"Asiatic! Mordovan!" said the old cook now and again in his deep voice.
I did not like these people. Fat, bald Jaakov Ivanich spoke of nothing but women, and that always filthily. He had a vacant-looking face covered with bluish pimples. On one cheek he had a mole with a tuft of red hair growing from it. He used to pull out these hairs by twisting them round a needle. Whenever an amiable, sprightly passenger of the female sex appeared on the boat, he waited upon her in a peculiar, timid manner like a beggar. He spoke to her sweetly and plaintively, he licked her, as it were, with the swift movements of his tongue. For some reason I used to think that such great fat creatures ought to be hang-men.
"One should know how to get round women," he would teach Sergei and Maxim, who would listen to him much impressed, pouting their lips and turning red.
"Asiatics!" Smouri would roar in accents of disgust, and standing up heavily, he gave the order, "Pyeshkov, march!"
In his cabin he would hand me a little book bound in leather, and lie down in his hammock by the wall of the ice-house.
"Read!" he would say.
I sat on a box and read conscientiously:
"'The umbra projected by the stars means that one is on good terms with heaven and free from profanity and vice.'"
Smouri, smoking a cigarette, puffed out the smoke and growled:
"Camels! They wrote—"