The Palace of Dreams by Ismaíl Kadaré, Barbara Bray Page B

same every time he’d worked late, but what could he do? It was regarded as good form to do some voluntary overtime occasionally, not to mention the fact that the staff were sometimes required to stay on. Mark-Alem had resigned himself to sacrificing yet another evening.
    Cutting short a breath that had really been a long sigh, he began to read the next to last page. That’s funny, he thought after scanning the first line. Where had he seen this dream before? A plot of wasteland near a bridge with some rubbish, and a musical instrument … He nearly let out an exclamation of surprise. This was the first time he’d come across a dream that he’d examined himself when he was in Selection. He felt as pleased as if he’d met an old acquaintance, and looked around for someone to tell about the coincidence. But there weren’t many people left now, and the nearest one was at least ten yards away.
    Still rather thrilled by his little discovery, he read the text of the dream—casually at first, and then more and more carefully. He couldn’t find any particular significance in it. But that didn’t worry him. A lot of dreams didn’t seem to have any meaning at first—they were like smooth cliffs where you couldn’t get a foothold—but a tiny flash of inspiration might reveal a clue. He’d manage to find the key to this dream as he had with others. After all, he had a certain amount of experience now. The wasteland covered with rubbish, the old bridge, the strange musical instrument, and the furious bull—these were all very significant symbols. But he couldn’t make out what it was that linked them together. And in the interpretation of a dream the relationship between the various symbols was usually more important than the symbols themselves.
    Mark-Alem arranged them in pairs: the bridge with the bull, and the musical instrument with the patch of wasteland; then the bridge with the instrument, and the wasteland with the bull; and finally the bull with the musical instrument, and the bridge with the wasteland. The last arrangement seemed to yield a certain amount of meaning, but it wasn’t very logical: a bull (unbridled brute force), stirred by some music (treachery, secrecy, propaganda), is trying to destroy the old bridge. If, instead of a bridge, it had been a column or the wall of a citadel, or some other symbol representing the State, the dream might have had a certain amount of meaning; but a bridge didn’t stand for anything like that. Like fountains and roads, it was usually a symbol for something useful to man… . Just a minute though, thought Mark-Alem, suddenly finding himself short of breath. Wasn’t the bridge connected with his family’s own name? … Perhaps this was some sinister omen?
    He reread the text and began to breathe more freely again. The bull wasn’t really attacking the bridge at all. It was just rushing around the piece of wasteground.
    It’s a dream without any meaning, he thought. The pleasure of having come across it again was succeeded by a feeling of contempt. He remembered now that even when he’d seen it in Selection it had struck him as devoid of significance. He’d have done better to throw it in the wastepaper basket there and then! He dipped his pen in the inkwell and was about to mark the dream “Insoluble,” when his hand remained poised in suspense. What if he left it and came back to it again in the morning? What if he asked the supervisor for advice? Though of course, while you were allowed to ask for advice, they didn’t like you to do so too often. Mark-Alem started to get impatient. The best thing was to get on and have done with the file. He’d spent more than enough time on it already… .
    He took up the last dream, dealt with it briskly, then went back to the one he’d left in abeyance. He was just hesitating and wondering again whether to mark it “Insoluble,” file it away, and go home, when the head of Interpretation entered the room. He exchanged a