Chapter 6 — Vegetarian Restaurant Behind the Temple Gate

Rain poured down on Ben Truc town since midnight, an intense rain rarely seen even in the rainy season, which lasts from July to September of the lunar calendar here. Yen Nhi woke up at nearly three o'clock in the morning because of the heavy sound falling on the yard, a sound different from the familiar sound of raindrops tapping on the tile roof. She jumped up, didn't have time to put on more clothes, ran out of the room and saw her grandmother Cam Thi Nu standing at the kitchen door, holding a flashlight, looking up at the dark sky that appeared right in the middle of the restaurant's roof.

"A corner has collapsed, my child." Mrs. Nu spoke, her voice so calm that it took Yen Nhi a few seconds to fully understand the meaning of that sentence. A piece of tiled roof in the northeast corner, right above the area where three old wooden tables and mother's cupboard were located, had collapsed, revealing a gaping gap where rainwater poured straight in, flooding a large puddle on the patchy cement floor.

Yen Nhi quickly grabbed a bucket and basin to catch the water and pulled the tables and chairs away, but the rain became heavier and heavier, and the tarp she tried to temporarily stretch kept getting gusted by the wind, not enough to cover the lost roof space. She stood in the middle of the shop, her shirt soaked, looking at the water flowing in streams on the rotten wooden beams, suddenly feeling an unfamiliar feeling of helplessness - not because of the rain, but because she suddenly realized she didn't know where to start repairing it. In Saigon, everyone else takes care of everything that breaks down — building manager, maintenance team, one call away. Here, the shop is hers, the roof is hers, and this rain waits for no one.

It was just dawn, the rain had not completely stopped but had become less torrential, when there was a soft call outside the gate. Yen Nhi looked up and saw Teacher Thien Tam standing there in a dark brown raincoat, carrying a heavy bag of tools, his hair and hem under the raincoat still wet.

"Before being admitted to the hospital, Master Giac Vien told him to pay attention to the shop, saying that the roof of the shop and the roof of the west wing of the temple at the same time were equally weak." Thien Tam said, his voice was low and steady, not seeming to be in a hurry even though he had clearly walked through the rain through a slippery Bo De alley to get here since early morning. "I heard Little say the roof of the shop collapsed, so I came over to see if I could help."

Yen Nhi was about to refuse, partly because she was afraid of being bothered, partly because she still kept a certain distance from the monk whom she had only just met and had never had more than a few friendly conversations with. But looking at the rainwater still dripping down into her mother's cupboard, looking at Thien Tam's hands naturally placing the tool bag on the steps, she could only nod and say in a low voice: "Yes, thank you, teacher."

During that morning, when the rain had completely stopped, Thien Tam climbed up to the intact roof, carefully tracing each step on the railings that were rotten with time. He removed the broken tiles, inspected the wooden truss underneath, and Yen Nhi stood below, passing him each tool as he named it — the handsaw, the chisel, the new pieces of wood he brought along just in case. She realized that his hands worked very skillfully, unlike the hands of a person who only knew how to chant sutras and knock on drums. The precise sawing lines, the carefully measured joints before lowering the knife, the way he gently tapped each beam to hear the sound of decay - all exuded a true understanding of carpentry.

"When did you learn carpentry?" Yen Nhi asked, when the two had taken a break, sitting on the porch of the restaurant drinking a pot of hot ginger tea that Mrs. Nu had brought out. The rain had completely stopped, only small drops of water fell from the corrugated iron roof of the house next door, and the air after the rain carried the smell of damp earth, wet leaves, and the smell of newly sawed wood still lingering in Thien Tam's hands.

He held the teacup with both hands, the rising warmth slightly blurring his calm face. "Before entering the temple, I worked as a carpenter at a small furniture factory outside Long Xuyen city. My father also did this job, he passed away early, leaving me a set of tools and a few regular customers." He stopped, looking out at the wet yard, where a few fallen petals of the celestial flower lay scattered on the tiled floor. "I did that job for nearly ten years, until one day I accepted to make a set of altar tables and chairs for a family that had just lost a loved one in an accident. The husband died, leaving behind his wife and two small children. When he came to deliver the goods, he saw the wife sitting quietly in front of the newly built altar, not crying, just looking. She said to him a sentence that I will always remember: 'You made this table so beautifully, I wish I never needed it.'"

Yen Nhi listened silently, the tea cup in her hand gradually cooled without her noticing.

"That sentence stuck with me for many months afterward." Thien Tam continued, his voice slow, as if he was following his own memory lane. "I realized that the work I did, no matter how skillful, was just to serve people's sad or ephemeral moments - the dining table would one day be abandoned, the altar cabinet would rot over the years. I began to wonder if there was any profession, any path that would help me touch a more permanent part of people's hearts, not just making external objects. At first, I thought it was very simple, I thought becoming a monk was about finding a clear answer, a place to stop worrying. wondering."

"So did you find that answer?" Yen Nhi asked, surprised that she asked so directly.

Thien Tam laughed lightly, a rare laugh that made his normally calm face brighten up a bit. "The answer is not as readily available as I thought. But I found something else - that any work can be a path of practice, if you do it with all your presence. Fixing a wooden tenon tightly, fixing a corner of the roof to keep out the rain, turns out to be no different from reciting a sutra, if your mind is really there, not wandering elsewhere." He looked over at the unfinished roof, his eyes gentle. "Maybe that's why monk Giac Vien often lets him do manual work around the temple, instead of just sitting and chanting all day. People say, working with your hands and having peace of mind is also a way of practicing meditation."

Yen Nhi nodded, thinking about the story of her mother, coming to this small restaurant, and her own hands every morning chopping vegetables and marinating spices according to a mechanical habit that had been formed a long time ago. She never thought cooking could be a form of meditation, even though she grew up in a vegetarian restaurant right next to the temple gate.

"What about Yen Nhi," Thien Tam asked again, his voice gentle as if he didn't mean to probe, "why do you keep the restaurant? I heard people say you work in the kitchen in Saigon, the restaurant is very big."

The question touched a place in Yen Nhi's heart that she still did not want to open up to strangers. But there was something about the way Thien Tam asked — without curiosity, without judgment, simply like a friend wanting to understand more — that made her feel like she could tell part of the truth. "I worked as a sous chef there for nearly six years. I was so tired, teacher, so tired that there were nights when I stood in the middle of a crowded kitchen and felt like I was drowning in a sea of fire. Then my mother passed away, I came home to mourn, planning to stay for just a few months, but then I just stayed." She smiled softly, her smile a bit bitter. "I still cooked according to the recipe my mother left behind, but I knew something was missing in my heart. My mother cooked as if she were chatting with each guest. I just kept cooking to finish, like a machine."

Thien Tam did not rush to respond immediately. He looked out into the yard, where the first sunlight after the rain had just filtered through the leaves, shining down on the drops of water remaining on the Thien Ly flower trellis, sparkling like small beads. "Maybe I'm not missing anything." he said. "You just haven't given me time to find it. We can fix the collapsed roof in one morning. But there are things inside that need to be fixed much slower, with much more patience."

That sentence wasn't a big deal, but it made Yen Nhi's nose sting, a feeling she hadn't allowed herself to have in front of others for a long time. She turned away and pretended to look into the kitchen, hiding her red eyes.

That afternoon, the two continued the work of repairing the roof, rebuilding the truss frame, and temporarily buying new tiles at the building materials store at the market. Mrs. Nu cooked a pot of white porridge to eat with sauerkraut and called them both in to eat in the middle of the day when it was sunny. The atmosphere between Yen Nhi and Thien Tam, even though it was just their first real conversation, had a gentle, warm familiarity like between two friends sharing the same concern - preserving a home, whether it is a temple or a restaurant.

In the afternoon, when the roof was firmly re-roofed, with no gaps left for rainwater to get in, Thien Tam packed up his tools and prepared to return to the temple. Before leaving, he looked back at his work, nodded with satisfaction, then turned to Yen Nhi.

"If anything goes wrong, just call the teacher, don't be shy." he said, his voice sincere without any formality. "Ben Truc is small, the shop and the pagoda are inherently like a family."

Yen Nhi saw him off to the gate, watching his figure in the blue shirt disappear behind the trees along Cay Bo De alley, her heart felt strangely relieved. She looked up at the new roof tiles, the bright terracotta-colored tiles nestled between the old moss-colored tiles, like a small proof that the old and the new can still coexist, as long as someone has the patience to connect them together.

That evening, while cleaning up the kitchen before closing time, Yen Nhi stood quietly for a moment under the corner of the newly repaired roof, listening to the sound of the last drops of rainwater remaining on the leaves of Thien Ly falling onto the nearby corrugated iron roof, dripping steadily. She thought about Thien Tam's words — there are things inside that need to be fixed more slowly, with more patience — and wondered if she had that patience. But at least tonight, her shop is no longer leaking. That's also a start.