The Palace of Dreams (10 page)

He was obsessed with the fear of making a mistake. Sometimes he was convinced it was impossible to do anything else, and that if anyone got anything right it was purely by chance.

Sometimes he would get frantic with worry. He still hadn’t submitted one decoded dream to his superiors. They probably thought him either incompetent or else excessively timid. How did the others manage? He could see them filling whole pages with their comments. How could they look so calm?

As a matter of fact, every decoder was allowed to leave aside some dreams that he couldn’t unravel himself, and these were sent to the decoders par excellence, the real masters of Interpretation; but of course not everything could be sent to them.

Mark-Alem rubbed at his temples to disperse the blood that seemed to have accumulated there. His head was a flurry of symbols: Hermes’s staff, smoke, the limping bride, snow … They all whirled around in a wild saraband, displacing every perception of the ordinary world. To hell with it, thought Mark-Alem, taking up pen and paper, I’ll give this dream the first explanation that comes into my head, and hope for the best!

It had been dreamed by a pupil at a religious school in the capital. In it two men had found a fallen rainbow. With some difficulty they raised it up and dusted it off, and one of the men repainted it; but the rainbow absolutely refused to come to life again. So the men dropped it and ran away.

Hmmm, thought Mark-Alem, fiddling with his pen. His resolution had already evaporated. But he made himself go on. Without thinking, or rather, rapidly abandoning his first explanation of the dream, he wrote underneath it: “Warning of …” Warning of …

“God, what can this nightmare possibly mean?” he almost cried out. “It’s enough to drive you crazy!” He crossed out what he’d written, and tossed the sheet of paper angrily onto the heap with the other uninterpretable dreams. No, he’d sooner be sacked straightaway than have to be bothered with such drivel! He propped his head in his hands and sat with his eyes half shut.

After a while he heard the reedy voice of the room supervisor:

“What’s the matter, Mark-Alem? Have you got a headache?”

“Yes, a slight one.”

“Never mind—it happens to everyone at first. Do you need anything?”

“No, thanks. But I’ll ask you to explain some things to me in a little while.”

“Oh? Good. I’ve been waiting for you to do that for the past few days.”

“I didn’t want to bother you for nothing.”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that. That’s what I’m here for.”

“I’ll have something for you in an hour or so,” said Mark-Alem. “Only …”

“Only what?”

“Only I’m not quite sure … My explanations may be quite wrong, or may not make any sense at all.”

The supervisor smiled.

“I’ll be waiting for you,” he said, and moved away.

Now I’ve got no escape, thought Mark-Alem. Whether I like it or not I’ll have to get on with it the same as all the others. Well, to hell with it—here goes! And he looked for the piece of paper recording a dream in which a group of men in black crossed a ditch and disappeared into a snow-covered plain. Suddenly the meaning of the dream seemed quite clear to him: A group of officials who’d committed some fraud against the State had overcome the obstacles ranged against them and reached the safety of the white plain; this meant the fall of the government.

Mark-Alem swiftly wrote down this explanation, but hadn’t completed the last few words before he thought to himself: But this is practically tantamount to a plot against the State!

He reread his interpretation and was confirmed in the thought that the dream really did relate to some kind of conspiracy. But the file he’d been given was the one concerning law and order and corruption! He was in such despair the pen fell from his nerveless hand. For once he thought he’d managed to produce something, and it turned out to be no good again! But wait a minute, he reflected. Perhaps it isn’t quite as bad as that. After all, there’s not all that much difference between corruption and a conspiracy against the State, since officials are involved in both cases.

Then again—how stupid of him not to have thought of it before!—the classification of the files wasn’t as rigid as all that, and there was no reason why the file on law and order shouldn’t also contain dreams concerning important affairs of State. And hadn’t the staff often been told it was considered commendable for them to search for signs of special significance in places where at first sight there seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary? Yes, he could remember being told that quite plainly. It was even said that many Master-Dreams had come from the most undistinguished of files.

Mark-Alem felt much better now. Before the impulse had time to weaken, he took up four dreams that he’d read several times already and added his own explanation of each of them. He was feeling quite pleased with himself, and getting ready to deal with a fifth dream, when for some unknown reason he looked at the first dream again, and reread the explanation he’d appended to it. He was immediately overcome with doubt. Could I be mistaken? Could the dream have another explanation? he thought. A moment later he was quite sure he’d got it wrong. Beads of cold perspiration broke out on his forehead; he sat staring at the lines he’d written such a short time ago with so much alacrity, which now seemed alien and hostile. What ought he to do?

Then he said to himself, Dash it all, who’s going to attach any importance to this one dream out of all the tens of thousands that are dealt with here? And he was just about to leave it as it was when at the last moment his hand dropped away again. What if someone discovered his mistake? Especially as the dream involved State officials! Government circles might get to know of it somehow, and the worst of it was that everybody might think the accusation applied to themselves or their associates. A search would be made for the person who’d supplied the explanation of the dream, and when they found out it was him they’d say: “Well, well, a fellow called Mark-Alem, a new boy who’s only just started in the Tabir Sarrail, and as soon as he starts decoding his first dream he tries to sling mud at the senior servants of the State. Better keep an eye on that snake in the grass!”

Mark-Alem hastily snatched the page up as if to prevent anyone from reading what he’d written. He absolutely must try to repair his blunder before it was too late. But how? It occurred to him that he might simply do away with the dream altogether, but then he remembered that the cover of each file indicated the number of dreams it contained. To abstract one of them would be enough to get you sent straight to prison as a common thief. Something else, something else—he must think of something else! If he hadn’t been in such a hurry, if he hadn’t dashed the words off so madly, he could now have given the dream a completely different explanation. It was some diabolical impulse that had made him hurl himself upon his own destruction. It was all up with him now. But not so fast, he thought, still gazing at his own writing; perhaps all is not lost yet.

His eyes flew over the words again, and concluded there was still a possible way out. When he’d reread the page for the third time, he was surprised he hadn’t thought of it before. An unexpected sense of relief spread from his temples to his throat and lungs. After all, it was quite usual to make corrections. He would do his in such a way that they wouldn’t call attention to themselves; they’d just look like improvements in accuracy, refinements of style. It would be enough if he merely altered one word. For the umpteenth time he reread the phrase “a group of officials who’d committed some fraud against the State.” Finally, with a shaky hand, he altered it to read “a group of officials who’d prevented some fraud against the State.” He checked it a couple of times. It seemed all right. You could scarcely see the alteration. And even if anyone did notice it they might put it down as the correction of a slip. He breathed a sigh of relief. The business was settled at last… . Mark-Alem, who’d committed a fraud against the State …

He looked about him in terror. What if someone had noticed what he was doing? Nonsense, he told himself. The clerk who was nearest to him, and worked at the same table, was too far away to be able to read the name of his file, let alone what he’d written. A good thing my writing’s so spidery, he thought. Now, after all this agitation, he could take a bit of a rest. What a beastly job!

He cast a covert glance around the rest of the room. The clerks were working peacefully away, crouching over their files. You couldn’t even hear the sound of their pens. Every so often one of them would leave his desk and slip away as quietly as possible to the door. No doubt he was going down to the Archives to consult relevant interpretations made in the past—ages ago, some of them, and by decoders eminent in their art. God! he thought, looking at those dozens of heads bent over their files.

In those files was all the sleep in the world, an ocean of terror on the vast surface of which they tried to find some tiny signs or signals. Hapless wretches that we are! thought Mark-Alem.

He made himself read some more pages, but he could feel that his brain had seized up. Even if his eyes followed the text, his mind was elsewhere. Some soldiers with their faces covered up. Thousands of shoes in a village square, with a wire fixed overhead. More snow, but this time heaped up in big chests, together with a … set of man’s clothes! My mind’s gone completely, he thought, and suddenly, with a strange, almost wistful feeling, he remembered his first dream here in this palace. Three white foxes on the minaret of the local mosque. A nice dream, that, perfectly plain and clear. Where was it now, in all this horrible sea? “Oh, well,” he sighed, and picked up another page. He’d have to decode at least another two before the break. But the bell rang early, it seemed to him, and he shut up his file.

There was the usual bustle downstairs. The basement where they had coffee or
salep
was the only place where you had the opportunity to exchange a few words with people you knew, or even with people you didn’t. Mark-Alem had been in Selection such a short time he’d met only a few of those who worked there, and he saw them even more rarely in the cafeteria. But even when he did see them they seemed strange and far away, as if they belonged to a distant period of his existence. He preferred to talk to strangers. He hadn’t spent a single satisfactory day in Selection, and perhaps that was why he avoided his former colleagues there.

In Interpretation the days were just as tedious and dreary—apart from today, when at last he’d managed to get somewhere. Maybe that was why, instead of going down to the cafeteria in the usual bitter mood, he now felt comparatively cheerful.

“Where do you work?” he said casually to the man opposite him. He’d found a place free at a table covered with empty cups and glasses.

The other man drew himself up as if in the presence of a superior.

“In the copying office, sir,” he said.

Mark-Alem knew he’d been right. You could tell straightaway that the man was new to the place, as he himself had been a month ago. After taking a sip of coffee:

“Have you been ill?” he asked, surprised at his own temerity. “You’re very pale.”

“No, sir,” the other man answered, putting his glass of
salep
down for a moment. “But we’ve got a lot of work, and …”

“Yes, of course,” Mark-Alem went on as before, not quite sure where this new nonchalance of his was coming from. “Perhaps this is the high season for dreams?”

“Yes, yes,” said the other, nodding his head so energetically Mark-Alem thought his thin neck would snap if he went on much longer.

“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.