They grew in slowly, ever so slowly. The pain lessened, but it didn’t go away, and often Herr Bamberg yelled and twisted his neck as if to separate his head from his body. It was many years since the nurse’s own children had teethed, but she remembered the pain of it almost as if it had been her own, and she knew what to do. She gave him cold sponge baths and covered his head with a wet cap to keep him cool, to keep the teething fevers away. She fitted him with a bib to catch the drool and brought him elder stems to chew. When he gave her money to find something better, she bought a polished red teether made of coral. It was the only kind they had at the silversmith’s, a red coral stick attached to some jangling bells, like a baby’s rattle. It didn’t seem to help the pain, but he liked to shake it when he needed her.
She remained watchful against the dangers: diarrhea, earaches, the signs of skull compression that could squeeze the brain and kill him. She wanted to tie a wolf’s tooth around his neck, like the peasants do, but he wouldn’t have it. Nor would he let her smear his gums with the brains of a hare, as her mother had done. Sugar cubes wrapped in paper helped, and a cloth soaked in brandy helped, and a cloth soaked in brandy and laudanum helped best of all.
After about four weeks, when the first cold winds began to blow in from Alsace, the pain abated, and the teeth were fully in. One morning Herr Bamberg arose and fumbled in his wardrobe until he found his wife’s old hand mirror. It trembled as he held it before his face and opened his mouth. They were eight good new teeth, white and straight and strong. He turned the mirror to examine the rest of his face, which he hadn’t properly examined in perhaps a dozen years. He looked, even to himself, impossibly old: eyelids so heavy that they almost hid the pupils, deep lines running vertically from mouth to nose and horizontally across the brow like the scoring of a sharp knife through old dough. The dark scar above his upper lip, a souvenir from his father, had lengthened so that it was threatening his right nostril, and the parts of his cheeks that weren’t covered by beard were blotched by dark, mildewy spots. But the teeth—the teeth made him look less dull than before, less dull and less helpless. He decided to try smiling. Thin crescents formed on either side of his mouth and a lean, wolfish look came over him. He snarled, then went back to smiling, then snarled once more.
It occurred to him that it was time for breakfast, so he put down the mirror, straightened his nightcap, and hobbled downstairs. The nurse was waiting for him with a fresh slab of bacon and a seed cake. “And how are we this morning, my dear?” she said.
“Fine, fine.”
“The pain?”
“Is gone, Käthe. It’s gone. I feel—I feel ravenous.” He tried his wolfish look on her. “All right?”
“Marvelous! I gathered some eggs in case the pain returned, but since you were feeling so good yesterday I thought we would try this.” She pushed the plate in front of him as he eased himself into his chair. “It’s from Frau Huber. She says she can supply more, if you like. At a good price, she says.”
Herr Bamberg looked at her sharply. “You didn’t say anything to her, did you? About these?” He wolf-smiled again.
“Oh no, Herr Bamberg! I simply said we might be having guests for Saint Martin’s Day and were laying in supplies. Oh, that reminds me,” she settled into her regular seat beside him. “Have you written to your son this year?”
“Pah,” Herr Bamberg said through a mouthful of bacon. “My son. He never comes.” Herr Bamberg’s son lived in the town of Konstanz, on the lake. He was a magistrate, like his father had been.
“But perhaps this year,” said Käthe, dabbing his mouth with a cloth. “This year seems a year for miracles.”
“Miracles.” He stopped chewing. “These aren’t miracles.” He tapped his teeth with his fork. “They’re…” but instead of finishing, he took another bite of bacon. It was very good bacon, and it gave him no trouble if he ripped it and swallowed it in small pieces. But the seed cake was another matter, for he had no molars with which to chew it. Käthe took note of this and began planning what else she could feed him. She would see if Frau Huber had any tender calf meat, for a start.