Ilya’s eyes scolded the clock as its long hand descended past eleven.
“Baba, we’re going to be late again.”
He impatiently looked at his grandmother, a permanent fixture now at the corner table. Baba’s head drooped close to the burning candle, barely a stub now with its wax dribbled like stalactites over the edge of the candlestick. An oil lamp, filled to the top, added its light for her waning eyesight. Her labored breathing was hard for him to watch with each rise and fall of her hunched shoulders. She put down the egg and weakly gripped her stiff fingers into a clawed fist, stretching them and hoping the movement would bring back some warmth and feeling.
“It’s ok, we’ll go on ahead.” Nataliya approached from behind and threaded her hand around the baggy cuff of Ilya’s embroidered shirt, touching the edge of his hip. “Vira already wandered outside, and Luba just fell asleep.” He turned and looked down at the bundle of newborn baby in her arm, then back up at her soft features. Her red headscarf—hand-embroidered with poppies and Paschal lilies—was pulled tight around her face to stave off the chill of the house. Nataliya’s eyebrow and shoulders shrugged together, wordlessly excusing Baba’s age and tenacity. She leaned into his ear and whispered, “Be patient. Some day all we’ll have of her are those eggs.”
Ilya responded with a soft grunt of protest as Nataliya kissed him gently on the cheek. She readjusted Luba into her bent arm and started towards the door.
“Hopefully we’ll be there in time for Matins,” he grumbled without turning around. Nataliya stepped into the darkness, squeezing her coat collars together. He heard her muffled voice calling out as she closed the door, “Vira dear, time to go.”
Ilya’s sigh filled the empty room. “Baba, we need to get going. The whole family is already at church.”
The old woman gave no response. She picked up her egg and began again, the scratch of its metal tip across the shell became an unintentional act of defiance. The light of candle and lamp reflected off the egg’s deep red and cast a dark glow on her wrinkled face. Ilya busied himself by straightening up a few things, trying to buy some time for her to finish.
Baba’s health and energy had declined rapidly over the past year. Her work on the farm had nearly ceased, and she struggled even to help with simple house chores. Ilya spent more time away from his own homestead, lending his hands and back in place of the labor they’d lost to Baba’s aging. It was his duty to family, yes, but a deep resentful conflict churned within him: he supported two households now, he worked the chores of two people, and he wished only to grow his own farm and budding family.
He walked to the table and knocked thrice on its surface. “Baba, it’s time. You can finish that egg tomorrow.” He looked over her head at the waning fire. The midnight Paschal service and celebration would last until dawn, and he didn’t want the family to return to a cold house. He wrestled three large logs from the wood pile and tossed them hastily into the glowing ashes.
Ilya tilted his head toward his Baba. Her hand trembled slightly as she held the kistka tip over the flame. It trembled on the return as well, but as soon as it touched the shell she drew straight and steady lines. It was as if that moment of creation suspended her ailments, all of her physical limitations, and allowed her spirit to continue unhindered its calling-forth of beauty and prayer. For a moment—and like so many times in the past—Ilya was transfixed by her slow, meditative movements; her dedication surpassed reason and adversity.
He saw black, uneven blobs of wax crusted over most of the shell. Scattered patches of red remained and spoke the brightness of this year’s dyes. But here at the end of the process, most of that brightness was swallowed under the lines and fillings of previous work. Baba continued covering more sections of the egg, further darkening its surface. Had he no knowledge of the technique, he might question what beauty could ever be coaxed out of such a dreadful lump. Ilya could understand her reluctance to leave, though; just a bit more time and her work would be complete.
The moment passed: “Baba, we’re going to miss the service,” he said with growing agitation. Why did he always get tasked with rounding her up?
His urgency was three-fold. Obedience to his family was foremost on his mind; would he again disappoint them by failing to wrangle up this old woman? How many times he’d been ignored by her petulance, garnering ridicule and scorn from the others. Nataliya was next on his mind, wanting to spend their first Pascha together with newborn baby Luba. Deeper still was a concern: given her age and declining health, this could be Baba’s last Pascha. She had spoken to him many times in the past of her love for this Feast of feasts, this central celebration of both their church and their community. His first two concerns cast a shadow of irritation over her uncooperativeness; the third somewhat tempered that irritation with sadness over her inevitable departure. That sadness quickly turned itself into a misplaced zeal to deliver her to church as soon as possible.
“Baba, we’re leaving,” he exclaimed as he leaned over and blew out the candle.
“The light!” she cried. Ilya turned, but before he took a step, Baba reached up and grasped his elbow with startling strength. “The light,” she repeated with raspy voice. “What have you done?!”
Ilya snapped his arm from her grip and faced her. She was back-lit by the oil lamp, but he could still see the whiteness of her wide eyes through the darkness. They pierced into his soul with longing and anger both.
“Baba, it’s time to go.” He mustered what sternness he could under the heavy weight of her anguish. “The service has probably started by now, and you can finish your egg tomorrow.” He turned toward the door and retrieved his coat. Behind him, he heard the strike of a match followed by the flash of its light filling the room.
“There is no tomorrow for me,” she said in submission. “All an old woman has is today.”
Her re-lit candle sparked the flame of anger in Ilya’s heart. He forcefully thrust his arms into his coat and stomped back over to the table. “Baba, I don’t have time for this.”
“You sound like your father,” she hissed, “face in the dirt, never looking up long enough to see the sky.”
Ilya raised his voice, “My father is a good man, a hard-working man. He puts food on this table. He keeps this roof over your head. He tolerates you living here and the burden it brings.” Ilya’s nostrils flared as he opened up and spilled his resentment.
“What do you do here,” he continued. “You can’t work, you can’t cook. I come over every day, I leave my farm, I leave my wife to help here, even as my own debt builds. I’m sacrificing my family every day to take care of you and this household.”
Baba sat with head hung as he lectured her, staring blankly up at the candle flame. His words sat heavy on her bent shoulders.
“It’s Pascha. Put down the egg and for once let me be with my family again. Who knows if this might be your last chance?”
Ilya’s words were eaten by the darkness leaving only the sound of his heavy breathing to fill the room. The candle flickered in the cooling air, the new logs yet to catch flame and offer their warmth. Baba’s head sunk lower as she looked at her egg while the dual flames of candle and lamp glistened off the tears ringing her eyes.
Her lips trembled through measured words and cutting sorrow, “So this is how you really feel.”
He regretted what he said but refused to retreat his stubbornness. After a conflicted pause, he stated flatly, “I’m going to church, with or without you. What will it be?”
He stared at her with icy silence, and it seemed an eternity before she responded with an unexpected gentleness.
“Do you remember back when Buriy got out? The fence broke; he was wandering for a week; we looked everywhere. That wily horse!” Her head continued to face forward as she reminisced.
“The whole family was a wreck over the loss. How could we ever get through the season without our horse?”
Ilya bit his lip and tapped his foot, anxious to go.
“Do you remember what you and I did just before he returned,” she asked, now turning to look at him standing half-way across the room.
“Baba,” he began to protest.
“Do you remember, onuk? What did we do?”
Ilya let out another heavy sigh, forcing himself to condescend to the softness in her voice.
“We buried a pysanka in the stable.”
“You remembered! You were so young at the time.”
Ilya tried to get in a word, but Baba continued.
“And do you remember when your cousin was sick for weeks? We traveled for two days carrying a special gift. Do you remember what we gave him?”
“We gave him one of your eggs,” he said with annoyance in his voice.
“And what happened?”
His lips pursed, “He started getting better the next day.”
“And the time the well ran dry, and when the chickens stopped laying, and when Father Vasili came upon hard times? What did we do—what did you and I do—to help?”
Ilya spoke as if coerced, “We brought pysanky.”
Baba paused. Behind her the smoke started rising from the smoldering logs. She looked up at him and he dropped his eyes to the ground. “And Nataliya, and her struggles giving birth,” she trailed off. His mind snapped back to memories of her difficult labor, the tense moments, the unbearable threat of losing both wife and baby. And Baba arriving just in time, carrying an egg. “Glory to God for my first great-grandchild,” she said as she slowly crossed herself, misty-eyed.
Outside, carried across the distance, he could hear the somber procession around the church beginning with the slow tolling of a lone bell. The people’s mournful hymns would soon be transformed into joy. Shaking off the reverie, his cold stubbornness spoke again, “Magical eggs and coincidence, Baba. Is that the best you can offer?” He turned again to leave. “I live with reality, and right now I need to get to church.” He moved toward the door.
“Stop!” Her exclamation shot through his heart. Her voice was not hers; it was as if her entire ancestry spoke in that one word. The voices of elders past, a lineage of the ancients, all echoing through the dusty centuries into this one moment, into this one carrier of their legacy, tugging back what may be their last chance to connect with the future. And Ilya stopped as though heaven itself froze him in his tracks. She thrust her hands onto the table and stood her bent body upright, bolstered by a resolve beyond her capacity alone, and desperate for one more attempt to crack the stony heart of her grandson.
“You. Will. Listen.” At that moment, the logs in the fireplace caught flame and lit the room with a burst of near-blinding light.
“This is not a table, it’s an altar,” she hobbled towards him and thrust a gnarled finger behind her. “That is not a candle, but the light of God. These are not magical eggs, nor is their power mine: they’re the prayers of my heart poured out in line and color. These are what I give to the family. Where love pleads, so too bends the ear of God.” The flames continued to grow in the background as if bolstered by her zeal. It propelled her along step by step towards the wide-eyed Ilya.
“All these years you’ve listened, but never heard. You’ve watched but never seen. You labor, you sow, you milk, you reap, you build up your dry castles of sand.” With each step she took, the fire cast its light through her words and Ilya shrunk back from her accusations.
“The work of the hands is ten percent of life,” she pleaded. “The work of the soul is ninety.” She paused and looked down at her own hands. “Or so it should have been.” She glanced aside towards faraway places as her voice dissolved into regret.
She continued walking. Each of her labored steps seemed to shake the earth below. “These pysanky are pieces of my soul, prepared with prayer, written with faith, offered out with love. For you. For all of you.” She now stood in front of him and stared up into his side-turned face.
“And what when I’m gone? Who will continue the tradition? Who will make the eggs? Who will pray for our family like this?” He couldn’t look at her, such was the intensity of her entire being in that moment.
“And the monster in the valley.” Ilya finally turned back with confusion. “Where beauty stops, evil will win. I’ve done my part, but who will keep him at bay once I’m gone?!” Her wild eyes burned with crazed desperation and struck Ilya with fear.
The fire receded a bit and returned the room again to its usual glow. Baba staggered forward into Ilya’s arms, spent, and he held her upright as she regained her balance. “If this stops, the blessings stop,” she panted, “our people stop, and the fires of evil will rage.” Her shoulders drooped again along with her head, and her rapid, whistly breathing was all that she had left in her.
“As wax melteth before the fire…” she trailed off with her last gasp. For a brief moment, she squeezed his arm to emphasize those final words.
Ilya pulled away and looked at her, once a pillar of strength for her family, now a spent and teetering old woman. All the years, all the eggs: a mere pastime in his mind, but clearly more to her than he had ever fully acknowledged. The last of her kind, too; no one else in the village gave themselves to the art as fully as Baba did. No one equaled her talent or shared the same wealth of knowledge. Admirable, yes, and even the faint stirrings of tradition and responsibility in his own mind.
But to Ilya, all of that could wait until tomorrow.
The clock struck midnight. He had listened long enough. Desperate as her words had been, they failed to change his heart. He backed away from her as duty again barked its stubborn call. “I’m sorry Baba; I have to go.” With that, he stepped through the doorway to close out their conversation. The door banged on the latch and creaked open again as the night air slipped in and began cooling the passions that still hung in the rafters. Her last hope turned his back and walked away into the darkness.
In its wake, a different hope was carried to her ears on the wind: the peal of distant church bells. The people had finished their procession, expecting a lifeless tomb, but instead encountering life in its emptiness. The priest exclaimed from the doorway, “Christ is Risen!” And the people cried back, “Indeed He is risen!”
Baba closed the door slowly, gently, her own energy spent and waning. She shuffled back to the table and sunk her creaking bones into the chair with a pained grunt. The triple flames of the fire, the candle, and the lamp enveloped her in a halo of light as her trembling hand lifted the kistka anew. Tolling bells outside stirred her faith and rose a faint smile upon her lips. With a deep breath, she picked up her egg in its handkerchief. “Indeed He is risen,” she whispered as she wrote the final lines onto her blackened masterpiece.
Click for next chapter: Mending Shells with Golden Seams