I then felt as if a red-hot awl were being driven into my jawbone; I
writhed and twisted.
“A splendid set of teeth,” she said, “just like an organ to play upon! We
shall have a grand concert, with jew's-harps, kettledrums, and trumpets,
piccolo-flute, and a trombone in the wisdom tooth! Grand poet, grand
music!”
And then she started to play; she looked terrible, even if one did not see
more of her than her hand, the shadowy, gray, icecold hand, with the long,
thin, pointed fingers; each of them was an instrument of torture; the thumb
and the forefinger were the pincers and wrench; the middle finger ended in
a pointed awl; the ring finger was a drill, and the little finger squirted gnat's
poison.
“I am going to teach you meter!” she said. “A great poet must have a
great toothache, a little poet a little toothache!”
“Oh, let me be a little poet!” I begged. “Let me be nothing at all! And I
am not a poet; I have only fits of poetry, like fits of toothache. Go away, go
away!”
“Will you acknowledge, then, that I am mightier than poetry, philosophy,
mathematics, and all the music?” she said. “Mightier than all those notions
that are painted on canvas or carved in marble? I am older than every one of
them. I was born close to the garden of paradise, just outside, where the
wind blew and the wet toadstools grew. It was I who made Eve wear clothes
in the cold weather, and Adam also. Believe me, there was power in the first
toothache!”
“I believe it all,” I said. “But go away, go away!”
“Yes, if you will give up being a poet, never put verse on paper, slate, or
any sort of writing material, then I will let you off; but I'll come again if you
write poetry!”
“I swear!” I said; “only let me never see or feel you any more!”
