The Palace of Dreams

by Ismail Kadare

  “What about you?” said the other man timidly.

  “I’m in Interpretation.”

  The eyes of his interlocutor widened, and he smiled as if to say, “I thought as much.”

  “Drink up—it’ll get cold!” said Mark-Alem, noticing that the other man was too impressed to pick up his glass.

  “It’s the first time I’ve met a gentleman from Interpretation,” he said reverently. “What a treat!”

  He took up his glass of salep several times, but then put it down again, unable to bring himself to raise it to his lips.

  “Have you been working in the Palace long?”

  “Two months, sir.”

  And after only two months you’re all skin and bones, thought Mark-Alem. Heaven knew what he himself would look like soon… .

  “We’ve had a terrible lot of work lately,” said the other, finally drinking his salep. “We’ve been having to do several hours’ overtime every day.”

  “That’s obvious,” said Mark-Alem.

  The other smiled as if to say, “What can I do?”

  “It so happens that the solitary rooms are near our offices,” he went on, “so when they need copyists during an interrogation they send for us.”

  “Solitary rooms?” said Mark-Alem. “What are they?”

  “Don’t you know?” said his companion. Mark-Alem immediately regretted asking the question.

  “I’ve never had anything to do with them,” he muttered, “but of course I’ve heard of them.”

  “They’re more or less adjacent to our office,” said the copyist.

  “Are they in the part of the Palace guarded by sentries?”

  “That’s right,” said the other cheerfully. “The guard stands just outside the door. Have you been there, then?”

  “Yes, but on other business.”

  “Our offices are just nearby. That’s why the people who work there apply to us when they need copyists. Yes, the work is really diabolical. There’s someone there at the moment that they’ve been questioning for forty days on end.”

  “What did he do?” asked Mark-Alem, yawning as he spoke so as to make the question seem more casual.

  “What do you mean—what did he do? Everyone knows that,” said the other, looking Mark-Alem deep in the eye. “He’s a dreamer.”

  “A dreamer? What of it?”

  “As you probably know, those are the rooms where dreamers are held whom the Tabir Sarrail has sent for to ask them for further explanations about the dreams they’ve sent in.”

  “Oh, yes, I’ve heard about it,” said Mark-Alem. He was on the point of yawning again, but at that moment, for the first time, he noticed the light fade out of the other man’s eyes.

  “Perhaps I oughtn’t to have mentioned it, because it’s secret, like everything else here. But seeing you said you worked in Interpretation, I thought you’d know all about it.”

  Mark-Alem started to laugh.

  “Are you sorry you spoke? Don’t worry. I really do work in Interpretation, and I know much more important secrets than the one you’ve told me about.”

  “Of course, of course,” said the other, pulling himself together.

  “What’s more,” added Mark-Alem, lowering his voice, “I’m a member of the Quprili family. So you haven’t got anything to worry about… .”

  “Goodness me,” said the copyist, “I had a presentiment! … Aren’t I lucky you were good enough to talk to me! …”

  “And how are things with the dreamer in the solitary room?” interrupted Mark-Alem. “Is there any progress? You’re a copyist, you say?”

  “Yes, sir, and I’ve been working there lately. That’s where I’ve just come from. How are things going with him? Well, how can I put it …? So far we’ve filled hundreds of pages with his depositions. Of course he’s completely at sea, but that’s not his fault. He’s only an ordinary sort of chap from a dead-and-alive province on the eastern borders. It can never have entered his mind, when he sent in his dream, that he’d wind up in the Tabir Sarrail.”

  “And what’s so important about his dream?”

  The other man shrugged.

  “I don’t know, myself. At first glance it seems ordinary enough, but there must be something there since they’re making such a fuss about it. It seems Interpretation sent it back for further explanations. But even though they’re taking all this trouble, it isn’t getting any clearer—in fact, it’s only getting more confused.”

  “I don’t see what they can expect to get from the dreamer himself.”

  “I can’t really explain. I don’t understand it very well myself. They ask him for further details about a few points that seem strange or unusual. Naturally he can’t supply them. It’s such a long time ago since he had the dream… . And anyway, after being shut up here so long, he doesn’t know where he is. He can’t even remember the dream anymore.”

  “Does this sort of thing happen often?”

  “I don’t think so. Twice or three times a year—not more. Otherwise people would get frightened and think twice about sending in their dreams.”

  “Of course. And what are they going to do with him now?”

  “They’ll go on questioning him until …” The copyist threw up his hands. “I don’t really know.”

  “All very odd,” said Mark-Alem. “So you can’t send your dreams to the Tabir Sarrail with impunity. One fine day you might get a letter telling you to present yourself here.”

  The other might have been going to answer, but at this point the bell rang for the end of the break. They said good-bye and went their separate ways.

  As he made his way upstairs Mark-Alem couldn’t shake off the thought of what he’d just heard. What were those solitary rooms the copyist had been talking about? At first blush it all seemed absurd and inexplicable, but there must be more to it than that. What was involved was undoubtedly some kind of imprisonment. But for what purpose? The copyist had said it was obvious the prisoner couldn’t remember anything about his dream. That must be the real object of his incarceration: to make him forget it. That wearing interrogation night and day, that interminable report, the pretense of seeking precise details about something that by its very nature cannot be definite—all this, continued until the dream begins to disintegrate and finally disappears completely from the dreamer’s memory, could only be called brainwashing, thought Mark-Alem. Or an undream, in the same way as unreason is the opposite of reason.

  The more he thought about it, the more it seemed this was the only explanation. It must be a question of flushing out subversive ideas which for some reason or other the State needed to isolate, as one isolates a plague virus in order to be able to neutralize it.

  Mark-Alem had reached the top of the stairs and was now going along the long corridor together with dozens of his fellow workers, who disappeared in small groups through the various doors. The closer he got to the Interpretation rooms, the more the temporary sense of self-assurance he’d had in the cafeteria faded away, as it usually does when it derives from someone else’s sycophancy. In its place came the feeling of suffocation that descended on him at the thought of becoming once again an insignificant clerk in the heart of the gigantic mechanism.

  As he approached he could see his desk with his file lying on top of it. Going and sitting down at it was like stationing himself on the shore of universal sleep, on the borders of some dark region that threw up jets of menacing blackness from its unknown depths. “God Almighty protect me,” he sighed.

  The weather had grown even more severe. Even though the big tiled stoves were filled with coal and lighted first thing in the morning, the Interpretation rooms were freezing. Sometimes Mark-Alem kept his overcoat on. He couldn’t understand where such extreme cold came from.

  “Can’t you guess?” said someone he was having coffee with in the cafeteria one day. “It comes from the files—the same place as all our troubles come from, old boy… .”

  Mark-Alem pretended not to hear.

>   “What else can you expect to issue from the realms of sleep?” the other went on. “They’re like the countries of the dead. Poor wretches that we are, having to work on files like that!”

  Mark-Alem walked away without answering. Afterward he thought the man might have been a provocateur. Every day he was more convinced that the Tabir Sarrail was full of strange people and secrets of every kind.

  The things he’d heard, during this time, about the Tabir and everything that went on there! At first it had seemed as if the people who worked there never spoke about it, but as the days went by and he picked up an odd phrase in the cafeteria, and another in a corridor, or on the way out of the front doors, or coming from the next table, there gradually, unconsciously, began to build up in his mind a large and extraordinary mosaic. Some voices said, for example, that dreams, regarded as private and solitary visions on the part of an individual, belonged to a merely temporary phase in the history of mankind, and that one day they would lose this specificity and become just as available to everyone as other human activities. In the same way as a plant or a fruit remains under the earth for a while before appearing aboveground, so men’s dreams were now buried in sleep; but it didn’t follow that this would always be so. One day dreams would emerge into the light of day and take their rightful place in human thought, experience, and action. As for whether this would be a good thing or a bad, whether it would change the world for the better or the worse—God alone knew.

  Others maintained that the Apocalypse itself was simply the day when dreams would be set free from the prison of sleep, that this was the form in which the Resurrection of the Dead, usually depicted in a trite and metaphysical manner, would really take place. Weren’t dreams, after all, messages sent from the dead as harbingers? The immemorial appeal of the dead, their supplication, their lamentation, their protest—whatever you cared to call it—would one day be answered in this way.

  Others shared this point of view, but provided it with a completely different explanation. When dreams emerged into the harsh climate of our universe, this argument ran, they would sicken and die. And so the living would break with the anguish of the dead, and thereby with the past as well, and while some might see this as a bad thing, others would see it as a liberation, the advent of a genuinely new world.

  Mark-Alem was sick and tired of all this hairsplitting. But what he found still more trying were the long insipid days when no one said anything, nothing happened, and all he had to do was crouch over his file and pass from one sleep to another. It was like being in a fog that every so often seemed about to lift but most of the time remained as thick and gloomy as ever.

  It was Friday. They must be quite excited in the Master-Dream officers’ room. The Master-Dream would already have been chosen, and they’d be getting ready to send it off to the Sovereign’s palace. A carriage emblazoned with the imperial arms had been waiting outside for some time, surrounded by guards. The Master-Dream was about to go, but even afterward the section would be in a commotion; the previous tension would persist, or at least people would be curious to know how the dream would be received at the Sultan’s palace. They usually had some account by the following day: The Padishah had been pleased; or the Padishah hadn’t said anything; or, sometimes, the Padishah was dissatisfied. But that happened only rarely; very rarely.

  Anyhow, it was livelier in that section than in the others; the days had some pattern to them. The week went by more quickly, looking forward to Friday. In all the other sections there was nothing but boredom, monotony, and dullness.

  And yet, thought Mark-Alem, everyone dreamed of working in Interpretation. If they only knew how long the hours seemed here! And as if that weren’t enough, a permanent cloud of apprehension hung over everything. (Ever since the stoves had been lighted, it seemed to Mark-Alem that this constant anxiety gave off a smell of coal.)

  He bent over his file and started to read again. By now he was comparatively familiar with the work and had less difficulty in finding meanings for the dreams. In a few days’ time he would have finished off his first file. There were only a few pages left. He read a few boring dreams about such things as black stagnant water, an ailing cockerel stuck in a peat bog, and a case where one of the guests was cured of rheumatism at a dinner attended by giaours.* What stuff! he thought, laying down his pen. It’s as if they’d saved the worst till the last. He thought of the rooms of the Master-Dream officers as someone in particularly depressing circumstances might think about a house where there was going to be a wedding. He’d never seen these rooms, and didn’t even know what part of the Palace they were in. But he was sure that unlike the other offices, they must have tall windows that reached up to the ceiling, letting in a solemn light that ennobled everyone and everything.

  “Ah well …” he sighed, taking up his pen again. He made himself work without stopping until the bell rang to announce the end of the day. There were two pages still left unexamined in his file. He might as well read them now and have done.

  All around him arose the racket made by the other clerks as they left their desks and made for the door. But after a little while silence was restored, and the only people left in the room were the people who’d decided to stay on late. Mark-Alem felt oppressed by the emptiness left by the departure of most of his colleagues. He’d felt the same every time he’d worked late, but what could he do? It was regarded as good form to do some voluntary overtime occasionally, not to mention the fact that the staff were sometimes required to stay on. Mark-Alem had resigned himself to sacrificing yet another evening.

  Cutting short a breath that had really been a long sigh, he began to read the next to last page. That’s funny, he thought after scanning the first line. Where had he seen this dream before? A plot of wasteland near a bridge with some rubbish, and a musical instrument … He nearly let out an exclamation of surprise. This was the first time he’d come across a dream that he’d examined himself when he was in Selection. He felt as pleased as if he’d met an old acquaintance, and looked around for someone to tell about the coincidence. But there weren’t many people left now, and the nearest one was at least ten yards away.

  Still rather thrilled by his little discovery, he read the text of the dream—casually at first, and then more and more carefully. He couldn’t find any particular significance in it. But that didn’t worry him. A lot of dreams didn’t seem to have any meaning at first—they were like smooth cliffs where you couldn’t get a foothold—but a tiny flash of inspiration might reveal a clue. He’d manage to find the key to this dream as he had with others. After all, he had a certain amount of experience now. The wasteland covered with rubbish, the old bridge, the strange musical instrument, and the furious bull—these were all very significant symbols. But he couldn’t make out what it was that linked them together. And in the interpretation of a dream the relationship between the various symbols was usually more important than the symbols themselves.

  Mark-Alem arranged them in pairs: the bridge with the bull, and the musical instrument with the patch of wasteland; then the bridge with the instrument, and the wasteland with the bull; and finally the bull with the musical instrument, and the bridge with the wasteland. The last arrangement seemed to yield a certain amount of meaning, but it wasn’t very logical: a bull (unbridled brute force), stirred by some music (treachery, secrecy, propaganda), is trying to destroy the old bridge. If, instead of a bridge, it had been a column or the wall of a citadel, or some other symbol representing the State, the dream might have had a certain amount of meaning; but a bridge didn’t stand for anything like that. Like fountains and roads, it was usually a symbol for something useful to man… . Just a minute though, thought Mark-Alem, suddenly finding himself short of breath. Wasn’t the bridge connected with his family’s own name? … Perhaps this was some sinister omen?

  He reread the text and began to breathe more freely again. The bull wasn’t really attacking the bridge at all. It was just rushing around the piece of wasteground.


  It’s a dream without any meaning, he thought. The pleasure of having come across it again was succeeded by a feeling of contempt. He remembered now that even when he’d seen it in Selection it had struck him as devoid of significance. He’d have done better to throw it in the wastepaper basket there and then! He dipped his pen in the inkwell and was about to mark the dream “Insoluble,” when his hand remained poised in suspense. What if he left it and came back to it again in the morning? What if he asked the supervisor for advice? Though of course, while you were allowed to ask for advice, they didn’t like you to do so too often. Mark-Alem started to get impatient. The best thing was to get on and have done with the file. He’d spent more than enough time on it already… .

  He took up the last dream, dealt with it briskly, then went back to the one he’d left in abeyance. He was just hesitating and wondering again whether to mark it “Insoluble,” file it away, and go home, when the head of Interpretation entered the room. He exchanged a few words in a low voice with the supervisor, looked around as if to count those who had stayed on, then whispered something else to the supervisor.

  When he had gone:

  “You and you,” said the voice of the supervisor.

  Mark-Alem looked around.

  “And you two over there. And you too, Mark-Alem—you’re all to stay on. The boss has just told me there’s an urgent file that has to be worked out this evening.”

  No one said anything.

  “While it’s on its way, go down and have something in the cafeteria. We may have to stay on late.”

  They trailed out of the room one after the other. Out in the corridor they could hear the turning of keys and the shooting of bolts coming from various directions. The last stragglers were going home.

  The cafeteria was particularly depressing at this late hour. The few remaining assistants, their faces drawn with fatigue; the tables pushed aside so that the floor could be swept—it all looked very melancholy. Mark-Alem asked for a salep and a roll, and went to stand at the farthest end of the counter. He didn’t want to be disturbed. He drank his salep calmly and nibbled mechanically at his roll, and when he’d finished he went slowly out again, looking neither left nor right.