Half Life

by Jillian Cantor

  “Run over? By a carriage?” I repeat the words back, and they sound empty, untrue.

  “He was always dreaming of something, never paying attention,” Dr. Curie murmurs, almost to himself, as if he’s in such a state he doesn’t realize the rest of us are in the room with him.

  “I’m so sorry, Marie,” Professor Appel says. “He didn’t make it.”

  Pierre was just here, this morning. Just riding bikes with me in Saint-Rémy last weekend and saying how lucky we are. How he loves our life. I shake my head. “That can’t be,” I say. “It must be some mistake.”

  “Marie.” Jean Perrin stands, comes to me, holds on to my shoulders, as if to hold me up, to keep me standing. I shake him away. I do not need him to carry me. I carry myself, I always carry myself. “It is true,” he says gently. “Pierre is dead.”

  “Pierre is dead.” I echo him, the words coming out too loud, hurting my own ears. “Dead? He is absolutely dead?”

  No one says a word for a moment. I have frightened them with my logic, or with my lack of tears or with the way shock ripples through me, making my voice loud and angry and so absolute.

  “Yes,” Jean Perrin says again. “Dead.”

  “Where is he?” I demand. “I need to see him.”

  “Madame.” One of the gendarmerie rises. “I don’t know if that’s the best idea. He will not be as you knew him.”

  “I have to see him,” I say again,

  The men all look at each other. “His skull was crushed,” the other gendarme says, his tone gentle, as if that will soften it.

  His brilliant, beautiful mind, crushed. Trampled by a carriage. In the street.

  “Bring him to me,” I say louder, and all around me the men’s voices buzz and hum. They are bees in my garden, annoying me.

  A FEW HOURS LATER, THEY BRING HIM TO THE HOUSE BY AMBULANCE, carry him in on a stretcher, and lay him out in our living room. It is dark inside the house, but neither Dr. Curie nor I have lit the lamps. A gendarme hands me Pierre’s things—his pocket watch, not trampled at all, completely unbroken, still ticking. It feels impossible, that it continues to keep time. That time is still moving forward at all.

  I clutch the watch in my hand, feeling it ticking against my palm, and I go to him. His head is wrapped in bandages, but his face looks exactly like him, when he is sleeping. My Pierre. I grab his hand and it is still warm, still feels responsive to my touch. Could they be wrong? I put my hand to his neck to feel for his heartbeat, but there is nothing. Nothing at all.

  I sit with him, holding on to his hand with one of my hands. His watch with the other. I cannot speak, and I have no tears.

  Behind me, Dr. Curie stands quietly, watching, waiting for me to break apart. But morning comes first, and Pierre’s brother, Jacques, arrives at our house from Montpellier.

  “Marie,” Jacques says, touching my shoulder gently. He tries to pull me up, pull me away from Pierre, but I refuse to budge. “Papa says you have been here all night. But they need to take him away. Prepare his body for the funeral.”

  Maybe it is that word, funeral, that I have not considered until right now. Or maybe it is the sound of Jacques’s voice, an echo of Pierre’s. But quite suddenly my tears come, my body is racked with sobs that I cannot control, that I cannot stop, even if I would want to.

  Marya

  Paris, 1906

  Klara and I arrived in Paris just before Easter weekend, and enduring the long train rides with a two-and-a-half-year-old, even a usually pleasant one like Klara, was a hellish sort of torture I did not wish to ever repeat. Never mind we planned to return to Poland in only a month’s time, and I would have to do it all over again. Stepping out from the Gare du Nord, into the warm, bright Paris morning, I inhaled deeply and tried to put that thought out of my mind.

  Our trip to Paris was at once a last-minute decision and the culmination of eight long months of Hela’s worried letters to me and Bronia. Truth be told, Bronia was the one Hela longed for in her condition, the one she begged to come to Paris to help her through childbirth. But Bronia was too busy with Jakub and Lou, and her sanatorium was quite busy as well. Bronia could not leave Zakopane for an entire month, and she had written to me, begging me to be the one to go instead. I’d showed her letter to Kaz as proof. See. Hela cannot survive without me. Even Bronia said so.

  What I did not show Kaz was my correspondence with Pierre. Not because I was doing anything wrong—Pierre had been keeping in more frequent touch to update me on Hela’s condition, which he promised he was keeping an eye on for me. But because my letters from him felt private. Something outside of our family or the friends I had in Loksow who Kaz also knew. Before Pierre, Leokadia had been my closest friend, and look what had happened when I’d involved Kaz with her life. No, Pierre was separate. All mine.

  I wrote to Pierre last week, to let him know of our upcoming trip, and he wrote back, letting me know he’d taken Jacques’s bicycle out again. Fixed a broken spoke, and oiled it, and put air in the tires. And perhaps, he wrote, if she is old enough and wants to learn, you would let me teach your Klara to ride, too?

  THE WEEK BEFORE I LEFT FOR PARIS, I RECEIVED A LETTER from Leokadia. She would be in Paris the week after Easter, too, giving a series of concerts at Montmartre. And she enclosed two tickets for me, should Hela and I wish to attend. She wrote how she would love to see me again, and though I folded the letter and tickets back up, thinking I would never actually go to her concert, I had brought them with me all the way to Paris, just in case I changed my mind.

  The day of her concert, a Thursday, it was dreadfully dreary and rainy outside. Hela lay in her parlor moaning about her heaviness, her swollen ankles, and the way her mind felt as though it had been stretched and rolled into pastry dough, flat and malleable, and I can’t even concentrate on keeping up with the latest papers, she complained.

  I sliced some bread for Klara and heated some water for Hela in the kitchen, squeezing a full lemon into it, before taking it to her. “This will help with your swelling,” I told her. “I promise.”

  She frowned, as if to say, who was I? Not her sister-mother. Not her sister-doctor. Not even someone who had obtained a doctorate in science from the Sorbonne. But then she sighed and took the hot water from me. She blew on it before taking a sip. “I’m sorry I’ve been so difficult,” she said. “I just feel so miserable. Tell me it gets easier when the baby gets here, Marya?”

  I laughed a little, and lied to her, assured her everything would be easy. Everything would be easy, and harder, too. Though Hela, who already employed a servant to cook for her, would probably also be able to afford a wet nurse and a nanny to look after her baby. Perhaps nothing at all would ever be as hard for her as these last few exhausting weeks of her pregnancy had been. But poor Hela, she was in such a state right now. And I really didn’t know how to help her.

  I pulled Leokadia’s tickets out of my valise. “Would it cheer you up to get out of the house, hear some music with me this afternoon?”

  “Oh for heaven’s sakes no, Marya. For one thing, it’s miserable outside.” She gestured to the window, slick with raindrops. “And for another, look at me.” She put both her hands on her belly, just as Klara finished her bread and ran out from the kitchen, hugging herself to my legs.

  I picked her up, though she was almost getting too heavy for that, kissed the top of her head. She no longer smelled like a baby, but like a child, one who loved to explore and dig in the dirt when I allowed it. Her aunt’s garden and the wetness today was her idea of perfection. “Oh my goodness, Klara, you are filthy,” I said, noticing now the streaks of brown across her little forehead. She giggled in response. Clearly, that was her intent.

  Hela’s front door opened and shut; a man’s voice called hello. “Jacques is home early,” I remarked to Hela, who laughed, and shook her head.

  “Not Jacques. That’s Pierre.” His voice was a strange echo of his brother’s, but Hela, who was used to them both, was right. Pierre walked into
the parlor not a moment later. I put Klara down so I could look at him. He kissed Hela on the cheek, asked her how she was feeling, then stepped back, stared at me, and smiled.

  “Hello, Pierre,” I said. “Nice to see you again.” Though nice was not the right word. I felt something else, something warm and wanting and disquieting too.

  “You too, Marya,” he said. “And who’s this?” He kneeled down to Klara’s level, all without taking his eyes off my face. “Is this the one and only princessa Klara Zorawska I’ve heard so much about?”

  Klara spent most of her time with women, and I’d never seen her warm up to any man, other than her father, and perhaps she was beginning to warm up to her uncle Jacques. But with Pierre she laughed and let him shake her little hand, seeming immediately at ease.

  “Why don’t you take Pierre to your concert,” Hela said now, forcing herself into an awkward sitting position. “Pierre loves those sorts of cultural things. Don’t you, Pierre?”

  “A concert?” Pierre said, raising his eyebrows.

  “Her friend from Poland, the pianist . . . What’s her name?” Hela said.

  “Leokadia,” I said. “But really you don’t have to, Pierre . . . And, Hela, Klara is a mess.”

  “I can clean Klara up,” Hela said. “I haven’t moved all day. It will be good for me to get up, practice mothering.”

  “But . . . it’s raining,” I protested.

  “You don’t go out in the rain in Poland?” Pierre asked. It was hard to tell whether he was teasing me or asking a serious question.

  “Of course she does,” Hela said. She waved us away with her hand, then patted the spot on the couch next to her. “Klara, do you want to sit down with me and hear a story about the rocks in my laboratory?” Klara, being the sweet and gentle and calm child she was, listened and sat down with her aunt. I bit my lip, knowing rocks could only get Hela so far before Klara began to squirm, but perhaps Hela was right. Perhaps she needed some practice at being motherly. Perhaps I was doing her a favor.

  AS PIERRE AND I WALKED DOWN BOULEVARD KELLERMAN TO catch the carriage to Montmartre, he held his large black umbrella over both of us, and I told him a bit about Leokadia. About how I loved her, and how I hated her too. How I was in awe of her talent and also grateful that it had taken her somewhere away from me. I felt an openness with Pierre that led me to share honestly with him in a way I couldn’t with Agata or my sisters. There was a comfort in how he listened to me speak and then continued on walking without making any harsh judgments about my marriage or my continued friendship with Kadi.

  “But she is a good piano player, you say?” Pierre finally said, his only comment on my story.

  “Yes,” I said. “Wonderful, really.”

  “Ah, very nice then. We should be in for a treat this afternoon. I do not like to walk in the rain for nothing.” I glanced at him, and a smile grazed his lips. He was making fun of me. As if he felt my eyes on his face, he turned too, so he was looking at me. We were both looking at each other as we walked. We didn’t say anything more, just walked for a moment in the pouring rain, staring at each other.

  I looked away first, and that’s when I suddenly noticed Pierre stepping into the street to cross at just the wrong moment, inches away from an oncoming horse.

  “Pierre!” I yelled his name, grabbed his jacket, and pulled him back toward me as hard as I could. He nearly lost his footing, and let go of his umbrella, which tumbled out in front of us and was promptly run over. His umbrella was trampled by the horse, crushed and flattened by the wheels of the carriage.

  We both stood unmoving for a moment. My heart pounded furiously in my chest, my hands shook. The rain poured down upon us, drowning my bun and my face, but I could not feel the wetness.

  Pierre spoke first: “Marya,” he said. “You saved my life.”

  I shook my head. No. Surely he would’ve looked up at the last moment, stopped himself from walking in front of that horse even if I hadn’t been here.

  He walked ahead, retrieved his umbrella, tried to put it up again above our heads, but the spokes were broken and bent and the linen torn, providing no cover from the rain at all any longer. We both stared at the umbrella, and I wondered if Pierre was thinking what I was thinking, that this could’ve been him: broken, bent, torn. That life was delicate and fleeting, that we were all just one wrong step away from death, at any moment.

  And here we both were, standing together in the pouring rain, alive and breathing.

  Marie

  Paris, 1906

  I am walking with Pierre in the rain, holding on to him so tightly. I love our life together, he says, turning to me, smiling. How did I ever get so lucky?

  There is no such thing as luck, I tell him, as he walks out into the street, one step ahead of me. His eyes, bright blue and filled with light, are still on my face. And then I see the horse, coming right at him. Pierre, stop! I cry out. I try to reach for him, to pull him back. But I can’t grab ahold of him in time.

  Why can’t I just pull him back?

  I sit up in bed, startled. Disoriented. I reach for Pierre next to me, but his side of the bed is empty. And I remember again, he is dead, dead, dead. Trampled and crushed. His beautiful brain broken. I am haunted by this cruel and recurring dream where I try to stop him, try to save him. But he’s gone. I can’t save him, can’t help him, can’t fix him as Hela once believed I would.

  WE BURY PIERRE IN SCEAUX BY HIS MOTHER’S SIDE, ON April 21st, only two days after the accident. The press began clamoring immediately, and there were so many telegrams, and I just wanted them all to leave me alone; I just want quiet. We rush through everything, have a private family burial, in hopes the press will leave, and then in the days after, everything has happened so fast that I can’t understand yet it’s true. He’s gone. How can he really be gone?

  When I first tell Irène the news, she runs to her bedroom to weep. But then, only hours later, she comes to me, seeming completely untouched, asking if it is still all right if she goes and plays in the Perrins’ garden with her friend. She is young, she does not understand the power this loss will hold over her for the rest of her life. And because of that, I forgive her insensitivity.

  Yes, I tell her. Go play next door. Be home for supper.

  Ève has no idea what she has lost. Fifteen months old, she toddles around the house, still pulling off her clothing at will and stealing Irène’s toys. She will never remember him. She will never know him. I walk through days and days carrying that thought in my head, and that becomes my undoing. Pierre’s loss is a great loss for the scientific community, a great personal and professional loss for me. But more than anything it is Ève’s loss that breaks me. She will never know her father.

  JACQUES AND BRONIA BOTH LINGER IN PARIS FOR WEEKS, HOVERING. Bronia looks after the children, stepping in for Dr. Curie in the evenings when normally I would. Jacques says he is straightening Pierre’s affairs with the university and that he will go home when he is sure we are okay.

  “We will never be okay,” I tell him flatly, and he frowns, making his face look more angled, more like Pierre’s.

  “In time,” Jacques says kindly, patting my shoulder. “In time.”

  But what does Jacques know? What does Bronia know? He will return soon to Montpellier to his own wife, Marie. Bronia will return to Zakopane and Mier and Lou. They will not work and live and breathe and raise their children alone.

  I spend days in bed, not having the energy to get up, much less care for the children or tend the house. Bronia and Jacques do these things for me. Jeanne Langevin and Henriette Perrin stop by each afternoon with food, and Bronia thanks them on my behalf, feeds their delicious meals to my children, herself, and Jacques. I hear the noises of them downstairs. Normal noises, happy noises, laughter. I put a pillow over my head, drowning them out.

  “Siostra,” Bronia calls into the darkness of my bedroom. “Come, have dinner with us.”

  “I’m not hungry,” I say back.

&nbs
p; When I stay in bed, when I close my eyes and dream, Pierre is still here, still almost close enough to touch. I dream him here; I dream of ways to stop him, to save him. But every morning I wake up and remember again and again. He is gone.

  EVEN THOUGH HIS BODY IS IN THE GROUND IN SCEAUX, I HAVE kept ahold of him in my own way. The shirt Pierre was wearing that last day, his bloody and torn and muddy shirt—I’ve folded it up and put it in a small brown paper package, wrapped it with string, and tied it to my stomach, wearing it with me underneath my clothing, holding the last pieces of him tight against my skin. It went with me to his burial in Sceaux, and it goes with me again when I go back with Jacques and Bronia and Dr. Curie to see his finished tombstone.

  His name is on it. Pierre Curie.

  It cannot be. It cannot be. His shirt is tied to me still. It has his blood, his life. They have made a mistake, engraved the wrong man’s name.

  “This isn’t right,” I say. “This can’t be him.”

  “I’m sorry, but it is,” Bronia whispers into my widow’s veil. I don’t want to listen. I want to go back to my bedroom, where I can be alone with my dreams and the last piece I have left of him.

  How is it possible? His name, written on a tombstone, next to Sophie-Claire’s, who has been gone from us nearly ten years. How can that be? My Pierre.

  My sister-mother holds on to me. “You have to be strong now, for the children,” she says softly. I think of them, Irène and little Ève. And then I tell Bronia about the piece of him I kept, that I have with me now.

  Back at the house, she helps me untie it from my body. She lights a fire in my bedroom, and she says to me sternly, but kindly, “It is time to let go now. It is time to let go.”

  “I’VE SPOKEN TO THE UNIVERSITY,” JACQUES SAYS, A WEEK later, the beginning of May. Time has passed. I don’t understand it. I clutch Pierre’s watch still, feel it ticking on relentlessly beneath my fingers. “They will offer you a generous widow’s pension for Pierre’s position,” he says.