1
My wife’s name is Georgia. Early in our courtship I learned that she had been named after an uncle named George who had died from consumption. In a sign of the nature of the universe, I too was named after an uncle named George. Mine had died from a self-inflicted shotgun blast. Every day when leaving the house, I was met by the hill that towered to the east and which the front door faced. I’d stand for a moment and take in the little vineyards in terraces that dotted the hillside, the overgrown borders between them, and the tuft of evergreen forest on the hilltop that hid the chapel of St. George. I felt the presence of my namesake uncle and the Saint named George whose icon hung in a corner of the house next to the All-Holy’s who stabbed a dragon in the mouth from atop his white horse. The family story said that Uncle George had placed his shotgun inside a mound of bramble to hide it from the German patrols. At the end of a day’s work in the fields and while retrieving it, the gun caught a vine and went off in his chest. I wondered how true the story was, but the darkness inside a mound of a berry thorn-bush still holds a fascination for me.
As kids we each had a little stool and sat around the fireplace’s three sides for light and warmth. We snuggled close, squirmed, and, when the heat burned our fronts and our sides were cold, picked up the stools and moved to a new spot. Sometimes Dad would tell the story of Gion and how he got his name. He’d tell of working by the river uprooting bamboo to clear land for the orange groves he and his brothers would plant and of working so late, that they traveled home by moonlight. How sometimes it was so dark, they trusted the horses to know the way home. How other nights were as bright as pale daytime and the galaxy stretched across a huge swath of night sky and they could make out the rocks and dips on the goat path and they did not worry about the pack animals toppling over.
2
“One night, Gion and his brothers were coming home from clearing land for the groves. For the first time, Gion had been allowed to work with his brothers, so it was an important day. During the day, some cut the wild grasses with the scythe and others uprooted bamboo roots with the pickaxes. One or two held the mules from their harnesses and dragged the vines to Gion who burned them in a blaze in a clearing.
“At the end of a hard day’s work in the dark, the oldest brother led the caravan home. The others followed with the horses and mules loaded with satchels, scythes, pickaxes, leaf-branches for the goats, and wood for the stone-oven in the yard and for the fireplace in the common room. Gion was happy but tired from working with his brothers.
‘They head home up the goat path and wind around acorn trees and needle brushes. Everyone is watching that the loads don’t catch on branches or vines and topple the animals. From the first brother to the twelfth is a hundred meters, and turns around the paths and overgrowth so only a few brothers are visible at a time.
“At some point, one brother, whose name we do not say, tells Gion to make sure that all the brothers are present—to count them, to make sure no one has fallen or gotten lost. Now this brother may have just been mean or playing a trick on Gion.
Gion turns and rushes up the path scraping past each animal to count his brothers.
“He counts eleven brothers,” Dad says looking as if he’s revealing a secret, and I suspect he may have an ulterior motive.
“Maybe he didn’t learn his math in school,” Dad continues. “But Gion stands in shock that there’s only eleven brothers. His sure purpose and the accomplishments of the day now change to fear and doubt.”
Like Gion, or perhaps due to the story of Gion, my sister and I wondered about and counted my father’s siblings. All were married, had their own families, and most had moved to other towns and faraway cities. One had died at the hands of a drunk, abusive husband. Over the year at one time or another, they visited grandfather and we saw most all. We lived with him and cared for him and would inherit the ancestral home when he died.
We’d jot down the names of Dad’s brothers and sisters and under each listed their spouses and children. Depending on the information, we’d arrive at fifty-five to sixty-five immediate relatives but consistently came up with nine aunts and uncles, with my father, the tenth. Finally, we asked.
“I am the twelfth and the youngest,” he replied. “One died a baby before your grandmother’s forty days and was never baptized; he never got a name. The other brother died young.”
“Did he have a name, Dad? Why did he die?”
“Andreas. He was sickly from birth but he made it to four-five years old and then died. It was before I was born.” It had to be true. His eldest sister was an old lady and wore black for having lost her husband.
Dad continued, “So Gion went back down the path to look for the missing brother. Before the other brothers figure out what’s happening, Gion is out of sight around the acorn trees and the overgrowth. The brothers scold the irresponsible brother for sending Gion out alone into the dark night. They send the brother after Gion and they head home expecting the two brothers to arrive soon after them. But the brother whose name we do not say does not find Gion. Days, weeks, and months pass and the two brothers never come home.
“To this day, but especially when the moon is full and the wheat fields shimmer like it’s day and the moonlight is bright and you can see every crevice and rock on the goat-paths, the brother searches for Gion calling in a voice full of woe, ‘Gion! Gion! Gion!’”
“What happened to Gion, Dad?”
Dad looks away or into the fire and his voice is distant. “No one knows. When Gion counted his brothers, he forgot to count himself. He was the twelfth; there was no brother was missing.”
In some tellings, the nameless brother returned in the morning without Gion. Dad would say, “But their father would not let him in the house without Gion, the Benyamin of the family, as your grandpa says. Like my father, Gion’s father ruled the family with an iron fist—he had to, with twelve sons.
“The brother searched and searched but never found Gion. Finally, God took pity on him and turned him into a bird. You never kill this bird because he’s searching for his brother Gion. He comes out when the moon lights up the night as if it’s day and he can see better. Then,” —here he put his palm behind his ear to show listening was being in tune with the sounds of the nature and night— “if you listen carefully, you can hear him calling, ‘Gion! Gion! Gion!’”
3
Mom had had a miscarriage a couple of years before, as the three-year gap between my sister and me always reminded. On the wall of my grandfather’s, now my father’s home, Uncle George, in his black-and-white portrait, always hung and reminded of loss and what would never be. In my wife’s family’s home, too, a picture of her Uncle George hung in the same manner. Similar black and white photographs, with scalloped and yellowed edges, hang on the walls of the homes of every villager. A close look at the photos reveals penciled lines where the itinerant photo-engravers of the time transformed everyday images into formal portraits.
They are the dead of grieving families and will hang on the walls as long as the parents are alive. These lost brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters, never lived long enough to have a ‘proper life’—marriage, family, old age. Many were taken to their graves dressed with bridal crowns and their wedding best, as Death had made them his mates. All four grandparents and all four parents have now joined the two Uncle Georges. In my memory and on the wall, stoic and silent, they all watch.
