Chapter 4 — Old Book Repairer In A Small Alley

During the next three days, Lam almost neglected all other work in the shop to read and re-read the stack of papers found in the spine of the book. She closed the workshop earlier than usual, hanging a sign "temporarily closed, having family matters" on the door, causing Mrs. Nu across the street to ask in surprise, but Lam just laughed, not ready to tell anyone about what she had just discovered.

The stack of papers contained a total of seventeen pages: nine pages of poetry, eight pages of letters, interspersed without a clear chronological order, as if the person who kept them — probably his grandfather — simply gathered up everything Thuc Hien had sent him many different times, pressing them together in one place without rearranging them. Lam spent an entire evening reading each letter carefully, trying to put them together in chronological order based on the small details mentioned inside.

The earliest letter, according to her guess, did not have a specific date but mentioned "this year's lotus season blooms late", probably around mid-1963. In the letter, Thuc Hien wrote about how she had just started sending poetry to a local newspaper under a different name, not daring to use her real name, afraid her family would know. She writes, her tone is still somewhat innocent, even a little humorous when talking about having to hide the manuscript at the bottom of the clothes chest to avoid discovery by her housekeeping mother.

But as time went on, the tone of the letter became more serious. A letter, probably written at the end of 1964, mentioned that her family had "forced her into marriage" to a much older man, the son of an influential business family in the area, and Thuc Hien wrote that she "did not have time to write poetry anymore, I only wanted to send you what was left, as a farewell to writing".

Lam read that sentence no less than five times. Each time she read it, she felt a distant sadness rising in her heart, even though the person who wrote it had passed away a long time ago, even though she had never known that person's face or name before finding this stack of papers. There is a sentence at the end of the letter that especially caught Lam's attention:

"You keep these pages for me, it's like keeping a part of my true self for me, a part that from now on I will no longer be able to live with. If anyone asks about Smoke and Fog of Lac Ben in the future, please don't say anything - because when it comes down to it, the suffering is first and foremost for me, then for you, for your family too. I just hope that one day, when everything is so far away, so old, no one is really hurt by it anymore, then This word should be mentioned, even though at that time I probably would no longer be here to witness it."

Reading this, Lam understood why his grandfather had never told anyone about this story, not even his son. It wasn't simply a secret he wanted to keep to himself — it was a promise, a heavy entrustment that Thuc Hien had given him, and he kept that promise until he died, taking most of the story with him to the grave, leaving only this stack of papers as the last faint trace.

But the biggest question remains open: the name Khoi Suong Lac Ben mentioned in that letter - is the name of the published poetry collection, under the name of Ung Boi Chau. So does Thuc Hien personally know that his poetry collection was printed under someone else's name? Did you agree to that, or was it something that happened against your will, maybe even after you left Tra Lang?

Lam brought that question to his father one quiet evening, when father and son sat eating under the yellow light of the small kitchen. She had learned to ask her father questions that could be answered with a nod, a shake of the head, or a few short words, instead of open-ended questions that required him to elaborate—an approach that relieved some of his hardship.

"Dad, does Mrs. Thuc Hien know about books with other people's names printed on them?"

Mr. Vinh put down his chopsticks, thought for a long time, then nodded, slowly and firmly.

"Is Grandpa sad about that?"

This time he neither nodded nor shook it immediately, but reached for the notebook and wrote a sentence longer than what he had written in the past few days. It took nearly five minutes to complete.

"He. Was. Sad. His. Whole. Life. He couldn't. Say. Okay. To. Anyone."

Then he wrote more, his hands shaking even more with emotion: "He. Wanted. To. Tell. The. Truth. But. Was. Afraid."

"What are you afraid of, Dad?"

Mr. Vinh looked at Lam for a long time, his eyes both painful and as if he was trying to convey something too big to be encapsulated in a few shaky handwritten words. In the end, he could only write two words, but those two words sent chills down Lam's spine: "Home. Ung."

Ung's family — Ung Boi Chau's family. Grandfather was afraid of something related to that family, enough to keep silent for more than forty years, even after Ung Boi Chau passed away. Lam suddenly remembered the clearance notice posted at the beginning of the alley a few days ago, and the name Tinh Hoa Land Company, affiliated with Tinh Hoa Publishing House - the same publishing house that printed Smoke Suong Lac Ben in 1965, the same publishing house that Ung Boi Chau's descendants are still running today.

A coincidence, or not a coincidence? Lam did not dare to confirm, but her hunch, the hunch that had been right when it told her about the unusually thick nape lining, now whispered that these two things - the sixty-year-old literary secret and the plan to clear the alley today - may not be as separate as she thought.

That night, after her father fell asleep, Lam climbed up to the small attic at the top of the house, where old items were no longer used, and found her grandfather's notebook that she vaguely remembered seeing since she was a child. The attic is dusty, the flashlight shines shakyly through old cartons, stacks of yellowed newspapers, and a few rotten clothes. After nearly an hour of searching, she found a small wooden box locked with a rusty lock, hidden in the darkest corner.

She didn't have a key, and didn't want to rush into the lock without preparing herself for what might lie inside. She brought the box down, placed it next to the stack of papers she had found in the spine of the book, and sat looking at both things under the desk lamp, feeling like she was standing on the threshold of something much greater than an ordinary bookbinder like her could handle.

The small wooden box was made of wood, the corners were chipped, the top was engraved with a few simple patterns like an amateur carpenter would have carved it himself, probably made by his grandfather to keep something he considered most precious in his life. Lam turned the box over and over in his hand, testing the weight - it wasn't heavy, inside was probably just papers and books, not anything bulky. She thought about asking the locksmith she knew at the other end of the street to help open it, but then decided against it, afraid that rumors would spread before she could understand what was going on. She decided to leave that box behind, not opening it yet, as a promise to herself that when she was brave enough and knowledgeable enough, she would return to it.

In the following days, Lam continued the shop's daily work - two regular customers came to pick up books by appointment, an old man brought a termite-eaten genealogy book that urgently needed mending - while silently searching for any more clues that could be related to the name Thuc Hien. She went to the district library and asked to borrow old newspaper collections from the Tra Lang area, but most of the documents before 1970 were lost or damaged due to war and time, leaving only a few sporadic newspaper issues, not enough to assemble a complete picture. She also tried looking up the name "Thuc Hien" on search sites, but found hundreds of unrelated results with the same name, not a single line mentioning an anonymous female poet in Tra Lang in the mid-sixties.

She needed someone with a deep understanding of literature, the history of publishing, and how to verify the authenticity of an ancient manuscript—expertise that was beyond the scope of her profession. She thought about going to the provincial library, to literary researchers, but was afraid that if she approached the wrong person, in the wrong way, the news could reach Ung Boi Chau's family before she could fully understand the truth, and then, what was at stake was not just a family secret, but possibly the safety of the bookstore, her father, and herself.

The next morning, when the factory reopened, Lam happened to see a flyer posted on the public notice board at the end of the alley, next to the clearance notice that had faded from the rain and sun these past few days. That is information about a literary seminar about to be held at a university in the province, with the theme "Looking back at a journey of modern poetry", chaired by a young lecturer, who is carrying out a research and reprinting project to celebrate the sixty-year anniversary of the poem collection Smoke Suong Lac Ben.

Lam stood reading the flyer for a long time, her heart beating fast because of a feeling of both trepidation and finding a direction. If there is someone in this area who knows best about Smog Suong Lac Ben, about Ung Boi Chau, about the entire publishing context of that book — it is most likely the young lecturer whose name is printed in small print at the bottom of the leaflet: Tu Duy Khoi, Department of Literature.

She took down the flyer, folded it carefully, and stuffed it into her pocket, feeling both hopeful and uneasy. She didn't know if this person would be an ally or become another link in the system that had been protecting the official story about Ung Boi Chau for the past sixty years. But she knew she couldn't carry this burden alone anymore, couldn't decipher everything in that locked wooden box by herself, and perhaps, whether she wanted it or not, it was time to step out of the four familiar walls of Vong Chu shop to find answers.