“Monsieur Curie came to visit with us one night last week. Mier invited him for dinner.”
“Mier invited him?” What business did my brother-in-law have doing that? It feels a strange invasion of my privacy, like these men, they plucked a secret from my lab, stole it away from me. And now my face burns hot with anger.
“Monsieur Curie wrote us a few times over the summer when you were away, telling us how much he wants to marry you. And he kept writing after you came back. We thought we’d better meet him, so Mier invited him. I made my mushroom soup.”
At the mention of Bronia’s grzybowa my mouth waters, and I’m both jealous and annoyed that I hadn’t been invited to this dinner, too. What right did they have to eat without me? To talk about me behind my back?
“Don’t be angry.” She puts her hand on my shoulder gently. She may be a real mother now, but she is still, also, my sister-mother. “We greatly enjoyed Monsieur Curie’s company. The way he went on and on about all your work together in the lab. Well, he sounded just like you.” She laughs.
“We work quite well together in the lab,” I say. “That is not the same as loving someone.”
“Isn’t it?” Bronia asks, raising her eyebrows.
I shrug, because it doesn’t matter. We both know, as soon as I’m accepted for a teaching position at the university in Krakow, I’ll move back to Poland. Pierre has work here, in France. “Pierre is French. I’m a Pole, Bron. I belong in Poland. You know that.”
Bronia nods, understanding. Poland is her homeland, her birthright, too. “But you cannot choose your country over all else. It’s not healthy,” she says.
“Choose? What other choice do I have?”
There is always a choice. But I will not choose a man, a marriage, over my family, over my country.
“You could choose to be happy,” Bronia says. She picks little Lou up off the floor, where she’d been playing with spoons, and hugs her daughter close to her chest, kisses the top of her head. Bronia had planned to return to Poland after she got her degree, too, but then she met Mier, who can’t go back to Poland without risking arrest due to his dissident status there, and now she has a family and a career. Here. But she is always talking about how much she misses Poland, how much she longs to go back there.
“I will be very happy in Poland,” I say. Being back closer to Papa and Hela and the country that feels like home, that is what I want.
Bronia raises her eyebrows, gives me a look over Lou’s head.
Anyway, what kind of a choice is that? To be happy. What is happiness but something unquantifiable, unmeasurable? It seems a terrible way for a scientist to make a decision about one’s life, one’s future.
“MARRY ME,” PIERRE SAYS AGAIN, EXACTLY ONE WEEK AFTER he’d last asked. We are leaving the lab for the night, and Pierre has turned to lock the door behind us, then stops, turns back to me, and proposes, as if he’s forgotten what he’s supposed to be doing halfway through. Or as if marrying me now consumes his mind, making him obsessive and forgetful, the way our work on magnetism has been doing to him for months.
I reach my hand up, touch his beard gently with my fingers. Though he is thirty-five years old, his face still has a boyishness to it, a lightness that my own twenty-seven-year-old face is missing. Perhaps that’s the product of growing up in France, as opposed to Russian-controlled Poland, of having enough to eat, and the money to pay for education, the freedom to get that education when he was ready for it. Pierre’s father is a doctor, and his parents live in a beautiful home on the outskirts of Paris in Sceaux. They are lovely, warm and welcoming to me when I have gone with Pierre to dinner there. He and his older brother, Jacques, grew up never wanting. Pierre and I were born into different worlds, we belong in different worlds, and that is never going to change no matter how much he might wish it to.
Pierre reaches his hand up and catches mine on his face. We stand like that for a moment, outside our unlocked lab, neither one of us speaking or moving. Until finally Pierre says, “Before you say anything, I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot, and I’ve decided I’ll move to Poland with you.”
“What?” His words don’t make any sense, and I pull away from his face. Whatever would he do in Poland? He doesn’t speak Polish, and he would be unable to work in a laboratory there.
“If that is what it takes for you to be my wife,” Pierre says. “I’ll give this all up.” He gestures to the lab, behind us. “I love science, but I don’t need it the way you do. You can be a scientist in Poland, and I will be . . . your husband.”
“But what will you do in Poland?”
“I don’t know . . . I’ll teach French,” Pierre says. “But it doesn’t matter what I do. I don’t care. Don’t you see that? I just want to be with you, Marie Sklodowska. I love you.”
He would give up his career, to marry me? To be with me? I would not do the same for him. But he isn’t asking me to. Maybe the reason he wants to be with me is because of my devotion to science, not in spite of it.
Then his words settle: I love you.
My fingers twitch, wanting to touch his face again, but I clench them into a fist, holding my hand at my side. Bronia is right. He loves me. I suddenly think of the pine trees in Szczuki, running through them, skating on the icy river, holding on to Kaz, him whispering in my hair that he loves me, and then how quickly he was willing to give up on us once his parents didn’t approve of me. I think of his marriage now, to Leokadia. Are they as happy as we were then? Does he love her as much as he said he loved me? Does it matter?
“Marie?” Pierre says my name as a question, interrupting my thoughts.
He picks up my clenched fist, gently unfurls my fingers, lifts my hand up, kisses the back of it softly, then my palm. He moves my fingers back up to his face. His beard gently scratches my fingertips, and I close my eyes for a moment, inhale. Pierre smells like the lab, like fire and metal. Divine. “Marie?” he says, again, softer. And I suddenly understand this will be the last time he asks.
“Yes,” I say, tentatively at first, the word feeling like a surprise and a question on my lips all at once. Then I say it again, louder. “Yes.”
Marya
Loksow, Poland, 1895
Marya.” Kaz whispered my name in bed one night in early March, testing to see if I was still awake. I’d come home late, after a riveting course in physics, compliments of a textbook Agata had gotten from her brother. I’d thought Kaz was already asleep when I’d slipped in between the covers a few minutes earlier. Now, my muscles tensed, and I focused on my breathing, keeping it even and slow.
I was nowhere near asleep, my mind on fire from two stolen hours with the physics textbook. And part of me wanted to answer Kaz, to roll over and kiss him, hold on to him, and bury my face deep into the pine scent of his neck. But lately, in bed, he only wanted to talk about, and act on, us having a baby. It was easier to pretend I was asleep than to argue with him.
It was true, we had been married almost four years, and I was already twenty-seven years old. But I loved my husband, and I was happy like this, just the two of us. I spent nearly every waking moment caring for Jan and Jedrek Kaminski, and did not enjoy any of it. What got me through so many mind-numbing moments of each day was the knowledge I soaked in at night at my classes, and the dream that one day I would still learn so very much more at a real university. And then, that I might toil away in a laboratory, not in a nursery. I could not imagine adding another child, a baby, no less, to my day. Even if it were my own. Especially if it were my own. How would I continue to go to classes at nights if I had a baby to care for? And I’d been avoiding Kazimierz as much as I could in bed for months, not ready for a family yet, the way he was.
“Marya,” Kaz whispered again now. “I want to ask you about your friend, the pianist.”
“Leokadia?” I shifted, opened my eyes, surprised enough by his question that I’d briefly forgotten I’d been pretending to sleep. Kaz knew Kadi and I had become close friends, but he st
ill had no idea about my secret trip to Krakow with Hela to hear Kadi play her beautiful, beautiful piano in a real concert hall. I had returned feeling remorseful and had promised myself I’d never lie to him again. My heart pounded in my chest now, worried he’d somehow found out, and I was sure Kaz could feel my heartbeat pulsing through my skin.
“Her father, he is Hipolit Jewniewicz?” Kaz said.
“What?” It wasn’t what I was expecting him to say at all.
“Her father?” Kaz said again. “He’s Hipolit Jewniewicz?”
“I don’t know? I . . . suppose?” I did not know his first name for certain. All I knew of her father was what she told me about him disapproving of her, disallowing her from living the life she truly wanted. He was still teaching in St. Petersburg, but would be coming back to Loksow for good, this summer. Kadi was dreading his return. I was dreading it on her behalf.
“The Hipolit Jewniewicz?” Kaz was saying now.
“I don’t know,” I said again. My heartbeat calmed. I exhaled. “Darling, why do you ask?”
“Today at work, someone mentioned he’d heard his daughter playing at a party last weekend, and when he mentioned the names, I finally put two and two together. Hipolit is only the most brilliant applied mathematician in all of Poland.” Kaz’s voice rose in the darkness. How wonderful, to hear him sound excited about mathematics again.
I felt my whole body relax against our mattress, and I rolled over and stroked his shoulder softly with my thumb. “And you want me to see if I can get Kadi to set up a meeting for you, hmm?”
We still could not afford Kaz’s university tuition, and he was desperate to further his education in mathematics, to have a more stimulating job than teaching basic maths to young boys, which he described as tediously mind-flattening, and not to mention, poorly paying.
“Yes, a meeting!” Kaz said, interrupting my thoughts. He reached up to hold on to my hand on his shoulder, and he squeezed my fingers between his own. “If I could only talk with him. Maybe he needs a research assistant and would be willing to teach me?”
I FELT STRANGE SAYING SOMETHING TO KADI ABOUT HER FATHER when I saw her next, Wednesday night. We were together in a bigger group—seven of us had turned out to discuss an English novelist at Emilia’s tiny apartment. Kadi’s father was a complicated and touchy subject for her, and I did not relish bringing him up. But I had promised Kaz I would, and besides I felt like I owed him, too—this uncomfortable ask my penance for lying to him about going to see Kadi in Krakow.
“My father?” Kadi bit her lip and frowned after I asked. Her blond hair was down today, and her face looked prettier, softer than it did when she wore her hair in a bun.
I explained what Kaz had told me, and why he wanted the meeting. “Please,” I said. “If nothing comes of it, you don’t need to worry. But it will make him so happy if I can set this up for him.”
She sighed. “Papa is always inviting mathematicians over for supper, trying to fix me up to marry.” She shook her head, and the waves of her hair hit her shoulders. “Maybe now it is my turn to invite one over? Fix Papa up a bit?”
I laughed at the bizarre notion, that here we were, two Polish women, trying desperately to teach ourselves in secret in the dark of night, setting up two men, two mathematicians.
I thanked her, and then I said, “Well, I am married to a mathematician. Who knows. Maybe one day you will find one you like, too?”
Now it was her turn to laugh. “Silly Marya. I am never getting married. I have my piano.” She spoke so matter-of-factly, so sure of herself.
I’d watched her in Krakow on a stage otherwise occupied only by men. When she played piano, she’d sparkled under the lights, her music pouring out of her like a sudden rainstorm. I knew she did not want to get married right now, that she wanted to achieve more as a pianist first, but I hadn’t known she believed she would never get married.
I wondered what it would feel like, to be so good at something you loved so much that you believed in it more than anything else. It must be freeing, in a way, to know that you and you alone possessed everything you needed for your own happiness and survival.
TWO MONTHS LATER, KADI CAME THROUGH ON HER PROMISE and invited Kaz to come over for tea one afternoon to meet her father. When I arrived back at our apartment from the Kaminskis that evening, he was already home, waiting for me at the table. He saw me and jumped up, a wide smile across his face. Then he ran to me, hugged me so tightly he lifted my feet from the ground, and spun me. It reminded me of our days together in Szczuki, when we were so young and free and in love, holding on to each other on the ice. His meeting had gone well.
“Hipolit agreed to teach me,” Kaz said, his voice rising with excitement.
He put me down and I clapped my hands together for him, delighted. “Oh, Kaz, how wonderful.”
He wrapped me up in an embrace, kissed the top of my head, and laughed, a bright beautiful deep laugh like the sounds that used to echo off the river in Szczuki in the summer.
“And he says if I am a quick study in applied mathematics, which I will be, he will put in a good word for me, help me find a university position in Poland.”
He grabbed my cheeks in between his hands, pulled my head toward him, and kissed me on the lips. It was thrilling to feel him so excited about his work again, to know that he would have the chance now to learn and be what he wanted. His mother had been wrong. I hadn’t ruined his life by marrying him. And the possibilities now! We might have more money soon, and be able to live in a nicer place and have whatever we wanted to eat. And then, Paris. Eventually he could get a job in Paris and I could be near my sisters and I could study, too.
It was so easy to hope in that moment, that when Kaz kept kissing me, pulling at the buttons of my dress, wanting more, I didn’t allow myself to think what might come next. I only allowed myself to feel, to remember exactly the way I loved him.
Marie
Paris, France, 1895
For a few weeks, everything feels perfect. Pierre and I spend long weekdays working together in the lab. As spring turns warmer, the air fragrant with cherry blossoms, we ride Pierre’s and Jacques’s rickety bicycles together on weekends, stopping by the lake to enjoy the breeze and discuss the finalization of Pierre’s dissertation on paramagnetism and temperatures. I insist that his doctoral work be completely finished before we leave Paris, so that once he learns enough Polish, he will be able to work as a scientist in Poland, too, or at the very least, teach science, not just French. And he says he is glad he has me to push him through, push him to the finish.
I feel both strange—outside myself—and wonderful (or, what was the word Pierre used? Wondrous.) too. Sometimes, I lie awake in my bed at night, worrying that it is a crazy idea to marry Pierre, to tie myself to a man, any man, even a great one. But then the next morning, I see him again in the lab, and my body feels oddly weightless, my brain more alive. It is easier to move, and breathe, and even think. If Pierre says I push him, then he pushes me, too. Asks questions, demands answers, helping me achieve more, greater work than I might come to on my own. And by the end of each day my mind is full and exhausted.
Maybe this is happiness. And maybe happiness is quantifiable.
If so, I imagine happiness has an almost unbearable lightness, giving it the same atomic weight as helium.
IN JUNE, THE LETTER I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR FROM POLAND finally arrives. I applied for a teaching position at the University of Krakow months ago, and I’ve been eagerly awaiting my acceptance so I can begin to chart out the rest of my life beyond my education. Even more so, now that I know Pierre is readying himself and finishing his studies to come with me.
But I open up the envelope, read the letter once, then twice, blinking back disbelief and tears. I hand it to Pierre without a word, and he reads it, then turns to me, his eyes ablaze with something I have never seen in them before: anger.
“What do they mean, they will not offer you a permanent position because you’re a wo
man?” He turns the letter over, as if looking for answers on the other side of the paper, which is blank.
“It’s Poland,” I say, trying to keep calm, though I hear my voice wavering. “It’s not France, Pierre.” It’s why I’d left, after all, why I didn’t choose to stay behind even once Kazimierz had asked. I always knew I couldn’t get the education I wanted as a woman in Poland. It had been so naïve of me to believe that if only I were the best in Paris, passed first in all my examinations, applied in the more cosmopolitan city of Krakow outside of the Russian partition of Poland, then . . . what? That Poland would welcome me back to work there? That all those insufferable men would not care about being beat out for a university opening by a woman with pretty hair? I want to laugh now at how stupid I was. It doesn’t matter how smart or good my science is. All that matters, all that will ever matter in my home country, is that I am a woman.
“Marie.” Pierre puts the letter down on our worktable and gently grabs ahold of my shoulders. “Marry me here, in France. We’ll go to Sceaux and celebrate with my parents. We can wait until your father and Hela can make it here to have the wedding. And then we’ll live in Paris and work together in our lab. You’re such a brilliant scientist, you cannot return to Poland if you cannot work there.”
His words are like fire, burning everything I thought to be true just an hour earlier, turning it all into ash and smoke. I am a Pole. I belong in Poland. I blink back tears. The ache of homesickness is palpable, a heaviness in my chest that makes it difficult to breathe.
But Pierre is right. I know, he’s right. I will not go back to Poland if I can’t work there. Science is the most important thing. Science is everything.
But no. Science is not everything, any longer. There is also Pierre.
Kazimierz was a young love. It felt sweet and pretty and fresh like the poppies that bloomed in Szcuzki in the spring. I’d liked the way Kaz had held me up, on the ice. But with Pierre, I do not need him to hold me up. I hold myself up, and he stands by my side, or, often, content to be behind me. And then what I love about him is his mind. His beautiful, brilliant mind. I could live inside a scientific conversation with him, going on forever and ever. Poland isn’t home, I realize by the middle of July, when we are set to get married. Pierre is home.
Half Life Page 5
