[A repeat from August 24, 2014] Years ago, in another life, I traveled to Spain and Portugal frequently.  I would normally come back with suitcases chock full of handwritten manuscripts. Some dating to the 1400’s. There were the Spanish garrison records for Gibraltar (from before the British occupation), a thousand page manuscript history of the Church in Santiago de Compostela (1540-1822), the Jesuit diaries in Goa (India) dating to the early 1500’s and so on. 

As we all say when time goes by – “those were the days.”  In Lisbon, during one visit, I found it.  I found the cemetery of the books.  This was a term made popular by Carlos Ruiz Zafon in his must read book The Shadow of the Wind.  The cemetery of the books in Lisbon was a 3 or 4 story warehouse on a narrow street in the Bairo Alto.   It was chock full of manuscripts, rare books and manuscript books.   It was not a museum or archive.  It was literally a cemetery of rarities.  Which one could buy for a song.  Few people knew about this place.  And somehow I had stumbled upon it.  For those who are squeamish, stop reading here. 

The books and manuscripts I would pull off the shelves were literally crawling with dust mites and lice.  All manner of insects.  Vermin scooted in the corners and along the walls.  But oh my – the things that were there.  I would load up suitcases with books and manuscripts – carefully wrapping them in plastic bags – and bring them home.  Once home, I would put the plastic bags in a large freezer for a month or two (a recommended Rx for dealing with the creepy crawlers) and later leaf through what I had found.  Create listings and sell them.  But on one sad trip to Lisbon, I arrived at the cemetery of the books and – it was no more.  It had burned to the ground a month or two before.  I still have an item or two or three left from these forays.  Regrettably the cemetery of books is no more.  If it was still there, I might still visit Lisbon every few months. . . . .