Chapter 3 — Summer After the Rain

Minh is not a professional projector repairman. He studied mechanical engineering, worked at all sorts of jobs, and once repaired rice cookers for the whole town. He once patched a ceiling fan with rubber bands because he didn't have the right spare parts. The Ha Vang theater's projector is ancient, the light bulbs are rare and must have been ordered from the city, the wires are connected with tape shaped like a yellow duck, the glue has peeled off the edges but still holds firmly like an old promise.

“Who glued this duck?” Linh asked, sitting on a wooden chair next to the computer table.

“Your father.”

“Does he know electricity?”

“No. But he knows the duck makes people less afraid.”

Minh took the projector apart piece by piece, moving slowly and orderly like a ritual. He put the screws into different bottle caps — a beer bottle cap, a soft drink bottle cap, even an old oil bottle cap — and then labeled them with such bad writing that Linh had to tilt her head to read them. Linh sat opposite, reading theater sales documents, but the sound of the screwdriver kept clicking, drawing her attention. Her eyes occasionally glanced at the hands he was working on instead of the legal words in front of her.

“How long have you worked with my father?”

“Since I was seventeen.”

“He hired you?”

“You feed me.”

Minh said that at that time, he dropped out of vocational training because his mother was sick and had to take time off to take care of her during times when she could not walk on her own. Linh's father let him work at the theater, first sweeping the lobby, then learning to change light bulbs and set up backdrops. Linh's father didn't ask too many questions, just told anyone who wanted to fix something to listen to it. Minh's voice when telling this story was deeper and slower than usual, as if he was recounting something he had never fully said.

“Do projectors also make sounds?”

"I know. People who don't listen will think it's broken."

Linh wanted to ask about the flood, but Minh avoided talking about the light bulb, his hand quickly turning a screw as if to fill the silence. He said the film in the machine could be a recording of the volunteer team. No one knows why it was stuck in the machine for eighteen years, silent like an unspoken word.

They wipe the film roll with a soft brush, rotating slowly so as not to scratch the delicate photographic emulsion layer. A piece of torn label can still read the words "Ha Vang", the ink has almost completely faded. Linh touched the edge of the film and found her hand cold even though there was no wind in the projection room. The images on the screen last night were not vague memories; Someone intentionally recorded it, chose the frame, and kept it all these years as evidence waiting to be opened.

To test the device, Minh turned on an old comedy video. As soon as the character on the screen opened the door, he fell into the potted plant, the background music sounded shrilly in the style of an old movie. Hau laughed so much that he knocked over the popcorn box, sending corn kernels rolling all over the aisle between the two rows of seats. Ms. Nam said this movie is useful because it teaches people that falling in front of others is not necessarily embarrassing, then bent down to pick up each grain of corn seriously as if cleaning up the scene.

Linh sat in the last row, watching the light run across the dust, small dust particles spinning in the white light like a miniature galaxy. She remembered her mother sitting next to her there, the smell of her mother's grapefruit shampoo still lingering in her memory even after eighteen years. Her mother often fell asleep in the middle of a movie, and her father secretly covered her with his coat, moving so lightly that he did not wake her. After the flood, her mother took Linh and left. Her father stayed, kept the theater open, but never showed the movie about that summer, as if he had forbidden himself to remember it completely.

Minh sat down next to her, just enough distance so they wouldn't touch each other. He didn't ask if she was crying or not. He handed over a package of tissues, with a picture of a scowling bear printed on it with faded advertising text.

“I'm not crying.”

“I didn't ask either.”

“I'm giving the towel.”

"Towels have many uses. Wiping water, dust, wiping faces that want to hit people."

Linh laughed dryly, took the package of towels but did not open it. She asked him what the debt was. Minh looked up at the screen, where the comedian had just fallen for the third time, pre-recorded laughter rang out as regularly as a broken clock.

"Your father once saved my mother during a flood. I promise to keep the theater until I can't keep it anymore."

“So what if I sell?”

"I'll help you sell it. But before that, you have to watch the entire roll of film."

The projector suddenly turned off, without any warning signs. The audience room was dark, with only the sound of the old ceiling fan screeching overhead. There was only one frame left on the screen before it turned off completely: Linh's father stood next to the dike, pointing towards an open water gate, his face so tense that Linh almost didn't recognize him.

Minh whispered, his voice so small that he could almost only hear it for himself: "Are you sure your father is the one who lost the relief money?"

Linh did not answer. All she knew was that the seven days were starting to feel longer, and each passing hour brought a new question that she was never prepared to face.

The next morning, Minh took Linh to the old ferry wharf on a motorbike, the river breeze blowing coolly on her face the whole way. He said that if you want to find a ticket seller, you have to ask the person who sold the tickets, you can't just rely on an online address. The road leading to the riverbank passes through a makeshift market, where the roofs collide in the wind, creating a constant popping sound. Linh had forgotten there were so many smells in An Binh: dried fish, wind oil, wet soil, car smoke and the sweet smell of grilled corn rising from a charcoal stove in the corner of the market.

Minh walked first, continuously greeting acquaintances, raising his hand to wave from one person to another. Linh realized he could fix everything in the theater but couldn't walk across a street without being called back. A vegetable seller asked him when he would get married, a motorbike taxi driver asked if he had paid for the brake repair, a child gave him a half-bitten cake and ran away without even being able to thank him. Minh accepted everything, but only the wedding question he pretended not to hear, walking a little faster as if speed could save him from the answer.

“Do you know the whole town?” Linh asked, trying to suppress a smile.

“No. The town knows me because I owe them money.”

“How much do you owe?”

“More than you planned to pay the theater.”

He said it jokingly, but Linh understood that it was partly the truth. Minh provides free repairs for the elderly, debits for children, and only accepts money when people insist on giving it. He is not rich, but people trust him, and that trust is evident in the way people call his name from afar without looking closely at his face.

The old ticket seller lives in a low house near the wharf, with a tiled roof covered with green moss, and in front of the yard are some old fishing nets drying. Her name is Sau, but everyone calls her Mrs. Ve because she sat by the ferry gate for forty years, counting tickets with her calloused fingers. When she heard Linh's father's name, she took out a yellowed envelope from the closet and kept it carefully in a plastic bag inside a locked drawer.

“He let me keep it for him before the flood,” she said, her voice trembling because of age, not emotion. "Tell me if a girl named Linh comes back, I'll bring her home."

Linh held the envelope, her hands shaking slightly. The outside just says “Seat 13”. It contained a theater ticket, a photo of the stage and a copy of the storm shelter list. Xuan's name is at the end, next to the number 2:17. Phuc's name was crossed out with a line of black ink, the stroke was so strong that it tore the entire surface of the paper.

“Do you know why?”

Mrs. Ve said Phuc came to the theater after the dike gate opened. He didn't help carry people, just stood at the ticket office and called, his voice low but urgent. When Linh's father asked who he was calling, he said he was calling his superiors. Phuc then asked to keep the list, citing the need to report it to higher authorities.

Minh asked her if she saw him taking money. She shook her head, her thin hands clasped together in her lap. "I didn't see it. I just saw him carrying a briefcase to the car."

Linh doesn't want to turn a briefcase into a conclusion. She wrote down her grandmother's words in a small notebook, asked for a photo of the envelope and kept the original in a moisture-proof bag that she brought with her. Mrs. Ve agreed, but made Linh promise not to let others use her name without asking. Her eyes were much more serious than before.

On the way home, Linh opened the stage photo, the river wind made the edge of the photo tremble in her hand. Her father stood behind the velvet curtain, her mother held the camera, and Minh was then a thin boy standing under the seats. He didn't remember being present, but in the photo he was holding a flashlight, the boy's eyes in the photo seemed both scared and curious.

“I was there too.”

“I don't remember.”

“Maybe I tried to forget.”

Minh did not object. He said his mother was stuck on the south shore and was taken back to the theater by boat. His voice slowed down as if he was retracing each piece of faded memory. He ran to find her, but was held back by Linh's father because the water rose quickly. Little Minh cried, kicked the warehouse door and called Linh's father a liar, words that a seventeen-year-old child should not have to utter on a rainy night.

“Is he angry?”

"No. He gave me a dry shirt and told me that if I wanted to scold him, I should wait for the water to recede."

Linh saw that the father in Minh's words was different from the father she remembered. Not better, just more layers. A person can make someone feel saved and their child feel abandoned, and both things can be true at the same time without being mutually exclusive.

Back at the theater, they tried projecting the photo onto the screen using an old slide projector found in the warehouse. The light revealed a line written behind the photo: "Don't release before meeting Xuan." Linh looked at her mother in the photo, young and strong, then looked at the key in her hand. She remembered the name circled with a blue pen on the storm shelter list, the name that appeared over and over again like a thread that no one had pulled to the end. She knew that the trip to find Ms. Xuan - the woman with that name, not her mother, but another person who was present on the night of the flood - was no longer a side job. It's the only way not to continue talking about your mother with blank spaces.

Minh said he would sleep in the projection room tonight. Linh asked why. He said if the projector runs on its own anymore, at least someone will argue with it. She told him he could sleep on seat number 13. Minh said that seat was for people who hadn't returned yet.

Linh looked at him, for the first time she didn't find that statement scary. She saw only one empty seat, and one person was trying to save it for tomorrow—for someone neither he nor she dared to name clearly.