The story of the only surviving bookstore in Villa de Leyva

The cave of infinite moments

I guess it happens to many people the same. Maybe it's a reader thing, a drive, a whim. Every time I travel to one place, I carry with me a book, or two, sometimes three. I can't go anywhere without a book in my suitcase. It doesn't matter if I'm going to take a short time in one place or it's hours that I'm going to spend on the outside. The book is like my drug, my personal dose of heroin. And that's how my way of connecting with the people and places I visit also works. It doesn't matter where I go, I always end up looking for a bookstore. I can't completely link to a site if I don't find a bookstore, no matter how small it is.

I have been traveling to Villa de Leyva consecutively since 2019, always for the time when the Independent Film Festival takes place. I had visited the municipality before, but I hadn't paid much attention to it. He was too young or too foolish to notice the magic of the place. In that 2019, in the spirit of covering the festival, I stayed three days at the Hotel La Española and from there I toured the place as I had not done before. I was accompanied at that time by a good friend, a tremendous photographer who at every step found an image worth keeping in my memory. I said to her, “I want to look for a bookstore.” We found some antique dealers, two or three. In one of them there were a few books. Very few. The inscription on the door read 'Antiques - Books', but they were more antiques than books. I wasn't entirely satisfied. We kept walking, with the sun hitting our faces and when we were giving up, we found it.

A house with a white façade, almost gray from dust, and a small door, barely for two people to enter. On both sides of the door, a couple of advertisements that read: 'BOOKSHOP', and on one side, a plaque reading: 'ART BOOKS - CRAFTS'. We entered and after a pile of yellowed books there appeared a man of about 36 years old, black and short hair, a nose between upturned and plump. “Welcome, what are you looking for,” he said. We thanked him and told him that we were happy to find a bookstore, that we had been walking for quite a while. “We've been here for a few months. Well, we came often, but this is when we stayed,” he said. He told us that it was a mobile bookstore. He went from place to place, touring Boyacá, with books for the people, used books. “We did well because we are the only ones.” We asked him if the locals bought a lot of books and he told us not as he wanted. “Sales are for people who come from outside. Tourists come looking for things to take away, always.”

In addition to books, there were old typewriters, more to decorate than to use, old photographs, watches, paintings, cups, discs, and even a coat of arms. There was everything. It was like a writer's office in the 19th century. We were there for like 60 minutes. We saw art books, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and we looked at the shelves. In the middle of the search I found three books that caught my attention: One Hundred Years of Solitude, a reissue of the Sudamericana publishing house, Rayuela, in its twelfth edition by the same publishing house and a version of El viejo y el mar, published by Circulo de Lectores. The first book was somewhat unbound and had a price that, for its condition, seemed unfair to me. I fell in love with Cortázar's book and I came close to taking it, but what I had in my pocket was not enough for me. I decided, long before considering the other two, because of Hemingway's book, which on the first page had a signature that I could not identify and the date of July 1985.

When I was a child, my mother would read me an illustrated edition of the book of the American. Over time, the copy deteriorated and I decided to remove the illustrations to preserve them, while I found another copy that was to my liking, one very similar to that one. Until then, I had been looking for her for a long time. I went into bookstores and no edition convinced me. Suddenly, there he was, waiting for me. It was almost eight years of searching. He found me and I found her in the least thought out place. Once, a bookseller friend told me that books always come to us in the most unexpected ways, which can take years, but in the end, they always come.

I bought it without hesitation, euphoric, and I also took an old edition of The City and the Dogs. I told the bookseller I'd be back another time for Cortazar's book. “I hope they don't take him away,” he said. We left the bookstore and when I returned to Bogotá I realized that I had forgotten to ask for the name of the place, or to ask the man his name. I felt sad, but I forced myself not to forget the episode. Fortunately, a year later, with viruses walking, I returned, once again to cover the film festival. As soon as I had a free time, I went in search of the bookstore. There it was. The bookseller was the same, the entrance was the same.

“You may not remember me, but I was here a year ago,” I said. The man looked at me and said no, that there were many faces I saw. I told him I understood and asked him about the Hopscotch that I had seen that time. “Aaaa yes. I remember they asked her,” she said, but she didn't remember me, just someone who took her hands a year earlier and looked at her affectionately. “I think he's still here.” He told me where to look and yes, there it was. It was the same copy. It hadn't deteriorated a bit. He was waiting for me. I quickly took the book in my hands and opened it in the first pages. “Would I find La Maga?” I embraced that moment and without saying more said to the bookseller: “I'll take her.” He smiled because, somehow, he recognized in my voice the relief of the reader who had embarked on a long search.

For the second year, I left the site without asking any names, neither the bookstore nor the bookseller. When I arrived in Bogotá, I opened the copy on the first pages and found two things: The first, a note in incomprehensible letters that managed to identify two names, Julio Acosta and Cecilia Díaz Granados; the second, a dedication that reads something like... “To get to heaven in my imagination, in a bookstore, and it's like a song” - Rayuela Bookstore. Bogota, 12/XI/71. I kept thinking about the stories beyond history that books carry with them. I wanted to know what that bookstore with the name of Julio Cortázar's most iconic novel would look like at the time. When I went to put the book away, a piece of paper fell on the floor. I picked it up and realized that it was the answer that came after regretting my neglect.

That's where all the data was. I didn't have to do any more. And so, even with phones, I returned for the third year to the site. On that occasion, I didn't buy anything for myself, or well, I didn't do it with that intention. I took, in the spirit of giving it away, an edition of Aire de Tango, by Manuel Mejía Vallejo. Inside was an illegible signature followed by some information about someone: “Calle 100 # 19 - 45. Apt. 501″, and a date: October 1974. I gave that copy to someone very important at the time. Today, this copy rests in my library, and that person wakes up every day by my side.

It is impressive to notice the paths that the books follow before they reach us, the hands they pass through and the places they occupy. I owe a lot to this small bookstore in Villa de Leyva, even though I visit it once a year and I still don't dare to remember the name of the bookseller. I thank him for every moment he has given me, because with each visit something changes in my life, something takes me, something I receive. It's not just a bookstore, none really are, they're wormholes that take us from one place to another, wrapped in yellowed pages and the smell of old. They are like a cave of infinite moments. Yeah, that's what they are.

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