by Mary McHugh
The path leading up to the museum was filled with people, children and adults, black and white, Russians and tourists, hurrying toward the doors. Andrei led our little group into the museum and then up a long flight of white marble steps with a red carpet running up the center. With each step, my excitement grew.
“It’s the biggest art museum in the world,” I heard Alex say to Gini. “Way bigger than the Metropolitan in New York, and ornate in the way only the Russian tsars—and French kings—could manage. You’ll see gold and marble columns and ceilings covered with paintings and carvings, enormous crystal chandeliers dwarfed by the size of the rooms they hang in.”
“Follow me. Stay close,” Andrei said as we struggled to keep up with him. Barry tried to push his way through to walk with me, but my friends formed a tight circle around me so he couldn’t get through.
We walked into the Italian Renaissance room. Each group was allowed only a limited amount of time to go through the main part of the museum. Hundreds of school children, foreign tourists, and Russian families rushed from painting to painting. We stared, overwhelmed at the extravagantly ornate gold and crystal chandeliers, highly polished parquet floors, domed cathedral ceilings. Oddly, the paintings themselves were hung in a hodgepodge way in bad lighting, so it was very hard to see them.
“Hurry, hurry,” Andrei said. “Here is Leonardo.” We each had about one minute to look at a small daVinci on an easel in the middle of the room. It was an oil painting of the Madonna and Child, beautiful and serene, but hardly in the right place to show off its perfection.
“Do not stay too long with each picture,” Andrei said. “Next, we see Caravaggio over here.” He herded us over to a painting hung on the wall, but the light coming in from the window cast a glare on the glass covering the work of art, so it was hard to make out the subject of the painting. It was Caravaggio’s Lute Player, which I knew showed a young boy in a white shirt against a dark background. Squinting, I could barely make out the central figure.
We heard angry voices and without even turning around, I knew Barry was at the center of the disturbance. He refused to leave the Madonna and Child, and the guide of another tourist group was trying to get him to move along.
“I have not finished looking at this painting,” Barry shouted. “I will leave when I’m good and ready.”
Andrei rolled his eyes and hurried over to Barry. He said something in Russian to the other guide. To Barry, he said, “Please, Mr. Martin, I want you to see a magnificent Rubens across the room.” Barry made grumbling noises, but followed Andrei to a painting called Statue of Ceres, which showed the earth goddess with little cherubs carrying fruits and vegetables to place around her statue.
Seconds later, Andrei scooted us to another part of the main floor. “This museum has largest collection of Rembrandts,” he said. We caught a glimpse of Return of the Prodigal Son before he shooed us along to a gorgeous Tiepolo.
“This is an outrage,” Barry said. “We’re going too fast to see anything.”
“I am sorry,” Andrei said, “but is very busy time of year. You should come back in the wintertime. Hardly anyone here. You can see all pictures much better.”
“I’m never coming back to this backward country—winter, spring, summer, or fall!” Barry said.
We all cringed. How could I ever have thought this man was interesting or worth knowing? I would have to figure out a way to get rid of him once and for all. Short of pushing him in front of the bus, I didn’t know how to do it. I should have known I could count on Gini.
“Barry, Andrei is doing the best he can,” she said. “I suggest you take your anger and stuff it. In any case, stay away from us. We’ve had enough of you.”
Barry looked at me.
“And that includes our friend Tina here,” Gini said. Her expression was easy to read. “Leave her alone.”
I nodded. He got the message.
Andrei, looking relieved, waved for all of us to come over to him. “We still have half an hour before we leave for tour of St. Petersburg,” he said. “If you want, you can go up to third floor and see Impressionists. Not very good, but go if you like. I wait for you here. Meet me by these benches.”
Most of us ran up the stairway to the third floor. I found a remarkable collection of works by my favorite painters, many of which I had never seen before, even in art books. There was Renoir’s Girl with a Fan, a lovely light and pastel-colored painting of an alluring young lady. We saw Matisse’s The Dance, a vivid abstract painting of five bright-red nudes in a circle, holding hands and dancing so wildly you could almost see them moving. There were paintings by Gauguin and Degas, Van Gogh and Picasso. It wasn’t very crowded up there, I guess because the paintings are not respected in this country—at least if we could judge by Andrei’s attitude toward them.
“These are my favorites,” I said to Pat.
“Mine too,” she said. “When we get back home, I’m spending a whole day at the Metropolitan, mostly in the Impressionist part. I never get tired of them. I’m so glad you’re writing about this trip, Tina. It’s been a fascinating experience—well, except for a murder here and there, but I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”
“I’m relieved that you feel that way, Pat,” I said. “I was afraid I’d led all of us into something really dangerous for a while there. But we’re safe now—or at least I think we are—and we can enjoy our last day of the cruise.”
“I hope you’re right, Tina. I’m a little worried that guy will turn up again on the ship.” She saw the look on my face and quickly added, “Oh, Tina, I didn’t mean that. I’m sure he left the ship. Don’t worry. Please forget I said that.”
“I still get the shakes when I think about him,” I said. “But I’m telling myself the police searched the ship thoroughly, and they would have found him by now if he were still on the ship. Right?”
“Of course,” Pat said, putting her arm around me. “He’s gone. You’ll never see him again.”
I knew she was just trying to make me feel better, but I was grateful for her fake reassurance.
We walked back to the lobby of the Hermitage to join Alex, who brightened up the minute he saw Gini.
“This is no way to see the Hermitage,” he said to her. “I wish I could show it to you without all these people. If you were going to be here longer, I might be able to arrange a private showing, but this is your last day.” He looked at Gini and we could tell that he wanted her to stay as long as he was posted in Moscow.
“I’ll be back,” Gini said. “I’d love to do a documentary on St. Petersburg. It’s full of possibilities.”
“There’s so much I could show you,” Alex said.
Mark and Sue walked over to join us. They looked a little down in the mouth, not their usual enthusiastic selves.
“Somehow, this isn’t what I expected visiting the Hermitage would be like,” Sue said. “I could have spent hours just looking at the Rembrandts.”
“My bride was really looking forward to this part of the trip,” Mark said.
“We’re all disappointed, Mark,” Pat said. “We just came at the wrong time of year, that’s all.”
“What do you paint, Sue?” I asked.
“Mostly still lifes and landscapes. We live in Colorado, and our house faces the mountains. Mark built me my own studio. It’s really beautiful. You have to come and visit us.”
“I’d love to,” I said. “I’ve always wanted to see Colorado.”
Caroline came up beside us in a wheelchair being pushed by her granddaughters.
“Caroline, are you all right?” I said.
“Oh yes, dear, I’m fine. Andrei offered to get me a wheelchair because of the crowds. The girls and I decided it would be a good idea. I’m glad I said yes. A person could get trampled here.”
“It’s a good thing Andrei thought of that,” I said. “It’s rough going through these crowds.”
I was glad to see that Stacy and Andrea were making sure their grandmot
her saw everything, while being protected from the shoving and pushing all around us.
“Are you going to the ballet tonight?” I asked them. “To see Nutcracker?”
“Oh yes,” Stacy said with a spark of mischief in her eyes. “Andy and I are going to sneak in and join the dancers under the Christmas tree. No one would notice a couple more kids, and we’ll scrunch down.”
“I’m afraid I’ve been a very bad influence on you,” I said, laughing at these wonderful girls. “But that does sound like fun.”
“Don’t encourage them,” Caroline said. “They really would do it.”
We formed a protective circle around Caroline and her wheelchair until we found Andrei again near the benches. He led us to the square in front of the museum, where our coach was waiting for us.
“Oh, Tina,” Pat said, “look at all those cats running around. There are so many of them.”
“They’re a tradition at the Hermitage,” a woman wearing glasses and a sensible dark blue suit, one of our fellow passengers, said to us as we headed for the bus.
“What do you mean?” Pat asked.
“When Empress Elizabeth started collecting paintings for the palace, she wanted to protect them from mice and rats. She brought in a bunch of cats to catch them, and they still do that.”
“I didn’t see any in the museum,” I said.
“They’re not allowed in the galleries, but there are about sixty-five of them. They live in the basement and run around out here in the square.”
“How do you know all this?” Pat asked her.
“I love cats and I read about them in a guidebook before I came here.”
Pat leaned over to pet a black and white cat, who rubbed against her leg.
“They certainly look healthy,” she said.
“They should,” the woman said. “There are three people who are hired to take care of them and make sure they have food and medical care.”
“What a great country,” Pat said.
“Please to take your seat on bus,” Andrei said. “We will do city tour so you will view the great beauty of St. Petersburg.” Andrei actually sounded enthusiastic, for once. We piled back on the coach and plunked down in our seats.
As the driver eased his way out of the crowded plaza, Andrei picked up his microphone again. “Peter the Great called this city his Window to the West,” he said. “He wanted it to be like other European cities—like Paris—reflecting Western culture, because so much of Russia had been under the influence of Eastern cultures before he became tsar. This city has sixty-six canals, a hundred and one islands, and hundreds of bridges. You feel like you are in Europe. You will find box lunches on your seats for you to eat on our way to Catherine Palace.”
Tina’s Travel Tip: Don’t worry about the extra calories you eat on a cruise. You’ll walk them off sightseeing. Yeah, right.
Chapter 19
The St. Petersburg Diet
As the bus moved along the crowded streets, occasionally dodging horse-drawn carriages, we opened our box lunches to find ham sandwiches, an apple, and a cookie. “So Russian,” Mary Louise murmured.
“One thing about this trip,” Gini said, “we won’t gain any weight. It may be the first cruise in history where you come back thinner than when you left.”
“See,” I said, “there’s always a silver lining. I’ve been on every diet known to womankind, and I had to go on a cruise to lose weight.”
Pat leaned over the back of her seat as the bus pulled out into traffic. “What diets have you been on? I thought you were just naturally thin, Tina.”
“Naturally thin is sixteen years old,” Mary Louise said. “Ever-expanding hips and stomachs and waistlines are from thirty-five on. If George didn’t keep nagging me about staying skinny, I’d be nicely rounded.”
“Honestly,” Janice said, “I don’t know why you put up with that bully. Why do you let him tell you what you can and can’t do? You’re fifty-two years old and you act like his slave.”
“I’ve been married for thirty years, Jan, and I’d like to stay that way for another thirty,” Mary Louise said, uncharacteristically snappish. “Not everyone changes husbands as often as her underwear.”
“My husbands were no prizes,” Janice said. “But they never tried to tell me what to do or not do. You’re such a wimp. I’ll bet you had to cook all week before you left so there would be dinners in the freezer for George, assuming he even knows where the freezer is.”
“Well, what if I did? I love him and I want him to eat well while I’m away. Sometimes marriage is eighty-twenty. Too bad you never learned that. We don’t all have a steel rod up our kazoos.”
“With you, you’re always the eighty and he’s always the twenty,” Janice said.
“Enough,” Pat said, her therapist voice taking over. “Why don’t you stop George-bashing, Janice. And Mary Louise, stop defending your marriage all the time. It is what it is and you obviously like it that way. So knock it off, both of you.”
Janice and Mary Louise glowered at each other.
“I’ll shut up about George if you shut up about my three marriages,” Janice said.
Mary Louise put out her hand to shake on the deal. “It’s a good thing Pat is here,” she said.
“We’re all glad Pat is here,” I said. “But let’s get back to diets. Wanna hear how I lost twelve pounds on my chocolate and wine diet?”
A slightly plump woman with a shiny face, who was wearing a blouse not tucked into her pants, leaned in closer. “That’s my kind of diet. You just eat chocolate and drink wine all day?”
“Not really,” I said. “But I knew I would never stick to any diet that didn’t include a glass of wine at dinner and a little chocolate. So I allowed myself a glass of wine or two and nibbled on these fabulous rich, dark chocolate cookies I found that have only twenty calories each.”
“But how did you lose the twelve pounds?” practical Pat asked. “What did you eat in between the wine and the chocolate?”
“I made up a twelve-hundred calorie a day diet that had lots of fruits and veggies, some chicken and fish, nuts for snacks, and I exercised. Mostly danced.”
“I’m starting that diet the minute I get home,” the plump lady said.
“It certainly beats that low-fat, no-fat, whole grain boring stuff we eat all the time,” Mark said from his seat behind us. “I know it’s good for me, and Sue is just trying to keep me around to entertain her. But once in a while, I’d like a nice fattening Danish for breakfast.”
Sue patted his stomach. “You’re much more entertaining without a fat belly.”
Mark put his arm around her. “I knew I was just your plaything.”
“I think Andrei is trying to get our attention,” Pat said.
Our guide picked up his microphone as the bus neared a massive structure of wood and stone. “The crowning glory of Tsar Peter’s reign was the Peter and Paul Fortress, built in the eighteenth century. Inside this fortress is the Peter and Paul Cathedral, where Peter is buried and also the Romanovs, the last tsars before the Communist Revolution in 1917,” he said.
The bus stopped briefly so we could look at St. Isaac’s Cathedral, which Andrei told us was the largest in the city, with more than 200 pounds of gold in the dome. “It holds thirteen thousand people . . . ,” he was saying when I fell asleep.
I woke up an hour later, stretched, and asked Mary Louise if I had missed anything.
“Only about a thousand monuments, statues, churches, canals, and bridges,” she said. “But you woke up in time for Catherine Palace.”
Catherine the Great’s summer palace was a blue and white confection of glistening marble and gold statues, with fountains shooting water into the air all along the length of the edifice. “Longest palace in world,” Andrei said. He led us into the Great Hall, a glittering glass and gold ballroom lined with two tiers of mirrors and windows.
“Look at that ceiling,” Gini said. A vast painting of Russian victories and figures repres
enting art and science stretched above us across the whole room, which made the football stadium in my hometown seem small by comparison.
“What do you think, Sue?” I asked her. “Your kind of painting?”
“Mine tend to be a little smaller,” she said, smiling. “But I love this room. Just look at all the light and sparkle and gold. It feels much more European than Russian. Doesn’t it remind you of the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles?”
“I was just thinking that,” I said, turning around to take in the elaborate décor of the palace. “You and Mark must have been to Paris many times.”
“Yes, in fact I lived there when I was eighteen,” she said. “I studied painting there.”
“Oh, Sue, I lived there too,” Gini said. “After I graduated from college, I studied photography in Paris. It’s still my favorite place in the world.” She pulled Sue off to the side, and I could tell from their gestures and mouth pursings they were talking in French.
“This palace is in town now called Pushkin, after great Russian poet,” Andrei said. It was obvious he was delighted at this change.
We walked through the ornate rooms, feasting our eyes on the elegant furniture, the marble and silk wall coverings, the huge blue and white tiled ovens that kept Catherine and her minions warm. The sweet sound of a string quartet playing in one of the chandeliered halls followed us as we moved from room to room.
Andrei led us outside to the back of the palace, past a large pyramid structure. “Catherine’s dogs buried here,” he said. We crossed a marble bridge over what was called “the Great Pond” and checked out the pavilion where musicians had played for the tsars and their guests.
“During White Nights, we have chamber music concerts here at the palace,” Andrei said. “Beautiful.”
Sated with the glories of the days of Russia’s tsars, we piled back onto the bus and headed back to the ship.