The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [206]
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 recognizing 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 crossways 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 anymore.”
16.
Interview with the Cat
The Cheshire Cat was the first character I met at Jurisfiction, and his sporadic appearances enlivened the time I spent there. He gave me much advice. Some was good, some was bad and some was so nonsensically nonsequitous that it confuses me even now to think about it. And yet, during all that time, I never learnt his age, where he came from or where he went when he vanished. It was one of Jurisfiction’s lesser mysteries.
THURSDAY NEXT,
The Jurisfiction Chronicles
AVISITOR!” exclaimed a voice behind me. “What a delightful surprise!”
I turned and was astonished to see a large and luxuriant tabby cat sitting precariously on the uppermost bookshelf. He was staring at me with a curious mixture of insanity 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 inquired:
“Me?”
I stifled a laugh.
“I don’t see any others.”
“Ah!” replied the Cat, giving me another broad grin. “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, licking a paw and stroking his whiskers. “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, waving a paw at the surroundings. “What do you think of the library?”
“It’s pretty big,” I murmured, looking all around me.
“Two hundred miles in every direction,” said the Cat off-handedly and beginning to purr. “Twenty-six floors above ground, twenty-six below.”
“You must have a copy of every book that’s been written,” I observed.
“Every book that will ever be written,” corrected the Cat, “and a few others besides.”
“How many?”
“Well, I’ve never counted them myself, but certainly more than twelve.”
As the Cat grinned and blinked at me with his large green eyes I suddenly realized where I had seen him before.
“You’re the Cheshire Cat, aren’t you?” I asked.
“I was the Cheshire Cat,” he replied with a slightly aggrieved air. “But they moved the county boundaries, so technically speaking I’m now the Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat, but it doesn’t have the same ring to it. Oh, and welcome to Jurisfiction. You’ll like it here; everyone is quite mad.”
“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” I replied indignantly.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat. “We