The Palace of Dreams

by Ismail Kadare

  As the days went by he grew more and more conscious of the importance of his new post. He now had a sky-blue carriage at his disposal, waiting for him outside the Palace, and he felt it was not merely this equipage but he himself who commanded respect, silence, and fear. He was tempted to smile at this, finding it almost incredible that he, recently so fearful about the mystery of the State and the oppressive atmosphere emanating from its organs, should now cause the same apprehension in others. But he sometimes thought that was only in the nature of things. It was probably because he was so sensitive, building up so much mystery and anguish inside himself, that he now spread the overflow around him.

  He was so taken up with his work he didn’t notice that the weather was growing milder. Although, after the murder of the rhapsodists, all Albania had fallen prey to insomnia, the Palace machine was working flat out. As one of the most senior officials, Mark-Alem received the ultra-secret detail report every morning. The amount of sleep registered in the various regions varied in accordance with the events that took place there. A special report had been called for on the subject of Albania’s insomnia. The street trader who’d sent in the fateful dream had been in solitary confinement for several days. They were still trying to get the explanations they needed out of him, and the record of his depositions had already filled four hundred pages. In general, a period of disturbed sleep was expected, with a steep rise in the wilder kind of dream. Mark-Alem had got into the habit, in moments of weariness, of rubbing his eyes at length, as if to remove the veil drawn over them by so much reading.

  One evening when he got home as usual, he found Loke looking very pale. Again he felt in his midriff the familiar hollow of anxiety, almost forgotten in the last few weeks.

  “What’s the matter?” he breathed. “Is it Kurt?”

  Loke nodded.

  “Isn’t he going to be freed? How many years’ imprisonment has he been sentenced to?”

  Loke’s eyes, almost dissolving in tears, just gazed at him sadly.

  “I asked you how long a sentence they’ve given him,” Mark-Alem repeated. But still she didn’t answer. Just went on gazing at him tearfully.

  He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her, then, gradually guessing what had happened, burst into tears himself.

  Kurt had been sentenced to death and decapitated. The news had just arrived.

  Mark-Alem went and shut himself up in his room, while his mother wept alone in hers. How could it have happened? he kept asking himself. How could it be that, when Kurt’s release had seemed just a matter of days, he could have been condemned to death and summarily executed? He clutched his brow. Did this mean that the Quprilis’ counterattack, their recovery of power and his own meteoric rise, were only illusions, a false triumph preceding some new blow? But he didn’t care about anything anymore. Let them strike, the sooner and the more cruelly the better, and get the whole business over once and for all.

  Next morning, pale and wan, he went into the Tabir Sarrail, convinced he was going to be relieved of his new post and sent back to his former duties in Interpretation, or even in Selection. But his subordinates greeted him with the same respect as they had always shown since his promotion, and his pallor seemed to make them even more attentive. As they came and set various papers in front of him, he examined their expressions and their words for signs of mockery. Finding none, he felt reassured. But this didn’t last long. His anxiety revived at the thought that even if his dismissal or demotion had already been decided, his staff wouldn’t know about it yet. He thought up an excuse for going to see the Director-General, and when he was told the Director-General was unwell and not coming in that day, this merely seemed part of the elaborate joke that was being played on him.

  Mark-Alem’s anxiety lasted several days. Then early one morning—he’d noticed that everything that happened to him did so when he least expected it—the Director-General sent for him. About time too! thought Mark-Alem as he got up to go. Strangely enough, he didn’t feel any emotion. It was as if he’d gone deaf and the only sound was that of his footsteps as he went along the corridor. When he presented himself in the Director-General’s office, he was struck by the extreme gravity of the other’s expression. Of course, he thought, it’s only natural he should be serious when it’s a question of dismissing a Quprili. In their family, both promotion and its opposite were always dealt with ceremoniously. The Director was talking to him, but he wasn’t listening. He wasn’t really interested in what he had to say. He just wanted to get out of this office as fast as possible and go to the section he was being sent to, whether it was Selection or even copying, and there take an unassuming place amid the hundreds of anonymous clerks. At one point he felt inclined to interrupt: Why not cut it short? What was the point of beating about the bush? There was no point in these long preambles. But apparently the Director enjoyed playing cat and mouse with him. Who knows, perhaps he wasn’t sorry to be getting rid of this young sprig from the Quprili family. Perhaps it had even occurred to him that he, Mark-Alem, might one day do him out of his job. As a matter of fact he’d once hinted at the possibility… .

  Mark-Alem frowned. How dared the man use such coarse sarcasm on him? It was going too far! Now the Director was actually offering him his congratulations! Easy for him to make fun of me! he thought. And then a moment later: I must be going crazy… .

  “Mark-Alem—don’t you feel well?” said the Director solicitously.

  “Go on—I’m listening,” he answered coldly.

  Now it was the Director’s turn to be astonished. He smiled tentatively.

  “I must admit I didn’t expect you to react like this… .”

  “What do you mean?” said Mark-Alem as curtly as before.

  The Director-General flung out his arms.

  “Of course, everyone has the right to receive news like this as he thinks fit. All the more so in the case of someone like you, coming from an illustrious family of prime ministers …”

  “I’d be obliged if you’d get to the point,” said Mark-Alem, who could feel the perspiration trickling down his forehead.

  The Director-General stared.

  “I thought I’d made myself perfectly clear,” he muttered. “To tell the truth, I still can’t take it in myself … calling someone to my office to tell them that …”

  Mark-Alem could scarcely hear for the buzzing in his ears. What the other was saying was simply incredible. Gradually, bit by bit, it penetrated to his brain. The words “appointment,” “dismissal,” “replacing the Director-General,” “post of Director-General” really had been uttered, but with a completely different meaning from what he had at first supposed. For a good quarter of an hour the Director-General of the Tabir Sarrail had been explaining that he, Mark-Alem, while continuing in his post as head of the Master-Dream section, was also, by direct orders from on high, appointed First Assistant Director of the Palace of Dreams, and thus assistant to himself, the Director-General, who, as Mark-Alem knew, would often be absent for reasons of health.

  The Director-General, as he slowly repeated what he had already said once, seemed to be trying to make out why this news should have met with such a cool reception. But his amazement was now accompanied by a tinge of suspicion.

  Mark-Alem rubbed his eyes, then without lowering his hands murmured:

  “I’m sorry. I’m not feeling very well today. Please forgive me.”

  “No, no … don’t worry about it,” said the Director. “As a matter of fact, I could tell you were unwell as soon as you came in. You must take better care of yourself, especially now that you’re going to have all this extra work. I wasn’t careful enough myself, and now, as you see, I’m paying the price. Anyway, let me congratulate you! With all my heart! Good luck!”

  Every time he recalled this tête-à-tête in the days that followed, Mark-Alem felt an almost physical pain. On top of that, he was overwhelmed with work. The Director-General was absent most of the time for health reasons, and Mark-Alem had
to replace him for several days running. Burdened as he was, he’d become even more morose. The gigantic mechanism, which he was now to all intents and purposes running, functioned day and night. Only now did he realize how vast the Tabir Sarrail really was. Senior State officials were timid when they entered his office. The Assistant Minister of the Interior, who visited him often, was careful never to interrupt him when he spoke. In the Assistant Minister’s eyes, as in those of all the other senior officials, there was, despite their polite smiles, a constant query: Is there a dream about me? … Being powerful and laden with honors, holding important posts and enjoying influential support—all this was not enough to reassure them. What mattered was not merely what they were in life; equally important was the part they played in other people’s dreams, the mysterious carriages they drove in in those dreams, and the emblems and cabalistic signs carved on their carriage doors… .

  Every morning, when the daily report was brought in to him, Mark-Alem felt as if he were holding in his hands the previous night of millions and millions of people. Anyone who ruled over the dark zones of men’s lives wielded enormous power. And with every week that went by, Mark-Alem grew more aware of this.

  One day, on a sudden impulse, he got up from his desk and went slowly down to the Archives. There he met with the same oppressive smell of coal as before. The clerks stood there in front of him, self-effacing, like shadows, ready to do his bidding. He asked for the file containing the Master-Dreams for the last few months. When it was brought, he told the staff to leave him to work in peace, and began to leaf steadily through the pages. His trembling fingers showed his growing tension. His heartbeats slackened. At the top of each page, on the right, was written, among various other details, the date of the dream it recorded. Last Friday in December. First Friday in January. Second Friday in January. And here at last was the dream he was looking for, the fateful Master-Dream that had led his uncle to the grave and raised him, Mark-Alem, to be a director of the Tabir. He found it difficult to read the dream; it was as if there were a white bandage over his eyes that let in only thin shafts of light.

  It really was the dream of the greengrocer who had a stall in the capital—the dream he’d held in his hand twice before—together with the rough interpretation which he already knew: the bridge, from the word Qupri, meaning Quprili; the musical instrument, signifying the Albanian epic; the red bull which, maddened by the music, would rush upon the State. My God! he breathed. It had all been engraved on his mind before, but seeing it here in black and white made him tremble from head to foot. He closed the file and walked slowly away.

  Since he’d been appointed to the head of the Tabir Sarrail, he’d learned a great many terrifying secrets, but until now he’d never succeeded in clearing up the mystery of that night, with the attack on the Quprilis followed by their counterattack.

  The greengrocer was still being interrogated in his cell. The record of his depositions now covered more than eight hundred pages, and still there was no sign that it was going to be brought to an end. One day Mark-Alem sent for the file and spent several hours studying it. It was the first time he’d ever seen such a document. The hundreds of pages were full of minute details about the greengrocer’s daily life. Everything was included, or almost everything: the kinds of fruit and vegetables he sold—cabbages, cauliflowers, peppers, lettuces; the times when they were delivered; how they were unloaded; how fresh the various items were; quarrels with suppliers; fluctuations in prices; customers and what they said, and how it reflected family problems, economic difficulties, hidden illnesses, conflicts, crises, alliances; scraps of overheard gossip; things that drunks, road-sweepers and idlers said as night fell; the sayings of unknown passersby which for some reason or other had remained in his memory; and again all the vegetables and what they tasted like at the beginning and at the end of the season; how they were moistened to make them seem fresh; the doltishness of the peasants who brought them in; haggling over prices; the throw-outs; how dew made lettuces weigh more; the whims and fancies of housewives; the squabbles; the rows—and all of these things gone over and over interminably.

  When he’d shut the bulky file, Mark-Alem felt as if he were emerging from a vast meadow damp with dew, an innocent field which you’d never have dreamed could have harbored a viper. Although reading the file had tired him, he felt in a way refreshed, and was surprised to find he was inclined to pity the greengrocer, who seemed not to have the slightest idea of the consequences of his dream. But before Mark-Alem went on to read the explanation of the dream, which probably took up hundreds more pages, he had to consider whether the greengrocer really had dreamed the dream in question. But after all, that didn’t matter now; things had taken their course, and there was no going back.

  In the days that followed, Mark-Alem stopped thinking about the greengrocer. Spring was on the way, probably bringing all kinds of tension to the Palace of Dreams, and he wouldn’t have time for trivialities. All the reports that were brought to him bristled with problems. Albania’s insomnia continued; such a thing had never been seen before. Admittedly it wasn’t up to the Palace of Dreams to set these matters right, yet as long as the tension lasted, the Tabir had to keep very careful records of the increasing sleeplessness. To crown all, the Director of the Imperial Bank, in the course of a long interview he’d had with Mark-Alem a few days before, had mentioned the possibility of devaluation as the probable result of the serious economic crisis the Empire was going through. So it was up to the Palace of Dreams to take note of this state of affairs and pay extra-careful attention to dreams on this subject. Mark-Alem knew, from his brief experience in Selection and Interpretation, that there were always hundreds of such dreams in the files.

  Other important State institutions, more indirectly, called his attention to the unrest currently prevailing in Jewish and Armenian intellectual circles (God, were they asking for some new massacre?) and to a certain slackening of the links between the major pashaliks and the metropolis. Probably for the umpteenth time, these institutions renewed their warnings against the weakening of religious feeling among the younger generation. It was well known that such warnings derived from the Sheikh-ul-Islam.

  Mark-Alem, absorbed by all these preoccupations, was unaware of the approach of spring. The weather was slightly warmer, the migrating storks had returned, but he didn’t notice.

  One afternoon, at the same time and almost at the same place in the corridor as before, he saw some men silently carrying a coffin out of one of the cells. The greengrocer, he said to himself, without looking after them to make sure or to find out more. A little while later, as he was being jolted along in his carriage, the sight of the little procession came back to him. But he drove it away. Outside, in the crimson light of the setting sun, he could see the first shoots of grass in the gardens of the houses, though the trees were still bare.

  At home he found his eldest uncle, the governor, and his wife, together with some other close relations. The governor hadn’t been back to the capital since Kurt’s execution. They were all talking about Mark-Alem’s betrothal. His mother’s eyes were damp, as if spring had reached her at least. He listened absently to what they were saying, without contributing to the conversation himself. With some surprise, as if at some sudden revelation, he realized he was twenty-eight years old. Since he’d started working in the Palace of Dreams, where time obeyed completely different laws, he’d practically never given a thought to his age.

  Encouraged by his silence, the others started to speak more confidently about the girl they had in mind for him. She was nineteen, and fair—he liked blondes. They led the conversation around to the subject very carefully, as if they were holding a crystal goblet in their hands. Mark-Alem didn’t say either yes or no. And in the days that followed, as if to avoid jeopardizing what they thought was their success, they refrained from mentioning the matter further.

  At home, apart from the two dinner parties that his mother held in honor of her eldest brother, that w
eek was uneventful. The sculptor usually employed to see to the family’s graves came to submit suggestions for the inscription on Kurt’s tombstone and the bronze ornaments to be added to it.

  The following week Mark-Alem got home late every evening. He had more work than he could cope with. The Sovereign had asked for a long report on the sleep and dreams of the whole Empire. People were working overtime in every section of the Tabir Sarrail. The Director-General was still unwell, and Mark-Alem had to write the final version of the report.

  Every so often as he sat at his desk, he would feel his head grow heavy, and wonder at the pages already written as if it had been someone else who’d penned them. There before him lay the melancholy aggregate of the sleep of one of the vastest empires in the world: more than forty nationalities, representatives of almost all religions and of every race. If the report had included the whole globe, it wouldn’t have made much difference. To all intents and purposes it covered the sleep of the entire planet—terrible and infinite shadows, a bottomless abyss from which Mark-Alem was trying to dredge up a few fragments of truth. Hypnos himself, the Greek god of sleep, couldn’t have known more than he did about dreams.

  One afternoon he got his family’s Chronicle out of the library. The last time he’d looked at it was that cold morning when, newly appointed, he was about to present himself for the first time at the Palace of which he was now virtually the Director. As he turned the pages he still wasn’t sure what he was looking for. Then he realized he wasn’t looking for anything. All he wanted was to get to the blank pages at the end… . It was the first time it had ever occurred to him to add something to this ancient chronicle. For a long while he sat still, gazing at the ledger. Important things had been happening. The war against Russia was just over. Greece had left the Empire, and the rest of the Balkans was in turmoil. As for Albania … It grew more and more distant and dim, like some far cold constellation, and he wondered if he really knew anything about what went on there… . He sat there uncertainly, his pen growing heavy in his hand, until finally it rested on the paper and instead of writing “Albania” wrote: There. He gazed at the expression that had substituted itself for the name of his homeland, and suddenly felt oppressed by what he immediately thought of as “Quprilian sadness.” It was a term unknown to any other language in the world, though it ought to be incorporated in them all.