Lisbon welcomed me with that broken elegance you expect from cities that have read more than they have lived. I walked up and down its cobbled streets. I stopped in front of the façade of Livraria Bertrand, at number 73 on Rua Garrett, in the heart of Chiado—that neighborhood where shoe stores, cafés, and vendors of disillusionment coexist with a resignation that borders on courtesy.
Founded in 1732 by two French brothers, this bookstore has survived earthquakes, fires, censors, dictatorships, and German tourists in search of literary postcards. Partially destroyed by the 1755 earthquake, it was renovated and reopened on the same street in 1773, where it has continued to sell books and observe the ups and downs of Portugal ever since.
According to a plaque at the entrance, Bertrand is the oldest bookshop in the world still in operation. The neighborhood residents also swear by it with the tone of those who believe in bureaucratic miracles. A charming claim, although suspiciously identical to the one I heard in Buenos Aires (a certain “Archivo Subterráneo Clemente Airó” that did not appear on any map), in Prague (where a bookshop only opened on leap years) and in a nameless inn in Naples, where they sold books alongside fried di paranza… All of them claim antiquity as if old age guaranteed virtue.
Inside, the air smelled of resigned paper, of ink that had lost its nerve, of an enlightened republic. The shelves creaked, looking like old women with opinions on concrete poetry. There were tourists taking selfies between Pessoa and Saramago; for them, words are statues that grant wisdom by proximity. I stopped in the Portuguese history section, where an 1893 edition of Crónicas do Reino de Afonso Henriques, Comentadas por el P. Teodoro de Sant’Anna (Chronicles of the Kingdom of Afonso Henriques, Commented by Father Teodoro de Sant’Anna) stared at me with a mixture of compassion and menace.
I asked the bookseller about the Diário Espiritual do Irmão Amador de Sines (1611–1619) (Apocryphal Diary of Brother Amador of Sines). “I’m sorry, I sold a copy last week,” he said, and without pausing, he offered me a biography of the Lisbon monk Ernesto Filomeno, who founded the Order of Refractory Librarians… It is the volume I am now leafing through in my library as I write these lines.
In the farthest corner of the store, among practical alchemy manuals and romantic novels from the Restoration, I found an underlined copy of O Livro do Desassossego. The annotations were in three languages and a language that seemed to be encrypted. “This fragment smells of voluntary failure (Aníbal Chao, Montevideo, 1956),” reads the reddish ink on the title page.
In the box, I saw a copy of Poemas by Alberto Caeiro (Edições Ática, Lisbon, 1946) that demanded to be bought. The bookseller grabbed it and said, “A classic for days when you have no questions.” Before leaving, I signed an orphaned book with my initials and a coffee stain: Teoria do Desencontro Voluntário (Livraria Alquimia, Porto, 1971).
I sat on a bench in front of the store, right between the 19 de Abril perfume shop and a kiosk that sold soulless souvenirs instead of newspapers. I wrote in my diary: “Livraria Bertrand, where books are visitors who come to stay, like those old guys with repeated stories and noble gestures.”
Lisbon continued on its course, turning to the rhythm of the trams. I continued one station further, counting the cobblestones of its ruas, in search of other margins waiting for new writings.
