The Palace of Dreams (13 page)

Mark-Alem pressed on, his mouth dry despite his attempts to reassure himself. After all, what did it really matter if he did get lost? He wasn’t on some vast plain or in a forest. He was merely inside the Palace. But still the thought of getting lost terrified him. How would he get through the night amid all these walls, these rooms, these cellars full of dreams and wild imaginings? He’d rather be on a frozen plain or in a forest infested with wolves. Yes, a thousand times rather!

He hurried on faster. How long had he been walking now? Suddenly he thought he heard a noise in the distance. Perhaps it’s only an illusion, he told himself. Then, after a little while, the sound of voices burst out again, more clearly this time, though he still couldn’t tell what direction it came from.

Still following the row of lights, he went down another two or three steps and found himself in another corridor, which he deduced must be on the ground floor. The sound of voices faded for a few moments, then returned, nearer. Straining his ears, Mark-Alem walked on as fast as he could for fear of losing what now seemed to him his only hope. But the sound kept coming and going, without ever fading away completely. At one point it seemed close by, but a moment later it was far away again. Mark-Alem was practically running by now, his eyes fixed on the end of the corridor, where a faint square of light came in from outside. Please, God, let it be the back door! he prayed.

And it was. As he approached a little nearer he could see it was a door. He took a deep breath, and his whole body relaxed so suddenly he could scarcely stay upright. He tottered a few more steps in the direction of the door, which channeled into the corridor not only cold air but also the noise he’d heard intermittently before.

When he reached the threshold an extraordinary sight met his eyes. The rear courtyard of the Palace was filled with light from lamps very different from those inside—a murky brightness dimmed by fog in some places, while in others patches of wet glittered on the flagstones. The place was full of men, horses, and wagons, some with their lights on, some with them off, all rushing to and fro in nightmarish confusion. The lurid glow of the lights, together with the whinnying of the horses careering through the mist, produced an almost supernatural spectacle.

Mark-Alem stood rooted to the spot, unable to believe his eyes.

“What is it?” he asked a passerby who was carrying an armful of brooms.

The other turned and looked at him in surprise, but noticing that Mark-Alem wore the badge of the Tabir on his overcoat, answered amiably enough:

“It’s the carriers of dreams,
aga
—can’t you see?”

Was it really them? Why hadn’t he thought of it? There they were, rushing about in their leather tunics and muddy boots. The wagons, their wheels, too, covered with mud, all had the emblem of the Tabir at the back.

His eye lighted on a lean-to shed to the right of the courtyard; there were lights on inside, and the carriers of dreams were going in and out. That must be Reception, where the staff was said to go on working all around the clock. Mark-Alem started to walk across the slippery flagstones amid the clamor of men and vehicles, some of which were trying to find a place to draw up. He headed without thinking for the Reception shed, meaning to take refuge there. But the uproar inside was even worse than that out in the courtyard. Dozens of dream-carriers stood by the long counters. Some had already completed their business at the delivery windows, while others awaited their turn. Some were drinking coffee or
salep,
some were eating rolls and delicious-smelling meatballs.

Mark-Alem found himself being jostled by the hefty shoulders of men in leather tunics who gave way casually to let him by, chewing, laughing, and uttering loud oaths.

So these were the famous dream-carriers, whom ever since he was a child he’d imagined as almost divine couriers driving back and forth along the roads of the Empire in their blue wagons. Some were bespattered with mud not only on their boots but almost all over; perhaps they’d had to right an overturned wagon or get a fallen horse to its feet. Their faces showed signs of anxiety, sleeplessness, and physical exhaustion. Their speech, like everything else about them, was as different as it could be from that of the sedentary staff of the Tabir. It was coarse, arrogant, and peppered with vulgar expressions. Mark-Alem, though completely lost in the midst of such an uproar, began to catch a phrase or two here and there. News from all over the Empire was to be heard here. The messengers told about the ups and downs of their journeys, their quarrels with the dim-witted clerks they had to deal with in the provinces, with drunken innkeepers, and with sentries at the roadblocks set up in troubled pashaliks.

A hoarse voice attracted Mark-Alem’s attention. Without turning to look at its owner, he tried to make out what he was saying.

“My horses refused to go on,” said the man. “They whinnied and snorted, but they wouldn’t budge an inch. I was all alone on the steppe on the way out of Yenisehir, a remote little town where I’d collected a few dreams—five in all for a whole month, so you can tell what a dead-and-alive hole it was. So there were my horses, stuck. No matter how I lashed out with the whip they stood rooted to the spot, as they usually do when there’s a death in their path. I looked around. There was nothing there but the empty steppe: no graves, not a sign of any tomb anywhere. I was just wondering what to do when I suddenly thought of the file of dreams I’d picked up in Yenisehir. It struck me it might be because of them the horses were petrified. Aren’t sleep and death close neighbors? So I opened my bag as fast as I could, took out the Yenisehir file, then got down and went and dumped it some distance away on the plain. When I climbed back on the wagon and urged the horses forward, they started up straightaway. Blow me down, I thought, so that was it! I stopped again and went back and collected the file, but as soon as I put it back in the cart the horses started acting up again just as before. What could I do? I’ve transported thousands of dreams, but I’d never had a thing like that happen to me before. So I decided to go back to Yenisehir without the file, which I left out there in the middle of the steppe.

“So then there was a row with the head of the Yenisehir office of the Tabir. I told him, ‘I can’t take your dreams… . Come and see for yourself—my horses refuse to move as soon as I put your file in the wagon.’ So the silly oaf yells, ‘That makes five weeks that no one will take my dreams, and now you want to leave them on my hands too! I’ll complain, I’ll write to Head Office, to the Sheikh-ul-Islam himself!’ ‘Complain as much as you like,’ I said. ‘My horses won’t stir and you needn’t think your five lousy dreams are going to stop me from delivering all the rest.’ You should have heard him then! ‘Oh, yes, of course,’ he said. ‘That’s all you care about
our
dreams. Naturally you find them crude—you prefer the dreams of artists and courtiers in the capital. But in the highest circles it’s been said it’s our dreams that are the real ones, because they come from the depths of the Empire, not from dandies covered in paint and powder!’ The swine kept on and on—I don’t know how I kept my hands off him!

“Well, I didn’t hit him, but I did give him a piece of my mind, I was so furious at being held up! I told him what I thought of him and his rotten little subprefecture inhabited by a handful of drunks and dodderers whose dreams were so rotten they even frightened the horses! I said that after this, if it was up to me, I wouldn’t let Yenisehir have its dreams examined for at least another ten years! He was so angry he started to foam at the mouth worse than the horses! He said he was going to write a report to the authorities about what I’d said, but I said if he did I’d tell about how he’d insulted the Tabir. ‘What!’ he yelled. ‘Me insult the sacred Tabir Sarrail? How dare you say such a thing!’ ‘Yes, you said it was the haunt of courtiers and painted dandies!’ That was too much for that fool of a yokel, and he started to weep and ask for mercy. ‘Have pity on me,
aga,
’ he said. ‘I’ve got a wife and children, don’t do a thing like that… .’ ”

For a while the carrier’s words were drowned in laughter.

“And what happened then?” someone asked.

“Then the subprefect and the imam came on the scene. Someone had told them about the row that was going on. When they heard what it was all about they scratched their heads at first and didn't know what to do. They didn’t like to force me to take the file, because that would have amounted to keeping me there. For both of them were sure the horses would never leave if the file was up behind them. On the other hand, they couldn’t admit that the dreams sent in by their subprefecture were so evil they prevented the couriers from going about their business. But my time was precious. I was carrying more than a thousand dreams from other regions, and delay might be dangerous. So I told them to come with me to the part of the plain where I’d left the file, to see for themselves.

“They agreed to come; we all piled into the wagon, and I drove them to the place. The file was still there. I picked it up, got into the wagon with it, and whipped up the horses. They started to whinny and lather where they stood, as if the devil had got up behind them. Then I gave the file back to the subprefect and the iman, and the horses set off at a gallop. I did think of making off there and then, leaving the two officials standing there openmouthed with their file in their hands, but I thought that might get me into trouble, so I turned back. ‘Did you see?’ I said. ‘Are you convinced now?’ They were dumbfounded.
‘Allah!’
they muttered. As they tried to think of a way out of the impasse, the head of the local section, terrified that he might be the first to suffer for having allowed such a diabolical letter to be sent to the Tabir at all, decided to get the letters out of the file one by one to identify the cause of the trouble and prevent the others from being implicated. We all approved of this idea, and duly took the dreams out of the bag. It wasn’t difficult to find the culprit and remove it from the file. And then I was able to go on my way.

“That was no dream—it was pure poison!” said someone.

“And what will they do with it now?” asked another. “No wagon will be able to carry it, I suppose?”

“Let it stay where it is,” said the man with the hoarse voice.

“But with that strange power it might be important. …”

“Let it be what it likes,” said the courier. “If it’s made of gold and the horses refuse to carry it, that means it’s not a dream—it’s the devil incarnate! Horns and all!”

“But …”

“There’s no buts about it. If the horses won’t bring it, it’ll just have to be left to rot where it is, in that godforsaken hole of a Yenisehir!”

“No, that’s not right,” said an elderly courier. “I don’t know how they manage things now, but if anything like that happened in my day we fell back on the foot couriers.”

“Were there really foot couriers then?”

“Of course. The horses didn’t often refuse to carry dreams, but it did happen sometimes. And then they made use of foot couriers. There were
some
good things about the old days.”

“And how long would it take a foot courier to get the dream from there to here?”

“It depends on exactly how far it is, of course. But I think the journey from Yenisehir should take about a year and a half.”

There were two or three whistles of amazement.

“Don’t sound so surprised,” said the old man. “The government can catch a hare with an oxcart!”

They started to talk about something else, and Mark-Alem pressed on a bit farther. There was the same loud chatter everywhere, from the doors to the middle of the room and around the Reception windows, where the couriers handed in their files according to some order, the rules of which were not apparent. One fellow—Mark-Alem heard someone say he’d got drunk at an inn and lost his bag with the files inside—sat apart from all the rest, his eyes red as fire, drinking and grumbling at the same time.

From the courtyard came a constant hubbub of voices mingled with the sound of wheels on the flagstones. Some wagons had just arrived from distant parts; others were setting off again after making their deliveries. The neighing of the horses struck terror into Mark-Alem’s very soul. And this is going to go on until dawn, he thought. Eventually he pushed his way through the crowd and set out for home.

^*
Contemptuous term denoting Christians.

A DAY OFF