Half Life

by Jillian Cantor

  “You brought too much with you from Paris,” I chide him, remarking on his bag of heavy equipment. “I thought we were only going to work a little here? On papers?”

  “Yes, mon amour, but this equipment is not for work. This is for fun. I’ve hired a carriage to take us all to Mont-Saint-Michel to watch the eclipse this week. And I brought special viewing equipment with me from Paris so we can all get a better look.”

  “Of course you did.” I laugh, shake my head at his foolishness, while also delighting in it. I have never seen an eclipse before, and I am now quite excited about the prospect of viewing it, and though I have chided him, I am actually quite thrilled that he thought to bring the equipment along.

  A FEW DAYS LATER, WE ALL PILE INTO THE CARRIAGE: HELA and the older girls, Pierre, Dr. Curie, and then me with Ève on my lap. The ride isn’t too long, the driver gentle, and we are there by late morning, enough time to get out and explore the ruins and the castle and prison of Louis XI. As the sky begins to darken, we go to a viewing terrace in the castle. And Pierre explains the science of it all to the older children, who delight in his explanations and explode with their questions. They spent the whole evening last night studying their hermit crab with Pierre, and today it is the sun and the moon and the sky.

  The midday sky grows black, and birds flutter around us, restless and confused. Hela puts her arms around me in the darkness. “Remember when Papa used to teach us about the sunsets?” she says softly into my hair.

  “Of course I do.” It is one of my earliest memories of learning about the world, loving science and feeling that deep and abiding sense of wonder I still feel now each morning in the lab.

  “Pierre reminds me of the way he was with us, so good with our children.”

  In the darkness it is hard to see that Pierre can barely stand. And in the excitement of his voice, it is hard to remember the way he’d been restless all night last night, moaning in his half-sleep about the terrible pains in his bones.

  “I’m worried about him,” I tell Hela now. “The doctors cannot say what is causing him so much pain. I worry he will never feel good again, that there is something wrong with him that they do not understand yet. He is only forty-six, and you would never know it from the way he walks and cries out in agony all night.”

  Only two months ago in Sweden, he was seeming better, but now in the damp sea air, he seems so much worse again. It is hard to love him so much and to watch him suffer. I want to help him, want to fix him, and I have no idea how.

  “You are a good wife, a good person. A wonderful scientist! Papa would be so proud if he could see you now.” Hela kisses my cheek, and I feel her own cheek wet with a tear against mine. I’m not sure why she’s crying exactly, but it makes me start to cry too. “Moja mała siostrzyczka. You will find a way. You will fix him, take care of him, help him,” she says to me. I want to fix his pain more than anything, but I truly don’t know how.

  “Mon amour,” he calls out to me now, his voice rich with excitement, and I pull away from Hela. “It’s your turn. Come, have a look at the sun.”

  I tread slowly to him in the darkness, and then I listen to his instructions for viewing in the large scope. I look at the sky through his lens.

  The sun has retreated into a nearly impossible darkness, turning its fiery light black and dim.

  Marya

  Poland, 1905

  By the beginning of 1905, my Flying University had greatly multiplied in size. Eight of the original women who had come together with me to learn, over ten years earlier, now all acted as professors with me. We taught in our own areas of specialty, ranging from sciences to maths to literature and even music, after Leokadia followed through with her promise to connect me with her old teacher. And we had close to sixty young women enrolled in our courses, each paying two rubles (or whatever they could afford) a month to attend. This money went toward paying all of us teachers a salary. And to pay the rent on a one-room apartment where classes took place a few evenings a week. A revolution was rising in Poland, the people wanting to break free of Russian rule. The Russian police were busy with protests, looters. In a way, it gave our burgeoning school a new safety. They had no time for us.

  Still, Kaz continued to worry about me breaking the law, and perhaps even more so now that we had Klara. But I felt an odd safety in our numbers, in the fact that we had gone on and on like this for years with hardly a problem. As long as we did not advertise what we were doing, out in the open. As long as we stayed secret, I truly believed the police would continue to leave us alone. What did it matter to them, really, if we were educated? There were no jobs for us in Russian Poland, nothing we could do with our education, anyway.

  Kaz had gone back to teaching maths at the dreaded boys’ school for only half the salary Hipolit had been paying him, and on nights and weekends he worked to get his and Hipolit’s research on elasticity written up into a paper, with the goal of publishing it, eventually being able to secure himself a better job in his field. We moved around each other, both busy, barely talking, barely touching each other.

  But Kaz loved Klara, so deeply, so obviously. The first thing he did when he walked in each night after work, before poring over his research, was go to her, where she was often playing on the floor, babbling to herself while I prepared dinner. He would walk in, pick her up: “Kiciuna, how I missed you today.” He’d swoop her into a hug and tickle her belly with kisses until she began to laugh.

  Then he would turn to me, smile a little. Ask me if I’d had enough money to buy food for supper, or if I needed anything else for the apartment. He could always tutor a boy or two after school to make some extra money if we needed it. That was Kaz, steady. Even when he himself was struggling with his work.

  And sometimes, I would stand there at the edge of the kitchen, watching him with Klara. For just a moment I would remember it. Why I loved him. Why I married him.

  I STAYED AT HOME IN OUR APARTMENT WITH KLARA DURING the day, almost every day. She took regular and long naps, and I got a lot of reading done, new papers being published in chemistry and physics, which Hela would send to me in big, thick packages once a month, knowing my hunger for them. I continued to learn, to self-teach, so that I could impart this knowledge to my young students on Wednesday nights. I loved Klara and the days we had together, but even with my time for reading, being at home constantly became somewhat mind-numbing. Sometimes I simply longed for intelligent conversations with adults, longed to be learning in an environment with others, not just by myself.

  A few times a month, Agata and I went to the girls’ gymnasiums in Loksow to work on recruiting the older girls for our courses, and these were days I greatly looked forward to. First there were the long walks, the conversations with Agata, whose little boy Piotr was two, six months older than Klara. And second, there was the joy I felt in talking about our school, remembering again and again what it had become. What we had made it. Now that we had a fixed location, we were no longer a Flying University, and we gave ourselves a new name, one so bold it could only be said in secret: Women’s University of Loksow.

  Whenever I spoke to the girls at the gymnasium about what we did, what they could learn, I got a little thrill saying our new name out loud. Women’s University. Right here in Loksow. I had started this. Agata and I both had.

  BY THE SPRING, LOKSOW WAS BURNING WITH RESISTANCE. IT was, at first, a dull hum on the streets as I walked to teach my Wednesday night class, a whisper among the younger women I was teaching. And then it erupted into crowds of people blocking the street, making it hard to get around. Kaz’s students went on strike, protesting for the right to learn in Polish instead of Russian, for better pay for all workers, and so Kaz was at home during the day, with me and Klara. He kept to himself, working all day on his research, but our meager savings dwindled, and I worried we’d soon run out of money to eat. My salary was not enough for us to live on, to continue to afford our two bedrooms on Złota Street.

  In Paris, He
la and Jacques had made a finding with their minerals and magnetic properties, winning a prize from the French Academy of Sciences and with it a generous sum of francs. Hela wrote me with the good news and mailed us a portion of their prize winnings, offering this gift as her very small and faraway contribution to the revolution in Poland.

  Kaz did not like it, taking charity money from my sister, but I said to him: “What would you have us do instead? Starve?”

  I hated the way he looked back at me, both startled and disappointed. “As soon as I publish this research . . .” he mumbled, turning back to his papers.

  But we had gone on this way for so many years, I didn’t know if I believed there was something more for us any longer, something beyond what we were and what we had now. And though I hoped for Poland to be free, for my university to be allowed out in the open and for our lives to be easier, ever since I gave birth to Klara, none of the rest of it mattered quite as much as it used to. I did not dream of Paris or the Sorbonne any longer.

  Instead I dreamed mostly of enough food to eat, a nice place to live, and for Klara to grow up happy and healthy.

  “COME WITH US, PANI MARYA,” ONE OF MY STUDENTS, A small, bright-eyed girl, Aleksandra, implored me one Wednesday in May. My walk to class had been lined with students her age, both men and women, chanting in the streets, protesting. And when I walked inside our school, my students were all humming about protesting, too, not readying themselves for my lesson.

  “What is going on here?” I asked. I had prepared a lesson tonight on the new research about X-rays I’d been reading that Hela had sent to me last week. A paper by Henri Becquerel, a pioneer in the field, and Hela wrote that she had actually met him recently! He had come to their lab, wanting to view their new prizewinning discovery about his Becquerel rays and their minerals. Imagine that.

  “We are going to join the revolution tonight,” Aleksandra answered, her blue eyes shimmery even in the dim lighting.

  “No.” I held my hand up. “Everyone put your signs away. You have paid me to teach you. And do you know where the real revolution is?” They all stopped what they were doing and looked at me, their young eyes eager, trained on my face. “Right here.” I tapped my forefinger to my head. “If you become educated. If you learn . . . well, that is how you will beat them. How you will win.”

  It was something Papa had said to me and Bronia and Hela so many times when we were girls, and remembering his last deathbed words to me again, I smiled a little. “Now,” I said to the girls. “Should I begin my lesson? There will still be time to protest after.”

  LEOKADIA KEPT HER PROMISE AND WROTE ME ONCE EVERY few weeks from Berlin to update me on the goings-on in her life. And I kept my promise to her and replied to the letters sometimes, when I had something to say, or when my heart softened toward her again as she mentioned being lonely in Berlin. She was learning so much, being paid to perform in the city, and beginning to be offered new and exciting opportunities all around Europe. But she had no friends in Berlin, no family.

  Hela wrote me from Paris and Bronia wrote me from Zakopane weekly too. But the letters I looked forward to most of all? The ones I treasured and kept in a pile inside the top drawer of my chest? The occasional ones that came from Pierre.

  As the revolution was overtaking the streets of Loksow, Pierre wrote me about the flowers blooming once again, taking over the gardens surrounding his house in Sceaux.

  Sometimes when I am taking my morning bicycle ride, I can’t help but think of you, he wrote. Hoping that you are well, belle intelligente Marya. When do you think you might return to Paris?

  Marie

  France, 1906

  Easter weekend we go to our cottage in Saint-Rémy, leaving all thoughts of work and the lab and even teaching behind us in Paris. We while away the days soaked in sunshine and lake water and happiness.

  Everyone is in high spirits and healthy, and Pierre is feeling well enough to ride bicycles with me again. We go out in the morning, pedaling toward the Alpilles, until they are closer and closer, almost close enough to touch those stunning brown hills. We return to the cottage sweating and a little sunburned on our faces, and ravenous for the eggs Dr. Curie and the girls have cooked fresh from the chickens while we were riding.

  In the afternoon, we lie out on the grass in the sun, in front of the cottage. Pierre and I hold hands, watching the girls. Irène dances around, picking flowers. Ève has somehow managed to remove her dress and runs topless in only a pair of knickers, trying to keep up with her sister.

  I roll on my side to look at Pierre, and he turns to look at me. His beard is grayer than when we first met, but his eyes just as blue, just as filled with light. The sun streams across his face, turning his features yellow and radiant, reminding me of the phosphorescent radium tube he made for my nightstand at home. “Mon amour,” he says softly, reaching his other hand up to touch my hair, to stroke my forehead with his thumb. “I love our life together,” he says. “How did I ever get so lucky?”

  “There is no such thing as luck.” I smile at him. But even my scientific mind now understands a little what he means. The strangest way we came together by chance, the way our children, these particular children, came from us, and now they run around before us perfect and healthy and undamaged. The way we have been touched by phosphorescent light and love, professional success, and even money.

  “Everything we have,” I finally say. “It is because we have made it so, together.”

  “Together,” he echoes back.

  IN THE CITY THE NEXT WEEK, THE WEATHER TURNS. ON Wednesday, as the children and I return, the winds roll in and the sky grays, and by Thursday morning it is chilly and rainy. I move about that morning, sluggish and out of sorts, trying to dress the children, ready them for the day, when Pierre calls out to me from downstairs that he is leaving for the lab.

  “I have that lunch,” he calls up. I recall vaguely what he means. A newly formed association of science professors he’s been invited to be a part of, and that they have called a lunch meeting today. It is not so long ago that Pierre was not included in such things, and I remember now that they have specifically requested Pierre’s presence at the lunch. I smile. They still haven’t included me, as a woman, but I don’t care. I much prefer the lab to socializing anyway.

  “I’ll see you in the lab afterward,” I yell back. I have errands to run this morning, food to buy for the house after having been away in the country for days, and then in the afternoon I will settle back into the lab myself. I close my eyes and wish I were there now, with Pierre, instead of suffering through the next hours of household duties and errands.

  Ève hands me her sweater, interrupting my thoughts. I sigh. She dislikes it and has already pulled it off twice. “You’ll be cold without it,” I tell her as sternly as I can manage. I put her arms through the tiny sleeves once more.

  Irène lets out an exaggerated sigh. “Why must she make everything so difficult, Maman?”

  “Why indeed?” I say, as Ève is taking off her sweater again. The day is gray and cold and wet, and I am so sluggish. “Why indeed.”

  PIERRE NEVER MAKES IT INTO THE LAB AFTER HIS LUNCH, AND I leave early myself, allowing extra time to walk home in the rain. The streets are flooded, and I walk slowly, worrying about Pierre. If he did not come to the lab, his rheumatism must be acting up again. He seemed so good last weekend, so healthy, that it was easy to forget my worries about his health while we were away. But the dampness today must be affecting him. It always does. I long for more sun-filled days in Saint-Rémy. Even the lab hasn’t cheered me up today, and by the time I walk inside the front door of our house, I’m soaked and chilled and feeling as gloomy as the weather.

  I lay my umbrella out in the foyer, take off my wet boots. “Pierre,” I call out, and when he doesn’t answer I try again.

  “Marie.” Dr. Curie walks in from the dining room. He’s a tall man, and despite his age, his white hair and beard, his wrinkled skin, I always believe I
am seeing him in my mind the way he must’ve been when he was young. He usually walks gracefully, his voice filled with light. But now from the way he is hunched over, the way he has just said my name . . . His face is pale, expressionless. Something is wrong.

  “What’s happened?” I ask. “Is it his legs again? Have you called for the doctor?” I hang up my coat and move to walk toward the steps, to check on Pierre in our bedroom.

  “Marie.” Dr. Curie says my name again, more sharply. He reaches his hand out to catch my arm, to stop me from going upstairs. Dr. Curie has never grabbed me in anything but a hug before. My heart suddenly pounds in my chest. I look back at him and now he is crying. “The gendarmerie are in the dining room. They want to talk with you.”

  The gendarmerie? In my house? “The children?” I gasp, suddenly panicked.

  “They’re fine. They’re at the Perrins’.” Irène is often next door, playing with her little friend when I arrive home, and that in itself is not unusual. It is the way Dr. Curie’s voice breaks, the way his eyes cloud with tears.

  I pull out of Dr. Curie’s grasp and rush into the dining room. There, sitting at my table, are two policemen, along with Professor Appel and Jean Perrin. They all stare at me as I enter, with serious faces, wide eyes.

  “What is it?” I demand. Has Pierre has gotten sicker? Is he in the hospital?

  “There was a dreadful accident,” Jean Perrin finally speaks, his voice shaking. “Pierre was run over by a carriage, Marie.”