Half Life

by Jillian Cantor

  Then Klara and I took a carriage to the Gare du Nord, got on the train, and watched the city of Paris fade away into the summer morning, behind us.

  Marie

  Paris & Warsaw, 1906

  The girls and Dr. Curie and I move into an unremarkable house on rue Chemin de Fer in Sceaux. It is not as nice or modern as our house on boulevard Kellerman was, but at least it is quieter here than in the city. And the backyard has a garden for the children to play and Irène to plant seeds. We are far from our neighbors, and perhaps in time I will miss having the Perrins and Langevins nearby, but now I am quite happy to be left alone.

  I tell Dr. Curie I like the idea of bringing up the children in the very place Pierre was brought up, but the real reason I like our new house in Sceaux is because it is close to where Pierre rests now. When classes begin again in the fall, I will have a thirty-minute train ride into the city, rather than a short walk like on boulevard Kellerman, but I care less about that than about my distance from Pierre.

  The first few days after we move, in the mornings, before the children wake, I take a walk and go and talk to Pierre’s tombstone. I tell him how Ève is so small, I think about all the years and years it will take for her to grow, and how I don’t know if I can continue to live for that many years on my own without him. How some people have been writing me to congratulate me on my new position at the Sorbonne. And how the very idea that someone might rejoice over me taking his position makes me impossibly angry.

  Some mornings I linger too long, return to the house after breakfast, and Dr. Curie frowns at me. “It is not him. He is not there,” Dr. Curie chides me gently.

  As a scientist, I know he is right. But Pierre had always believed in séances, hiring a woman to conduct them to speak to his mother after her death. And though I did not enjoy them, or even believe in them the way he had, now I can understand his need for the otherworldly, for something. I cannot keep away from his grave. And I continue to go each morning just to talk to him there. And sometimes, I go in the evenings before bed, too.

  PIERRE AND I HAD PLANNED ON SPENDING MOST OF THE summer in Saint-Rémy—classes will not begin again until November. But I cannot bear the thought of going back there again now. The last time we went, Easter, Pierre and I had ridden bikes and lain in the grass together holding hands, touching sunlight, reveling in our luck. It feels like a cruel joke now. Dr. Curie offers to go with the girls, and I decide to go to Warsaw and spend time with Hela instead.

  “It’ll be good for you to have a rest back in Poland,” Dr. Curie says. But what he really means is that we both know I cannot take care of the children right now, that it is not good for them to see me like this, tired and listless and ill and drowning in grief. And it is not that I don’t love them, or don’t provide for them, but it is that I do not have the strength within my being to both grieve and be their mother.

  “I’ll write them letters,” I tell Dr. Curie.

  “I know,” he says, offering me an acceptance, a condolence, in the form of a fatherly hug.

  HELA’S HOUSE IN WARSAW IS SMALLER THAN I REMEMBER IN the years since I’ve seen it last. I estimate it at only a third of the size of our new unremarkable home in Sceaux. But she welcomes me to into it with the warmest hug and kisses on my cheeks, and an apology for not being able to make it to Paris in time for Pierre’s funeral.

  “Please,” I beg of her. “Don’t say his name.” I close my eyes, bite back tears. I cannot bear to hear his name out loud, or even to speak it myself.

  “Of course, I’m so sorry,” she says, pulling me tighter in her hug.

  “It’s not your fault,” I say, holding on to my sister-twin so fiercely, reveling in the way she still smells of lemons and corn poppies, as she always has. My entire world has grown and then imploded, and here is Hela, in Warsaw, exactly the same.

  She offers me her daughter Hanna’s bedroom for my stay, and Hanna stays in her parents’ room. I unpack my valise, happy for the quiet here, for this space of my own. Happy that my children are half a continent away enjoying the summer in Saint-Rémy with their grand-père, and that I am not dragging them under with my grief.

  Hela and Stan do not have much money, nor great acclaim in their work. Hela runs a small girls’ school in Warsaw, and her husband, Stan, is a photographer. Their life is simple compared to mine in Paris. But in the evenings, at the dinner table, Stan reaches for Hela’s hand, or catches her eye in a smile, and watching the way they love each other, so quietly, it almost tears me apart with wanting, jealousy.

  I BEGIN TAKING VERY LONG WALKS EACH MORNING TO CLEAR my head, to try and satiate my sadness with fresh air and with exercise. I walk all around Warsaw, to the corners of my youth: the girls’ gymnasium we all attended, and Papa’s old home, and the homes where I attended Flying University classes with Bronia, which ignited in me that hunger for more, for a real university. I walk along the banks of the Vistula, as Bronia and Hela and I did as girls. And then I find myself each day for lunch inside the little café where Bronia and I used to go and study for our Flying University classes.

  I order myself a czarna kawa. It is the color of night and nearly the consistency of mud, and it awakens my mind much more so than a Parisian coffee. I begin bringing my notebook along with me, and I start to think about work again. I jot down ideas for what I might say in my first lecture in November. What I might study when I return to my lab again. Coffee, and the thick summer air, and the ghosts of my youth remind me again how far I have come. How much I have left to do before I go. Even without Pierre. He would not want me to stop; he would never want me to stop.

  One afternoon, I am concentrating very hard on my notes, my coffee, and then out of nowhere, a man’s voice calls out: “Marya Sklodowska?”

  I don’t register at first that it is me he is speaking to. I have kept Sklodowska as part of my name, even since being married, so I am sometimes referred to as Madame Sklodowska Curie instead of Madame Curie. But no one, not even my sisters, has called me Marya in so many years. The sound of it shocks me now, and there is a moment of both dread and nostalgia, the memory of being so poor and desperate, so sad, so certain that my life would never take the path it has. And I think about what would I say to that girl now, if I could speak to her in this café. If I could tell her that she would someday have everything she ever dreamed and desired and more. And then, it would be pulled away from her, bloodied and trampled. And crushed. Just like that.

  “Marya Sklodowska? Is that you?” I look up, and a vaguely familiar man stands in front of me. He is tall and brown-eyed, with a round face and a beard shorter and grayer than Pierre’s was.

  “I’m not Marya,” I say. Marya was a poor, helpless Polish girl I have left behind forever.

  “Oh.” He casts his eyes down, disappointed. That look. I know that look. It is the same one he had on his face once when he came to me in Szczuki, when he turned me away and then he begged me for my forgiveness all at once. When he told me what his mother said, that I was penniless, that I would amount to nothing.

  “Kazimierz Zorawski?” I say, disbelieving the words even as they escape my lips. He looks up again; he smiles. “I did not recognize you at first. No one has called me Marya in so long. I’ve been going by Marie for years.”

  “Ah yes,” he says. “Marie Curie, world-famous scientist, winner of the 1903 Nobel Prize in physics.” He speaks quickly, confidently, in a way that tells me he believes he knows everything there is to know about me. That he has followed my career.

  I smile, remembering that once his mother believed him to be much too good for me, and how much that hurt me at the time. And now I try to remember the last time I have even thought of him. Not for so many years, since Hela sent me the newspaper clipping about his marriage to that pianist. Her name escapes me now. “How have you been, Kazimierz?” I ask, to show him I have not done the same. I have not followed after him.

  “I’ve been well,” he says. “I’ve recently been named the dean of faculty
at Jagiellonian in Krakow. We’re back in Warsaw for the summer visiting my mother, who has been ill.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I murmur. All these many years later, I cannot bring myself to muster ill will for Pani Zorawska, who was perhaps only acting out of a simplistic protective instinct. Besides, she was very wrong about me, and that in itself is satisfying enough.

  “Leokadia and I have three children.” Kazimierz is still talking.

  Leokadia, yes, that was her name. I remember again the clipping Hela had sent, that I had placed away in a textbook, so long ago. “And your wife . . . she is a pianist?”

  He laughs. “Once, she played, yes. But now the children keep her very busy. She doesn’t have time for piano any longer.”

  I feel a sudden sadness for her, this woman, Leokadia, this wife of Kazimierz’s who I’ve never met. It is hard for me to understand a life where having children would force a woman to give up on her own work. “She can’t do both?” I say, frowning. “Be a mother and a pianist?”

  “She loves being a mother, looking after the children.” He shrugs. “And I make a good living.”

  I nod and think about that morning so long ago at the train station, the last time I saw Kazimierz. What if I had not gotten on that train, but stayed here, married him instead? Would Leokadia’s life be my life? I love my children, but I cannot imagine a life without my work. I cannot imagine who I would’ve become without it.

  “You have children,” Kazimierz says, more a statement than a question.

  “Two daughters,” I say. “Irène is almost nine and Ève is almost two. And I’ll be starting as a full professor at the Sorbonne in the fall, and of course I have my work in the lab, too.”

  Kazimierz nods. Somehow he already knows this also. But my life has been detailed in the press for the past few years. Maybe it would not be so hard to keep up with me. “I was very sorry to hear about Pierre’s accident,” he says softly. At the mention of Pierre’s name, I quickly look away from him.

  “Please don’t say his name,” I say. It is warm inside the café; I’m sweating. I stand up quickly, too quickly, and my coffee begins to tip. Kazimierz and I both reach for it. He catches it just in time, and then catches onto my elbows.

  “I’m so very sorry,” he says softly. He holds onto my elbows for a moment, his eyes wide with sympathy, or maybe it is regret. I remember that he is a good man, a kind man. I am happy for him that his life has turned out well, that he has love and a family. But none of that belongs to me.

  I gently pull out of his grasp. “I should get going,” I say. “My sister will worry.”

  He nods, but keeps his eyes on my face for another moment. “It was so good to see you again, Marya.”

  “You too,” I say. The air in here is stifling; being this close to him is stifling. I gather up my notebook and quickly walk out of the café, not turning back to see if he’s still watching me.

  Though somehow, I know he is. I can feel his eyes on my back.

  ON THE LONG WALK BACK TO HELA’S, I THINK ABOUT KAZIMIERZ and his three children, his wife who gave up her work to look after them. His mother, who lies in bed somewhere in Warsaw, dying. His prestigious job as the dean of Jagiellonian in Krakow. None of that belongs to me, but it could have.

  What if I had not stepped on that train, but instead, stayed behind in Poland with him so many years ago? If I had married him, become a mother to his children, and given up on my own education altogether, I would not have my work now.

  But then Pierre and I never would have met at the Kowalskis that night so long ago. We never would’ve shared a lab, fallen in love, gotten married. We never would’ve won a Nobel Prize. And Pierre never would have been walking in the rain on his way back from a science academy luncheon on April 19th.

  What if I hadn’t stepped on that train, but had turned around, chosen Kazimierz instead?

  Then, right now, Pierre would still be in Paris somewhere, very much alive.

  Marya

  Poland, 1907

  I quickly forgot about my wayward fantasy of staying in Paris, as Pierre had suggested that lazy afternoon in the park. Because two momentous things happened to us in Poland in the beginning of 1907.

  The first was that mine and Agata’s school grew large enough so that we suddenly needed not just one room to hold classes, but three. And we had enough tuition money, enough regular students now, that we rented what had once been a girls’ gymnasium on Aleja Wróbli. We liked it both for its size and the symbolic nature of the street name. Our Flying University was now housed out in the open, on an avenue named for sparrows.

  We hung a large sign out front, designed by our art students, that proclaimed us to be the Women’s University of Loksow. No longer hiding, no longer flying. In addition to my administrative duties that I carried out during the day with Agata, I also taught three courses, three nights a week: beginning chemistry and physics, and a new course this term, advanced physics, as we now had girls who’d been with us long enough to want more advanced knowledge.

  The second thing that happened was Kaz finally finished writing up his and Hipolit’s research. His paper was accepted for publication by the Polish Academy of Mathematics in March: The Theory of Elasticity. It was a very momentous and exciting moment in the mathematics field. As Hipolit was no longer alive, all the acclaim and accolades for the work fell squarely on Kazimierz. He received encouraging letters from as far away as America! And in May he was offered a guest lecture position at the University of Vienna to begin in the fall. It was a well-paying appointment, five times what Kaz would be paid in a year to teach at the boys’ school here. As it would only be a one-year appointment, we decided it made the most sense for Klara and me to stay behind in Loksow, without him.

  “For now,” Kaz said, with a hopeful note to his voice, like he thought his appointment could be extended, and that I would be more than happy to join him. But what would I want from Austria? Poland was my home. Poland had always been my home. Now that my school was out in the open and thriving, I would not want to leave it.

  “Maybe if this goes well,” I told him. “You will get a good job back here?”

  “Maybe, kochanie.” He kissed the top of my head. “Finally the entire world might be opened to us. Just the way we always dreamed.”

  I thought about the sign we had recently erected on Aleja Wróbli, and it was not the world I wanted any longer. It was Poland, it was my own country. My own burgeoning part of it.

  WE PLANNED TO GO TO ZAKOPANE FOR THE WHOLE MONTH OF July to stay with Bronia and Kazimierz, Lou and Jakub, and to spend some family time all together before Kaz left for Austria. Agata and I put our school on summer break, just like the male universities, and I was so excited for this trip. My hands shook with glee as I packed for the three of us. It was the first vacation we had ever taken together, the first vacation Kaz and I had taken since that disastrous one with his family nearly ten years earlier.

  Pani Zorawska was reportedly back in Warsaw these days and had taken ill. Kaz received monthly letters from his brother Stan, but he had not gone to seen his mother, not since that time many years earlier when she had offered to pay me to leave him. I still sometimes thought about that, even now. If I had taken her up on her offer, my life might have been completely different. But by the summer of 1907, I no longer desired a different life. The years had softened the blow of Kaz’s betrayal, and since I had Klara, I could not imagine any sort of life that would be good for me, without her.

  ON THE TRAIN RIDE TO ZAKOPANE, KAZ SEEMED MORE RELAXED than I had seen him in so long, the features of his face softened. He had grown a beard in these last years, and it had gone half gray in the time he’d been working on compiling his research. There were wrinkles around his eyes that I couldn’t remember being there, even last year at this time, around when I returned from Paris. And I put my hand to my own face, wondering if age had shown up the same way on me. If it did, did Kaz notice? Age looked handsome on him though, and si
tting there with him, I remembered again how much I’d always desired him.

  After a little while on the train, he put his arm around me, and I relaxed, too, and did something I hadn’t in so long: I leaned in to him. I put my head on his shoulder and closed my eyes, enjoying the warmth of his body so close to mine, allowing myself to be lulled almost to sleep by the rocking of the train, the beating of his heart.

  “Klara,” I heard Kaz say, but I didn’t open my eyes. “I heard your cousin Lou is going to teach you to climb mountains this summer and Jakub is going to teach you to swim.” Bronia had written as much in a letter to me, which I had shared with Kaz. Our niece Lou was now almost fifteen and had taken up mountain climbing as her greatest hobby and passion, much to Bronia’s chagrin, wishing for her to be more interested in science instead. And Jakub, now eleven, planned to spend his summer like a fish in the lake.

  I heard Klara’s beautiful giggle, resonating against the commotion of the train. “Mama, I’m too small to climb mountains, aren’t I?”

  I opened my eyes. She stared at me wide-eyed, serious. I smiled at her. “No, mój mały kurczak. You are not too small. You can do anything you want to do, you know. Anything you put your mind to. I am sure of it.”

  ZAKOPANE WAS BEAUTIFUL AND LUSH, GREEN AND SWEEPING, surrounded on all sides by the great green and brown hills of the Tatras. Bronia and her Kazimierz lived in a very large house on the rolling pasture behind their sanatorium. They had access to hiking and swimming, and though it seemed like a rare piece of paradise, Bronia spoke of how they hoped soon Warsaw would be free again, and they could move back there without her Kazimierz being in danger of arrest for the pro-Polish activities he’d taken part in as a young man.

  I did not understand why anyone would choose the bustle and dirtiness of the city over the light and the peace here in Zakopane. “It must be like you are on vacation all year long,” I exclaimed to Bronia, looking out the back window of her house, a wide view of the Tatras in the near distance, close enough that it almost felt I could reach my hand out and touch the mountains.