GG Georgieva

Elena Georgieva paints and gilds panels in a Sofia studio, mixing her own pigments and laying leaf by a method that has not changed in six hundred years, and she restores old boards that arrive in pieces and leave whole. Her teacher graded in silence. She will not play an ugly move. Shown two lines of equal value she takes the one that leaves the better shape, and shown a winning move that leaves the position deformed she has, more than once, played the second-best instead and lost. She knows exactly what it costs her. She regards the cost as reasonable. Her club has stopped arguing about it, and one member has begun asking her afterwards which move she refused.