Page 9 - The Mirror of My Soul. Vol. 1

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

brother served on the World War II front when he was 17 years old, having falsified his
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birth certificate to pass for older than he was. Three men of my family, from the group
of my closest relatives, did not return from this war.

Starting as early as childhood, my mother was able to manifest unusual abilities:
she could levitate, forsee the future and discern problems in the human organism. The
latter proved very useful for her later on when she worked in a children's hospital.
Destiny drove her to Kislovodsk, where in 1956 she entered and successfully graduated
medical school, earning and entering the profession of medical assistant. It was in this
resort town that she met my father, married him and had three children.

We all huddled together in the little basement room, which my father adapted for
our living quarters. But the basement remained a basement and the walls were damp all
year round, along with our clothes, bed linen, etc. The windows were two thirds below
street level and the only things we could see were the feet of passers-by. Ever since then

I could not stand dampness. These are un-pleasant recollections of my childhood.
However, most of them are warm and joyful, especially those involving nature.

The yard of the house containing our basement apartment bordered on the canyon
of a small mountain river. This canyon became our playground. We would go down to
the bottom of the can-yon and then travel upstream through the small river to mountains
of amazing beauty. Within a fifteen or twenty minutes’ walk we appeared among an
almost total wilderness sanctuary of nature. Only the vegetable gardens, where our
neighbors grew potatoes, slightly marred this “wilderness”. By one kilometer deeper into
the mountains—the traces of civilization almost completely disappeared.

In 1967, my father, who worked as a builder, got us a three-room apartment
measuring 35.6 square meters in the city of Mineralnye Vody and we moved there from

Kislovodsk. This tiny flat seemed a real palace to us. Rooms were dry and sunny, with
windows on the fourth floor. For the next year or two we still had colds and then almost
forgot about them; when we caught the flu, we only stayed ill no more than a day or two.

2. My school years

I entered school in 1968 and graduated, a decade later, in 1978. My graduation
certificate consisted of two “good” grades (while the rest were “excellent” and earned
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me several awards). I will not dwell on this period of my life too much, because my
school years differed little from those of my classmates.

Probably the only difference was that I never missed a class, but always rejoiced
when lessons were canceled for whatever reason. Like any other boy, I waited
impatiently for vacations, especially in the summer. It is also true that my extracurricular
interests differed markedly from those of my classmates.

I explored all the nearby ravines and personally checked the depth of every brook.
I also organized “scientific” expeditions on the outskirts of Zmeika Mountain. My

mother wasn’t enraptured by the results of my expeditions and I often “destroyed the

5 In Russia it is called the Great Patriotic War. Russia battled Germany for four long and bloody years—from June, 1941
to May, 1945, and won—but paid for this victory with over 30 million Russian lives.
6 In the former USSR children received grades from 1 to 5 — “very bad”, “bad”, “satisfactory”, “god”, “excel-lent”. After
graduating from school those pupils, who got the highest grades in certain subjects, were also given awards on those
subjects.
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