Ismail Kadarе - The Palace of Dreams

The more he thought about it, the more it seemed this was the only explanation. It must be a question of flushing out subversive ideas which for some reason or other the State needed to isolate, as one isolates a plague virus in order to be able to neutralize it.

Mark-Alem had reached the top of the stairs and was now going along the long corridor together with dozens of his fellow workers, who disappeared in small groups through the various doors. The closer he got to the Interpretation rooms, the more the temporary sense of self-assurance he’d had in the cafeteria faded away, as it usually does when it derives from someone else’s sycophancy. In its place came the feeling of suffocation that descended on him at the thought of becoming once again an insignificant clerk in the heart of the gigantic mechanism.

As he approached he could see his desk with his file lying on top of it. Going and sitting down at it was like stationing himself on the shore of universal sleep, on the borders of some dark region that threw up jets of menacing blackness from its unknown depths. “God Almighty protect me,” he sighed.

The weather had grown even more severe. Even though the big tiled stoves were filled with coal and lighted first thing in the morning, the Interpretation rooms were freezing. Sometimes Mark-Alem kept his overcoat on. He couldn’t understand where such extreme cold came from.

“Can’t you guess?” said someone he was having coffee with in the cafeteria one day. “It comes from the files—the same place as all our troubles come from, old boy….”

Mark-Alem pretended not to hear.

“What else can you expect to issue from the realms of sleep?” the other went on. “They’re like the countries of the dead. Poor wretches that we are, having to work on files like that!”

Mark-Alem walked away without answering. Afterward he thought the man might have been a provocateur. Every day he was more convinced that the Tabir Sarrail was full of strange people and secrets of every kind.

The things he’d heard, during this time, about the Tabir and everything that went on there! At first it had seemed as if the people who worked there never spoke about it, but as the days went by and he picked up an odd phrase in the cafeteria, and another in a corridor, or on the way out of the front doors, or coming from the next table, there gradually, unconsciously, began to build up in his mind a large and extraordinary mosaic. Some voices said, for example, that dreams, regarded as private and solitary visions on the part of an individual, belonged to a merely temporary phase in the history of mankind, and that one day they would lose this specificity and become just as available to everyone as other human activities. In the same way as a plant or a fruit remains under the earth for a while before appearing aboveground, so men’s dreams were now buried in sleep; but it didn’t follow that this would always be so. One day dreams would emerge into the light of day and take their rightful place in human thought, experience, and action. As for whether this would be a good thing or a bad, whether it would change the world for the better or the worse—God alone knew.

Others maintained that the Apocalypse itself was simply the day when dreams would be set free from the prison of sleep, that this was the form in which the Resurrection of the Dead, usually depicted in a trite and metaphysical manner, would really take place. Weren’t dreams, after all, messages sent from the dead as harbingers? The immemorial appeal of the dead, their supplication, their lamentation, their protest—whatever you cared to call it—would one day be answered in this way.

Others shared this point of view, but provided it with a completely different explanation. When dreams emerged into the harsh climate of our universe, this argument ran, they would sicken and die. And so the living would break with the anguish of the dead, and thereby with the past as well, and while some might see this as a bad thing, others would see it as a liberation, the advent of a genuinely new world.

Mark-Alem was sick and tired of all this hairsplitting. But what he found still more trying were the long insipid days when no one said anything, nothing happened, and all he had to do was crouch over his file and pass from one sleep to another. It was like being in a fog that every so often seemed about to lift but most of the time remained as thick and gloomy as ever.

It was Friday. They must be quite excited in the Master-Dream officers’ room. The Master-Dream would already have been chosen, and they’d be getting ready to send it off to the Sovereign’s palace. A carriage emblazoned with the imperial arms had been waiting outside for some time, surrounded by guards. The Master-Dream was about to go, but even afterward the section would be in a commotion; the previous tension would persist, or at least people would be curious to know how the dream would be received at the Sultan’s palace. They usually had some account by the following day: The Padishah had been pleased; or the Padishah hadn’t said anything; or, sometimes, the Padishah was dissatisfied. But that happened only rarely; very rarely.

Anyhow, it was livelier in that section than in the others; the days had some pattern to them. The week went by more quickly, looking forward to Friday. In all the other sections there was nothing but boredom, monotony, and dullness.

And yet, thought Mark-Alem, everyone dreamed of working in Interpretation. If they only knew how long the hours seemed here! And as if that weren’t enough, a permanent cloud of apprehension hung over everything. (Ever since the stoves had been lighted, it seemed to Mark-Alem that this constant anxiety gave off a smell of coal.)

He bent over his file and started to read again. By now he was comparatively familiar with the work and had less difficulty in finding meanings for the dreams. In a few days’ time he would have finished off his first file. There were only a few pages left. He read a few boring dreams about such things as black stagnant water, an ailing cockerel stuck in a peat bog, and a case where one of the guests was cured of rheumatism at a dinner attended by giaours. * What stuff! he thought, laying down his pen. It’s as if they’d saved the worst till the last. He thought of the rooms of the Master-Dream officers as someone in particularly depressing circumstances might think about a house where there was going to be a wedding. He’d never seen these rooms, and didn’t even know what part of the Palace they were in. But he was sure that unlike the other offices, they must have tall windows that reached up to the ceiling, letting in a solemn light that ennobled everyone and everything.

“Ah well…” he sighed, taking up his pen again. He made himself work without stopping until the bell rang to announce the end of the day. There were two pages still left unexamined in his file. He might as well read them now and have done.

All around him arose the racket made by the other clerks as they left their desks and made for the door. But after a little while silence was restored, and the only people left in the room were the people who’d decided to stay on late. Mark-Alem felt oppressed by the emptiness left by the departure of most of his colleagues. He’d felt the same every time he’d worked late, but what could he do? It was regarded as good form to do some voluntary overtime occasionally, not to mention the fact that the staff were sometimes required to stay on. Mark-Alem had resigned himself to sacrificing yet another evening.

Cutting short a breath that had really been a long sigh, he began to read the next to last page. That’s funny, he thought after scanning the first line. Where had he seen this dream before? A plot of wasteland near a bridge with some rubbish, and a musical instrument… He nearly let out an exclamation of surprise. This was the first time he’d come across a dream that he’d examined himself when he was in Selection. He felt as pleased as if he’d met an old acquaintance, and looked around for someone to tell about the coincidence. But there weren’t many people left now, and the nearest one was at least ten yards away.