Book lovers in Colombia say goodbye to Mauricio Lleras, the bookseller

A few months ago, José Manuel, his son, had told me that his father was very ill. He did not have words to explain what was happening, the way in which, little by little, his life was running out. Glazed eyes, head bobbing from side to side, indicating no. "It's very bad," he repeated. From that day on, I missed him. Not before, because one makes the mistake of assuming that loved ones are still there.

The last time I saw him was longer than I'd like to admit. I arrived when he was having lunch and, despite that, he treated me with the same kindness as always. The last book I bought her is still in my library, unread, and I don't know if I want to open it now. A little piece of him may still be inside, and I refuse to let him go.

I met MAURICIO LLERAS in 2017, the same afternoon that I met Hugo Chaparro Valderrama for the first time. The bookstore had recently moved and had the charm of new spaces. That time I was there, not only the Colombian writer and the bookseller, but also Gabriela Alemán, the Ecuadorian writer, acting as a bookseller for a day, as part of a campaign by the Colombian Book Chamber, if I remember correctly.

I arrived at the place all sweaty; He had walked from the previous headquarters because he did not know that Prologo Libros had changed locations. I entered and greeted eagerly, going to a corner to freshen up. Gabriela, with her particular accent; Don Mauricio, with his announcer's voice, and Hugo, always jocular, talked about books, naturally. I don't remember exactly which ones or by which authors, but I do know that they laughed every once in a while and made you want to enter the conversation. Gabriela noticed.

From that first talk, whenever I could I went to Prologue, and not so much because of the place, because there are many bookstores in Bogotá, but because of him, because of Mauricio Lleras, the bookseller.

Each meeting with him required, like good football matches, an obligatory extension. His recommendations could fill an entire notebook and the anecdotes he told will always have space in the best of copies on literary celebrations. One of them, one of my favorites, is when a client asked his permission to ask his girlfriend to marry him. Don Mauricio agreed and then everything was merriment.

I remember arriving and looking sideways at the small side window. "At this table we talk about politics," said a small sign, but big enough to heed the warning. In the background, the image of him. His mustache like Rafael Pombo's. There he could see Don Mauricio, sitting in his chair, looking at a book or serving a client. "Don Santiago", he told me when he arrived. “How has he been doing? What is counted? ”, He asked. "Don Mauricio", I answered, and from there, the hours.

The first book that we talked about with great enthusiasm was a marvel that he had recently discovered, a novel that he never stopped recommending to me, because of how entertaining and beautiful it was: “The Woman with the Red Notebook”, by Antoine Laurain. The first author we discussed extensively about was Roberto Bolaño. He didn't like it very much. I loved it, and still do. The first genre to be discussed was science fiction. He liked certain authors and tried to make me "come to my senses", but I couldn't with so much numerology and spaceships.

We were always talking about books. I would ask him what he was reading and he would talk to me at length. He asked me the same thing and thus we established, by mutual agreement, but without even having conceived it, an exchange of readings that, I like to believe that was the case, both he and I would brighten up our afternoons.

Some say he was an angry guy, who spoke little and smoked a lot. The first is not true. He was very serious, yes, but he had plenty of room for smiles. The second is pure lie. If there was someone who liked to talk, it was him. And the third, well, I can't deny that.

From a very young age, Don Mauricio was attracted to the bookseller's trade. An early reader, he never forgot the day his father took him to the Buchholz bookstore, in downtown Bogotá, during the 1950s. On that occasion, even without knowing how to read, he took a book in his hands and was fascinated with the colors and texture of the paper. His father gave him the book and at home he taught him what was necessary to carry out the reading. It was then that he knew what he would do for the rest of his life: read.

As soon as he could, as an adult, he looked for a way to come into contact with the world of books. For a long time he was involved in agronomy and flirted for several years with publishing literature. He was an inexhaustible curious. He had a relationship with the editor Margarita Valencia, the mother of his son, José Manuel, for a long time. And in one afternoon, unintentionally wanting, like all the good things that arise in this life, he came up with the idea of ​​starting his own bookstore.

Talking with Rodrigo Matamoros about the boredom that the atmosphere in book fairs produced in both of them, where the amount of people and the hustle and bustle made true communion with BOOKS impossible, they conceived the possibility of starting a bookstore. However, Lleras was convinced that a business like that, in a city like Bogotá, could easily end up bankrupt. He resisted at first.

It took a few weeks for him to agree, although deep down he knew that this was what he wanted, it had always been that way. In the end, reason failed to win over the heart. "Well, if we're going to break, let's break," he said. Thanks to this, Prologo Libros became a reality.

Going into the Prologue, I wrote it once, is like getting into Mauricio Lleras's head, like looking at an appendix of his personal library. What else there is, that's how it was from the beginning and will continue to be until the end, are novels, and among all those novels, police novels are the favorites. In Bogotá there was not, there is not, nor will there ever be another bookseller as passionate about the genre as he is.

Many people came to his bookstore in recent years thanks to the podcast 'El librero', which he did together with the journalist Jorge Espinosa. His recommendations, several of the best, were registered there.

With Don Mauricio you always got what you were looking for, and not just books, but also advice, lessons, gifts. Seeing him was a party. To the readers, or at least to me, he was the kind of person you wanted to be when you grew up. Several times, when they ask me how I look when I'm old, I answer that: “I want to be like Mauricio Lleras”. And I'm sure everyone who knew him can say something similar.

He left before his time, like all the people one loves. On the night of December 26, the poet María Paz Guerrero wrote to me asking about him, if she knew anything. I told him no, that the last thing was that, that he was in poor health and José Manuel had taken over the bookstore. “He passed away”, he told me, and I broke down.

The bookseller Álvaro Castillo Granada confirmed it to me. “When I thought of a bookseller in Colombia, when someone asked me, the first name that came to mind was his, Mauricio Lleras,” he wrote. Suddenly, social networks were filled with people who talked about him, who mourned his death. Photographs, memories, books.

It had been a long time since a death hit so hard, not me. If there was someone in this world of BOOKS who taught me unintentionally, who guided me and corrected me when necessary, it was Mauricio Lleras. Now that he's gone, I feel bad for not having told him, but I'm sure that as long as he remembers it, as long as we remember it, his memory will continue to be present and he won't stop telling us about those very good BOOKS and also those other very bad ones.

Thank you for so much, Mr. Bookseller.

KEEP READING:

Talking with Rodrigo Matamoros about the boredom that the atmosphere in book fairs produced in both of them, where the amount of people and the hustle and bustle made true communion with books impossible, they conceived the possibility of starting a bookstore.