The Palace of Dreams

  Hurrying on, he knocked no more, but with a spitefulness he scarcely understood himself, he twisted every doorknob as he went along. He had a wild desire to give those silent doors a good bashing. He would certainly have set about doing so if a door hadn’t suddenly opened when he least expected it. He’d given it such a shove he almost shot into the room. His hand mechanically grabbed for the knob to try to close the door again, but it was too late. The door was now wide open, and as if that weren’t enough, a pair of eyes, amazed at the sudden irruption of this wild-looking individual, were staring at him coldly.

  “What’s going on?” said a voice from the other side of the room.

  The cold eyes continued to scrutinize Mark-Alem.

  “I’m sorry,” he stammered, recoiling. “I do apologize …” His brow was covered in perspiration. “Please forgive me!”

  “What is going on, Aga Shahin?” said the voice again.

  “Nothing of any importance,” the other answered. His eyes still fixed on the intruder, he asked: “What do you want?”

  Half dead with embarrassment, Mark-Alem opened his mouth to speak, though he wasn’t very clear what he was going to say. Fortunately, his hand went to his pocket and encountered the piece of paper with the dream on it.

  “I’ve come to consult the files … in the usual way … about a dream,” he faltered. “But I think I may have come to the wrong door. I’m sorry—it’s the first time …”

  “No, you didn’t come to the wrong door.”

  This was the other voice. At first it had come from behind some shelves, and now Mark-Alem located it for the first time. A familiar face, with bright, smiling eyes, now showed itself.

  “You!” murmured Mark-Alem, recalling his first morning and the cafeteria where they’d met. “Do you work here?”

  “Yes. So you remember me?” said the other kindly.

  “Of course. But I’ve never seen you again since that first time.”

  “I saw you once when everyone was going home, but you didn’t notice me.”

  “Really? I must have been preoccupied—I’d have liked to …”

  “You did look rather worried. How’s the work going?”

  “Quite well.”

  “Still in Selection?”

  “No, I’ve been transferred to Interpretation.”

  “Really?” said the other, surprised. “You soon got promoted. Congratulations! I’m really glad.”

  “Thanks. Is this the Archives?”

  “Yes. Did you come to look something up?”

  Mark-Alem nodded.

  “I’ll help you.”

  The archivist whispered a few words to his colleague, whose hitherto cold eyes now showed a lively curiosity.

  “What sector do you want to look in?” asked the archivist. Mark-Alem shrugged.

  “I don’t know. This is the first time I’ve been down here.”

  “I’ll give you a hand.”

  “I’d be very grateful.”

  The archivist led the way out of the room.

  “I thought I’d meet you again one day,” he said as they went along the passage.

  “I couldn’t find you in the cafeteria.”

  “No wonder, in all that crowd …”

  Their footsteps kept time as they walked.

  “Do the Archives really take up all this room?” said Mark-Alem, nodding toward the network of passages.

  “Yes. It’s a real labyrinth. You can easily get lost in it.”

  “Thank goodness I met you—I don’t know what I’d have done otherwise.”

  “Somebody else would have helped you,” replied the archivist.

  He walked on in front, while Mark-Alem fretted at not being able to express his gratitude properly.

  “Yes, there’d certainly have been somebody else who’d have helped you,” said the other. “But I’m going to show you all around the Archives.”

  “Really?” said Mark-Alem, overwhelmed. “But perhaps you’ve got things to do—I don’t want to be a nuisance.”

  “Not at all! I’m only too glad to be able to do a little favor for a friend.”

  Mark-Alem was embarrassed, and didn’t know what to say.

  “If the Tabir Sarrail is like sleep in comparison with real life,” went on the archivist, opening a door, “the Archives are like a deeper sleep still inside the sleep of the Tabir.”

  Mark-Alem followed him into an oval-shaped room with walls covered with shelves up to the ceiling.

  “There are dozens of rooms like this,” said the archivist, pointing to the shelves. “You see these files? There are thousands of them. Tens of thousands.”

  “And are they all full?”

  “Of course,” answered the other, leading the way out again. “But we’ll go to all the rooms and you can see for yourself.”

  They were now walking along a narrow passage that seemed to Mark-Alem to slope slightly downward. It was faintly illumined by the light coming from other passages or from the circular corridor.

  “Everything is here,” said the archivist, slowing down. “What I mean is: If the world were to end—if the earth collided with a comet, say, and were smashed to pieces; or if it evaporated, or disappeared into the abyss—if the globe just vanished leaving no trace but this cellar full of files, that would be enough to show what it used to be like.”

  The archivist turned around, as if to see what effect his words had had on his companion.

  “Do you see what I mean? No history book, no encyclopedia, not all the holy tomes and suchlike put together, nor any school or university or library could supply the truth about our world in so concise and complete a form as these Archives.”

  “But isn’t that truth rather distorted?” Mark-Alem ventured to ask.

  The archivist’s smile looked even more ironic in profile than it would have done seen full face.

  “Who can say it’s not what we see with our eyes open that is distorted, and that what’s described here isn’t the true essence of things?” He slowed down outside a door. “Haven’t you ever heard old men sigh that life’s a dream?”

  He opened the door, and Mark-Alem followed him in. It was an extremely long room, and as in the previous one the walls were covered from floor to ceiling with shelves full of files. One pile was stacked on the floor, apparently for lack of space. Two men were bustling around by the shelves at the far end of the room.

  “What’s your dream about?” asked the archivist. Mark-Alem touched the sheet of paper folded away in his pocket.

  “It predicts much loss of life in war.”

  “Oh, one of those dreamed just before great slaughter. They’re kept in another section, but don’t worry—we’ll find them. These dreams”—the archivist pointed to the shelves on the left—“are those of the dark people, and the dreams opposite are those of the bright people.”

  Mark-Alem would have liked to ask him what he meant, but didn’t like to. He followed him in and out of the narrow passages between the shelves. The other stopped in front of a shelf that was sagging under the weight of all the files on it.

  “This is where they keep the dreams about the end of the world according to the inhabitants of places where the winters are very windy.”

  He made as if to straighten up the shelf.

  “Sometimes,” he said, “the people who come down here are very conceited and objectionable. But I like you—you’re nice, and it’s really a pleasure to show you round.”

  “Thank you.”

  A low door led off into an adjoining room. The smell of old paper grew more and more pungent, and Mark-Alem was beginning to find it rather difficult to breathe.

  “The Resurrection of the Dead …” said the archivist. “Allah, the horrors there are here! … Well, let’s go on a bit. This is Chaos, on all these shelves here—Earth and Heaven all mixed up together. Life-in-death or death-in- life—take your pick. Female life projects. Male life projects … Let’s go on a bit farther. Erotic dreams—all this room and t
he adjoining ones are full of them. Economic crises, depreciations, income from land, banks, bankruptcies—all that kind of thing is here. And here are conspiracies, too. Coups d’état nipped in the bud. Government intrigues …”

  The archivist’s voice seemed to be coming from farther and farther away. Sometimes, especially when the two men were in the corridors leading from one room to another, Mark-Alem could scarcely hear what he was saying. The vaulted ceiling sent back a quavering echo.

  “And now … ow … ow … we’re going to see … ee … ee ? the dreams about imprisonment ?

  Every time a door creaked, Mark-Alem shuddered. “Dreams of the first period of captivity …” said the archivist, indicating the relevant shelves, “or as they’re also called, dreams of early captivity, to distinguish them from the later ones, the dreams of deep imprisonment. The two kinds are very different. In the same way as first loves are different from later ones. And from here to the end of the room are the files containing the really wild imaginings.”

  Really wild imaginings…Mark-Alem couldn’t take his eyes off the shelves. How long would he go on wandering through this inferno?

  “Yesterday the Master-Dream officers were down here researching till late at night,” the archivist told him, lowering his voice. “There’s nothing surprising about that. All the great disasters are gathered together here, beginning with what some peoples have recently taken to calling ‘national renaissance.’ This refers, you understand, not to the resurrection of a dead person, but to that of a whole nation—the sort of thing one daren’t even name… . Dreams dreamed on the eve of bloodshed, you said?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Here are the files on that. Most of them are dreams dreamed on the eve of battles, some of them just before dawn.…The battle of Kerk-Kili…The battle of Bayazit Yeldrum, against Tamburlaine. The two Hungarian campaigns …”

  “Is the battle of Kosovo here?” asked Mark-Alem faintly.

  The archivist looked up.

  “You mean the first, in 1389, against all the Balkans, if I’m not mistaken?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “It’s bound to be there. Wait a moment.”

  He turned and disappeared among the groaning shelves, evidently to look for the assistant on duty in this section. He soon came back with him.

  “This is where they keep the seven hundred or so dreams about it, dreams dreamed on the eve of the fateful day,” said the archivist, glancing alternately at Mark-Alem and the assistant, whose head, with its emaciated features, nodded in agreement with every word he said.

  “There should have been more of them, but they’ve probably been lost,” said the assistant in a piping voice. “What’s more, a lot of those that are left are very sketchy, as dreams scribbled down in the early hours may well be.”

  “Really?” exclaimed Mark-Alem eagerly.

  He’d often heard his family speak of the tragic battle.

  “The Master-Dream itself was chosen in haste, so that it could be brought to the Sultan’s tent at daybreak.”

  “Did they have time to choose a Master-Dream?” asked Mark-Alem, amazed.

  “Of course. How could they do otherwise?”

  “And is it here?”

  “No, it’s kept with the others in the Master-Dreams office.”

  “We’ll be going there too—don’t worry,” said the archivist.

  “I can describe it to you more or less,” said the assistant, his voice thinner than ever. “Only if you’re interested, of course …”

  “Yes, of course!”

  The archivist looked at him briefly and lowered his eyes sympathetically. How could you not be interested, his expression said, seeing that you’re a Quprili.

  “A soldier dreamed he saw a friend of his who’d been killed sometime before, and the friend beckoned him over behind an embankment. ‘What are you doing there all on your own?’ said the friend. ‘Aren’t you bored? Why don’t you come and join us? Most of us are over here… ’ ” The assistant related this in a voice that really did seem to come from beyond the grave. “That meant that the battle would be particularly bloody—as indeed it was.”

  “No, it was certainly no joke,” put in the archivist. “The whole Balkan army was wiped out.”

  Mark-Alem looked from one of his interlocutors to the other.

  “Even now, after five centuries, the Balkan peoples often dream of that battle,” said the assistant. “Or so I was told by a friend of mine who works on the ‘dark people. ’ ”

  “It’s quite understandable,” observed the archivist, his eyes fixed on Mark-Alem.

  “Do you want us to open the files?” asked the assistant.

  “No, not now,” said the archivist. “We’ll come back in a little while, won’t we?” He turned to his young companion. “Let’s take a look at the Archives as a whole, and then you can come back here and stay as long as you like.”

  Mark-Alem agreed.

  They went back into the passage. The archivist’s voice was accompanied by an echo again.

  “Now…ow…ow…we’re going to see…oo see…oo see…the Ottoman … an … an .. . archaeo-dreams…earns…earns. …”

  “What are they?” asked Mark-Alem after they’d gone through a door and the archivist’s voice sounded normal again.

  “Old Ottoman dreams,” he answered. “The earliest dreams of the founders of the Empire. Hence archaeo- dreams.”

  “Have they been preserved?”

  “Up to a point,” said the archivist. “To the same extent as ancient murals can be. They’re here in these files.”

  Mark-Alem made a little bow to the silent clerk who had appeared from between the shelves.

  “There aren’t very many of them, which makes them all the more valuable,” the archivist went on. “But as a matter of fact they’ve come down to us in such a mutilated form that it isn’t possible to learn much from them. Although there have been a number of attempts to restore them, like old frescoes, they’re still more or less what they always were— disjointed visions, without any connections between them. Nevertheless, they’re sacred, inasmuch as they served as the basis of the State. The present interpreters often come down and look at them, to get inspiration from the way they were explained. Isn’t that right, Fouzoul?” he asked the clerk.

  “That’s right,” said the other. “Several of them were here till quite late last night.”

  “Interpreters from our section?” inquired Mark-Alem.

  “From the Master-Dream office. Is that where you work?”

  Mark-Alem blushed.

  “No—I’m in Interpretation.”

  “The Master-Dream officers seem to have been everywhere last night,” observed the archivist—rather pointedly, Mark-Alem thought. “Thank you, Fouzoul.”

  He led the way out.

  “It’s hard to get any meaning out of the archaeo-dreams, even after they’ve been restored,” he said. “I’ve seen some of them, and they struck me as completely washed-out, like old tapestries where you can’t make out the picture anymore. Yet the interpreters spend hours and hours poring over them.”

  The archivist laughed to himself.

  “But I’d bet you anything they don’t understand a thing! They just stay there pretending to rack their brains trying to find hidden meanings, and all the time what they’re really doing is thinking about their little problems at home, the inadequacy of their salaries, and so on. Ah, here are the Master-Dreams at last!”

  Mark-Alem shuddered as though his companion had shown him a nest of vipers—only these had spent their venom long ago. Even so, they still seemed fearsome.

  “There are about forty thousand of them altogether,” sighed the archivist. “Allah!”

  Mark-Alem sighed too.

  “And now,” said the other, “let’s go and see the Sovereign’s dreams.”

  Mark-Alem expected to find a room that was particularly impressive, but it was just the same as the rest. There was
nothing special about the shelves and so on; the only difference was that the files had the Emperor’s seal on the cover. Above the seal was written the name of each Sovereign: Dreams of Sultan Murat I; Dreams oj Sultan Bajazet; Dreams of Sultan Mehmet II; Dreams oj Sultan Solyman the Magnificent …

  “These files can be opened only on the Sovereign’s orders,” said the archivist. “Anyone breaking the rule has his head cut off.”

  He drew the edge of his hand across his throat.

  They went on and visited rooms containing dreams of the giaours and of profound captivity. Also others devoted to anxieties (there were three big rooms full of those) and to hallucinations (there had been long debates about whether or not they really ought to be examined in the Tabir Sarrail at all). In the last room were the dreams of the insane.

  “Well, I think you’ve got some idea of the Archives now,” said the archivist as they left.

  Mark-Alem looked at him with eyes that seemed to implore pity.

  Then he and his companion went back to the shelves where the file on the battle of Kosovo was kept. And there they parted.

  “When you’ve finished,” said the archivist, “go along this corridor until you reach the circular one. There you can turn either way—you’ll come to a staircase whichever direction you take.”

  The assistant on duty offered Mark-Alem a small table and put the file he wanted in front of him. With trembling fingers Mark-Alem started turning the ancient pages; they were made of a heavy kind of paper that had long ago fallen into disuse. Most had stains all over them, and the ink was so faded that many words were almost illegible. Mark-Alem felt a sudden pain in the head, as if someone had hit him with an ax. He had spots before his eyes. He shut them for a moment to rest them, then opened them again. Then he started to read, but very slowly, unable to concentrate. Something seemed to be keeping the meaning of the text at a distance from his brain, making it vibrate like the echo of the archivist’s voice in the vaulted corridors. But he forced himself to persevere. The language was ancient, and many of the words were incomprehensible. Above all, the order of the words in the sentences seemed very unnatural—a real jumble. But he had to make do with what he’d got. This was the first time he’d ever consulted texts as old as this, dating from some five centuries ago. Gradually, encouraged by deciphering a bit of meaning here and there, he found himself progressing more easily. Most of the dreams were described very briefly, in two or three lines, some in just one, and this made the going less difficult than he’d thought it would be at first. If it hadn’t been for the interpretations underneath the texts, he could have read the whole file in a few hours.