Chapter 10 — Cartographer of Lost Roads

Van Khue cradled the hand-drawn piece of paper in her palm, carefully as if just a strong wind was enough to turn it into dust. She compared it in her mind to the 1987 map that she had memorized every line after weeks of studying — the shape of the main alley, the location of the temple, the banyan tree, the ferry wharf, all of which matched surprisingly well, even though one side was an expert drawing of precise measurements, the other side was just a commoner's memory sketched out with a shaky pencil.

"Grandma," Van Khue asked, her voice cautious, "do you remember anyone in your neighborhood who was involved in mapping and measuring land that day? I'm trying to find out who surveyed this area before clearing it."

Mrs. Net pondered for a moment, her blurred eyes squinted as if trying to search through memories that had faded over the years. Then her face suddenly lit up, a rare smile appeared on her lips, different from the bitterness when talking about the coercion.

"Yes, how can I not remember," she said, her voice suddenly becoming much warmer. "Mr. Tuyen, the son of teacher Khoat at the beginning of the neighborhood. He is very smart, the best student in the neighborhood, received a scholarship to study geodesy in the province at the age of fifteen, everyone in the neighborhood is proud, sees him as the common hope of this poor neighborhood. Later he went to work at the Department, and occasionally still comes home to visit his younger sister, Nhai."

Van Khue felt her whole body stiffen, as if time had suddenly stopped. She could clearly hear her heart pounding in her chest, the sound of blood rushing in her ears, to the point that the sounds around her - the sound of the bamboo fan, the sound of the wind blowing through the eaves - suddenly became distant and faint.

Tuyen. That name, in that moment, was no longer a strange name in the story of an eighty-year-old woman. It was the name she had called thousands of times in her twenty-six years of life, every morning, every evening, every time she sat next to him on the rattan chair on her porch. Grandfather.

"Jasmine... is... uncle Tuyen's sister?" she asked, trying to keep her voice as neutral as possible, even though she felt her voice shaking uncontrollably.

"Yes, Quach Thi Nhai," Mrs. Net replied, not paying attention to the change in Van Khue's voice. "The two brothers are very close, even though they are six or seven years apart. Tuyen went to school far away when he was young, but every year he comes back to visit his younger brother, bringing gifts to the whole neighborhood. Nhai stayed with his grandparents, because their parents died early, teacher Khoat and his wife both died of cholera when he was young."

Van Khue sat quietly, her hands clasped tightly around the hand-drawn piece of paper in her lap, trying to rearrange the puzzle pieces that were rushing into her head at the same time. Her grandfather - Quach Van Tuyen - not only worked at the Department of Planning at the same time Van Dang Hamlet was cleared. He grew up in that place, from childhood to fifteen years old, before leaving the neighborhood thanks to a scholarship. And he had a younger sister, an aunt that Van Khue had never heard anyone in the family mention, not even once, throughout the twenty-six years of her life.

"After you're relieved, where... where are you going, Ms. Nhai?" Van Khue asked, her voice almost whispering.

The smile on Ms. Net's lips gradually disappeared, replaced by a look of deep sadness. "At that time, Nhai was already married, so her husband's family was sent to resettle in another district, far away, I don't remember the name. There was chaos at that time, everyone was worried about themselves, no longer able to keep in touch with anyone. I also heard that Tuyen, after that incident, never returned to visit the old neighborhood, nor did I see him looking for his sister, very strange. In the past, the two brothers were so close, but suddenly they disappeared, no one understood why."

Mrs. Net stopped, looked straight into Van Khue's eyes, and in that moment, a ray of light flashed in her dim eyes, as if the old woman had just realized something. "By the way, what's your name? I didn't understand you when I introduced you earlier."

"Yes, my name is Van Khue. Quach Van Khue," Van Khue replied, her voice trembling uncontrollably.

Mrs. Net was silent for a long time, her eyes narrowed and looked at her intently, as if trying to detect some familiar feature on the face of the young girl in front of her. "Guo," she muttered. "Is your last name Quach?"

"Yes," Van Khue replied, feeling her throat dry.

Duy Khanh, sitting next to him, had been silently observing from the beginning. Now he also realized the sudden tension surrounding the conversation. He looked at Van Khue with worried eyes, but he didn't say anything, just waited quietly.

"Your grandfather... is his name Tuyen?" Ms. Net asked, her voice shaking with emotion, her trembling hands tightly grasping the rattan chair's armrests.

Van Khue was speechless for a moment. She nodded, slowly, as if each nod was as heavy as carrying a large boulder.

"Oh my god," Mrs. Net exclaimed, her voice choked, her hands covering her mouth. "Oh my god, is that Tuyen's grandson? Oh my god, I... I didn't expect that one day I would meet his grandson again."

The old woman burst into tears, tears rolling down her wrinkled face, not because of sadness, but seemingly a much more complex emotion - both joy, sadness, and as if a burden had been lifted from her heart for many years.

"Is he still alive? That Tuyen guy?" she asked, her voice shaking.

"Yes, my grandfather is still alive, seventy-eight years old this year," Van Khue replied, tears welling up in the corners of her eyes but she didn't realize it until she felt them rolling down her cheeks.

"Seventy-eight," Mrs. Net muttered, shaking her head as if she couldn't believe the time had passed so quickly. "The day he left the neighborhood to go to school, he was only fifteen years old, skinny, dark, studying all day under the light of an oil lamp. Yet now he is seventy-eight. Nhai must be seventy-four or seventy-five."

Mr. Duoc, standing next to witness the entire conversation, could not hide his emotions, quickly poured more water for his mother, and gently patted her shoulder to calm her down.

"Grandma," Van Khue said, trying to suppress her emotions to ask the most important question, "my grandfather never told my family about Van Dang Hamlet, about how he grew up there, and never mentioned Nhai. I don't understand why. Do you know the reason?"

Ms. Net wiped her tears, sighed deeply, her eyes became distant again like at the beginning of the story. "I don't know for sure, but I guess... he was embarrassed, or he was too hurt, and didn't want to mention it again. You know, after the clearance, there were rumors in the neighborhood that it was Tuyen who redrew the map, erasing the name of his neighborhood, on Mr. Bon's orders. I didn't believe it at that time, because Tuyen was so gentle and loved the village so much, how could he do such a thing. But after that, he never returned to his old neighborhood again, never contacted anyone again, so gradually, Even I'm starting to wonder if that rumor is true or not."

That sentence was like a knife cutting into Van Khue's heart, even though she had somewhat predicted this through the signature on the document delivery record that she found many weeks ago. But hearing from the mouth of a living witness, a person who once considered her grandfather as a proud grandson of the whole neighborhood, confirming that rumor, the weight of the truth suddenly became more real, much more painful than what she imagined when just looking at the dry pages in the archive.

On the way home, sitting behind Duy Khanh's car, Van Khue didn't say a word for nearly half an hour, just looking at the rice fields passing by in the fading dusk, her mind reeling with the image of her grandfather - the seventy-eight year old man who still sat drawing invisible lines on his thigh every night, who was once the poorest and smartest boy in the Van Dang fishing village, who had to erase his own hometown from the map, and who lost his only sister in the process. That same event, carrying that secret for nearly thirty years, never once daring to look back.

"Are you okay?" Duy Khanh asked, his voice echoed through the wind, when the car stopped at a red light.

Van Khue did not answer immediately. She just hugged him tighter around his waist, resting her forehead against his back for a moment, letting the last tears quietly seep into his coat, speechless under the weight of the truth she had just discovered—a truth that belonged not just to the history of a city, but to the very flesh and blood of her family.