Everyday

by James Oppenheim

Everyday

By

James Oppenheim

A WILD wind banged the windows and wailed down the street. The East Broadway office was snug and cozy and warm. In its deep silence and intense white light, Dr. Rast nestled in his armchair, smoking slowly on his pipe. Nell leaned forward in a rocker and sewed. They were talking quietly and sweetly.

"Hear that wind!" murmured the Doctor. His dark smooth face turned toward his wife. His brown eyes glistened with serene happiness. He watched her busy fingers— their intricate skill and sureness. He noted the soft fall of her hair round her calm, contented, absorbed face. "Whoo!" he went on, "the world's blowing away!"

Nell smiled at him—a wife smiling at her husband because she was glad to have him near and at home.

"It's autumny, isn't it?" she said softly. "It's homey."

He puffed a long white cloud of smoke and watched it glow and spread and thin out in the gas-light.

"Great, here!" he murmured, "great! A man could sit here for a thousand nights! Really, kid, sometimes it's just good to be alive—to feel alive—to be aware of oneself and the world—and do nothing—just be!"

He heard the little stitches as she worked on in silence.

"I wonder," she sighed at last, "if all people aren't happy, after all. We're pretty happy, aren't we?"

"Happy?" he cried. "Yes! It's good to work hard and be tired at night—it's good to eat one's supper at one's own table—it's good to suffer and then be free of pain—it's a rich big thick warm life, this human life, even at the worst!"

A great wind knocked the windows in and out and burst roaring down the airshaft, bearing with it the mingled voices of many people in the flats above.

"Whoo!" the Doctor whistled. "It's good to curl up in here to-night, to sit in the warmth and light—with you, Nell!"

She looked up tenderly, sweetly, her eyes dim.

"With me! You love me—as much as ever?"

She put out a soft warm little hand and he grasped and patted it.

"Doesn't the little wife know?" he whispered.

"But—say it anyway,"—she laughed sadly—"every now and then, Morris, you must tell me. I like to hear you say it!"

"Ach, das ewige Weiblich! (the eternal feminine)," he smiled. "Kid!" He pressed her hand, and touched it to his lips, "Ich liebe Dich, mit Herzen, mit Schmerzen, uber alle Masse,—ein wenig—gar nicht!" (A German game of counting off—"I love you—with heart—with pain—beyond all measure—a little—not at all!")

She drew back her hand.

"Aren't you mean, Morris!" she cried.

He looked at her, wondering if she were not a trifle hurt.

"Poor, poor little wife!" he exclaimed. "Of course I love you! Love you?" He suddenly spoke deeply, almost brokenly, his words tense and taut and hot, "Good God, Nell, how I do love you—it frightens me at times!"

She drew a sharp breath of exquisite tingling happiness.

"Then you really do—don't you? My Doctor-man!"

She secured one of his hands, and laid her cheek upon it, and they were like one happy throbbing human heart, warmly pulsing in the thick of the wild night.

Whereupon the inevitable telephone bell shrilly rasped out with its quick b-r-r-r-r-r-r-r—The two looked at each other in vexation and laughed. It was so inevitable,

"The old story!" cried Nell. "Just when we're saying: 'and they got married and lived happily ever after'—oh, the dickens!"

B-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r—went the impatient far-hidden human being.

Dr. Rast swung the instrument over to his lap.

"Um—hello!"

"Iss dis Doktor Rass?"

"Yes."

"Goot! Could you come a little by six-und-seventy Henry Street—just a little, please, Doktor!"

"What's the name?"

"Sinn."

"Sinn?"

"Sinn."

"What is the matter?"

"Ach, just a little, Doktor! Just a little!"

'I'll be over!"

"Güte Doktor!"

Nell and Morris looked at each other again. He grinned and she puckered up her nose.

"Well!" he sighed, "it's out I go! A doctor's a slave! But I'll hurry back, dear!"

He arose, sighing, knocked his pipe clean and laid it down, got his coat and grip and hat. The wind labored again at the windows and Nell shivered. She put down her sewing and arose.

"Morris," she cried, "it's such a wild night, I'm going with you!"

He frowned, and she hurried to him and put her hands on his coat. "Please, Mister!" she coaxed. "I'll be good—I'll be good!"

He kissed her lips.

"Nell! be a good girl—stay home!"

"Morris—I couldn't! I couldn't sit still with you out and that wind howling. It's full of wolves. Ah, Morris, I won't be in the way. I'll wait for you in a corner drugstore!"

Her face was childish in its sweet appeal. First his heart laughed, then his lips.

"You rogue!" he cried. "Put on your duds—come along! Oh, such a wife!"

She laughed gaily and jigged out of the room, He heard her singing wildly as she put on her coat and her hat and her torn gloves. She came out rosy with happiness.

"I love to go with my man!" she cried.

He turned the light low and they stepped out into the dim hall and sought the empty street. And then suddenly they were blown away and over the world. The heavens were slashed by flying clouds, tinged a dull red by the great lights of the huge city beneath, and now and then there was a tattered break and a wild brilliance of moon momentarily poured out. Wailing gales tore about them, wrapping their coats close. Nell took his arm and they plunged along. Windows on every street were golden patches.

Nell tried to speak, but her words blew wild, and all he heard was "lights—lonesome—home."

"What is it?" he shouted.

She drew up close and shrieked in his ear.

"The windows—the lights—Morris—each one is a home. It makes me lonesome—heartsick!"

He roared back:

"Earth's dying, Nell—I can feel the leaves being stripped from trees—everything's going to wreck. It's home-time—home-time," he yelled to make her hear. "This weather drives men home. It's the greatest time of the year!"

She shrieked again:

"And it's birth-time, too—Morris—something—the whole world—seems at the moment of birth!"

"That's it!" he cried. "That's the magic of it—it's the time of death-birth!"

They swung into a side-street, and the big walls made a sudden lull that astounded them. They heard themselves thumping along in the silence. They laughed. And they could talk at last.

"Who are these people you are going to?" asked Nell.

"Oh! I had almost forgotten them!" The Doctor was suddenly sober and serious. He sighed. "It's a rough case, Nell!"

"Rough? Who are they?"

"It's the Sinns. You know old Sinn, don't you—the organ-grinder? He and Tiffy?"

"Not," she cried sharply, "my old organ-grinders? The two old men who come around every Friday? The two I've known since I was that high?"

"That's the two!" said the Doctor.

"The poor old men!" cried Nell "I'm always so sorry for them—they always bow so—so like old gentlemen—and thank me for my nickel! Is he sick, Morris? she asked sharply.

"I don't know!" said the Doctor.

"The poor old man!" cried Nell vehemently. "Do you know, Morris, sometimes I think it's a crime to be happy while there are such people in the world. Think of an old man having to tramp the streets and grind an organ! It's too horrible! He's all weather-beaten and bowed and grizzled. Morris, it makes my heart ache!"

He sighed again, deeply.

"It's pretty hard, Nell! Yes," he said in a puzzled tone, "I can't see much good in such a thing. He hasn't gotten much out of life, except—move on! And now I suppose it's all over—a long hard grind of a life, and then—sleep!"

The thought saddened them; they walked on in silence.

"It's tragic," murmured Nell, infinite womanly pity in her voice, "the poor, poor old man, stooping over his organ, holding out his hat—and yet so mild, so sweet-tempered, such an old gentleman. I love old men!"

The Doctor smiled and squeezed her hand

"Well—" he sighed—"it's a real world and a hard one—and some are happy and some are not! What can we do?"

Nell almost sobbed.

"Really, Morris—I—I can't stand the thought of his not coming around on Fridays! I'm so used to him! And that old broken-down organ—just like himself! And the tunes!" She half-laughed, "'The Bowery'—'Sweet Rosie O'Grady'—'Mother, Dear, Come Bathe My Forehead!'" They paused to laugh, tears in their eyes. "And all out of tune!— But really, really, Morris!" she added sharply, "my world has a warm place in it for my organ-grinder!"

They came to a corner, blotched green and red with the lighted jars of a drugstore. And then at once they were caught up in the wild wind and whirled into Henry Street. The Doctor clutched Nell by the arm, pushed back the spring-door of the pharmacy and helped her in on to the tiled floor.

"I'll hurry!" he exclaimed, and disappeared.

Nell was in a curious little place, almost too dim for a drugstore, and warm with the the mingled smells of many drugs and the peculiar odor of the tiny dull soda-fountain. She stepped to the counter where a pale insomnious clerk, with black rings under his eyes, was rubbing his hands.

"Yes, ma'am?" His voice was flat. He talked and looked as if he had not slept for several nights.

"I just wanted to wait for my husband," Nell explained, "if you don't mind!"

"Yes ma'am!"

He seemed a trifle annoyed and stepped back behind the prescription partition. Nell idly sauntered about the hushed shop, glancing now at a counter full of toilet articles, and now at the little cigar stand, and now at the rubber goods—and now at the shelves on the walls which were lined with labeled jars. A woman came in, coughing and shuffling, and left a prescription. A boy hurried in for a bottle of castor oil. Otherwise there was an intense stillness, streaked with weirdness, uncanniness, by the roaring streets. Nell, however, noticed very little. She felt unutterably sad—her heart went out to the lonely world-broken organ-grinder—the old bit of human wreckage. It was blessed to have a husband who could step in and lend a band. She loved Morris dearly.

And then suddenly the door opened, letting in a whirl of wind that dimmed the dim lights still further, and the Doctor stepped in breathlessly. His face was animated and sparkling.

"Nell—they want you to come up and see them!"

"Me?" she cried, "I?"

"Yes, you—come on!"

"But it's impossible!"

"And why, little obstinate?"

She looked at him, horror-stricken.

"Dressed as I am, Morris? No, never!"

He laughed.

"I knew you'd say that! But, really, dear——"

She shook her head.

"Now don't argue, Morris! It's just impossible!"

"But listen!" he whirled on. "They're not used to people dressed up. You'd be out of place there dressed up. So you'll come—old Sinn asked especially. He's very fond of you; you won't deny him!"

She faltered,

"He asked—you're sure?"

"Honest!"

"Remember, I didn't want to, Morris!"

The insomnious clerk came out and frowned upon them; but they stepped gaily into the wild night and went blowing across the street. They could say nothing until they were safe in haven of a reeking hall.

"Is he sick?" asked Nell.

The Doctor laughed.

"Oh, come up, and see! It's mountain-climbing!"

"Ah, tell me, Morris!"

"Not a word!" he laughed.

"Aren't you mean!"

But she followed him up the carpet-worn stairs, through dim thick-smelling halls, past tiny flickering lights, past the sounds on each floor of human beings busily talking, playing and moving about. They were in a man-hive swarming with life. The climb seemed endless—flight after steep flight. Nell panted and puffed and laughed and scolded. And then at last they landed on the top floor. A great gust of loud mirth blew over them—a great clattering and wrangling and roar of laughter. Nell drew back.

"Here?" she cried. "The organ-grinder? I don't want to go, Morris! I don't know these people!"

He took her arm firmly, urged her a step and knocked on the thin rear door. There was a sudden hush within, and whispers. Someone pushed back a chair. There were a few steps, and the door swung wide. A brilliant hot glow poured into the hall—golden and dazzling. A young man, a sleek well-fed smooth-shaved Jew, extended his hand.

"Mrs. Dr. Rast!" he exclaimed. "Welcome! Come in!"

They stepped into the quieted room. Nell stood for a moment, dazed and embarrassed. In one quick, glance she saw the lay-out. The small room, with its paper ornaments on the mantel and its old crayons on the ghastly-papered walls, was empty of all furniture save a long table that filled it from end to end. This table bore a gorgeous load of fruits and cakes and sliced cold meats, candy and flowers. At the upper end stood an enormous layer-cake, and on it flamed a small army of candles. The four gas jets above were lit.

Around the table sat a dozen glowing human beings, their faces red and golden in the lights, and to Nell's amazement, at the layer-cake end of the table sat the old organ-grinder and an old woman. He looked the same as ever in back of the blazing candles—the red weather-beaten wrinkled face, the shrewd kindly bloodshot eyes, the big human lips, the gray frazzled hair on either side of a central baldness. The rest of the people there were either middle-aged or children—a sleek, happy, prosperous lot of Jewish people—save that old Tiffy, the other organ-grinder, sat next to old Sinn.

As Nell stood dazed and bewildered and unable to believe her eyes, the dozen at the table stared at her in equal embarrassment. Then finally the sleek young man spoke:

"Just in time!" he cried, rubbing his bands. "There are your seats. Make yourselves one of the family. The seats of honor!"

Two young men had to rise, that they might pass. The two seats at the window end of the table had been saved for them. The Doctor helped Nell out of her coat and she and he sat down in silence. For a moment they felt as if they had spoiled the family feast. The natural, unconscious stream of family wit and mirth was turned off. But the sleek young man was evidently toast-master. He stood at his seat, next the door, and waved his hand.

"Pardon me," he said pompously, showing the generous girth of his sporty vest, "if I seem to do the whole spiel—but you see, I'm a traveling salesman. I've got the gift of the gab, and the others ain't!"

Old Sinn muttered his approval and Dr. Rast nodded.

The young man drank a swallow of water to clear his throat.

"Ladies and Gentlemen," he burst out, "this is a glad occasion! None other than the golden wedding of our Mother and our Father—the happy Sinns! A toast!"

"Prosit! prosit!" the cry ran around the table, and all save old Sinn and his wife rose, held high tiny glasses of red wine, and sang:

"Hoch sollen Sie leben,
Hoch sollen Sie leben,
⁠Drei mal hoch!"

(Literally: "May they live high! May they live high'! Three times high!")

The warm fire of the German home-song poured through the room like the warming wine. It broke the gap between the family and the outsiders. Nell and the Doctor felt a burst of glow in their hearts that seldom came to them—the warm flame that has come steadily up the ages in the warm nests of the Ghettoes—the tremendous hearth-flame of the Jewish home. They were swept into this one atom of family life; they were made one with these human. beings; they felt that this people was their people; they felt as if, by birth-right, they belonged here. They felt the hotness of the human, here, massed thick in a tenement room.

All sat down laughing and happy again. A buzz of talk arose, a jabbering, needling, flashing talk, a chaos of happy little things that make up the family literature and life. Then suddenly the sleek young man pounded the table and raised his voice.

"Hear! hear!" be cried, and as the silence succeeded, he continued, "We have with us to-night our beloved Dr. Rast and his beloved wife!"

A burst of hand-clapping and thumping on the floor. The Doctor nodded, Nell flushed and smiled.

"Perhaps," the young man continued, "the Doc would like to know why he was invited. I will tell him. It's because we asked the Rabbi, and he said he was busy!" He shrugged his shoulders and added in a delightfully Yiddish way, motioning with his hands, "Why, says I, should I ask some goniff (thief) of a stranger, some old schnorrer (sponger) to eat up our good delicatessens? No, I said, there is Doctor Rast—we all love him—he, too, has the gift of the gab—he is no schnorrer—him will I invite! And besides—" he laughed explosively at his own forthcoming joke to prepare the table, "the poor old Doc looks as if he never had anything good to eat!" There was a great roar. and then the young man noticed Nell, and rushed on awkwardly. "I mean, outside of his home and away from his wife, Mrs. Dr. Rast!—A speech from the Doctor!"

"Speech! speech!" they all cried, clapping their hands, and then in the silence Dr. Rast arose. His eyes were full of happy mist. His heart was full to overflowing. He looked down, fumbled with his chair, and then looked up—gazing deeply from face to face. He tried hard to speak as man to man, as human being to human being.

"Really," he began in a low deep intense tone, his voice breaking, "this is—tremendous. It is so real—it is so good to sit down with you—and you—and you—all of you—and be one with you—be one—" he smiled, "of the family! This family, in this room, this night! I thought I was coming as a Doctor. My! you don't know how good it is to come to you as a man—to come here with my wife, and just be an ordinary common everyday human being—that is, a gloriously happy human being. I'm in Earth's best place here," he went on very deeply, "because I'm home here!"

He paused: he could see how deeply they were affected by his simple words: one could have heard a pin drop. His heart stirred with a passion like pain. He spoke straight from it.

"A Golden Wedding! I don't mind—" he smiled queerly, and they too all smiled, "I don't mind telling the family a secret. I love my wife dearly!" He smiled again, but they id not answer; their eyes were large and glistening. "If I could dream that in forty-six years from now she and I could sit like you two at the end of a table like this, and have about us our children and our grandchildren, all so radiantly happy, here, in a real home—do you know, there is nothing, nothing else I could ask! It would round out a human life! There is nothing on Earth so deeply human—so glorious—so full of—God! God bless you all!"

As he sat down, there was a deep intense throbbing pause. A Rabbi would have spoken for an hour and left them weary and thankful—because he was finished. These man-to-man words played upon their very deeps—it touched the sacred—it revealed the meaning of their home to themselves. Then suddenly the toast-master noticed, and began to clap. There was a thunder of glad applause and a wild laughter of relief. A busy glad tearful talk ensued, and soon the company was hard at work winding up the feast. A little later it broke up, and went into a front room. A phonograph was set to work, and Dr. Rast and Nell sought out old Sinn, who sat awkwardly at the edge of a chair, his hands on his knees, nodding his head rapidly, his lips working, his eyes dim with happy tears.

He arose quickly and bowed, and shuffled—still the organ-grinder. He smiled awkwardly on Nell, nodding his head to show that he knew her.

"Ya," he muttered in Yiddish, "since you were five years old, Miss!"

The Doctor could not help but ask a question.

"We were surprised to find you here—with such a family—in such a home!"

The old man nodded rapidly, and bowed.

"Yes, yes, yes,—surely—everybody is surprised!" He struck out both his hands. "Why not? I—I am the old organ-grinder—ah!" he exclaimed, with a sudden straightening up of pride, "but my sons—one has a delicatessen store—" he leaned and whispered in confidence, "he brought us all the good things to-night—and the other—he is a salesman. They are good boys!"

He scraped and bowed again, and was suddenly awkward and wanted to escape.

"But surely," cried Nell, "you don't have to be an—an——"

"Organ-grinder?" he whispered. He smiled his old smile upon her, and nodded bis head. "How you have grown," he murmured, "since you were five years old! Ah, but you have a fine husband! Organ-grinder? Yes, yes, yes! Everybody says so too, and my sons; well, they think they can stop it. Last winter they make me stop; they were a little ashamed!" He laughed, and bowed and rubbed his hands. "A little ashamed! But I made money—much money—I send them to school—I give them a start—ach," he sighed, "it was once a good business—in the old times! The old times then when Jews were in it. You never hear of Yiddish organ-grinders now," He winked slyly. "The Jews are too smart: they would make money.

"So—your sons tried to make you stop?" asked Nell.

He seemed to awake from a revery.

"They? Yes, yes. Of course. And I stopped—one week! And then—" he suddenly tapped the Doctor on the shoulder, "I found out the dear God made me an organ-grinder. I could not stay home. The streets called me. My hand itched to turn the handle. I missed the old music—it is like my breathing now, it is a part of me. I missed all the people I know, the little children that dance and sing and gather around me, the Mothers with babies at the windows, the sights, the noise, the people,—I missed being tired and hungry and glad to get home at night and sit down and smoke and get sleepy. A man gets used to anything, güte Doktor, and when he gets used to it, he does not want to give it up—even being sick, nicht wahr?"

The Doctor laughed.

"So," the old man shuffled and bowed again. "I went back, because, Doktor—" he put a hand on the Doctor's shoulder and looked at him with flawless pride, "I am an organ-grinder!"

The Doctor took a deep breath.

"That's fine!" he cried, "that's splendid!"

Old Mrs. Sinn came trudging up, smiling sweetly. She touched Nell on the arm.

"Young wife!" she spoke in a softened Yiddish, "come—I must show you—" then came fifty years of pride to her voice, "our household!"

Nell with gleaming eyes followed her.

Old Sinn bowed again and shuffled off across the crowded floor to where old Tiffy stood alone in a corner, blinking with dazed eyes on the hilarious roomful. The two old men, in their wonderful old clothes—the heavy handmade shoes, the baggy shiny trousers, the long tattered weathered coats—put their old heads together, and the Doctor, from the center of a group of young men who taught him politics, noticed that old Sinn kept pointing out to old Tiffy the girl he had known since she was five. They nodded and motioned and grinned and jabbered, proud to have the Doctor and his wife in their home.

And when finally the Doctor and Nell said goodby, old Sinn whispered:

"God send you children—God give you a Golden Wedding!"

And old Mrs. Sinn added:

"Ah, what a beautiful young couple!"

And the Rasts went down the stairs laughing and tearful.

A moment later they swung out into the black and blowing night. Their burning cheeks took the cool gale; their hearts were brimful; they went laughing along like two children, hand in hand. Every patch of golden window in the tenements about them sent out the fires of home to warm the empty street.

"Nell! Nell!" cried the Doctor, drawing her close to his side, "there's your poor, poor old organ-grinder! We never can tell, Nell! It's a pretty happy world, after all!"

Nell laughed queerly.

"To think of him being a grandfather and having a Golden Wedding! And I was so sorry for him!"

"Nell!" cried the Doctor, "we're all here after a swarming million years of struggle—and yet we are alive and toiling and getting on. The race must have been—must be—rather happy to keep it all up! I guess it's a thick rich warm life, this human life, even at the worst! These tragedies that come to the surface—they are tidal waves—the rest of life flows busily, happily—common and human and everyday!"

They were wildly blown along. The flying clouds above were swelling red with the city lights; the glimpses of the moon came eerie and weird— a passing glamour. They walked in step, taking long strides, their hearts beating together, their blood pulsing warm.

"The air is full of Autumn," Nell sighed, "Autumn and home."

"It's a happy Earth!" added the Doctor, "it's a happy human race!"

"A Golden Wedding!" breathed Nell, clinging close to him. "Will we have one too, Morris—will we?"

And the years stretched before them, rich with human possibilities.