From that day Werner Bamberg bit anything he could fit his teeth around. He bit the tips of his spectacles, the leaves of trees, the brass knocker on his front door when the street was empty. He bit the chain on the well bucket and pulled it across the yard like a dog. He left ragged notches in the pages of books, bit matches at both ends. He gnawed on the dining room curtains and the tops of leather boots. He bit coins, something he had never done before, and was pleased when they didn’t give. He bit the tops of chessmen when he thought Käthe wasn’t looking, and he grew particularly fond of bishops and pawns, with their round heads and narrow necks.
He opened the case of the grandfather clock in the hallway and bit the shaft holding the pendulum. Then he angled his head and put his teeth around a corner of the clock’s wooden casing and waited for the hour to strike, anticipating the slow vibrations that would rumble through his jaws and the bones under his eyes. He liked the vibrations of the clock, just as he had liked the vibrations of the fork, and soon he was seeking out other things that shook his whole his face like that. He put his teeth on the strings of his old violin and plucked them, then bowed them, then plucked them again; he tried it with just one string, then two, then three. He found the coral teether in a drawer and bit its little tin bells while he shook the red handle, then he bit the handle and batted the bells with his palm. He put the tip of his walking stick between his teeth and slapped the heavy end into a doorframe. He bit the tops of chairs while scooting them across the floor. He bit everything except his wife’s jewels in the box under the floorboard. Those he wouldn’t touch, although one day he did bring out the brooch he had promised to Käthe and gave it a little nibble before placing it on her pillow.
At night, sometimes, he dreamed of climbing up the tower of the village church and putting his teeth around one of the big bells just when they started to ring. He dreamed of holding the cold, metal rim with his teeth while the bell tumbled back and forth, his body flopping about like a puppet, his ears bleeding from the noise.
He took to chewing a wine cork, sometimes biting down so hard that his jaws bulged, sometimes wrapping his lips around it and sucking it like a pacifier. When Käthe caught him at this he became angry, and the next day he sent her out to buy a clay pipe that he could use when he knew she was watching, though he feared clay would be too brittle. He tried to keep all this biting a secret from Käthe, but it was difficult. One time she came into his bedchamber to find him sprawled on the floor with his mouth around one of the bed’s clawed feet. He told her he’d fallen, but her thin smile told him that she knew more than she was letting on, and he was more cautious after that.
So it went throughout the winter—through Christmas, through Three Kings Day, through Rosenmontag. At Christmas he had Käthe buy a spruce tree from the farm on the Pforzheim road, the first tree he’d had since his wife died, and they spent an evening decorating it with candles and nuts. The tips of the spruce tasted like lemon and resin. On Three Kings Day he watched the old priests walk along the main road, yellow in the glow of the windows, sprinkling villagers’ doors with holy water and chalking them for luck. Normally he chased them off when they came to his door, but this time he let them chalk it. On clear nights, packs of children in pinecone crowns went about singing songs and asking for gifts. They didn’t come to his house—they never did—but he opened his window to listen to them, and once or twice he threw down some coins as they passed. Käthe even heard, or thought she heard, a quiet song in the old man’s throat.
Käthe was well aware of all that he was doing. How could she not see it? It was only ever the two of them in that big house, and, although she had her small duties to attend to, they were never as burdensome as she let him think. Even if she hadn’t been watching him from corners and listening through the walls, she would have seen the notches in the candles and books, would have noticed the sheen of spittle running down the chessmen when they played. Again she thought of her own children, how at a certain age they licked and sucked and bit anything within reach, including their own toes and fingers. It brought them such delight, but it took a mother’s vigilance to ensure that they didn’t put the wrong things in there, sharp things or poisonous things or things they might choke on. And so she watched and listened to Herr Bamberg in his biting, doing her nurse’s duty to keep him safe but also enjoying the pleasure it brought him. The gloom that had clung to him like a leaden mist for years, the gloom that had found its way even into Käthe’s warm breast, had dissipated. In the coldest, darkest months of the year, the old house became warm and bright.