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Lekl101 5

The document narrates the story of Frau Frieda, who interprets dreams for a family, guiding their daily lives during challenging times. Her predictions gain absolute authority, especially after the father's death, leading to her continued influence over the family. The narrator, influenced by her dreams, leaves Vienna for Rome, believing he is escaping a catastrophe, and has not returned since.

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hanumadatta2002
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12 views1 page

Lekl101 5

The document narrates the story of Frau Frieda, who interprets dreams for a family, guiding their daily lives during challenging times. Her predictions gain absolute authority, especially after the father's death, leading to her continued influence over the family. The narrator, influenced by her dreams, leaves Vienna for Rome, believing he is escaping a catastrophe, and has not returned since.

Uploaded by

hanumadatta2002
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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5/I SELL MY DREAMS

covered her minor expenses, but she had a nice room and
three meals a day—breakfast in particular, when the family
sat down to learn the immediate future of each of its
members: the father, a refined financier; the mother, a
joyful woman passionate about Romantic chamber music;
and two children, eleven and nine years old. They were all
religious and therefore inclined to archaic superstitions,
and they were delighted to take in Frau Frieda, whose
only obligation was to decipher the family’s daily fate
through her dreams.
She did her job well, and for a long time, above all
during the war years, when reality was more sinister than
nightmares. Only she could decide at breakfast what each
should do that day, and how it should be done, until her
predictions became the sole authority in the house. Her
control over the family was absolute: even the faintest sigh
was breathed by her order. The master of the house died
at about the time I was in Vienna, and had the elegance to
leave her a part of his estate on the condition that she
continue dreaming for the family until her dreams came
to an end.
I stayed in Vienna for more than a month, sharing the
straitened circumstances of the other students while I
waited for money that never arrived. Frau Frieda’s
unexpected and generous visits to the tavern were like
fiestas in our poverty-stricken regime. One night, in a beery
euphoria, she whispered in my ear with a conviction that
permitted no delay.
‘I only came to tell you that I dreamed about you last
night,’ she said. ‘You must leave right away and not come
back to Vienna for five years.’
Her conviction was so real that I boarded the last train
to Rome that same night. As for me, I was so influenced by
what she said that from then on I considered myself a
survivor of some catastrophe I never experienced. I still
have not returned to Vienna.

2024-25

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