Jasper Fforde - Lost in a Good Book

I had been followed, obviously. It suddenly struck me that perhaps Goliath were more interested in how to get into books than in Jack Schitt himself. There was a billion-pound hole in the budget for their advanced weapons division and a Prose Portal, any Prose Portal, would be just the thing to fill it.

‘Go to hell!’ I shouted as I returned to my book. On the first page, under a large heading that read ‘READ ME FIRST!’, there was a description of a library somewhere. I needed no second bidding; the door flexed under a heavy blow and I saw the paint crack near the lock. If it was Chalk or Cheese they wouldn’t take long to gain entry.

I relaxed, took a deep breath, cleared my throat and read in a clear, strong and confident voice, expressive and expansive. I added pauses, inflections and raised the tone of my voice where the text required it. I read as I had never read before.

‘I was in a long, dark, wood-panelled corridor,’ I began, ‘lined with bookshelves that reached from the richly carpeted floor to the vaulted ceiling—’

The sound of thumping increased and as I spoke the door frame splintered near the hinges and collapsed inward as Chalk fell with a heavy thump on to the floor, closely followed by Cheese, who landed on top of him.

‘The carpet was elegantly patterned and the ceiling was decorated with rich mouldings that depicted scenes from the classics—’

‘Next!’ yelled Schitt-Hawse, putting his head round the door as Chalk and Cheese struggled to get up. ‘Coming to Osaka was not part of the deal! I told you to keep me informed. Nothing will happen to you—’

But something was happening. Something new, something other . My utter loathing of Goliath, the urge to get away, the knowledge that without entry to books I would never see Landen again—all of these things gave me the will to soften the barriers that had hardened since the day I first entered Jane Eyre in 1958.

‘High above me, spaced at regular intervals, were finely decorated circular apertures through which light gained entry—’

I could see Schitt-Hawse move towards me but he had started to become less tangible; although I could see his lips move, the sound arrived at my ears a full second later. I continued to read, and as I did so the room about me began to fworp from view.

‘Next!’ yelled Schitt-Hawse. ‘You’ll regret, this I swear!’

I carried on reading.

‘—reinforcing the serious mood of the library—’

‘Bitch!’ I heard Schitt-Hawse cry. ‘Grab her!’

But his words were as a zephyr; the room took on the appearance of morning mist and darkened. I felt a gentle tingling sensation, the feeling of tepid water brushing on the skin—and in the next instant, I had gone.

I blinked twice but Osaka was far behind. I closed the book, carefully placed it in my pocket and looked around. I was in a long, dark, wood-panelled corndor lined with bookshelves that reached from the richly carpeted floor to the vaulted ceiling. The carpet was elegantly patterned and the ceiling was decorated with rich mouldings that depicted scenes from the classics, each cornice supporting the marble bust of an author. High above me, spaced at regular intervals, were finely decorated circular apertures through which light gained entry and reflected off the polished wood, reinforcing the serious mood of the library. Running down the centre of the corridor was a long row of reading tables, each with a green-shaded brass lamp. The library appeared endless; in both directions the corridor vanished into darkness with no definable end. But this wasn’t important. Describing the library would be like going to see a Turner and commenting on the frame. On all the walls, end after end, shelf after shelf, were books . Hundreds, thousands, millions of books. Hardbacks, paperbacks, leather-bound volumes, uncorrected proofs, handwritten manuscripts, everything . I stepped closer and rested my fingertips lightly on the pristine volumes. They felt warm to the touch, so I leaned closer and pressed my ear to the spines. I could hear a distant hum, the rumble of machinery, people talking, traffic, seagulls, laughter, waves on rocks, wind in the winter branches of trees, distant thunder, heavy rain, children playing, a blacksmith’s hammer—a million sounds all happening together. And then, in a revelatory moment, the clouds slid back from my mind and a crystal-clear understanding of the very nature of books shone upon me. They weren’t just collections of words arranged neatly on a page to give the impression of reality—each of these volumes was reality. The similarity of these books to the copies I had read back home was no more than the similarity a photograph has to its subject—these books were alive !

I walked slowly down the corridor, running my fingers along the spines and listening to the comfortable pat-pat-pat sound they made, every now and then recognising a familiar title. After a couple of hundred yards I came across a junction where a second corridor crossed the first. In the middle of the crossway was a large circular void with a wrought-iron rail and a spiral staircase bolted securely to one side. I peered cautiously down. Not more than thirty feet below me I could see another floor, exactly like this one. But in the middle of that floor was another circular void through which I could see another floor, and another and another and so on to the depths of the library. I looked up. It was the same above me, more circular light wells and the spiral staircase reaching up into the dizzy heights above. I leaned on the balcony and looked about me at the vast library once again.

‘Well,’ I said to no one in particular, ‘I don’t think I’m in Osaka any more.’

‘A visitor!’ exclaimed a voice behind me. ‘What a delightful surprise!’

I turned and was astonished to see a large and luxuriant cat sitting precariously on the uppermost bookshelf. He was staring at me with a curious mixture of lunacy and benevolence, and remained quite still except for the tip of his tail, which twitched occasionally from side to side. I had never come across a talking cat before, but good manners, as my father used to say, cost nothing.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Cat.’

The cat’s eyes opened wide and the grin fell from his face. He looked up and down the corridor for a few moments and then enquired:

‘Me?’

I stifled a laugh.

‘I don’t see any others.’

‘Ah!’ replied the cat, grinning more than ever. ‘That’s because you have a temporary form of cat blindness .’

‘I’m not sure I’ve heard of that.’

‘It’s quite common,’ he replied airily. ‘I suppose you have heard of knight blindness, when you can’t see any knights?’

‘It’s night , not knight,’ I corrected him.

‘It all sounds the same to me .’

‘Suppose I do have cat blindness,’ I ventured. ‘Then how is it I can see you?’

‘Suppose we change the subject?’ retorted the cat. ‘What do you think of the library?’

‘It’s pretty big,’ I murmured, looking all around me.