The shambling, fattish, unprepossessing, relatively inarticulate yet strangely moving protagonist is thus put in the position of having to renegotiate his relationship to the world, of having to process feelings that refuse to clarify themselves and which he proves himself ill-equipped to handle.
Derk is "a tall, fattish, mild-faced man," while Blade is "a boy of about fourteen who looked rather like the man, except that he was skinny where the man was wide" (11).
(103) With substantives, the pattern forms diminutives, such as klavlav 'little dog' from kelev 'dog' and gvarvar 'little man' from Over 'man.' With adjectives, especially those denoting colors and physical char-acteristics, the pattern is usually glossed with 'ish', such as kxalxal 'bluish' from kaxol 'blue', ktantan 'smallish' from katan 'small', and smanman 'fattish' from samen 'fat'.
From photographs taken thirty years ago he appeared to be of the sickly 'Ghandi' variety, but here was a fattish man with a shaved bullet head, bright though slightly watery eyes--teeth rather defective as they had mostly fallen out.