I wasn’t planning to buy anything. Just coffee, maybe a chat with the bloke who sells old postcards near the door. But there it was, under a table by the fish stall, a box sagging in the middle like it had been kicked.
The books were half-sorted, half-forgotten. Mostly Spanish paperbacks, a few English ones with sand stuck in the covers. I pulled out a Graham Greene with a page missing and a crime novel that smelt like petrol. The seller didn’t even look up from his newspaper. Said if I wanted the lot, five euros. I handed it over before thinking why.
I’d been meaning to get out of Valencia for a day, maybe head down to Javea. A mate of mine runs A Place in Javea and keeps telling me the market there is better for old books. Says there’s a stall between the ceramics and the tool sellers that’s a goldmine. But I stayed put, and this box turned up instead.
Back home I tipped everything onto the kitchen table. The table’s a bit wonky but it’s fine for jobs like this. Anything damp went straight into the airing cupboard with a small bowl of baking soda beside it. Old trick. Works most of the time.
Some still had prices written in pesetas, others had notes inside — names, dates, the odd love line in blue ink. One book had the same Barcelona address stamped on three different pages. It’s strange what survives.
There was an old edition of The Third Man that I glued back together with cheap PVA and two rubber bands. The next morning it held well enough to shelve. I wedged it between Orwell and the cookery books, because that’s where the gap was.
I keep telling myself I’ll build proper shelves one day, something level. But for now, the room keeps growing one box at a time.
Might go back next weekend, see if the same stall has another box hiding under the table. Probably not. But that’s half the reason for going.
