Out of Russia by Brian Grover

Author:Brian Grover [Brian Grover and Jim Rickards]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784185923
Publisher: John Blake Publishing
Published: 2015-02-27T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 18

There was a long line of couples waiting for the big moment, all of us in our finest clothes which had been specially cleaned and pressed for the occasion. The only snag was that in the Soviet Union of 1933 there was no big moment. Marriage was definitely going out of fashion in Moscow, considered too bourgeois and, more important, too time consuming, None of Lena’s friends could understand why we were bothering. There were factories to be built, fields to be ploughed. Why all the fuss? It makes good sense for comrades to live together and support each other and produce children for the future of the Union, but why waste time with a silly ritual?

The registry office was as bleak as a railway station on a cold winter’s night. At the far end of the plain, narrow waiting room was a door and beside it a pane of glass behind which sat a dour attendant with about as much goodwill as a snake eyeing an unsuspecting frog. Thick lines, running from the edge of her beaky nose, echoed the downturn of her pale lips. Bitterness and resentment were etched in grey, blank eyes. I couldn’t help thinking she had been chosen to put off as many people from getting married as possible. She certainly affected the atmosphere. Instead of the bubbling excitement you might have expected, couples sat hardly talking. Grooms smoked absent-mindedly. Brides became irritated because their man was getting ash on his trousers and brushed it away with a warning glare. It was as though most of the people in the room were embarrassed to be caught buying into this ritual yet found themselves unable to shake off the tradition of centuries.

Given the state’s desire to cut down on waste, the ceremonies seemed to take an extraordinarily long time. Every three quarters of an hour or so, the attendant would tap on the glass, bark ‘Next’ and there would be a shuffle of feet as the couple nearest to her made their way through the door and sat in front of her. The rest of us moved up, two places closer to becoming man and wife.

One of the couples must have been warned about the delay because they took out a lunch box and proceeded to munch away on sandwiches. The rest of us could only look on enviously wondering if there was any way we could hold our place in the queue while we popped out for something. We decided against it.

I refused to be sucked into the pervading gloom. This was a special day and I intended to enjoy it. I squeezed Lena’s hand. ‘You look beautiful,’ I said. And she did. She had spent some time that morning pinning her hair up in a bunch on top of her head with little ringlets curled meticulously down each side of her face. She wore a little more make-up than usual, but subtly applied. And to my delight, she was wearing the red dress

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