Somebody's Daughter by Marie Myung-Ok Lee Page B

chest in the storeroom. Seeing this unexpected object, wrapped in brilliant, if crumbling, silk amidst a latticework of cobwebs and stray grains of rice, she had naturally picked it up, that knobby length of bamboo that felt strangely familiar in her hands. On a whim, she put it to her lips. And this is when her destiny changed.
    Until then, she had merely lived her life, accepting its joys and hardships like a ship tossed about on a vast sea. She had never had, until that chance find, something to live
for
, a certain direction she wanted to follow. Now, all the necessary parts of her life—eating, sleeping, studying—became mere pauses before she would steal away again to the Three Peaks Lake to play this flute, eventually learning how to capture the quivering sounds of the wind and water, notes that filled her more deeply than any food.
    At those times, in the place where the pines gave way to summergreen oaks and wild pear trees, Kyung-sook would feel she had held the flute in her fingers for only a minute—but then she would notice that the sun, which had been high over the three peaks in the mountain when she started, would be beginning its slow, somnolent descent over her westward shoulder. When she returned home, looking tired, her parents would beam at her and say, “Look at our Kyung-sook-ah, studying so diligently, a true Bae descendant.”
    Occasionally some grandmothers wandering for ginseng in the fall or tender fern bracken in the spring would be attracted by the sounds and they would stop to listen.
    This music, that beautiful vibrating sorrow, is the pulse of us, they would say. We have seen two wars, so much destruction. Yet, we are still here, Korea is still here, and we hope some day we will be allowed north to visit the sacred Mount Paekdu, the way our people used to when our beloved country was one land. Oh, the beauty and sorrow of our han. You have somehow managed to capture this at such a tender age.
    Her audiences showed their appreciation by leaving her with mung-bean pancakes, fruit, or rice balls from the grannies’ own lunches as they walked away, sighing about what a shame it was that there weren’t more young people who appreciated folk music nowadays.
    One day, a woman appeared on the ridge. She stayed a distance away, listening, but then, when Kyung-sook was finished, approached her.
    It was her mother.
    Kyung-sook gulped, moved to hide her schoolbooks, which were scattered disrespectfully nearby in the goose-grass.
    But her mother didn’t scold her. Instead she set down the bundle of wild onion she carried on her head.
    Music exists for the Huhr clan, she said, referring to her maiden family. It is in our blood.
    It must be true, Kyung-sook thought. At every Autumn Harvest Moon Festival, people begged Kyung-sook’s mother to sing. And when the women assembled for the kangkang sullae dance, it was her mother’s true soprano that broke the first verse of the dance.
    That taegum belonged to a great-great-great grandfather, Kyung-sook’s mother said, looking at the ancient instrument. She did not ask Kyung-sook where she had found it, only settled herself more comfortably on the grass.
    Back in the Chosun Dynasty, when the arts and letters flourished, this man was a court musician, so renowned for his music that whenever he played, people from all over the province would travel to hear him, she went on.
    The musician’s wife, however, had never heard her husband play a note. The man even practiced in a special insulated room that the governor had made, just for him.
    When the wife complained that every peasant in the province had heard him play, and she had not, he answered, “Woman, how can I let you hear me play? You know that music is of a woman’s world—are not the kisaeng all given musical training? I am your husband. I cannot have you see me that way.”
    The wife consoled herself by reminding