The Palace of Dreams (20 page)

“Blinded by his mother! My God!” exclaimed the Austrian. “But it’s like the
Oresteia! Das ist die Orestiaden!
”

Mark-Alem was now quite close to them, so as not to miss a word of what they said. Kurt was just about to go on with his commentary when there was a sudden noise. Heads turned in all directions, some toward the doors, some toward the windows. Then the noise came again, mingled with shrill cries, and then amid all the din there was a loud banging at the outer door.

“What is it? What’s happening?” cried anxious voices. Then all were silent. The rhapsodist stopped singing. There was another knocking, louder than before.

“My God, what can it be?” gasped someone.

Everyone turned toward the Vizier, whose face had suddenly turned deathly pale. There was a distant sound of a door opening, then a brief cry, followed by the tramp of approaching footsteps. The guests stood petrified, gazing at the drawing-room doors. These were finally shoved open roughly, and a group of armed men appeared on the threshold. Something—perhaps the lights in the room, or the sight of the guests, or the cry that issued from some unknown throat—seemed to stop them in their tracks for a moment. Then one of them came forward, scanned the room apparently without finding what he was looking for, and said:

“The Sovereign’s police!”

No one said anything.

“Vizier Quprili?” said the officer, having now evidently found the person he sought. He took a couple of steps toward the Vizier, bowed deeply, and said:

“Excellency, I have orders from the Sovereign. Allow me to execute them.”

Then he brought out from his breast a decree, which he proceeded to unfold as the Vizier looked on. His white face didn’t change now; it had changed as much as it could already.

The officer took his impassiveness as permission.

“Your papers!” he shouted, turning suddenly to the guests and nodding to his men to enter.

There were about half a dozen of them, all armed, and wearing the badges of the imperial police on their caps and collars.

“I’m a foreign citizen,” the voice of the Austrian could be heard protesting amid the rising hubbub.

Mark-Alem looked around in vain for his mother. A voice that was meant to be severe but which tried to avoid brutality was saying at intervals: “This way! This way!”

Someone had opened a side door leading into the adjoining salon, and a group of guests was being herded into it.

“Kurt Quprili!” shouted one of the policemen, pointing Kurt out to his chief. “He’s the one.”

The officer went over to him, taking some handcuffs out of his pocket on the way.

Mark-Alem saw the officer grab Kurt’s wrists adroitly with one hand and fix the handcuffs on them with the other. Strangely enough, Kurt didn’t offer the slightest resistance. All he did was look at the handcuffs in surprise. Mark-Alem, like some of the other guests, turned to the Vizier, expecting him to put an end to this absurd scene. But the Vizier’s face remained expressionless. Anyone else might have thought the powerful Vizier’s failure to respond to an outrage committed under his own roof had something to do with fear. But Mark-Alem guessed there was another reason for his resignation. This was the ancient reflex of the Quprilis, who in similar circumstances, scores of times in the history of their family, assumed the mask of unreality. Its features reflected fatalism, abstraction, and weariness.

Mark-Alem felt like shouting, “Wake up, Uncle, pull yourself together!—don’t you see what’s happening?” But in the eyes of the Vizier, even while with everyone else he watched Kurt being led out, there was a trace of what looked like submission. You suspected he was really looking into the distance, into some mysterious depths where the official machine that had engendered this misfortune might have been set in motion.

I only hope he’s thinking of a way to stop it, thought Mark-Alem, approaching the Vizier in an attempt to see if this were so. And perhaps because he was so close, perhaps by mere chance, their eyes briefly met. In that short time, in the look that sprang as through a rift in his uncle’s brow, it seemed to Mark-Alem that he understood the meaning of their previous incomprehensible interview. And suddenly, painfully, he was transfixed by the thought that all this had to do with the Palace of Dreams and with himself, Mark-Alem; and that this time the Quprilis had probably been caught out… .

He felt two hands pushing him roughly toward the door into the other room. As he went in he caught a glimpse of the rhapsodists, still standing alone amid a small crowd of guests.

“Mark!” He heard his mother’s gentle voice as soon as he entered the smaller salon. He would have expected a cry or a sob, but she sounded almost calm. “What’s happening in the other room?”

He shrugged and didn’t answer.

“I was worried about you,” she whispered. “What misfortune has befallen us now?”

He could see that most of the guests had now moved into this room. Every so often a voice could be heard asking, “What’s going on in there? How much longer is this going to last?”

“Have they taken Kurt away?” asked Mark-Alem’s mother.

“I think so.”

She’s keeping herself under control, he thought. She’s not a Quprili for nothing. But he noticed she was as white as a sheet.

All of a sudden, through the communicating doors between the two drawing rooms, they could hear piercing cries, followed by a scuffle and a groan.

Mark-Alem made to join those of the guests who were rushing toward the doors, but his mother held him back.

From the other room came more cries, then the sound of a body falling to the floor.

“Was ist los?”
said the Austrian.

“The doors are locked.”

Every face was pale with fear.

Mark-Alem felt his mother’s fingers gripping his arm like a vise. From beyond the door came another heartrending cry, cut off short.

“Who was that?” someone asked. “That voice …”

“It wasn’t the Vizier.”

They heard the sound of a body falling heavily, and a terrifying “Ah!”

“My God, what’s going on?”

For a few moments everyone was silent. Then, through the silence, a voice said:

“They’re murdering the rhapsodists.”

Mark-Alem buried his face in his hands. From the other room came the clatter of boots receding in the distance. Someone started twisting the door handles.

“Open up, for the love of God!”

The door into the main drawing room was still locked. But another one opened, onto an inner corridor, and a voice shouted: “This way!”

The guests filed out like shadows, except one who had fainted and slumped onto a chair. The corridor was feebly lighted and full of the sound of footsteps. “Have they killed Kurt?” asked someone. “No—but they took him away.” “This way, ladies and gentlemen,” said a valet. “You can get out this way.”
“Wo ist Kurt?”

The little procession of guests came out into the main corridor by the larger drawing room, in which some vague figures could be seen through the frosted glass in the doors. Mark-Alem wrenched free from his mother’s grasp and went over to find out what was happening. One of the doors was ajar, and through the gap he could see part of the drawing room. Everything was turned upside down. Then he caught sight of the lifeless bodies of two rhapsodists stretched out close together on the floor. A third corpse lay a little way farther off, near an overturned brazier; its face was half covered with ashes.

The policemen had gone. Only the footmen were left, walking silently over a carpet strewn with broken glass. Mark-Alem caught a glimpse of a motionless image of the Vizier hanging on the wall, and by pushing the door a bit farther open he could see the Vizier himself, still in the same rigid attitude as before. My God, it all happened in front of his very eyes! thought Mark-Alem. And it seemed to him the Vizier’s eyes had something in common with the splinters of glass scattered all over the floor.

Suddenly he felt his mother’s hand seize him and pull him resolutely toward her. He hadn’t the strength to resist. He felt like vomiting.

The hall was almost empty. Through the open front door he could see the lights of the carriages driving away one after the other.

“Everyone else has gone,” breathed his mother almost inaudibly. “What are
we
going to do?”

He didn’t answer.

One of the footmen put out the center lights. Beyond the doors of the main drawing room, still the same silent coming and going. After a few minutes the footmen brought out the corpses of the rhapsodists, carrying them by their arms and legs. The face of the third, the one that was half covered with ashes, looked particularly horrible. Mark-Alem’s mother turned her head away. He himself was hard put to it not to vomit, but despite everything, he felt he couldn’t leave. The last footman came out with the musical instruments. Soon afterward all the servants went back into the drawing room.

“What shall we do?” whispered Mark-Alem’s mother.

He didn’t know what to answer.

The drawing-room doors were now wide open, and they could see the footmen rolling up the bloodstained carpet.

“I can’t go on looking at this much longer,” she said. “It’s too much for me.”

They were putting out the lights in the drawing room, too, now. Mark-Alem looked around, incapable of making any decision. The other guests must all be gone by now. Perhaps he and his mother would do well to leave too? But perhaps they ought to stay, as near relatives usually do when there’s a misfortune in the family. Even if they wanted to go home they couldn’t have done so. They lived a long way away—too far to walk, especially on a night like this. As for finding a cab, there was no point in even thinking about it.

Most of the lights were out now. Just a few lamps were left burning here and there on the stairs and in the corridors. The huge house grew full of whispers. A few flunkeys came and went like shadows, carrying candlesticks which cast yellow gleams along the passages.

Mark-Alem’s mother groaned from time to time. “My God—what was that ghastly business?”

After a while a door creaked and the Vizier emerged out of the shadows of the drawing room. Moving slowly, like a sleepwalker, he went straight up the darkened staircase.

Mark-Alem’s mother touched his hand.

“The Vizier! Did you see him?”

A few moments later a footman hurtled down the stairs and out of the front door. Almost at once they heard the sound of a carriage driving rapidly away.

Mark-Alem and his mother stayed for some time in the semidarkness, watching the little flames of candles being carried hither and thither. No one bothered about them. In silence they went out of the front door, which had been left ajar, and made their way to the tall iron gate. The sentries were still on duty. Mark-Alem didn’t have a very clear idea of the way home. His mother remembered even less, having always made the journey in a closed carriage.

After an hour they were still walking, and beginning to wonder if they were lost. Soon they heard the sound of carriage wheels approaching fast. They flattened themselves against the wall to let the vehicle pass, and as it did so Mark-Alem thought he saw a Q carved on one of its doors.

“I believe that was the Vizier’s carriage,” he whispered. “Perhaps the same one that set out a little while ago.”

His mother didn’t answer. She was shivering in the cold and damp.

A short time later another carriage brushed by them equally impetuously, and although there were no street lights, Mark-Alem thought he saw the letter Q again. Despite the darkness he even waved his arms in the hope that the carriage would stop and drive them home. But it galloped off into the mist. Mark-Alem concluded it was foolish to expect help from anyone tonight, this night of anguish full of capital Qs swooping by like birds of ill omen.

* * *

It
was long
past midnight when they reached home at last. Loke, who’d had a presentiment that something was wrong, was still up. They gave her a brief account of what had happened and asked her to make some coffee to warm them up. There were still some embers left in the brazier, covered with ashes so that Loke could use them to start the fire up again in the morning. But the embers weren’t enough to warm their shivering limbs.

Mark-Alem lost no time going up to bed; but he couldn’t get to sleep.

When he got up at daybreak he found his mother and Loke just where he’d left them, huddled around the almost dead coals.

“Where are you going, Mark?” said his mother in a terrified voice.

“To the office,” he answered. “Where do you think?”

“Are you out of your mind? On a day like this!”

She and Loke both tried to persuade him not to go that day—just that day—to his wretched work; to say he wasn’t well; to give some more serious reason for his absence; but at all costs to stay away. But he wouldn’t be persuaded. They both implored him again, especially his mother, kissing his hands and bathing them in tears, and saying that on such a day the Tabir Sarrail might not even be open. But the more she begged, the more he insisted on going. Finally he managed to tear himself away and leave the house.

Outside it was more than usually cold. He walked briskly along the street, which as usual at this hour was almost empty. The few passersby, their faces muffled up in shawls, still looked drowsy. His own head was no clearer than theirs. He still hadn’t got over the scene of the night before. Just as certain marine creatures secrete a protective cloud around them, so his brain seemed to have invented a way of avoiding lucid thought. Sometimes he even wondered if anything had really happened at all. It might just have been one of those wild imaginings that filled so many files in the Tabir Sarrail. But the truth finally pierced his brain like a needle, after which his mind fell back into a daze, followed by a lull, which in turn was followed by the shooting pain once more. He’d noticed that in attacks of this kind, the awakening after the first night was particularly disagreeable. He felt as if he were in some fluid intermediate state between sleeping and waking. And his own state seemed to be reflected in the world around him—in the walls of the buildings patched with damp, and the ashen faces of the passersby. These grew more numerous as he approached the middle of the town. He could tell by the way they hurried along—perhaps it had something to do with the fact that they all had the same office hours—which were the ones who worked in ministries and other government offices.