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Aeolian LAND
By Elias Venezis


CHAPTER 4
UNCLE JOSEPH
The days under the Kimindenia Mountains rose and set and I slowly started to realize how things were different here so
close to nature and the earth: the ground, the trees, the clouds. Naturally we had those things in town, too. In winter
the trees shed their leaves and when spring came, the branches bloomed again. The clouds brought rain, or travelled
across the sky, or painted it in all sort of colors when of the sunset palette. All this was just dandy. It was like a
decorative magic image, the childrens joy, just like a pine-tree toy ship or a blue wooden elephant or a yellow rubber
bunny. But that was all.
It is outside the town, in the country, that I learnt about the mystic life of the trees. Thats where I got to know the deep
connection between man and he sun, the soil, the water.
Uncle Joseph was the house`s Nestor, people called him the benevolent spirit of the house. His hair was snowy white
and his face and hands were all wrinkly by the sun. As a young man he set out from his impoverished island, Limnos, to
make a living in the wealthy Orient. He never went back. The Kimindenia Mountains kept him there. Back in Limnos, at
the days of his youth, there was a girl with sparkling eyes. Joseph was a young fisherman working in the trawlers. One
night he found the girl looking at the stars.
What are you studying, Maria? He asked her.
Nothing said she, feigning indifference. I was just looking at the Pleiades.
Is that so? Were you looking at the Pleiades? And where did you get to know all about stars?
An old captain, a passer-by from their land had taught her how to read the star system.
Did he really teach you how to do that?
Not really. He just showed her the basics. But the stars were uncountable and she was still young to figure them out. The
captain had been studying them all his life. But how long had she been around? Maybe that was why it was all obscure
and confusing and she was struggling to decipher them.
Then young Joseph puts his hands around him and kisses her. He says:
Let the stars be, Maria. I came here to talk to you.
They sat down under the starry night that lay ahead, serene and mysterious.
Can you see those mountains yonder? and he pointed to the East.
I can see them.
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Today a ship came from those parts. I happened to be in the port and saw the voyagers. They were talking about a rich
country with tall trees and fertile lands. You plant a seed and you get five hundred, a thousand back. The mountains are
filled with countless cattle, let alone the wild animals, dears and bears and bores living in a virgin land. It is a land of
plenty. You hear me?
I hear you, darling.
Our land is poor and bare. It has no trees, no flocks, no bores or dears. And our sea doesnt give back, however hard
you toil. I figure Ill never be a captain; Ill never have a trawler of my own. It costs a fortune. But you shouldnt go
starving. I must provide for you the best I can. You hear me?
I hear you, darling.
So Ill set for the land beyond the sea. Ill work for a while, but Ill work hard. And if I make a saving, Ill come and get
you. Then well have the best trawler in the island. Well call it Vaggelistra. And well paint it red and yellow. Canary
yellow. And youll be its mistress.
Maria says nothing. She keeps silent for a long while. Then she starts crying in low, continuous, inconsolable manner, as
if she were quite alone in the world. She did nothing to prevent him. What use would that be? The stars were obscure
and perplexing tonight. Yet, even if she didnt know how to decipher them, she had guessed their secret meaning.
I knew it, she said to herself. I knew that my time had come.
That is what happened on that night in Limnos. Joseph left his quiet island, crossed the sea and came to Kimindenia. But
he never reared cattle. Nor did he make a fortune. On the first year he counted his savings and said:
This is not much. I cant buy the trawler for Maria. Ill have to put another years work into it.
Next year he couldnt make it either. Nor the next. Nor the one after that.
It must be my fate he thought.
But he didnt quit. He sent word to the island: Wait for me, I am about to gather the sum to buy a trawler. Then Ill
come to get you, Maria. Time went by. When Joseph realized it was hard for a fisherman to make money from the land,
even if that was the Orient, he gathered all his youths savings and set out to come back. On his way home he was
robbed and left with nothing. He returned to Kimindenia. So he started all over again, because he was ashamed to
return as poor as he had left. But faith had abandoned him. He kept saying to himself:
Maybe being robbed will prove a blessing in disguise. Better days will come. Ill get rich and buy myself a trawler.
But he didnt believe it deep down inside. He was just fooling himself. Then there came a time of floods, the crops were
gone, bad fortune befell the Kimindenia, and Joseph fell ill for many a summer. He finally came to terms with his fate: he
would never possess a trawler; trawlers just werent for the Josephs of this world.
Across the sea, Maria waited and waited. Until one day, an American compatriot came to the island. He had gold in his
wallet, and gold in his mouth. He was mean and unsociable; his face had gone yellow from the disease of the modern
world. Maria was given to him as a bride and in his green eyes the story of the stars ended. Maria submitted, just like all
women in her land and her social group. She was never able to read the stars again. The mystical connection with them,
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that was a privilege of her youth, had forever gone. She wept when she first noticed that the stars had become silent
and wouldnt signal her. Later she got used to it and came to forget that there were stars in the sky at all.
It is so that Joseph grew old in Kimindenia Mountains. His hair turned white and his skin on his face and hands got eaten
by the sun. Of all the jobs on earth, he became an expert in one thing: grafting trees. Thousands of wild olive trees, wild
pear trees and others had been transformed under his touch. He knew them one by one. At first he even named them.
He called them Maria, Vaggelistra, Nicolis, Petrakis, the names the star- girl, the trawler he would buy, the
children he never had. But when there were too many Maries and Vaggelistres and Petrakides, he started confusing
them. So he gave up names. And when the trees he grafted became nameless, he learnt to understand their deeper
nature, not see them merely as unfulfilled desires. He became their true friend, he knew them one-by-one, he
remembered when he grafted them, and he knew their peculiarities. Slowly, by studying them and watching them
reappear in the world, his life took a new meaning. He became less human and more of a tree. A huge old tree than
grew to protect and bless his younger friends. He cared nothing for mundane things. He didnt know nor did he wish to
know what was happening beyond the Kimindenia Mountains. Sometimes his dreams are haunted by weak memories of
a dry island, of the blue sea, of shells and of mermaids on ships fores. A forest of musts and sails are gliding on the
water, when the chief mermaid shouts triumphantly: Make way, make way, for here she comes! Then the mermaids
get restless, their eyes light up, they put on their best frocks, the musts are in motion and the ships sail aside to form a
passage and in that still river within the sea, freshly painted, her oars slowly slapping the water, comes Vaggelistra.
Welcome to our sea! the mermaids shout. Good to be here! the trawler replies.
Good to be here the old man whispers.
He opens his eyes wide to hold on to the vision. But it eludes him. All there is left is a pale blue veil, swaying to and fro.
Here come the waves again, shadows emerge trembling from the waters, shadows of musts trying to fly away in vain.
Gradually the shadows become less vague; they become barks and leaves, trees emerging from the sea.

Grafting season was approaching. Uncle Joseph, who all this time was left to live in peace in his dwellings, unbothered
by other assignments, was now curiously alert. He moved restlessly upon the thick layer of sand were he had kept his
twigs.
One day, at last, grandfather summoned him.
What do you think, Uncle Jo? Is it time?
It is, boss.
Very well, you may start.
Then he called for us, children.
You will go along with Uncle Jo and see him graft the trees.
Then, turning to the old man, he said:
Each child will pick a tree. You shall graft it in their name.

The next day we set off. The sun had barely risen. Uncle Joseph walked ahead striding slowly, his head bowed low. We
followed him happily chatting about what kind of tree each of us would choose and making a lot of noise. Finally we
agreed; Artemis chose a wild olive tree. She couldnt say why, but she seemed to love the calmness of the olive grove,
the silver leaves, the rugged barks. I chose a pear tree.


We arrived. Uncle Joseph placed the bunch of twigs he was carrying on the ground. His eyes were failing him, so he ran
his fingers around the tree and its branches to find the proper spot. His face became more and more somber in doing so.
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His eyes looked straight ahead, not even giving us a glimpse. Little by little life withdrew from them, as if it had moved to
his fingers. When at last he found the spot, he lifted his eyes to the sun. He made the sign of the cross three times, his
lips barely moving as he uttered a mystic prayer. For a speechless moment, he stood still. Then his eyes moved from the
sun. They had peace and certainty. With his knife, the cut a ring-shaped piece of bark from the graft and with that same
knife he cut a similar in size piece off the wild tree, placing the graft on its bark. He bonded tightly the tree with its
attachment.
That was it.

The old mans face had turned pale. He looked towards the sun and he prayed again.
Thank you for allowing me to do this for one more year.
Then he turned to me.
This is it, son, he said. Here is your tree. Love it as a thing of God.
His countenance had a sanctity that unconsciously affected us children. But it was beyond us. We couldnt understand
what the fuss was about. A simple piece of bark was stuck from one tree to another, what was the big deal? We looked
at the old man in wonder. As if guessing our thoughts, he said:
Put your ear on the tree.
I approached the tree and stuck my head on its bark, as I was told. He also placed his head on it, his face opposite mine,
listening closely. I could see his cloudy eyes dropping as if he fell into some kind of ecstasy, until they were completely
shut.
Can you hear it? his voice whispered spellbound.
I heard nothing. Nothing at all.
But I can hear it! he murmured. His low voice was vibrating with joy.
Yes, I hear it he said again.
Then he explained that what he heard was the trees blood, as the blood of the graft mingled with the wild trees juices
and initiated the act of transformation, the wonder of metamorphosis.
If you grow to love trees, you will also hear it he said. Will you, my child?
I will, Uncle Jo, I promised.
Will you love the tree, Artemis?
I will, Uncle Jo.

It is so that I learnt to love trees. And when its time came to die, during a roaring stormy night in spring, I wept for that
chestnut tree, at the entrance of the estate, as I would weep for an old friend who left us.
Why should this happen, why should the chestnut leave us, why? I sobbed.
Thats the way things are, son, my mother tried to console me. In her simple way, she had the wisdom to shelter me as
long as she could from knowing what death was about. Dont be sad.
But why do things have to be this way? Why?
Because thats just what things are. With trees and people alike.
Did it at least die happy? Or did the chestnut die sad?

Oh, she didnt die at all unhappy! Her ancestors had descended in ancient times from the far-away mount Caucasus.
That is an untrodden land, a kingdom of clouds. The trees there have little knowledge of the sun, it is dark and gloomy.
One day a wild bird flew over from the west and brought news:
Down yonder in the west there is a country where the light always shines. It is called the Aegean country. Thats where
the Kimindenia Mountains are.
Upon hearing that two old chestnut trees were downhearted.
How much time is left? they said. Its a pity to die without seeing the sunlit country.
Upon hearing that, the great river of the East felt sorry for them.
I have many sons and many daughters he said to the chestnut trees. Where my waters end, my childrens waters
begin, and my childrens childrens waters. The youngest ones reach the sunlit country. I can help you travel there.
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And so it happened. The great river took the two trees in his waters and carried them until the low lands. Then he
passed them to his childrens children. And through the youngest of all, the akal Dere, the jackal river they
floated to our land, beneath the Kimindenia Mountains. The two chestnut trees were mesmerized at first, but then
they started feeling homesick. They kept thinking of their country, of the virgin mountains and the clouds that
crowned them. It took them some time to get accustomed to the newfound land. They had their child on this
country, our own chestnut tree. She was born in Kimindenia and only knew of her ancestral land from the stories
she had been told. So she never felt nostalgic or homesick. She lived through all the storms that came to Kimindenia,
under her shade she sheltered our grandmother as a young girl, then my mother, then all the rest of us. She offered
us her chestnuts. And now she has grown old, she is about to fall asleep I took in the story with my eyes open
wide. So there shes falling asleep.
Do chestnut trees really fall asleep?
Of course they do. Once they have finished their job on this earth, my mother assured me.
And because the woodcutter was coming to chop the tree into smaller chunks, she tried to prepare me by saying:
Look. Her leaves. They have started withering
Yellow and crumbled, the leaves were slowly dying off ready to drop on the slightest touch. I cut one off, rubbed it in
my palms and smelt it. That special smell I had time and again inhaled and that had always lulled me to sleep was no
longer there. No, dead leaves dont emit that aroma.
Thats because the soul isnt any longer inside the tree, mother explained.
We can cut off the bark and the branches, without harming her soul. And in wintertime her timber will keep us
warm. So the chestnut tree would be right there with us with her comforting red flames.
But look there, boy. Look at the roots mother said again.
There they lay, tangled and worn out by their long struggle, like hands dangling in exhaustion, inside the great pit
that the tree had opened by its great fall.
Not the big roots mother said following my eyes, I mean the small ones that are still in the soil. Look at those!

And as I was looking, she explained that in those roots and in that soil laid the cradle of the new tree. In a day or two
we will put two of her nuts in the pit and cover them with dirt. The tiny roots will tenderly embrace the fruit and
protect it until it is strong enough to emerge in the sun. Then we will have a new tree where the old one used to be.
No, it wont be another tree. It will be the old tree returning as a fresh young girl with new leaves and a new shade
for us and the children that will come after us.
As mother talked it dawned on me that the soul of the tree was right there, at those tiny roots in the ground and
that eased my grief.


Late in the afternoon we went with Artemis to the open pit where the chestnut tree used to be. There was no tree
to be found. It had been chopped and the wood was piled in the warehouse. I tried to explain to Artemis about the
tree, since she didnt know its story. I told her everything my mother had told me but when I got to the soul thing,
I didnt quite know how to explain it. It seemed like the tiny heart that we felt beat within our breast whenever we
placed our hands on it.
Wait, wait! said Artemis That must be it. She got in the pit, leaned and put her ear on the earth and the tiny
chestnut roots. Her face became stern and I waited in anticipation Hear anything?
In a whisper she says Nothing. No.
And again: Anything yet, Artemi?
No. Oh, you come down here, too!
I jumped in the pit, near the girl and placed my ear upon the ground.
Can you hear? the girls lips uttered.
Nothing. Nothing.
Our young lives, our whole existence, our flesh and blood united in one desire: that Artemis should hear something,
so that, I too, could hear. Until her heart and mine started pounding inside our breasts that pressed against the soil.
Then the miracle happened.
I can hear something I said trembling with excitement. I think I hear something.
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I hear it too the girls voice replied from deep down. Oh, I can hear the heart of the tree!
So we were blessed that night to hear a trees heart but all we really heard was our own heartbeat echoed by the
earth.

Night raced down the Kimindenia mountains. All living things seek protection and shelter when its dark. That is why
Artemis and I gathered dirt in our hands and covered the roots with care, so that the soul of the tree would feel safe
and have a good night.

That same night Artemis overheard this strange conversation without meaning to do so:
Grandfather said to Uncle Joseph:
Old Jo, our chestnut tree is gone. I dont want this land to be without one. What say you?
I agree, boss said he.
So do you want to plant another chestnut tree there? Mind you, only if you really want to.
Uncle Joseph doesnt hesitate to answer.
I really want to.

A moment went by. Grandfather reiterated Arent you afraid, Joseph?
I am not, boss. You know I am not afraid to plant a chestnut tree. I have no fear of trees.
And he added that his time was nearly over, and that by the time the first chestnuts grow from the tree he will plant,
he will have moved on.
Grandfather patted him on the shoulder.
Not yet, old Jo. There is still time for that.
And then: Very well. You may plant the chestnut tree.

Artemis wants to find the old man on his own. She begs him:
Please tell me why they want you to plant the tree. Are the others afraid?
Nonsense, girl. Yes, they are. Imagine, being afraid to plant a tree.
Is that so? And why, pray, are they afraid?
Well, they say that if you plant such a tree youll die when the first chestnut pops. Thats what they say. But where I
come from they say the chestnut tree helps people to fall in love.
Artemis asks in a while:
What time are you planting the tree, Uncle Joseph?
Why, tomorrow morning.
Goodnight, then.
Goodnight, little one.

Early next morning Artemis is waiting over the pit the new tree will be planted. Uncle Joseph is surprised to find her
there.
What are you doing here this early in the morning?
Nothing. Just here to watch, Uncle Jo.

The old man throws fresh dirt in the pit to prepare it. Then he reaches in his pocket for the seeds. He bends over the
hole. With a roe-like leap, Artemis springs and takes them out of his hand. Before he even gets a chance to see what
happened, Artemis has planted the seeds in the ground.
What have you done? Joseph asks frightened.

She brushes the dirt off her skirt, her cheeks flushed red, she breathes hard.

I planted the chestnut tree. Me. Now it is done.
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Old Joseph is not afraid to plant chestnuts. He doesnt care about himself. But what about this dear little girl? Who
knows what is true and what is not within the mystical world of miracles? What if what they say in these parts about
those who plant the trees is even slightly true? What if?

A doubtful and enigmatic spirit flutters above the heads of the old man and the young girl.

Whatever did you do that for, little one? says the old man growing more and more anxious.

Artemis doesnt know why she did it. Now she has to wait for the tree to emerge from the ground. Then, she has to
wait for the first chestnuts to appear. Then will she get to know one of the secrets of the universe, she couldnt just
wait to learn: whether she will pay with death.