Chapter 7 — The Watch Repair Shop That Doesn't Sell Time

Hạ waited under the old railway bridge on a windy afternoon. She wore a brown coat, her hair was cut short, and she didn't have a watch on her hand. Lan recognized the face in the film even though twenty years had softened the features. Minh stood behind a concrete pillar, giving Lan and Hạ some distance.

The wind blew up from the river below, carrying moisture and the smell of mud, carrying a few dry left rolling across the rusty rails. Lan stood for a moment before walking forward, feeling her heart beat faster than usual, her hands clasped tightly together behind her back to hide her trembling. She had imagined this meeting dozens of times in her head over the past two days, but none of it had come close to actually standing before a woman who could hold the answer to her entire life.

“I knew you would come,” Hạ said.

“You know because of the watch?”

“Because Hòa finally left enough traces.”

Hạ did not invite them to sit, as if standing kept the conversation in a state of readiness to leave at any moment. There are rusty rails at the foot of the bridge, with reeds growing between the two rails. She said she used to make goods books for Vạn Thành, detecting human transports. She copied documents and intended to send them to the press, but a colleague was beaten right in front of her house. Hạ panicked and asked Hòa for help.

Hạ's voice was flat, without any drama, as if she had retold this story so many times in her head that it no longer had the ability to hurt her any more. But Lan noticed Hạ's hand tightening the hem of her jacket every time the word "Vạn Thành" was mentioned, a small reflex that words could not hide.

“Your father took me away?”

"He didn't save me out of pity. He believed it was the witness's responsibility to speak out," Hạ said. "The 4:50 p.m. train was delayed, so she and Hòa had to go back to the warehouse to get the notebook. They did not know that Vạn Thành's men were waiting. Hòa pushed Hạ into an empty compartment and told her not to come back out. He stayed behind as a distraction."

“He pushed me so hard that I fell face down in the carriage,” Hạ said, her voice suddenly quiet. "At that time, I was angry at him for being rude. Later I understood, a second of hesitation could have gotten both of us arrested."

“You left the station alone?” Lan asked.

"I was taken to the bus station by a driver. Then I changed my name and lived in three provinces. Hòa promised to call when it was safe."

“Did he call?”

Hạ looked at the water under the bridge, her eyes sparkling in the afternoon light but without tears, as if she had cried for this story many years ago. “Once. You just said, ‘Don’t wait up.’ I thought you wanted me to forget. I didn’t know you said it to protect me.”

Lan held out the silver watch. “He sent this to you?”

"No. I left it behind when I hid. Hòa took it to hide the note. He planned to give it back to me when everything was over."

“Is it all over?”

Hạ smiled, an unhappy smile. "Vạn Thành changed its name three times, the owners became richer. Hòa disappeared, and I lived on. That's how bad things win: it tires the good people first."

Minh stepped out of the ball. “Do you still keep the original documents?”

Hạ looked at him, her eyes searching as if trying to remember a familiar face. “Mr. Sáu once asked that question.”

“He knows?”

"He helped Hòa change the mainspring for the watch. He advised me not to bring all the documents with me, just keep a record enough to prove it."

Hạ took a tin box from his pocket. Inside are old employee cards, a recording and a list of names that have been stained with water. "This is the part I keep. Hòa takes the rest away," Lan opened the lid of the box. The tape is labeled 16:42. Hạ said that was the time when a Vạn Thành manager asked Hòa to hand over someone. Lan's hand trembled as she touched the small tape, feeling like she was touching the very moment that shaped the rest of her life that she had never known. Lan wanted to listen right away, but Minh stopped her. “Audio can be used, but there must be a copy and an authenticator.”

Hạ nodded, her eyes softening a bit. "Mr. Hòa told me that. He said his daughter has the right to know, but must not turn into someone who only lives to search."

Lan felt her eyes sting. She looked down at the tin in her hand, feeling its weight not from the metal but from everything it contained. “Do you know where my father is?”

Hạ looked up at the rails on the bridge and was silent for a long time before answering, as if considering how much to say. "I know he got on a train. I know someone dropped him off at Phú Sơn station. I know from then on he used another name to work at a watch factory in the South."

Minh and Lan turned at the same time. “Which workshop?”

“Mr. Sáu's workshop.”

Minh felt a cold run down his spine. For many years he believed that Mr. Sáu was just a quiet teacher, never involved in anything bigger than gears and mainsprings. Now, the name Hòa appears again right in his workshop, like an invisible thread connecting two seemingly unrelated stories.

The wind blew across the bridge, rolling an old ticket along the tracks. Lan couldn't speak, her throat was tight as if a handful of sand had just been poured in. If father had lived for a while under another name, he would have chosen not to return. The question was no longer "is my father dead or alive", but "why did he keep us waiting". She stood still, letting that feeling flow through her like a stream of cold water, neither trying to suppress it nor letting it drown her.

Hạ gave the address of an old warehouse in Phú Sơn, written in italics, hastily, as if she had prepared this piece of paper a long time ago, just waiting for someone to come and ask the right question. "Hòa worked there for two years. Then he moved on. He sent letters to my mother, but she burned them."

“Do you know where he died?”

“No. I stopped looking when I realized I was using fear to keep you in my life.”

That sentence made Lan pause. She realized she was doing the same thing — turning the search into a way to avoid having to face the void left by her father's absence. Perhaps search and fear are sometimes just two sides of the same emotion, different in the name people choose to call it.

Lan kept the tin box. She wanted to ask more, but Hạ said enough. She turned away and walked toward the dirt road. Before leaving, Hạ said: "The watch cannot take me to my father. It can only take me to the people who were left behind." On the bus back to town, Tùng called Mrs. Hạnh to alert her and asked where Lan was. Lan answered truthfully. For the first time, she did not hide the investigation from her younger brother. She found that telling the truth, even a short sentence about her position, made her shoulders feel a little lighter, as if each secret let loose took some weight off her chest.

Minh drives. He asked her if she wanted to go to Phú Sơn right away. Lan shook her head. “First, listen to the tape, back up the documents and tell your mother.”

“That's an order of magnitude more difficult.”

“I know.”

Minh glanced at her once, enough to see Lan biting her lower lip, a habit he realized she often did when trying to hold back an emotion greater than she could bear. He didn't say more, just slowed the car down a bit, as a way to silently give her more time before having to face the house, her mother, and everything that was waiting ahead.

The car drove through golden rice fields, the late afternoon sunlight dyed the whole space an unusually warm orange compared to what they had just heard. Lan leaned her head against the glass window, watching the scenery pass by without really seeing anything, her mind was still under the bridge, in Hạ's hoarse voice when mentioning the words "don't wait".

When they arrived at the shop, the silver watch read 16:49. Minh placed it on the table, not touching the knob. The ticking sound counted each time until the train time, but there was no whistle. At exactly 4:50 p.m., the second hand passed the number twelve and continued running.

Lan looked at the dial. An hour that was once evidence of loss now becomes a sign that something has been said. She did not feel relieved. She only knew that she had stopped standing on the station platform alone.

That night, before going to sleep, Lan took out a notebook to write down every detail Hạ had just told, not as evidence but to keep her memories from slipping away over time like so many other things in her family had slipped away. She wrote the last line: "Dad didn't run away. He entered another door, and none of us knew where that door led." She closed the book and turned off the light, but for a long time afterward she could still hear the sound of the wind under the bridge and the hoarse voice of the woman her father had saved.