Chapter 14 — Unnamed Perfume Shop

Sunday morning, Bach Nguyen drove to pick up Bao Nghi early to go find the old Van Dien village according to Mr. Ta Khac Nguyen's instructions. Bao Nghi gave Aunt Xuyen careful instructions, prepared medicine, a familiar doctor's phone number, and a list of things to do if her mother showed any unusual symptoms, although she still couldn't help but feel guilty when for the first time in many months, she left the shop and her mother for nearly a full day.

"Mom will be fine," Bach Nguyen reassured, when he saw her keep looking back toward the house until it disappeared behind the corner of the street. "Auntie Xuyen has been taking care of your mother for two years now. She definitely knows how to handle every situation."

The road to the old Van Dien village takes nearly two hours, passing through green rice fields, bamboo groves swaying in the wind, and finally a rough red dirt road leading down to the river bank. The village has now changed its name, most of the old residents have moved elsewhere after many landslides, leaving only a few sparse rooftops and a small ferry wharf with no passersby. Bao Nghi stood on the bank, looking at the river flowing lazily, trying to imagine the scene that her grandmother once described - dense rows of cork trees, the sound of roosters crowing in the morning, a sixteen-year-old girl running in the rainy night looking for her mother.

"Over there," Bach Nguyen pointed to a bend in the river, where a strip of dense green trees grew close to the water's edge, branches and leaves spreading wide, roots entwined deep into the mud along the shore. They walked along the riverbank for nearly half an hour to get there, and when Bao Nghi saw the clusters of ivory-white flowers peeking out among the dark green foliage, she felt her heart stop beating for a moment.

"Cork flower," she whispered, stepping closer, reaching out to gently touch a delicate petal, ivory white petals with red and pink stamens, just as Mr. Ta Khac Nguyen described. She bent down, took a deep breath, and even though the flowers bloomed at night so the scent of the day was only very faint, her sharp sense of smell still caught a layer of gentle, slightly fragrant scent, carrying the typical wet feeling of the river area - the final piece of the puzzle she had been looking for so long.

In her mind, that scent created a vague but strong image: a river in high season, moonlight reflecting on the water, and a feeling of both loss and strange peace, like a goodbye that had been accepted after many years of torment. She wasn't sure if it was a real memory or just something her mind had made up from everything she had heard, but the feeling was so real that it made her burst into tears right in the middle of a deserted riverbank.

Bach Nguyen stood quietly next to her, not saying anything, just gently placing his hand on her shoulder, giving her space for her overflowing emotions. After a while, he spoke up, his voice gentle: "Can I pick some back? Enough for you to try distilling."

Bao Nghi nodded, wiped her tears, took out a few small cloth bags she had prepared from her pocket, and carefully picked each bunch of flowers, trying not to damage the plants. "Don't pick them all," she instructed, her voice serious. "We have to leave it behind so the flowers can continue to grow. Who knows, maybe we'll need them again in the future."

They spent the rest of the morning harvesting, carefully packaging, discussing with an old man who lived nearby about the growth characteristics of the plant, noting down the exact location so they could return on the nights when the flowers were in full bloom, when the fragrance was strongest. At noon, as they sat down to rest and quickly eat the rice balls they brought with them, Bao Nghi's phone rang loudly - Aunt Xuyen's number.

"Miss Nghi, can you come home quickly?" Aunt Xuyen's panicked voice rang out on the phone. "Miss Bich Van fell in the bathroom. I helped her up but she complained that her leg hurts. I'm calling a taxi to take her to the hospital."

Bao Nghi stood up, her hands shaking and almost dropped the phone. "Auntie, take mom to the district hospital first. I'll go home now!" She turned to Bach Nguyen, her face pale. "My mother fell and had to go home quickly."

All the way home, Bach Nguyen drove as fast as he could within the safe range, while Bao Nghi sat next to her, her hand tightly clutching the bag of cork flowers she had just picked, her heart confused between worry for her mother and a feeling of guilt that kept clinging to her - the feeling that she had been selfish in spending an entire day searching for a perfume formula, while her mother, the person who needed her the most, had an accident right at home.

Arriving at the district hospital, they found Ms. Bich Van lying on the hospital bed, her left leg bandaged, her face pale but alert, Aunt Xuyen sitting next to her with a still shocked expression. "The doctor said it was only a mild sprain, no broken bones, I'm very lucky," Aunt Xuyen said when she saw Bao Nghi rush into the room.

Bao Nghi hugged her mother, tears rolling down her eyes. "Mom, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have gone so far."

Mrs. Bich Van, even though she was still in pain, still gently rubbed her daughter's back, her voice was weak but clear, much more alert than what Bao Nghi feared. "It's not your fault, Nghi. Mom just slipped, this can happen to anyone. You can't stay locked in the house forever because of mom. You have your own work to do." She saw the small cloth bag containing cork flowers still in her daughter's hand, and her eyes suddenly lit up in a strange way. "What kind of flower is that, why does it look familiar?"

Bao Nghi was stunned and brought the flower bag closer so her mother could see more clearly. "That's a cork flower, Mom. I just found it in a riverside village two hours ago."

Mrs. Bich Van raised her trembling hand touch a flower petal, closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and in that moment, her face lit up with an emotion that Bao Nghi had rarely seen in her mother during the past two years - a complete, clear awareness, without any ambiguity. "That's right," she whispered, tears rolling down her haggard cheeks. "It's really this smell. I remember it, Nghi, I remember it very clearly."

Bao Nghi held her mother's hand tightly, not daring to move too much, for fear of breaking the fragile thread of memories that had just been revived. "What do you remember? Tell me," she whispered, her voice trembling with both emotion and hope.

"When I was little, your grandmother once took me to the workshop and let me smell a bottle of essential oil she had just distilled," Mrs. Bich Van said, her voice slow but strangely coherent, as if the pain in her leg and the fall that morning had strangely opened a certain path in her mind that had been blocked for a long time. "I remember that smell made me cry, even though I was only seven or eight years old at the time, I didn't understand why I cried. Your grandmother hugged me and said, this is the smell of someone she has never met, her own mother, but she wants her to remember, so that if she goes anywhere in the future, she can still keep a part of both of them."

Aunt Xuyen stood silently in the corner of the room, unable to hold back her tears at that scene. Bach Nguyen stood behind the door, not daring to enter so as not to interrupt the sacred moment between mother and child.

"What else did Grandma say, Mom?" Bao Nghi continued asking, trying to keep her voice light and patient.

Mrs. Bich Van frowned, a moment of pain flashed across her face, not because of the wound in her leg, but because she was trying to hold on to a memory that was slowly slipping back into the fog. "She said... she said the scent must have three layers," she whispered, "the first layer is the smell of earth after the rain, to remember the place where you were born. The middle layer is the smell of honey grass, to remember the peaceful days before loss struck. And the last layer, the layer that stays the longest, must be the scent of cork flowers, because that is the only thing left after everything, the one that blooms at night, silently, without needing anyone to see it and still radiates its scent." She opened her eyes and looked at her daughter, her eyes were both painful and strangely comforting. "I can't remember the exact ratio, Nghi, it was more than forty years ago. But those three layers of incense, I'm sure, that's what your grandmother wanted you to understand."

Bao Nghi bent down, pressed her forehead against her mother's thin hand, tears fell continuously, but this time they were not tears of despair, but of a hope that had just been rekindled after many dark days. She knew that this rare moment of her mother's lucidity would pass, maybe in just a few minutes, maybe last another afternoon, but what her mother had just told her would forever stay with her - three layers of scent of a memory, the final structure missing to complete the recipe that her grandmother had spent her whole life pursuing.

The doctor on duty that day stopped by to check the wound and reminded Ms. Bich Van to absolutely rest for the next few days and avoid walking too much to help her leg heal quickly. When the doctor left, Ms. Bich Van showed clear signs of fatigue, her eyes began to wander again, and Bao Nghi realized that precious moment of clarity was gradually closing as she had expected. She quickly took out the small notebook she always carried with her, jotting down every word her mother had just said before they could be mixed with what she had explained herself further in her emotions, trying to keep her mother's story as intact as possible.

That evening, after bringing his mother home safely and instructing aunt Xuyen to stay overnight to take care of her, Bao Nghi saw Bach Nguyen out the gate. "Thank you for today," she said, her voice still choked by everything she had just been through. "If it weren't for that trip, maybe your mother would never have had the chance to remember so much."

"You are the one who deserves to be thanked," Bach Nguyen replied, gently holding her hand. "I was just driving, and everything that happened today is thanks to your perseverance, over the years." He looked at her for a moment, his eyes full of affection. "You should go home and rest early. There will be a lot of work to do tomorrow, but at least now I have almost all the pieces."

Bao Nghi nodded, watched the driver disappear into the darkness, then turned back into the house, standing silently in front of the empty wooden sign above the door for a long time, filled with a feeling of both exhaustion and hope, as if after a long journey of groping in the dark, she began to see a small but certain ray of light leading the way ahead.