NCERT Textbook: I Sell my Dreams | Class 12 English Kaleidoscope - Humanities/Arts PDF Download

 Page 1


1/I SELL MY DREAMS
Short stories
INTRODUCTION
A short story is a prose narrative of limited length.
It organises the action and thoughts of its
characters into the pattern of a plot. The plot
form may be comic, tragic, romantic or satiric.
The central incident is selected to manifest, as
much as possible, the protagonist’s life and
character, and the details contribute to the
development of the plot.
The term ‘short story’ covers a great diversity of
prose fiction, right from the really short ‘short
story’ of about five hundred words to longer and
more complex works. The longer ones, with their
status of middle length, fall between the tautness
of the short narrative and the expansiveness of
the novel.
There can be thematic variation too. The stories
deal with fantasy, reality, alienation and the
problem of choice in personal life. There are three
short stories and two long ones in this section
representing writers from five cultures.
2024-25
Page 2


1/I SELL MY DREAMS
Short stories
INTRODUCTION
A short story is a prose narrative of limited length.
It organises the action and thoughts of its
characters into the pattern of a plot. The plot
form may be comic, tragic, romantic or satiric.
The central incident is selected to manifest, as
much as possible, the protagonist’s life and
character, and the details contribute to the
development of the plot.
The term ‘short story’ covers a great diversity of
prose fiction, right from the really short ‘short
story’ of about five hundred words to longer and
more complex works. The longer ones, with their
status of middle length, fall between the tautness
of the short narrative and the expansiveness of
the novel.
There can be thematic variation too. The stories
deal with fantasy, reality, alienation and the
problem of choice in personal life. There are three
short stories and two long ones in this section
representing writers from five cultures.
2024-25
2/KALEIDOSCOPE
I S I S I S I S I Sell my Dreams ell my Dreams ell my Dreams ell my Dreams ell my Dreams
Gabriel Garcia Marquez was brought up by his
grandparents in Northern Columbia because his
parents were poor and struggling. A novelist, short-
story writer and journalist, he is widely considered
the greatest living Latin American master of narrative.
Marquez won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982.
His two masterpieces are One Hundred Years in
Solitude (1967, tr. 1970) and Love in The Time of
Cholera (1985, tr. 1988). His themes are violence,
solitude and the overwhelming human need for love.
This story reflects, like most of his works, a high
point in Latin American magical realism; it is rich
and lucid, mixing reality with fantasy.
One morning at nine o’clock, while we were having breakfast
on the terrace of the Havana Riviera Hotel under a bright
sun, a huge wave picked up several cars that were driving
down the avenue along the seawall or parked on the
pavement, and embedded one of them in the side of the
hotel. It was like an explosion of dynamite that sowed panic
on all twenty floors of the building and turned the great
entrance window to dust. The many tourists in the lobby
were thrown into the air along with the furniture, and
some were cut by the hailstorm of glass. The wave must
have been immense, because it leaped over the wide two-
way street between the seawall and the hotel and still had
enough force to shatter the window.
The cheerful Cuban volunteers, with the help of the
fire department, picked up the debris in less than six hours,
and sealed off the gate to the sea and installed another,
1 1
1 1 1
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
1927-2014
2024-25
Page 3


1/I SELL MY DREAMS
Short stories
INTRODUCTION
A short story is a prose narrative of limited length.
It organises the action and thoughts of its
characters into the pattern of a plot. The plot
form may be comic, tragic, romantic or satiric.
The central incident is selected to manifest, as
much as possible, the protagonist’s life and
character, and the details contribute to the
development of the plot.
The term ‘short story’ covers a great diversity of
prose fiction, right from the really short ‘short
story’ of about five hundred words to longer and
more complex works. The longer ones, with their
status of middle length, fall between the tautness
of the short narrative and the expansiveness of
the novel.
There can be thematic variation too. The stories
deal with fantasy, reality, alienation and the
problem of choice in personal life. There are three
short stories and two long ones in this section
representing writers from five cultures.
2024-25
2/KALEIDOSCOPE
I S I S I S I S I Sell my Dreams ell my Dreams ell my Dreams ell my Dreams ell my Dreams
Gabriel Garcia Marquez was brought up by his
grandparents in Northern Columbia because his
parents were poor and struggling. A novelist, short-
story writer and journalist, he is widely considered
the greatest living Latin American master of narrative.
Marquez won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982.
His two masterpieces are One Hundred Years in
Solitude (1967, tr. 1970) and Love in The Time of
Cholera (1985, tr. 1988). His themes are violence,
solitude and the overwhelming human need for love.
This story reflects, like most of his works, a high
point in Latin American magical realism; it is rich
and lucid, mixing reality with fantasy.
One morning at nine o’clock, while we were having breakfast
on the terrace of the Havana Riviera Hotel under a bright
sun, a huge wave picked up several cars that were driving
down the avenue along the seawall or parked on the
pavement, and embedded one of them in the side of the
hotel. It was like an explosion of dynamite that sowed panic
on all twenty floors of the building and turned the great
entrance window to dust. The many tourists in the lobby
were thrown into the air along with the furniture, and
some were cut by the hailstorm of glass. The wave must
have been immense, because it leaped over the wide two-
way street between the seawall and the hotel and still had
enough force to shatter the window.
The cheerful Cuban volunteers, with the help of the
fire department, picked up the debris in less than six hours,
and sealed off the gate to the sea and installed another,
1 1
1 1 1
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
1927-2014
2024-25
3/I SELL MY DREAMS
and everything returned to normal. During the morning
nobody worried about the car encrusted in the wall, for
people assumed it was one of those that had been parked
on the pavement. But when the crane lifted it out of its
setting, the body of a woman was found secured behind
the steering wheel by a seat belt. The blow had been so
brutal that not a single one of her bones was left whole.
Her face was destroyed, her boots had been ripped apart,
and her clothes were in shreds. She wore a gold ring shaped
like a serpent, with emerald eyes. The police established
that she was the housekeeper for the new Portuguese
ambassador and his wife. She had come to Havana with
them two weeks before and had left that morning for the
market, driving a new car. Her name meant nothing to me
when I read it in the newspaper, but I was intrigued by the
snake ring and its emerald eyes. I could not find out,
however, on which finger she wore it.
This was a crucial piece of information, because I feared
she was an unforgettable woman whose real name I never
knew, and who wore a similar ring on her right forefinger
which, in those days, was even more unusual than it is
now. I had met her thirty-four years earlier in Vienna,
eating sausage with boiled potatoes and drinking draft beer
in a tavern frequented by Latin American students. I had
come from Rome that morning, and I still remember my
immediate response to her splendid soprano’s bosom, the
languid foxtails on her coat collar, and that Egyptian ring
in the shape of a serpent. She spoke an elementary Spanish
in a metallic accent without pausing for breath, and I
thought she was the only Austrian at the long wooden
table. But no, she had been born in Colombia and had
come to Austria between the wars, when she was little
more than a child, to study music and voice. She was
about thirty, and did not carry her years well, for she had
never been pretty and had begun to age before her time.
But she was a charming human being. And one of the
most awe-inspiring.
Vienna was still an old imperial city, whose
geographical position between the two irreconcilable worlds
left behind by the Second World War had turned it into a
2024-25
Page 4


1/I SELL MY DREAMS
Short stories
INTRODUCTION
A short story is a prose narrative of limited length.
It organises the action and thoughts of its
characters into the pattern of a plot. The plot
form may be comic, tragic, romantic or satiric.
The central incident is selected to manifest, as
much as possible, the protagonist’s life and
character, and the details contribute to the
development of the plot.
The term ‘short story’ covers a great diversity of
prose fiction, right from the really short ‘short
story’ of about five hundred words to longer and
more complex works. The longer ones, with their
status of middle length, fall between the tautness
of the short narrative and the expansiveness of
the novel.
There can be thematic variation too. The stories
deal with fantasy, reality, alienation and the
problem of choice in personal life. There are three
short stories and two long ones in this section
representing writers from five cultures.
2024-25
2/KALEIDOSCOPE
I S I S I S I S I Sell my Dreams ell my Dreams ell my Dreams ell my Dreams ell my Dreams
Gabriel Garcia Marquez was brought up by his
grandparents in Northern Columbia because his
parents were poor and struggling. A novelist, short-
story writer and journalist, he is widely considered
the greatest living Latin American master of narrative.
Marquez won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982.
His two masterpieces are One Hundred Years in
Solitude (1967, tr. 1970) and Love in The Time of
Cholera (1985, tr. 1988). His themes are violence,
solitude and the overwhelming human need for love.
This story reflects, like most of his works, a high
point in Latin American magical realism; it is rich
and lucid, mixing reality with fantasy.
One morning at nine o’clock, while we were having breakfast
on the terrace of the Havana Riviera Hotel under a bright
sun, a huge wave picked up several cars that were driving
down the avenue along the seawall or parked on the
pavement, and embedded one of them in the side of the
hotel. It was like an explosion of dynamite that sowed panic
on all twenty floors of the building and turned the great
entrance window to dust. The many tourists in the lobby
were thrown into the air along with the furniture, and
some were cut by the hailstorm of glass. The wave must
have been immense, because it leaped over the wide two-
way street between the seawall and the hotel and still had
enough force to shatter the window.
The cheerful Cuban volunteers, with the help of the
fire department, picked up the debris in less than six hours,
and sealed off the gate to the sea and installed another,
1 1
1 1 1
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
1927-2014
2024-25
3/I SELL MY DREAMS
and everything returned to normal. During the morning
nobody worried about the car encrusted in the wall, for
people assumed it was one of those that had been parked
on the pavement. But when the crane lifted it out of its
setting, the body of a woman was found secured behind
the steering wheel by a seat belt. The blow had been so
brutal that not a single one of her bones was left whole.
Her face was destroyed, her boots had been ripped apart,
and her clothes were in shreds. She wore a gold ring shaped
like a serpent, with emerald eyes. The police established
that she was the housekeeper for the new Portuguese
ambassador and his wife. She had come to Havana with
them two weeks before and had left that morning for the
market, driving a new car. Her name meant nothing to me
when I read it in the newspaper, but I was intrigued by the
snake ring and its emerald eyes. I could not find out,
however, on which finger she wore it.
This was a crucial piece of information, because I feared
she was an unforgettable woman whose real name I never
knew, and who wore a similar ring on her right forefinger
which, in those days, was even more unusual than it is
now. I had met her thirty-four years earlier in Vienna,
eating sausage with boiled potatoes and drinking draft beer
in a tavern frequented by Latin American students. I had
come from Rome that morning, and I still remember my
immediate response to her splendid soprano’s bosom, the
languid foxtails on her coat collar, and that Egyptian ring
in the shape of a serpent. She spoke an elementary Spanish
in a metallic accent without pausing for breath, and I
thought she was the only Austrian at the long wooden
table. But no, she had been born in Colombia and had
come to Austria between the wars, when she was little
more than a child, to study music and voice. She was
about thirty, and did not carry her years well, for she had
never been pretty and had begun to age before her time.
But she was a charming human being. And one of the
most awe-inspiring.
Vienna was still an old imperial city, whose
geographical position between the two irreconcilable worlds
left behind by the Second World War had turned it into a
2024-25
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
Page 5


1/I SELL MY DREAMS
Short stories
INTRODUCTION
A short story is a prose narrative of limited length.
It organises the action and thoughts of its
characters into the pattern of a plot. The plot
form may be comic, tragic, romantic or satiric.
The central incident is selected to manifest, as
much as possible, the protagonist’s life and
character, and the details contribute to the
development of the plot.
The term ‘short story’ covers a great diversity of
prose fiction, right from the really short ‘short
story’ of about five hundred words to longer and
more complex works. The longer ones, with their
status of middle length, fall between the tautness
of the short narrative and the expansiveness of
the novel.
There can be thematic variation too. The stories
deal with fantasy, reality, alienation and the
problem of choice in personal life. There are three
short stories and two long ones in this section
representing writers from five cultures.
2024-25
2/KALEIDOSCOPE
I S I S I S I S I Sell my Dreams ell my Dreams ell my Dreams ell my Dreams ell my Dreams
Gabriel Garcia Marquez was brought up by his
grandparents in Northern Columbia because his
parents were poor and struggling. A novelist, short-
story writer and journalist, he is widely considered
the greatest living Latin American master of narrative.
Marquez won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982.
His two masterpieces are One Hundred Years in
Solitude (1967, tr. 1970) and Love in The Time of
Cholera (1985, tr. 1988). His themes are violence,
solitude and the overwhelming human need for love.
This story reflects, like most of his works, a high
point in Latin American magical realism; it is rich
and lucid, mixing reality with fantasy.
One morning at nine o’clock, while we were having breakfast
on the terrace of the Havana Riviera Hotel under a bright
sun, a huge wave picked up several cars that were driving
down the avenue along the seawall or parked on the
pavement, and embedded one of them in the side of the
hotel. It was like an explosion of dynamite that sowed panic
on all twenty floors of the building and turned the great
entrance window to dust. The many tourists in the lobby
were thrown into the air along with the furniture, and
some were cut by the hailstorm of glass. The wave must
have been immense, because it leaped over the wide two-
way street between the seawall and the hotel and still had
enough force to shatter the window.
The cheerful Cuban volunteers, with the help of the
fire department, picked up the debris in less than six hours,
and sealed off the gate to the sea and installed another,
1 1
1 1 1
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
1927-2014
2024-25
3/I SELL MY DREAMS
and everything returned to normal. During the morning
nobody worried about the car encrusted in the wall, for
people assumed it was one of those that had been parked
on the pavement. But when the crane lifted it out of its
setting, the body of a woman was found secured behind
the steering wheel by a seat belt. The blow had been so
brutal that not a single one of her bones was left whole.
Her face was destroyed, her boots had been ripped apart,
and her clothes were in shreds. She wore a gold ring shaped
like a serpent, with emerald eyes. The police established
that she was the housekeeper for the new Portuguese
ambassador and his wife. She had come to Havana with
them two weeks before and had left that morning for the
market, driving a new car. Her name meant nothing to me
when I read it in the newspaper, but I was intrigued by the
snake ring and its emerald eyes. I could not find out,
however, on which finger she wore it.
This was a crucial piece of information, because I feared
she was an unforgettable woman whose real name I never
knew, and who wore a similar ring on her right forefinger
which, in those days, was even more unusual than it is
now. I had met her thirty-four years earlier in Vienna,
eating sausage with boiled potatoes and drinking draft beer
in a tavern frequented by Latin American students. I had
come from Rome that morning, and I still remember my
immediate response to her splendid soprano’s bosom, the
languid foxtails on her coat collar, and that Egyptian ring
in the shape of a serpent. She spoke an elementary Spanish
in a metallic accent without pausing for breath, and I
thought she was the only Austrian at the long wooden
table. But no, she had been born in Colombia and had
come to Austria between the wars, when she was little
more than a child, to study music and voice. She was
about thirty, and did not carry her years well, for she had
never been pretty and had begun to age before her time.
But she was a charming human being. And one of the
most awe-inspiring.
Vienna was still an old imperial city, whose
geographical position between the two irreconcilable worlds
left behind by the Second World War had turned it into a
2024-25
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
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