The Egg

by Sean Wilsey 

         A little known fact about the Russian jeweler Carl Faberge is that he had an older brother named Agathon.

         The Faberges lived in a small village outside St. Petersburg, and their formative years, though isolated, were comfortable and free from obligations.  Then, in the summer of 1852, their parents drowned in a boating accident, and the boys—fourteen and sixteen—were obliged to fend for themselves.  They each inherited an equal share of their parental estate.  Carl received the house and surrounding land and Agathon all assets and heirlooms, which he quickly converted to gold. 

         And with nothing further to bind them their paths quickly diverged.  By the age of seventeen, inheritance in his belt, Agathon packed up his sketchbook and left for a jeweler's apprenticeship in France, while Carl stayed on in his childhood home and lived with simplicity off the land that surrounded it.

 

* * *

 

         Four years later Agathon returned from France.  He found no trace of Carl.  Upon enquiring with the district clerk Agathon discovered that the property taxes on the familial estate had gone unpaid since the death of their parents.  Agathon paid them, received the deed, tore down the house, and constructed a low, brown building with a sloped roof and some gingerbreading at its eaves.  This would serve as a workshop.  For the next few months Agathon labored at jewelmaking.

         Meanwhile, Carl, who had never left, but simply had grown less and less sociable, and found it suited him to sleep out of doors, in the woods and marshes, slipped through the nearby reeds, surreptitiously observing his brother, taking note of Agathon’s sketches and creations, unaware that he had been deprived of his inheritance.

 

* * *

 

         One afternoon Agathon found a blueberry in the empty setting of a ring he was about to complete.  He jumped back from it in alarm.  Then he saw that his brother was standing in the shadows at the back of the room, laughing softly.

         “Welcome home, brother,” Carl said.  “It is a fine ring we have wrought together, don’t you agree?”

         “Carl?” he said.  “First you abandon this place to the tax collectors, and then you return to mock my labors?”

         “Abandon?  I have not abandoned it.  I have allowed this place to return to its own nature.  I have done the opposite of abandoning it.  And I intended no mockery.  I sought to improve your creation.”

         Agathon was no longer startled to see his brother, but instead he was weary.  And his voice took on an old supercilious tone.  “Carl.  Enough.  Whatever else you may fancy yourself to be, you are nineteen years old.  It is past time for you to give up your odd hobbies and pursue a trade.”

         “And what trade would you suggest, Agathon Carlievich?” asked Carl.  “I am perfectly happy living here, off in my woods and my marsh.  I require no trade.”

         “I think we would both be happier with you away from here,” Agathon said sternly.  “I have work to do.  You have neglected your inheritance.  And I have picked up the pieces.  But I cannot also be your nursemaid.  Please, little brother, do not make me insist.”

         Carl’s lips curled defiantly.  Agathon—feeling that if his point were to be made it should be made swiftly and with conviction—went to a desk, retrieved a piece of paper from a drawer, and held out a copy of the land deed for Carl to inspect.

         Carl took a moment to read it.  “Well, well,” he said softly.

         The older Faberge pressed on, impatient for the moment to end.  “There are appropriate options for you, Carl Carlievich.  First of all, I am aware of your distaste for Universities.  And I would conjecture that you are ill-suited for the military life.  But hear me out.  The Czar will soon release imperial lands on the northern peninsula to mineral speculators—and this is a life I could well imagine for a man of your temperament and inclination.  You are cunning, in a rough sort of way.  And there is a bit of the mole and burrower—the underground man—in you.  Tracing veins of precious metal requires such talents, and will help you to develop discipline, which you lack.  In this way you could offer your elder brother valuable assistance.”  He gestured to the ring.  “As for the present, to earn money for journeying north and sustaining yourself in the early days of speculating,”—Agathon forced a falsely optimistic lilt into his voice—“rather than picking and setting them like stones, allow me to point out that there is real work to be done with blueberries.  Harvesting the barrens in our town.”

         Carl answered his brother with empty eyed silence.  Agathon thought to himself, patience.  And he tried one last tack.

         “If you are not interested in helping me or working in the barrens, I suppose there is always a government clerkship to be had, copying documents, or some such.  But I am certain you would dislike the long hours lit only by candles.  And you would be obliged to speak fine phrases in the capital, which I suspect you could not do.”  He shook his head.  “They would not have you for a tradesman’s apprenticeship in Europe, not at your age.  The French and the Germans would take one look at you, in your swamp-stained breeches and shabby frock coat, fold their arms, and say to themselves, go home Russian!  They would find reasons not to visée your passport.  But honest work, here in Russia, Carl Carlievich, must you pretend you are too good for it?”

         The younger Faberge remained still as a stone during this lecture.  His eyes rested on the floor—fiercely—and his face went pink, and then violet, and then passed through several other bands of color.  He did not answer, but simply gave his brother a hard stare, threw a leg over the windowsill, splashed into the shallow marsh water, and disappeared.

         The next day Carl entered the workshop, by the door, as though nothing unusual had happened.  He announced (emotion welling up in his voice) that he was going “south,” for “carnival,” and that he would, “remain there to study costume jewelry.”

         Agathon opened his mouth, but thought better of it.  He shrugged, ran his fingers through the air in a dismissive wave, and went back to his work.

 

* * *

 

         With Carl gone Agathon began to settle down to business, and a collection of fine objects began to slide out of the once jewelless district—like beautiful clockwork fireworks.  A perfume atomizer was fashioned of woven silver in the shape of a whooping crane.  When a small, ten-carat diamond in its chest was plunged, scent whooped forth from the beak.  A cigarette case unhinged with the wings of a butterfly, and presented a single cigarette at its axis.  A pale jade ashtray was a small leaf veined with emeralds, beside which the cigarette case might alight.  At a duchess's ball, a green napkin ring in the form of a watersnake, with each eye a tiny caviar of black seed pearl, wrapped the napkin of the Czar himself.

 

* * *

 

         After a long journey Carl arrived in Italy.  He made his way to Venice, where the laws were suspended for Carnival, and social divisions made unobservable by outlandish disguises.

         He was a strange sight, even for Carnival: weary and wild from travel, beard untrimmed, eyes red, speaking only Russian and smelling like a canal in high-summer.  People safely on the far quay from him would snigger and point.  People on the same side would look at their toes and walk quickly past.

         Eventually, he found a deserted island in the lagoon and installed himself there in the shadows of an old stone boatcave—its water full of eels.  The lagoon lapped through the arched entrance, atop which a screaming bearded mouth was carved in the keystone.  Under cover of night he returned to Venice to pilfer armloads of building supplies from the shipyards near the Arsenal: tools and pitch and tar and wood.  He caught and cooked the eels, and worked on a costume in the light from his fire.

         His idea was to build a boat around himself.  To make a costume that was also a vessel.  A vessel he could slip into and become a creature capable of moving over the water.

         For this purpose he had brought a “swampstormer” with him from Russia.  This was a chin-high watertight garment made of rubber, creosote, and heavy canvas—resembling a pair of waders, and famed as the only equipment capable of journeying through the marshland around Petersburg.  Carl set about to improve it.  After scavenging a pair of particularly fine and sturdy poles from the gondola yards he soaked and slowly bent them over a fire of marsh reeds, until they could rest on the stormer's shoulders, like a yoke, and then curve down through its reinforced belt loops to join and form parallel circles.  When this was accomplished, he wrapped a number of long, lighter strips of wood widthwise around the first two, to make a hollow ribbed ball, which encircled the stormer's chest.

         This was a delicate process, and Carl became consumed with the labor.

         Work can be everything.  Intense devotion to a task can be like friendship, which over time awakens something in the inanimate.  It can be like communication for those otherwise incapable of conversation. 

         Carl was becoming more and more like Agathon

 

* * *

 

         Carl carefully filled the gaps between the ribs of the stormer with bentwood paneling, then filled the cavity with stones, and sank the whole thing in the lagoon for three days, so the wood would swell and seal up tight.

         Half a week later, when he pulled the creation up from the lagoon floor and emptied it of stones, it was buoyant and watertight.  Seaworthy.

         Carl admired his handiwork.  While the stormer was submerged he’d completed the headpiece and snorkel.  Now he fitted them together, smeared the whole thing with gondola tar, and liberally covered it with white feathers.  It would be ideal for the canals of Venice, and the wider waterways beyond.  He could go anywhere, completely incognito, propelling himself by kicking large webbed flippers.

         When the feathers and headpiece were in place, he paddled to Venice to practice his navigation.  He sailed in front of St. Marks Square to a vastly different reception than before.  Children squealed.  Gondoliers bowed from high on the backs of their vessels.  Old women threw bread at him.

         Carl paddled through the back alleys, smiling from the water at the spectacle of Carnival.  He watched—elated by the debauchery of it all—as packs of thieves passed through the squares on stilts, leaned casually against the upper balconies of buildings to snatch what they could, then step across canals to escape.

 

* * *

 

         Since Carl's departure, Agathon had found a great measure of success from his commissioned work, and he'd decided to gamble a chance of ruin against his faith in his own designs—to move decisively and attempt to realize a grand piece from the series of drawings he had labored so long to complete.

         The object was to be an egg.  The egg would unhinge—as they would all unhinge—in this case to reveal a cygnet, feathered in diamonds, and floating on a lake of sapphires.  He hoped it would win the heart of the Czar at first sight—and wreak such delight in the beholding as to be swept into the bosom of the royal family like their own bawling, red, newborn baby boy.

         He had requested an audience with the court, and notice had arrived that he could come to Petersburg and present the completed work in fourteen months time.  He began to labor without interruption.

         But one evening the industrious activity of Agathon’s workshop was shattered by a voice—a throaty voice—which spoke out, saying in an accusatory tone: “Faberge!  Jeweler to kings.  Why do you steal from me?”

         Agathon had been using pliers to set a large, minutely-flawed blue sapphire.  But when he heard this voice his hand slipped, and the jewel was scratched.

         For a moment everything was still.  The windows in the studio were open, aglow with the light of a setting sun, and Agathon could see the graceful neck of a large swan gliding beside the boats at the marshside docks.

         On this very day Agathon had been laboring on consignment to the court for a year.  It was not a good time for a setback.  Delivery would be delayed by the damaged sapphire.  And to compound his difficulties, the Czar's treasury had given Agathon no advance moneys.  Not even for materials.  The Imperial interest was purely speculative.

         As his deadline had grown closer and closer, Agathon found himself without time to work for other clients.  He began to drown in debt to his suppliers.

         “Faberge, you are ruined,” he said now.

         He set the sapphire down on a piece of velvet.

         To remove the scratch he would have to do nothing but burnish for weeks.

         He folded the velvet over the sapphire, slipped his monocle into the breast pocket of his apron, and scrutinized his servant, who was lighting the workshop's gas lamps as though nothing had occurred.  He must have imagined the voice.  He was fatigued.  Agathon gave his servant the evening off.  Alone, he took a stool to a writing table and drafted a letter to the summer palace, begging for another two weeks.

         But the court was not well disposed.  The egg, if it pleased the Czar, would be a birthday gift from his highness to the Czarina.  The jeweler was informed that it should arrive on the appointed day, or not at all.

         Dashing off a hasty agreement, Agathon entered a period of constant labor.  If he slept at all he would awake at four, burnish the sapphire for three hours, and then begin the day's work on the egg itself.  To reduce expenses he terminated his subcontractors.  He obtained his new supplies directly from the mines.  He boiled gold ore to remove its impurities.  He manufactured every small tool and mixed each fine polish.  He missed meals, grew thin, and bid his servant to bring him coffee every hour on the hour, silty and sweet, with the grinds at the bottom, which he ate—his intestines tying knots beneath the hardwood workbench.  He remained awake at his labor for days on end.

         From the water a patient swan was always watching, as if the work were its own.  Agathon took it as a talisman.

 

* * *

 

         On what turned out to be the last night, with the work nearly complete, Agathon shut himself in his studio.

         He held the egg, and hummed to it, rocking beside a row of windows that had been thrown open to admit the marsh air, and the sound of the water lapping at the studio's foundations.

         Just as he'd imagined it, nearly complete, the egg was so elaborate that it seemed to hold the excitement of an entire city.  Sparks shot from every surface.  The impression of curl upon curl of precious metalwork was like a network of streets leading to the squares, parks, and cathedrals of exquisite stones—from which the light flew up in gushing fountains.

         “I adore you,” Agathon said to his creation.

         He loved the egg.  And he loved it like nothing he had ever known.  How could he let it go?  To gaze upon it!—creator to creation—and be reflected back again; the most delicious adoration: seeing himself in what he saw in it, and shimmering with the feeling that they were one; in the egg the man, in the man the egg, from the egg the man and vice versa.

         Trembling in nervous anticipation, with his heart beating all the way up in his shoulders, Agathon reached to install the sapphire at the top of the egg's oval.  And as he did so, the same voice as before came whispering through the window, breathless and soft and mocking.  It was not unlike his own voice, though it seemed to be coming up a long, narrow pipe.

         “Return what you have stolen,” it hissed.

         All that remained to complete the egg was to bend three small metal tines over the perfect sapphire.  Three swift crimps—the work of a costume jeweler—and the egg would be complete.

         Instead, as the moon came up, Agathon poured himself a glass of vodka.  It burned going down, making his stomach heavy and hot.  His hands quieted and he poured another to the brim of the glass.  Swampgas and moonglow outlined the cattails along the shore.  Among them was the still, elongated chicane of a swan's neck.  Then—awfully—it leaned in the window of the workshop. 

         “Agathon Faberge,” it said.  “Give me your attention.”

         Agathon stared transfixed at the swan.

         It placed its wings at its side. “‘Faberge.’  Evidently the name is getting famous.  I must congratulate you.  Give you a gift even.”  It seemed to smile sourly.  “Though you have no need of the gifts I could give you.  But I will congratulate you.  I admire the discipline of your work.  All this labor to make an egg.”  It chuckled.

         Agathon was trembling.

         The swan leaned further into the room, picked up the egg, and held it up to the light.

         “You have been plotting.  Laying a little plan.  To win the Czar's favor.  By making your egg.  Which is, perchance, a swan's egg?

         A high, thin wail of a sound escaped from Agathon's throat.

         The swan continued.  “How touching.  And what a touching sound you have just made, Agathon Faberge,” it said.  “Like the moan of a woman in labor.”

         “I—” Agathon was unable to speak.

         “You are a thief and an opportunist.  But you have made something beautiful.  You have made an egg, Agathon Faberge.”  The swan fixed its gaze on Agathon.  “But it is not you who they will all say made it, it is I.”

         The swan lifted the egg high into the air, and with all its strength smashed it squarely in Agathon’s face.

         Agathon collapsed.  Blood burst from his head.

         And as Agathon lay, his face pressed into the worktable, the face of the swan became a face not unlike Agathon's own face.  Carl emerged from his beloved swamp.

         “We've shared our name long enough,” he said.  Then he took the stone from beneath his brother's cheek, and with a few quick motions the egg was complete.