Souvenirs of a Tiny Bookshop

Two Saturdays ago, at some point during this rainy gloomy day, we found a charming old bookstore in Chiado. The shop was tiny (the space was the size of a small room) and when we walked inside, only two people were there: the owner and another customer. As we slowly entered, we found a mad universe of books everywhere - from the shelves, to the floor, and even stacks of books in chairs. 

I headed to the end of that little room, where I found a basket with some old postcards. Let me explain why this was my first destination. 

I've always liked postcards. Sending them, receiving them, writing them... Unfortunately, given the generation I was born in, postcards give me a sort of melancholic nostalgia of a tradition I know I will never fully experience. 

Sure, every now and then I might send or receive a postcard in the mail, but it's obviously not the same. Recently, though, I've come to find a deeper interest in other people's postcards. People I have never met, will never meet, and of whom I have no information about. Maybe they're alive, maybe they're dead. Maybe they were abducted by extraterrestrials. What it all comes down to, and what I find fascinating, is that in these postcards I get a glimpse of a story, a piece of someone's life, of what one person had to say to another... (Is this hobby of mine some sort of "new age voyeurism"?, I wonder.)

I was in between a groupie's postcard to a musician and a proud grandmother's postcard to her grand daughter (who had just passed her exams), when the owner of the shop started speaking to us.

As he showed us his collection of Black Magic books, Music books and History books, we talked for ages. 

One of the things we learned about this man, was the fact that he almost married a frenchwoman (apparently an heiress of Perrier water family), but ended up marrying a portuguese woman. His french fiancée could not leave Paris behind and he could not leave Lisbon. "It's okay. She was more of an aperitif", said the other customer, a 92-year-old book collector. 

As the men continued talking, I found two old 1940s almanacs that ended up coming home with me. Inside each one of them was a world filled with poems, short stories, quotes, articles about absolutely every subject you can imagine, jokes, puzzles and a calendar. 

Take a look: