Ismail Kadarе - The Palace of Dreams

Mark-Alem straightened up and shut his file. It must be very late. To judge by his drawn features, the supervisor was as exhausted as the rest. Mark-Alem went over and handed him his file.

“Good night!” he whispered.

“Good night,” answered the other. “Do you know the way out? It’s late, and all the doors of the Tabir are shut.”

“Really?” It was the first he’d heard of it. “How do we get out then?”

“Through Reception, and then through the courtyard at the back,” said the supervisor. “You won’t have been there before, but you can’t miss it. At this hour only the lights in the corridors leading that way are still on. All you have to do is follow them.”

“Thank you.”

When Mark-Alem got out in the corridor he saw that the supervisor was right; the lamps were lighted on only one side. He made off as instructed, listening to his own footsteps as he went; they sounded different in all that solitude. What if I get lost? he thought two or three times. Perhaps it would have been better if I’d left at the same time as one of the others who know the way. The farther he went the more nervous he felt. Still following the lights, he turned off the main corridor into a side passage, then came out again into another corridor so long he could scarcely see the end of it. The whole place was deserted. The faint glow of the lights faded into the distance. He went down two or three steps into another, very narrow passage with a vaulted ceiling. Here the lights were fewer and even more dim. How long is this going to last? he wondered. At one point he almost expected to see the men carrying the coffin appear around a corner, still wandering through the endless corridors of the vast building. If I keep on walking like this I’ll go crazy, he thought. Perhaps if he just stopped and waited, someone would turn up and show him the way out. Or would it be better to go back to Interpretation and start out afresh with the other two? This last course seemed the wisest, but here again there was a problem. What if he couldn’t find the way back? The devil alone knew if these feeble lights would really lead him there.

Mark-Alem pressed on, his mouth dry despite his attempts to reassure himself. After all, what did it really matter if he did get lost? He wasn’t on some vast plain or in a forest. He was merely inside the Palace. But still the thought of getting lost terrified him. How would he get through the night amid all these walls, these rooms, these cellars full of dreams and wild imaginings? He’d rather be on a frozen plain or in a forest infested with wolves. Yes, a thousand times rather!

He hurried on faster. How long had he been walking now? Suddenly he thought he heard a noise in the distance. Perhaps it’s only an illusion, he told himself. Then, after a little while, the sound of voices burst out again, more clearly this time, though he still couldn’t tell what direction it came from.

Still following the row of lights, he went down another two or three steps and found himself in another corridor, which he deduced must be on the ground floor. The sound of voices faded for a few moments, then returned, nearer. Straining his ears, Mark-Alem walked on as fast as he could for fear of losing what now seemed to him his only hope. But the sound kept coming and going, without ever fading away completely. At one point it seemed close by, but a moment later it was far away again. Mark-Alem was practically running by now, his eyes fixed on the end of the corridor, where a faint square of light came in from outside. Please, God, let it be the back door! he prayed.

And it was. As he approached a little nearer he could see it was a door. He took a deep breath, and his whole body relaxed so suddenly he could scarcely stay upright. He tottered a few more steps in the direction of the door, which channeled into the corridor not only cold air but also the noise he’d heard intermittently before.

When he reached the threshold an extraordinary sight met his eyes. The rear courtyard of the Palace was filled with light from lamps very different from those inside—a murky brightness dimmed by fog in some places, while in others patches of wet glittered on the flagstones. The place was full of men, horses, and wagons, some with their lights on, some with them off, all rushing to and fro in nightmarish confusion. The lurid glow of the lights, together with the whinnying of the horses careering through the mist, produced an almost supernatural spectacle.

Mark-Alem stood rooted to the spot, unable to believe his eyes.

“What is it?” he asked a passerby who was carrying an armful of brooms.

The other turned and looked at him in surprise, but noticing that Mark-Alem wore the badge of the Tabir on his overcoat, answered amiably enough:

“It’s the carriers of dreams, aga —can’t you see?”

Was it really them? Why hadn’t he thought of it? There they were, rushing about in their leather tunics and muddy boots. The wagons, their wheels, too, covered with mud, all had the emblem of the Tabir at the back.

His eye lighted on a lean-to shed to the right of the courtyard; there were lights on inside, and the carriers of dreams were going in and out. That must be Reception, where the staff was said to go on working all around the clock. Mark-Alem started to walk across the slippery flagstones amid the clamor of men and vehicles, some of which were trying to find a place to draw up. He headed without thinking for the Reception shed, meaning to take refuge there. But the uproar inside was even worse than that out in the courtyard. Dozens of dream-carriers stood by the long counters. Some had already completed their business at the delivery windows, while others awaited their turn. Some were drinking coffee or salep, some were eating rolls and delicious-smelling meatballs.

Mark-Alem found himself being jostled by the hefty shoulders of men in leather tunics who gave way casually to let him by, chewing, laughing, and uttering loud oaths.

So these were the famous dream-carriers, whom ever since he was a child he’d imagined as almost divine couriers driving back and forth along the roads of the Empire in their blue wagons. Some were bespattered with mud not only on their boots but almost all over; perhaps they’d had to right an overturned wagon or get a fallen horse to its feet. Their faces showed signs of anxiety, sleeplessness, and physical exhaustion. Their speech, like everything else about them, was as different as it could be from that of the sedentary staff of the Tabir. It was coarse, arrogant, and peppered with vulgar expressions. Mark-Alem, though completely lost in the midst of such an uproar, began to catch a phrase or two here and there. News from all over the Empire was to be heard here. The messengers told about the ups and downs of their journeys, their quarrels with the dim-witted clerks they had to deal with in the provinces, with drunken innkeepers, and with sentries at the roadblocks set up in troubled pashaliks.

A hoarse voice attracted Mark-Alem’s attention. Without turning to look at its owner, he tried to make out what he was saying.

“My horses refused to go on,” said the man. “They whinnied and snorted, but they wouldn’t budge an inch. I was all alone on the steppe on the way out of Yenisehir, a remote little town where I’d collected a few dreams—five in all for a whole month, so you can tell what a dead-and-alive hole it was. So there were my horses, stuck. No matter how I lashed out with the whip they stood rooted to the spot, as they usually do when there’s a death in their path. I looked around. There was nothing there but the empty steppe: no graves, not a sign of any tomb anywhere. I was just wondering what to do when I suddenly thought of the file of dreams I’d picked up in Yenisehir. It struck me it might be because of them the horses were petrified. Aren’t sleep and death close neighbors? So I opened my bag as fast as I could, took out the Yenisehir file, then got down and went and dumped it some distance away on the plain. When I climbed back on the wagon and urged the horses forward, they started up straightaway. Blow me down, I thought, so that was it! I stopped again and went back and collected the file, but as soon as I put it back in the cart the horses started acting up again just as before. What could I do? I’ve transported thousands of dreams, but I’d never had a thing like that happen to me before. So I decided to go back to Yenisehir without the file, which I left out there in the middle of the steppe.