The Father of Teeth
Text for today: Enamel clxiii-clxxix
Once upon a time, said the Father of Teeth unreliably, the Creator of the universe was so annoyed by the behaviour of certain people that He smote two entire cities with fire and brimstone and killed every single inhabitant. Cinders poured from the sky, which blackened and thundered; the earth shook and cracked open in great chasms that swallowed alive those sinners not already incinerated.
It was, said the Father of Teeth, a rather show-offy spectacle indeed, and not at all suitable for those of a sensitive or impressionable temperament. Such a one was a minor wife of a man who escaped, having been forewarned that the Creator's mercy was about to make one of its more assertive manifestations. She looked back to where her friends and cousins and the gossips at the market were all being scalded and broiled and crushed and suffocated, and she was so traumatised by the sight that from that moment forth she was paralysed and rooted to the spot, unable to move or speak, her face white as salt. After a while, of course, those who had fled began to drift back, and they took out their knives and their trowels and cut bits out of her to chew on because the ground was so scorched that food was hard to come by. She never objected or cried out, so they told each other as they chewed that she was nothing more than a pillar and it served her right for looking where she shouldn't.
In the end, said the Father of Teeth, there was nothing left of her but white bones and terrified white eyeballs, which still faced towards the scene of devastation because no-one, least of all her husband or her family, had thought to cover her eyes or close them or point them away; and at last I ground them to dust in my seventeen-carat diamond molars and scattered them grain by grain on the Creator's hurricanes over the next five thousand years. Eventually a few of the grains will find their way into people's eyes, and in this way, said the Father of Teeth, a few people may gain some small homeopathic insight at last into the nature of the Creator's mercy.
Once upon a time, said the Father of Teeth unreliably, the Creator of the universe was so annoyed by the behaviour of certain people that He smote two entire cities with fire and brimstone and killed every single inhabitant. Cinders poured from the sky, which blackened and thundered; the earth shook and cracked open in great chasms that swallowed alive those sinners not already incinerated.
It was, said the Father of Teeth, a rather show-offy spectacle indeed, and not at all suitable for those of a sensitive or impressionable temperament. Such a one was a minor wife of a man who escaped, having been forewarned that the Creator's mercy was about to make one of its more assertive manifestations. She looked back to where her friends and cousins and the gossips at the market were all being scalded and broiled and crushed and suffocated, and she was so traumatised by the sight that from that moment forth she was paralysed and rooted to the spot, unable to move or speak, her face white as salt. After a while, of course, those who had fled began to drift back, and they took out their knives and their trowels and cut bits out of her to chew on because the ground was so scorched that food was hard to come by. She never objected or cried out, so they told each other as they chewed that she was nothing more than a pillar and it served her right for looking where she shouldn't.
In the end, said the Father of Teeth, there was nothing left of her but white bones and terrified white eyeballs, which still faced towards the scene of devastation because no-one, least of all her husband or her family, had thought to cover her eyes or close them or point them away; and at last I ground them to dust in my seventeen-carat diamond molars and scattered them grain by grain on the Creator's hurricanes over the next five thousand years. Eventually a few of the grains will find their way into people's eyes, and in this way, said the Father of Teeth, a few people may gain some small homeopathic insight at last into the nature of the Creator's mercy.
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