The Palace of Dreams Read Online Free PDF Page B

lately.”
    “And what’s that?”
    The other lowered his voice.
    “We probably oughtn’t to be talking about that sort of thing,” he said. “But after all, you have just become a member of staff. And these are really only organizational matters—I don’t suppose there’s anything secret about them.”
    “Probably not,” said Mark-Alem.
    He couldn’t wait to find out more.
    “Do go on,” he said encouragingly. “I do belong here, in a way. My mother belongs to the Quprili family.”
    “The Quprili family!”
    Mark-Alem wasn’t surprised by his interlocutor’s astonishment. He was used to meeting with this reaction whenever anyone found out about his origins.
    “As soon as you said you’d gone straight into Selection, I guessed you must belong to a family close to the State. But I must admit I didn’t imagine those dizzy heights.”
    “Quprili was my mother’s maiden name,” said Mark-Alem. “My own name’s different.”
    “That makes no odds. It’s the same thing for all intents and purposes.”
    Mark-Alem looked at him.
    “Tell me some more about the Master-Dream.”
    His companion drew a deep breath. Then, as if sensing his voice wasn’t going to be loud enough to need all that air, he exhaled some of it again before he spoke.
    “As perhaps you know, every Friday a traditional ceremony is held, ancient but discreet, in which one dream, selected as the most important of all the thousands we’ve received and analyzed during the previous week, is presented to the Sultan. That’s the Master-or Arch-Dream.”
    “I have heard of it, but only vaguely, as a kind of legend. ”
    “Well, it’s not a legend—it’s a fact. And it gives work to hundreds of people in the Master-Dream department.”
    He looked at Mark-Alem for some time before going on.
    “And—-would you believe it?—a dream like that, with its significant omens, is sometimes more useful to the Sovereign than a whole army of soldiers or all his diplomats put together.”
    Mark-Alem listened openmouthed.
    “So now do you see why the position of the Master-Dream officers is so superior to ours?”
    What a gigantic mechanism, thought Mark-Alem. Yes, the Tabir Sarrail really was unimaginably vast.
    “You never see any of them about,” the other went on. “They even have their coffee and salep in a place of their own.
    “A place of their own …” Mark-Alem echoed.
    His new friend had just opened his mouth to supply more information when the sound of a bell, the same one as had announced the coffee break, put a sudden stop to everything that was going on around them.
    Mark-Alem had neither time nor need to ask what it meant. Even before the ringing had stopped, everyone started to rush for the exits. Those who hadn’t finished the drinks in front of them emptied their cups and glasses in one gulp. Others, who’d only just been served with beverages still too hot to drink, just abandoned them and made off like the rest. Mark-Alem’s companion had fallen silent just as suddenly, then nodded curtly and turned away. Mark-Alem would have tried to detain him and ask him one last question, but as he was about to do so he was jostled first to the left and then to the right, and so lost sight of him.
    As he let himself be swept out along with the crowd, he realized he’d forgotten to ask his new acquaintance his name. If only I knew what section he works in, he sighed. Then he consoled himself with the thought that they might meet again at the next day’s coffee break and be able to have another chat.
    The crowd was thinning by now, and Mark-Alem tried to find one of the faces he’d seen before in the Selection department. In vain. He had to ask the way back there twice. When he arrived he crept in quietly, trying not to be noticed. The last chairs were still being scraped into place. Nearly all the clerks were ensconced at their long tables again. Mark-Alem tiptoed to his desk, drew out his chair, and sat down. He did nothing for a