The Door of Unrest Page #2

"The Door of Unrest" is a short story by O. Henry that explores themes of love, longing, and the human condition through the lens of urban life. The narrative revolves around a man who, feeling trapped in his monotonous routine, becomes captivated by a mysterious woman he observes through an apartment window. This encounter leads him to reflect on his own desires and the nature of relationships. With O. Henry's signature wit and twist ending, the story poignantly captures the complexities of yearning and the search for connection in a bustling city.

• Short story

								


“‘And for what,’ says I, ‘do ye smoke be night in dark places widout
even a cinturion in plain clothes to attend ye?’

“‘Have ye ever heard, Michob,’ says the Imperor, ‘of
predestinarianism?’

“‘I’ve had the cousin of it,’ says I. ‘I’ve been on the trot with
pedestrianism for many a year, and more to come, as ye well know.’

“‘The longer word,’ says me friend Nero, ‘is the tachin’ of this new
sect of people they call the Christians. ’Tis them that’s raysponsible
for me smokin’ be night in holes and corners of the dark.’

“And then I sets down and takes off a shoe and rubs me foot that is
frosted, and the Imperor tells me about it. It seems that since I
passed that way before, the Imperor had mandamused the Impress wid a
divorce suit, and Misses Poppæa, a cilibrated lady, was ingaged, widout
riferences, as housekeeper at the palace. ‘All in one day,’ says the
Imperor, ‘she puts up new lace windy-curtains in the palace and joins
the anti-tobacco society, and whin I feels the need of a smoke I must
be after sneakin’ out to these piles of lumber in the dark.’ So there
in the dark me and the Imperor sat, and I told him of me travels. And
when they say the Imperor was an incindiary, they lie. ’Twas that night
the fire started that burnt the city. ’Tis my opinion that it began
from a stump of segar that he threw down among the boxes. And ’tis a
lie that he fiddled. He did all he could for six days to stop it, sir.”

And now I detected a new flavour to Mr. Michob Ader. It had not been
myrrh or balm or hyssop that I had smelled. The emanation was the odour
of bad whiskey—and, worse still, of low comedy—the sort that small
humorists manufacture by clothing the grave and reverend things of
legend and history in the vulgar, topical frippery that passes for a
certain kind of wit. Michob Ader as an impostor, claiming nineteen
hundred years, and playing his part with the decency of respectable
lunacy, I could endure; but as a tedious wag, cheapening his egregious
story with song-book levity, his importance as an entertainer grew
less.

And then, as if he suspected my thoughts, he suddenly shifted his key.

“You’ll excuse me, sir,” he whined, “but sometimes I get a little mixed
in my head. I am a very old man; and it is hard to remember
everything.”

I knew that he was right, and that I should not try to reconcile him
with Roman history; so I asked for news concerning other ancients with
whom he had walked familiar.

Above my desk hung an engraving of Raphael’s cherubs. You could yet
make out their forms, though the dust blurred their outlines strangely.

“Ye calls them ‘cher-rubs’,” cackled the old man. “Babes, ye fancy they
are, with wings. And there’s one wid legs and a bow and arrow that ye
call Cupid—I know where they was found. The
great-great-great-grandfather of thim all was a billy-goat. Bein’ an
editor, sir, do ye happen to know where Solomon’s Temple stood?”

I fancied that it was in—in Persia? Well, I did not know.

“’Tis not in history nor in the Bible where it was. But I saw it,
meself. The first pictures of cher-rubs and cupids was sculptured upon
thim walls and pillars. Two of the biggest, sir, stood in the adytum to
form the baldachin over the Ark. But the wings of thim sculptures was
intindid for horns. And the faces was the faces of goats. Ten thousand
goats there was in and about the temple. And your cher-rubs was
billy-goats in the days of King Solomon, but the painters misconstrued
the horns into wings.

“And I knew Tamerlane, the lame Timour, sir, very well. I saw him at
Keghut and at Zaranj. He was a little man no larger than yerself, with
hair the colour of an amber pipe stem. They buried him at Samarkand. I
was at the wake, sir. Oh, he was a fine-built man in his coffin, six
feet long, with black whiskers to his face. And I see ’em throw turnips
at the Imperor Vispacian in Africa. All over the world I have tramped,
sir, without the body of me findin’ any rest. ’Twas so commanded. I saw
Jerusalem destroyed, and Pompeii go up in the fireworks; and I was at
the coronation of Charlemagne and the lynchin’ of Joan of Arc. And
everywhere I go there comes storms and revolutions and plagues and
fires. ’Twas so commanded. Ye have heard of the Wandering Jew. ’Tis all
so, except that divil a bit am I a Jew. But history lies, as I have
told ye. Are ye quite sure, sir, that ye haven’t a drop of whiskey
convenient? Ye well know that I have many miles of walking before me.”

“I have none,” said I, “and, if you please, I am about to leave for my
supper.”

I pushed my chair back creakingly. This ancient landlubber was becoming
as great an affliction as any cross-bowed mariner. He shook a musty
effluvium from his piebald clothes, overturned my inkstand, and went on
with his insufferable nonsense.

“I wouldn’t mind it so much,” he complained, “if it wasn’t for the work
I must do on Good Fridays. Ye know about Pontius Pilate, sir, of
course. His body, whin he killed himself, was pitched into a lake on
the Alps mountains. Now, listen to the job that ’tis mine to perform on
the night of ivery Good Friday. The ould divil goes down in the pool
and drags up Pontius, and the water is bilin’ and spewin’ like a wash
pot. And the ould divil sets the body on top of a throne on the rocks,
and thin comes me share of the job. Oh, sir, ye would pity me thin—ye
would pray for the poor Wandering Jew that niver was a Jew if ye could
see the horror of the thing that I must do. ’Tis I that must fetch a
bowl of water and kneel down before it till it washes its hands. I
declare to ye that Pontius Pilate, a man dead two hundred years,
dragged up with the lake slime coverin’ him and fishes wrigglin’ inside
of him widout eyes, and in the discomposition of the body, sits there,
sir, and washes his hands in the bowl I hold for him on Good Fridays.
’Twas so commanded.”

Clearly, the matter had progressed far beyond the scope of the
Bugle’s local column. There might have been employment here for the
alienist or for those who circulate the pledge; but I had had enough of
it. I got up, and repeated that I must go.

At this he seized my coat, grovelled upon my desk, and burst again into
distressful weeping. Whatever it was about, I said to myself that his
grief was genuine.

“Come now, Mr. Ader,” I said, soothingly; “what is the matter?”

The answer came brokenly through his racking sobs:

“Because I would not … let the poor Christ … rest … upon the step.”

His hallucination seemed beyond all reasonable answer; yet the effect
of it upon him scarcely merited disrespect. But I knew nothing that
might assuage it; and I told him once more that both of us should be
leaving the office at once.

Obedient at last, he raised himself from my dishevelled desk, and
permitted me to half lift him to the floor. The gale of his grief had
blown away his words; his freshet of tears had soaked away the crust of
his grief. Reminiscence died in him—at least, the coherent part of it.

“’Twas me that did it,” he muttered, as I led him toward the door—“me,
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