Neruda, the dream and the ending

Years later, in Barcelona, the narrator was having lunch with the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, who was passing through on a sea voyage. Neruda ate like a Renaissance pope: greedy yet refined, three whole lobsters dissected with a surgeon's skill, while tasting from everyone else's plate. Suddenly he said quietly that someone behind him would not stop looking at him.

It was Frau Frieda, older and fatter, with the snake ring on her index finger. She was travelling on the same ship as Neruda. The narrator encouraged her to talk about her dreams, but Neruda paid no attention: he did not believe in prophetic dreams. 'Only poetry is clairvoyant,' he said.

Walking along the Ramblas, she told the narrator she had retired to Oporto, in Portugal, to a house like a fake castle. It was clear that, dream by dream, she had taken over her Viennese patrons' whole fortune. The narrator told her he had always thought her dreams were only a stratagem for surviving. She just laughed. Then she said he could go back to Vienna now; but he said he never would, 'just in case'.

After his siesta, Neruda said, 'I dreamed about that woman who dreams... I dreamed she was dreaming about me.' When they found Frau Frieda on the ship, she said she had dreamed about the poet: 'I dreamed he was dreaming about me.'

The story comes back to Havana. Months later, the narrator met the Portuguese ambassador and asked about his dead housekeeper. The ambassador spoke of her with great admiration. 'In concrete terms,' the narrator asked, 'what did she do?' 'Nothing,' the ambassador said. 'She dreamed.' So the woman in the car was surely Frau Frieda, and we are left with the mystery: were her dreams real, or a clever way to live?