Page 53 - The Mirror of My Soul. Vol. 1

Nicolai Levashov. The Mirror of My Soul. Vol. 1. Born in the USSR

the look of and pretty soon I knew all sellers and their products as well as they knew me.

There I also bought meat, fragrant vegetable oil, homemade sour cream, etc.

As a student, I could not afford to buy myself all this, but now I could indulge
myself a little. When I was a student, I saw how market sellers drove students away who
walked between the rows and “tried” their merchandise. “Tasting” the sausages of ten
or twelve sellers, students tried to fill their empty stomachs, because in most cases they
squandered their monthly grant very quickly and looked for a way to hold out till the
next one.
I did not want anyone to take me for such a “tester”, both when I was a student and
much later. If this kind of thing was an entertainment for some, for me, it was
humiliating. However hungry I was, I considered the likes of this humiliation, or even a
hint of it, impermissible for me. Pretty often I went to Privoz in my uniform so that no
one would get the idea that I wished to “eat off” “poor” merchants. Now it is funny to
remember my feelings and ideas of that time, but, what can I say, that’s how it was.

My life as an officer was not something unbearably heavy for me, as young fellows,

who served in the army, often say. Certainly I was an officer, not a soldier, but I believe
that it does not matter in what rank you serve, but how you serve. I heard about the
burdens of service both from officers and soldiers. Certainly, there was a lot of stupidity
and nonsense in the army, but also a lot of necessary things that indeed do make a man
out of a boy.

In our company there were some officers who treated soldiers as a springboard for
their career. For example, when checking up on a guard duty according to the
regulations, a duty officer or his assistant every now and then gave the “alarm”. This
meant that all guard detachments, both resting and on duty, received the urgent message
“the guarded object is under attack” and had to rush to this object. Soldiers did not
respect such officers, and I agreed with them on this question, but it does not mean that

I connived, quite the contrary. However, I tried to act justly, as I understood it.

When a person spends seven to ten days a month on guard, he pretty quickly
masters numerous nuances of the service. When I was a “green” lieutenant and had to
check a guard, I came to the guardhouse, took the commander or the corporal of the
guard and the guard and went to check sentries. When I approached guarded objects, I
always heard some signal sounds, the significance of which I understood pretty quickly.

Those who remained in the guardhouse warned sentries with these signals of the
approaching check-up and when I reached every guarded object the sentries cheerfully
reported that there were no incidents. I, and not only I, was simply (but knowingly)
“wrapped round a little finger”. It was very clever, but I dislike the role of “simpleton”.
Therefore, I changed tactics.

Instead of running around guarded objects in vain, I came into the guardhouse and
went straight to the commanders’ room where there was an electronic chart of the
guarded objects. There were bulbs on it and each bulb lit up when a sentry, walking
around an objective on the set route, pushed a button. Therefore, it was possible to
observe the movement of the sentry to the guarded object, from the guardhouse.

So, knowing the distance between points, I sat opposite this chart and observed the
bulbs. If next bulb failed to light up within the time required for passing between two
points on the route and smoking a cigarette; making allowance for the speed of a

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