Half Life

by Jillian Cantor

  When she walked out on stage, she was stunning, as always. She wore a shiny red dress, her blond curls swept back away from her face in a perfectly sculpted chignon. She sat down to play, and, after hearing Klara practice oh-so-many hours, I understood now just how divine, how precise and passionate Leokadia’s piano playing really was.

  “She’s so famous, Mama,” Klara said, her eyes wide, as we walked backstage to meet her for dinner after the concert. “That is going to be me up on that stage one day.”

  “You desire fame, chicken?” It was a hard thing for me to understand. I had my entire life craved learning, perfection, but I shied away from attention.

  She shook her head. “No, Mama. I mean I want to play piano the way she plays. I want to be the best.”

  I smiled at her and kissed the top of her head. She was my daughter, after all, wasn’t she?

  Then Leokadia walked out, her face red and glowing, a sheen of perspiration across her petite forehead, and somehow her hair was still wrapped up inside that perfect chignon, not even one strand out of place.

  “Moi kochani!” she exclaimed when she saw us, wrapping us both up in a hug. She stood back, stooped down a little to be eye to eye with Klara. “Oh, let me look at you, my little pianist friend.” Klara beamed from the attention. “You have gotten so tall. So beautiful, just like your mama, huh?”

  “Hi, Kadi,” I said softly. She stood, smiled slowly at me, wrapped me again in another hug.

  “Papa wanted to come,” Klara blurted out, God knows why. “But he’s at a conference in Brussels.” There was no way Kaz would’ve come here with us, even if he were home.

  Kadi averted her gaze and changed the subject by asking Klara what pieces she was studying now at Chernikoff. Then she told us to follow her to her hotel, where she had preordered us a dinner feast.

  She was staying at a beautiful brick hotel on the Wisla river, and she had a huge suite there, complete with her own piano and a beautifully displayed fish dinner laid out on a dining table. The magnitude of her success did not quite hit me until that very moment, when we stepped inside her lavish suite. It was one thing to read it in the liner notes, and quite another to see the way she lived, to taste it.

  FULL AND HAPPY AND EXHAUSTED, KLARA LAY DOWN ON Leokadia’s parlor couch, closed her eyes, and fell asleep after we ate supper. And then Kadi poured two glasses of wine and told me to follow her out to her balcony so we could talk.

  “I really should get Klara home,” I protested. “It’s late.” But it was an idle protest. Kadi handed me the wine, and I took it. Klara had a few days off school for the holiday, and Kaz was in Brussels. There was nothing for the two of us to rush home for.

  “How have you been, Marya?” she asked me, sipping her wine as she sat in a chair on the balcony. I sat down next to her. “Krakow seems to agree with you.”

  “Does it?” I said, taking my own sip of wine. It was a dry wine, dryer than I’d been expecting, and I puckered my lips as I swallowed. “I suppose it does. I’ve been working as a research assistant in a lab at the university. Working on combustion. Each day is explosive. Quite literally.” I laughed at my own joke, and Leokadia smiled.

  “And you are teaching still, like you were in Loksow?”

  I shook my head. “No, but I’m learning so much now. I will teach again one day, and then I’ll have more knowledge to give my students.”

  “Wonderful,” she murmured. “Wonderful, wonderful. You were always the smartest one of all us, Marya.”

  I laughed a little, uneasy, thinking about how stupid I’d been when she had betrayed me once, and I had just let it happen, right before my very eyes. How Kaz was drawn to her because of her passion, because of her drive for her career, and how I had given up on that in my own life, once, all to be with him. “Well,” I finally said. “Look at you. World-famous pianist.”

  “Hmmm.” She frowned, took another sip of her wine, and stared out across the night sky, the river, and then, the heart of Krakow sparkling in front of us.

  “Are you not happy?” I asked her. “You have everything you ever wanted.”

  “What is happiness, really?” she said. “You can love your work or you can love your family, but it is impossible as a woman to have both, to have it all, isn’t it?” I thought about how Professor Mazur promised me you could have both work and family, but I wasn’t so sure. As her assistant, I left the lab when it was time to pick Klara up each afternoon, but she would often work through dinner; sometimes, she would tell me, until almost midnight. How did her daughters feel, without their mother at home at night? “I have had great success in my work,” Leokadia was saying now. “But it is lonely sometimes. This great big room, it can be very, very lonely.”

  “Still . . . you have sold more records than any Polish woman in history,” I said, repeating what I’d read in the liner notes on the program.

  “Any European woman,” she corrected me gently. “Not just Poland.” Then she grimaced a little. “But record sales cannot hold your hand or kiss you goodnight, can they?”

  “No,” I said, finishing off the last drop of my wine. “I suppose they can’t.”

  TWO MONTHS LATER, IN THE SUMMER QUIET OF ZAKOPANE, I felt restless. I had the whole summer ahead with Klara and my sisters and my nieces and nephew. But I thought about what Leokadia had said: that you could have your work, or you could have your family, but you could not have both. I missed the burnt smell of Professor Mazur’s lab, missed having my hands and my mind busy with combustion all day long. Kaz had stayed behind in Krakow this summer to work, and so had Professor Mazur—she had sent her own daughters off to Berlin to stay with their grandparents, and she planned to continue in the lab. She’d asked if I’d wanted to stay this summer too, but I had chosen Zakopane, Klara, my family.

  I was grateful for the sun-kissed air, and the feel of Klara’s warm red skin lying close to me in bed each evening. In the dark we would whisper our favorite parts of our summer days. Mine was always the time I spent with Klara each morning after breakfast, trying to catch her up on her maths and science studies. Hers were the hours she got to swim in the lake with her cousin Jakub. At fifteen now, Jakub was tall, looking startlingly like Papa, and I knew it was good for Klara to play with her cousin in the fresh air, so after the first weeks, when she begged me to skip her maths and science lessons in favor of time outdoors, I acquiesced.

  Then I read all the latest research on flame theory that Professor Mazur had given me before I left, the paper Henri Becquerel had published on his findings about becquerelium that Pierre had sent to me, somewhat in despair that he himself had not been able to publish it first.

  It felt silly but I wished I had a bicycle again; I needed exertion and exhaustion to clear my mind and my heart. When Lou arrived from Paris with Hela, Jacques, Marie, and Pierre, I asked her to take me hiking, thinking perhaps I could climb my way out of this strange empty feeling that had settled in my stomach.

  “Aunt Marya.” She laughed. “I don’t hike anymore. I need to study to get ahead for my courses next term.” After falling in love with biology at my school in Loksow, Lou was now studying to become a doctor in Paris. “And I promised Klara and Jakub I would teach them how to dissect the dead frogs they found yesterday,” she said.

  Bronia smiled, nodded her head approvingly, and I could not argue with the fact that she was about to inject some love of science into Klara’s summer, even if it would be taking the shape of dead frogs.

  “I will hike with you,” Pierre offered. He walked in from the kitchen, where he had been eating breakfast, and I hadn’t realized he’d even been listening to our conversation.

  “Do you know the Carpathians well?” I asked, skeptical. Yes, my body longed to climb and ache and soar. But I did not want to die in the mountains either.

  He pulled out his pocket watch to show me that it also had a compass. “I enjoy exploring, and we won’t go too far,” he said. “Anyone else want to come?” he offered to Bronia, Hela, Jac
ques, but no one else took him up on it.

  “TELL ME,” PIERRE SAID, BREATHING HARD AS WE BEGAN TO climb. We had not gotten too far, but already Bronia’s home and sanatorium looked like toys in the distance below us. “Where is your husband this summer?”

  “He has too much work to do, back in Krakow,” I said. I felt a strange sort of jealousy that, as a man, Kaz could simply stay behind, allow his work the utmost importance in his life and be revered for it. But also, I felt sorry for him. He was missing these beautiful light-filled days with our family, missing watching our daughter swim and play with her cousins, and dissect frogs. And this—Pierre and I reached the top of the peak, and we were both breathing so hard that we had to stop talking, catch our breath, inhale this view. I stood at the edge, looked out at the great lustrous verdant valley below us.

  Pierre walked up next to me, looked out, too. “I have felt very lost this past year, Marya,” he admitted. “I had a séance to talk to my father again, to ask him what I am supposed to do.” Hela had written me when her father-in-law passed away last year, and I know that Pierre now occupied that great big house in Sceaux all by himself. I thought about Leokadia, complaining about large empty lonely rooms. But at least she had her record sales. For Pierre, those empty rooms must only compound the failures he also had felt with his work these past years.

  But I didn’t know anything about a séance, nor did I believe in anything like that. “And was this . . . séance successful?” I asked him, humoring him.

  Pierre shrugged. “He wants me to marry, to have a child still.” I bit my lip. From what I knew of Dr. Curie, he would’ve made that fairly clear while he was still alive. “I am fifty-two years old.” Pierre was still talking. “I have become an old man. But how can that be? I still feel like a young man. And I don’t know that I will ever find my place in this world. Perhaps it is too late for me.”

  He had climbed this mountain with a fierceness I’d had trouble keeping up with. His beard was grayer than it once was perhaps, but nothing about him seemed old. He was vibrant, brimming with vigor.

  “It is not too late for you,” I reassured him. “It is only too late when you are dead. And you’re standing here with me, very much alive, Pierre.”

  He reached out his hand for mine. I took it, held on to him. His skin was warm; his grip firm. And we stood there for just a little while before we turned to climb back down, holding on to each other, feeling, both of us, on top of the world.

  Marie

  Brussels & Paris, 1911

  I have not seen Paul in months when I leave for Brussels for the Solvay Conference in the beginning of November. I am quite excited about the conference: physicists from all around Europe will convene and present our latest work. But Paul and Jean and I are to ride the train together, and as I get onto the train, I feel a nervous sort of anticipation building in my stomach at the thought of being close to Paul again.

  Paul wrote me exactly one letter this summer when I was in Poland visiting Bronia. He and Jeanne had a terrible fight. She threw a plate at his head, and he left early with their two oldest boys for a vacation in Brittany. Then, she tried to file an abandonment claim, despite the fact he had planned the trip with the boys for months in advance.

  Now, when I first see him again as he boards the train to Brussels after me, I notice how tired he looks. How he seems to have aged years since last spring when he begged me for five thousand francs in the street in front of my lab. I put my hand to my cheek, wondering if the same has happened to me. I stare at him, but he turns away, refusing to meet my eyes, and he sits as far away from me as he can, at the back of the train.

  I keep glancing up from my reading on the journey to see what he is doing, but never once does he look up, toward me. Jean Perrin has taken the seat next to me, and he’s chattering away about what he believes to be the highlights of the upcoming conference—he is quite looking forward to talking with Albert Einstein, whose recent paper on quantum theory he found quite exciting. And he continues talking even as we all arrive at the hotel together and check into our separate rooms, while Paul and I say nothing.

  It is only once I am in my own room, alone, in the quiet, that I close my eyes, lean against the door and allow myself a few tears. Paul and I are here, so close, and I want nothing more than to talk to him, to touch him. To hold on to him again.

  There is a gentle knock on my door; I feel the vibration of it against my back, and I jump. I open the door slowly, and there Paul stands on the other side, his face reflecting the same sadness, the same longing, that I feel.

  He walks into my room, quickly shuts the door behind him. And we are holding on to each other so fast, so tightly. I cling to the familiar feel of his tall body, the clover smell of his pipe on his neck. “Ma lumière rayonnante,” he whispers into my hair. “I have missed you so.”

  We go to my bed, and we lie down together. But we keep our clothes on. We simply lie there, holding on to each other, staring at each other, whispering about our work, about the life we still long to have together. Next week it is my birthday—I will turn forty-four, and he says by the time I am forty-five we will figure out a way to have our future.

  He promises me, kissing my face.

  THE WEEK IN BRUSSELS IS GLORIOUS. PAUL AND I TALK ABOUT physics with our peers during the days and spend our nights inside my room together. There is nothing but science, no one else but us.

  Paul stays an extra two days in Brussels for another meeting, and the morning Jean and I are to take the train back, Paul kisses me softly on the lips, one last kiss before I go.

  “I don’t want to leave you,” I say, clinging to him. “Can’t we just stay here like this forever?”

  “I promise you,” he says. “Bientôt.”

  But soon is an intangible promise, and I already feel it—the happiness we found together this week is a bubble. Delicate and ephemeral and about to burst.

  I hold on to him for just another moment, then take my valise and walk to the door. Before leaving, I turn back again, look at him one last time, my stomach feeling uneasy. I’m not sure now if the ache I’m feeling is desire or dread. Or hope.

  WHEN JEAN AND I ARRIVE BACK IN PARIS, WE ARE GREETED BY a strange storm of press at the train station. They are shouting at me as we step off the train: “Madame Curie! Madame Curie!”

  “No one cares this much about Solvay,” Jean says to me, puzzled.

  “Madame Curie!” they shout. “When did the love affair begin? Is it true, you and Monsieur Langevin tried to run away together?”

  At the sound of Paul’s name I grow suddenly cold and then begin to sweat. “What is going on?” I whisper to Jean, who shrugs in confusion.

  We keep on walking, pushing our way through the crowd without saying a word to the press. I push forward, my heart thrumming too fast in my chest. My stomachache deepens. And then I see it: a stack of papers on the newsstand outside the station. I am the front-page headline. We are the front-page headline, Paul and I.

  A Story of Love: Madame Curie and Professor Langevin.

  And then another: A Romance in a Laboratory: The Affair of Mme. Curie and M. Langevin.

  I buy copies to read before Jean manages to get us in a carriage. And inside, once I am sitting, the shouting of the press muted, I read through the articles, my hands shaking. Not only has Jeanne told the papers about me and Paul, but she has shown them all our letters. And then she lied and said we had both run off together this past week, our whereabouts unknown.

  I can’t believe it. We had an agreement. I gave her five thousand francs. Then I think guiltily of the way I left Paul, just this morning, in Brussels with a kiss. But Jeanne had no way of knowing that. And we had been there to attend a conference with our peers; we were not running away together.

  I throw the papers down, my hands shaking. Jean picks them up and reads for himself; his face turns bloodless.

  “The entire department knows we were at Solvay for the conference,” I say. But my stomach
clenches, and suddenly I know I am going to be sick. “Stop the carriage,” I say. The driver doesn’t listen. “Stop the carriage,” I yell.

  We come to a sudden halt. I throw open the door, step out, and vomit right there. The little bit of breakfast I’d eaten in Brussels with Paul swims liquefied and putrid in the street.

  “We’ll set the press straight,” Jean says quietly, when I get back inside the carriage. “And everything will be fine.”

  BUT IT IS NOT FINE. I DO NOT KNOW IF IT WILL EVER BE FINE again.

  The press gather around my house in Sceaux, an angry mob demanding answers at all hours of the day and night. I try to ignore them; they throw stones at my windows. But I refuse to go out there, and we become trapped in our home like prisoners. I cannot leave; I cannot go to work.

  I type up a statement and mail it to the papers, explaining about the conference in Solvay, and how we were there with twenty other physicists who can account for both our whereabouts. But no one seems to care about that part. They continue to print terrible story after terrible story, crucifying me for carrying on an affair with a married man, for ruining Jeanne’s life and the lives of her children.

  I think of what Bronia said to me last summer, Who is the villain? All of France believes it to be me. I love Paul, and he is still technically married to Jeanne. But their marriage was over long before Paul and I got together. It’s not Jeanne’s life that is being ruined now, it’s mine. Every day, the papers print worse and worse things about me:

  She is not really a scientist at all.

  She clings to her dead husband’s fame, having done nothing in her own right.

  She is a hack and homewrecker.

  She was already rejected from the Academy, and rightly so. They will never accept her now!

  And what is it that they are really saying? Because I am woman who desires to be loved, I cannot also be a respected scientist? As a woman, you cannot win. You cannot have it all. The press will simply not allow it. And what of Paul? There is no mention of his scientific career being over in any paper.