Chapter 11 — Old Book Repairer In A Small Alley

That night, all three of them — Lam, her father, and Duy Khoi, who was invited to stay because no one wanted to face the diary pages alone — sat around the cleared dining table, yellow light falling on the worn leather-bound notebook placed in the middle of the table like a sacred artifact. Lam read each page aloud, her voice sometimes shaking with emotion, sometimes having to stop and take a deep breath before reading further.

"Today I did something that I will probably regret for the rest of my life," reads the first page, dated August 1965. "Hien came to me, crying, asking why I didn't tell the truth when she went to the printing house. I didn't dare look her in the eyes. I was afraid. I was afraid of the Ung family, afraid of what they could do to my family, to the bookstore I was working at, to herself if the truth was revealed in this situation."

Grandfather, through the words left behind, said that when Ung Boi Chau brought Thuc Hien's manuscript to the printing house, he - at that time still working at a large bookstore, often going back and forth to the printing house to receive bound books - accidentally recognized the familiar handwriting on the manuscript page placed in the editing room. He was suspicious from the beginning, but did not dare to speak up, because Ung Boi Chau at that time was the son of a powerful family in the publishing industry, and he was just an apprentice bookbinder, the difference in status was too great.

"I was planning to tell the printing house owner," my grandfather continued on another page, "but then I thought, if I said it, who would believe an apprentice like me more than the Ung family's son? I might even get fired, and Hien still wouldn't get anything back. I chose to stay silent, telling myself it was a wise choice, but in reality I was just a coward."

Lam stopped and looked at his father. Mr. Vinh sat motionless, his hands clasped together on the table, his eyes red but without tears, as if he had learned to suppress his emotions throughout his life with a father who carried a heavy secret.

She continued reading. The following pages tell more details about the relationship between grandfather and Thuc Hien - the two have known each other since childhood, grew up together in the old town, grandfather was a young man who loved reading but his family was poor, could not afford higher education, had to learn the bookbending profession to make a living; Thuc Hien is the daughter of a well-off business family, well-educated, but is held back by the strict prejudices of a well-educated family, especially the father's opinion that writing poetry for a daughter is "indecent" and can easily cause people to gossip, affecting her future marriage.

"Hien often sneaks out to where I work, carrying hastily written pages, asking me to keep them for him," his grandfather wrote. "At first we were just friends helping each other, but gradually, I realized that I looked forward to her visits more than anything else during the day. I never dared to express my feelings, because I knew clearly that my status as a poor bookbinder was not worthy of a young lady from a merchant family."

Duy Khoi sat quietly listening, occasionally jotting down a few important details in his private notebook, but most of the time he just remained silent, letting this space belong entirely to the Lam family. In some pages, my grandfather tells about the afternoons the two of them sat on the riverbank behind the printing house, Thuc Hien read poetry to him before sending it to the newspaper, and he commented on every word even though he had never attended any literature school, relying only on the love of books accumulated over many years of working. On another page, he tells about hand-binding Thuc Hien a small leather-bound notebook for her to copy poetry, painstakingly sewing every thread, choosing the best paper he could find even though his budget for an apprenticeship was not abundant, just hoping that the notebook would be worthy of the poems she wrote.

"I never dared to give her anything expensive, I could only give her what I made with my own hands," his grandfather wrote, his voice simple but filled with emotion. "She accepted, smiled, and said this was the most precious gift she had ever had, more precious than any jewelry anyone had ever given her. I always remember that saying, even now, no matter how many years have passed."

When Lam read the part where her grandfather told about how Thuc Hien was forced by her family to marry an older man, the son of a powerful businessman, her voice choked up.

"The day Hien came to tell her that she was about to follow her husband, she brought with her all the remaining things - manuscripts, letters, even poems that had not yet been sent to newspapers - and asked me to keep them for her. She said, if anyone asks about Smoke Suong Lac Ben in the future, don't say anything, because it's still her who suffers the most. I asked her if she blamed me, because I didn't have the courage to testify when she needed it the most. She just smiled sadly and said I didn't. There's nothing wrong with it, the fault is in a world that doesn't allow a girl to be herself through words."

All three people sat in silence for a long time after Lam finished reading that paragraph, no one said anything, only the sound of the rain outside the corrugated iron roof and the steady ticking of the wall clock. Finally, Mr. Vinh reached for his notebook, wrote a sentence, and pushed it towards Lam.

"He. Loves. Her."

Three short words but containing a lifetime of regrets. Lam nodded, her eyes had been wet without realizing it. "That's what I think, Dad. And maybe that's why you can't speak up - afraid that people will think you're doing this for your own love, not for what's right."

She turned to the next page in the diary, and discovered a detail that made the room silent again: her grandfather wrote that, after Thuc Hien left Tra Lang with her husband, he decided to personally bind the first printed copy of Smoke in the Mist of Lac Ben — not to sell, but to hide Thuc Hien's original manuscript inside the very book that took her name, as a paradoxical way to protect the truth: hiding it right in the heart of the words. lie, waiting for one day, when time is long enough, the truth will have a chance to be unearthed again.

"I hid it in the spine of the book that night, my hands were shaking so I couldn't hold the needle," my grandfather wrote in the last lines of that diary page. "I promise myself, if in the future anyone is patient enough and meticulous enough to take this book apart and find it, then that is when the truth should be told. I am not brave enough to do it myself. I can only hope that one day, my children and grandchildren will be braver than me."

Lam put down the diary, covered her face with both hands, unable to hold back her tears. She realized, in that moment, that her accidental discovery of the stack of papers in the spine of the book was not a complete accident — it was a silent message her grandfather had installed sixty years ago, waiting for the right person, at the right time, to be heard.

"You've been waiting for me," she whispered, her voice choked. "Waiting for so many years."

Duy Khoi quietly placed his hand on Lam's shoulder, without saying anything, just to let her know that she was not alone in facing this emotional burden. Mr. Vinh, sitting opposite, raised his hand to wipe away the rare tears rolling down his wrinkled cheeks, and in that moment, three people from three different generations, three different relationships with this secret, shared a common emotion - the emotion of finally touching the truth that a person had carried with him all his life, not daring to say it until he died.

Late that night, after Duy Khoi had left and Mr. Vinh had fallen asleep, Lam still sat alone at the table, flipping through the last remaining pages of the diary, where his grandfather wrote about the years after opening Vong Chu shop, about him marrying his grandmother - whom he always treated kindly and thoughtfully, but according to his own admission, his heart was never completely dedicated to anyone other than a long-gone figure. He wrote, not to complain about fate, but as a belated confession, that there are books that the best binder cannot completely fix - he can only keep them from falling apart, waiting for someone, one day, brave enough to open them again.

Lam closed the diary, hugged it to her heart as if hugging a part of her grandfather's flesh and blood, her heart filled with an unnamed complex emotion - pity, pride, and a new responsibility that she knew she could no longer refuse.