Chuck and Ghek live in the North. They live in an igloo. Their father is Arkadi. He was in the North on an expedition and met their future mother, a walrus. Then he left for Moscow, promising to return, which he never did. Old people say he has written a book about his children, but nobody has ever seen it let alone read it.
Chuck is 8 years older than Ghek, but in spite of that their mother calls them twins, because they are very much alike as she thinks. Chuck is tall and thin, he is blue-eyed and fair-haired. Ghek is short and fat, completely bald and has a brown artificial eye (a birthday present from his brother). Anyway, they are getting on very well.
If Chuck goes hunting polar bears, he always takes his brother’s harpoon. If Ghek goes boating he sometimes takes Chuck’s gun or his mother’s dynamite. If their mother goes hunting, it means that she goes fishing and won’t return very soon.
There’s one thing Chuck is proud of - his skis. He has skis for all occasions of life. When he goes shopping, he puts on his brown skis, when he is reading, his skis are yellow. When he receives guests, he has blue skis, when he is dancing, he has black skis and red ski poles. When he takes a bath, well, in fact, he never takes a bath.
Chuck and Ghek have a distant relative, whose name is Umka. He has a palace on an icicle, a bear in the kennel and a whale in the bathroom. He takes his silver chopper when he goes shopping to Alaska. His own factory produces Coca-Cola and Vodka ‘Kayuk’. He is a Liberal Democrat and he publishes his own newspaper ‘Hari, hari, Zhiri’, because deep in his heart he is very religious. He likes to gamble in the Casino ‘Penguin’ because he is its owner, so if he loses, he will win all the same.