statue from her strongbox and said, “This is yours. But tomorrow I will not give this to you, and not you I will announce the winner!” After these words, Louise Wilson continued with a lot of bad language. She liked to swear, this big, bulky and seemingly very rude woman. “You and your fucking Georgian man do not read the papers, and the relations between Britain and Russia today are so bad, so tense, that I am not in the position to give you what you deserve. Just hold it in your hands for a while and give it back to me!” And she swore again. Those days Toma Stenko dexterously rode a scooter around London while being pregnant. Aside from her big belly with the Georgian baby moving inside, she carried rolls of cloth, rolls of paper, portable mannequins; she was getting ready for her diploma fashion show. Although she did not have any spare time, she spent Sundays in the National Gallery lying down in front of her favourite paintings — she was not strong enough to stand, as her belly got bigger and bigger every day. Matisse, Watteau, Breughel, Bosch, Picasso... “The only man I would cheat on you with, Irakli, is Picasso! Just keep this in mind!” She told me when I came again to London, forgetting about my business obligations at home. Time was on Stenko’s side. That year, while London suburbs were burning, rioting locals and emigrants caused trouble in shops and set cars on fire, Toma continued to ride her scooter. One day, after she rode through to the tunnel under La Manche (she was not riding her scooter, of course, but a train), she found herself in Antibes, where she arranged a meeting with Pablo Picasso in his museum. There
are a lot of odd diseases, Picassomania is among them Paintings by other artists tried to cure her of this illness: Salvador Dali, Marc Chagall, Henri Rousseau, Amedeo Modigliani, as well as the old masters such as Giotto and others, but all in vain. After finishing Central Saint Martins, she had to quickly pack her bags. According to the new British law, a foreign graduate had no right to obtain a working visa. Thus, England pushed foreigners away: “Quick, quick, go home, or God forbid you pick up a brick on the street and throw it into a shop window, or else, upon seeing a parked Bentley, you may wish to burn it down”. This new law coincided with the emigrants’ fire dances in London’s suburbs. Nobody, even the powerful Louise Wilson, could help Toma in getting a working visa. This was a fall at take-off... This was banishment. An Aeroflot plane landed in Sheremetyevo. In Russia, many things changed during Toma’s absence... The artificial lake at the outskirts of Adler, the one that hydrologist Valery Storozhenko had dug and filled with water, letting out sazans, carps and sturgeons, was just beginning to bring profit, and ‘the lake genius’ decided to privatize it. The prodigal daughter Toma returned from London (do you remember Rembrandt’s painting The Return of the Prodigal Son? So, replace the son with the daughter). ‘The lake genius’, alas, soon died. The Lord takes the best ones. If sazans, carps and sturgeons could deplore and weep, the lake’s waters (or tears) would overflow its banks. Toma Stenko called me from Adler. She was depressed after her London failure; she hid away on her father’s lake from the world and the people, and she only
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