‘Why don’t you go on writing? Have you forgotten?’
‘I’ve forgotten.’ Yarmola shook his head angrily.
‘Heavens, what a fellow you are! Well, make a wheel.’
‘Ah, a wheel, a wheel!... I know....’ Yarmola cheered up, and diligently drew an elongated figure on the paper, in outline very like the Caspian Sea. After this labour he admired the result in silence for some time, bending his head now to the left, then to the right, and screwing up his eyes.
‘Why have you stopped there? Go on.’
‘Wait a little, sir ... presently.’
He thought for a couple of minutes and then asked timidly:
‘Same as the first?’
‘Right. Just the same.’
So little by little we came to the last letter ‘k,’ which we knew as ‘a stick with a crooked twig tilted sideways in the middle of it.’