Readers are creatures of habit, and La Madriguera has its own. For example, the jolatero that Toño made for me, where books from the Canary Islands furrow the street, is a magnet for tourists. They usually prowl around the entrance, sometimes taking photos or trying to decipher the titles. And if they know a bit of our language, they buy without hesitation. What is not so frequent is that, as a bookseller, they ask you about specific topics or authors (beyond Manrique and photography). That's why I was so surprised that last Thursday, on the eve of Book Day, a young Englishman, red-haired, with a trimmed beard and clear eyes, who could have been perfectly an adult version of Ron Weasley, approached the counter, separating himself a few meters from the couple accompanying him (I would later find out they were his parents) and with the much-touted British phlegm, but in perfect Spanish, said to me: "Excuse me, do you have anything of graphic humor in
Canary Islands?".
That query put me on alert, but what really left me speechless was the phrase that came next: "I'm looking for things by Cho Juaá." Because, as far as I remember, in the almost four years that I've been open, no one, neither foreigner nor local, had asked me for materials by Eduardo Millares Sall. Moreover, pronounced with English phonetics, his name sounded exotic, like a Korean painter: "Cho Yuaá." Unfortunately, I could offer him little of what was available in the bookstore: just a few comic strips by Morgan, compiled by Canarias7. "No, no, I already have that author, and Padylla, we are even in contact and I have interviewed them." As you can imagine, by this point, curiosity was eating me up inside. So we immediately struck up a conversation and I proceeded to interrogate him. First of all, I found out that his name was Rhodri, like that, with an h in between. And that his thesis had been about César Manrique as a cultural icon and that he was now doing his doctorate in island graphic humor, starting from Cho Juaá to the contemporaries. And I, who consider myself a scholar and a defender of Canarian culture, was simply amazed by that. We talked about the Millares dynasty, from the patriarch Agustín Millares Torres to the recently deceased Jane Millares Sall, the only woman of the six artist siblings and the last survivor (along with Totoyo) of her generation. Also about the branch of the de la Torre family, Claudio and Josefina, uncles of the former and of the cousin Néstor, all related. The most fruitful family tree in the Canary Islands. And also about the island idiosyncrasy, so permeable to English humor and its fine sense of irony, historically present in the Archipelago through the colony and British travelers, because in certain aspects or personality traits, we have a more Anglo-Saxon than Hispanic character.
And as I saw him so sad for not being able to locate anything and at the same time so excited about his thesis, I did something that is not usual: offer him funds from my own collection. Because it turns out that I had in my possession two diptychs, both signed by Cho Juaá, from an exhibition in 1981 in El Campesino - Mobiliario, located at number 100 of José Antonio street (current Manolo Millares; I lived at number 27) in Arrecife. And although I could have charged him a fortune for such an exclusive object, I decided to give it to him, because he deserved it and because it came from my heart. The problem is that Rhodri was flying back to the United Kingdom that same afternoon (he is doing his doctorate at the University of Durham), so we agreed that his parents would come to pick it up the next day at La Madriguera.
When I got home, I sent him some photos of the diptych (with reviews by Néstor Álamo and Luis León Barreto, among others, a catalog of the exhibited works and a biobibliographical sketch) by WhatsApp and given his reaction, a mixture of impatience and enthusiasm, I understood that I had made the right decision.
When his parents appeared on Friday morning at the bookstore, the first thing I did was hand them the diptych, which they treated and wrapped with reverence. Then, they asked me for a copy of Benito Pérez Armas's Canarian Tales, which I had the honor of coordinating and which we had also discussed the day before, asking me to dedicate it to Rhodri, to whom I even stamped our exlibris, which I reserve for special occasions. But the most amazing thing was discovering that his mother, Rhian Davies, has been reading and studying Galdós for 27 years and that she is one of the greatest connoisseurs of his work (especially of the Torquemada Tetralogy), with abundant works published from the University of Sheffield, where she is a professor. When I mentioned Yolanda Arencibia to her, she looked for photos on her mobile with her in the courtyard of the Casa de Colón, during some Galdosian conferences. Anyway... what an extraordinary family! Luckily, the father, Paul, was a typical Englishman who didn't speak a word of Spanish, because if he had told me that he was translating Cairasco's proparoxytone verses into the language of Shakespeare, I would have believed him without a problem.
As luck would have it, before we said goodbye, the area postman came in to deliver an envelope. And seeing the sender, I asked them to wait until I opened it. Because what it contained were two copies (one for me and another for a good friend), in first edition, of The Hall's Concerns by Alonso Quesada, with a cover by César Manrique and a prologue by Lázaro Santana, published in 1975, for the fiftieth anniversary of his death. And what better way to say goodbye to them than with this novel of colonial Englishmen, among whom there is a married couple from Manchester who read the same story.
