Ismail Kadarе - The Palace of Dreams

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.”