The Palace of Dreams (21 page)

And when he got to the Palace of the Sheikh-ul-Islam he saw there were more soldiers of the Guard on duty than the day before. Their helmets, wet with dew, glinted dully. There were soldiers posted at the crossroads by the bank. Apparently the state of emergency hadn’t been lifted. No, none of this was an illusion. And Kurt was in prison. Perhaps even … The bloodstained carpet that the footmen had rolled up kept enveloping his own thoughts. How would he ever be able to set foot on a carpet again without feeling faint? He felt the desire to vomit rising again… .

So the Palace of Dreams is open, he said to himself when he saw the entrances from a distance. The employees were flocking around the doors. Most of them didn’t know one another and didn’t greet, let alone talk to, their colleagues. But in the corridor by the Interpretation Department Mark-Alem did see some familiar faces. And luckily his neighbor was already sitting at his desk.

“So,” he said as soon as Mark-Alem had sat down beside him. “Have you found out anything?”

“No, I don’t know a thing,” lied Mark-Alem. “I’ve only just arrived. What’s happened?”

“I don’t know anything definite myself, but it’s obvious something important has been going on. Did you see the soldiers in the street?”

“Yes—last night and today.”

The other, while pretending to be busy with his file, leaned nearer to Mark-Alem and whispered:

“It seems something has happened to the Quprilis, but no one knows what exactly.”

Mark-Alem felt his heartbeats slacken.

Idiot, he said to himself. You know all about it, so why do you let yourself be affected by what anyone else says? Nevertheless he asked:

“What do you mean?”

His voice had grown faint, as if he feared that to hear what had happened might make it real.

“I don’t know anything definite. It’s only a rumor, perhaps mere gossip.”

“Maybe,” said Mark-Alem, bending over his file and saying to himself, You silly idiot—do you think it’s all going to be sorted out as easily as that?

His eyes were incapable of taking anything in. There in front of him was a senseless dream that he was supposed to explain, while he was ten times more crazy himself. The other clerks were all poring over their files. Every so often you could hear the rustle of pages being turned.

“Even today you can feel a kind of uneasiness everywhere,” muttered his neighbor. “Something’s bound to happen.”

What else
can
happen? thought Mark-Alem. His head felt as heavy as lead. It seemed to him he might easily fall asleep over his open file and drop a dream on it, like a hen laying an egg. What nonsense, he thought, rubbing his brow. My mind must be wandering. Perhaps after all I’d have done better to stay at home.

Never before had he looked forward so eagerly to the bell for break. His eyes were half closed over the sleep of someone else, as described in the file. Before long his own sleep would merge with the other, as sometimes two human destinies blindly join.

The bell for break startled him. He slowly followed the others down to the basement. The usual hubbub reigned there, as if nothing had happened. Of course, for the others nothing
had
happened. He tried to catch bits of the conversations going on around him, but none of them had anything to do with what had occurred. Anyway, he thought, what’s the point? No one knew as much as he did about what had taken place. He couldn’t learn anything from their senseless comments.

He had a coffee and started slowly up the stairs again. Beside him the others went on chatting about this and that. Two or three times he thought he caught the word “siege,” and people asking, “Did you see the sentries last night?” But he walked on, asking himself what concern it was of his.

He really thought he didn’t want to find out anything, even out of curiosity. But when he sat down at his desk he realized he was eagerly awaiting his neighbor’s return.

Finally he appeared in the doorway. Mark-Alem could tell by the way he walked that he had news.

“Apparently it’s a dream that’s behind it all,” the other man whispered as soon as he got near enough.

“All what?”

“What do you mean, what? Behind the disgrace that’s fallen upon the Quprilis.”

“Oh! So it’s true?”

“Yes, it’s been confirmed. They’ve been hit very hard. I suspected as much! People had a presentiment here yesterday evening… .”

“What sort of dream was it?”

“A strange one, dreamed by a street merchant. You always think that at first—you believe it’s about innocent things like vegetables or grassy plains, and then you find out there’s some great disaster behind it all. It was that kind of dream, with a bridge and a flute, or a violin—some kind of musical instrument, anyway.”

“A bridge and a musical instrument?” gasped Mark-Alem all in one breath. “And then what? What else was there?”

“Some animal going around in circles—but the main thing was the bridge, and the violin.”

Mark-Alem felt as if an elephant were treading on his chest. He’d held the wretched dream in his hands, twice. “What’s the matter? You don’t look well… .”

“It’s nothing. I felt rather off-color yesterday evening, and I was vomiting all night.”

“You look like it. But what was I talking about?”

“The dream.”

“Oh yes … So it was the dream that acted as a clue. They deciphered its meaning, and everything was clear. The bridge stood for the Quprilis, you see
—Qupri
means bridge. And after that the whole thing unraveled of its own accord.”

So that’s what it was! Mark-Alem felt his mouth go dry. He remembered now how he had tried in vain to find a link between the bridge and the raging bull, which certainly symbolized destructive force, and how he had put the dream in the file of those that remained undeciphered.

Now that someone else had elucidated it—and so successfully!—perhaps he would be asked to explain why he had failed to do so? Perhaps he’d be suspected of setting it aside deliberately in order to cover things up. What could be more natural, seeing he himself was a Quprili? True, he could defend himself by saying that as he was working in Selection at the time, he could have eliminated the dream altogether if he’d wanted to, whereas in fact he’d sent it on to Interpretation. But he couldn’t help feeling that such excuses were likely to fall on deaf ears.

“And then,” his neighbor went on, “the violin, or whatever it was, was connected to an epic they sing about the Quprilis in the Balkans. But hey, what’s up with you now? Are you feeling ill?”

He nodded, unable to speak. To avoid arousing suspicion rather than because he really wanted to listen, he signed to the other to go on. Now that his neighbor had mentioned the epic, he lost all hope that this trouble might be the product of an unruly imagination. Kurt’s arrest and the murder of the rhapsodists were further reasons for thinking the epic had something to do with what had happened, and that the dream was at the root of it all. The meaning of the dream now seemed as clear as day: The Quprilis (the bridge), through their epic (the musical instrument), were engaged in some action against the State (the angry bull). Why hadn’t he seen it earlier? It had been in his power to avert the disaster, and he had done nothing. There had been nothing accidental about that dinner with the Vizier, or about his uncle’s vague warnings and exhortations to be on the alert. But he had been incapable of seeing the clue, he had gone to sleep over his files, and misfortune had descended on his nearest and dearest.

“Do you feel a bit better now?” asked his colleague.

“Yes, a bit.”

“Good. Don’t worry—it’ll pass. As I was saying, the epic was apparently the cause of friction between the Quprilis and the Sovereign in the old days. The family’s supporters have been urging them for a long time to renounce it, but apparently they’ve always refused, although they’ve often had to suffer for it. And there’s something else; as if the Slav epic wasn’t enough, they invited some Albanian rhapsodists to come and perform
their
version! I ask you! They were digging their own graves. That was what really made the Sovereign fly off the handle. He decided to put a stop to the business once and for all—to root out the confounded epic altogether. It seems a group of officials is even being organized to rush to the Balkans and eliminate the Albanian epic, which is regarded as the cause of the whole trouble.”

“Really? Really?” Mark-Alem kept interjecting. He was really thinking, How on earth does he know all this?

“Feeling better now?” said the other again. “I told you it’d pass. Where was I? Oh yes—on top of all the rest they expect this to bring about a deterioration in relations with Austria and a rapprochement with Russia. The Russian ambassador could scarcely conceal his satisfaction at the reception last night.”

Mark-Alem remembered the terror in the face of the Austrian consul’s son the previous evening. God, it must all be true! he thought. But he said to his neighbor:

“But what’s Russia got to do with those wretched epics?”

“Russia? I wondered that too, but things are a little more complicated than they look, my lad. This is not just a matter of poetry and song, as it might appear at first blush. If it was only that, our great Sovereign wouldn’t deign to bother with it. But in fact it’s an exceedingly complex business, to do with settlements and transfers of population in the Balkans, and the relations between Slav peoples and non-Slav peoples, like the Albanians. In short, it directly concerns the whole map of the Balkans. For this epic, as I said, is sung in two languages, Albanian and Slav, and is connected with questions of ethnic frontiers inside the Empire. I too wondered at first what Austria, not to mention Russia, had to do with it. But it seems both of them are involved. Austria supports the non-Slav peoples, whereas the Slavs’ ‘little father,’ the Tsar, is always on at our Sultan about the way the people of his race are treated. He has informers everywhere. And this epic deals precisely with the relations between the peoples of the Balkans. Apparently the Albanese rhapsodists were murdered at the Quprili house, and their instruments smashed with them. Do you still feel ill?”

Mark-Alem blinked.

“Never mind, it’ll pass. I’ve suffered from the same thing myself. Yes, old boy, things are always more complicated than they seem. Those of us who work here think we’re well informed, but in reality all that we know amounts to a handful of dreams, a few clouds… .”

He droned on for a while, his voice getting lower and lower until in the end he was mumbling more or less to himself. Mark-Alem’s brain felt ground to bits by what he’d just heard. If only he’d destroyed the dream in Selection, while he had it in his power—nipped it in the bud as one crushes the head of a young viper to stop it from growing up and doing mischief! But he’d let it escape, let it glide from file to file, from section to section, growing and accumulating venom until at last it turned into a Master-Dream. He suffered pangs of remorse. Every so often he would try to console himself: Perhaps the dream would have made its way to its goal whatever happened, since it was in the interests of such powerful factions, even whole states, that it should do so. And even if he had destroyed it, mightn’t means have been found to fabricate another? Hadn’t the Vizier given him clearly to understand that dreams
were
fabricated, even Master-Dreams? No, he’d been right, absolutely right not to get mixed up in it. Otherwise there might have been an inquiry afterward, they might have found out that he’d suppressed that bit of evidence, and then the punishment (which he was afraid of incurring anyway for not having deciphered the dream) would have been terrible, and fallen not only on him but also on all his family. Perhaps that was why the Vizier hadn’t given him precise instructions about what to do. And if his uncle had hesitated, perhaps it was because he himself didn’t know what was the best course to follow. Oh, groaned Mark-Alem inwardly, why did I ever set foot in this cursed place?

“We’re expecting the official eulogy today,” he heard his neighbor’s voice say.

“Eulogy? What for?”

“What for? Because of the dream, of course—the dream is at the root of everything. You
are
in the clouds. What have we been talking about all this time?”

“Of course … Whatever am I thinking of?”

“Oh well, you’ve got an excuse—you’re not feeling well. Yes, the people in Selection were congratulated this morning. And the other sections, starting with Reception, have probably been commended. Perhaps the official eulogy, and the reward that goes with it, has already been sent to the greengrocer… . But what I can’t understand is why Interpretation hasn’t received any congratulations yet.”

“Hasn’t it?”

“I haven’t mentioned it before, but there’s a feeling of nervousness in this section this morning. And perhaps that’s the reason: The congratulations haven’t arrived.”

“Why not?”

“Who knows? I’ve been watching the boss; he’s looking worried. Don’t you agree?”

“Yes.”

“He’s got reason to worry. Interpretation deserves congratulations more than anyone. Unless …”

“Unless what?”

“Unless its interpretation had turned out to be wrong.”

“But in that case, how would it have been corrected? There’s no other section that deals with deciphering after Interpretation. The Master-Dream officials deal only with the choice of dreams, don’t they?”

“Yes,” said the other, somewhat surprised to see Mark-Alem reviving slightly. “It’s hard to puzzle it out. But we still don’t know why the congratulations are late… .”

They both plunged back briefly into their files. But neither could read the lines in front of them. What if he knows about my connection with the Quprilis? thought Mark-Alem. But he’d find out about it sooner or later anyway. And the boss must know already, even if he was for the moment concealing the fact that the Quprilis’ downfall was the event of the day. But perhaps the boss had troubles of his own? Come what might, Mark-Alem was sure everyone would soon be looking askance at him, if he wasn’t simply dismissed outright.

“They’ve just sent for the boss again,” whispered his neighbor. “He’s as white as a sheet; have you noticed?”