Ismail Kadarе - The Palace of Dreams

One day, on a sudden impulse, he got up from his desk and went slowly down to the Archives. There he met with the same oppressive smell of coal as before. The clerks stood there in front of him, self-effacing, like shadows, ready to do his bidding. He asked for the file containing the Master-Dreams for the last few months. When it was brought, he told the staff to leave him to work in peace, and began to leaf steadily through the pages. His trembling fingers showed his growing tension. His heartbeats slackened. At the top of each page, on the right, was written, among various other details, the date of the dream it recorded. Last Friday in December. First Friday in January. Second Friday in January. And here at last was the dream he was looking for, the fateful Master-Dream that had led his uncle to the grave and raised him, Mark-Alem, to be a director of the Tabir. He found it difficult to read the dream; it was as if there were a white bandage over his eyes that let in only thin shafts of light.

It really was the dream of the greengrocer who had a stall in the capital—the dream he’d held in his hand twice before—together with the rough interpretation which he already knew: the bridge, from the word Qupri, meaning Quprili; the musical instrument, signifying the Albanian epic; the red bull which, maddened by the music, would rush upon the State. My God! he breathed. It had all been engraved on his mind before, but seeing it here in black and white made him tremble from head to foot. He closed the file and walked slowly away.

Since he’d been appointed to the head of the Tabir Sarrail, he’d learned a great many terrifying secrets, but until now he’d never succeeded in clearing up the mystery of that night, with the attack on the Quprilis followed by their counterattack.

The greengrocer was still being interrogated in his cell. The record of his depositions now covered more than eight hundred pages, and still there was no sign that it was going to be brought to an end. One day Mark-Alem sent for the file and spent several hours studying it. It was the first time he’d ever seen such a document. The hundreds of pages were full of minute details about the greengrocer’s daily life. Everything was included, or almost everything: the kinds of fruit and vegetables he sold—cabbages, cauliflowers, peppers, lettuces; the times when they were delivered; how they were unloaded; how fresh the various items were; quarrels with suppliers; fluctuations in prices; customers and what they said, and how it reflected family problems, economic difficulties, hidden illnesses, conflicts, crises, alliances; scraps of overheard gossip; things that drunks, road-sweepers and idlers said as night fell; the sayings of unknown passersby which for some reason or other had remained in his memory; and again all the vegetables and what they tasted like at the beginning and at the end of the season; how they were moistened to make them seem fresh; the doltishness of the peasants who brought them in; haggling over prices; the throw-outs; how dew made lettuces weigh more; the whims and fancies of housewives; the squabbles; the rows—and all of these things gone over and over interminably.

When he’d shut the bulky file, Mark-Alem felt as if he were emerging from a vast meadow damp with dew, an innocent field which you’d never have dreamed could have harbored a viper. Although reading the file had tired him, he felt in a way refreshed, and was surprised to find he was inclined to pity the greengrocer, who seemed not to have the slightest idea of the consequences of his dream. But before Mark-Alem went on to read the explanation of the dream, which probably took up hundreds more pages, he had to consider whether the greengrocer really had dreamed the dream in question. But after all, that didn’t matter now; things had taken their course, and there was no going back.

In the days that followed, Mark-Alem stopped thinking about the greengrocer. Spring was on the way, probably bringing all kinds of tension to the Palace of Dreams, and he wouldn’t have time for trivialities. All the reports that were brought to him bristled with problems. Albania’s insomnia continued; such a thing had never been seen before. Admittedly it wasn’t up to the Palace of Dreams to set these matters right, yet as long as the tension lasted, the Tabir had to keep very careful records of the increasing sleeplessness. To crown all, the Director of the Imperial Bank, in the course of a long interview he’d had with Mark-Alem a few days before, had mentioned the possibility of devaluation as the probable result of the serious economic crisis the Empire was going through. So it was up to the Palace of Dreams to take note of this state of affairs and pay extra-careful attention to dreams on this subject. Mark-Alem knew, from his brief experience in Selection and Interpretation, that there were always hundreds of such dreams in the files.

Other important State institutions, more indirectly, called his attention to the unrest currently prevailing in Jewish and Armenian intellectual circles (God, were they asking for some new massacre?) and to a certain slackening of the links between the major pashaliks and the metropolis. Probably for the umpteenth time, these institutions renewed their warnings against the weakening of religious feeling among the younger generation. It was well known that such warnings derived from the Sheikh-ul-Islam.

Mark-Alem, absorbed by all these preoccupations, was unaware of the approach of spring. The weather was slightly warmer, the migrating storks had returned, but he didn’t notice.

One afternoon, at the same time and almost at the same place in the corridor as before, he saw some men silently carrying a coffin out of one of the cells. The greengrocer, he said to himself, without looking after them to make sure or to find out more. A little while later, as he was being jolted along in his carriage, the sight of the little procession came back to him. But he drove it away. Outside, in the crimson light of the setting sun, he could see the first shoots of grass in the gardens of the houses, though the trees were still bare.

At home he found his eldest uncle, the governor, and his wife, together with some other close relations. The governor hadn’t been back to the capital since Kurt’s execution. They were all talking about Mark-Alem’s betrothal. His mother’s eyes were damp, as if spring had reached her at least. He listened absently to what they were saying, without contributing to the conversation himself. With some surprise, as if at some sudden revelation, he realized he was twenty-eight years old. Since he’d started working in the Palace of Dreams, where time obeyed completely different laws, he’d practically never given a thought to his age.

Encouraged by his silence, the others started to speak more confidently about the girl they had in mind for him. She was nineteen, and fair—he liked blondes. They led the conversation around to the subject very carefully, as if they were holding a crystal goblet in their hands. Mark-Alem didn’t say either yes or no. And in the days that followed, as if to avoid jeopardizing what they thought was their success, they refrained from mentioning the matter further.

At home, apart from the two dinner parties that his mother held in honor of her eldest brother, that week was uneventful. The sculptor usually employed to see to the family’s graves came to submit suggestions for the inscription on Kurt’s tombstone and the bronze ornaments to be added to it.

The following week Mark-Alem got home late every evening. He had more work than he could cope with. The Sovereign had asked for a long report on the sleep and dreams of the whole Empire. People were working overtime in every section of the Tabir Sarrail. The Director-General was still unwell, and Mark-Alem had to write the final version of the report.