Chapter 2 — Old Book Repairer In A Small Alley

That night Lam couldn't sleep at all. She lay on the mezzanine, listening to the steady sound of water dripping from the leaking roof onto the aluminum pot her father had set up since the afternoon, and in her mind the image of the unusually thick spine lining of the book Smoke Suong Lac Ben appeared in her mind. Perhaps it was just a bookbinder in the past who used extra paper to line the spine, she reassured herself no less than ten times, but her professional intuition - a intuition that had been honed through hundreds of old books passing through her hands - told her something else.

The next morning, the sky was completely clear, the early morning sunlight poured through the factory window into thin yellow streaks on the cement floor, stained with old moisture. Lam woke up earlier than usual, brewed a pot of strong tea for his father, tidied up the corner of the desk, then brought the book out and placed it on a specialized cover, as carefully as placing a patient on an examination table.

She started by observing the whole before touching any detail - that was the first principle her father taught her from the day she first learned the trade: don't rush to fix it, look closely first, because every tear, every fold, every yellow stain on the page is telling a story, and a good craftsman is the one who can read that story before picking up the knife.

The book Smoke Suong Lac Ben, hardcover covered with moss green cloth, compact book size popular in the sixties, spine with gilded lettering that has almost faded away, leaving only a few faint lines. Formal printed book title page: SMOKE OF LAC BEN — Poetry — Ung Boi Chau — Tinh Hoa Publishing House, 1965. In the bottom corner of the title page, a handwritten line in blue ink has mostly faded, the handwriting is slanted, only two words that appear to be a name can be vaguely read, the rest has completely faded with time and humidity.

Lam used a magnifying glass to look carefully but could only guess that it was a gift, the type people often write when giving books to each other. She took notes in her workbook - a habit her father taught her since childhood, every unusual detail on a book before restoration must be recorded and photographed if possible, because that is sometimes the most valuable part of the book, more than the content printed in it.

She flipped through the pages, examining the brittleness of the paper. The water stains were streaks of light brown arcs—marks of the previous night's rain, but underneath the new stains there were older, darker stains, showing that the book had been wet at least once in the much more distant past. The spine of the book, when she gently opened it, made the dry cracking sound of aging glue, and just as she noticed yesterday, the inside spine lining was much thicker than the books she had restored from the same era.

"Dad," Lam called out when he saw his father creeping out of the house, one hand leaning on a cane, the other hand lightly gripping the doorjamb to keep his balance. "Dad, come look at this book with me."

Mr. Vinh sat down in the chair opposite, looking at the book on the table for a long time before realizing what it was. When he realized it, his face changed clearly — not the usual surprise, but a flash of something like startle, like one is startled when hearing a name he tried to forget for a long time. His right hand trembled slightly, reaching out touch the cover of the book, his fingers tracing the frayed fabric spine.

"For... you," Mr. Vinh said, his voice broken, pointing to the ceiling — the way he used to refer to his deceased grandfather, as if he were up there looking down. "You... keep. Long."

"I know, the box of books left by my grandfather," Lam said, trying to keep his voice gentle despite his burning curiosity. "But why is this book kept separate, Dad? I see that the spine of the book is unusually thick. It must be repaired quickly or it will all rot."

Mr. Vinh did not respond immediately. He reached for the notebook that was always on the table, a pencil tucked inside, and tremblingly wrote. Lam looked at each line of letters gradually appearing on the page, waiting patiently because he knew that each word for his father now took ten times more effort than a normal person.

"Book. Mr. Precious. Most."

That's all. Three short words but enough to make Lam feel that something is not as simple as a normal commemorative book. She asked more, as gently as possible: "Do you know each other with the author of this book? Mr. Ung Boi Chau?"

This time, Mr. Vinh's reaction was much clearer. He shook his head vigorously, not in denial of the question, but more like a spontaneous movement, almost a small convulsion of pent-up emotion. He put down his pen, hugged his knees with both hands, breathing faster than usual. Lam panicked, quickly stood up and supported his father's shoulder, asking him if he was okay and if he needed medicine.

Mr. Vinh waved his hand, signaling that he was fine, just needed a moment to calm down. Lam sat next to him, didn't ask anything else, just held his father's right hand, feeling it was still shaking slightly. She thought to herself that perhaps she had asked the wrong thing, touched an area of memory that her father was not ready for, or no longer had the language ability to fully explain.

After his father calmed down and went back to rest, Lam sat alone at his desk for a long time, looking at the book lying still in the sunlight through the window. She thought about her grandfather - a thin, quiet man whose childhood memories she only kept in a few fragments: his figure sitting next to this window, right where she was sitting, slowly turning the pages of a book, sometimes stopping for a long time on a certain page, his eyes looking far away as if he were in another place, another time.

Her father once said, although he rarely told it, that his grandfather learned the bookbending profession from a large bookstore in the center of Tra Lang old town when he was a young man in his twenties, around the early sixties. That bookstore is no longer there, having closed a long time ago, making way for a row of modern townhouses. My grandfather worked there for many years before opening his own shop in Do Paper Alley, named Vong Chu, and from then on stuck with this small alley for the rest of his life.

But there was one thing her father had never mentioned: that her grandfather, during more than forty years of working, had never written a book of his own, even though he read a lot, even though the family still kept a few notebooks filled with passages and poems written by himself - unfinished drafts, without beginning or end, as if he had started many times but never finished them. Lam found one of those notebooks when he was a child, read a few pages, then put it back because he didn't fully understand it, and from then on forgot about it amid all the work of adulthood.

Now, sitting in front of the book Smoke Suong Lac Ben with an unusually thick spine lining, Lam suddenly remembered that notebook, wondering where it was still in this cramped house, and whether it had anything to do with his father's reaction just now.

At noon, Lam decided to start restoring the book immediately, partly because it was really damaged and needed urgent treatment, partly because she could not stand the feeling of curiosity that had been growing in her heart since last night. She spread a soft cloth on the table, arranged the tools in the correct order: knife, spine clamp, glue brush, page holder, a small basin of warm water to soften the old glue.

The first step is to remove the cover. She used a thin knife to gently slide it into the gap between the fabric spine and the inside of the book, little by little, being careful not to tear any more of the rotten fabric. The old glue, after sixty years, had dried into brittle pieces that peeled off into small pieces every time she touched it. The cover of the book separated from the inside of the book after nearly an hour of meticulous work, revealing the stitched spine inside - the barbed threads have turned dark brown, still quite strong considering the age of the book.

And then, as she began to remove the spine lining — a process that normally only takes a few minutes for a regular book — she immediately noticed something unusual that she had suspected from the beginning. Under the outermost layer of lining paper, instead of the empty fabric spine as usual, is another layer of paper, thicker, carefully folded into many small folds, pressed so close to the spine frame that it almost blends into the overall structure of the book if not observed carefully.

Lam's heart beats faster. She stopped, took a deep breath, and reminded herself to be calm and careful — this was no longer an ordinary restoration job, but a real excavation, and any small mistake in operation could permanently destroy what lay inside.

She glanced at the wall clock. It was past four o'clock in the afternoon, and the natural light was about to go out. This complicated job of removing the nape lining requires good lighting and a very alert head, and cannot be done in a hurry while the light is fading. Lam reluctantly put down the knife, carefully wrapped the book in soft cloth, placed it in a separate box lined with acid-free paper for preservation, and then carefully stored it in a locked cabinet — a professional habit she always followed with any artifact with special markings.

That night, when serving dinner for his father, Lam noticed that he kept looking towards the locker with the book, his eyes were both worried and expecting something, but when Lam asked, he just shook his head slightly, signaling that he was okay, then bent down to eat as usual. Lam did not ask further, but in her heart she silently decided: tomorrow, no matter what happens, she will open up that nape lining and see what has been lying inside for the past sixty years, waiting for a hand patient enough touch it.