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Ðóññêèé English
General Kurkov: General Andrei Kurkov was in superb physical condition for any man, especially one in his late seventies. A widower, the General lived by himself in a dacha on the outskirts of Kiev, in a sleepy village called Borschagovka. His tiny three-room house, sitting on a small plot of land, was surrounded on all sides by a high wooden fence.
The first few months of his retirement General Kurkov spent fishing in the polluted Dnieper River. The catch was so small and infrequent that he finally gave up. Then he came up with a brilliant invention, designed to improve the quality of his retirement. The General requisitioned new recruits to find for him a large empty metal oil drum. The drum was sawed in half and then welded together, side-by-side.
Under his supervision, the soldiers planted the half-drums in the General's back yard, just outside his kitchen window. When they left, the General tested his invention by filling the drums to the rim with water from the garden hose. He now had two in-ground mini-ponds.
Early next morning, after making sure the drums had not leaked, the General excitedly jumped into his black Volga and hurried to the fisherman's market. He bought two dozen live minnows in a round metal bucket and a bamboo fishing pole with extra small hooks. Then General Kurkov drove back to his dacha very slowly, careful not to overturn the bucket containing his precious minnows.
With great care he released the slippery fish into the pools and smiled at his creation. The rest of the afternoon the General spent exactly the way he envisioned his retirement to be, catching and releasing fish in his own pond. For the first time in his retirement, he went to bed that night with satisfaction of having accomplished something truly enjoyable.
As life would have it, however, when the General woke up at 6:30 a.m., he found two dozen dead fish with their white bellies floating lifelessly on top of the water. This sight shattered the old man's long-held illusion of living happily in retirement, and he lost all control. The General shook his head and went inside his dacha. Seconds later he emerged, gripping his trusty old AK-47, and sprayed the fishing pool with a steady volley of bullets. The familiar burst of gunfire from the much-loved Kalashnikov raised General Kurkov's spirits, and he squeezed the trigger until there were no more rounds left.
To get more ammunition, the General placed an early morning call to Sergeant Korsakov and ordered him to bring several crates from the storage so that "a man could target practice in the forest without running out of bullets." While General Kurkov waited for the supplies, his panic-stricken neighbors bombarded the police station with reports of an armed maniac on the loose. When the police arrived, and learned the identity of the mischievous culprit, they apologized to the neighbors, but declined to disarm General Kurkov.
Until someone was actually injured, the police explained, there was little anyone could do since General Kurkov was one of the most highly decorated Ukrainian officers with powerful connections. Eventually the neighbors accepted their predicament. Still, being civilians, they never quite got used to the rapid machine gun fire that would erupt at odd hours of the night. Golden years of retirement proved to be a living hell for the General and his neighbors, who lived in permanent fear of being shot by the crazy old man during one of his regular anxiety attacks. That is why General Kurkov gladly accepted an offer to head up a start-up security company called ProServe, Ltd.
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