The Palace of Dreams (14 page)

iv.

He woke up two or three
times with a start, afraid he was going to be late for work. His hand was just reaching out to throw off the blanket when his sleep-numbed brain suddenly remembered he had the day off. He lapsed back into uneasy slumber. It was the first time since he’d started working in the Palace of Dreams that he’d been given a rest day.

At last he opened his eyes. The daylight reaching his pillow was dimmed by the velvet curtains. He stretched for a moment, then threw off the blanket and got up. It must be late. He went over to the mirror and looked at his face, which was still puffy with sleep. His head felt as heavy as lead. He’d never have believed that on this, his first day off, he’d wake up feeling more jaded than on the other mornings, when he had to hurry out into the damp, foggy streets to get to the office on time.

He washed his face and felt a bit fresher. It seemed to him that if he made an effort he might be able to remember two brief dreams he’d had in the early morning. Since he’d been working in the Tabir Sarrail he hardly ever dreamed. It was as if dreams no longer dared visit him, knowing he’d fathomed their secrets and could tell them to go and find someone else to play their tricks on.

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.”

Mark-Alem had asked what he meant by “The State protects them,” and the proprietor, who was expecting the question, told him a truly amazing story. The blind men who came to his café hadn’t lost their sight through illness, accident, or war. If that had been the case he would have welcomed them gladly. But the cause of their blindness was different, and very difficult to comprehend. They had never suffered from any physical infirmity, and at one time could see, but their eyes, unlike other people’s, had a baneful effect. And so, as Mark-Alem must know, the great Ottoman State, in order to defend itself and protect the rest of its subjects, decreed that these people were to have their eyes put out. And by way of compensation the State in its mercy awarded them each a pension for life.

“So now do you see why I can’t throw them out of my café? Goodness knows who they take themselves for! They’re proud of their sacrifice—probably take themselves for heroes!”

Mark-Alem hadn’t known anything about this decree, and at first regarded the proprietor’s story, which he probably repeated to every new client, as the creation of a deranged mind. But on looking into the matter he found the decree did exist, and that it was put into practice throughout the Empire.

Strangely enough, in spite of their black bandages, Mark-Alem didn’t find them frightening anymore.
There,
in theTabir, he had read about all kinds of terrifying looks, and he thought of those eyes now in their supreme horror, opening not out of human brows but out of the edge of the sky or the deepest heart of the mountains, and lighted sometimes by a sliver of moon like a waxen stalactite.

Neither the denunciation of people with the evil eye, which had horrified Mark-Alem when the café owner first told him about it (for anyone could write a letter accusing someone else of this offense); nor the monthly meeting of a government committee to decide which of the wretches who had been arrested really did have the evil eye and were to have it put out; nor even the cruelty itself, referred to as “in the public interest” in the traditional speech delivered to those who had just been blinded—none of these things horrified Mark-Alem now as they had done in the past. Sometimes he found himself thinking that a few years hence neither the wonders nor the horrors of this world would have any effect on him; they were, after all, pale copies of the wonders and horrors
there,
in the Tabir, which had succeeded in crossing the frontiers between this world and the other. Hell and heaven are indistinguishable there, he observed whenever he heard anyone say, “How wonderful!” or “How horrible!”

The door of the café opened, admitting some officials from the foreign consulate opposite. They still come and have coffee here, thought Mark-Alem. The acrobat’s table fell silent for a moment. In the old days Mark-Alem, too, used to be rather thrilled when foreigners came into a place where he was, and used secretly to admire their European dress. But now, strangely, he found even foreigners devoid of mystery.

This was the time of the morning when the café was at its most crowded. Mark-Alem recognized some of the staff of the Vakoufs’
*
Bank, which was no more than a stone’s throw away. Then the policeman who’d just got off traffic duty came in. The next customers were people Mark-Alem didn’t know. Stifled laughter arose from the acrobat’s table. Laugh away, he thought. For frivolous fellows like you, the world is a bed of roses.

But
then, suddenly,
like a dark cloud, there came back to him the dinner party two days before at the house of his powerful uncle, the Vizier. Mark-Alem hadn’t seen him for nearly a year, and he’d trembled, as always, when he got home from work and saw his carriage with the Q on the doors waiting outside the house. But he’d been even more shaken to learn from his mother that the Vizier had sent the carriage to fetch him, and was waiting to see him.

Although the Vizier had greeted him warmly, Mark-Alem thought he looked tired and morose. His eyes were dull, as if he’d slept badly. As for his speech, it was full of pauses, and he seemed to be swallowing most of what he had to say. The worries inherent in power, thought Mark-Alem. His uncle asked him about his work, and he, at first with some awkwardness and then more and more freely, started to describe its various aspects. But the Vizier listened absently, and seemed to be thinking of something else. Soon, when Mark-Alem thought he’d just told him something interesting, he blushed to realize that not only was his uncle aware of everything that went on in the Tabir Sarrail, but he knew much more about it than all the people who worked there. The Vizier then talked to him about it, speaking in a slow voice, with many pauses, and leaving many things unexplained. Nevertheless, Mark-Alem learned much more about the Tabir Sarrail in those few minutes than in all the time he’d worked there.

They were alone—something that had never happened before—each with a cup of coffee in front of him, and Mark-Alem still didn’t know why his uncle had sent for him. He was still talking in a low voice, every so often poking at the coals in the brazier, which appeared to interest him rather more than Mark-Alem did. The Vizier spoke about the Quprili family’s relations with the Palace of Dreams. As his nephew might have heard, these relations had been extremely confused for some hundreds of years. It looked as if he was about to add something, perhaps about the Quprilis’ feverish efforts to abolish the Palace of Dreams, but apparently he changed his mind, for he sat silent for some time, clutching the poker nervously and prodding at the coals.