Half Life

by Jillian Cantor

  I nodded, but Papa was never too busy to write his daughters, and Bronia had mentioned in her latest letter to me that she hadn’t heard much from him either, that she was also beginning to worry. Besides, Papa loved to keep me updated on all the many good things happening with my sisters, bragging about them in a way they would not want to do about themselves. Hela was doing so well in her exams, at the top of her class in applied sciences, and she was dating a French scientist named Jacques—both very kind and very handsome. Bronia and her Kazimierz longed to return to Poland, but they wanted Hela to finish her schooling in Paris first, as no one wanted to leave her there all alone. I longed for them to return to Poland, too, to be closer to me again, but I also wanted them to stay in Paris. The idea of their return felt like the closing of a door, the final ending of my own dream of Paris.

  LEOKADIA AND I WALKED THE FEW SHORT BLOCKS FROM THE train station, up the stairs to Papa’s front door. I knocked, once softly, then harder. “Papa, it’s Marya. I’ve come for a visit,” I called out. He didn’t respond, and then my heart shook against the walls of my chest, and I put my hand to my breast, an attempt to steady it.

  “It’s still early in the morning,” Leokadia said. “Perhaps he’s still asleep?” Papa awoke each day with the sun, and went to bed early, soon after the sun set. It would not be like him to still be asleep.

  I used my key and let us in. The apartment was dark, all the curtains drawn. I ran my finger across his credenza, his dining table—there was a fine layer of dust covering everything, coating my fingertip. What if he had been here all alone, died in his bed, and no one had known for weeks? “Papa,” I called out again, my voice breaking a little.

  Leokadia reached for my hand, squeezed my fingers with her own, and in that moment I loved her for coming with me and loved Kaz for suggesting it.

  We walked together back toward his bedroom. I knocked on the door. “Papa,” I called out. “It’s me, Marya.” For a moment, he did not respond, and I did not dare to open his door, and then I heard a noise, slow footsteps from the other side, and I exhaled. I realized tears were rolling down my cheeks, and I pulled away from Leokadia and wiped furiously at my face, not wanting Papa to see me cry.

  He opened the door. “Marya? What are you doing here?” He looked older than when I’d seen him last, six months ago, and now he stood stooped, in his dressing gown.

  “I got worried about you when I hadn’t gotten a letter in four weeks. Are you ill?” I asked him. He didn’t answer, just kept staring at me, and I kept talking. “Have you been eating? Remembering to drink water, Papa?”

  He tilted his head to the side, like he was considering my questions, or he wasn’t sure. He put his hand on his stomach. “I haven’t been too hungry,” he finally said. He wobbled a little, then grabbed on to the door to steady himself.

  “Why don’t you help him into bed?” Leokadia said softly. “I’ll find him some food to eat.”

  I took his arm, and he leaned on me. Only then did I realize just how thin he’d gotten, how frail he was. “Papa,” I admonished him. “Why didn’t you write that you weren’t feeling well? I would’ve come sooner.”

  “You have a husband to worry about, a life in Loksow. And your sisters are so busy in Paris. I didn’t want to be a bother to anyone.”

  I remembered that morning, ten years ago, when Papa had come into my room, thrown the curtains open, and pulled me out of my darkness. He had offered me hope: money and Paris and an education, and then he had loved me all the same when I’d chosen a life with Kaz instead.

  I got him back into bed, felt his forehead with the back of my hand. He felt hot; I worried he had a fever. “I’ll call the doctor,” I told him.

  He closed his eyes, then opened them again. “My sweet Marya,” he said, his lips turning into a slow smile. “The doctor just left. There is nothing more he can do for me, other than surgery, and I’m not going to have that.”

  “Papa, don’t say that.”

  “Just sit here with me,” he said.

  I pulled the chair from the side of the room, pushed it toward his bed, my eyes welling with tears. I bit my lip to keep them at bay. I sat and took his hand in my own, running my fingers softly over his wrinkled flesh. Papa closed his eyes again, his breathing evened, and I thought he’d fallen back to sleep, but then he said, “Marya, my youngest, my dearest. I always thought you would . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “Thought I would, what . . . Papa?”

  But then he really was asleep. His chest rattled with a soft snore, and he didn’t answer.

  I FOUND LEOKADIA KNITTING IN THE PARLOR A LITTLE WHILE later. Her fingers turned, twisting the long needles, moving the way they did when she played piano, swiftly, deftly. She looked up when she heard me walk in, but her fingers kept going—Leokadia’s fingers were always moving. “How is he?” she asked.

  “Not well,” I said. From what I’d learned of biology in my classes, I guessed his liver wasn’t functioning fully: his pallor was gray, his eyes tinged with yellow. I wondered how long he’d known he needed surgery, and whether now it might already be too late. I sighed and I took a sheet of paper from Papa’s desk, knowing I needed to write out a telegram to send to Bronia and Hela right away. They needed to come from Paris. Papa looked terrible. Thank goodness I’d come here when I did.

  “You’re quite lucky, you know,” Leokadia said. Her knitting needles clicked and clicked, a fast and steady rhythm. “You have two men who both adore and respect you.”

  I had told her before about Papa’s desire to teach my sisters and me as we were growing up. About how he read us banned books as bedtime stories, how he wanted us to leave Poland to get a real university education, and how he believed that as intelligent women, we were just as capable, if not more so, to grow our minds as any man. But there was something in her voice that made me uneasy now, something about what she was saying about Kaz, too, and it was the same thing I felt when I realized she might have told him about our encounter with the police, that they had some sort of relationship outside of me.

  But I was grateful for her friendship, too, and that she had come here with me, so all I said to her instead was, “I’m not ready for him to go, Kadi. Maybe I am greedy? I want more time with him.”

  She put the needles in her lap, reached out both her hands for mine. “How good that he has you, that we are here,” she said. We sat like that for a few moments, and then I went back to the stationery, to compose a telegram for Bronia and Hela, to tell them to come on the train from Paris at once, before it was too late.

  LATER, WHEN IT WAS VERY DARK, THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, I could not sleep, and I got up and sat by Papa’s bed again, held on to him. His hand was cool and dry, the skin around his fingers loose and wrinkled. I stroked his fingers softly with my thumbs and hummed the melody of a long-forgotten lullaby, “Śpij Laleczko,” that came back to me only now. Mama had sung it to me and Hela and Bronia and Zosia once, when we were very young, and all ill, before Zosia succumbed to her sickness.

  I sat there holding on to him until morning, until he opened his eyes, saw me there, smiled. “Papa,” I asked him. “What did you mean yesterday . . . you started to say you always thought I would . . . what did you mean?”

  “Marya, my youngest, my brightest.” He spoke slowly, his voice trembling with the effort it took him to form the words. “I always thought you would be the one to change the world.”

  “And I have disappointed you,” I said quietly.

  “Disappointed me . . . no, not at all. Look at you, still learning, teaching young women in Poland. Education changes everything, does it not?”

  “You taught me that,” I said. Papa had been a teacher himself, before the Russians took over Poland, and he’d always told us our entire lives how important education was. I squeezed his hands softly between my own.

  “I wanted to teach you more,” he said, breathless.

  “You taught me everything,” I told him.

  TWO
DAYS LATER HE TOOK HIS LAST BREATH, WITH ME SITTING by his bed, holding his hand. I was not ready to let him go, but he was ready to leave, and so I had no choice.

  Bronia and Hela arrived on the train from Paris, three days too late.

  Marie

  Paris & Warsaw, 1902

  Mon amour,” Pierre says into the darkness of Irène’s bedroom, waking me with a gentle shake of my shoulder. Irène likes me to sit with her while she falls asleep each night, and perhaps she is insecure because she barely sees me during the day. Tonight I must’ve fallen asleep myself in here. “Come with me,” Pierre says softly in my ear.

  I peer out Irène’s window toward our garden. It is the darkest of nights, not even a sliver of moon. “Pierre, what time is it?”

  “Just about nine.” Only nine? I stretch and my body aches. I fell asleep in a strange position in the rocking chair, and I have been so tired as of late, the work we’ve undertaken so hard, so painstaking, that often I even dream about my own exhaustion. Pierre, too—sometimes he awakens me in the middle of the night, half-asleep, crying out in agony over the pains in his legs. But tonight his voice is soft, happy. Different.

  “Come,” Pierre says. “Get your coat and come with me to the lab. I have a surprise for you.”

  I rise, suddenly feeling dizzy, and Pierre puts his arm around me to steady me. We’ve been working so hard and so long with the pitchblende, and finally, finally, we’ve extracted enough radium and will be able to present it to the Academy. They asked for us to isolate the element to prove ourselves worthy, perhaps believing we never would. And at long last, we have. But these have been long, grueling, exhausting years, so many days when we are not feeling well in body or in spirit.

  Yet in spite of the work and all the illness that has befallen us, Pierre always finds a way to look for the best in everything, and he brings me to see it too. Though it is late, I trust in his surprise, and I get my coat.

  We tiptoe out to the front door, not wanting to wake Irène, or Dr. Curie, who is asleep in his own room down the hall. Pierre races out to boulevard Kellerman, forgetting for the moment all the pains in his legs, and I follow, suddenly giddy, or maybe I am just overtired, delirious.

  We hold on to each other and proceed to walk, arm in arm. The night air is cool, and the darkness feels dangerous, but I cling to my husband, happy for a moment to feel free, of the science, of our household obligations, even of Irène’s little shouts for me each night as she tries to fall asleep.

  When we reach the lab, Pierre unlocks the door and says, “Mon amour, don’t light the lamp.”

  “But it’s very dark, we won’t be able to see what we’re doing.” We walk inside, and I reach for the lamp in spite of his words.

  He gently tugs me away. “No, Marie, look.”

  He points to our worktable, where, since I left, hours ago, he has lined up all our samples of extracted radium inside glass. They line the table now in rows, and in the absolute blackness of this night, they glow, making our dark, small shed of a lab alive with an ethereal light. I gasp, put my hand to my mouth.

  How many days in the lab had I said to him that it felt we were working so hard for nothing tangible, that if only radium were beautiful, striking in its color, I might feel more encouraged.

  And now here it is, right in front of my very eyes: our radium. Glowing so brightly it feels alive. Or otherworldly. As if Pierre has reached up into the sky, grabbed starlight, and put it in glass for me in our little lab. “Oh, Pierre,” I say. “Look what you have done!”

  He climbs up onto the worktable to sit within the glow. His face illuminates green and gold. I go to him and he embraces me. “Look what we have done, mon amour. All this work, all these years.”

  “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” I tell him. And it is.

  THE GLOW OF OUR RADIUM BURNS BRIGHTER THAN THE DIFFICULTY of the work, the years of aches and pains in our bodies. It is everything. It is worth the higher-paying jobs we turned down in Geneva so that we could stay here in Paris and not interrupt our research by moving. It is worth the time and the distance away from my family, and from my country, and the long hours away from our daughter.

  But then, only weeks later, an urgent telegram arrives from Warsaw from Hela, and suddenly the glow of the radium dims. Papa has been ill, has recently had surgery for gallstones. In her last letter Hela told me all was well, he was recovering nicely from the surgery, on the mend. But then her urgent telegram: all at once, he is dying. And I must get to Warsaw as soon as I can.

  I am wrapped inside my own panic, my disbelief. This can’t be real. This can’t be happening. Not when I am so far away.

  I throw a few dresses into a valise, and Pierre hovers, saying he wants to go to Warsaw with me. But someone has to stay here, look after the lab and the household and Irène. “No,” I tell him, resolutely. “I will go to Poland alone.”

  “At least let me get you to the train,” Pierre says. And I agree to that much.

  A few hours later, I offer him and Irène a quick kiss goodbye before I board the train. “Send a telegram with any news,” Pierre calls after me, a worried look on his face. I can see him standing there, looking gloomy through my window, even after I take my seat on the train. I reach my hand up to the glass, partly to wave goodbye, partly to try and hang on to this moment, where my life is still whole.

  THE LAST TIME I WENT BACK TO POLAND, IT WAS THREE YEARS ago, and our exhaustion from the work had only just begun to set in. Bronia and Mier and Lou and Jakub moved to Zakopane in 1899, opened their sanatorium, and a few months later my whole family reunited there for a holiday. Hela and Stanislaw, their daughter Hanna (just about the same age as Irène), and Papa all came together from Warsaw. Pierre and Irène and I came from France, and for a few glorious weeks we were all together. It was Pierre’s first time in Poland, and how he had enjoyed it so. I see why you love your country so much, he’d said to me as we’d taken a hike together on a mountain trail in the sunshine of the Tatras. And I had felt a glimmer of joy, of hope. One day my whole family could be together again in Poland. Pierre would love it enough, just like the rest of us.

  When we returned to Paris, I got caught up in our work. Everything else felt so far away, that now, on the train, it is hard to believe it has been years since I’ve last seen Papa and my sisters, not weeks or months. And I spend the long hours on the train from Paris to Berlin praying to a God that I don’t believe in that Papa will hang on longer, that he will make a miraculous recovery. Perhaps now that Pierre and I have extracted our radium we will have more time, and we can make more frequent visits to Poland.

  But when I change trains in Germany there is an emergency telegram from Hela, waiting for me at the station. It is too late. I am too late. Papa died in the middle of the night.

  THE TRAIN ROLLS ON FROM BERLIN TO WARSAW. SO MANY hours and hours and hours. They are excruciating. Guilt curls into my chest like a lion, roaring and hurting, but I am too stunned for tears. My body is cold and numb, from grief, or the shock. Papa was doing fine just last week. How has this all happened so fast?

  When the train arrives in Warsaw at last, I have not eaten nor slept for days, and yet I do not feel tired or hungry. I am only angry now. Why didn’t Hela write sooner? Why did she wait until the very end? I storm from the train, rehearsing my tirade, and practically run the entire way to Papa’s apartment.

  “How could you?” I say to Hela, when she opens the door and tries to wrap me in a teary-eyed hug.

  Bronia stands behind her. Of course, she made it first, the journey from Zakopane so much shorter than the one from France. Her face is white as snow, her eyes bloodshot from her own tears. “Marya, you are so thin,” Bronia says, reaching for me, too, but I pull away from them both. “Are you feeling well?” Bronia asks. Always my sister-mother. Her worry enrages me even more, perhaps unjustly so. But it’s not fair; they got to say goodbye.

  “I need to see him,” I demand, ignoring her questions about my
health.

  “He’s gone,” Hela says softly.

  And though I am a scientist and I understand what happens in death, I cannot let it go. “I demand to see him,” I say again. Tears roll down Hela’s face, and maybe they are tears of my doing and I should feel her pain as my own, my sister-twin. But I can only feel my own rage.

  Bronia sighs and takes my arm. “The casket has already been prepared,” she says. “But I will take you to it.”

  THEN, PAPA IS A WOODEN BOX. BRONIA WAITS OUTSIDE THE mortuary, giving me, she says, a chance to say my goodbyes.

  In the last letter Papa wrote to me, he told me how proud he was, how happy he was to know that his daughter, his little Maryishna Sklodowksa, born of Warsaw, Poland, had discovered an entirely new element, opened up the world of science in a way no man had yet done. And then, as was his way, he had told me about the weather. Papa was always as interested in the otherworldly as he was the mundane. The day, he wrote, was cool, but still pleasant. Or had he said it was warm? I can’t remember exactly now, nor even where I set the letter down. In the lab, somewhere? Or had I been reading it in Irène’s room as I’d tucked her into bed?

  It is stupid, and it does not matter now, what he wrote about the weather. But I want to remember the last piece of him, and it infuriates me that I can’t. But it does not matter. What matters is that he is gone. That I’d been so caught up in the glow of our radium, I hadn’t taken the time to write him back yet. And now it is too late.

  I stare at the large wooden box in front of me. I have so many things to say to him, so many apologies to make, but I cannot believe it, this box, is really him.

  “Open it,” I command the mortuary worker.

  He stares at me with large brown eyes and shakes his head. He does not know who I am, what I have done, that I have spent the last four years away from my family, tearing apart rock bit by bit, just to extract the smallest bit of radium, and that I will tear him apart with my hands, too, if he does not do what I say.