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Lekl101 4

The document introduces Frau Frieda, a mysterious woman who sells her dreams and has a unique talent for interpreting them. Raised in a large family in Caldas, her early experiences with dreams shaped her life and career, leading her to Vienna where she finds work by simply stating her ability to dream. The narrative highlights her prophetic skills and the impact of her interpretations on her family's life.

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hanumadatta2002
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19 views1 page

Lekl101 4

The document introduces Frau Frieda, a mysterious woman who sells her dreams and has a unique talent for interpreting them. Raised in a large family in Caldas, her early experiences with dreams shaped her life and career, leading her to Vienna where she finds work by simply stating her ability to dream. The narrative highlights her prophetic skills and the impact of her interpretations on her family's life.

Uploaded by

hanumadatta2002
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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4/KALEIDOSCOPE

paradise of black marketeering and international espionage.


I could not have imagined a more suitable spot for my
fugitive compatriot, who still ate in the students’ tavern
on the corner only out of loyalty to her origins, since she
had more than enough money to buy meals for all her
table companions. She never told her real name, and we
always knew her by the Germanic tongue twister that we
Latin American students in Vienna invented for her: Frau
Frieda. I had just been introduced to her when I committed
the happy impertinence of asking how she had come to be
in a world so distant and different from the windy cliffs of
Quindio, and she answered with a devastating:
‘I sell my dreams.’
In reality, that was her only trade. She had been the
third of eleven children born to a prosperous shopkeeper
in old Caldas, and as soon as she learned to speak she
instituted the fine custom in her family of telling dreams
before breakfast, the time when their oracular qualities
are preserved in their purest form. When she was seven
she dreamed that one of her brothers was carried off by a
flood. Her mother, out of sheer religious superstition,
forbade the boy to swim in the ravine, which was his
favourite pastime. But Frau Frieda already had her own
system of prophecy.
‘What that dream means,’ she said, ‘isn’t that he’s
going to drown, but that he shouldn’t eat sweets.’
Her interpretation seemed an infamy to a five-year-old
boy who could not live without his Sunday treats. Their
mother, convinced of her daughter’s oracular talents,
enforced the warning with an iron hand. But in her first
careless moment the boy choked on a piece of caramel that
he was eating in secret, and there was no way to save him.
Frau Frieda did not think she could earn a living with
her talent until life caught her by the throat during the
cruel Viennese winters. Then she looked for work at the
first house where she would have liked to live, and when
she was asked what she could do, she told only the truth:
‘I dream.’ A brief explanation to the lady of the house was
all she needed, and she was hired at a salary that just

2024-25

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