Chapter 1 — Old Book Repairer In A Small Alley

Rain poured down on the corrugated iron roof of Giay Do Alley since it was still dark, a steady pattering sound that Khuc Thanh Lam had heard for twenty-seven years to the point where she could no longer distinguish whether it was noise or a lullaby. She sat at the desk next to the window, where the daylight shone in the clearest, holding a knife as thin as a rice leaf in her hand, dragging lines along the spine of a book whose cover was almost completely rotten. The smell of damp paper, the smell of glue cooked from rice flour, the smell of buffalo hide glue boiled on a small alcohol stove mixed together into a unique smell that can only be found at Vong Chu shop - a smell that Lam believes that if she closes her eyes, she can still find her way home just by taking a breath.

Vong Chu bookshop is located in the middle of the alley, about fifty steps from the beginning of the alley adjacent to the main road, about thirty steps from the end of the alley leading to the old river bank. A narrow tube house, with a facade less than three meters wide, deep inside, divided into three layers: the outer layer displays a few restored books for customers to see, the middle layer is a workshop with two pressing tables, a wooden shelf full of iron clamps and hemp threads, the innermost layer is the residence of father and daughter. On the wooden sign hanging in front of the door, the three words "Vong Chu Shop" have faded in paint, the handwriting by Mr. Lam himself since the opening day, now only vaguely remains if you don't stand close and look.

Lam looked through the steamy window, looking at the alley engulfed in gray rain. Across the street, Mrs. Nu's small tea shop had set up shop under the awning, a small charcoal stove with a kettle on, a few low plastic chairs arranged neatly even though it was raining, there were no customers. She was the only person in the alley who woke up earlier than Lam, and was also the first person to notice that there was something different posted on the electric pole at the end of the alley this morning.

"Lam." Mrs. Nu's voice echoed through the rain, her hand holding a piece of plastic paper, walking quickly through a puddle of water. "Go take a look at this."

Lam put down the machete, wiped her hands on her worn leather apron, and walked out onto the porch. Ms. Nu held out the notice, printed clearly, with a red stamp in the corner: ANNOUNCEMENT OF PLANNING POLICIES FOR RENOVATION OF TRA LANG OLD TOWN AREA — ITEMS OF THE GAO DONG ALONG SECTION. Below are a few smaller lines, talking about the current status survey, relocation plan, and expected timeline for completion within the next year. Signed by the investor: Tinh Hoa Land Company, affiliated to Tinh Hoa Publishing House.

"They posted it late at night," Ms. Nu said, her voice still in shock. "Electricity poles, light poles, everywhere. Ms. Sau selling do paper in the alley has been crying since morning until now."

Lam took the paper, read it once, then again, as if reading slowly would make the words change their meaning. But they don't change. “Renovate” is a beautiful word, carefully chosen so as not to sound jarring, but Lam clearly understands what it means for an alley that has been around longer than her father.

"It's probably a long time coming," Lam said, trying to keep her voice calmer than what she really felt in her heart. "Notifying policies and implementing them are two different things."

"I hope so too." Ms. Nu sighed and looked at the Vong Chu sign that was drenched in rainwater. "But neither my family nor my family's shop has its own red book. It's all documents left by our grandparents. I don't know if it's valid for proper compensation or if people can push it away whatever they want."

Mrs. Nu's words were like a small stone thrown into the calm pond in Lam's heart, the ripples spread farther than she thought. She folded the notice, returned it to Mrs. Nu, promised to ask more questions and then went back inside, but her mind was no longer as peaceful as before.

In the workshop, her father - Mr. Khuc Ba Vinh - was sitting on a rattan chair next to the charcoal stove, his left hand rested on his lap, his right hand trembling holding a pencil, neatly writing each word on a hardcover notebook with frayed corners. Two years ago, a stroke took away nearly half of his left-sided mobility and most of his ability to speak fluently. He still understands everything, still remembers, but the words that come out of his mouth are now often interrupted, sometimes just one or two separate words, the rest he has to write down on paper to fully express the thought.

"Dad," Lam sat down next to him, speaking softly, "outside the alley, people posted clearance notices. Did you hear what Mrs. Nu said?"

Mr. Vinh looked up, his eyes were still bright and sharp even though his face was sagging on one side. He nodded slowly, then shook his head, a contradictory gesture that Lam had learned to understand: he knew about it, but didn't want to discuss it right away. He bent down, wrote more in the notebook, and pushed it towards Lam.

The writing is scrawled but still readable: "Book. Before. Already."

Books first. What he means is, worry about books first, and think about alley stuff later. That was always the way Mr. Vinh faced all the upheavals of his life - focusing on the task at hand, letting the bigger things settle down over time, like the way a bookbinder deals with a tattered book: he cannot mend the whole book at once, he must start with one page, one thread, one corner of the spine.

Lam nodded, gently held his father's right hand for a moment, then stood up and returned to his desk. The book she is in the process of restoring is a novel printed in 1978, the cover has completely peeled off, the spine is rotted due to moisture, brought by a regular customer last week. She continued her work, removing each layer of worn spine lining paper, carefully placing aside the remaining pages to flatten them later.

The job of bookbinding and restoring old books that her family has pursued for three generations is not an easy job to make a living, and it is not a job that is highly valued by today's society. People read e-books and if paper books are damaged, buying new ones is much cheaper than having them restored. Vong Chu shop's customers are mostly people who have a book with special meaning: a relic of a deceased person, a gift from an old love, a bedside book from childhood. They don't pay for a new book, they pay to keep an old one — and all that it carries.

Lam learned the trade at the age of sixteen, sitting next to his father, watching his hands quickly sew threads, apply glue, and press the nape. Her father learned from her grandfather - Khuc Van Tuyen - who passed away when Lam was in middle school, so her memories of him are only a few fragments: a thin old man, with a deep voice, who often sat quietly for hours by the window overlooking the alley, flipping through the pages of a book as if looking for something he could never find.

By noon, the rain gradually subsided and stopped completely, leaving the alley soaked with water forming small puddles reflecting the gray sky. Lam opened the window for fresh air, the smell of damp earth mixed with the smell of old paper. She looked to the corner of the wall inside the workshop, where there was a stack of old cartons containing the family's inventory of books - books that her grandfather and father had bought, collected, or received from old book liquidations over the past decades, but had never had a chance to restore them all because the quantity was too large for time and human effort.

Among them, there was a box that Mr. Vinh repeatedly told not to sell, not to give away, but to only repair when absolutely necessary. Lam once asked why, her father only wrote two words in the book: "Dad's." She understood that these were her grandfather's private books, carrying a part of his life that he never finished telling.

That afternoon, when Mr. Vinh took a nap, Lam quietly set up a chair and pulled out that cardboard box to check the condition, partly because he was worried that last night's rain had leaked the roof, and partly because of a vague, unnamed hunch. Water had leaked through a corner of the corrugated iron roof, seeping down and soaking three or four books lying close to the wall, including a hardcover book, the blue cloth spine had faded, the title printed in gold-plated letters was almost completely faded: Smoke Suong Lac Ben — Ung Boi Chau, published in 1965.

Lam lifted the book up, water dripping from the spine onto the cement floor. The spine of the fabric was rotten, and when she gently tried to squeeze it, a whole piece fell off, revealing an unusually thick inner layer of paper compared to other books she had restored at the same time. A normal book, the spine lining is only as thin as a few sheets of newspaper pressed together to reinforce its hardness. This book's lining is almost three times as thick, as if there was something added inside.

She sat down at the table, placed the book right under the light, her heart beating a beat faster for some unknown reason. Outside, the sound of a motorbike passing through the alley, the sound of Mrs. Nu calling someone to buy water, the sound of a temple bell in the distance chiming the afternoon hour - all the familiar sounds of Do Paper Alley continued as usual, no one knew that in that small workshop damp with the smell of glue, a sixty-year-old book had just revealed its first anomaly, just waiting for a hand patient enough to open the rest.

Lam put the book aside, telling herself she would deal with it after finishing more urgent work, but throughout that afternoon, her eyes kept returning to it, as if the book was quietly waiting, had been waiting for sixty years, a few more hours wouldn't be a problem - she just didn't know that she was about to start dismantling a part of history that this whole alley, this whole literature, had never known.