look at the tree I see in the depths of the leaves, the one who is sitting and looking back.” I asked, “Who is it that is staring back at you from the depths of the leaves? God?” Her answer shocked me. “Somewhere I read that the great painter Corot said that one should paint krones of trees in such a way that there is space left for the little birds to fit in.” I continued, “So the birds are the ones that are staring?” And she finished our not so sober conversation, “Little birds, God, and the unattractive boy with a squashed nose named Michelangelo Buonarroti, that will grow up and paint The Sistine Chapel.” It was all said in a tone that I understood not to argue back and just gazed quietly at the dark Italian sky and the yellow stars the size of Uzbek melons. Next morning Toma and Irakli ran off to Venice. In the arms of other great teachers — Tiziano, Tintoretto, Tiepolo... Drowned a chandelier made out of Murano glass in the Grand Canal. Toma said the chandelier was pale pink in colour. She drowned it in secret from Irakli. I hardly believed the story, but Paola Dmitreovna Volkova (a renowned art critic and psychologist) after hearing about it said, “That’s Stenko.” Returning to the village Pennabilli Toma and I struck up a conversation about Voskresensky again. “He would show me Bosch, Schiele, Renoir, Deyneka. He was teaching his students to find soul in their artworks, while drawing portraits of the communist party leaders in his tiny kitchen! Year by year he completed his mandatory target of portrait paintings of Lenin, Brezhnev and Susloveh, acting as if he is happy to receive these orders. He drew in squares: in one square there is an ear, in the other — an eye, a nose and so on... Voskresensky lived in the same
apartment block as me and every evening I could see a ray of his diascope and ears of Brezhnev enlarged, projected on the wall. I was really young when the Soviet Union collapsed. Voskresensky lost all his work. He was practically starving, but he was happy. We went to Sochi together to buy some cheap paint. For three months I was helping him to draw and eventually he got his creative energy back... and suddenly he killed himself.” “What!?” I shockingly asked, “How?” “He shot himself.” On our last day in Pennabilli holding a glass of rosé, Tonino Guerra said, “Two days before Federico Fellini’s death he said ‘It would be great to fall in love again!’” He wanted to say that love is one of the greatest things in life. When you are in love, you stop being just a person, but you become an aroma. You stop walking on land, you soar above it. That’s the state of being in love. And it doesn’t matter what you love, a woman, a painting, a piece of literature, your work, the world. Love isn’t happiness nor is it sadness. It is not an award or a struggle. It’s all a journey to a magical country, a secret path, a mysterious road. And each of us has to make this journey. That night we drank a lot of rosé... A lot of years have passed since that time in Pennabilli. Tonino Guerra isn’t with us anymore, but the memories are... In 10 years Toma Stenko developed into a wonderful artist, found her voice, style, form. Today she is walking along that mysterious road... And I deeply believe in her... P.S. I still have Toma’s drawing of Michelangelo’s Oak tree, and looking right at it I can see someone’s eye observing all of us....
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