Page 22 - The Mirror of My Soul. Vol. 1

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

I wasn’t so lucky there. Because I cooked quite well I had to prepare meals for the

whole group. My working day began at four o’clock in the morning and finished at
midnight. It was a daily routine: first, I had to wield an ax to chop firewood for the whole
day and then feed the guys in three shifts. I also had to buy food and lug it to our camp
on foot along a sandy road, and in between wash tableware. Every day a new assistant
helped me. He could hardly crawl to his bed after one day of work in the kitchen. I was
also running out of steam.

Meanwhile, I earned some money in the building group and decided to give myself
the pre-sent of a good flash camera. It was in 1980 and I was in my second year at the
university. One day I was invited to the birthday party of one of my fellow students and
took my camera along. I began to take pictures using the flash. The camera behaved very
strangely. The flash only worked off and on sporadically. I could not understand what
was happening. Another classmate, by the name of Sergey Pohilko, also had a camera
but without the flash.

When he saw that I stopped taking pictures, he asked to borrow my flash which

worked just perfectly with his cameral. This convinced me that something was wrong
with mine. I had no other logical explanation so I took my camera to a guarantee repair
shop where I briefed them on the essence of the problem.

Leaving the repair shop I happily anticipated getting a normally working camera in
my hands as quickly as possible. In a few days I went to collect my hapless camera. In
the repair shop I was told that there were no problems with my camera. It was a fault-
free unit. I believed the repairman but, nevertheless, asked him to check this for me on

the spot. He kindly consented and personally demonstrated the functioning of my camera
with a flash.
I felt a load off my mind but a little “worm” of doubt continued to gnaw at me. To
dispel my doubts, I asked to check the camera by myself. The inexplicable began from
this moment. When I pressed the button there was no flash. This surprised me to a much
lesser degree than the man and a girl assistant, a witness of the event. Full of surprise,
the man pressed the button and the flash worked again. When I did it, the result was the
opposite. The girl also participated in the “scientific” experiment. Later the second
repairman also tried. The result was the same.

When I pushed the button—nothing happened. I had already begun to joke about a
psycho-logical incompatibility between me and my camera, when the workshop’s senior
specialist suggested that I use the isolated handle of some pliers to push the button. To

their great relief the flash finally worked.

They began explaining to me that my case was pretty rare, that I had a very powerful
static electric field which was short-circuiting the flash synchronizer. That was why my
camera behaved so strangely in my hands. It was only necessary to replace the
synchrowire by another one with an isolation of higher capacity. However, they did not
have it in stock and I would have to call them periodically to check if they received it.

When I arrived home, I exclaimed angrily, “Damn it, you must work!” and pressed
the notorious button of my camera. To my great surprise the flash worked. I immediately

began experimenting with it: when I thought that the flash must work, it worked; when
I thought to the contrary, nothing happened!

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