Ismail Kadarе - The Palace of Dreams

“The courtyard’s swarming with soldiers,” he muttered.

“Yes, but they’re there for something else. It seems that even some of the high-ups in the Tabir are going to be arrested. ”

“My God—what can it mean?”

“The Quprilis have struck back. It was only to be expected.”

“Struck back?” stammered Mark-Alien. “Who? How? Against whom?”

“Hold on—don’t be in such a hurry! I’m just going to explain. Only come a bit closer—we don’t want to end up like them!… The whole of the Tabir Sarrail is in a turmoil. Last night, or early this morning rather, something very strange happened…”

The carriages that seemed like owls… thought Mark-Alem. He also remembered there was a bird, the eagle owl, known as the grand duke….

“After the blow fell on them, the Quprilis didn’t just sit idly by. They acted at once, during the night, and in some way neither you nor I nor anyone else can guess at, at least for the moment. It was apparently at dawn that they managed to carry out their plan. But as I say, it’s still all shrouded in mystery. Some confrontation, some secret and terrible exchange of blows has taken place in the darkest depths of the State. We’ve felt only the surface repercussions, as you do in an earthquake with a very deep hypocenter…. So, as I was saying, during the night a terrible clash took place between the two rival groups, the two forces that counterbalance one another within the State. The entire capital is in an uproar, but no one knows anything definite. After all, even we, who’re at the very source of the mystery, are still in the dark.”

Mark-Alem was tempted to say he had handled the beastly dream twice himself, but a moment’s reflection was enough to remind him that this would be folly.

“Even before daybreak,” his neighbor prattled on, “carriages were seen coming and going between the embassies and the Foreign Ministry. But that’s not all. Apparently the Empire’s leading banks and the big copper mines are implicated too. There’s even talk of devaluation.”

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Mark-Alem.

“So that’s how things are. Very confused, and very different from what they appear. As if they were taking place down a bottomless pit… And as I said, all we have to guide us is a handful of dreams, a few scraps of cloud….”

All that day the Palace of Dreams was racked by deep anxiety. Early in the afternoon the head of Interpretation and a number of the Tabir’s other senior officials were indeed arrested. Other arrests were expected to follow immediately. But evening came without any further developments.

Mark-Alem went home, eager to tell his mother all he knew. He was surprised that she didn’t look more delighted.

They sent someone to the Vizier’s house, hoping he might bring back some good news about Kurt, but the messenger returned saying no one knew anything about him.

Although he’d had very little rest the previous night, Mark-Alem couldn’t sleep a wink. At one point he thought he was about to drop off, but a noise in the distance brought him wide awake. He got up and went to the window, but couldn’t see anything. Then he noticed a faint red glow on the horizon, and he thought in a flash, What if the Palace of Dreams is on fire? But he soon realized the fire lay in a completely different direction. Back in bed, he tossed and turned for a long time before falling asleep. He woke before dawn, got up straightaway, shaved carefully, and prepared, much earlier than usual, to set off for the Tabir Sarrail.

No one was ever to know what really happened that night. As the days went by, the fog that had enveloped not only the details but also the very nature of the event, instead of dispersing, only grew denser.

The arrests in the Palace of Dreams went on for a whole week. The brunt of the blow fell on the Master-Dream officers. Those who escaped prison were transferred to Selection or Reception or even to the copyists’ department. Conversely, some of the staff in Selection and Interpretation were sent to fill the spaces left in the Master-Dream section. Mark-Alem was among the first to be moved in this way. Two days later, before he had got over the excitement of the move, he was sent for by head office, which had been decimated by the arrests, and the Director-General in person told him he was being made head of the Master-Dream section.

He was staggered. Such a huge leap forward in his career was almost unthinkable. The Quprilis were obviously getting their own back.

Meanwhile, there was no news of Kurt. The Vizier was always busy. Mark-Alem couldn’t understand why his uncle, when he’d been powerful enough to shake the foundations of the State, couldn’t manage to get his own brother out of prison. But perhaps he had his own reasons for taking his time. Or perhaps he thought things were best left as they were.

Mark-Alem himself was overwhelmed with work and hadn’t time to indulge in long reflections. The section had to be reorganized from top to bottom. Unexamined files were piling up. And it would soon be Friday, the day when the Master-Dream was sent to the Sovereign.

Mark-Alem’s mood had grown even more somber than before, and he was becoming increasingly unapproachable. Despite his efforts to remain his old self, he could feel that something was gradually changing, in what he said, what he did, even in the way he worked. He identified more and more with the sort of people he’d always liked least: the senior civil servants.

As the days went by he grew more and more conscious of the importance of his new post. He now had a sky-blue carriage at his disposal, waiting for him outside the Palace, and he felt it was not merely this equipage but he himself who commanded respect, silence, and fear. He was tempted to smile at this, finding it almost incredible that he, recently so fearful about the mystery of the State and the oppressive atmosphere emanating from its organs, should now cause the same apprehension in others. But he sometimes thought that was only in the nature of things. It was probably because he was so sensitive, building up so much mystery and anguish inside himself, that he now spread the overflow around him.

He was so taken up with his work he didn’t notice that the weather was growing milder. Although, after the murder of the rhapsodists, all Albania had fallen prey to insomnia, the Palace machine was working flat out. As one of the most senior officials, Mark-Alem received the ultra-secret detail report every morning. The amount of sleep registered in the various regions varied in accordance with the events that took place there. A special report had been called for on the subject of Albania’s insomnia. The street trader who’d sent in the fateful dream had been in solitary confinement for several days. They were still trying to get the explanations they needed out of him, and the record of his depositions had already filled four hundred pages. In general, a period of disturbed sleep was expected, with a steep rise in the wilder kind of dream. Mark-Alem had got into the habit, in moments of weariness, of rubbing his eyes at length, as if to remove the veil drawn over them by so much reading.

One evening when he got home as usual, he found Loke looking very pale. Again he felt in his midriff the familiar hollow of anxiety, almost forgotten in the last few weeks.