...of studying pornography

Sometimes Colonel Lelewicz came himself. Sometimes he would send one of his friends. He brought bread, tinned food, newspapers. At irregular intervals there was a visit from Len-Min-Tsin, the Chinese trader, with newspapers, books and cheap pornography. This consisted of packets of postcards like those offered to foreigners in the dazzling nights of the great cities by timid little dealers with encouraging whispers. The Chinaman purveyed the postcards in series through the lost townships of Siberia and lent them out like books. He would then collect them again from his subscribers and exchange them for new ones. The pictures were worn like old playing-cards by the covetous fingers of many hundreds. Efrejnov, Lion and Berzejev scrutinized the cards together in unpolitical and purely sexual accord. Efrejenov kept a dignified silence as he became engrossed in the details. He puckered his eyebrows, combed his fair beard with his fingers, narrowed his eyelids and peered at the cards through a narrow slit with the appraising glance of a connoisseur. Against his will, he simultaneously opened his bewhiskered lips in the same measure as he closed his eyelids. His tongue crept inquisitively between his teeth, he began to smile, his face relaxed and, despite the powerful neck on which it rested, despite the beard in which it was framed and embedded, acquired a boyish expression. Lion held his pince-nez in his hand, hard against his eyes, and tapped one foot incessantly, causing his body to break into a delicate rocking tremor. Berzejev was red under the normal brown of his countenance and it seemed, not that his skin was flushed, but that the red complexion of his second inner self was appearing through the brown of the outer man. Impatient as he was, he wanted to turn over faster than the others, who appeared to have a more thorough approach.

[The Silent Prophet, Roth, J.]