Chapter 4 — Cartographer of Lost Roads

The three-story house on Nguyen Trai Street is not a place where people can easily hide anything for a long time, because it is small, the wooden stairs creak every time someone steps on them, and the bedrooms are only separated by a wall thin enough for whispers to pass through if someone is not careful. Van Khue grew up in that house, knowing every sound of it by heart — the distinctive squeak of the hinges of his grandfather's door every time he opened it, the sound of water flowing in the pipes when someone upstairs flushed it, the sound of the old ceiling fan in the living room vibrating every time it ran in third gear.

Tuesday night, after dinner, Van Khue went to his room early, using the excuse of being tired, but in reality it was to have time alone to think about the list of unanswered questions in the notebook. She lay on the bed, the desk lamp was still on, but her mind was not focused on the half-open book in front of her.

Around nine o'clock at night, she heard her mother's familiar footsteps going up the stairs, stopping at her grandfather's room — not her room — and the soft "squeak" of the door hinge. Normally, her mother would say goodnight to her grandfather at this time, a habit that had lasted for many years since her grandmother passed away. But tonight, instead of just a short good night as usual, Van Khue heard her mother's voice, low but still clear enough to penetrate the thin wall, carrying a tone of anxiety she had rarely heard.

"Dad," her mother's voice said, "I see you don't seem to be feeling well these days. Is there something wrong with you?"

A long silence. Then the grandfather's voice, hoarse and slow: "It's nothing, son. It's just an old person fighting against the wind and the sky."

"Khue asked dad about a certain fishing village on Sunday. I thought he seemed... I don't know how to describe it, but he was different. Did he remember something?"

Another silence, this time longer. Van Khue held her breath, pressed her ear against the wall, feeling like she was doing something wrong but couldn't resist.

"Khue is like dad in his curious, digging personality," Mr. Tuyen said at last, his voice somewhat low, as if trying to hide something under a calm shell. "But there are things that have already passed, so you should let them go. Tell him for me, don't waste your time going back and forth, it won't do anyone any good."

"But dad, if there's something you need to say, I think you should say it. Our whole family will understand."

"Go back to sleep," Mr. Tuyen said, his voice returning to its usual tough tone, ending the conversation. "Dad, it's okay."

Van Khue heard her mother's footsteps leave his room, the door hinges squeaked again, then the footsteps gradually moved toward her parents' bedroom at the end of the hallway. She lay quietly on the bed for a long time afterward, looking up at the ceiling, feeling heavy with both guilt for accidentally eavesdropping and confirmation that her hunch was not unfounded. Her grandfather was hiding something, and it was heavy enough that even a close daughter-in-law like her mother noticed the change in him after just one unintentional question from his granddaughter.

The next morning, at the breakfast table, Van Khue observed his grandfather more closely than usual. He still ate breakfast as usual, still asked a few idle questions about her work, but there was a slight tension in his posture that she had never noticed before - his shoulders were slightly hunched, the hand holding the chopsticks was shaking slightly more than usual, and his eyes, although still looking straight at the other person when talking, had something distant, as if they were looking through the other person to see a different scene, at another time.

"Grandpa," she said, trying to keep her voice gentle, without any scrutiny, "in the past you worked at the Department of Planning, what was your specific job? I never asked carefully."

Mr. Tuyen slowly and carefully put his chopsticks down into the bowl, as if considering his answer. "He worked as a draftsman, just like me now. Draws maps, updates maps according to planning projects."

"So you must know a lot about the history of the areas in the city," Van Khue said, trying to keep his voice as if he were having a normal conversation. "I see that the work I do now is exactly the same as what he did in the past, the only difference is that I do it on the computer, and he does it by hand."

"That time was much worse than it is now," Mr. Tuyen said, a wry smile flashing across his lips. "There was no scanner, no software, everything had to be drawn by hand, measured by hand, calculated by hand. If you make a millimeter mistake, you have to start over again."

"Do you remember which map you once drew that you found... the most difficult? Like some complicated project with a lot of changes?"

This time, Mr. Tuyen did not answer immediately. He looked at his niece and nephew for a long time, his eyes had something both gentle and painful, like a person standing at a crossroads, one side is the truth, the other is the habit of silence that has been ingrained for thirty years.

"You ask too many strange questions," he said finally, his voice light but somewhat evasive. "You're old, you can't remember such old things. Eat breakfast or you'll be late for work."

That answer ended the conversation, but it did not close the curiosity in Van Khue's heart - on the contrary, it made her even more convinced that there was a big story lying dormant behind her grandfather's distant eyes, a story that he had carried with him for many years, perhaps never telling anyone, not even his closest daughter-in-law, not even his biological son.

As for her father, Mr. Lam also seemed to notice the simmering tension in the house these days, although he did not say it directly. That evening, while Van Khue was washing dishes in the kitchen, Mr. Lam walked in, stood leaning against the door frame, arms crossed on his chest - a familiar pose whenever he wanted to have a serious talk with his daughter.

"Son," he said, "I've noticed that these days you've been asking grandpa about old stories. Is it related to the work you're doing?"

"Yes, that's right," Van Khue replied, not hiding it. "I discovered an old neighborhood that disappeared from the map for no apparent reason, and I thought grandpa might know something, because he used to work at the same time, in the same area."

Mr. Lam was silent for a moment, his eyes looking out the kitchen window, where darkness had covered the small garden behind the house. "I'll tell you the truth, from childhood to adulthood, I've never seen your grandfather talk freely about his old work. He always avoided it every time someone asked about his years working at the Department of Planning, especially in the early nineties. When I was a child, I once happened to see him sitting alone in his room crying, with the door ajar, holding a roll of paper in his hand. I asked him what was wrong, he just said that dust had gotten into his eyes, then put the roll of paper away, no. When will I show my dad?"

Van Khue stopped washing the dishes and turned to look at her father. "Do you know what that scroll is?"

"No," Mr. Lam shook his head, his voice a bit bitter. "Dad never asked again, and he never mentioned it again. You know, my father's generation, they are not used to sharing the pain and burdens in their hearts. They think that suffering in silence is the way to protect the family. I grew up with a father who always had some invisible distance, something he never let anyone touch. I used to think maybe it was just personality, but listening to you tell stories these days, I started to think Maybe there's a specific story behind it, something that really happened."

"Do you think I should continue to find out?" Van Khue asked, her voice a bit hesitant. "I'm afraid if I keep asking, he'll be sad and more tired."

Mr. Lam thought for a long time before answering. "I think... there are secrets that, if kept inside, will corrode a person from the inside, even more than facing them. I don't know what he's hiding, but looking at him these past few days, I feel like he's tired of keeping it, not because you asked. Sometimes, you finding out the truth, no matter what, is a way for him to feel relieved, after all these years."

His father's words made Van Khue feel somewhat calmer, even though the questions were still there, unanswered. She dried her hands and gave her father a short but warm hug — a rare gesture between a father and son who were not used to expressing their feelings in words.

“I will find out the truth,” she said, her voice more determined than she expected. "But I'll be careful not to make you sadder."

That night, before going to sleep, Van Khue opened his notebook and wrote a new line in the list of questions: "The scroll my grandfather cried when holding - is it the original map of Van Dang Hamlet?" She looked at that line for a long time, then closed the notebook, turned off the light, and lay in the dark listening to the sound of the old ceiling fan vibrating gently downstairs, the sound of her grandfather coughing in the next room, and in the distance, the sound of a train whistle echoing from the railway station, the familiar sound of Kim Xuyen city at night - a city that she suddenly realized she had never really understood, even though she had lived here for twenty-six years of her life.

She fell asleep without realizing it, and in her dream that night, she saw herself standing in the middle of a small winding alley along the river, red lanterns hanging sparkling along the sides, the sounds of people laughing and talking, the sound of children running and jumping, the fragrant smell of grilled fish in the air. She followed that alley forever, trying to find a familiar face in the crowd, but the more she walked, the more the alley faded, until everything disappeared into a white mist, leaving only the sound of river water flowing gently in the darkness.