Ismail Kadarе - The Palace of Dreams

Mark-Alem looked at him with eyes that seemed to implore pity.

Then he and his companion went back to the shelves where the file on the battle of Kosovo was kept. And there they parted.

“When you’ve finished,” said the archivist, “go along this corridor until you reach the circular one. There you can turn either way—you’ll come to a staircase whichever direction you take.”

The assistant on duty offered Mark-Alem a small table and put the file he wanted in front of him. With trembling fingers Mark-Alem started turning the ancient pages; they were made of a heavy kind of paper that had long ago fallen into disuse. Most had stains all over them, and the ink was so faded that many words were almost illegible. Mark-Alem felt a sudden pain in the head, as if someone had hit him with an ax. He had spots before his eyes. He shut them for a moment to rest them, then opened them again. Then he started to read, but very slowly, unable to concentrate. Something seemed to be keeping the meaning of the text at a distance from his brain, making it vibrate like the echo of the archivist’s voice in the vaulted corridors. But he forced himself to persevere. The language was ancient, and many of the words were incomprehensible. Above all, the order of the words in the sentences seemed very unnatural—a real jumble. But he had to make do with what he’d got. This was the first time he’d ever consulted texts as old as this, dating from some five centuries ago. Gradually, encouraged by deciphering a bit of meaning here and there, he found himself progressing more easily. Most of the dreams were described very briefly, in two or three lines, some in just one, and this made the going less difficult than he’d thought it would be at first. If it hadn’t been for the interpretations underneath the texts, he could have read the whole file in a few hours.

Mark-Alem felt his fatigue disappear. His eyes were gradually getting used to the outmoded characters, and he was beginning to find the strange syntax amusing. Little by little the skimpy, mutilated lines drew him into their own universe. His imagination was filled with a vision of the plain of Kosovo in northern Albania, where he had never set foot: a dreamlike and confused vision, the combined product of several hundred drowsy brains. And as if this weren’t enough, these vague and meaningless visions were accompanied by interpretations which made them even more difficult to grasp. Yet, perhaps because of the common anxiety felt by all the dreamers on the brink of that fatal day, and perhaps because this anguish was shared by those appointed to scribble them down, the motley collection of individual dreams possessed a curious unity. Before dawn, when the plain was still wet only with dew, in the minds of the sleeping soldiers it had filled with pools of blood which grew thicker and darker as night fell. Into the earlier pools flowed new streams of blood, soon to grow gradually darker, but never dark enough to be indistinguishable from the old. Then, at dusk, the end of the fighting, with the defeat of the Balkan allies and the murder of the Sultan just as he was rejoicing in victory. Then came the Sultan’s tent, where his body was taken, his death kept hidden from the army; the secret meeting of the Viziers; the dispatch of a messenger to fetch Jakub Tchelebi, one of the Sultan’s two sons. “Come, your glorious father has sent for you.…” The prince entering the tent, thinking his father had really summoned him, and then his own murder, hacked to death in cold blood by the Viziers to avoid a power struggle between the two brothers…

Mark-Alem rubbed his eyes as if there were a mist veiling his sight. What was the truth, then? Could it ever be found when its very roots were in dream? What’s more, there was no clear frontier between the dream and the reality. Everything to do with the battle on the plain—the lie of the land, the bad weather, the different incidents, the eyewitness accounts—all was confused and tangled. The white souls of three hundred thousand Balkan soldiers in their last agonies formed a vast blizzard swirling over the earth. Why was the Great Sultan running wildly through the flying snowflakes as if to flee with them? “Where are you going, Padishah? Pull yourself together!” Selim the janissary had cried out in his sleep, and on waking had hastened to tell of his dream. Further on, Prince Jakub Tchelebi, drenched in blood, ran across the plain in the form of a maneless horse. And here again were pools of blood, summer, winter, the seasons intermingled, with the plain covered simultaneously with rain and sunshine, snow and greenery, flowers and icy desolation. It would have to rain for weeks, months, to wash away all that blood. And the snow would have to come and turn everything white for all that suffering to seem to be covered over. But next spring, when little streams began to trickle through the spotless drifts, they would carry little clots of blood along with them, as if the snow itself had been wounded. And that is why, O Allah, in any kind of weather, winter or summer, in wind or silent rain, that plain there in northern Albania…

Mark-Alem suddenly remembered that he and his mother were invited to the Vizier’s house that evening. It was the night of the traditional dinner party when they listened to the Balkan bards. This time, as well as the Bosnians, there’d undoubtedly be the Albanese rhapsodists Kurt had invited.

Mark-Alem shut the files and stood up. His head ached from reading too much, or perhaps because of the coal fumes, which were worse in the basement than on the higher floors. He nodded at the assistants on duty and left. His footsteps echoed along the corridor. What time could it be? He had no idea. At ground level it could easily be lunchtime, or the middle of the afternoon, or perhaps evening. For a moment he felt quite anxious: What if he was late for dinner? But he soon stopped worrying. The time couldn’t have gone by as fast as that. The dinner seemed to belong to a different universe somewhere up above, almost in the clouds, while down here, to right and left of him, behind the blank walls of the corridors, in thousands upon thousand of files, lay the sleep of the whole world. He could feel his eyelids drooping. What’s happening? he thought. What was this somnolence that was creeping over him? For a moment he was terrified, but then he told himself it must be the effect of the coal fumes…. “What are you doing here all on your own? Why don’t you come and join us? Most of us are over here….”

Mark-Alem mended his pace so as to get to the circular corridor as fast as possible, but it still didn’t appear. The farther he went the more lost he felt. What if he collapsed and lost consciousness in these empty corridors? Again he felt his eyelids growing heavy. Why on earth did I ever come down here? he asked himself. He began to walk so fast he was almost running. The sound of his own footsteps, multiplied by the echo, increased his terror. I will not go to sleep! he told himself. No, I won’t fall into your trap!

Heaven knows how long he would have rushed along like that if a man hadn’t suddenly appeared in front of him at an intersection.

“What’s the matter?” asked the stranger anxiously.

“Nothing,” said Mark-Alem. “Where’s the way out?”

“But you look so pale—have you heard what happened?”

“What? I’m just looking for the way out….”

“I wondered if you’d heard anything. You’re as white as a sheet….”

“Perhaps it’s the fumes….”

“I just thought….”

“How can I get out of here?”

“This way,” said the other.

Mark-Alem was tempted to say, “But you look pale too—why are you so upset about me?” But he didn’t want to lingèr even for a moment. Let me get out of this hole as soon as possible, he groaned inwardly.