The Father of Teeth
Text for today: Dentures xxiii-xlvii
Even the most malevolent and destructive among us deserves a little help now and then, said the Father of Teeth; one cannot in all decency consign a person to eternal torment simply for going astray here and there, and that is why, in spite of all the crimes and horrors he had perpetrated up to that point, I once agreed to serve in the maw of the Almighty in an adhesive capacity. It was purely a matter of goodwill, with no remuneration; not that I would have taken one of his employment contracts in any case.
Anyway, said the Father of Teeth, it was a most unpleasant business. The Almighty's own teeth are long gone for the most part, donated for keystones in churches and gothic arches, or begged for statuary. I shouldn't be surprised if some priest persuaded the barmy old bugger that the best cure for toothache was to have the thing extracted and set up in public with a beatific grin carved onto it. That doesn't help in the least, of course; but you can't fool others properly without fooling yourself first, as the saying goes, and whatever else you may think of the Almighty, you can't deny he does keep packing in the suckers.
And speaking of suckers, said the Father of Teeth, without his dentures that more or less sums him up. His mouth was littered with splinters and stumps, all brown and blunt, with a few black ones that had holes in them which led, for all I know, to Nirvana or Abraham's bosom, or somewhere less restful judging by the reaction whenever you gave one of them a prod.
Of course, said the Father of Teeth, the dentures didn't fit properly. Even with my help they rattled all the time, and they ground against his gums, and sometimes his speech became so garbled that his priests and prophets had to interpret, and we all know what that leads to. There must have been half a dozen schisms and a couple of genocides before things were more or less fixed. Don't ask me why he couldn't get a better fit; maybe the dentists don't like the offers he makes them, or maybe he has too infinitely big a mouth. My personal view, said the Father of Teeth, is that he just enjoys being angry.
Naturally, said the Father of Teeth, I did my humble best. I summoned my most mucilaginous might and I spread myself across those black and brown splinters and I did everything, positively everything I could to hold his damned dentures in place. Great pink and yellow things they were: not only do they not fit very well, they don't even help his appearance much. And people wonder why it's so difficult to see the face of God and live. Worse yet: when those dentures grind together, the noise is atrocious. By comparison with that, even the screaming isn't so bad; most souls, the civilians at least, aren't really able to scream, even when he chews them up; they're too undeveloped, like embryos. Priests, yogis, mystics and authors of popular self-help books are a different matter, and the souls of anchorites and contemplatives can attain quite impressive levels of volume when the juice bursts out of them and the true meaning of salvation starts to dawn. But even that isn't so bad compared with the noise from the dentures themselves, especially when he wasn't chewing anything and just constantly scraped them together. It was like listening to sand being gnawed. I don't know what those dentures were made of; substandard all round if you ask me. Maybe I had it worse because I was spread so thin across his gums, said the Father of Teeth; maybe it was the pressure that got to me.
But the noise was what did it in the end, said the Father of Teeth. I just couldn't stand the noise, so I unstuck myself (a fairly unedifying business) and respectfully took my leave. And did I get one word of thanks? Did I receive so much as a nod, do you suppose?
Even the most malevolent and destructive among us deserves a little help now and then, said the Father of Teeth; one cannot in all decency consign a person to eternal torment simply for going astray here and there, and that is why, in spite of all the crimes and horrors he had perpetrated up to that point, I once agreed to serve in the maw of the Almighty in an adhesive capacity. It was purely a matter of goodwill, with no remuneration; not that I would have taken one of his employment contracts in any case.
Anyway, said the Father of Teeth, it was a most unpleasant business. The Almighty's own teeth are long gone for the most part, donated for keystones in churches and gothic arches, or begged for statuary. I shouldn't be surprised if some priest persuaded the barmy old bugger that the best cure for toothache was to have the thing extracted and set up in public with a beatific grin carved onto it. That doesn't help in the least, of course; but you can't fool others properly without fooling yourself first, as the saying goes, and whatever else you may think of the Almighty, you can't deny he does keep packing in the suckers.
And speaking of suckers, said the Father of Teeth, without his dentures that more or less sums him up. His mouth was littered with splinters and stumps, all brown and blunt, with a few black ones that had holes in them which led, for all I know, to Nirvana or Abraham's bosom, or somewhere less restful judging by the reaction whenever you gave one of them a prod.
Of course, said the Father of Teeth, the dentures didn't fit properly. Even with my help they rattled all the time, and they ground against his gums, and sometimes his speech became so garbled that his priests and prophets had to interpret, and we all know what that leads to. There must have been half a dozen schisms and a couple of genocides before things were more or less fixed. Don't ask me why he couldn't get a better fit; maybe the dentists don't like the offers he makes them, or maybe he has too infinitely big a mouth. My personal view, said the Father of Teeth, is that he just enjoys being angry.
Naturally, said the Father of Teeth, I did my humble best. I summoned my most mucilaginous might and I spread myself across those black and brown splinters and I did everything, positively everything I could to hold his damned dentures in place. Great pink and yellow things they were: not only do they not fit very well, they don't even help his appearance much. And people wonder why it's so difficult to see the face of God and live. Worse yet: when those dentures grind together, the noise is atrocious. By comparison with that, even the screaming isn't so bad; most souls, the civilians at least, aren't really able to scream, even when he chews them up; they're too undeveloped, like embryos. Priests, yogis, mystics and authors of popular self-help books are a different matter, and the souls of anchorites and contemplatives can attain quite impressive levels of volume when the juice bursts out of them and the true meaning of salvation starts to dawn. But even that isn't so bad compared with the noise from the dentures themselves, especially when he wasn't chewing anything and just constantly scraped them together. It was like listening to sand being gnawed. I don't know what those dentures were made of; substandard all round if you ask me. Maybe I had it worse because I was spread so thin across his gums, said the Father of Teeth; maybe it was the pressure that got to me.
But the noise was what did it in the end, said the Father of Teeth. I just couldn't stand the noise, so I unstuck myself (a fairly unedifying business) and respectfully took my leave. And did I get one word of thanks? Did I receive so much as a nod, do you suppose?
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