Half Life

by Jillian Cantor

  IT FELT STRANGE WALKING BACK INTO LEOKADIA’S OLD HOME, Kaz’s old workspace, after all this time. The inside was exactly as I remembered, sprawling and filled with expensive-looking furniture and rugs, except now it was all covered in a fine coat of dust. Pani Jewniewicz had been dead only a week, but it seemed no one had cleaned her apartment in much longer than that. Her husband had gone years before her, her daughter all the way across Europe. I felt sad about the way she had died alone, her house oddly neglected, and I had the thought that no matter what else might happen in my life, I did not want it to end that way for me. I put one arm around Klara, one around Lou, and gave them each a half hug.

  “Come in.” Leokadia ushered us in to the back of the apartment, where the baby grand piano still sat in the same place it had years earlier when I’d watched her give lessons, taken a few lessons myself. It shone now, free of dust, and I imagined she had spent the morning cleaning it herself, though not a blond curl was out of place, nor was there a single wrinkle in her stunning blue velour dress.

  I introduced Lou, and Leokadia quickly grabbed a chair for her from the dining room. Then she patted the piano bench, and Klara hopped up on it. Leokadia sat next to her and showed both girls the notes, running her fingers delicately across the keys. I sat on the sofa and watched, remembering myself here as I had been so many years earlier, so much younger. When I was deeply and blindly in love with my husband, and when Klara was nothing but a dream, a wish, I did not believe would ever be real.

  I felt a strange sensation in the pit of my stomach, the memory of the beetroot stew that came back up in the street and the sting of deception that followed. And then, that desire of a young girl who wanted nothing more than to eventually make it to Paris. To study at the Sorbonne.

  “Marya.” Leokadia’s voice interrupted my thoughts, and I shook my head, trying to push away the past.

  I looked up and she stood before me. Lou and Klara both sat on the piano bench, together, and somehow they were already playing something that sounded pleasant, vaguely like the old Polish lullaby my mother used to sing us to sleep.

  “Klara has perfect pitch,” Leokadia said matter-of-factly.

  “Perfect pitch?” I raised my eyebrows not understanding. “What does that mean?”

  “That means your daughter is a musician,” Leokadia said. I laughed. No one in our family was drawn to music, or even art. We were scientists, mathematicians, physicians. “I’m quite serious,” Leokadia said. “You must start her on regular lessons now.”

  “But she’s not quite five,” I protested.

  “Marya,” Leokadia said seriously, “your daughter has a gift.”

  THERE WAS SOMETHING THAT RUBBED ME THE WRONG WAY about Leokadia telling me what I must do, insisting she understood something about my daughter that had been hidden and previously unknown to me for nearly five years. Lou hugged us goodbye to go off on her daily walking, then to class, and Klara and I walked alone back to Złota Street. I asked her, as we walked, how she felt about the piano.

  “It is the best thing I have ever touched, Mama. Do you think we could go back to Pani Kadi’s house again and again?” Her voice was small and soft, but filled with an odd sort of desperation, a wanting I’d never heard from her before. Klara was so easygoing, content to simply go along with me to class and listen or play quietly in the back. Content to stay with her cousin any time I asked. Content to eat her supper and go to bed, then wake up and get dressed in the morning. She had never asked me for anything.

  “Leokadia is only here for a short visit. She goes back to Berlin in a few days,” I reminded her.

  “Oh.” Klara cast her eyes downward, her entire face sinking with disappointment

  “But Pani Jankowska teaches piano at my school,” I said. “And perhaps I could talk to her about special lessons, just for you.”

  She stopped walking, her eyes widened, and she nodded quickly. In the fall she would be old enough to attend the girl’s gymnasium, but she had never had lessons in anything before, other than informal ones from me, working on basic reading and maths. It felt odd that I should start her formally on piano first, something I knew nothing, and cared very little, about. But her smile was so wide, and she grabbed my hand in excitement and began to skip toward home.

  I loved her with my entire being; I wanted to give her everything I could not have afforded as a child. Everything she ever wanted.

  KAZ RETURNED HOME FOR A FEW DAYS AROUND EASTER, HIS bag filled with Austrian chocolates for Klara, and for me, he brought a new copy of Physikalische Zeitschrift, one of the most respected physics journals in Europe, published quarterly in German. It might have been the nicest thing he ever gave me, and when he handed it to me I forgave him again for all the negative feelings our recent visit with Leokadia had reawakened in me. I stood on my toes, kissed him gently on the mouth. He tasted different than I remembered, like bitter coffee and a German tobacco he’d grown fond of in Austria.

  “Kochanie.” He held on to my shoulders. “These past few months have been too hard. I’ve missed you and Klara too much.”

  “We’ve missed you too,” I said, and it was true. Kaz and I had reconnected at Bronia’s last summer, and then having him gone this year had ignited a feeling of emptiness inside of me. It felt too quiet at the dinner table, too empty in our bed sleeping in it all alone. I missed having someone to share Klara’s daily pursuits with, and it wasn’t the same to write them down and send them in a letter. And then there was Klara herself, who was constantly counting the number of days until she could see her father again. But it was not something we could change. Kaz needed to be in Vienna for his career, and his salary was so good, there was a relief now in not worrying about having money for food and clothing and coal.

  “I have good news,” he said. “I’ve been offered a position for the fall in Krakow.”

  Krakow was closer than Vienna, certainly, but it was not Loksow. Or even Warsaw, which would make it possible for him to come home every weekend. I sighed. “So you will be away, still.”

  “No, kochanie, you will come with me!” There was a certainty in his voice. In his mind, this was already a foregone conclusion. So many years ago we had wished for Krakow together, for more freedom, more opportunity outside of the Russian Empire. But now Loksow was my home. My life was here. My work was here. My school was here.

  “I can’t just leave my university,” I said.

  Kaz frowned. “But you could teach in Krakow, or take classes there. Whatever you want.”

  “I want to stay here,” I said, though even as the words came out, I realized I sounded petulant and stubborn, like a child.

  “Think about Klara,” Kaz said. “She will get a better education in Krakow than in Loksow. So many more opportunities for her.”

  I opened my mouth, but did not say anything in response. Kaz wasn’t wrong. Krakow was a bustling, cosmopolitan city, vibrant, cultural, and modern, and unoppressed by Russian rule. It was where we should’ve lived all along, if Kaz’s parents hadn’t disowned him after our marriage and he had been able to continue his education then.

  In Loksow, we had a very nice two-bedroom apartment, but when we opened the windows and the wind blew just right, it smelled as though the red-and-white smokestacks that hovered at the edge of the city were in our very backyard. And the girls’ gymnasium in Loksow would provide nothing but the most basic of educations for Klara.

  And still, I pressed my lips tightly together. My school. Agata and I had worked so hard, so many years. I could not just move away, leave it. Just like that.

  “Kochanie.” Kaz kissed my forehead softly. “I will finally be able to give you everything you want, everything you desire. You just have to let me.”

  I did not want Kaz to give me everything; I wanted to take everything I wanted for myself. And perhaps if it hadn’t been for Klara, I would’ve told him that. I would’ve pulled away from his embrace, planted my feet firmly on the floor and refused to move from Loksow and e
verything I had built here.

  But when I looked up, Klara stood in the doorway, watching us intently, hanging on our every word to each other.

  Marie

  France, 1908–1909

  We rent a place near the beach in the Normandy region of France for the summer of 1908, my family and the Langevins all staying together in one large house. It is perfect for Ève and Irène—Paul and Jeanne Langevin have four children now, so my girls have built-in summer playmates. And also, they have me for continued lessons in science and Paul for continued lessons in mathematics. Our collective school takes no breaks; learning is a year-round endeavor, after all.

  I like Arromanches simply for the fact that it is not Saint-Rémy or Brittany. There are no old memories here, haunting me. Jeanne is just glad to be out of the city. And Dr. Curie enjoys the mornings by the water, the sea air. Good for the lungs, he tells me, and we both pretend not to notice the reoccurring bronchial spasm that has begun to rattle his chest at alarming intervals.

  All six children love the sand and the water, and we send them outside to go and play and come back to us for supper, then lessons. They return dirty and exhausted and starving for a feast Dr. Curie prepares. During the days I catch up on my reading, and I write notes in my journal. My body is away from my lab; my mind never leaves it.

  It is only Paul who seems unhappy here. He will disappear for the afternoon, and whenever I go to look for him to let him know supper is ready, I find him sitting alone in an empty corner of the beach, gazing off into the water with a steady frown on his face.

  “Are you feeling ill?” I ask him one afternoon in early June. I put the back of my hand to his forehead, but his body temperature feels normal. I sit down next to him on the beach, gaze off into the water, but it is infinite and boring. I don’t understand what he’s doing out here.

  He turns away from the water and offers me a wan smile. “I just need a break sometimes. You know how that is, Marie?”

  “From work?” I ask him, not knowing how that is at all. Whenever I try to take time away from my work, I feel lost. Work is what nourishes me, keeps me alive.

  He shakes his head. “It’s just . . . do you ever feel that everything around you is crushing you? So much so that it is impossible to breathe.”

  It is strange the way he describes a feeling I’ve known well my whole life: when Mama died, when Kazimierz left me, and most recently when I lost my Pierre. “The dark fog,” I say, resting my hand gently on his arm. “The heaviness.”

  He turns his eyes back to the water, but he moves his hand up to hold on to mine. “When I lose myself in the expanse of the sea,” he says softly. “I can remember how to breathe again.”

  SINCE WE HAD LIVED NEXT TO THE LANGEVINS ON BOULEVARD Kellerman for years, I count both Paul and Jeanne among my before and after friends, along with the Perrins (who have decided to spend the summer in Brittany with family this summer, instead of with us). The Langevins were a part of my other, married life, and they have remarkably stayed my friends through the endless black tunnel of my grief and our move to Sceaux. It is both wonderful and terrible to have friends who have known you in both your best and darkest times.

  Jeanne acts as though nothing has happened, nothing is different here in Arromanches than it ever was back on boulevard Kellerman when Pierre was alive. I find that to be her most remarkable quality; the way she just simply ignores my loss and the changes in my life. And mostly that is why I make a point to eat breakfast with her each and every morning during the month of June. We sip coffee, and Jeanne talks about herself, about her own marriage. “Paul is horrible to me,” she confides one morning, about a week after Paul told me of his darkness on the beach. Jeanne’s favorite topic of conversation is, and always has been, her marriage.

  I sip my coffee, and nod and murmur softly. My friendship with Paul has always relied upon my balancing and ignoring Jeanne’s badmouthing of him with what I know and see to be true with my own eyes. I have watched him teaching maths to our children these last months: He is soft-spoken, so unbelievably patient and kind, even with their painstakingly elementary grasp on the subject matter. And then I think about how lost he’s been looking when I find him on the beach, the sweet sad sound of his voice when he told me how it is impossible for him to breathe. I can’t imagine him intending to be horrible to anyone. But I have the feeling if I were to tell Jeanne all this, she would get angry with me. And it is nice to have a friend, another woman around me, for once. So I say nothing at all on the subject. I simply nod.

  “He has a mean streak, you know,” she tells me now, pouring thick cream into her cup, turning her coffee an unpalatable shade of tan. “He purposefully denies me money, Marie. Money I need to care for his children.”

  “If you ever need money,” I say to her. “I could lend you some money.”

  “Oh no.” She pushes my offer away with a flick of her wrist, then takes another sip of her coffee. “I’m not asking you for money. I’m just telling you, one woman to another, how hard it is for me. You understand?”

  I nod, but the truth is, I don’t understand at all. I have made my own money, relied on my own self, since I first left my home and moved to Paris so many years ago. I want to tell Jeanne, if she thinks her life is hard, she should imagine what it is like to grow up under Russian rule in Poland, to be so poor as a student in Paris that you faint from hunger. That she should imagine what it is like to fall in love and finally, finally, have everything, and then have your husband be crushed by a horse in the street.

  But I don’t say any of that to her, and Jeanne is already on to another topic, looking out the window, commenting on the clouds rolling in over the water. “I think it’s going to storm tonight,” she says.

  I sip my coffee and look outside. The clouds are high and thin, nonthreatening. “I wouldn’t worry,” I say. “It doesn’t look like anything serious.”

  IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT I AWAKE TO A LOUD CRASH above me. I remember what Jeanne said about a storm, and wonder if she was right after all, if the noise that awoke me was thunder. But the clouds had floated back out to sea in the afternoon as I’d suspected; the night sky had been black and starlit.

  Above me now, I hear Jeanne’s voice, saying words I can’t quite make out. But her tone sounds frightened, or is it angry? What was that noise? My heart pounds furiously, and I get out of bed, find my robe. The Langevins have taken the upstairs bedrooms, the Curies downstairs. I tiptoe around downstairs, but Irène and Ève and Dr. Curie are all soundly asleep.

  The entire house feels quiet and still, and I return to my room. Perhaps I dreamed the disturbance. But no matter now; I am wide awake.

  I light a lamp and check Pierre’s pocket watch, the last relic I have allowed myself to save of his, to keep with me always. It is nearly five in the morning, and I suppose there is no use going back to sleep. I take my notebook and quietly tiptoe down the hall and out onto the back porch. I will work by lamplight, then catch the sunrise across the water and enjoy the quiet until the children wake after the first light.

  I am out here for only a few moments, when the door opens again, and I jump. Paul walks out, his head half-covered in a towel. I lift my lamp so I can get a better view. There is what appears to be blood running down his cheek, from just above his right eye.

  “Paul!” I gasp. “Whatever happened to you?” The loud noise . . . Jeanne’s voice. But I can’t reconcile any of this with the blood on Paul’s face.

  “Jeanne got angry with me,” he says softly, his voice resigned. Then he attempts a half smile. “The vase fared much worse than I did, I assure you.”

  I stand and go closer, holding the lamp to his forehead to examine the wound. I remove the towel gently—pieces of glass are stuck in his hair, and I pluck them out gingerly one by one with my fingers, then look at his wound again. “I have a needle and thread in my room. I can go get it, stitch this for you,” I say.

  “No.” He gently moves my hand away, clasps my fingers i
n his own. I give his hand a small squeeze, before letting go. He reaches up to touch his wound, then winces. It’s tender. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Paul, you’re bleeding.”

  “It’s a superficial cut,” he insists. “I’m telling you, I’ll be fine.”

  He sighs and sits down on a chair beside me. He presses the towel to his wound until the bleeding seems to stop. I want to ask why Jeanne got so angry, and how exactly a vase came into contact with his forehead. And is she the reason for his crushing darkness, his need for afternoons alone gazing at the water? But I bite my tongue. Jeanne is my friend. Paul is my coworker, and also my friend. I shouldn’t get in the middle of whatever is happening with them.

  “What are you working on?” Paul asks, changing the subject, pointing to my journal.

  “Polonium,” I say, sighing. “So much work has been done with radium these last years. Good work. I, myself, have focused on it. But I named polonium after my homeland, and everyone’s forgotten about it since. I’m dreaming up a study now to determine its alpha decay.”

  “That’s what I always admire about you,” he says quietly. “You don’t ever give up, do you, Marie?”

  “I suppose I don’t. Or I . . . can’t.” The most important thing I have now is my work, and I can’t imagine any sort of meaningful life without it.

  “When Pierre died . . .” Paul starts, and then his voice trails off. Perhaps he remembers the way I got so upset when people spoke Pierre’s name, shortly after he died.

  Now that time has passed, I want to hear his name again, want to talk about him, remember that he was real and alive and beautiful and brilliant. And mine. But no one talks about him much anymore. “It’s all right,” I say gently. “You can say it, Paul. Please.”

  “When Pierre died,” he begins again, his voice soft, wistful, “I just really admired your strength, that’s all. There you were, all alone with two young girls, and you could’ve taken a widow’s pension from the university and lived quite comfortably. But instead you took Pierre’s job. You made it your own. You made the work your own. You’re brave and amazing, Marie.”