River by Eve Anderson
I’ve swum in roiling, boiling peaty pools on the Coe. I’ve leapt into mysterious dark lakes, edged with warm pink stone - graduated jumping platforms - on the Etive, primus stove at the ready, sausages spitting, smoke keeping the midges away. I’ve paddled through the green pool further down; moss lined, slimy and insect ringed, yet somehow beguiling. That was the site of my first swim without armbands, mum on the pebbles at the other side, my triumph. I’ve wallowed in snow melt in March and April and other crazy months. I’ve spluttered into Loch Leven in the evening, a faint rainbow of petrol on the surface, salty and lukewarm, still wearing my clothes. I was dripping, and egged on.
And there was a mountain stream in the morning, frothing falls dropping into a slatey pool, eating choc ices before school. Not really swimming; rather dunking, splashing, shivering. Then we’d cycle back home, and catch the bus to fusty classrooms, where I’d dream of water. Hugh’s Pool. Pool of dreams. Pristine pool of our imaginations. No peat here, no murk or mud. It was deep and clean and bottomless; gorgeous green. Always ice-cream cold, we’d plunge from the rocks, never needing to worry about stones on the bottom. Lemonade gushed in at the top, frothing and freezing, and we danced behind it.
All these swims, and so many more, so many worthy of words. And yet from these glorious, watery memories of my Highland childhood, none are more memorable than others. They wash through my mind, scattering opalescent drops, but for perhaps my most unforgettable swim of all, I remember Kyiv in 2001.
The broad brown Dnieper curves through the city, making two halves. There’s not much shipping on this river now, and the water quality is good. (You’re told not to rake up the silt on the bottom with your toes - legacy of Chernobyl, looming many hundreds of miles upstream). But at first I swam in the -Palace of Underwater Sport’, next to solid babushkas, propelling themselves up and down, encased in long costumes, with skirts dragging to the knee, hair under textured flowery caps. It was a vast space of water, antiseptic, all bathers having to show a medical certificate. Then, though, I met Tanya and her Captain. True adventurers, they spent summer outdoors, dressed in fatigues, seeking out empty Crimea. And in midwinter, the banks of the Dnieper were theirs, empty of picnickers, monochrome and hard-edged.
The morning I joined them, the sun didn’t rise to help defrost the air. I took the metro early, heading down the long escalators into the bomb-proof bowels of the city. Smells of garlic and vodka through pores dampened the air, filling it with the odours from small parquet-floored rooms, insulated against the sting of winter, windows tightly taped.
The train was on time, as ever. I wore my purple hat, and wondered if, when the moment arose, I would really make myself do it. I changed stations in the centre, where chandeliers hung over the echoing halls, crystals dim, remnants of the Soviet past. We came out from under the earth to cross the bridge onto the island. I saw the fishermen, out on the ice, breathing over holes, strength reinforced by samogon. And then I arrived, and fumbled my way to the door, and out into the morning. Tanya and Misha were there, Heath Robinson stove set up, water warming. He, the Captain, was already in trunks, with a helmet pressing his ears to his head, and a snorkel slung curiously around his neck. Tanya as yet was beduffled, but grinning, gold teeth punctuating her smile.
At the edge of the river the ice was thinner, crackling underfoot. Further out it was broken into pieces, the water between chunks thick and slow moving, granular and thick like wholegrain mustard. The ice balls weren’t melting. I didn’t want to go into this alien water.
A shot of vodka lined the way, and Misha went first, smoothly, no limbs flailing, but beckoning. I shivered to the edge. My toes were nipped, and withdrew. I threw off my tweedy coat, and shuddered over the crunchy sand, ice crystals rasping, and into the sliding mass of water. My limbs felt nothing, and gulping air, I lurched forward, and was hit by the attack of a trillion red-hot needles. No cold plunge pool this, but an inferno, roasting my skin, hissing. It was so strange, no sense of cold at all, at first. I tried to swim, lips stretched across my face. Misha’s snorkel waved ahead. It hurt, but at the same time I felt a sense of exhilaration, refreshing, and new. I turned, and, in a moment, dipped my head under the heaving surface. No more fiery warmth then, but instead a co-ordinated numbness, and a frantic dash for the side. Tanya met me with towel and glass, instructing me to run along the bank, keep moving. When I’d been given tea, she went in herself, satisfied that the foreigner was not going to collapse. I put on my clothes in the now tepid feeling air. And a tremor ran through my body. I felt in a strange way, reborn. My friends waved from the middle, and called to me, cheering.
At work later, I felt altered, and my lessons were charged with ice and fire. If I lived there now, I like to think I would do it every morning, tip myself into the icy maw and feel myself awaken.
But for now I swim in the baths. I do thirty lengths forward and back, moving through the water with, at first, no resistance. Then, red and yellow mats brush my side, bringing back memories not only of the salmon flipping through my legs in the rushing waters of my youth, but also of the broken ice near the shores of a wide river, one weird and beautiful day half a world away
