A few last puffs

I always said that I would live in Russia and would leave only in the event of a direct, immediate threat to life, not so much my own, but my family’s; I would leave along the old Bandera paths only when there was not the slightest chance or hope left.

They expelled, exiled and simply imprisoned writers, artists and scientists, sent troops into Afghanistan, constantly rewarded Brezhnev and completed the construction of developed socialism. I didn't even think about leaving.

They adopted a semi-prohibition law, lined up the country for food, established the Civil Code and declared a state of emergency. I didn't even think about leaving.

Then the cops robbed, bandits attacked, the tax office grabbed you by the throat, and customs turned your pockets out. I didn't even think about leaving.

They destroyed media independent from the state, destroyed the election system, abolished justice and stole everything they could. I didn't even think about leaving.

Freedom of thought was enough for me, instead of freedom of speech, and the autonomy of my personal existence served as a fairly reliable protection from all the abominations of the world around me.

And yesterday the thought first appeared. Just a thought for now. But it appeared.

The funny thing, of course, is what they broke me on. Not on a gigantic wave of totalitarian stupidity and stupid totalitarianism, which has already risen on the horizon and is rushing with ever-increasing speed towards the recently quite peaceful and quite comfortable, but even now quite polluted and desecrated beach. Not on such fateful, all-consuming and constantly depressing monsters of the thinking part of society as corruption, the destruction of freedom of speech, or even an increase in housing and communal services tariffs simultaneously with the deterioration of the quality of roads. Not on something great and terrible.

Everyone has their own personal hell. And your limit of strength. My soul suffocated right now, not because the special forces took Udaltsov out of the apartment and took him somewhere. Not because a department of theology was opened at MEPhI. And not from all the other news feeds that have been raging since the morning, as usual.

No, they broke it because of some simple nonsense. Moreover, it is not at all original Russian, having nothing to do with the bloody Putin regime, but quite the opposite, bringing us closer to the bright future of European civilization. It is precisely that nonsense, which, perhaps, is the only one that causes my absolutely identical rage, whether in the Parisian “Maxim”, or in the Munich “Spaten”, or in the Barcelona “Sant Pau”. Just think, smoking will be banned in restaurants, no matter what.

It may seem like senile insanity. However, in reality everything is extremely simple. I have a little over a year left until retirement age. I’m not saying that before I retired, I worked since I was fifteen, but like the rest of the Soviet people, I didn’t earn anything real from the state, and what I can afford myself doesn’t depend in any way on the moment I received my pension certificate. And there won’t be any fundamental changes in your lifestyle after your upcoming birthday. But this will not stop the beginning of the seventh decade from being so. And many of the pleasures of previous years, naturally, became a thing of the past.

And in what remains, and what is directly connected with my country, I emphasize this separately, since you can read books and listen to music even on Mars, and so, in this remaining one third to half is the opportunity to sit and spend time in in accordance with my tastes in a good domestic tavern, by the way, not only in Moscow. For example, when I was recently in Arkhangelsk, perhaps more than half of the pleasure there would be from the restaurants.

But I can’t sit in a restaurant without tequila, vodka, cognac, dark beer and different colors of wine. I don’t know how to consume all this without a cigarette. I never knew how and will never learn. So, for me, a ban on smoking there, without any options, is tantamount to a ban on visiting such establishments of all kinds at all.

And here comes the question. Why the hell am I going to live here if they brazenly, solely on their own senseless whim, deprive me of one of the main and last pleasures?

There are places for believers to communicate, people who listen to rap and techno can gather, and even mass gatherings of gays and lesbians, despite all the persecution, so far no one plans to prohibit it by law, well, at least in closed and separate rooms.

Only smokers turn out to be such a select caste that they have the right to inhale only in their own apartment or somewhere in the open air, as far away from civilization as possible and mostly in the cold, which is the main feature of the domestic climate.

You know what, gentlemen, shouldn’t you all stay here, and I should go to some damn distant place where it’s warmer and not everyone has gone crazy yet?

No, of course, all this does not mean that I have already started packing my things. Firstly, I don’t have much to collect, I won’t carry books around anymore, I’m tired, and it won’t take long to put on jeans. And, secondly, there are still a couple of years before the final ban; anything can happen in our country and in my life. I’m not talking about some global political changes, but simply that our cunning restaurateurs have a chance, albeit a small one, to come up with some reasonable solution, and for me, the problem of visiting not only a restaurant, but whatever be that as it may, we may fall away altogether, we still walk under God.

So I don’t throw hysterics and I don’t get into a fever. Just for the first time in my life I told my wife in all seriousness to figure out which country’s wine she prefers at this time of year. And he thoughtfully opened on the largest monitor in our house one of the most wonderful inventions of mankind called “Google Maps”.

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