Читать книгу Ajijic - Patricio Fernández Cortina - Страница 7

Chapter II

La Renga

When Julio, the bookseller, opened his bookstore, he was only twenty-five years old. He did it using the scarce financial resources he had, and his initial inventory was made up of just a few books. He started in a two-story house on Morelos Street, that he had inherited from his parents, very close to the town square and the lagoon, and he called it La Renga.

Morelos Street was a cobblestone street like all the other streets of Ajijic, very picturesque with its colorful houses, craft and textile stores, and boutiques. Some of the houses that lined it were made into hotels and several of their facades were adorned with murals and mosaics. The street led to Ajijic’s boardwalk, where people paraded all hours of the day enchanted by the beauty of the lagoon and the horizon.

Julio was a thinly built man of medium height, dark skin, and black hair. He had studied Hispanic Literature at the University of Guadalajara and, for some time, had worked as a clerk at a bookstore near the cultural center, Ex Convento del Carmen, but after the death of his parents, he was forced to return to Ajijic. It was in those circumstances that he decided to open his own bookstore. He was an avid reader who would underline and make annotations in the books he read, writing notes on loose pages where he would then write book reviews to place on the counter in hopes of spurring the interest of potential readers.

The catalogue of books of La Renga had grown with time and it was made up almost entirely of old and second-hand books, most of them read by Julio, allowing him to make better recommendations based on the needs or likes of his customers. The first book he sold was a facsimile edition published by the publishing house Porrúa of the original 1749 Widow of Frau edition of The Book of the Lover and the Beloved by Raymundo Lulio. The night before the book sold, he had been reading it and reviewing each point of the conversation in which the friend, who was God, spoke to the beloved, who was man. Perhaps it was the mysticism that Julio loved so much, that made him ignore the promise of female companionship, entrenched as he was in his books and reflections, believing that remaining single would grant him the absolute freedom of thought and time. On the corner in front of the bookstore was a cafe, La Colmena, the oldest one in Ajijic, it was very popular with the Lakesiders and the inhabitants of town as well as its visitors. That corner was known as “the heart of Ajijic,” it was where the street 16th of September changed its name to Independence. From there looking towards the mountains you could see at the summit, the cloister that the townspeople used for the celebrations of the Via Crucis and the festival of Santa Cruz, since the town like the majority towns in Mexico was steeped in tradition. The echo of the hubbub of the cafe, La Colmena, reached the bookstore, La Renga, were silence almost always reigned. Julio the bookseller used to say that books inspired in men and women an almost liturgical modesty, and that La Colmena was the breath of conversations often inspired, why not, by the reading of books, so that the cafe and the bookstore constituted a cultural haven at the heart of Ajijic.

The facade of the bookstore was painted white, the windows sills and the bars on the windows were made of wrought iron and were painted blue. The door entrance was on the right side and the name La Renga could be red in giant letters made of wrought iron incrusted into the wall. A small marquee protected the door from the rain and the sun, and there was a bell that was rarely rung because the door was always open during office hours.

The bookstore contained three bookcases that covered the walls from floor to ceiling giving it an air of intellectuality. The first bookcase was to the left of the entrance, nailed to the inside wall of the facade; the second was on the same side on the back wall then came the counter, and to the right of it was the third bookcase near a staircase let that lead to the upper floor.

Julio had commissioned a carpenter to line the shelves of the three bookcases with wood, in such a way that the part that protruded was worked in mahogany, and the surface of the planks had been covered with cheap wood, something trivial as they were hidden by books. “Books hide a thousand worlds inside them,” was a phrase that was inscribed on one of the shelves in small letters. In the center of that bookcase was a bronze sculpture of a French soldier, perched on a marble pedestal. It was a gift that an American from the island of Martha’s Vineyard had given Julio when the bookstore was still new. The soldier carried the flag of France, on the warpath, and engraved at the base were these words: “N’abandonne pas.”

On a wooden rack, behind the counter, Julio had placed various objects that some clients had given him and others that he had decided to collect himself: a Lagenaria gourd for mate, a ceramic bull, a reproduction of the Coit Tower in San Francisco, a porcelain duck, a wire figure of a walker from Santiago, several roosters from Sweden, a terra cotta pot from Oaxaca, a postcard from Portugal, a tiny copper casserole from the Lasserre restaurant in Paris, an inlaid jewelry box from India, a clock without the hour, a globe, a small 1966 Volkswagen van and a miniature Big Ben, a dried maple flower, a bottle of Niagara water, an American aircraft carrier, an iron Brooklyn Bridge, a scale reproduction of Chapala fishermen with their nets, a photograph of Nevski Avenue, and a sign on the wall, stamped on a wooden board, that read:

Only books will save us!

At the back of the bookstore was a small but very pleasant patio, accessed through an archway. The courtyard walls were covered with jasmine and two bougainvilleas. Jasmine covered the back wall and bougainvillea the two side walls. In the right corner, between the jasmine and one of the bougainvilleas, Julio had planted a shrub known as “Queen of the Night” in a pot. The plant gave off a delicious fragrance that, when mixed with the wind that came from the lagoon, flooded the bookstore. In the courtyard there were two tables, each with four equipales covered with green, white, and red striped cushions. At the bottom of the jasmine wall, there was a small stone fountain whose floor was covered with blue and white tiles, on which a stream of water fell from the mouth of a stone-carved lion embedded in the wall. On the wall that separated the patio from the bookstore, under a marquee, was a small cupboard with a sink and a coffee machine with a grinder, as well as a small shelf and a stove.

The customers at La Renga would usually snoop around the bookshelves for a while, and then go to the patio to sit and have a cup of coffee, while reading a book or the day’s newspapers that were stacked on the tables. Julio had instituted the custom of giving a cup of coffee to anyone who bought a book.

The attic, on the top floor of the house, was a small convent-like room where Julio lived, with the walls lined with books that he did not share with anyone. It was his personal library. There was a twin bed, a desk, a reading chair, and a tiny bathroom. In the afternoon, after closing the bookstore, Julio would go to the boardwalk to watch the sunset and sometimes, depending on the season, he would wait for nightfall to see the line of light that the moon cast over the lagoon towards the shore, sketching out a path by which one could ascend towards the starry sky. Then he would go back to the attic and sit in his chair to read in solitude and imagine himself travelling through countries and cities as had Xavier de Maistre around his room. He was comforted by the knowledge that the freedom of a man lay in his thoughts, and thus, traveling with his mind through hidden worlds, he would go to bed at peace while the wind from the lagoon swayed the treetops, lulling him to sleep.