The Lost Doll

The Lost Doll

              Maria Del Carmen is the only child of Roberto and Rosa Soto. She is beautiful, right, kind and loving child. However, she is sick from the day of her birth. As time passes, she becomes more and more weak and finally she dies when she turns four. Since everyone in the village loves the child, all of them attend her funeral. They bury the child in the cemetery outside the village.

              After some days, Rosa gives Carmen’s clothes and playthings to the priest from another village. She gives them so that she will be able to forget Carmen easily. Moreover, the doctor says that she won’t be able to give birth to another baby after Carmen. But Roberto doesn’t become happy to hear this. He wants to save the things because he still hopes that Rosa will give birth to another child. He consoles her that because Rosa was busy in taking care of Carmen, god didn’t send her another child. Roberto then remembers the doll with which Carmen often used to play and asks Rosa whether she has given that doll too. But Rosa says the doll was not with other things. They search for the doll everywhere but they can’t find it.

              Rosa becomes pregnant and on the first anniversary of the death of Carmen she gives birth to another baby. It was good news for them so the priest also gives the name ‘Evangelina’ to the child which means good news. As Evangelina grows up she looks more and more like Carmen. Her actions and characters are also similar to her sister. The only difference is that Evangelina is healthy. One day, when Evangelina turns four, she asks her mother whether she was sick for a long time back. But the mother says it was not she but her sister was sick. Evangelina insists that she remembers it very well and also asks her auntie about it. She also adds that she had a doll with blue eyes and red dress and she had put it under a big tree in the yard. She then takes them to that place and asks to dig there. When they dig the ground they find the doll there. Rosa can’t believe her eyes and becomes speechless. But when Rosa’s sister asks Evangelina to tell everything about what she remembers, she says that when she was sick the priest prayed with his hand on her head. Then she went to sleep. A real nice man woke her up and took her. But he didn’t allow her to take the doll with her. So, she put the doll under the tree. Rosa becomes shocked when she hears the whole story.

              This is the story of reincarnation or rebirth in which Carmen is reborn as Evangelina. She is not only reborn but remembers everything that happened to her in her previous life.

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.

Fear

Fear

              Fear is a psychological story from Mexico with Armando Gonzalez as its main character. The story examines how baseless fear results in nervousness and how things get worse when people become unnecessarily nervous.

              Armando goes to a bank in Mexico to withdraw 50000 pesos. He has a dream to buy a house with this money. The bank teller asks unnecessary questions and counts the money loudly which helps to increase Armando’s fear. As he leaves the bank he puts his hat on backwards due to nervousness. A number of people look at him and a heavy man looks at Armando twice in the bank.

              Armando starts sweating with fear because he thinks that somebody is going to rob him. His mouth becomes dry and his heart starts beating faster. He holds the wad of money tightly because the amount he had was the whole world to him and his family. As they had many people to feed, the couple has earned the money with great difficulty. Their dream is to buy a house to live which will be a house that they could call their own. It will be the happiest day of their life. But the dream is in danger now because Armando thinks that he could be robbed at any moment and the dream would be stolen from him. He regrets having not taken the cheque.

              As Armando waits for the right bus, his fear increases more when he sees the same heavy man standing next to him. After getting on the bus he finds the heavy man there too, it greatly adds to his fear and horror. He thinks the heavy man and the other three boys talking to him are the members of a street gang and are going to rob him. He has the same feeling when other people in the bus look at him. He thinks that they are looking at him because they know he has money in his pocket. Actually people are looking at him because he has still his hat on backwards. He becomes very nervous and can’t think straight. With this in mind Armando decides to change the bus so that he will be safe from potential robbers.

              To his great surprise, the three boys get off the bus at the same station as Gonzalez. At this, feelings of hot and cold run through his body. He finds himself in an area without buildings nearby. The boys walk in the direction of Armando. He thinks they are after him and cries frantically for help. He goes to an area full of rubbish and junk and stumbles over something. Though he asks the scavengers for help they can’t hear him. The three boys come near him and he weeps like a baby. He asks them to leave a poor and honest man alone. The boys ask him if they can help him, Armando can’t believe his ears because he had thought that they are there to rob him. The boys introduce themselves as students who had come to the city for a football tournament. The boys also explain that they had taken the wrong bus and had to get off.

              After asking the boys many questions, Armando confirms that he is safe. He stops sweating and puts his hat straight. His dream of buying and living in his own house is not harmed.

The Loving Mother

The Loving Mother

              The story The Loving Mother is about a mother’s love for her child. It talks about how a mother’s spirit is not in peace after leaving behind a small child. Even after the death the mother comes back to the child in order to look after her. Since it talks about spirit and ghost it is a supernatural story.

              Shoji Sakota is a pharmacist in Sapporo, a city in northern part of Japan. He lives alone in an apartment behind the drugstore. His wife has died earlier. The building being the same he sometimes works till late. One stormy night Shoji Sakota is busy preparing his annual business report. At about midnight there is a knock at the door. He ignores the knock and goes back to his work. When there is s knock for second time he thinks it could be the wind. The knock is louder next time and he goes towards the door thinking that it could be an emergency. He turns on the light and is surprised to see a young woman standing there. Thinking that it might be a trick to rob him he doesn’t open the door. Rather, he says that the pharmacy will be opened at 8 o’clock next morning.

              But the woman pleads that her daughter needs something immediately. Thinking it to be an emergency he lets her in. A thin, young woman stands in front of Mr. Sakota bending her head. Her dress is worn out and her hair is uncombed. But as she raises her head and looks at Mr. Sakota, it seemed that her eyes are looking through him and not at him. She says that she needs ame for her baby. The doctor gives her ame and she goes her way. For him it was a strange request in the night. Not long after he is back at the desk, he decides to stop working for the night because he can’t remove the image of the strange visitor out of his mind.

              The next two nights the same thing happens. It is strange why she comes at night and not during the day when the shop is open. When she comes for the fourth night the pharmacist’s photographer friend takes some photographs of the woman from a hiding place. When the film is developed, the things of the store are there but not the picture of that woman. When she comes the fifth night they decide to follow her so that they could find out who she was and what she was doing. The woman finds that she is being followed but it doesn’t matter to her. She acts as though she wants them to see where she is going.

              A few blocks away, she enters an old apartment building and disappears through a door at the end of a dark narrow hallway. They go inside and find the switch despite darkness. They see a baby, perhaps eight or nine months old, licking ame on a stick. The child looks happy and satisfied. Beside her a woman lies, appearing to be asleep. They think that it is the same woman and couldn’t be asleep so fast. They think she is perhaps acting. Mr. Sakota goes near her and touches the shoulder. Finding her body cold and lifeless he says she is dead. He looks more closely and finds that she has been dead for a number of days.