The Palace of Dreams

iv. A DAY OFF

He woke up two or three times with a start, afraid he was going to be late for work. His hand was just reaching out to throw off the blanket when his sleep-numbed brain suddenly remembered he had the day off. He lapsed back into uneasy slumber. It was the first time since he’d started working in the Palace of Dreams that he’d been given a rest day.

At last he opened his eyes. The daylight reaching his pillow was dimmed by the velvet curtains. He stretched for a moment, then threw off the blanket and got up. It must be late. He went over to the mirror and looked at his face, which was still puffy with sleep. His head felt as heavy as lead. He’d never have believed that on this, his first day off, he’d wake up feeling more jaded than on the other mornings, when he had to hurry out into the damp, foggy streets to get to the office on time.

He washed his face and felt a bit fresher. It seemed to him that if he made an effort he might be able to remember two brief dreams he’d had in the early morning. Since he’d been working in the Tabir Sarrail he hardly ever dreamed. It was as if dreams no longer dared visit him, knowing he’d fathomed their secrets and could tell them to go and find someone else to play their tricks on.

As he went down the stairs he was greeted by the agreeable smell of roasted coffee and toasted bread. His mother and Loke had been waiting for him for some time.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Good morning,” they answered, looking at him fondly. “Did you sleep well? You look nice and rested.”

He nodded, and sat down near the glowing brazier; the coffee things had been put on a low table close by. Now that he had to rush out every morning at the crack of dawn he’d almost forgotten this pleasant hour, when reflections from the silver, the coals, and the copper edges of the old brazier all combined with the pallid daylight to create the impression of an eternal morning steeped in affection.

He ate slowly, then had another cup of coffee with his mother. As usual, when she had finished she turned her cup upside down on the saucer and Loke came and read the grounds. This used to be the time when the family told one another their dreams of the previous night, but since Mark-Alem had started working in the Tabir Sarrail, this custom had been abandoned. This happened after a little incident that had occurred during his first week in the Palace, when one of his aunts had arrived in great excitement to tell him about a dream she’d had that night.

“How lucky we are!” she cried. “Now we’ve got the key to the meaning of dreams in our own home, and we don’t need to go and see Gypsies and clairvoyants anymore!”

Mark-Alem had scowled and lost his temper—a rare thing for him. How dare this silly woman bring her stupid, uninteresting dreams to him? Who did she take him for?

At first the aunt was stupefied; then she went off in a huff, and her daughters had a lot of trouble calming her down.

Mark-Alem contemplated the embers, pale now under a layer of ashes.

“It’s quite mild today,” said his mother. “Are you going out for a walk?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“There isn’t any sun, but it will do you good to get some fresh air.”

He nodded.

“Yes, it’s a long time since I went for a walk.”

He sat for a moment without speaking, his eyes fixed on the brazier; then he got up, put on his coat, kissed his mother good-bye, and went out.

Yes, it was a dull day, as his mother had said. He looked up to seek at least some traces of the sun in that empty sky. Its emptiness suddenly seemed unbearable. It was some time since Mark-Alem had seen the sky over the city at this time of day, and it struck him as amazingly insipid with its scattering of insignificant clouds and its few uninteresting birds. Since starting work at the Tabir he’d gone out very early in the morning, generally in bad weather and with his head still swimming after an unsettled night, and come home at dusk, too tired to pay attention to anything. So now he looked at the city like someone returned from a brief exile. He looked right and left, almost with astonishment. By now not only the sky struck him as washed-out and insipid, but also all the rest—the walls, the roofs, the carriages, and the trees. What’s happening? he wondered. The whole world seemed to have lost all its color, as if after a long illness.

He had an icy sensation in his chest. His legs, after taking his body down the street where he lived, now led him toward the town center. The pavements on both sides of the road were overflowing with people, but they moved stiffly, with a kind of grudging precision. Just as niggardly seemed to him the movement of the traffic and the call of some wretched town crier in Islam Square, who sounded as if he were yelling out all the troubles in the world.

What had happened, then, to life, to mankind, to everything here below? There—he smiled inwardly as if at some precious secret—there, in his files, all was so different, so beautiful, so full of imagination…. The colors of the clouds, the trees, the snow, the bridges, the chimneys, the birds—all were so much more vivid and strong. And the movement of people and things was freer and more graceful, like stags running through the mist, defying the laws of space and time! How tedious, grasping, and confined this world seemed in comparison with the one he now served!

He went on gazing at people, carriages, and buildings in amazement. Everything was so ordinary, meager, and depressing! He’d been quite right not to go out and not to see anyone these last months. Perhaps that was why they gave the people who worked in the Palace of Dreams so little time off. He realized now that he didn’t know what to do with it. There seemed no point in walking about this faded city.

Mark-Alem continued to cast a cold eye on all around him. It seemed increasingly clear that there was nothing accidental about what he was feeling. That other world, however exasperating he sometimes found it, was much more acceptable than this one. He’d never have believed he could become detached so quickly from the ordinary world—after only a few months’ absence. He’d heard about former employees in the Palace of Dreams who had in a manner of speaking withdrawn from life while they were still alive, and who, whenever they found themselves among people they used to know, looked as if they had just come down from the moon. Perhaps he’d be like that himself in a few years’ time, thought Mark-Alem. What if I am? Look at the nice world you’d be leaving behind you! The passersby directed sardonic smiles at the wild-looking employees of the Palace of Dreams, but they never dreamed how arid and wretched their own lives seemed to the visionaries from the Tabir.

He had now reached the terrace of the Storks Café, where he generally used to have a coffee in the days when he was… the word that came to mind first was “alive,” but it was soon supplanted by “awake.” Yes, this was where he used to drop in for a coffee when he was only an idle young man-about-town. He went in and without looking around made straight for the corner on the left and what had once been his usual seat. He liked this café. It had comfortable leather armchairs instead of the sofas still to be found in old-fashioned tearooms.

The café owner struck Mark-Alem as looking very sallow.

“Mark-Alem!” he said in surprise, coming over with the coffeepot in his hand. “Where have you been all this time? I thought at first you must be ill—I couldn’t believe you’d taken your custom elsewhere.”

Instead of providing an explanation, Mark-Alem only smiled. The proprietor of the café smiled too, then leaned over and whispered:

“Later on I found out what had happened….” Then, seeing the other’s face darken: “Will you have your coffee with a little sugar, as usual?”

“Yes, as usual,” said Mark-Alem, without looking up.

He stifled a sigh as he watched the thin stream of coffee being poured into the cup. Then, when the café owner had gone away, he looked around to see if the usual customers were there. They nearly all were: the hodja from the neighboring mosque, with two tall men who were never heard to utter a word; Ali the acrobat, surrounded as always by a group of admirers; a squat little bald man poring as usual over some old bits of paper. These were described by the café proprietor, according to his mood, as ancient manuscripts which his learned client was arduously translating, or vestiges of an ancient lawsuit, or an abstruse and useless document found in some silly old dodderer’s wormeaten trunk.

And there are the blind men, thought Mark-Alem. They were in their usual place to the right of the counter.

“They’ve done me an awful lot of harm!” the proprietor had confided to Mark-Alem one day. “I’d have a much better class of customer if those repulsive-looking fellows hadn’t chosen to come to my café—and to sit in the best seats always, just to drive me really crazy! But there’s nothing I can do—I have no choice. The State protects them, so I can’t throw them out.”

Mark-Alem had asked what he meant by “The State protects them,” and the proprietor, who was expecting the question, told him a truly amazing story. The blind men who came to his café hadn’t lost their sight through illness, accident, or war. If that had been the case he would have welcomed them gladly. But the cause of their blindness was different, and very difficult to comprehend. They had never suffered from any physical infirmity, and at one time could see, but their eyes, unlike other people’s, had a baneful effect. And so, as Mark-Alem must know, the great Ottoman State, in order to defend itself and protect the rest of its subjects, decreed that these people were to have their eyes put out. And by way of compensation the State in its mercy awarded them each a pension for life.

“So now do you see why I can’t throw them out of my café? Goodness knows who they take themselves for! They’re proud of their sacrifice—probably take themselves for heroes!”

Mark-Alem hadn’t known anything about this decree, and at first regarded the proprietor’s story, which he probably repeated to every new client, as the creation of a deranged mind. But on looking into the matter he found the decree did exist, and that it was put into practice throughout the Empire.

Strangely enough, in spite of their black bandages, Mark-Alem didn’t find them frightening anymore. There, in theTabir, he had read about all kinds of terrifying looks, and he thought of those eyes now in their supreme horror, opening not out of human brows but out of the edge of the sky or the deepest heart of the mountains, and lighted sometimes by a sliver of moon like a waxen stalactite.

Neither the denunciation of people with the evil eye, which had horrified Mark-Alem when the café owner first told him about it (for anyone could write a letter accusing someone else of this offense); nor the monthly meeting of a government committee to decide which of the wretches who had been arrested really did have the evil eye and were to have it put out; nor even the cruelty itself, referred to as “in the public interest” in the traditional speech delivered to those who had just been blinded—none of these things horrified Mark-Alem now as they had done in the past. Sometimes he found himself thinking that a few years hence neither the wonders nor the horrors of this world would have any effect on him; they were, after all, pale copies of the wonders and horrors there, in the Tabir, which had succeeded in crossing the frontiers between this world and the other. Hell and heaven are indistinguishable there, he observed whenever he heard anyone say, “How wonderful!” or “How horrible!”

The door of the café opened, admitting some officials from the foreign consulate opposite. They still come and have coffee here, thought Mark-Alem. The acrobat’s table fell silent for a moment. In the old days Mark-Alem, too, used to be rather thrilled when foreigners came into a place where he was, and used secretly to admire their European dress. But now, strangely, he found even foreigners devoid of mystery.

This was the time of the morning when the café was at its most crowded. Mark-Alem recognized some of the staff of the Vakoufs’[1] Bank, which was no more than a stone’s throw away. Then the policeman who’d just got off traffic duty came in. The next customers were people Mark-Alem didn’t know. Stifled laughter arose from the acrobat’s table. Laugh away, he thought. For frivolous fellows like you, the world is a bed of roses.

But then, suddenly, like a dark cloud, there came back to him the dinner party two days before at the house of his powerful uncle, the Vizier. Mark-Alem hadn’t seen him for nearly a year, and he’d trembled, as always, when he got home from work and saw his carriage with the Q on the doors waiting outside the house. But he’d been even more shaken to learn from his mother that the Vizier had sent the carriage to fetch him, and was waiting to see him.

Although the Vizier had greeted him warmly, Mark-Alem thought he looked tired and morose. His eyes were dull, as if he’d slept badly. As for his speech, it was full of pauses, and he seemed to be swallowing most of what he had to say. The worries inherent in power, thought Mark-Alem. His uncle asked him about his work, and he, at first with some awkwardness and then more and more freely, started to describe its various aspects. But the Vizier listened absently, and seemed to be thinking of something else. Soon, when Mark-Alem thought he’d just told him something interesting, he blushed to realize that not only was his uncle aware of everything that went on in the Tabir Sarrail, but he knew much more about it than all the people who worked there. The Vizier then talked to him about it, speaking in a slow voice, with many pauses, and leaving many things unexplained. Nevertheless, Mark-Alem learned much more about the Tabir Sarrail in those few minutes than in all the time he’d worked there.

They were alone—something that had never happened before—each with a cup of coffee in front of him, and Mark-Alem still didn’t know why his uncle had sent for him. He was still talking in a low voice, every so often poking at the coals in the brazier, which appeared to interest him rather more than Mark-Alem did. The Vizier spoke about the Quprili family’s relations with the Palace of Dreams. As his nephew might have heard, these relations had been extremely confused for some hundreds of years. It looked as if he was about to add something, perhaps about the Quprilis’ feverish efforts to abolish the Palace of Dreams, but apparently he changed his mind, for he sat silent for some time, clutching the poker nervously and prodding at the coals.

“It’s no secret to anyone,” he said finally, “that a few years ago the Tabir Sarrail was under the influence of the banks and the owners of the copper mines, whereas more recently it has grown closer to the Sheikh-ul-Islam faction. What of it? perhaps you’re wondering. Well, it’s of the greatest importance! It’s not for nothing that one hears it said everywhere nowadays that whoever controls the Palace of Dreams possesses the keys of the State.”

Mark-Alem had indeed heard talk on this subject, but never anything as outspoken, and certainly not from the lips of so senior a government figure. He was taken aback, and as if all that wasn’t enough, the Vizier went on and asked him if he knew what became of the myriads of dreams that were examined in the Tabir Sarrail. Mark-Alem, red in the face, shrugged and said he didn’t know. He was so mortified he’d have liked to sink through the floor. As a matter of fact, he had occasionally asked himself the question, and had naively supposed that once the Master-Dream had been selected, like wheat from chaff, all the useless dreams were bundled up and sent down to the Archives. But as soon as the Vizier asked the question, he told himself it was absurd to think such a mountain of dreams, after having produced the rare flower of a Master-Dream, would just be discarded. Now the Vizier explained that while the choice of a Master-Dream was the main task of the section concerned, hence its name, it was not its only function. The Master-Dream officers were also required to write notes alerting the main institutions of the State to matters of interest, as well as reports and other secret studies on such subjects as the psychoses from which the various classes and races of the Empire suffered.

Mark-Alem drank in his uncle’s words. Naturally, the Vizier stressed, the Master-Dream was of prime importance, especially at times like this, and above all as regards their own family. He stared at his nephew for some time, as if to make sure he really understood that the Quprilis had never been concerned with ordinary dreams, but only, almost exclusively, with Master-Dreams.

“Do you see what I mean?” he said, his eyes veiling over, dark but glittering. “It’s toward the Master-Dream that they all converge… all the…”

Again his speech grew halting.

“There are a lot of rumors going around on this subject. I shan’t say whether they’re true or false, but what I do want to tell you is that a Master-Dream can bring about great changes in the life of the State….”

A gleam of irony appeared briefly in his eye.

“It was a Master-Dream that suggested the idea for the great massacre of the Albanian leaders at Monastir. I suppose you’ve heard of it? And it was a Master-Dream that caused the change of policy toward Napoleon, and the fall of Grand Vizier Yussuf. There are countless examples…. It’s not for nothing that the power of your director, who seems quite modest and doesn’t have any title, is said to rival the influence wielded by us, the most influential of the viziers….”

He gave a bitter smile.

“And if he can rival us,” he said slowly, “it’s because he has great power at his disposal, and power not founded on facts.”

Mark-Alem hung on his uncle’s lips. Great power not founded on facts… he marveled to himself as the Vizier went on, explaining that no directive ever had or ever could come from the Tabir, nor did the Tabir need it to. It launched ideas, and its own strange mechanism immediately endowed them with a sinister power, for they were drawn, according to him, from the immemorial depths of Ottoman civilization.

“As I was saying, we Quprilis have often had dealings with Master-Dreams….’’he almost hissed. “They have often struck at us.”

Mark-Alem remembered the nights of whispers and anxiety. In his mind’s eye he saw Master-Dreams as vipers striking out with their forked tongues. The Vizier’s speech was becoming more and more confused. Every so often one of his preoccupations would emerge, but he hastily covered it up again.

“You should have gone into the Tabir Sarrail before,” he said, “but perhaps even now it’s not too late….”

More interruptions and hesitations. Mark-Alem couldn’t understand what he was driving at. It was clear he didn’t want to reveal what he was really thinking. But I can see his point, thought Mark-Alem. He’s a statesman, and I’m only a humble clerk. Anyhow, he was leading him to understand—he was almost saying it explicitly—that he, Mark-Alem, hadn’t got his job in the Tabir by chance. And he must elbow his way in, try to find out all about the way it functioned, and above all keep his eyes open so that, when the time came…

But so that what? And what time? He almost asked, but didn’t dare. It was all so obscure….

“We’ll talk about it again,” said the Vizier, but Mark-Alem could sense that he still couldn’t bring himself to be open with him. He would keep coming back to a point in the conversation that he’d left in suspense, shed a few rays of light on it, then hastily shroud everything in darkness again.

“I expect you’ve heard it said that at times of crisis the power of the Tabir Sarrail tends either to decline or to increase. This is one of those times, and unfortunately the power of the Tabir is growing.”

Mark-Alem didn’t dare ask what the crisis was. He seemed to have heard about some project for big reforms that had greatly annoyed the clergy and the army, but he didn’t really know much about it. Could the Quprilis be mixed up in that?

“This is a crucial time,” said the Vizier. “The Master-Dream may strike again….”

Mark-Alem concentrated, so as not to miss a word. There was a long silence.

“The question is,” said the Vizier at last, “which of the two worlds dominates the other….”

Off he goes again, groaned Mark-Alem to himself. Just as he seemed on the point of saying something!

“Some people,” the Vizier went on, “think it’s the world of anxieties and dreams—your world, in short—that governs this one. I myself think it’s from this world that everything is governed. I think it’s this world that chooses the dreams and anxieties and imaginings that ought to be brought to the surface, as a bucket draws water from a well. Do you see what I mean? It’s this world that selects what it wants from the abyss.”

The Vizier leaned closer to his nephew. His eyes now shone with a fearsome yellow light, the color of sulfur.

“They say the Master-Dream is sometimes a complete fabrication,” he whispered. “Has that ever occurred to you?”

Mark-Alem went cold with fright. A fabrication? The Master-Dream? He could never have imagined a human mind daring to think such a thing, let alone say it in so many words. Still, the Vizier went on telling him the things that were said about the Master-Dream. Every now and then Mark-Alem thought, My God, it’s obvious that that’s what he thinks himself!… He still hadn’t got over his amazement, and the Vizier’s voice reached him as through the roar of an avalanche. So people said some Master-Dreams were forgeries; that they were fabricated in the Tabir Sarrail by the employees themselves, in accordance with the interests of powerful rival political groups or with the mood of the Sovereign; that if not entirely, they were at least partly doctored.

Mark-Alem had an almost irresistible desire to fling himself at the Vizier’s feet and implore him:

“Get me out of there, Uncle! Save me!”

But he knew very well he could never do such a thing, even if he knew his work was going to lead him to the scaffold.

As he went home from the Vizier’s house that night he felt anguish still nagging at him. The carriage bowled along through now unlighted streets, and sitting there in that black landau with a Q marked on each side like a fatal brand, he felt as if he were some solitary night bird flying in limbo between two worlds, and no one knew which world governed the other….

He had to keep his eyes open for when the time came… But how would he know when the time came? What angel or demon would come to warn him, how would he recognize them, and with whom should he get in touch through the mists of the Tabir Sarrail?

Mark-Alem remembered this episode in the café, turning his empty cup round and round. Even now, several days later, his chest was constricted with the same apprehension. Then something made him turn toward the table occupied by the acrobat Ali’s admirers, who had stopped chatting and were all goggling at him.

Mark-Alem was vexed. Apparently the cafe owner had told them he was working in the Tabir Sarrail. Mark-Alem knew the fellow couldn’t hold his tongue, but even so… ! Still, he could go to the devil, he and the other busybodies with him! He probably wouldn’t come to the café again more than two or three times in the next few months. Perhaps not so often; perhaps not at all.

The place gradually emptied as lunchtime approached. The foreign diplomats left; so did the bank clerks. The acrobat’s admirers also got up and went, after one last astonished glance at Mark-Alem. Only the blind men didn’t move. They’d stopped talking some time ago, and now sat stiff-necked, the way people do when they are angry with all and sundry. Those silent faces seemed to be saying: “Well, are affairs of State going better now that our eyes, which were supposed to harm them, have been put out? From all we hear the world is still the same as it used to be, if not worse.”

At last Mark-Alem paid for his coffee, left, and began walking slowly home. After a while he was sorry he hadn’t taken a cab. When he turned into his own street he heard voices whispering: “He works in the Tabir Sarrail now….” He pretended not to have heard, and walked on with his head held high. The chestnut seller and the policemen at the corner greeted him with special respect. They too must have found out where he worked, and in their eyes there was a kind of wonder, as if they could scarcely believe they were still seeing him in the flesh instead of in some immaterial form.

He noticed a shape beyond the panes of a window in the house opposite. He knew that two pretty sisters lived there. He usually liked to think of them, but today even the window that generally attracted him seemed empty.

So my first visit to the world of the living is nearly over, he thought as he opened the door into the courtyard. As he moved, there was a sound like the rustle of wings, as if breezes from the beyond still clung to his body. A few nights ago, at the Vizier’s house, he’d been shattered at the thought that he was risking death, but now the idea left him completely indifferent. The world was so dreary it wasn’t worth tormenting oneself at the thought of losing it.

He opened the house door and went in without looking around to see what he was leaving behind him. Tomorrow… he thought, conjuring up the cold rooms and the files on the desks that awaited him. Tomorrow he’d be back in that strange world where time, logic, and everything else obeyed quite different laws. And he told himself that if he was ever given another day off, he wouldn’t go into the town again.