The Palace of Dreams (19 page)

“What!” she said, gripping his hand. “Agitation? Why?”

“I couldn’t find out anything definite. But on the way home I passed a lot of patrols.”

He felt his mother’s hand tremble against his own, and was sorry he’d spoken.

“But perhaps it’s nothing at all,” he reassured her. “Perhaps they’re just rumors.”

“But what did you hear?” she asked in a choked voice.

“Oh, silly things!” he said, trying to sound casual. “It seems the Sovereign sent back yesterday’s Master-Dream. But perhaps the story’s not true. There could be quite a different explanation for the unusual activity.”

The noise of the carriage wheels breaking the silence was unbearable.

“If the Sovereign really did send the Master-Dream back, that’s not unimportant,” said Mark-Alem’s mother.

“But there really may be nothing to it.”

“That only makes it worse. It means that what’s going on is more disturbing still.”

I shouldn’t have told her anything, though Mark-Alem.

“But what could it be that’s more disturbing?”

His mother sighed.

“How can we tell? I don’t know much about what you do in that place. You’ve mentioned the possibility of mistaken interpretations and sudden inspections. Mark, tell me the truth—you haven’t got mixed up in anything wrong, have you?”

He tried to laugh.

“Me? I really don’t know anything about all this, I swear. I spent the whole of today down in the Archives. It was only when I came back upstairs that I heard that something was going on.”

Through the noise of the wheels he heard his mother fetch another deep sigh, then murmur, “God help us!”

He could just see, through the carriage windows and in the pallid light of the streetlamps, the dark buildings to the right and the left of the road, and here and there a few pedestrians. What if the dinner has been put off? thought Mark-Alem. The closer they got to the Vizier’s palace, the more the thought obsessed him. But he comforted himself with the reflection that this was all the more unlikely because the occasion was connected with the family epic, and thus with the very foundations of the Quprili dynasty. No, it couldn’t possibly have been put off. To tell the truth, he wasn’t sure whether he wanted it to be canceled or not. Anyhow, when he saw the lights by the palace gate and the guests’ carriages drawn up along the pavement, he felt relieved. It seemed to him his mother sighed too, as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. There were the Vizier’s guards standing by the gates as usual, and everything else as it always was on such occasions: lighted torches lining the path from the gate to the steps leading up to the front door; the majordomo standing in the entrance; the hall filled with a pleasant smell of mint. You felt it was impossible for the anxieties of the day just ending to pass through the gates of the palace.

Mark-Alem and his mother went into the main drawing room. From two silver braziers in the middle of the room came a comfortable warmth that consorted well with the dark red of the carpets and the gentle hum of conversation.

The guests included a few close cousins, all in high positions, several old family friends, the Austrian consul’s son—a tall fair youth to whom Kurt was talking in French—and two or three other people whom Mark-Alem hadn’t met before. He heard his mother quietly ask a footman where the Vizier was, and the man said he was upstairs but would be down soon. Mark-Alem felt calmer now. The icy dread that had gripped him all the evening like some dank and baneful mist was fading away.

The footmen were serving
raki
in silver goblets. Through the buzz of talk Mark-Alem tried to hear what Uncle Kurt and the Austrian were saying in French. After downing a glass of
raki
in one gulp, he felt a wave of euphoria. When, after a moment, his eyes met those of his mother, he quickly looked away. She seemed to be saying, “What was all that nonsense you were telling me just now?”

The entrance of the Vizier immediately struck a chill into the atmosphere. This wasn’t so much because of his gloomy expression—most of those present were accustomed to that—as because he also looked preoccupied and gazed at his guests as if he were surprised to see them there and were waiting for them to tell him why they had come. After saying good evening he stood by one of the braziers, holding his hands spread over it to warm them. To Mark-Alem the rings around his eyes looked even darker than on the evening of their memorable dinner.

Kurt, evidently feeling it was up to him to try to restore an air of normality to the proceedings, went over to his brother and whispered a few words which Mark-Alem couldn’t hear. But they must have had to do with the Austrian, for the Vizier replied to Kurt and the other young man at the same time, and the Austrian nodded respectfully as Kurt translated his brother’s words. After this, things did seem a little more relaxed. The guests began to converse in pairs, while the Austrian went on talking to the Vizier with Kurt still acting as interpreter. Mark-Alem was tempted to move nearer to listen, but one of his cousins, the bald one who’d had supper with them the day before Mark-Alem started work in the Palace of Dreams, asked in a whisper:

“How are you getting on at the Tabir?”

“Very well,” said Mark-Alem, though his mouth turned down at the corners to indicate only “So-so.”

“Are you working in Interpretation?”

He nodded. A gleam of irony came into his cousin’s expression, but Mark-Alem didn’t care. He had eyes for no one but his favorite uncle, Kurt. He’d never seen him looking so handsome and elegant, in his immaculate white starched collar which cast a magical glow over his face. Mark-Alem was soon convinced that the mainspring of the whole evening was Kurt, who had had the strange idea of inviting the Albanian rhapsodists. Mark-Alem was eager to hear at last the Albanian version of the family epic, until now as unknown to them as the other side of the moon.

Someone who was evidently the last of the guests now entered, apologizing for his late arrival:

“There’s a certain amount of unusual activity outside,” he said. “The forces of law and order are checking people’s identity.”

Some of the guests tried to catch the Vizier’s eye, but he seemed quite unaffected by the latecomer’s words. He must know what’s going on, thought Mark-Alem. Otherwise he wouldn’t take the news with such indifference. The Vizier didn’t seem to have noticed his nephew either; it was as if he’d completely forgotten the disjointed conversation they’d had that evening a few weeks before. Only an hour ago Mark-Alem had been wondering whether he oughtn’t to tell the Vizier what had happened at the Tabir Sarrail. Hadn’t the moment come for him to be on his guard? But now, seeing his uncle so unconcerned, Mark-Alem felt reassured too.

That being so, he began to examine the patterns in the huge Persian carpet, the largest and most beautiful he’d ever seen, a birthday present to the Vizier from the Sovereign. It was one of the few things that still seemed to him as lovely as ever, though since he’d started working in the Palace of Dreams the rest of the world had grown pale and dull.

He only raised his eyes from the carpet when he realized that everyone had suddenly fallen silent. The Vizier was preparing to speak. He told his guests that they were about to hear the rhapsodists from Albania; then, during and after dinner, as was the custom, the Slav rhapsodists would sing passages from the Quprili epic.

“Show them in,” he told the majordomo.

After a while the rhapsodists entered, amid a complete silence. There were three of them, dressed in typical native costume. Two of them were middle-aged, one of them slightly younger, and each was carrying his fragile stringed instrument. Mark-Alem’s attention was immediately captured by these instruments—
lahutas,
as they were called. They were very like the
guslas
of the Slav rhapsodists, and Mark-Alem felt the same surprise, not to say disappointment, as he’d experienced when he first saw the
guslas.
Having heard so much about the famous epic, he’d imagined that the instruments accompanying it would somehow be as strange, weighty, majestic, and imposing as the chant itself, and that the rhapsodists would have to drag them along behind them. But the
gusla
was merely a simple wooden instrument with a single string, and could easily be carried in one hand. It had seemed incredible that this wretched thing could bring the vast ancient epic to life. And now Mark-Alem had seen the
lahuta,
his disappointment was even more acute. Ever since he’d heard Kurt talking about the Albanian version of their epic, he’d for some reason thought the Albanian
lahuta
would cure the shock that the
gusla
had administered to his imagination. He’d expected it to be not only heavy and impressive but also steeped in the blood he associated in his mind with the cruelty of their epic. But it had turned out to be as rudimentary as the
gusla
—just a wooden sounding box with an opening on top and one solitary string.

By now the rhapsodists were standing between the two groups into which the guests had of their own accord divided themselves. The bards had fair hair, and their bright eyes seemed to express not so much scorn as complete rejection of anything that might be offered them.

The footmen had served them
raki
in the same kind of silver goblets as those they’d handed round to the other guests, but the Albanians merely touched them with their lips.

“Well, you can begin,” said the Vizier in Albanian.

One of the rhapsodists sat down on a stool which the majordomo had brought. He laid his
lahuta
on his lap, then sat for a moment looking at the string. Then he lifted his bow in his right hand and laid it across the string. The first sounds were faint and monotonous, tending obstinately back to their point of departure. It was like a long, too long, stifling lament. If it goes on like this, thought Mark-Alem, everyone will be gasping for air. When was the fellow going to start on the words? Everyone else was obviously wondering the same thing. This kind of music needed to be padded with words; otherwise this string would scrape their souls raw.

When the rhapsodist finally opened his mouth and began to sing, Mark-Alem was at first relieved. But there was something inhuman about the man’s voice, too. It was as if some strange operation had been performed on it, removing all everyday tones and leaving only eternal ones. It was a voice in which the throat of man and the throat of the mountains seemed, over ages, to have attuned themselves to one another and merged. And so with other voices, ever more distant, until they all joined in the lament of the stars. Words and voice alike might as easily have come from the mouth of the dead as of the living. Another accord—the closest and the most perfect—had been made with the shades of the dead.

Mark-Alem couldn’t take his eyes off the slender, solitary string stretched across the sounding box. It was the string that secreted the lament; the box amplified it to terrifying proportions. Suddenly it was revealed to Mark-Alem that this hollow cage was the breast containing the soul of the nation to which he belonged. It was from there that the vibrant age-old lament arose. He’d already heard fragments of it; only today would he be permitted to hear the whole. He now felt the hollow of the
lahuta
inside his own breast.

Then another rhapsodist started to sing “The Ballad of the Bridge,” and through the hush that surrounded it, Mark-Alem seemed to hear the blows of the masons, building in the cold sunshine a bridge sullied with the blood of sacrifice. A bridge that would not only give the Quprili family its name but would also mark them with its own doom.

Though his chest was constricted with tension, Mark-Alem suddenly felt an almost irresistible desire to discard “Alem,” the Asian half of his first name, and appear with a new one, one used by the people of his native land: Gjon, Gjergj, or Gjorg.

Mark-Gjon, Mark-Gjergj Ura, Mark-Gjorg Ura, he repeated, as if trying to get used to his new half name, every time he heard the word “Ura,” the only one of the rhapsodist’s words he could understand.

Suddenly there came back to him the dream of a certain merchant, about a musical instrument heard in the middle of some wasteland. He couldn’t remember the details—only that he’d felt like throwing it into the wastepaper basket at first but then had let it pass. And now it seemed to him that the musical instrument described in the dream bore a strange resemblance to the
lahuta.

The rhapsodist went on singing in the same resonant voice. Kurt gazed fixedly at him; his eyes were shining feverishly. Every so often, in a whisper, he translated a passage, a few verses, to the Austrian, who was also listening intently. The Vizier stood motionless, the rings under his eyes darker than ever, his hands folded in front of him. Mark-Alem could get the drift of a few lines here and there, but most of them were unintelligible.

Thou hast found a grave, 0 thou, bound by the bessal
^*

Almost imperceptibly he moved nearer to where his young uncle and the Austrian were. Kurt was just trying to translate that line. Mark-Alem, who understood a little French, listened.

“It’s extremely difficult to translate,” Kurt was saying. “Almost impossible, in fact …”

Mark-Alem did his best to follow the text of the epic, partly through what he could make out for himself and partly by listening to Kurt’s translation.

“It’s about a man trying to challenge his dead enemy to a duel on his grave,” Kurt explained to the Austrian. “Rather macabre, eh?”

“Magnificent!” replied the other.

“The dead man can’t get up, and he struggles and groans,” Kurt went on.

My God, thought Mark-Alem suddenly, it’s all quite clear! And indeed it couldn’t be plainer. The sounding box of the
lahut a
was the grave in which the dead man was struggling. His groans, arising from below, were uniquely terrifying.

“And now here are the owls, birds of ill omen,” whispered Kurt.

The Austrian nodded agreement as his friend spoke.

“This is the knight, Zuk, treacherously blinded by his mother and her lover, who wanders over the snowy mountains on his blinded steed.”