forest. The sunlight is falling on a few fruit trees that stand proudly against the mountain wall.

  Gustave stretches his arms clumsily and sighs: What a drive.

  Unlike before, he doesn’t look for her face in the mirror. Instead, he turns his head slightly towards her, but not enough for their eyes to meet. He only moves the pupil of his right eye.

  Let’s stretch our legs a bit, huh? he says and yawns, but it all seems rehearsed. He stumbles out of the car but does not, to her surprise, grab the knife. He takes a few steps. He fingers his pants and Sandra hears a relieved moan and the sound of urine splashing on the ground. Then he turns to the car, bends down, and picks up the knife.

  She was right. The object isn’t a simple knife; its blade forms an arc. There are no birds, no wind. Gustave knocks on the half-open window. She tugs at the belt. Her damp fingers slide down, then: click. She opens the door, stumbles out. The gravel road is burning. Sweat drops blurs her vision.

  Suddenly Gustave flings the blade up. He uses it to dig something from under a nail and then wipes it with his shirt. He stops for a while just to look at the landscape, squinting. Then he approaches her. He walks next to Sandra, then past her. The blade turns.

  A tree shivers and a round, glowing object falls into his hand.

  Take a bite, he says, and hands it over to her.

  She looks at the orange in her hand. She digs her teeth into it.

  Gustave laughs, a deep roar, and asks: Is that how Parisians eat orrhanges?

  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 gog
gles 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.