The House Call

The House Call

It is a day after Christmas, 1903, 9:30 in the evening. A famous German Surgeon, Dr. Emil Braun is sitting in the dining room of his apartment in Berlin. He had performed and supervised difficult surgical operations that day for more than eight hours. So, he is trying to write notes and have dinner also. But he is too tired so he becomes asleep on the table. He wakes up when he hears a doorbell and also hears a girl saying to his wife that her mother is very sick. The doctor then goes to the door and there he sees a thin little girl wearing cotton dress, old shoes and shawl. The girl wants to take the doctor because her mother was dying. Though the doctor was very tired, he becomes ready to make a house call because he is very dutiful.

              The doctor picks up his black bag and goes out in the night. In the light rain he follows the girl but the girl walks very fast in the street. She stops only at each corner for a moment to see if the doctor is coming. The doctor tries to catch up with her to ask few questions but he can’t meet her. The girl takes him through the poorest part of Berlin to an old tenement house. Then she starts to climb the stairs of the house. There also the doctor follows her but could not catch up. Finally they reach the fifth floor. Standing in front of a doorway she says that her mother is in the room. She thanks the doctor and the doctor also thanks her for being obedient daughter and enters the room.

              In the dim light, he sees a woman lying in a bed. He recognizes the woman as Elda who once worked as maintenance staff at the hospital. He also finds she was suffering from pneumonia and gives some medicine. Elda had gone to the country to live with her brother and the doctor didn’t know that she is back. He starts talking to Elda and tells her that her daughter is much bigger whom she had sent the night to call him. But Elda says that she came to the city after her daughter died of flu in September before three months. She also shows the shawl and shoed of the little girl which she has kept to remember her daughter. The doctor becomes very surprised and looks around the room. But he can’t find the girl. When he closely looks at the shoe and shawl he finds them wet too. Elda says that the doctor is mistaken about her daughter. The doctor agrees and doesn’t say anything to Elda about what happened that night and when Elda becomes asleep he comes out of the room.

              The little girl of the story can be taken as the spirit of Elda’s daughter who perhaps hears the praying of her sick mother and comes out of the grave. She takes Dr. Braun to her mother and returns back to the grave.