Chapter 3 — Old Painting Restoration Workshop

For the first three days, Mien Thu did not touch "Vong Nguyet" with brush or solvent. That was the first principle her grandfather taught her, so deeply engraved that it became instinct: before restoring any work, you must understand it, "talk" to it long enough to know what it needs, not what you want to do with it.

She set up a separate small table next to the easel, where she placed the painting under natural light from the north-facing window all day long, meticulously recording in a new notebook: the condition of the varnish, the density and direction of the hairline cracks, the areas where the color had faded, the areas stained by uneven humidity during sixty years of storage. She took hundreds of close-up photos under a variety of lighting angles — regular light, diagonal light to highlight rough surfaces, and even ultraviolet light that she borrowed from a friend who works at an art university's conservation lab.

"What are you doing so meticulously?" Thuy Chi asked on Tuesday afternoon, when she saw Mien Thu sitting for hours just to compare two photos taken at the same angle under two different types of light.

"Ultraviolet light helps us see what the naked eye cannot see." Mien Thu explained, her voice still steady and focused. "Old varnish, under UV light, will fluoresce in a characteristic way — if any area has been repaired, repainted, or covered with newer varnish at another time, it will appear as an unusually darker or brighter area compared to the rest. You need to know all of that before deciding what type of solvent to use, in what proportion, in each area."

Thuy Chi looked over her shoulder, attentively observing the photo taken under UV light appearing on the computer screen. Much of the painting's surface emits a uniform pale green halo — a sign of the natural pine varnish that has aged over time, consistent with the work's declared age. But in the lower left corner, where the small peeling mark she had noticed since the first day, there was a small patch of luminescence of a different color — slightly purple, different from the rest.

"What's that other blob in the corner over there?"

Mien Thu frowned and enlarged the photo. "I'm also wondering. Maybe it's just a place that someone has lightly restored before, using a different type of varnish. This is not uncommon, many old paintings have passed through several owners, each time someone 'fixes' a little in their own way." She paused, lightly tapping her fingers on the table, a habit when thinking. "But the museum records provided do not record any previous restoration. According to documents, this is the first time the painting has been professionally restored since its completion."

"Then that's strange." Thuy Chi frowned. "If it has never been repaired, why is there such a different colored varnish area?"

"I don't know yet. But I will find out." Mien Thu closed her laptop and looked at the painting resting on the stand under the fading afternoon sunlight. "Tomorrow I will start testing cleaning in a very small, hidden corner, not affecting the main layout, to see how the varnish layer reacts to the solvent."

That evening, after Thuy Chi returned, Mien Thu sat alone, pulled out her grandfather's stack of recipe notebooks from the drawer, and flipped through the pages recording notes about varnishes and popular solvents in the sixties and seventies. Her grandfather was meticulous to the point of obsession — every major restoration he ever did, whether successful or not, was meticulously recorded, along with the date, the type of solvent used, and sometimes even short comments about the work's original condition.

She flipped through each page, looking for anything related to the name Tu Binh Son or the painting "Vong Nguyet", but found nothing. Perhaps, she told herself, this was just one of hundreds of names he had mentioned in his professional life, nothing more special than the other names.

But then, her eyes stopped at a page near the end of the notebook, where there was a short note, with slightly different handwriting - not his usual steady, neat handwriting, but more shaky, as if written in a hurry, or written in some unusual emotional state.

"Pine varnish mixed with a small part of damar resin, the ratio is unusual compared to the teacher's standard formula. Remember: never use this type of mixture for any other project than that one."

No date. There is no work title. There was only that short line, like a private reminder that he did not intend for anyone else to read.

Mien Thu sat quietly for a long time, her fingers lightly gliding over that shaky handwriting. "Teacher" — her grandfather only used that word to refer to only one person in his life, the person he always mentioned in a voice that was both respectful and somewhat choked, even though he never said his name clearly. She had always thought it was a generic image, an abstract "early teacher" in the story of his upbringing. She never thought about finding out who it was.

She closed the notebook, placed it on the table, then stood up and walked to the painting "Vong Nguyet", looking for a long time at the lower left corner where the varnish area glowed differently under the UV light.

"Is that you?" She asked softly, even though she knew the painting wouldn't answer.

Late at night, Hanoi was quiet, with only the sparse sound of motorbikes echoing from the big street in the distance. Mien Thu opened another drawer, where old family photos were kept. She found a small black-and-white photo, with frayed edges, of her grandfather when he was very young — probably in his early twenties — standing in a room that appeared to be a studio, holding a paintbrush, standing next to a much older man, slim, wearing round glasses, pointing at a large painting on an easel.

On the back of the photo, handwritten words have faded over time: "With the teacher at the studio, 1961."

Full name not available. But the face of the man in the photo — thin, wearing round glasses, eyes focused and stern — was eerily similar to her image of a person whose name she had only heard of for the first time this afternoon: Tu Binh Son.

She placed the photo on the table, next to "Vong Nguyet", to compare. Nothing is certain — just a vague hunch, a coincidence that might just be the imagination of someone searching for meaning in the disparate pieces. But that premonition was strong enough to make her heart beat faster, strong enough to make her unable to sleep peacefully that night.

The next morning, when Thuy Chi arrived at the factory, she saw Mien Thu already sitting at the desk, her eyes dark from lack of sleep, but her gaze unusually sharp.

"Are you okay?" Thuy Chi asked, a bit worried.

"I'm fine." Mien Thu replied, closed her notebook, and stood up. "Today I started experimenting with cleaning a small corner of the painting. I'll help you prepare a pH testing kit and some specialized cotton swabs."

They spent the whole morning preparing and checking each tool, mixing a small amount of test solvent according to the standard ratio written in the international conservation handbook - not the special formula that her grandfather had recorded, she told herself, I need to try it the usual way first, see how the varnish reacts.

Near noon, Mien Thu gently dipped the tip of a cotton swab into the solvent, brought it to a very small corner, hidden behind the painting frame, where almost no one would notice unless they turned the painting around. She gently rolled the tip of the cotton swab across the surface, observing each movement under a magnifying glass.

The yellow varnish began to soften and dissolve, revealing streaks of color underneath that suddenly brightened — a surprisingly bright cobalt blue, completely different from the dark, cold color of the entire painting she had been observing for the past three days.

Mien Thu stopped, her hand holding the cotton swab shook slightly.

"Sister? What's wrong?" Thuy Chi asked, seeing her unusual expression.

"This color..." Mien Thu whispered, almost soundlessly, her eyes still glued to the cobalt blue streak that had just appeared. "That's not right. It doesn't match the color scheme of the whole picture."

She put down the cotton swab, took out a handheld magnifying glass, and leaned closer to observe. Under the layer of varnish, the original color was not simply covered by yellow stains as she had thought. There was something else — a stroke, a blurred outline, that seemed to belong to an entirely different composition from what was on the surface.

She sat up straight, her heart pounding, looking at Thuy Chi with both scared and excited eyes.

"I think," she said slowly, word by word, "under this layer of paintings there is another layer of paintings."

Thuy Chi was silent for a moment, then asked in a cautious voice: "Is it like... an artist paints over an old painting to save canvas? I once told you that story, back when the war was difficult, canvas was expensive, many artists often reused old picture frames."

"It's possible." Mien Thu nodded, trying to keep her voice calm even though her mind was spinning with dozens of different theories. "That is a normal thing in the painting world during the war years, there is nothing suspicious if it stops there. Many famous paintings in the world have also been discovered to have another work underneath, simply because the artist did not have enough money to buy new canvases." She paused, staring at the cobalt blue stain still wet on the surface. "But you need to know for sure what it is before moving on. If it's a completely different composition, we'll have to X-ray the entire painting, not just guessing at a small angle like this."

"We don't have an X-ray machine, right?"

"No. Our factory is not qualified to do that." Mien Thu stood up, walked to the window, looking out at the small alley outside bustling with people passing by at noon. "But I know who can help. It's just... I need to think more, before deciding whether or not to invite outsiders into this matter."

She didn't say more, but in her mind, a name began to appear - the name of an appraisal expert she had heard about in the world, someone who could help her see through the paint to see the truth hidden underneath. She just didn't know, inviting that person in would open a door that once opened, she would have no way to close again.