the bookseller

 The shop is on Calle de las Flores, where the asphalt turns to cobblestone and the cobblestones, to a murmur of cars that no longer pass. The facade is a gray that could once have been sand white, like Andalusian courtyards in May. A sign with letters painted by brush on blue glass reads "Librería Azahar," though no one remembers why. The door, always ajar, exhales the smell of old paper, of bookbinding glue, of damp, of dust that hasn't moved in decades.

Inside, the shop is a labyrinth. The oak and mahogany shelves bow under the weight of books. Everywhere there are towers of stacked books, raised with the patience of a medieval architect. At the base, the heaviest ones; in the middle, the hardcovers; at the top, the paperbacks, the most fragile, which threaten to bring the tower down in a heap of paper and dust at the slightest touch.

There is an empty box next to the back door. The bookseller keeps it because it was the first one he used when he opened the shop, thirty years ago, when his wife was still there. He likes to look at it and remember that everything once arrived in boxes. That everything is transportable. That everything could become a box again.

Clara died in winter.

The bookseller arrived and Clara wasn't there. He thought she might have been delayed at the pharmacy, or that she had gone to buy cigarettes. The door was closed, but not locked. He went in. The smell of old paper and cold coffee greeted him as always, but there was something different: a denser silence.

He called her name from the entrance. Nothing. He climbed the two steps that separated the shop from the back room. Nothing. He told himself that maybe she had lingered talking to Señora Rocío. He made coffee, organized the books from the previous afternoon, waited an hour. But Clara didn't come.

He dialed his mother's number.
—Mom? Is Clara there?
—No, son, she hasn't come. Isn't she at the shop?
—She hasn't arrived yet.
—Call me if she shows up.
—Yes, I'll call you.

He waited another half hour. He called Clara's friend, the only one who really knew how she was doing.
—Hey, did Clara come to see you? It's just that she hasn't arrived and it's already almost eleven thirty.
—No, I haven't seen her in days. Have you called her cell?
—It rings and she doesn't answer.
—Look, I saw her two days ago. She told me she was doing badly, that she wasn't sleeping. I told her to go to the doctor, but she laughed and said it was no use. I don't want to worry you, but...
—But what?
—Nothing, just that she sounded strange to me. As if nothing mattered to her. Call me if you find her.
—Yes, I'll call you.

He hung up. He sat staring at the phone. The coffee, cold. The bookshop, empty. Clara, nowhere.

He closed the bookshop and crossed the street. The house was two doors down. He climbed the three flights of stairs. When he opened the door, he noticed that there Clara's absence was the same as in the shop, but in the empty hallway of the house, it weighed differently. In the kitchen, on the table, a half-finished cup of coffee and a folded sheet of paper. He didn't open it. He didn't dare. He went to the bedroom. When he entered, he found her lying on the bed, the Pizarnik book La tierra más ajena open on her chest and her hands still. Beside her, an empty bottle. No one needed to tell him anything.

He went out into the hallway and called his sister. His voice was trembling. He didn't know what else to do. He went back to the room, sat on the edge of the bed, and waited for them to arrive.

The bookseller didn't want to open the shop. For weeks he remained seated in the armchair of his house, without light, without a telephone. His sister Marta came from Madrid, forced him to eat, dragged him to the shower. But he didn't want to go back to the bookshop. Because the bookshop was the place where Clara had spent the afternoons reading aloud, with bare feet and loose hair. Where she had left her fingers on the spines. Where her smell still clung to the shelves, like a mist that doesn't dissipate.

One morning, the bookseller dreamed of Clara. She was in the bookshop, her back to him, running her fingers over the books. She didn't turn toward him, nor did she speak to him, she just passed her hand over the books. But he knew he had to return to the bookshop, to look for what she wanted to tell him.

He got up, got dressed, walked to the bookshop, and opened the door. The smell of old paper, of dust, of bookbinding glue hit him.

Once inside, he headed to the corner by the window, where Clara used to sit to read with the light that came in from the courtyard. There, on a shelf, there were several books stacked without much order, the ones she kept at hand for her reading afternoons. He recognized, among the books, Boris Vian's Les vases communicants, Gertrude Stein wondering what a rose was, and a blue-covered notebook where she sometimes copied verses. But there was one book that stood out on the shelf, as if it had been the last one she touched.

The bookseller took it with both hands, with the same care with which one takes something that can break. It was El rayo que no cesa, by Miguel Hernández. An old, yellowed edition. He opened it.
And then he knew that he had not seen the bars that had been growing over these years, inside him, while he organized books and worried about the shop.

The bookseller closed the book, held it for a moment in his hands. He set it down next to the window and approached a pile of books stacked behind Clara's chair.

He chose one at random and opened it to smell it. It was a copy of Góngora. It smelled of old leather, of incense, of something dry and ancient. That smell belonged to someone who had kept it for a long time. A priest, perhaps, who read it in a cell, with hands always cold, and who died without anyone knowing he had that book. Then he tried an edition of La Regenta, by Clarín, bound in dark cloth with a worn spine. The pages were yellowed and the top edge full of dust. That was the smell of a provincial notary who bought it for its fame, placed it on the shelf, and never opened it. It smelled of good-quality paper, of a drawing-room library that no one used, of a life that passed among files and deeds, with no time for literature. He searched the shelves, took down an edition of the Poesías of Meléndez Valdés. It smelled of honey and beeswax, of cedar wood. This one had belonged to a law student who arrived in the city with that book under his arm. He underlined some verses in pencil, wrote a date on the last page —"Salamanca, 1947"—, and then left it in a boarding house. He never came back for it.

He took up the Miguel Hernández book again and brought it close to his nose. She was still there. The sandalwood, the soap, the tobacco of Orihuela mixed with her skin.

He realized then that every book holds something more than its contents. It holds the smell of the hand that opened it, of the table where it rested, of the room where it was read. It holds the life of whoever held it, like an echo that doesn't fade completely.

That afternoon, he began to classify the poetry books by smell. Not by author or by date. By smell. Because every smell was a life. Because every smell was Clara.

He placed a modest shelf next to the window. Birch wood, four shelves, screws that loosen every two months. It doesn't bow. It's the only piece of furniture in the shop that doesn't bow. On it he keeps only a dozen books, the ones he likes most, the ones he has read most often, the ones with handwritten dedications. On top of the thickest ones, he places fragile copies horizontally: Les fleurs du mal with its spine unstuck, the notebook by an unknown author, Gertrude Stein wondering what a rose was.

On the modest shelf he also keeps the books that smell of Clara. Only those in which her scent has clung most strongly.

Sometimes he changes his mind. A book he hasn't opened in years appears to him in a dream and the next day he takes it down from the highest tower and places it on the shelf. And vice versa. It's not a system for others. It's for him. To remember. To smell. To keep feeling Clara close.

Back home he turns on the small lamp on the table, in his room. The lamp's light is warm, yellow, barely a whisper of clarity in the penumbra. On the nightstand, next to a notebook of poems by an unknown author, is the old edition of Martín Fierro, with its worn cover and spine broken down the middle, as if someone had opened it too many times in the same place.

His father had given it to him. It was a gift from a sick uncle, who had come from Argentina to say goodbye. Or rather, his uncle, the one who came from Argentina, more than forty years ago now. "It's your father's favorite," he told him, and handed it to him with trembling hands, like someone handing over a treasure that no longer belongs to him. The bookseller had read it as a child, on rainy afternoons, with his father sitting beside him, pointing at the verses with his finger.

He opens it with both hands, with the same care with which one takes something that can break. The pages smell of old paper, of the damp of a village library, of the earth of the pampas. They smell of tobacco, of mate, of his father's hands, of childhood. They smell of something that is no longer there.

The next day, he comes down from the house early, has a coffee and some churros at the corner bar, and when he finishes, pays and heads off to open the bookshop.

And then he begins to write a letter.

Dear Clara:

I have reorganized the shelves. Don Quixote no longer rests: I've stood him upright, firm. The Brothers Karamazov asked me to be next to Machado. And I put him there.

I've begun to classify poetry by smell. It's the only way I've found to keep being here.

Góngora smells of incense and rabbit-skin glue from a workshop in Toledo. Quevedo, of earwax —I don't know why, but that's how it is. Darío smells of the sea, though the one from Buenos Aires smells of mate, of the hands of someone who read it in La Boca while it rained. Blas de Otero smells of chalk dust, of shelter, of shag tobacco smoked in silence.

The contemporary ones, the ones from now, barely smell at all. Acid-free paper, hot plastic from the printing press. The future doesn't smell, Clara. And that's frightening.

But when I opened La tierra más ajena, I found your smell. And then I knew that books keep those who read them. That they don't leave completely.

But there's something I haven't told you.

Sometimes, when I smell a book and don't find your scent, I'm afraid. Afraid that you're leaving. That one day I'll open a book and there will be only paper.

I don't know what I'll do that day.

I miss you. I miss your bare feet on the stool, your loose hair, your voice reading aloud. But when I smell the books, I find you. And that is enough.

When he finished the letter, he folded it carefully, without haste, like someone preparing an object he knows will be found. He slipped it between the pages of a book. He didn't choose any particular one. Just a book, one of those that were next to the ones she had touched.

Then he closed it and returned it to its place.

He knew Clara would read it.

At the end of the day, when he closes the bookshop, he smells his father, Clara, all those who are no longer there. A smell that cannot be named, but that is there, clinging to the books, to the shelves, to the dust that doesn't move, asking him to stay.

The bookseller turns around and goes back inside the shop.

He crosses the labyrinth of bowed shelves, dodges the towers of books that point at the ceiling with the precision of someone who knows every threat of collapse. He walks to Clara's corner, by the window, where the sunset begins to slip in among the withered geraniums, from the courtyard.

There, on the table, is Rayuela, by Cortázar. An old edition, with a worn cover and a spine broken down the middle, as if someone had opened it too many times in the same place. He doesn't know how it got there. Maybe Clara left it in her corner and he never saw it. Maybe it was always there, waiting. It smelled of blond tobacco, of a summer night, of the damp of the Paris asphalt after the rain, of the hands of someone who read it on the floor, with bare feet. He sits down, takes it with both hands, and begins to read.

But time passes without him noticing. The pages follow one another, as the sun declines, as the light turns golden, as the sunset tinges the geraniums a tired red. And he keeps reading when that light goes out completely and the penumbra envelops him. Only then, when the words begin to blur, does he raise his eyes. Night has come. The light of the stars now slips in among the withered geraniums, which seem to revive, and on the table, next to the book, the lamp he has turned on without realizing it casts a whisper of yellow clarity over the pages.

And then, when he lowers his gaze to the book again, he feels something.

First it's a brush, slight, barely a tremor on his scalp. Then, the pressure of some fingers that slip into his hair, slowly, with the same softness with which Clara used to do it when he was reading and she approached from behind, without warning. The fingers travel down his neck, tangle in the ends, draw circles on his crown. The bookseller closes his eyes.

He doesn't move. He doesn't open his eyes. He doesn't want the gesture to break.

He feels the weight of the hand, the temperature of the skin, the heartbeat of a life that shouldn't be there. But it is. And he knows, with the same certainty with which he knows that orange blossom will smell in the streets again every spring, that it is not a dream. That it is Clara. That she is there, behind him, with bare feet and loose hair, running her fingers through his head as she did on reading afternoons, when the world stopped and only they existed, the book, and the shared silence.

The bookseller says nothing. He doesn't turn around. He just lets the fingers keep moving, lets the smell of sandalwood and soap fill the air, lets the lamp keep trembling on the table.

He knows that when he opens his eyes, the hand will no longer be there. That the bookshop will be empty again, that the dust will remain the only reader in the dark corners.

But now, in this instant, with Clara's fingers on his head, the bookseller understands why he came back.

He came back for this. For this moment. To be together once more.

And while the fingers play at tangling in his hair, the bookseller smiles. Not a big smile, not a smile that can be seen. A small smile, almost invisible, that only he knows is there, like the smell that remains in a room when no one is left, like the dust that doesn't move, like Clara, who is there and did not leave.

The lamp flickers. The light of the stars slips through the window. The bookshop smells of those who are no longer there.

The bookseller remains there, with his eyes closed, feeling Clara's fingers on his head, while the book of Rayuela rests open on his knees, waiting for someone to read it again.