Chapter 3 — Cartographer of Lost Roads

On Monday, Van Khue arrived at the office half an hour earlier than usual, when the archive center hallway was still deserted, with only the hum of the air conditioner and cold fluorescent lights shining down on the row of steel filing cabinets painted moss green.

She unlocked the storage room with a magnetic card, went straight to the row of filing cabinets in the east riverbank area, and pulled out not only the HS-1995-047 file like the day before, but the entire series of records related to this area from 1990 to 2000. If there was indeed something unusual that happened in 1994, she wanted to see if its traces had spread to neighboring files — because of such a big change. Rarely does it leave just a single space, neat and isolated.

She spent the whole morning comparing and contrasting. Near ten o'clock, she discovered two more remarkable things.

First, file HS-1994-019 — a declaration of the current land use status of the eastern riverbank area, which should have been prepared before implementing any land acquisition project according to the administrative process at that time — shows signs of being removed and closed. The staple holes in the left corner do not line up with the old, rusty holes on the folder, as if someone had pulled out some pages and re-bound the folder without using the original staple holes. The remaining content in the file is only the declaration of the surrounding area, without mentioning the two hundred households of Van Dang Hamlet.

Second, and this made Van Khue's spine chill the most, there was a record of document delivery, dated June 3, 1995, stating that "a number of maps and registers of the current status of the eastern riverbank area were transferred to the City Land Fund Management Board to serve the inspection of the flood protection embankment project", signed by a person named "Diep Khac Bon". Below, in the "Deliverer" section, is the signature of a name that made Van Khue's hand stop in the middle of writing in the notebook: "Quach Van Tuyen".

She looked at that signature for a long time. It was small, compact, with the letter Q with a distinctive twist at the end — the same signature she had seen dozens of times on the New Year cards her grandfather wrote for her grandchildren, and on the old savings book he kept in his nightstand.

Her grandfather not only worked at the Department of Planning at the same time. He directly submitted documents about the Van Dang area to the person in charge of the clearance project.

Van Khue sat motionless in front of the desk, her heart pounding. She tried to stay calm, reminding herself that this was just a normal document delivery note - a draftsman handing over documents to another agency for inspection work was not something suspicious, if considered according to the correct job function. But the bigger question still hangs in the air: where are those documents — "some maps, status registers" — now? Are they the only documents that fully documented Xom Van Dang before it disappeared, and if so, why were they never returned to the archives after the inspection — if there was any inspection at all — ended?

She photocopied the delivery record, carefully folded it into the notebook, then returned the documents to the correct position on the shelf, closing the storage room door as if nothing had happened.

At noon, while eating a boxed lunch alone in the corner of the cafeteria, she overheard the conversation of two Administration Department employees sitting at the next table, discussing a briefing this morning that she did not attend.

"I heard that Hai Nguyen Group has just sent an official dispatch asking to speed up the construction permit process for the Kim Xuyen Riverside project," a person said, his voice lowered as if discussing an internal matter. "My boss told me to complete the procedures by the end of this year and start construction next January."

"Isn't that project involved in some kind of dispute? I remember hearing that the land had problems with its origin, so it wouldn't take decades for it to be resolved."

"Oh well, that's a long time ago, now the red book is all clean. Besides, that's the environmental resources department taking care of it, what does it have to do with me?"

Van Khue sat quietly, her chopsticks picking up a piece of braised meat stopped in mid-air. She tried to look like she was engrossed in eating, not revealing that she was absorbing every word of the conversation next to her. "Dispute over land origin" — that phrase matched what she was gradually piecing together: a plot of land was acquired improperly, records were dismantled, original documents were "transferred" and then disappeared, and now, nearly thirty years later, that same plot of land is preparing to be built into a high-end complex, under pressure from the investor to speed up progress.

That afternoon, she boldly knocked on Mr. Khai's door again, this time bringing a photocopy of the 1994 article and the document delivery record.

"Mr. Khai, I found a few more things about the Van Dang Hamlet case," she said, placing two pieces of paper on his desk. "It seems that file HS-1994-019 was dismantled and some documents were transferred to the Land Fund Management Board in 1995 but have never been returned to the archives. I think I should report it to higher up to ask for opinions on how to handle it, maybe it's related to the legal documents of the project preparing to start construction in that area."

Mr. Khai picked up two pieces of paper, skimmed through them, his face gradually became tense in a way that Van Khue had never seen in this always calm boss.

"Where did you get these from?" he asked, his voice no longer as gentle as usual.

"From my own archives, and from the city library," Van Khue replied, a bit confused by his reaction. "I'm just doing the right job of comparing documents."

Mr. Khai put two pieces of paper on the table, rubbed his temples, and let out a long sigh. "Van Khue, I'll tell you the truth. That land is now a key project of the city, a major investment partner, with relationships from many parties. Your digging up what happened thirty years ago, even if it comes from good intentions, can cause problems that you don't foresee. I don't forbid you from working, but I advise you to be cautious, don't arbitrarily report random things to the top without enough grounds, and don't go asking around outside. Just Leave that file in its original state, note 'deficiencies' as I told you, then focus on the main progress."

"But if records were intentionally dismantled, wouldn't that be a serious archival problem?" Van Khue asked, trying to keep her voice calm even though there was a stubbornness in her heart that she rarely showed in front of her superiors.

"I will consider this according to my authority," Mr. Khai replied, his voice more decisive. "You can rest assured and do your part."

That answer, once again, had the appearance of a door closing — politely, properly, but firmly closed. Van Khue nodded, took the two pieces of paper back, and said nothing more. But on the way back to her seat, she realized something: Mr. Khai's reaction was not that of someone who simply wanted to avoid administrative trouble. It was the reaction of someone who had known, more or less, what was being hidden—and was now trying, to the extent possible, to protect her from getting further involved in something bigger than both of them.

That night, Van Khue did not come home immediately after work. She cycled through the old town, stopped at a small cafe that she often visited to think, ordered a cup of iced milk coffee, opened her notebook, and wrote down everything she knew into a neat list, as she did with every work project: Van Dang Hamlet disappeared from the map in 1995 without a decision to reclaim the land. The 1994 flood protection embankment project fell silent after the site clearance period, with no evidence that the embankment was ever built. Land status records were intentionally dismantled. Mr. Diep Khac Bon, who was in charge of the project in 1994, is likely the father or relative of Mr. Diep Nhat Binh, the investor of the Kim Xuyen Riverside project currently being built on that same land. Her grandfather, Quach Van Tuyen, once directly submitted the original documents to Mr. Bon, and appeared unusually evasive when asked about Van Dang. Chief Khai knows more than he lets on.

Looking at that list, Van Khue suddenly realized that the job of digitizing an old map, which should have been a purely technical task, had silently pulled her into a web of secrets spanning thirty years, touching even the people she loved most in her family. She can stop here - note the "missing records" as Mr. Khai requested, continue the digitization work, so that the 1995 map with the light blue blank space continues to lie in the digital data warehouse as an official truth that no one questions.

But when she closed her eyes, the image of an ancient banyan tree standing alone in the middle of a wasteland, its secondary roots hanging down like silver hair, appeared clearly in her mind. She thought of the two hundred rooftops that once existed there, of the names, faces, and stories that no official document now mentioned. She thought about the fact that if she herself - the person holding the original map, the person who could see that void more clearly than anyone else - also chose to stay silent, that void would never be filled.

She closed the notebook, took a sip of the coffee that had almost melted, then took out her phone and searched for the phone number of the Provincial Archives Center - where higher-level records are kept, including records of the old City Land Fund Management Board, the agency where Mr. Diep Khac Bon used to work. If the original documents about Van Dang had been "transferred" to this department in 1995, perhaps traces of them — if there were any left — would be there, in an archive that she, as a city center employee, would need a good reason and a full set of permission documents to access.

She decided to apply for permission the following Monday, in her personal name, clearly stating the purpose of "researching the history of urban planning for personal work", avoiding mentioning her work at the center so as not to cause more trouble for Mr. Khai. It was a small, slow step, just like someone who is used to working according to procedures, according to each layer of documents, each stamp, each signature - but for Van Khue, it was also the first step where she officially stepped out of the role of a painter who only knows how to copy the past, to become someone who searches for what the past has intentionally lost.