The Door of Unrest Page #3

"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

								

the shoemaker of Jerusalem.”

I got him to the sidewalk, and in the augmented light I saw that his
face was seared and lined and warped by a sadness almost incredibly the
product of a single lifetime.

And then high up in the firmamental darkness we heard the clamant cries
of some great, passing birds. My Wandering Jew lifted his hand, with
side-tilted head.

“The Seven Whistlers!” he said, as one introduces well-known friends.

“Wild geese,” said I; “but I confess that their number is beyond me.”

“They follow me everywhere,” he said. “’Twas so commanded. What ye hear
is the souls of the seven Jews that helped with the Crucifixion.
Sometimes they’re plovers and sometimes geese, but ye’ll find them
always flyin’ where I go.”

I stood, uncertain how to take my leave. I looked down the street,
shuffled my feet, looked back again—and felt my hair rise. The old man
had disappeared.

And then my capillaries relaxed, for I dimly saw him footing it away
through the darkness. But he walked so swiftly and silently and
contrary to the gait promised by his age that my composure was not all
restored, though I knew not why.

That night I was foolish enough to take down some dust-covered volumes
from my modest shelves. I searched “Hermippus Redivvus” and “Salathiel”
and the “Pepys Collection” in vain. And then in a book called “The
Citizen of the World,” and in one two centuries old, I came upon what I
desired. Michob Ader had indeed come to Paris in the year 1643, and
related to the Turkish Spy an extraordinary story. He claimed to be
the Wandering Jew, and that—

But here I fell asleep, for my editorial duties had not been light that
day.

Judge Hoover was the Bugle’s candidate for congress. Having to confer
with him, I sought his home early the next morning; and we walked
together down town through a little street with which I was unfamiliar.

“Did you ever hear of Michob Ader?” I asked him, smiling.

“Why, yes,” said the judge. “And that reminds me of my shoes he has for
mending. Here is his shop now.”

Judge Hoover stepped into a dingy, small shop. I looked up at the sign,
and saw “Mike O’Bader, Boot and Shoe Maker,” on it. Some wild geese
passed above, honking clearly. I scratched my ear and frowned, and then
trailed into the shop.

There sat my Wandering Jew on his shoemaker’s bench, trimming a
half-sole. He was drabbled with dew, grass-stained, unkempt, and
miserable; and on his face was still the unexplained wretchedness, the
problematic sorrow, the esoteric woe, that had been written there by
nothing less, it seemed, than the stylus of the centuries.

Judge Hoover inquired kindly concerning his shoes. The old shoemaker
looked up, and spoke sanely enough. He had been ill, he said, for a few
days. The next day the shoes would be ready. He looked at me, and I
could see that I had no place in his memory. So out we went, and on our
way.

“Old Mike,” remarked the candidate, “has been on one of his sprees. He
gets crazy drunk regularly once a month. But he’s a good shoemaker.”

“What is his history?” I inquired.

“Whiskey,” epitomized Judge Hoover. “That explains him.”

I was silent, but I did not accept the explanation. And so, when I had
the chance, I asked old man Sellers, who browsed daily on my exchanges.

“Mike O’Bader,” said he, “was makin’ shoes in Montopolis when I come
here goin’ on fifteen year ago. I guess whiskey’s his trouble. Once a
month he gets off the track, and stays so a week. He’s got a rigmarole
somethin’ about his bein’ a Jew pedler that he tells ev’rybody. Nobody
won’t listen to him any more. When he’s sober he ain’t sich a fool—he’s
got a sight of books in the back room of his shop that he reads. I
guess you can lay all his trouble to whiskey.”

But again I would not. Not yet was my Wandering Jew rightly construed
for me. I trust that women may not be allowed a title to all the
curiosity in the world. So when Montopolis’s oldest inhabitant (some
ninety score years younger than Michob Ader) dropped in to acquire
promulgation in print, I siphoned his perpetual trickle of reminiscence
in the direction of the uninterpreted maker of shoes.

Uncle Abner was the Complete History of Montopolis, bound in butternut.

“O’Bader,” he quavered, “come here in ’69. He was the first shoemaker
in the place. Folks generally considers him crazy at times now. But he
don’t harm nobody. I s’pose drinkin’ upset his mind—yes, drinkin’ very
likely done it. It’s a powerful bad thing, drinkin’. I’m an old, old
man, sir, and I never see no good in drinkin’.”

I felt disappointment. I was willing to admit drink in the case of my
shoemaker, but I preferred it as a recourse instead of a cause. Why had
he pitched upon his perpetual, strange note of the Wandering Jew? Why
his unutterable grief during his aberration? I could not yet accept
whiskey as an explanation.

“Did Mike O’Bader ever have a great loss or trouble of any kind?” I
asked.

“Lemme see! About thirty year ago there was somethin’ of the kind, I
recollect. Montopolis, sir, in them days used to be a mighty strict
place.

“Well, Mike O’Bader had a daughter then—a right pretty girl. She was
too gay a sort for Montopolis, so one day she slips off to another town
and runs away with a circus. It was two years before she comes back,
all fixed up in fine clothes and rings and jewellery, to see Mike. He
wouldn’t have nothin’ to do with her, so she stays around town awhile,
anyway. I reckon the men folks wouldn’t have raised no objections, but
the women egged ’em on to order her to leave town. But she had plenty
of spunk, and told ’em to mind their own business.

“So one night they decided to run her away. A crowd of men and women
drove her out of her house, and chased her with sticks and stones. She
run to her father’s door, callin’ for help. Mike opens it, and when he
sees who it is he hits her with his fist and knocks her down and shuts
the door.

“And then the crowd kept on chunkin’ her till she run clear out of
town. And the next day they finds her drowned dead in Hunter’s mill
pond. I mind it all now. That was thirty year ago.”

I leaned back in my non-rotary revolving chair and nodded gently, like
a mandarin, at my paste-pot.

“When old Mike has a spell,” went on Uncle Abner, tepidly garrulous,
“he thinks he’s the Wanderin’ Jew.”

“He is,” said I, nodding away.

And Uncle Abner cackled insinuatingly at the editor’s remark, for he
was expecting at least a “stickful” in the “Personal Notes” of the
Bugle.
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