The Palace of Dreams

i. MORNING

The curtains were letting in the uncertain light of dawn, and as usual he pulled up the blanket in the hope of dozing on a while longer. But he soon realized he wouldn’t be able to. He’d remembered that this sunrise heralded no ordinary day, and the thought drove away all desire for sleep.

A moment later, as he groped by the bed for his slippers, he felt an ironical grimace flit briefly over his still-numb face. He was dragging himself from his slumbers in order to go to work at the Tabir Sarrail, the famous bureau of sleep and dreams. To anyone else the paradox might have seemed wryly entertaining, but he was too anxious to smile outright.

A pleasant aroma of tea and toast floated up from downstairs. He knew both his mother and his old nurse were awaiting him eagerly, and he did his best to greet them with some show of warmth.

“Good morning, Mother! Good morning, Loke!”

“Good morning, Mark-Alem. Did you sleep well?”

There was a gleam of excitement in their eyes, connected, no doubt, with his new appointment. Perhaps, like himself not long before, they’d been thinking this was the last night when he’d enjoy the peaceful sleep of ordinary mortals. From now on his life was bound to be different.

As he ate his breakfast he couldn’t concentrate his thoughts on anything, and his anxiety continued to grow. When he went upstairs to dress, instead of going back to his room he went into the big drawing room. The pale blue tones of the carpet had lost their power to soothe. He went over to the bookshelves and, just as he had done the day before in front of the medicine cabinet, stood for some time gazing at the titles on the spines of the books. Then he put out his hand and took down a heavy folio volume bound in dark-brown, almost black, leather. It was years since he’d last opened it. It contained the history of his family, and on the cover some unknown hand had inscribed the title, The Quprilis from Generation to Generation, followed by the French word, Chronique.

As he turned the pages he had difficulty following the lines of manuscript, the style of which varied with the different authors. It wasn’t hard to guess that most of the writers had been old men, or else younger ones confronting the end of their lives or on the brink of some great misfortune—the sort of occasion when people feel an irresistible need to leave some testimony behind them.

Mark-Alem heaved a deep sigh. His hand went on turning the pages, but his eyes paused only on the names of viziers and generals. Lord, they were all Quprilis! he thought. And when he woke up he’d been stupid enough to wonder at his own appointment! He really must be a prize idiot.

When he came upon the words Palace of Dreams, he realized he’d been trying both to find and to avoid them. But it was too late to skip to the next page.

Mark-Alem’s anxiety, which a short while ago had been distracted by all those names and titles, now seized him by the throat once more.

He started leafing through the Chronicle again, but this time roughly and fast, as though a gale had suddenly started to blow through the tips of his fingers.

Mark-Alem slammed the book shut and hurried from the drawing room. A few moments later he was out in the street.

It was a wet morning, with a light sleet falling. The tall buildings, looking down on the bustle in the streets with their heavy doors and wickets still shut, seemed to add to the gloom.

Mark-Alem buttoned his overcoat right up to the neck. As he glanced at the swirls of delicate flakes fluttering around the wrought-iron streetlamps, he felt a cold shudder run down his spine.

As usual at this hour of the day the avenue was full of clerks from the ministries hurrying to get to their offices on time. Mark-Alem wondered several times as he went along whether he ought to have taken a cab. The Tabir Sarrail was farther away than he’d thought, and a thin layer of half-melted snow was making the pavements slippery.

He was now walking past the Central Bank. A little farther on, a line of frost-covered carriages stood outside another imposing building. He wondered which ministry it was.

Someone in front of him skidded on the pavement. Mark-Alem watched him as he tried to recover his balance, fell, picked himself up, examined—muttering an oath as he did so—first his bespattered cape and then the place on which he’d slipped, and finally continued on his way, somewhat dazed. Keep your eyes open! Mark-Alem said inwardly, not quite sure if he was warning the stranger or himself.

As a matter of fact, there was no need for him to worry. He hadn’t been told to present himself at the office at any particular time; he wasn’t even sure he had to be there in the morning. He suddenly realized he had no idea of the hours that were kept at the Tabir Sarrail.

Somewhere in the mist, away to his left, a clock let out a brazen chime, addressed as if to itself. Mark-Alem walked on faster. He’d already turned up his fur collar, but now involuntarily made as if to turn it up again. In fact, though, it wasn’t his neck that was cold, but a specific place in his chest. He felt in the inside pocket of his jacket to make sure his letter of recommendation was still there.

He suddenly noticed there were fewer people about than before. All the clerks are in their offices already, he thought with a pang. But he soon calmed down; his position was quite different from theirs. He wasn’t a civil servant yet.

In the distance he thought he could make out a wing of the Tabir Sarrail, and when he got nearer he found he was right. It really was the Palace, with its faded cupolas which looked as if they’d once been blue, or at least bluish, but which were now almost invisible through the sleet. This was one of the sides of the building. The front must face on to the street around the comer.

He crossed a small, almost deserted esplanade, over which rose the strangely slender minaret of a mosque. Yes, here was the entrance to the Palace. Its two wings stretched away into the mist, while the main part of the building stood back a little as if recoiling from some threat. Mark-Alem felt his anxiety increase. Before him lay a long series of identical entrances, but when he got nearer he realized that all these great doors, wet from the sleet, were closed, and looked as if they hadn’t been opened for some time.

As he strolled by them, examining them out of the comer of his eye, a man with a cowl over his head suddenly materialized beside him.

“Which is the way in?” asked Mark-Alem.

The man pointed to the right. The sleeve of his cape was so ample it remained unaffected by the movement of the arm within, and his hand was dwarfed by the enormous folds of cloth. Good heavens, what a strange getup, thought Mark- Alem as he went in the direction indicated. After a while he heard more footsteps nearby. It was another hooded man.

“Over here,” he said. “This is the staff entrance.”

Mark-Alem, flattered at being taken for a member of staff, finally found the entrance. The doors looked very heavy. There were four of them, all exactly alike and fitted with heavy bronze knobs. He tried one of them and found it, strangely, lighter than he’d expected. He then found himself in a chilly corridor with a ceiling so high he felt as if he were at the bottom of a pit. On either side there was a long row of doors. He tried the handles of all of them until one opened, admitting him to another, less icy corridor. At last, beyond a glass partition, he saw some people. They were sitting in a circle, talking. They must be ushers or at least some kind of reception staff, for they were all wearing a sort of pale blue livery much the same color as the Palace cupolas. For a moment Mark-Alem thought he could see marks on their uniforms like those he’d noticed in the distance on the cupolas themselves and ascribed to damp. But he didn’t have time to pursue his examination, for the people he was observing had stopped talking and were looking at him inquiringly. He opened his mouth to greet them, but they were so obviously annoyed at having their conversation interrupted that instead of saying good morning he merely mentioned the name of the official to whom he was supposed to present himself.

“Oh, it’s about a job, is it?” said one of them. “First floor on the right, door eleven!”

Like anyone entering a large government office for the first time, but all the more so because he had arrived in a state of numb uncertainty, Mark-Alem would have liked to exchange a few words with someone. But these people seemed so impatient to resume their confounded conversation he felt they were actually ejecting him back into the corridor.

He heard a voice behind him: “Over there—on the right!” Without looking around he walked on as directed. Only the tension he was under and the cold shudders still running through his body prevented him from feeling annoyed.

The corridor on the first floor was long and dark, with dozens of doors opening off it, tall and unnumbered. He counted ten and stopped outside the eleventh. He’d have liked to make sure it really was the office of the person he was looking for before he knocked, but the corridor was empty and there was no one to ask. He drew a deep breath, stretched out his hand, and gave a gentle tap. But no voice could be heard from within. He looked first to his right, then to his left, and knocked again, more loudly this time. Still no answer. He knocked a third time and, still hearing nothing, tried the door. Strangely enough it opened easily. He was terrified, and made as if to close it again. He even put out his hand to clutch it back as it creaked open wider still on its hinges. Then he noticed the room was empty. He hesitated. Should he go in? He couldn’t think of any rule or custom that applied to this situation. Finally the door stopped creaking. He stood gazing wide-eyed at the benches lining the walls of the empty office. After lingering a moment in the doorway he felt for his letter of recommendation, and this restored his courage. He went in. Dash it all, he thought. Seeing in his mind’s eye his large house in Royal Street and the influential relatives who often gathered there after dinner in the huge drawing room with its tall chimneypiece, he sat down on one of the benches with a comparatively casual air. Unfortunately, the image of his house and relatives soon faded, and he was once more seized with apprehension. He thought he detected a muffled sound like a whisper, but couldn’t tell where it came from. Then, looking around the room he discovered a side door, from beyond which seemed to come the sound of voices. He sat still for a moment, straining his ears, but the murmur remained as indistinct as ever. By now his whole attention was concentrated on this door, on the other side of which he for some reason supposed it must be warmer.

He put his hands on his knees and sat like that for some time. At any rate he’d managed without too much trouble to get inside a building to which very few people had access. It was said even ministers themselves weren’t allowed in without a special pass. Two or three times he glanced at the door where the sound of the voices came from, but he felt he could stay there for hours or even days without standing up and going over to open it. He’d just sit on the bench and wait, thanking his stars for letting him get as far as this anteroom. He hadn’t expected it to be so easy. But had it really been as easy as all that? Then he reproached himself: a walk through the drizzle, a few closed doors, some ushers in copper- sulfate—colored liveries, this empty waiting room—you couldn’t really call that difficult.

And yet, without quite knowing why, he heaved a sigh.

At that moment the door opened. He stood up. Someone poked his head in, looked at him, then vanished again, leaving the door ajar. Inside, Mark-Alem heard him say: “There’s someone out in the anteroom!”

Mark-Alem didn’t know how long he waited. The door remained ajar, but instead of human voices he could now hear a strange crackling sound. The man he’d glimpsed before finally reappeared—a very short man holding a sheaf of papers which fortunately, as Mark-Alem said to himself, absorbed most of his attention. Nevertheless, he did dart a searching glance at Mark-Alem, who was tempted to offer some apology for having made him leave what was probably a nice warm office. But the midget’s expression froze the words on Mark-Alem’s lips. Instead, his hand slowly plucked the letter of recommendation from his pocket and held it out. The other seemed about to take it when he suddenly snatched back his arm as if afraid of being burned. He craned forward and scanned the letter for two or three seconds, then drew away. Mark-Alem thought he detected a mocking gleam in his eye.

“Come with me!” said the little man, heading for the door that led into the corridor.

Mark-Alem followed him out. At first he tried to memorize their route so as to be able to find his own way out, but he soon gave up the attempt as useless.

The corridor was even longer than it had seemed before. A faint light reached it from other passages branching off it. Mark-Alem and his guide finally turned along one of these. After a while the little man stopped in front of a door and went in, leaving it open for the visitor. Mark-Alem hesitated a moment, but when the other beckoned, he entered too.

Even before he felt the warmth he recognized the smell of red-hot coals coming from a big copper brazier in the middle of the room. A square-faced man with a morose expression was sitting at a wooden table. Mark-Alem had the feeling he’d been sitting waiting for them with his eyes fixed on the door before they’d even crossed the threshold.

The midget, with whom Mark-Alem reckoned he’d by now broken the ice, went over to the other man and whispered something in his ear. The man sitting at the table went on staring at the door as if someone were still knocking at it. He listened a moment longer to what the little man was saying, then muttered a few words himself, but in such a way that his face remained completely immobile. Mark-Alem began to think his enterprise was coming to nothing; that neither the letter of recommendation nor any of the other intercessions on his behalf carried any weight in those eyes, whose only interest seemed to reside in the door.

Then suddenly he heard himself being spoken to. His hand groped nervously inside his coat and brought out the letter of recommendation. But he immediately had the impression that he’d done the wrong thing and changed the atmosphere for the worse. For a split second he thought he must have misheard, but just as he was about to put the letter back in his pocket the midget reached out for the envelope. Mark-Alem, reassured, held it out nearer, but his relief was premature, for the other, as before, drew back and wouldn’t touch the letter. Instead, he waved his hand in the air as if to indicate its proper destination. Mark-Alem, somewhat taken aback, realized he was supposed to hand the letter directly to the other official, who was no doubt superior in rank to his escort.

Rather to Mark-Alem’s surprise, the senior civil servant actually took the letter. Even more amazingly, for the visitor had begun to think he would never take his eyes off the door, he opened the envelope and began to investigate its contents. Mark-Alem scrutinized him all the time he was reading in the hope of finding some clue in his face. But instead, something happened that he found really terrifying, filling him with the kind of faint but rapidly mounting panic that is often produced by an earthquake. And what Mark-Alem was feeling was indeed caused by a kind of upheaval. For as he read the letter, the official with the morose expression had slowly risen from his chair. The movement was so slow and so smooth it seemed to Mark-Alem that it would never end, and that the formidable official on whom his fate depended was going to turn into a monster of some kind before his very eyes. He was on the point of yelling, “Never mind! I don’t want the job. Give me back my letter. I can’t bear to watch you uncoiling like that!, ’ when he saw that the process of standing was now over and the official was finally upright.

Mark-Alem was astonished, after all this, to find his host was of merely average height. He drew a deep breath, but once more his relief was premature. Now that he was standing, the official began to walk away from his desk at a pace as deliberate as before. He was making for the middle of the room. But the man who’d brought Mark-Alem here seemed unsurprised, and moved aside to let his superior pass. Now Mark-Alem felt quite reassured. The man must just be stretching his legs after sitting down for too long, or perhaps he suffered from piles, or gout. And to think, Mark-Alem said to himself, I nearly let out a howl of terror! My nerves really have been in a terrible state recently!

For the first time that morning he was able to face his interlocutor with his usual self-assurance. The official still had the letter of recommendation in his hand. Mark-Alem was expecting him to say, “Yes, I know all about it—the job’s yours,” or at least to give him some hope, make him some promise for the next few weeks or months. His many cousins wouldn’t have exerted themselves for nothing, moving heaven and earth for over two months to arrange this appointment. And perhaps it was more important for this functionary, by whom he’d been so unnecessarily terrified, to remain on good terms with Mark-Alem’s influential family than it was for Mark-Alem himself to get on the right side of him. As he watched him Mark-Alem was now so much at ease that for a moment he felt his face might break into a smile. And he’d have allowed it to do so if he hadn’t suddenly been shattered by a new and horribly unexpected development. The official carefully folded up the letter of recommendation, and just as Mark-Alem was expecting some kindly comment, tore it across, twice. Mark-Alem shuddered. His lips moved as if to ask a question or perhaps just to get some air, but the official, as if he hadn’t done enough already, went over and threw the pieces into the brazier. A mischievous flame spurted from the ash-choked embers, then died away leaving scraps of blackened paper.

“We don’t accept recommendations at the Tabir Sarrail,” said the official in a voice that reminded Mark-Alem of a clock chiming through the dark.

He was petrified. He didn’t know what he ought to do— stay there, decamp without more ado, protest, or apologize. As if he had read his thoughts, the man who had brought him here silently left the room, leaving him alone with the official. They were now face-to-face, separated by the brazier. But this didn’t last long. With the same interminable movement as before, the official moved back to his place behind the desk. But he didn’t sit down, He merely cleared his throat as if preparing to deliver a speech, then, glancing back and forth between the door and Mark-Alem, said:

“We don’t accept recommendations at the Tabir Sarrail. It’s completely contrary to the spirit of this institution.”

Mark-Alem didn’t understand.

“The fundamental principle of the Tabir Sarrail resides not in being open to outside influences but in remaining closed to them. Not in openness but in isolation. And so, not in recommendation but in its opposite. Nevertheless, from today you’re appointed to work here.”

What’s happening to me? thought Mark-Alem. His eyes, as if to make sure again of what had taken place, took in the remains of the letter, lying in ashes on the sleeping embers.

“Yes, from this moment on you work here,” said the official again, having apparently noticed Mark-Alem’s appalled expression.

He drew a deep breath, spread his hands out over the desk (which Mark-Alem now noticed was covered with files), and went on:

“The Tabir Sarrail or Palace of Dreams, as it’s called in the language of today, is one of our great imperial State’s most important institutions….”

He was silent for a moment, scrutinizing Mark-Alem as if to assess how far he was capable of taking in the meaning of his words. Then he went on:

“The world has long recognized the importance of dreams, and the role they play in anticipating the fates of countries and of the people who govern them. You have certainly heard of the Oracle of Delphi in ancient Greece, and of the famous soothsayers of Rome, Assyria, Persia, Mongolia, and so on. Old books tell sometimes of the beneficial effects of the seers’ predictions, sometimes of the penalties incurred by those who rejected them or accepted them too late. In short, books record all the events that have ever been told of in advance, whether or not they were actually affected by the forecast. Now this long tradition undoubtedly has its own importance, but it pales into insignificance beside the operations of the Tabir Sarrail. Our imperial State is the first in the history of the whole world to have institutionalized the interpretation of dreams, and so to have brought it to such a high degree of perfection.”

Mark-Alem listened in bewilderment. He still hadn’t quite got over the previous emotions of the morning, and this matter-of-fact flood of abstruse phrases crowned all!

“The task of our Palace of Dreams, which was created directly by the reigning Sultan, is to classify and examine not the isolated dreams of certain individuals—such as those who in the past were for one reason or another granted the privilege, and who in practice enjoyed the monopoly, of prediction through interpretation of divine omens—but the ‘Tabir’ as a whole: in other words, all the dreams of all citizens without exception. This is a vast enterprise, beside which the oracles of Delphi and the predictions of all the hordes of prophets and magicians in the past are derisory. The idea behind the Sovereign’s creation of the Tabir is that Allah looses a forewarning dream on the world as casually as He unleashes a flash of lightning or draws a rainbow or suddenly sends a comet close to us, drawn from the mysterious depths of the Universe. He dispatches a signal to the earth without bothering about where it will land; He is too far away to be concerned with such details. It is up to us to find out where the dream has come to earth—to flush it out from among millions, billions of others, as one might look for a pearl lost in the desert. For the interpretation of that dream, fallen like a stray spark into the brain of one out of millions of sleepers, may help to save the country or its Sovereign from disaster; may help to avert war or plague or to create new ideas.

“So the Palace of Dreams is no mere whim or fancy; it is one of the pillars of the State. It is here, better than in any surveys, statements, or reports compiled by inspectors, policemen, or governors of pashaliks, that the true state of the Empire may be assessed. For in the nocturnal realm of sleep are to be found both the light and the darkness of humanity, its honey and its poison, its greatness and its vulnerability. All that is murky and harmful, or that will become so in a few years or centuries, makes its first appearance in men’s dreams. Every passion or wicked thought, every affliction or crime, every rebellion or catastrophe necessarily casts its shadow before it long before it manifests itself in real life. It was for that reason that the Padishah decreed that no dream, not even one dreamed in the remotest part of the Empire on the most ordinary day by the most godforsaken creature, must fail to be examined by the Tabir Sarrail. And there’s another imperial order that is still more fundamental: The table drawn up after the dreams of every day, week, and month have been collected, classified, and studied must always be absolutely accurate. To this end not only is there an enormous amount of work to be done in processing the raw material, but it is also of the utmost importance that the Tabir Sarrail should be closed to all external influence. For we know there are forces outside the Palace which for various reasons would like to infiltrate the Tabir Sarrail with their own agents, so that their own plans, ideas, and opinions might be presented as divine omens scattered by Allah among sleeping human brains. And that is why letters of recommendation are not allowed in the Tabir Sarrail.”

Mark-Alem’s eyes involuntarily shifted to the burned paper now quivering on the embers.

“You’ll be working in the Selection department,” the official went on in the same tone as before. “You might have begun in one of the less important sections, as most new employees do, but you’re going to begin in Selection because you suit us.”

Mark-Alem glanced furtively at the quivering remains of the letter, as if to say, “Haven’t you gone yet?”

“And remember,” said the other, “that what’s expected of you above all is absolute secrecy. Never forget that the Tabir Sarrail is an institution totally closed to the outside world.”

One of his hands rose from the table and wagged a menacing forefinger.

“Many, both individuals and whole factions, have tried to infiltrate us, but the Tabir Sarrail has never fallen into the trap. It stands alone and apart from human turmoil, outside all competing opinions and struggles for power, impervious to everything and without contacts with anyone. You may forget everything else I’ve just told you, but there’s one thing, my boy, which, I repeat, you must always bear in mind. And that’s secrecy. This isn’t a piece of advice. It’s the order of orders in the Tabir Sarrail…. And now, get to work. Ask in the corridor where the Selection department is. The people you’re going to work with will have been told all about you before you get there. Good luck!”

Out in the corridor Mark-Alem was at a loss. There were no passersby from whom he might ask the way to Selection, so he started off at random. Scraps of what the senior official had said were still ringing in his ears. What’s happening to me? he thought, shaking his head in an attempt to clear it. But instead of dispersing, the echoes of the words he’d just heard only clung to him all the more obstinately. He even had the impression that in this wilderness of corridors they ricocheted off the walls and colonnades, acquiring a resonance even more sinister than before: “You’ll be working in Selection, because you suit us….”

Without knowing why, Mark-Alem began to walk faster. “Selection.” He kept repeating the word in his mind, and now he was alone it struck him as sounding very odd. He caught a glimpse of a figure a long way away down the corridor, but couldn’t tell whether it was receding or approaching. He was tempted to call out to it, or at least wave, but it was much too far away. He walked faster still, almost ready to break into a run, shout, do anything so as to overtake the man who now seemed to him to represent his only chance of salvation in this endless corridor. As he hurried along he heard the sound of heavy footsteps somewhere to his left. He slowed down and listened. The footsteps, rhythmical and threatening, were coming from a side corridor opening into the main one. Mark-Alem turned and saw a group of men marching along silently, carrying large files. The covers of the files were the same color as the cupolas and the ushers’ uniforms—pale blue with a tinge of green.

As the group passed him, Mark-Alem asked timidly, “Please, could you tell me how to get to Selection?”

“Go back the way you came,” answered a hoarse voice. “I suppose you’re new here?”

Mark-Alem had to wait for the other to get over a fit of coughing to be told that the fourth corridor on the right would take him to the stairs leading up to the second floor, and that he should ask for further instructions there.

“Thank you, sir,” he said.

“Don’t mention it,” replied the stranger.

As he moved on, Mark-Alem heard him still coughing desperately and finally gasping, “I think I must have caught a cold.”

It took Mark-Alem more than a quarter of an hour to find the Selection offices. The people there were waiting for him.

“I suppose you’re Mark-Alem,” said the first clerk he came across, before he’d had time to speak.

He nodded.

“Come with me,” said the other. “The boss is waiting for you.

Mark-Alem followed obediently. They went through a series of rooms where dozens of clerks sat at long tables, poring over open files. None of them showed the slightest interest in either him or his guide, whose shoes clattered on the floor as he walked.

Like the others, the boss sat at a table with a couple of files open in front of him. The man escorting Mark-Alem went up to his superior and whispered something in his ear. But Mark-Alem had a feeling the boss hadn’t heard. His eyes went on devouring the closely written pages in one of the files, yet Mark-Alem had a fleeting impression that on the edge of his glance there lurked, like a dying wave, the outer fringe of something fearful, though its epicenter was far away.

Mark-Alem hoped his escort would whisper to the boss again, but he showed no inclination to do so. He just stood there calmly, waiting for his superior to finish with the file.

He had to wait some time. It seemed to Mark-Alem as if the boss would never look up; as if he himself would be stuck there indefinitely, perhaps until office hours were over, or even longer. The whole room was plunged in silence. The only sound was the faint one made by the boss when he turned a page. At one point Mark-Alem noticed he’d stopped reading and was just staring vaguely at the file. He seemed to be thinking over what he’d just read. This went on for some time, perhaps for as long as the time he’d spent actually reading. Eventually the boss rubbed his eyes as if to remove one last mist from them, and looked up at Mark-Alem. The fearsome wave, which had already lost much of its force when Mark-Alem first saw it, had now completely disappeared.

“Are you the new one?”

Mark-Alem nodded. Without more ado the boss stood up and began to walk between the long tables. The other two followed. They went through several rooms which Mark- Alem sometimes did and sometimes didn’t think he’d been through before.

When he saw a table in the distance with an unoccupied chair behind it and an unopened file on top, he realized this must be his place. And sure enough, the boss stopped and pointed at a spot between the table and the empty chair.

“That’s where you’ll be working,” he said.

Mark-Alem looked at the unopened file with its bluish cover.

“The Selection service occupies several rooms like this,” said the boss with a sweep of his arm. “It’s one of the most important departments in the Tabir Sarrail. Some people think Interpretation is the essential department. But it isn’t. The interpreters like to think they’re the aristocrats of this institution, and affect to look down on us selectors. But as you must know, this is pure vanity on their part. Anyone with the least gumption can see that without us here in Selection, Interpretation would be like a mill without any wheat. We’re the ones who supply them with all their raw material. We are the basis of their success.”

He waved a dismissive hand.

“Oh well… You’ll be working here, so you’ll see for yourself. I believe you’ve already been given the necessary instructions. I don’t want to overwhelm you on your first day, so I shan’t go into detail now about all your duties. I’ll just tell you what you need to know to start with, and you can pick up the rest as you go along. This is the chief room in Selection.”

Another of the sweeping gestures.

“Between ourselves, we call it the Lentil Room, because this is where the dreams are first sifted. In other words, this is where it all starts. Here in this very room…”

He blinked as if he’d lost the thread of what he’d been saying.

“Well,” he went on after a moment, “to be quite accurate I ought to say the first sifting is done by our provincial sections. There are about nineteen hundred of them all over the Empire. Each one has its own subsections, and all these cells do a preliminary sorting before they send the dreams to the Center. But the sorting they do is only provisional. The real selection begins here. Just as the farmer separates the wheat from the chaff, so we separate the dreams that contain something of interest from those that do not. It’s this winnowing process that is the essence of our Selection. Do you see?”

The boss’s eyes were growing brighter and brighter. His words, which had come with difficulty before, now crowded on him faster than he could formulate his ideas, and he kept speaking faster and faster as if to try to make use of them all.

“Yes, that’s the principal aim of our work,” he repeated, “to eliminate from the files any dreams that are devoid of interest. To begin with, all those that are purely private and have nothing to do with the State. Then dreams caused by hunger or satiety, cold or heat, illness and so on?in short, all those that are connected with the flesh. Then come the sham dreams, those that never really happened but have been invented by people to further their ambitions, or by myth-omaniacs or provocateurs. All these three categories have to be weeded out. But that’s easily said! It isn’t so easy actually to identify them. A dream may seem to be purely personal, or due to trivial causes like hunger or rheumatism, when in fact it’s directly relevant to matters of State—probably more so than the latest speech by some member of the government! But to recognize that takes experience and maturity. One error of judgment and everything can start to go wrong, do you see? To cut a long story short, ours is very highly skilled work.”

He now abandoned irony and adopted a more easy tone to explain to Mark-Alem what his practical duties would be. There was still a trace in his eyes, however, of previous tension.

“As you’ll have noticed,” he went on, “there are other rooms beside this one, and in order to get a better idea of the work you’ll be called upon to do you must spend a day or two in each of them. Then, when you’ve acquired an overall idea of what Selection is, you’ll come back here to the Lentil Room, where you’ll find the work all the easier because of your initiation. But that won’t begin until next week. Meanwhile, you’ll make a start here.”

He leaned across the table, drew the file over and flipped open its blue cover.

“This is your first file. It contains a group of dreams that arrived on October nineteenth. Read them very carefully, but whatever you do don’t be too hasty. If you think there’s the slightest chance that a dream might have been fabricated, leave it where it is and don’t be in too much of a hurry to remove it. After you there’ll be another sorter, or, to give him his proper title, a second inspector, and he’ll check what you’ve done and correct any errors. Then there’s another inspector to check up on him, and so on. In fact, all the people you see in this room are doing just that. So good luck!”

He stayed there another few seconds looking at Mark-Alem, then turned around and left. Mark-Alem was momentarily rooted to the spot, then slowly, trying not to make any noise, he edged the chair back a little, slid between it and the table, and, still very cautiously, sat down.

The file now lay open in front of him. His wish, and that of his family, had been granted. He’d been given a job in the Tabir Sarrail; he was even sitting on a chair at his desk, a genuine official in the mysterious Palace.

He bent a little closer over the file, until his eyes could make out what was written in it, then calmly began to read. The stiff first page bore the name and date of the file, followed lower down by the inscription Issued to Surkurlah. Contains 63 dreams.

With an apprehensive finger Mark-Alem turned to the next page. This, unlike the first, was covered with closely written text. The first three lines were slightly separated from the rest and underlined in green ink. They read: Dream of Yussuf, clerk in the post office at Aladjehisar, subprefecture of Kerk-Kili, pashalik of Kustendil, last September 3 just before dawn.

Mark-Alem looked up from the file. September 3, he thought bemusedly. Could it all be true? Was he really now an official in the Tabir Sarrail, installed at his own desk and reading the dream of Yussuf, who worked at the post office in Aladjehisar in the subprefecture of Kerk-Kili in the pashalik of Kustendil—reading it in order to settle his fate, to decide whether his dream was to be thrown in the wastepaper basket or inserted into and analyzed by the vast machinery of the Tabir?

He felt a quiver of pleasure run up his spine. Looking down at the file again he read: Three white foxes on the minaret of the local mosque…

Suddenly he was startled by the ringing of a bell. He looked up sharply as if he’d been tapped on the shoulder. Looking first to his left and then to his right, he was amazed by what he saw. All the people who had hitherto seemed glued to their chairs and mesmerized by the files open in front of them had suddenly broken the spell. They were now standing up, chatting and scraping their chairs on the floor as the bell went on echoing through the rooms.

“What is it?” asked Mark-Alem. “What’s going on?”

“It’s the morning break,” answered his nearest neighbor. (But where had he been until now?) “The morning break,” he repeated. “Of course you’re new, so you don’t know the timetable. But you’ll soon learn.”

On all sides the occupants of the room were moving between the long tables and making for the door. Mark-Alem did his best to go on reading, but it was impossible: others kept jostling him and knocking against his chair. But despite all this he bent over the file again, attracted to it now as by a magnet. Three white foxes… Then he heard a voice speaking just by his ear:

“You can get coffee and salep downstairs. Come on, there’s bound to be something you like.”

Mark-Alem scarcely had time to see what the speaker looked like, but he got up, closed the file, and followed everyone else to the door.

Out in the corridor he had no need to ask the way. Everybody was going in the same direction. Those in the main corridor were joined by an endless stream of others from the side corridors. Mark-Alem mingled in the human tide, now advancing shoulder to shoulder. He was impressed by the number of people employed in the Tabir Sarrail. There were hundreds of them, perhaps thousands.

The sound of footsteps grew louder, especially on the stairs. After descending one flight they went down a long straight corridor, then down another lot of stairs. Mark-Alem noticed that the windows grew narrower on every landing. It seemed to him they must be heading for some kind of basement. By now all the people were crowded together in one mass. He could make out the separate scents of coffee and salep even before they got to the refreshment room. It reminded him of breakfast in their own big house. He was filled with another wave of delight. In the distance he could see long counters with dozens of assistants handing out steaming bowls of salep and cups of coffee. He let himself be swept toward the counters. Amid the general hubbub you could hear people sipping their coffee or herb tea, brief bursts of coughing, the clink of coins. A lot of these people seemed to have colds, unless after being silent for hours on end they needed to clear their throats before starting to speak.

After being pressed into a queue, Mark-Alem found himself stuck near a counter, unable to move either forward or back. He realized other people were pushing in front of him, reaching over his head to take cups or pay for them, but he was determined not to let it bother him. Anyhow, he didn’t really want anything to eat or drink. He stayed where he was, shunted back and forth by the crowd, his only concern to do the same as everyone else.

“If you don’t move yourself you won’t get anything to drink!” said a voice behind him. “You might let me through, at any rate!”

Mark-Alem made way at once. The person who’d spoken, apparently surprised by his eagerness to oblige, looked round curiously. He had a long ruddy face with nice round cheeks. He stared at Mark-Alem for a moment.

“Have you just been taken on?”

Mark-Alem nodded.

“Yes, that’s obvious.”

He took another couple of steps toward the counter, then turned and said, “What’ll you have? Coffee or salep?”

Mark-Alem was tempted to say, “Nothing, thanks,” but that might have seemed odd. And wasn’t he supposed to be trying to be like everyone else and not draw attention to himself?

“A coffee,” he whispered, but moving his lips enough for the other to understand what he was saying.

He felt in his pocket for some change, but meanwhile his new acquaintance had turned around again and reached the counter. Mark-Alem, waiting, couldn’t help hearing snatches of the conversations going on around him. They were like fragments being ground up by some great millstone. But now and then a few audible words or even whole sentences would escape briefly, no doubt to be crushed at the next turn of the wheel. Mark-Alem strained his ears to listen and was astonished at what he heard. These people weren’t talking about the Tabir Sarrail at all, but about the most trivial and ordinary things, such as the cold weather, the quality of the coffee, the races, the national lottery, the flu epidemic in the capital. Not a single word about what went on in this building. You’d have thought they were officials in the Land Office or some ordinary ministry, not that they worked in the famous Palace of Dreams, the most mysterious institution in the whole Empire.

Mark-Alem saw his new friend emerging from the crush, a cup of coffee balanced precariously in either hand.

“This queueing—what a bore!” he said, still holding on to both cups as he tried to steer a way to a table that was free among the scores or even hundreds scattered around the room. No chairs were provided, and the tabletops were bare. They served merely as ledges to lean on, and a place to leave empty cups.

The other man finally found a free table and set down the coffees. Mark-Alem shyly offered the coins he’d been holding in his hand. The other waved them away.

“It’s nothing,” he said.

“Thank you!”

Mark-Alem picked up a cup of coffee, still clutching the money in his other hand.

“When did you start?” asked his companion.

“Today.”

“Really? Congratulations! Well, you’re right to…” He let the sentence trail off and took a sip of coffee. “What section are you in?”

“Selection.”

“Selection?” the other exclaimed, as if surprised. He smiled. “Well, you’ve certainly made a good start. People usually begin their career in Reception, or even lower down, in the copying section.”

Mark-Alem suddenly wanted to find out more about the Tabir Sarrail. A small chink had appeared in his former reticence.

“So Selection’s an important department, is it?” he asked.

The other stared at him.

“Yes, very important. Especially for a young recruit…”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean especially for someone who’s just been appointed?

“And what about in general? Not just for someone young, but in general?”

“Yes, of course. In general it’s regarded as a crucial department. Of the utmost significance.”

Now it was Mark-Alem’s turn to stare.

“Naturally there are sections that are more important still….”

“Interpretation, for instance?”

The other lowered his cup.

“Well, well—you’re not such a novice as you seem,” he said with a smile. “You’ve learned quite a lot already, considering it’s your first day!”

Mark-Alem was tempted to smile back, but realized it was too soon to make so bold. The icy carapace that seemed to cover his face this extraordinary morning hadn’t quite melted yet.

“Of course, Interpretation is the very essence of the Tabir Sarrail,” the other went on. “Its nerve center, its brain, so to speak, for it’s there that the preliminaries carried out in the other sections take on their real significance….”

Mark-Alem listened feverishly.

“And the people who work there are known as the aristocrats of the Tabir?”

His companion pursed his lips and thought for a moment.

“Yes. Something like that. Although of course…”

“What?”

“Don’t go thinking there aren’t any others above them.”

“And who are they?” asked Mark-Alem, surprised at his own audacity.

The other looked back at him calmly.

“The Tabir Sarrail is always bigger than it seems,” he said.

Mark-Alem would have liked to ask him what he meant, but was afraid of presuming too far.

“In addition to the ordinary Tabir,” went on the other, “there’s the secret Tabir. The dreams that are analyzed there are not sent in by people themselves—they’re obtained by the State through methods and means of its own. You’ll appreciate that that’s a section no less important than Interpretation!”

“Of course,” replied Mark-Alem, “although…”

“Although what?”

“Don’t all the dreams, whether they’re sent in spontaneously or collected by the secret Tabir, end up in Interpretation?”

“As a matter of fact, all the sections but one are duplicated—they all have offices both in the ordinary Tabir and in the secret one. Only the Interpretation department is a single service common to both. However, that doesn’t mean it’s superior in the hierarchy to the secret Tabir as such.”

“But perhaps it’s not inferior either?”

“Perhaps. There’s a certain amount of rivalry between them.”

“In short, both those sections constitute the aristocracy of the Tabir.”

The other man smiled.

“More or less, if that’s how you like to put it.”

He took another swig at his cup, though there was no coffee left in it now.

“But you mustn’t suppose even they are at the top,” he went on. “There are others again above them.”

Mark-Alem looked at him hard to see if he was serious.

“And who are they?”

“The Master-Dream officers.”

“What?”

“The Master-Dream officers. The section that deals with the Arch-Dream, as they’ve taken to calling it lately.”

“And what’s that?”

The other lowered his voice.

“We probably oughtn’t to be talking about that sort of thing,” he said. “But after all, you have just become a member of staff. And these are really only organizational matters—I don’t suppose there’s anything secret about them.”

“Probably not,” said Mark-Alem.

He couldn’t wait to find out more.

“Do go on,” he said encouragingly. “I do belong here, in a way. My mother belongs to the Quprili family.”

“The Quprili family!”

Mark-Alem wasn’t surprised by his interlocutor’s astonishment. He was used to meeting with this reaction whenever anyone found out about his origins.

“As soon as you said you’d gone straight into Selection, I guessed you must belong to a family close to the State. But I must admit I didn’t imagine those dizzy heights.”

“Quprili was my mother’s maiden name,” said Mark-Alem. “My own name’s different.”

“That makes no odds. It’s the same thing for all intents and purposes.”

Mark-Alem looked at him.

“Tell me some more about the Master-Dream.”

His companion drew a deep breath. Then, as if sensing his voice wasn’t going to be loud enough to need all that air, he exhaled some of it again before he spoke.

“As perhaps you know, every Friday a traditional ceremony is held, ancient but discreet, in which one dream, selected as the most important of all the thousands we’ve received and analyzed during the previous week, is presented to the Sultan. That’s the Master-or Arch-Dream.”

“I have heard of it, but only vaguely, as a kind of legend. ”

“Well, it’s not a legend—it’s a fact. And it gives work to hundreds of people in the Master-Dream department.”

He looked at Mark-Alem for some time before going on.

“And—would you believe it?—a dream like that, with its significant omens, is sometimes more useful to the Sovereign than a whole army of soldiers or all his diplomats put together.”

Mark-Alem listened openmouthed.

“So now do you see why the position of the Master-Dream officers is so superior to ours?”

What a gigantic mechanism, thought Mark-Alem. Yes, the Tabir Sarrail really was unimaginably vast.

“You never see any of them about,” the other went on. “They even have their coffee and salep in a place of their own.

“A place of their own…” Mark-Alem echoed.

His new friend had just opened his mouth to supply more information when the sound of a bell, the same one as had announced the coffee break, put a sudden stop to everything that was going on around them.

Mark-Alem had neither time nor need to ask what it meant. Even before the ringing had stopped, everyone started to rush for the exits. Those who hadn’t finished the drinks in front of them emptied their cups and glasses in one gulp. Others, who’d only just been served with beverages still too hot to drink, just abandoned them and made off like the rest. Mark-Alem’s companion had fallen silent just as suddenly, then nodded curtly and turned away. Mark-Alem would have tried to detain him and ask him one last question, but as he was about to do so he was jostled first to the left and then to the right, and so lost sight of him.

As he let himself be swept out along with the crowd, he realized he’d forgotten to ask his new acquaintance his name. If only I knew what section he works in, he sighed. Then he consoled himself with the thought that they might meet again at the next day’s coffee break and be able to have another chat.

The crowd was thinning by now, and Mark-Alem tried to find one of the faces he’d seen before in the Selection department. In vain. He had to ask the way back there twice. When he arrived he crept in quietly, trying not to be noticed. The last chairs were still being scraped into place. Nearly all the clerks were ensconced at their long tables again. Mark-Alem tiptoed to his desk, drew out his chair, and sat down. He did nothing for a few moments, then bent over his file and started to read: Three white foxes on the minaret of the local mosque… then suddenly he looked up. He felt as if someone were hailing him from a long way away, sending out some strange, faint, doleful signal like a call for help or a sob. What is it? he wondered. The question soon absorbed him absolutely. Without knowing why, he looked at the high windows. It was the first time he’d done so. Beyond the windowpanes the rain, so familiar but now so distant, mingled as it fell with delicate flakes of snow. The flakes eddied wildly in the morning light, now distant too—so far away it seemed to belong to another life, another world from which perhaps that ultimate signal had been sent out to him.

With a vague sense of guilt he looked away and bent over his file. But before he started reading again he heaved a deep sigh: Oh, God!