Another tooth plinked into the tea glass and Harush blinked at it twice.
“Again?” cried his wife Ina, stirring something bubbly at the stove. Harush tongued the widened gap in his mouth, then swirled the lonesome refugee in the green liquid.
“Go to Boyka!” she yelled. She never seemed to increase the volume of her voice so much as stay at continual shout. Various fleshy parts of her body swayed as she gestured wildly and stamped her feet. “Once and for all, let her fix your teeth!”
“Boyka is a witch and a thief,” said Harush, rolling a cigarette.
“Boyka is the best and only dentist, you fool.”
They’ve had this argument many times since Harush started losing his teeth; he’d been losing them steadily for weeks. When they left their two-room house their famously talented cockatoo imitated the transaction to mitigate his devastating loneliness.
“Boyka! Fix teeth! Witch and thief!” Misha cawed between mournful bites of discarded newspaper.
Now Harush had only a few rotten teeth left.
“Ah well,” he sighed into his tsuica at the soccer club where no one played soccer. He took another shot of the sweet, strong plum brandy and set the empty glass down on the tired wooden table, covered in sticky rings of spilt-over liquor. A few empty-headed cadets caroused in the corner, but mostly the place was filled with a smattering of old men looking into the depths of their shot glasses.
With only a few teeth left, Harush resigned, he had very little to lose. What was a dentist’s tip to a childless old man? He wasn’t a peasant after all. He could afford one chicken.
Boyka, like a barber in a Western, was the village’s multi-talented professional. Yes, she had studied dentistry under the greatest practitioners of the day, but did you know she could lance a boil like it was nobody’s business? It’s true! Infertile goat? She had just the thing. Secret police hunting you down? A word from her stopped ‘em dead. (In one case, literally, but the man was found to be a dissenter and so, in fact, no trouble came of the matter.)
Harush went to Boyka, the bleached-blond dentist with a mouthful of gold and silver teeth. He’d never been to her office before, on the second floor of the polyclinic, the only multi-story building in the village. Its smell was strange, a mixture of cigarettes and alcoholic fumes that didn’t trigger any sense of cleanliness or well-being among the graying white walls. Two rows of rusting metal chairs sat in the center of the room. The examination area was behind a heavy green curtain. Next to the curtain was a hefty wooden desk. On the desk were a carton of Pall Malls and a mason jar full of teeth. How many smiles could that jar make, he wondered.
Boyka came out from behind the curtain in a tight white pants suit and smock, leading a small boy to the exit. Their shoes squeaked across the floor. The boy was distressed in a quiet trembling way, but he didn’t whimper or cry.
“There now, you see, it’s all done,” she said patting him on the head. The boy looked at her, unlatched the heavy door and ran out, his stomps echoing down the stairwell. The room was empty but Boyka and Harush.
She closed the door and leaned against it as if she were about to seduce him, or kill him. Ina had told Harush once, in a rare hushed tone, that Boyka survived the war by hiding under a pile of bodies. He tried to imagine what that was like (perhaps it wasn’t even true) and absently tongued his last tooth. It had taken him a few days to resolve to see her, and as a consequence, more teeth had fallen out.
“What can I do for you?” she asked. Harush began, though it was a struggle communicating toothlessly with anyone but Ina. His lips fluttered around his gums. Boyka listened, squinting her eyes in concentration.
“Yes, your wife told me you’d be coming this morning, Harush. Come,” she said, leading him behind the curtain.
Harush sat on the gray, vinyl-covered chair and the cushion let out a hiss.
“Open wide,” she instructed in a sing-song. She let out an affirmative “mmmhmmm” and before he realized what was happening, she had reached in with her pliers—kept in a holster on her belt– and yanked out the last tooth.
“Ooo!” he cried.
Boyka was already at her desk. She unscrewed the mason jar and dropped the newest acquisition inside with a dull clink.
“Rrr,” said Harush. He rubbed his cheek. Was that satisfaction he saw on her face? He let out another useless growl.
Boyka came over with a metal mold and slathered a pink goop into it and shoved it into his mouth with a wink.
“Now hold still while I make this, you’ll want nice teeth, huh grandpa?” She smiled and patted his grizzled cheek. Harush breathed through flared nostrils. His tongue moved involuntarily, and felt the awful taste of metal. He tried to keep it from moving. The fumes from the pink goop filled his nose. After this, he thought, he would go straight to the club for a few drinks. He kicked his heels against the exam chair at an angry rhythm.
When Boyka removed the mold, Harush couldn’t resist spitting on the floor, clearing out the toxic saliva. He smiled weakly at her.
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
Boyka threw a small towel on the floor and wiped the area with her foot.
“We’re not done yet,” she said, less sing-song. Before Harush could stand or protest, she repeated the process with the lower part of his mouth.
Dear god! He pounded the arm of the chair with his fist. He would have five drinks and then he would have to have a coffee too. Ina didn’t like it when he drank coffee, because it made him nervous. But it was a treat he allowed himself at the club, when he’d had a little more tsuica to drink and he didn’t care for stumbling into the six o’clock herd of cows or the seven p.m. flock of sheep.
“Your new teeth will be ready next week,” said Boyka-tooth-thief. She grinned, her own silver-and-gold fangs glinting in the sunlight that crept through the dank curtain and cast on her face a monstrous glow. She waited, with her hand on her hip, not quite willing to stick her palm out for the payment, but also unwilling to move out of Harush’s way.
“You’ll get your hen when I get my dentures,” garbled Harush.
Boyka crossed the room to a glass cabinet and took two clumps of cotton from a jar.
“I require a 1000 lei gratuity to finish my work,” she said, pushing the cotton into his mouth. As she led him out of the examination area, he felt his mouth dry up.
“Now don’t forget to come next week for your teeth. Perhaps I’ll see you at the parade before then, eh?”
Harush grunted and waved a goodbye, a more forget-you dismissal than a good-humored ta-ta. He left the little complex and went around the corner to his club. It was silent inside, except for the radio—everyone intently listening to a game. The barman brought him his tsuica, which he had made on his own in the back, the best in the village. Harush took out the wads of cotton and put them on the table while he drank.
*
When he got home, Ina looked at her husband sympathetically. The house smelled like boiled sweet peas and freshly laundered socks.
“I made you some soup!” she shouted, trying not to laugh at his puffed up cheeks. She gave him a slight kiss on the forehead.
She was much younger than Harush. They’d met soon after the war, when she was ladeling out potato soup to some scraggly orphans at the village school. He had joined the queue, looked into her lazy eye and kind, round, face, and proposed then and there. Not having any other prospects, she accepted. And though one or both of them could not produce children, neither seemed to mind.
Misha, their surrogate child-cockatoo, had wandered in sometime in the ‘50s, flapped into their house (“Into my heart,” Ina told women at the market). He stayed around the house and suffered from bouts of depression, chewing on all manner of things when his caretakers were gone. Now he waddled to Harush and looked up at his cotton-filled, bloody mouth, a big yellow star in his beak.
“What’s that?” garbled Harush to Ina.
“The parade is tomorrow! I’m helping Boyka with the final touches of her costume.”
Misha dropped the star on the floor.
“Parade! Parade!” he squawked, claws tapping on the kitchen tile.
*
Twice a year, in May and August, the village had a parade, just like all other villages, towns, and cities. The very tired brass band reassembled itself, the Party members put on their best, little girls put flowers in their hair, and most of the village marched from one end of the main street to the other. Scattered along the sidelines were the very young, the very old, and the generally feeble.
Harush didn’t care much for the parades. Ina, who did participate, represented his household and that was enough for him. Every year for the last few years he remained an observer on the side, smoking a cigarette and muttering to Misha, who sat on his shoulder and bobbed his head to the tuba. This year he brought a little flask and a stool to make the time go by more quickly.
The procession was the same as always. The onlookers gathered along the route, and the sounds of the band emerged from the police station, until they spilled out onto the street. Behind them, a small troupe of flower-headed girls, dancing with ribbons admirably coordinated, and finally out came the Party members, most adults in the village, holding flags and banners with Party slogans. Boyka and Ina marched side-by-side. Ina wore her simple church frock, black with little red flowers. Boyka wore her usual parade costume, a bright red sweater (clinging) and mini-skirt with enormous stars (cut by Ina) sewed on to all the voluptuous curves of her body. Her teeth flashed in the sun as she belted out the Party’s anthem and waved a flag over her head in large swooping motions.
When the two women passed Harush, he crossed himself and finished his flask.
The next week, Harush went back to the polyclinic with a plump hen flapping under his arms. He’d told Ina that Boyka wanted cash, and she insisted he bring the hen as well, as a sign of goodwill. Harush rolled his eyes, but obeyed. Ina was a little frightened of Boyka too.
They were presented on a silver tray, pink and white and smiling. She showed him how to put them on, and it felt strange–extra.
He’d gotten used to a diet of soup and liquor, what good were fake teeth now? He felt the saliva form freely in his mouth.
Again, Boyka-businesswoman stood in front of Harush waiting.
“Well?” she asked.
“1000?”
“How do they feel?”
“Oh,” he said, moving his jaw around, making oral experiments that could’ve been interpreted as strange, lewd, demented. “So far so good. I’ll let you know when I’ve eaten some meat.”
“Be careful with that,” she said, standing uncomfortably close. Harush sighed and pulled out a wad of bills, thrusting them in her palm. It was most of his year’s pension.
*
On his way home he walked past the village school. In the yard a young man led boys through bends and squats. Until a few years ago, it was Harush that provided the young boys with physical education. Then he retired and let his teeth rot. He looked at all those young teeth. What were they feeding those younger ones, so that their teeth came out perfect, fake-like?
He lingered a bit until some boys looked back at him curiously. He left in a huff, heading home.
“What’s wrong?” asked Ina.
“I’m old!”
“Awww, my little old man,” she said, as if he were a little boy. The radio was on, “Blue Danube” crackled. “And look at those teeth!”
Misha, idly chewing on a slipper, looked up.
“Old little man!”
Harush reached into his mouth and pulled them out.
“These?” he asked.
“Ach, I hope you don’t do that in public,” she said.
“Don’t worry,” he said, holding the teeth in his palm, gazing at them. He came up to her and led her into a waltz around the kitchen, holding them high above their heads; slippered-feet shuffled in clumsy box steps and turns. As the music crescendoed he held the teeth still higher, and then let them drop, scattering like a string of pearls. He spun, palms in the air.
“Oh no,” yelled Ina, watching individual teeth skitter to the dusty corners of the room, and beneath the stove. “We can’t afford another set, Harush, you know that! How could you be so foolish?”
But Harush didn’t mind so much. He continued dancing to the music, spinning and spinning on his teeth.
This story was originally published in The Massachusetts Review and has been reprinted here with permission of the author. Anca Szilagyi’s fiction appears more recently in Gastronomica, Fairy Tale Review, Washington City Paper, and elsewhere. She also writes for the Ploughshares blog. “Skitter” is part of her short story collection MORE LIKE HOME THAN HOME, for which she was awarded an inaugural Made at Hugo House Fellowship.
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