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【完形填空】Cloze: The Khaen Maker's Legacy
I first met Uncle Somchai on a sticky afternoon in 2003, when the river ran low and the air (1) of fried garlic and diesel.
His workshop in Luang Prabang (2) behind a temple wall, and the only way in was a narrow lane where motorbikes had to squeeze past hanging laundry.
I was a twenty-four-year-old reporter (3) a grant of $1,200, chasing a story about disappearing folk tunes.
Somchai was fifty-eight, a maker of the traditional khaen, a bamboo mouth organ (4) sound can be as soft as breath or as sharp as a cry.
He took one look at my notebook and said, in a low voice, "You are late. The last master died in 1997. I am just a repairman." Then he picked up his instrument and played, and the room (5) with a melody that seemed to come from the floorboards themselves.
For three weeks I trekked to his shop every morning. Somchai had learned to make the khaen from his father, who had learned from a monk in a village that was now (6) water.
The rising Mekong had submerged eleven villages between 1990 and 2002, and with them, a whole vernacular of courtship songs and funeral relays. Somchai showed me the tensile strength of bamboo strips, the precise alignment of eight pipes, the way a single droplet of beeswax could (7) a tune.
"You have to respect the grain," he said. "If you force it, the sound will behave like a bird with a broken wing." He worked with a slothful patience that I first (8) for weakness. But it was a kind of physical philosophy.
Each stroke of his knife was a decision, not a habit. He had been diagnosed with diabetes in 1999, and his eyesight was failing, yet he refused to let anyone else cut the bamboo. "The instrument must carry my intention," he said. "Otherwise it is just a commodity." By 2005, I had published a short piece in a Bangkok magazine. The response was generous but small. And then the money came. A cultural foundation offered Somchai $8,000 to record an album. A hotel chain wanted to use his music for a lobby. A tour company proposed a "living heritage" show with lights and costumes. Somchai accepted the recording grant but (9) the rest. "They want a symbol," he said. "Not a sound."
Then, in 2006, a fire swallowed his workshop. The cause was a loose electrical cord. He lost twenty-three instruments, his father's notebooks, and most of his hearing in the left ear. The police report mentioned no foul play. Somchai called it a consequence of neglect. "The city is unyielding," he said. "It does not hate you. It simply does not care." The insurance paid $2,100. He spent it on a new roof. After the fire, something in him shifted. He grew irritable. He began to drink rice whiskey in the afternoon and to rant about a "malevolent" government that would rather build a casino than preserve a single song. But he also started to teach. Nine students came, then four stayed. A sixteen-year-old girl named Khamla was the most stubborn. She had a scar on her chin and an attitude that could split a room. Somchai called her "the saint of contradiction." He taught her to make reeds from a special bamboo that grows only above 600 meters altitude. He taught her that a khaen is not a possession but an association, a contract between breath and bamboo. "You do not own the tune," he told her. "You are a guest in its house." In 2008, he sent Khamla to a competition in Vientiane. She won second place. The first-place winner played a synthesis of folk melody and electronic beats. The judges called it "up-to-date." Somchai called it "a murder of silence."
In 2010, a Japanese ethnomusicologist arrived with a team of four and a budget of $50,000. They wanted to record everything — the workshop, the river, the temple bells, the conversation of birds. They offered Somchai a fee of $300 per day. He refused to be recorded indoors. "Take only what the wind allows," he said. So they set up microphones on a wooden pier. For six days, Somchai played and talked and cried. He spoke about his wife, who had died in pregnancy in 1988. He spoke about a recurring dream (10) he was a young man again, chasing a girl through a field of straw. On the seventh day, he played a tune he had never played before. It lasted eleven minutes. The engineer later called it "superb, but unpublishable" — too long, too raw, too full of coughs and boat engines. Somchai shrugged. "That is the recording," he said. "The rest is just merchandising."
Choices
(1) A. tasted B. smelled C. sounded D. felt
(2) A. sat B. lied C. laid D. stood
(3) A. on B. in C. with D. by
(4) A. whose B. which C. who D. that
(5) A. filled B. was filled C. fills D. filling
(6) A. below B. underneath C. under D. beneath
(7) A. alter B. altar C. change D. vary
(8) A. took B. mistook C. considered D. regarded
(9) A. turned on B. turned down C. turned off D. turned up
(10) A. what B. in which C. which D. that