The Father of Teeth

Text for today: II Caries xxxiv-xlvii

Later, however, the Father of Teeth found himself wandering a concentration camp, whose inmates were systematically starved in order to cure their laziness. For their own survival they were forced to betray one another, since the death of one meant slightly better rations for the rest, in accordance with the eternal laws of supply and demand.

The Father of Teeth came upon a woman whose husband had been rationalised into the gas chambers months before and whose children had since died of malnutrition. She herself had survived by selling her favours to the guards for bread and telling tales about her fellow inmates; but last week a fresh intake of idlers had arrived and the guards had their pick of less bony meat. The tales she told had never really made much difference, as the punishments in the camp were deliberately patterned after those inflicted by the Creator upon His works, and were therefore completely arbitrary.

Sensing her weakness, the woman's fellow inmates had called her out as an informer and set upon her severely. She lay expiring, and the Father of Teeth felt moved to dispense some honest consolation. "In fifty years from now, my child," he said, "an optimist will have decided that all of this was worth while; and in a hundred years it will all be forgotten, or the memory blurred and distorted beyond recognition."

Those who ran the camp were hygienic and fastidious, so he had inserted his whitest fangs. In her dying eyes, his grin was a luminous tunnel. "If you are forgiving, my child" he said, "take comfort: future generations will not suffer from your pain. If you are vengeful, take heart: neither will they learn."