The Palace of Dreams (7 page)

The older uncle took up a story he’d apparently been telling before Mark-Alem came in. He was the governor of one of the remotest regions in the Empire, and every time he came to the capital on business he brought back a lot of extremely rough stories which always seemed exactly the same to Mark-Alem as those he’d told the last time. His wife, a sickly-looking woman with a sullen expression, listened intently to all her husband said, occasionally glancing at the others as if to say, “You see the sort of place we have to live in!” She never stopped complaining about the climate there and about how hard her husband had to work; beneath all this you could detect a muted but permanent resentment against her brother-in-law, the middle one of the three uncles—the Vizier, as everyone called him now. He wasn’t present this evening. As foreign minister he was the highest-ranking member of the whole Quprili family, and the governor’s wife bore him a secret grudge for not doing enough to get his brother recalled to the capital.

The youngest uncle listened to the eldest with an absent smile. While Mark-Alem saw the older of the two men as a bronze figure corroded by the coarseness and fanaticism of provincial life, his liking for the younger increased daily. He had fair hair, and with his light-colored eyes, reddish mustache, and half-German, half-Albanian name, Kurt, he was regarded as the wild rose of the Quprili tribe. Unlike his brothers he had never stuck to any important job. He’d always gone in for strange occupations as brief as they were odd: At one time he’d devote himself to oceanography, at another to architecture, and lately it had been music. He was a confirmed bachelor, went riding with the Austrian consul’s son, and was said to carry on a sentimental correspondence with several mysterious ladies. In short, he led a life that was as pleasant as it was frivolous, the absolute opposite of the lives led by his brothers. Mark-Alem might have thought of imitating him, but he knew he was incapable of it. Now, listening quite serenely to his uncles, he thought of the carriage that had brought them here, drawn up outside his house. Every time he saw the vehicle it filled him with a kind of fearful joy, because it had always been the bearer of news, whether good or bad.

The Palace—as among themselves all the family called the residence of the most eminent of the Quprilis—was equipped with several carriages, all identical. But for Mark-Alem they had all merged into one:
the
carriage, sometimes of good and sometimes of evil omen, with Q carved on its doors, which might convey either rainbows or thunderclouds from the main to the other family residences. On several occasions it had been suggested that the Q should be replaced by a K—in accordance with the official Ottoman spelling of their patronymic:
Köprülü
—but the family always refused, and continued to spell its name in the Albanian fashion.

“So you’re working in the Tabir Sarrail?” said the elder of the two uncles, having at last finished speechifying. “You finally made up your mind?”

“We all decided together,” said Mark-Alem’s mother.

“You did the right thing,” said the uncle. “It’s an honorable position, an important job. My best wishes for your success!?

“Thank you.
Insh’Allah!”
said Mark-Alem’s mother.

The two cousins now joined in the conversation. As he listened to them, Mark-Alem remembered the endless discussions the question of his job had given rise to before the Tabir was finally chosen. Any outsider hearing them would have been incredulous. How could there be such earnest arguments over a job for a Quprili, the illustrious family that had given the Empire not only five prime ministers but also countless ministers, admirals, and generals, two of whom had led campaigns in Hungary, another in Poland, while yet another had invaded Austria. Even today, despite its relative eclipse, the Quprili family was still one of the pillars of the Empire, the first to have launched the idea of its reconstruction in the form of the U.O.S. (the United Ottoman States), and the only family that had an entry to itself in the Larousse encyclopedia. It was included there under the letter K. The entry read:
KÖPRÜLÜ: great Albanian family which provided the Ottoman Empire with five Grand Viziers between 1666 and 1710.
It was on this family’s door, moreover, that the highest functionaries of the State knocked timidly when they sought protection, advancement, or clemency… .

But incredible as the business of Mark-Alem’s job might seem to others, in the eyes of those who knew something about the family’s history, it was a different matter. For nearly four hundred years the Quprilis had seemed fated equally to glory and to misfortune. If its chronicles included great dignitaries, secretaries of state, governors, and prime ministers, they also told how just as many members of the family had been imprisoned or decapitated or had simply vanished. “We Quprilis,” as Kurt, the youngest of the three uncles, would say half jestingly, “we’re like people living at the foot of Vesuvius. Just as they are covered with ashes when the volcano erupts, so are we every so often struck down by the Sovereign in whose shadow we live. And just as the others resume their ordinary lives afterward, cultivating the soil that is as fertile as it is dangerous, so we, despite the blows the Sovereign rains on us, go on living in his shade and serving him faithfully.”

Ever since he was a child, Mark-Alem could remember the servants coming and going in the house in the middle of the night; the whispering in the corridors; terrified aunts knocking at the gate. He remembered whole days full of bad news and waiting and anxiety, until calm was restored and people wept placidly over the doomed prisoner in his cell, and life resumed its former course, awaiting a new spell of grandeur or fresh misfortune. For as they said in the Quprili family, either their men were appointed to highest office or else they fell into disgrace. No half measures for them.

“It’s a good thing you at least aren’t a Quprili by name,” Mark-Alem’s mother would say sometimes, not really convinced even herself. He was her only child, and after her husband’s death her only care had been to protect her son from the less desirable aspect of the Quprili destiny. This preoccupation had made her more intelligent, more authoritative, and, astonishingly, more beautiful. For a long time, deep down inside, she had made up her mind that Mark-Alem should not go into government service. But by the time he’d grown up and finished his studies, this decision seemed untenable. The Quprili family brooked no idlers, and he had to be found a job somehow—one that offered the most possibilities for making a career and the least for ending up in prison.

In lengthy family discussions they had considered diplomacy, the army, the court, banking and administration. They’d weighed the pros and cons of all of them, the chances of promotion and dismissal. One possibility would be ruled out because it seemed unsuitable or dangerous; another would be rejected for similar reasons; a third might appear different at first, and quite safe, but on closer examination it would turn out to be more risky than its predecessors. So the discussion would go back to the first suggestion, previously set aside with “Oh, God, anything but that!”—and so on and so forth, until Mark-Alem’s mother, exasperated by all the chopping and changing, finally said: “Let him do what he likes—you can’t escape what is written!”

At that point, just as they were going to let Mark-Alem choose for himself, his second uncle, the Vizier, who so far had not taken part in the discussion, finally gave his opinion. At first blush what he suggested seemed so preposterous that it provoked smiles, but it wasn’t long before the smiles faded and every face took on an expression of stupefaction. The Palace of Dreams? How? Why? Then the idea gradually came to seem quite natural. After all, why not? What was wrong with working in the Tabir Sarrail? Not only was there nothing wrong, but it was in fact a much better job than most of the others, which were strewn with pitfalls. But was there really no danger in this case? Yes, of course there were risks, but they were of dream dangers in a world of dreams—the very world the Ancients used to wish to be transported to when they were in trouble and cried, “Oh, God, let it be only a dream!”

So that was how it came about. Little by little the minister’s idea took root in the mind of Mark-Alem’s mother. How was it they hadn’t thought of it before? she wondered. The Tabir now seemed the only institution capable of ensuring her son’s happiness. It offered unlimited opportunities for making a career, but in her eyes its main advantage lay in its vagueness and impenetrability. Reality split in two there and led swiftly to unreality; and the resulting mistiness seemed to her likely to offer her son the best possible refuge when storms broke.

The others came around to her opinion. What’s more, they thought, if the Vizier had initiated the idea there must be something in it. The Tabir Sarrail had recently been playing a more important role in matters of State. The Quprilis, naturally inclined to regard old and traditional institutions with some irony, had rather underestimated the Palace of Dreams. It was said that some years earlier they had managed to curtail its power, though not to have it closed down altogether. But at present the Sovereign had restored it in all its former authority.

Mark-Alem had learned all this gradually, in the course of the long family debates about the kind of employment that would be best for him. Naturally, the fact that the Quprilis somewhat underestimated the Tabir didn’t mean they didn’t have agents there. If they’d been so heedless as to ignore the place completely, they’d long ago have ceased to be what they were. Nevertheless, absorbed as they appeared to be in other state mechanisms, and confident that they would again succeed in neutralizing what they jokingly called among themselves “that woolly institution,” they had ceased to pay it much attention. Now, however, they seemed to be trying to make up for this negligence.

Although they had their own representatives in the Tabir—and scores of them, at that—you couldn’t, said the Vizier to his sister, rely on them as surely as you could on people of noble blood. He was obviously nervous, and she got the impression that he was more anxious about this matter than he cared to admit. He must have more in mind than he’d revealed to her.

This particular interview had taken place two days before Mark-Alem presented himself at the Tabir Sarrail. But ever since the Vizier first made the suggestion, Mark-Alem’s name had always been linked with that of the Palace of Dreams. They were still being joined together now, and that was why the present conversation was getting on his nerves. He hoped they’d change the subject when they sat down to dinner. Luckily they did so even before. The theme was still the Tabir Sarrail, but not in relation to him. Mark-Alem began to take more interest.

“Anyhow, it’s true to say the Tabir Sarrail has now recovered all its old authority,” said the elder of the uncles.

“For my part,” observed Kurt, “even though I am a Quprili, I’ve never thought it could easily be undermined. It’s not only one of the oldest State institutions—in my opinion it’s also, despite its charming name, one of the most formidable.”

“It’s not the only one that’s formidable,” objected one of the cousins.

Kurt smiled.

“Yes, but in the other ones the terror’s obvious. The fear they inspire can be seen for miles, like a cloud of black smoke. But with the Tabir Sarrail it’s quite different.”

“And why, in your opinion, is the Palace of Dreams so formidable?” asked Mark-Alem’s mother.

“It isn’t so in the way you may suppose,” said Kurt, with a covert glance at his nephew. “I was thinking of something else. If you ask me, of all the mechanisms of State, the Palace of Dreams is the most remote from human will. Do you see what I mean? It’s the most impersonal, the blindest, the most deadly, and so the most autocratic.”

“Even so, I reckon it too can be kept more or less under control,” said the other cousin.

He was bald, with dim eyes that reflected his intelligence in a very peculiar way; they seemed simultaneously to reveal and to be consumed by it.

“In my opinion,” Kurt went on, “it’s the only organization in the State where the darker side of its subjects’ consciousness enters into direct contact with the State itself.”

He looked around at everyone present, as if to assess the effect of his words.

“The masses don’t rule, of course,” he continued, “but they do possess a mechanism through which they influence all the State’s affairs, including its crimes. And that mechanism is the Tabir Sarrail.”

“Do you mean to say,” asked the cousin, “that the masses are to a certain extent responsible for everything that happens, and so should to a certain extent feel guilty about it?”

“Yes,” said Kurt. Then, more firmly: “In a way, yes.” The other smiled, but as his eyes were half closed you could see only a bit of his smile, like a shaft of light from under a door.

“All the same,” he said, “I think it’s the most absurd institution in the whole Empire.”

“In a logical world it would be absurd,” said Kurt. “But in the world as it is it’s quite normal!”

The cousin laughed heartily, but gradually stifled his mirth when he saw the governor’s face darken.

“Yet it’s rumored everywhere that things are more complicated than that,” said the other cousin. “Nothing is ever as clear as it seems. For example, who can say nowadays what the Oracle of Delphi was really like? All its records have been lost—or rather destroyed. And it wasn’t as easy as all that to get Mark-Alem taken on… .”

Mark-Alem’s mother was listening attentively to all this, trying to catch every word.

“1 think you’d better change the subject,” said the governor.

It wasn’t as easy as all that to get me taken on… . Mark-Alem thought to himself. And gradually there came back to him scenes from his first morning at the Tabir, when he’d been so lost and bewildered, together with glimpses of the tedious hours he’d spent today, working in Selection. I suppose he thinks I shot straight to the top of the tree! he laughed bitterly to himself.

“Come, let’s talk about something else!” said the elder of the two uncles again.