Chapter 11 — Summer After the Rain

A letter her mother wrote to Linh when she was eight years old. Mrs. Nam didn't give it right away, saying Linh had to watch the screening first. Linh said she was turning her life into a treasure hunt. Mrs. Nam replied that real treasure often lies in places where people don't want to open it. Her voice was firm as if she had thought about that sentence for a long time.

The test screening was full, with people standing in the aisles because there weren't enough seats. Hau sold the wrong ticket to a person who was looking for a car repair shop, but that person still went in because he had already paid, sitting in the crowd with a confused and amused look on his face. Linh stood in the projection room, looking at people who had been coming to the theater for a long time, some with gray hair, some with their grandchildren, all sitting together under the same roof that they thought was closed forever.

After the movie, they showed the flood reel. No one said anything, the whole theater was so quiet that Linh could clearly hear the sound of the ceiling fan overhead. On the screen, Linh's father distributed medicine, her mother filmed, and Mr. Phuc stood near the dike gate. When the video stopped at the square ring, Ms. Nam jumped up from her chair, pointing straight at the screen.

“That is the hand of Mr. Hai, deputy head of the dyke department!”

Mr. Hai passed away a long time ago. Phuc was just an assistant at that time. The person behind the gate opening may not have been Phuc, but he knew, and perhaps, Linh thought, he continued to wear that ring as a way to retain the power of the deceased, a symbol that was passed down without anyone daring to ask directly. The theater was silent, only the sound of hundreds of people breathing heavily trying to digest what they had just seen.

Linh opened the letter at that moment, her hands shaking so much that she almost tore the envelope. Mother wrote that she and father discovered that Mr. Hai's company was withdrawing money for dyke maintenance. Her father wanted to press charges, but Mr. Hai threatened to cut off all support for children in the south bank area. When the flood came, Mr. Hai opened gate number three to save the industrial park above, causing water to flood into An Binh.

Linh's father admitted his mistake because he was the last person to sign the operating book. Mom took Linh away because Mr. Hai threatened to touch her school records. Mom promised to return when she had proof, but then she got sick and scared, the words gradually trembled towards the bottom of the page as if the writer no longer had the strength to hold the pen.

Linh read to the end and saw a sentence: "I didn't leave you because I lost love. I left you because at that time I only knew how to love by taking you away."

Minh stood next to her, not touching her, just standing close enough for her to know she was not alone in the whispering crowd. Linh folded the letter and asked the audience if they believed it. Mrs. Nam said that whether you believe it or not comes with evidence, but no one is allowed to call her father a thief anymore, her high-pitched voice echoed throughout the theater like an official declaration.

The screening night ended with Hau dropping the projector. Minh shouted, then tripped over the electric wire and fell down. Linh cried and laughed at the same time. Before her tears had even dried, she burst out into laughter because of the chaotic scene before her. A bout of tragedy doesn't turn people into serious characters forever; People still need to pick up chairs, wipe away tears and charge electricity bills.

Phuc sent a message asking to stop all activities. Linh replied: "The theater is operating legally." She then signed a form to retain the property for another thirty days. Seven days have passed, but she did not sell.

The test screening did not sell out, but most of the available seats were filled. People who came to watch brought paper fans, raincoats and old stories about Ha Vang. There was an uncle who proposed in the last row. Now he is a grandfather but still remembers clearly where he sat. There was a teacher who once showed the class a documentary here, her eyes were red as she told the story. There was an uncle who only came because he missed the sound of the projector. He said that familiar hum used to lull him to sleep during summer afternoons when he skipped school. When the screen lit up, the whispers subsided, and the whole theater waited with bated breath.

The old comedy wasn't really that good. The sound is sometimes loud and sometimes soft, the image sometimes loses color, and sometimes the frame jumps, causing the story to be interrupted. But when it came to the part where the main character ran away from the wedding on a bicycle, the whole theater burst into laughter, the laughter spreading from the front row to the door. Linh stood behind the ticket counter, looking at the faces covered in blue light. She suddenly understood a place that did not exist thanks to walls and chairs. It exists because people still want to look in the same direction.

In the middle of the session, the electricity went out. Hau panicked and ran to find the circuit breaker, tripped over a popcorn bucket, causing the corn kernels to scatter all over the walkway. Ms. Nam turned on her phone's flashlight and asked the audience to sing an old song while they waited. One carpenter sings out of tune, ten others sing along even more incorrectly, creating a choir that is out of tune but full of vitality. Minh groped his way up to the projection room, his hands searching in the dark. Linh heard him call her name, telling everyone to step back from the stairs.

“Don't try it alone,” she said.

"I'm not alone. There's even a cat looking at me judgmentally."

Linh laughed, then held the rope with him, her hands shaking but steady. The circuit breaker is turned back on. The image returns just as the character on the screen falls into the lake. The audience clapped as if Minh had just saved the movie, the applause and whistles echoed throughout the hall.

After the guests left, three middle-aged women placed a set of autographs on the table, their hands calloused from many years of work. They were part of the rescue team during the flood and wanted to testify about when the water rose. One person said her husband died because he went back to get medicine for a neighbor, her voice choked up midway through the story. Others said Ms. Xuan ran to the southern area before the evacuation order was issued, trying to knock on every door even though no one assigned her that task.

Linh doesn't know which sentence to write first. She took more chairs and invited them to sit, her hands shaking as she poured water for each person. Minh made tea, this time without adding salt, moving more carefully than usual as if understanding that this was not the time to joke. By morning, the table was filled with empty cups and names, each name a piece of memory put down after many years of keeping it secret.

When everyone left, Phuc sent a text message asking to stop all activities. Linh replied: "The theater is operating legally." She looked at the words for a long time, her finger hovering over the phone screen, then signed the form to retain the property for another thirty days. She wasn't sure thirty days was enough to change anything, but at least it gave the others time to say everything they had kept inside for eighteen years.

Linh sets up a schedule to receive reports. Each person has one hour, one person to take notes, and the right to proofread before signing. Mrs. Nam said that in the past, her father only needed a desk, but she needed the whole system. Linh replied that the system helps people not have to trust the memory of just one person, no matter how good that memory is.

Minh posted the calendar next to the ticket counter. His handwriting was still as bad as always, but this time he wrote very carefully. The first day was full. Some people came to tell stories of losing their homes, some told stories of being saved, some just wanted to confirm that they had sat in Ha Vang during the rain that year, as if just having their names written in a book was enough to make them feel at ease. Linh listened to everything, not trying to turn every word into evidence. She also recorded the silences, the times when the narrator stopped mid-sentence to wipe away tears, because she understood that those silences were also part of the truth.

One afternoon, a man about the same age as Linh's father came and sat down in the chair opposite her but said nothing for nearly ten minutes. He just looked around the lobby, looked at the rows of chairs, looked at the white curtain, as if comparing it with an image in his mind. In the end, he said he had nothing to testify, just wanted to see the room where his son slept one night when the house was flooded, before the boy moved away to live with relatives and never returned to An Binh again. Linh did not put his name on the witness list. She just sat with him for a while, letting him look at him to his heart's content, then sent him out the door without asking anything else.

Late in the evening, when everyone had almost gone home, Linh sat alone at a table full of papers, rearranging each file by date. Minh brought her a plate of cold rice and sat down opposite her but did not urge her to eat it right away. He said that seeing her work like this, he remembered her father many years ago, who often sat at that table until the candles burned out. Linh asked her father if he was ever so tired that he wanted to give up. Minh said yes, but he always reminded himself that if he stopped, there would no longer be anyone standing between other people's fear and the theater door.

Linh looked at the cold plate of rice and realized she had forgotten to eat since noon. She took a spoonful and chewed slowly, letting the familiar taste bring her back to the present after a long day of being immersed in other people's memories. Minh sat quietly next to her, not urging, not joking, simply there, like an anchor to keep her from drifting too far into stories that had no end.