Chapter 9 — Cartographer of Lost Roads

The resettlement area where Ms. Huynh Thi Net lives is located nearly forty kilometers from the center of Kim Xuyen city, in a coastal district that Van Khue has never had the opportunity to visit during her twenty-six years living in this province. Duy Khanh drove, Van Khue sat in the back holding a small bag of gifts - a few boxes of cakes, some fruit - according to the rules when visiting an elderly person that her mother had carefully taught her about since childhood.

The road out of the city gradually becomes sparse with high-rise buildings, replaced by green rice fields stretching on both sides, occasionally dotted with a few casuarina trees blocking the wind, signaling the land is near the sea. Nearly an hour and a half later, they arrived at the resettlement area - a row of four-level houses built in the same pattern, with faded whitewashed walls, and each house's front yard was only large enough to place a few potted plants and a motorbike.

Ms. Net's son, a middle-aged man named Duoc, came to the gate to welcome them, with a simple appearance and simple clothes. "Mr. Thinh called ahead to warn them," he said, leading them into the house. "My mother is fine today, she's sitting on the porch waiting for you two."

Ms. Huynh Thi Net sat on an old rattan chair on the porch, her figure was small, her back was hunched, her white hair was tied in a bun at the back of her neck, her eyes were blurred with age but still sparkled with sophistication when she saw strangers entering the yard. She wore a worn brown Ba Ba shirt and held a moca fan in her hand, waving it steadily even though the weather was not too hot.

"You two are Thinh's friends, right?" she asked, her voice still quite clear, just a little shaky with age. "Sit down here, sit down here, don't stand."

Van Khue and Duy Khanh sat down on the two plastic chairs that Mr. Duoc brought out, placed the gift bag on the table, carefully greeted, introduced themselves and the purpose of the visit according to what they had discussed in advance - gently, without haste, letting Mrs. Net decide for herself how much she wanted to share.

"We were learning about the history of the riverbank area east of the city. We heard Mr. Thinh say that she used to live in Van Dang Hamlet, so we took the liberty to visit. I hope you can tell us a little bit, if you don't mind," Duy Khanh said, her voice gentle and respectful.

Hearing the words "Van Dang", Mrs. Net's dull eyes suddenly seemed to light up, the moca fan in her hand stopped waving and placed it on her lap. She looked out into the distance, towards the horizon where there was nothing but the roofs of resettlement houses close together, but her eyes seemed to be seeing another scene, in another place, in another time.

"Van Dang," she repeated, her voice slow, almost a whisper, as if calling the name of a long-dead relative. "No one has asked me about that name in a long time. It's been thirty years."

She spoke hesitantly at first, then gradually became more fluent, like a stream that had been blocked for a long time now found a way out. She told of the mornings when the whole neighborhood woke up to the sound of roosters crowing, men went to the river to pull nets, women stayed at home to cook rice, and smoke from the kitchen flew over the thatched roofs. She told about the small temple at the beginning of the hamlet, where the whole neighborhood gathered to worship on full moon days, about the ancient banyan tree standing tall at the entrance, where children often climbed up to play hide and seek, and where old people sat in the cool air every afternoon and told old stories to their children and grandchildren.

"My neighborhood is poor, but very happy," she said, a rare smile flashing across her wrinkled face. "At night, dozens of lanterns light up the entire river, as beautiful as the Milky Way falling to earth. We children often sit on the shore and look at the shimmering lanterns, counting how many lanterns there are tonight, competing to guess whose house can catch the most fish."

She told more about the days leading up to Tet, when the whole neighborhood was bustling with making banh chung and banh tet, the sound of pestles pounding sausages rang out from morning to night, the smell of dong leaves and fatty meat mixed in the chilly air at the end of the year. She told about the small market held every morning right at the beginning of the hamlet, where people exchanged fish for rice and vegetables, and the sound of bargaining echoed throughout a corner of the riverbank. She talked about weddings held right on the communal house grounds, with the whole neighborhood contributing rice and meat, and having fun until late at night, regardless of rich or poor. "Those days were really poor, but people's hearts were very warm," she said, her voice dropping nostalgically. "We share everything, we share hunger and fullness. Now everyone has their own place, sometimes we don't see anyone for a whole year, it's as if our neighborhood never existed."

Van Khue listened, feeling like she was being transported into a world that had disappeared, a world that until a few weeks ago, she didn't even know existed. She remembered the black and white photo Duy Khanh showed her the other day, cone-shaped lanterns standing in the middle of the river, and now, through Mrs. Net's story, those quiet images suddenly came to life, with sound, light, and human breath. She quietly pulled out her notebook, didn't write anything down, just put it on her lap, as a way to keep her hands busy while her heart was filled with so many emotions.

But then Ms. Net's voice suddenly became lower, and the mo cau fan in her hand tightened. “Then one day, they came,” she said, her voice losing its previous warmth, replaced by a bitterness that had settled over the years. "It was said that the hamlet was located in a dangerous area and had to be relocated to build an embankment to prevent floods. People did not believe it, because my hamlet had been there for many generations, and there had never been any serious flooding. At most, the water rose during the rainy season and then receded, like every year. But they did not listen, they handed over the papers, and even brought the police down. Anyone who objected was considered to be against people performing public duties."

"Do you remember who was the leader of the enforcement team?" Van Khue asked softly, trying to keep her voice gentle, afraid of touching the pain still hidden deep in the old woman's heart.

"Remember," Mrs. Net replied, her voice sharp. "Mr. Bon, I'll never forget that name. His face was as cold as money, he talked to people like talking to animals, without any mercy. He promised adequate compensation, but when it came time to receive the money, everyone was stunned because the amount of money was nothing compared to the effort of many generations to build. Some houses were even wrongly calculated in area, and their names were removed from the list for 'invalid documents', even though they had clearly been there since their ancestors' generations."

Mr. Duoc, her son, stood quietly by the door listening to his mother's story. His face also sank. Perhaps this was not the first time he heard this story, but every time he heard it again, the pain seemed to still be intact.

"Do you keep any papers from that time?" Duy Khanh asked, his voice cautious.

Mrs. Net nodded slowly and turned to call her son. "Okay, go get the tin box mom left in the altar and bring it here for me."

Mr. Duoc went into the house and came back a while later with an old tin box with a rusty lid, carefully wrapped in a layer of faded red fabric. Mrs. Net trembled as she opened the lid of the box, inside were a few yellowed sheets of paper, a small black and white photo, and a piece of hand-drawn paper that was worn at the corners.

She took out the photo first and gave it to Van Khue with both hands, as if she were handing over a treasure. The photo shows a group of about twenty people standing in front of the communal house's yard, behind is the familiar shape of an ancient banyan tree. Everyone is wearing Ba Ba shirts or old shirts, tanned faces, and bright smiles even though life is clearly not abundant. "This is a photo taken during the land clearing ceremony in 1990, four years before the clearance," she explained, her trembling finger pointing to each face in the photo, calling each person's name even though her voice was choked - this person is now gone, that person has moved to an unknown place, that person is still alive but confused, can no longer remember the past.

Then, she took out a worn piece of hand-drawn paper. It was a sketchy sketch, the pencil strokes were almost faded, but one could still recognize the shape of the main alley of the hamlet, the location of the temple, the banyan tree, and the ferry wharf - a rudimentary hand drawing, probably drawn by a resident of the hamlet himself from memory, not a professional map, but enough to compare with what Van Khue had seen on the official map in 1987.

“This is what I still have,” she said, her voice choking. "All these years, I kept keeping it, not knowing what it was for, just thinking, maybe one day, someone will need it."

Van Khue looked at the tin box in the old woman's hand, her heart beating rapidly, feeling that she was standing on the threshold of a truth more important than anything she had found in the past few weeks - not in the cold archives, but right here, in the trembling hands of a woman who had carried that memory with her for thirty years, waiting for this exact moment to give it back to someone who appreciates it.