The Palace of Dreams (2 page)

As a matter of fact, there was no need for him to worry. He hadn’t been told to present himself at the office at any particular time; he wasn’t even sure he had to be there in the morning. He suddenly realized he had no idea of the hours that were kept at the Tabir Sarrail.

Somewhere in the mist, away to his left, a clock let out a brazen chime, addressed as if to itself. Mark-Alem walked on faster. He’d already turned up his fur collar, but now involuntarily made as if to turn it up again. In fact, though, it wasn’t his neck that was cold, but a specific place in his chest. He felt in the inside pocket of his jacket to make sure his letter of recommendation was still there.

He suddenly noticed there were fewer people about than before. All the clerks are in their offices already, he thought with a pang. But he soon calmed down; his position was quite different from theirs. He wasn’t a civil servant yet.

In the distance he thought he could make out a wing of the Tabir Sarrail, and when he got nearer he found he was right. It really was the Palace, with its faded cupolas which looked as if they’d once been blue, or at least bluish, but which were now almost invisible through the sleet. This was one of the sides of the building. The front must face on to the street around the comer.

He crossed a small, almost deserted esplanade, over which rose the strangely slender minaret of a mosque. Yes, here was the entrance to the Palace. Its two wings stretched away into the mist, while the main part of the building stood back a little as if recoiling from some threat. Mark-Alem felt his anxiety increase. Before him lay a long series of identical entrances, but when he got nearer he realized that all these great doors, wet from the sleet, were closed, and looked as if they hadn’t been opened for some time.

As he strolled by them, examining them out of the comer of his eye, a man with a cowl over his head suddenly materialized beside him.

“Which is the way in?” asked Mark-Alem.

The man pointed to the right. The sleeve of his cape was so ample it remained unaffected by the movement of the arm within, and his hand was dwarfed by the enormous folds of cloth. Good heavens, what a strange getup, thought Mark- Alem as he went in the direction indicated. After a while he heard more footsteps nearby. It was another hooded man.

“Over here,” he said. “This is the staff entrance.”

Mark-Alem, flattered at being taken for a member of staff, finally found the entrance. The doors looked very heavy. There were four of them, all exactly alike and fitted with heavy bronze knobs. He tried one of them and found it, strangely, lighter than he’d expected. He then found himself in a chilly corridor with a ceiling so high he felt as if he were at the bottom of a pit. On either side there was a long row of doors. He tried the handles of all of them until one opened, admitting him to another, less icy corridor. At last, beyond a glass partition, he saw some people. They were sitting in a circle, talking. They must be ushers or at least some kind of reception staff, for they were all wearing a sort of pale blue livery much the same color as the Palace cupolas. For a moment Mark-Alem thought he could see marks on their uniforms like those he’d noticed in the distance on the cupolas themselves and ascribed to damp. But he didn’t have time to pursue his examination, for the people he was observing had stopped talking and were looking at him inquiringly. He opened his mouth to greet them, but they were so obviously annoyed at having their conversation interrupted that instead of saying good morning he merely mentioned the name of the official to whom he was supposed to present himself.

“Oh, it’s about a job, is it?” said one of them. “First floor on the right, door eleven!”

Like anyone entering a large government office for the first time, but all the more so because he had arrived in a state of numb uncertainty, Mark-Alem would have liked to exchange a few words with someone. But these people seemed so impatient to resume their confounded conversation he felt they were actually ejecting him back into the corridor.

He heard a voice behind him: “Over there—on the right!” Without looking around he walked on as directed. Only the tension he was under and the cold shudders still running through his body prevented him from feeling annoyed.

The corridor on the first floor was long and dark, with dozens of doors opening off it, tall and unnumbered. He counted ten and stopped outside the eleventh. He’d have liked to make sure it really was the office of the person he was looking for before he knocked, but the corridor was empty and there was no one to ask. He drew a deep breath, stretched out his hand, and gave a gentle tap. But no voice could be heard from within. He looked first to his right, then to his left, and knocked again, more loudly this time. Still no answer. He knocked a third time and, still hearing nothing, tried the door. Strangely enough it opened easily. He was terrified, and made as if to close it again. He even put out his hand to clutch it back as it creaked open wider still on its hinges. Then he noticed the room was empty. He hesitated. Should he go in? He couldn’t think of any rule or custom that applied to this situation. Finally the door stopped creaking. He stood gazing wide-eyed at the benches lining the walls of the empty office. After lingering a moment in the doorway he felt for his letter of recommendation, and this restored his courage. He went in. Dash it all, he thought. Seeing in his mind’s eye his large house in Royal Street and the influential relatives who often gathered there after dinner in the huge drawing room with its tall chimneypiece, he sat down on one of the benches with a comparatively casual air. Unfortunately, the image of his house and relatives soon faded, and he was once more seized with apprehension. He thought he detected a muffled sound like a whisper, but couldn’t tell where it came from. Then, looking around the room he discovered a side door, from beyond which seemed to come the sound of voices. He sat still for a moment, straining his ears, but the murmur remained as indistinct as ever. By now his whole attention was concentrated on this door, on the other side of which he for some reason supposed it must be warmer.

He put his hands on his knees and sat like that for some time. At any rate he’d managed without too much trouble to get inside a building to which very few people had access. It was said even ministers themselves weren’t allowed in without a special pass. Two or three times he glanced at the door where the sound of the voices came from, but he felt he could stay there for hours or even days without standing up and going over to open it. He’d just sit on the bench and wait, thanking his stars for letting him get as far as this anteroom. He hadn’t expected it to be so easy. But had it really been as easy as all that? Then he reproached himself: a walk through the drizzle, a few closed doors, some ushers in copper- sulfate—colored liveries, this empty waiting room—you couldn’t really call that difficult.

And yet, without quite knowing why, he heaved a sigh.

At that moment the door opened. He stood up. Someone poked his head in, looked at him, then vanished again, leaving the door ajar. Inside, Mark-Alem heard him say: “There’s someone out in the anteroom!”

Mark-Alem didn’t know how long he waited. The door remained ajar, but instead of human voices he could now hear a strange crackling sound. The man he’d glimpsed before finally reappeared—a very short man holding a sheaf of papers which fortunately, as Mark-Alem said to himself, absorbed most of his attention. Nevertheless, he did dart a searching glance at Mark-Alem, who was tempted to offer some apology for having made him leave what was probably a nice warm office. But the midget’s expression froze the words on Mark-Alem’s lips. Instead, his hand slowly plucked the letter of recommendation from his pocket and held it out. The other seemed about to take it when he suddenly snatched back his arm as if afraid of being burned. He craned forward and scanned the letter for two or three seconds, then drew away. Mark-Alem thought he detected a mocking gleam in his eye.

“Come with me!” said the little man, heading for the door that led into the corridor.

Mark-Alem followed him out. At first he tried to memorize their route so as to be able to find his own way out, but he soon gave up the attempt as useless.

The corridor was even longer than it had seemed before. A faint light reached it from other passages branching off it. Mark-Alem and his guide finally turned along one of these. After a while the little man stopped in front of a door and went in, leaving it open for the visitor. Mark-Alem hesitated a moment, but when the other beckoned, he entered too.

Even before he felt the warmth he recognized the smell of red-hot coals coming from a big copper brazier in the middle of the room. A square-faced man with a morose expression was sitting at a wooden table. Mark-Alem had the feeling he’d been sitting waiting for them with his eyes fixed on the door before they’d even crossed the threshold.

The midget, with whom Mark-Alem reckoned he’d by now broken the ice, went over to the other man and whispered something in his ear. The man sitting at the table went on staring at the door as if someone were still knocking at it. He listened a moment longer to what the little man was saying, then muttered a few words himself, but in such a way that his face remained completely immobile. Mark-Alem began to think his enterprise was coming to nothing; that neither the letter of recommendation nor any of the other intercessions on his behalf carried any weight in those eyes, whose only interest seemed to reside in the door.

Then suddenly he heard himself being spoken to. His hand groped nervously inside his coat and brought out the letter of recommendation. But he immediately had the impression that he’d done the wrong thing and changed the atmosphere for the worse. For a split second he thought he must have misheard, but just as he was about to put the letter back in his pocket the midget reached out for the envelope. Mark-Alem, reassured, held it out nearer, but his relief was premature, for the other, as before, drew back and wouldn’t touch the letter. Instead, he waved his hand in the air as if to indicate its proper destination. Mark-Alem, somewhat taken aback, realized he was supposed to hand the letter directly to the other official, who was no doubt superior in rank to his escort.

Rather to Mark-Alem’s surprise, the senior civil servant actually took the letter. Even more amazingly, for the visitor had begun to think he would never take his eyes off the door, he opened the envelope and began to investigate its contents. Mark-Alem scrutinized him all the time he was reading in the hope of finding some clue in his face. But instead, something happened that he found really terrifying, filling him with the kind of faint but rapidly mounting panic that is often produced by an earthquake. And what Mark-Alem was feeling was indeed caused by a kind of upheaval. For as he read the letter, the official with the morose expression had slowly risen from his chair. The movement was so slow and so smooth it seemed to Mark-Alem that it would never end, and that the formidable official on whom his fate depended was going to turn into a monster of some kind before his very eyes. He was on the point of yelling, “Never mind! I don’t want the job. Give me back my letter. I can’t bear to watch you uncoiling like that!, ’ when he saw that the process of standing was now over and the official was finally upright.

Mark-Alem was astonished, after all this, to find his host was of merely average height. He drew a deep breath, but once more his relief was premature. Now that he was standing, the official began to walk away from his desk at a pace as deliberate as before. He was making for the middle of the room. But the man who’d brought Mark-Alem here seemed unsurprised, and moved aside to let his superior pass. Now Mark-Alem felt quite reassured. The man must just be stretching his legs after sitting down for too long, or perhaps he suffered from piles, or gout. And to think, Mark-Alem said to himself, I nearly let out a howl of terror! My nerves really have been in a terrible state recently!

For the first time that morning he was able to face his interlocutor with his usual self-assurance. The official still had the letter of recommendation in his hand. Mark-Alem was expecting him to say, “Yes, I know all about it—the job’s yours,” or at least to give him some hope, make him some promise for the next few weeks or months. His many cousins wouldn’t have exerted themselves for nothing, moving heaven and earth for over two months to arrange this appointment. And perhaps it was more important for this functionary, by whom he’d been so unnecessarily terrified, to remain on good terms with Mark-Alem’s influential family than it was for Mark-Alem himself to get on the right side
of him.
As he watched him Mark-Alem was now so much at ease that for a moment he felt his face might break into a smile. And he’d have allowed it to do so if he hadn’t suddenly been shattered by a new and horribly unexpected development. The official carefully folded up the letter of recommendation, and just as Mark-Alem was expecting some kindly comment, tore it across, twice. Mark-Alem shuddered. His lips moved as if to ask a question or perhaps just to get some air, but the official, as if he hadn’t done enough already, went over and threw the pieces into the brazier. A mischievous flame spurted from the ash-choked embers, then died away leaving scraps of blackened paper.

“We don’t accept recommendations at the Tabir Sarrail,” said the official in a voice that reminded Mark-Alem of a clock chiming through the dark.

He was petrified. He didn’t know what he ought to do— stay there, decamp without more ado, protest, or apologize. As if he had read his thoughts, the man who had brought him here silently left the room, leaving him alone with the official. They were now face-to-face, separated by the brazier. But this didn’t last long. With the same interminable movement as before, the official moved back to his place behind the desk. But he didn’t sit down, He merely cleared his throat as if preparing to deliver a speech, then, glancing back and forth between the door and Mark-Alem, said:

“We don’t accept recommendations at the Tabir Sarrail. It’s completely contrary to the spirit of this institution.”