My celebration of Mardi Gras includes the smoking of a fine cigar. It is my one and only indulgence of tobacco in the entire year and one which has a ritualistic character. In a brief season of indulgence, indeed of wretched excess in taking one's pleasures, my Mardi Gras smoker is a special pleasure I reserve only for this time. It's inspiration was a scene in
Doctor Zhivago (1965) and one which, for me, cohered wonderfully with carnival and its inevitable end at midnight on Shrove Tuesday.
The scene is the dinner Yuri Andrevich is sharing with his wife, Tonya, and his father-in-law Alexander Gromeko (Ralph Richardson, portraying one of the most British Russians to be found in any production), upon Yuri's return from the Ukranian front at the end of Russia's participation in the Great War. Gromeko, savoring the moment, pulls out a stub, declaring "I am about to light the last half of the last cigar to be found in Moscow". Some light conversation about the meal follows as the old man lights the cigar, after which he takes a long puff, letting the smoke roll around in his mouth and enjoying the experience for all its worth before wistfully declaring "Farwell, the pleasures of the flesh", and then wondering aloud how the family was going to make it through the winter in the face of the Revolution and the shortages of food and fuel in the city.
Mardi Gras itself is a brief time of gross enjoyment of appetite and sensation just before one is confronted with the harsh realities of Lent, the season of fasting and atonement in the Catholic calendar which begins on Ash Wednesday. Like Gromeko, I savor my pleasures at length, knowing that they must all too soon come to an end, and that waiting for me is more serious business, deprivation, and sacrifice. I don't take the ashes of Lent myself, but the burnt remains of my cigar fulfills the same symbolism for me of the season of indulgence which must end with the reminder that, from dust thou came and from dust shalt thou return.
Farewell, the pleasures of the flesh.
