Anna Akhmatova Museum

 On by metro to the Scheremetov Palace and the Anna Akhmatova Museum, which took some finding (“Далее!  Далее!”).  Akhmatova’s former “House on the Fontanka” consists of a few rooms painted toilet-green, bare and cold.  I stopped in the one described as “Комната Ахматовой” (“Akhmatova’s Room”) and imagined the meeting she had there with Isaiah Berlin.  She entered their conversation with her whole being, she wrote afterwards, and could not later remember whether they discussed death or poetry.  The photographs now left on the mirror are strangely transparent, so that you can look at yourself right through them.