Read Online The Palace of Dreams by Ismaíl Kadaré, Barbara Bray - Free Book Online Page B

expected something of us and they were disappointed.”
    “So you think they ignore us out of resentment?”
    “If you like.”
    “I can understand it quite easily,” said the other cousin. “It’s an ancient misunderstanding between our family and the Albanians. They can’t get used to our imperial dimension, or rather they don’t think it’s of any consequence. They care little for what the Quprilis have done and continue to do for the Empire as a whole. All that matters to them is what we’ve done for the small part of the Empire that is Albania. They’ve always expected us to do something specially for them.”
    He threw out his arms as if to say, “So there you have it!”
    “Some people think Albania is doomed; others think it was born under a lucky star. I think the question’s more complicated than that. Albania is rather like our family—it has experienced both favor and severity at the Sultan’s hands.”
    “And which of the two has counted most with them?” asked Kurt.
    “Hard to say,” answered the cousin. “I remember what a Jew said to me one day: ‘When the Turks rushed at you brandishing spears and sabers, you Albanians thought they’d come to conquer you, but in fact they were bringing you a whole Empire as a present!’ ”
    Kurt laughed.
    The cousin’s dim eyes seemed to emit a last spark.
    “But like all madmen’s gifts,” said the other cousin, “it brought with it violence and bloodshed.”
    Kurt laughed again, more loudly this time.
    “Why do you laugh?” asked his brother, the governor. “The Jew was right. The Turks have shared power with us—you know that as well as I do.”
    “Of course,” said Kurt. “Those five prime ministers prove it,”
    “That was only the beginning,” said the governor. “After them there were hundreds of senior officials.”
    “That wasn’t what I was laughing at,” said Kurt.
    “You’re a spoiled brat,” muttered the other.
    A glint came into Kurt’s eye.
    “The Turks,” went on the cousin, trying to attract attention again, “gave us Albanians what we lacked: the wide open spaces.”
    “And wide open complications too,” said Kurt. “It’s bad enough when an individual life gets caught up in the mechanisms of power—when a whole nation is drawn in it’s a million times worse!”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Weren’t you just saying the Turks shared power with us? Sharing power doesn’t just mean dividing up the carpets and the gold braid. That comes afterward. Above all, sharing power means sharing crimes!”
    “Kurt, it’s not right to talk like that!”
    “Anyhow, it’s the Turks who helped us to reach our true stature,” said the cousin. “And we just cursed them for it.”
    “Not us—them!” said the governor.
    “Sorry—yes … Them. The Albanians back home in Albania.”
    A tense silence followed. Loke brought in trays of cakes.
    “One day they’ll win real independence, but then they’ll lose all those other possibilities,” continued the cousin. “They’ll lose the vast space in which they could fly like the wind, and be shut up in their own small territory. Their wings will be clipped, and they’ll flap clumsily from one mountain to another until they’re exhausted. Then they’ll ask themselves, ‘What did we gain by it?’ And they’ll start looking for what they’ve lost. But will they ever find it?”
    The governor’s wife heaved a deep sigh. No one had touched the cakes.
    “Anyhow,” said Kurt, “for the moment they don’t say anything about us.”
    “One day they’ll understand us,” said the governor.
    “We ought to listen to them too.”
    “But you just said they don’t say anything.”
    “Then we should listen to their silence,” said Kurt.
    The governor guffawed.
    “Still the same old eccentric!” he laughed. “As I said, life in the capital has spoiled you. It would do you good to spend a year working for the government in some distant province.
    “God