I Sell my Dreams
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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A story of magical realism that mixes reality with fantasy, narrated in the first person. The narrator recalls a woman he had known as 'Frau Frieda', a Colombian who lived in Vienna between the wars and earned her living by 'selling her dreams', interpreting dreams to guide a wealthy family's daily decisions until she took over much of their fortune. She wore a distinctive gold ring shaped like a serpent with emerald eyes. The story opens with a huge wave hurling a car against the Havana Riviera Hotel; the drowned woman in it wears just such a serpent ring, which makes the narrator recall Frau Frieda. He remembers how, years earlier in Vienna, she had once dreamed about him and warned him to leave and not return for five years, and how he later met her again in Barcelona in the company of the poet Pablo Neruda, who did not believe in prophetic dreams ('Only poetry is clairvoyant'). The narrator never learns whether the dead woman really was Frau Frieda. When he questions the Portuguese ambassador about what she actually 'did', the ambassador replies with disenchantment: 'Nothing... She dreamed.'
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The story is a fine example of Latin American magical realism, weaving imagination and reality around the mysterious figure of a woman who claimed to 'sell' her dreams. It leaves the truth of her powers deliberately ambiguous.
The drowned woman and the serpent ring
The story opens with a freak accident: a huge wave hurls a car against the Havana Riviera Hotel, and a drowned woman is found inside wearing a gold ring shaped like a serpent with emerald eyes. She was the housekeeper of the Portuguese ambassador. The narrator is intrigued because he had once known a woman who wore just such a ring.
Frau Frieda in Vienna
The narrator recalls Frau Frieda, a Colombian woman he met in Vienna, who declared that her trade was to 'sell her dreams'. Since childhood she had interpreted dreams; in Vienna she was hired by a wealthy family to decipher their daily fate through her dreams, and gradually she gained complete control over the household and much of their fortune.
A dream that changed the narrator's life
One night Frau Frieda told the narrator she had dreamed about him and warned him to leave Vienna at once and not return for five years. So convinced was he that he boarded the last train to Rome that very night and never went back, considering himself a survivor of a catastrophe he never experienced.
Neruda and the unresolved mystery
Years later the narrator meets Frau Frieda again in Barcelona in the company of the poet Pablo Neruda, who declares he does not believe in prophetic dreams, 'Only poetry is clairvoyant.' The narrator never learns whether the drowned woman in Havana was truly Frau Frieda. Questioning the Portuguese ambassador about what she actually did, he receives the ironic reply: 'Nothing... She dreamed.'