17 A World Within a World #2
She went to London alone. Manuel had heavy workdays—closing fiscal years, convening boards, drafting minutes for all the companies he advised.
Paulina left Gina at home with Isabel, knowing her daughter loved being with the maid, who spoiled her and anticipated her wishes.
It was like staying with a grandmother. On her first afternoon in London, Paulina traced a bookshop route on a map.
She left the Westbury in Mayfair, walked down Old Bond Street, lingered at the Burlington Arcade windows, and emerged on Piccadilly, facing Hatchards, a bookshop founded in 1797.
She’d been told that shops bearing that crest above the door were places the queen frequented.
She also felt like royalty, walking beneath the flags above the black small-paned door.
Inside, order and silence reigned. In her search for butterfly books, she noticed the shelves were subtly tilted to make searching easier—the books at Hatchards greeted you face-to-face.
No need for finger-along-the-spines guesswork.
She found what she thought might be a rarity: La Mariposa y el Tanque, four illustrated Hemingway stories about the Spanish Civil War, published in Spanish by Bruguera, a Barcelona publisher.
She’d seen books in every language in Jean-Pierre’s apartment, even in those he didn’t understand.
The ritual was now well practiced. Each time she acted more decisively, more confident no one would see her slip her business cards into books in Britain’s oldest bookshop.
The next stop, according to the map route, was supposed to be London’s largest bookstore, and depending on the guidebook, the world’s most extensive by square meters and titles.
If it had the most books, surely it would have the most kinds of books he would choose and rummage through.
She let herself hope. Her Mastroianni went to London every year for the antiques fair.
She headed toward Piccadilly Circus, crossed Soho with her bag slung tight, marveled at the streetlights of old theaters on St. Martin’s Lane, and reached her destination: Foyles, at 119 Charing Cross Road.
It was a world within a world. If she found too many butterfly books, she might run out of cards.
She left six in the antiquarian section.
She was recommended a novel about a butterfly collector in the literature section.
It had been adapted into a movie in the sixties, she was told, starring Terence Stamp.
He played a lonely young man obsessed with an art student, who buys a cottage with gambling winnings.
Jean-Pierre, a movie lover, must have seen it.
She took out a card and, in a fit of longing, wrote two words: “Appelle-moi.” She closed the book and, as she returned it to the shelf, felt a twinge, maybe an intuition that the message would travel far.
She woke up at the Westbury. It was raining.
The concierge with the top hat lent her a hotel umbrella and opened the taxi door.
He said it was the best way to reach King’s Cross so she wouldn’t miss the train to Glasgow.
Four and a half hours later she arrived.
It was worth it just to see how the place looked almost clandestine in the bleak street and vulgar building.
You had to purposefully go to Voltaire & Rousseau, a hub for students and intellectuals.
Paulina could hardly believe that in such a renowned secondhand bookstore, three cats roamed happily atop mountains of books strewn across the floor.
There were piles upon piles of volumes that no longer fit on dust-filled shelves.
There were places that had gone untouched for decades.
Amid so much old paper, amid the brownish, sad atmosphere, stood a green wooden staircase, paint flaking, used to climb to higher shelves.
After two hours searching for a needle in a haystack, she managed to leave only two cards, with little hope Jean-Pierre would ever find them if he reached that remote corner of Glasgow.
That same afternoon, a trip to Inverness, another river city, restored her spirits.
Only two years earlier, Leakey’s had converted an old church into a bookshop.
From outside, with its eighteenth-century bell tower, it maintained the austerity of a place of worship.
Inside, the transformation gave off a magic and mystique.
Paulina had never imagined a place like it could exist, and felt happy there, surrounded by paper and order.
The journey north had been worth it. She searched for books and smiled.
She couldn’t help it. She thought of Jean-Pierre in Scotland’s largest secondhand bookshop, feeling close to him.
When she returned to London the next day, her card holder was empty.
Someone had once told her you couldn’t go to Venice alone.
Nostalgia will eat you up. If you’re in love, it will devour you.
Whoever had given that advice was right.
Paulina invited Júlia to spend three days with her in Italy.
Gina would stay home with Isabel, who was surely happy to be in charge.
The cousins flew to Milan, and while Júlia visited the Duomo, Paulina escaped to Bocca, the old bookshop in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, to hide business cards in books.
Six hours later they were gliding by gondola through the canals of Sestiere Castello.
They were narrow, impossible channels. Sometimes their turns were so sharp no taxi or motorboat could pass.
Only experienced gondoliers knew where to plant a foot on the wall and counter with the oar to round the corner.
Campo San Lorenzo, Palazzo Cappello, Palazzo Cavagnis.
It felt like Venice belonged to them alone.
Seen from below, they felt they had entered a tunnel through time, with moss embedded on crumbling walls revealed by the water’s small waves.
The gondolier pointed out a broken green wooden door.
It was the delivery entrance to Acqua Alta, a bookshop they had to visit at all costs.
Why else come to Venice? Paulina entered from the back.
Since Voltaire & Rousseau she’d not seen anything as chaotic, with secondhand books everywhere.
There were some that filled a gondola in the center.
Another gondola hung upside down from the ceiling.
Books filled two white bathtubs that Júlia found endearingly naive.
It was impossible to know what lay inside.
On the walls, there hung a wooden helm here and there.
There was a skull with a pirate hat that they each wanted to pose with, first one cousin, then the other.
The ceiling was low and irregular, and instead of steps to the first floor, there was a staircase made of books you had to climb on top of.
Never had they seen anything so unique. There, with an atlas of butterflies in hand, Paulina didn’t hide the ritual from her cousin.
“Do you really think Jean-Pierre will come to Venice? To this musty bookshop?”
“He does. He travels. He thinks he collects butterfly books. In truth, he collects bookshops.”
“And if he ever finds the card, what do you expect him to do? If you want to see him, write to him. Call him. Do you want me to tell him?”
“Honestly?” She grabbed her cousin by the shoulders shyly. “Don’t. Neither he nor I will allow the feeling of victory we had in Paris to be spoiled.”
“But then,” Júlia murmured, “why do it?”
“I like leaving clues to my love. He’ll find them or he won’t. He’ll know or he won’t. It doesn’t matter. What we lived deserves a try. Why do I do it?” She thought for a few seconds, then answered without hesitation. “Because this is the trail of love.”
Neither of them could imagine, in that intimate moment of happiness and confession, of having found an answer and spoken it aloud, that Venice would be Paulina’s last trip.