Half Life

by Jillian Cantor

  “Shhh.” I held her body tighter against mine. “It was only a bad dream, chicken. Mama is here. She’s not going anywhere.”

  “Papa is here too.” I had not heard Kaz come in, but I looked up at the sound of his voice, and he stood in the doorway. I wondered how long he’d been standing there, listening.

  He walked over to the bed, leaned in and kissed Klara gently on the forehead. Then he leaned across her and kissed my forehead too. His lips were cold, and he smelled like pipe smoke, the German tobacco he loved.

  “There is room for me?” he asked. His voice rose and broke, a question.

  Klara rolled in closer to me, and there was room. I patted the empty space with my hand, and Kaz took off his shoes, got into bed with us. After only a few minutes, Klara snored softly, back to sleep. “I did not know if you would ever come back to me either,” Kaz whispered into the darkness, a confession. He reached his hand across Klara for mine, grabbed my fingers and squeezed softly.

  “I chose you,” I said squeezing his hand, after a few moments. “I will always come back.”

  Marie

  Paris, 1912–1914

  Paul becomes a never-ending ache in my stomach, and after I return from Sweden it hurts worse and worse, and then one afternoon at the Sorbonne, I feel myself falling down, the ground collapsing beneath my feet. I’m unable to bear the pain any longer, unable to stand.

  “We have to get her to the hospital,” I hear one of my students say. His voice cuts through a fog, a haze of pain.

  And then, I am being carried, falling in and out of light and darkness. Jeanne will not have to kill me; the press will not have to crucify me. Here I am, dying, all on my own.

  Paul is far away and blurry, out of my reach. I imagine him again, that snowy night in my lab when he came to me, held on to me, promised me, just this once. One time.

  If I could go back to that moment now, I would pull away, say no. There is no man worth this pain, worth my career. Worth my life. If I could go back again, I would not choose him. I would choose myself.

  BUT PAUL IS NOT THE TRUE CAUSE OF MY ACHE; THERE IS A scientific reason behind it. At the hospital, I am diagnosed with severe kidney problems, caused by lesions on my uterus. In the spring of 1912, I require surgery to remove the lesions.

  It is meant to make me feel better. But instead, after the surgery, I feel profoundly worse. I am in so much pain, I can barely move. I lie in my bed, unable to work, unable to move or see the children. If I were to believe in any sort of penance, any sort of punishment for all those wonderful afternoons with Paul, then maybe this is it?

  I spend weeks in bed, trying to organize my affairs. I write to Jacques in Montpellier and beg of him to see that all the radium I have in my possession stays safe if I die.

  He writes back, saying that he will always help me with anything I want, of course. He will always be my brother. The girls’ uncle.

  But you are not dying, Marie, he writes. You are much too young to die.

  THE TRUTH IS, IN THE SPRING OF 1912, I AM FORTY-FOUR. THIS is two years older already than my mother was when she died. Only two years younger than Pierre was when he died. Over six times the age of Bronia’s Jakub, and five of my sister Zosia.

  I have won two Nobel prizes, had so much success in my work. But I am empty and alone, and, even if I get well, I’m unsure I’ll ever be able to work again. The papers still report terrible things about me. One even reports that I am pregnant with Paul’s child, and that is why I have been out of view for so long.

  It is a ridiculous fabrication, when I am in so much pain that I can barely move, barely breathe, hardly walk or get out of bed. When I haven’t even seen Paul in so many months.

  Death is a shadow. It follows me and hovers over me. I am marked by death. Perhaps it is surprising that I have even made it to forty-four years of age. Perhaps I should just give in to it, let it take me now. If I were dead, I would no longer be in such pain.

  WHAT IS IT PAUL SAID TO ME ONCE, IN THE HALF-LIGHT OF Arromanches?

  That what he admires most about me is my strength. I don’t give up, I can never give up. I am brave and amazing. Or am I foolish and crazy?

  For months and months, I am not feeling any better, and yet, I can’t stop trying a rest cure. I leave the girls with their nanny and tutor and check into a sanatorium in the Alps as Bronia, so the press can’t find me: Madame Dluska. Then in the summer, I take a boat to England, traveling as Madame Sklodowska.

  I read the latest journals in bed, and so much work is being done in radium without me. I feel jealous of all the work carrying on in my absence. I must get better, so I can contribute to it again. There is so much more to be done, and there is ongoing construction in Paris on a new, wonderful lab that will be mine if I can get well enough to work there.

  And then I wonder if death, like anything else, is a choice, and if maybe I am not ready to choose it yet.

  IN THE SUMMER OF 1914, I AM WELL ENOUGH FINALLY TO RETURN to Paris on a ticket in my own name. The press have, at long last, forgotten about me, and there is no fanfare, no one waiting for me at the station upon my return. All the papers are reporting about the recent assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne and speculation of a war. Who has time to worry about one woman scientist in Paris now?

  It is a relief to walk through the streets of Paris, of my own volition, unwatched and unnoticed, and free of the pain and the press that have haunted me for so very long.

  Ève and Irène are already in L’Arcouëst with the Perrins for the summer—I will join them in a few weeks after I get my affairs back in order in Paris. My house is empty, dark, and dusty, quiet. When I step inside it again, I feel like a stranger in my own home.

  Even the yellow flowers that are blooming in a pot out front are unfamiliar to me, planted here by someone else, in my absence.

  Work on my new lab is almost completed: Institut du Radium. Now it stands, a large three-story brick building on rue Pierre Curie—we could fit ten of our sheds where we first discovered radium inside. And it is only a few streets away. So close. So far.

  I go there straightaway after dropping my things at home, and I stand out front, taking in its near completion, its three stories of grandeur and splendor. I am hit with a sudden sense of overwhelm.

  Oh, Pierre. If you could see what they have built for us.

  I am very much alive, and there is more work to be done here, so much more to be done.

  A FEW DAYS AFTER MY RETURN TO PARIS, JEAN PERRIN writes me from L’Arcouëst. Ève has made new friends and loves to play all day, and Irène studies and continues to work on her maths. I have not seen the children in many months. But they are well and happy, and they want for nothing.

  And I thought you should know, Jean writes at the very end of his letter, a postscript, Jeanne and Paul have reconciled now.

  Reconciled?

  Once that word might have hurt me, but I am surprised I do not feel anything when I read it. Everything I had with Paul is far away and feels unimportant after I have struggled so long to regain my health. I want Paul to be happy, and I do not believe he will ever be happy with Jeanne. But their marriage feels out of my reach. I no longer desire a life with him. I simply want a life of my own. I want to work and I want to learn and I want to run my new Institut and make more advancements in the field of radium.

  Or perhaps I am just like Pavlov’s dog. And now at the ripe age of forty-six, nearly forty-seven, finally, finally I am learning. Every man I have ever loved has brought me pain in the end. What is the point of loving another man, of longing again for that kind of relationship in my life?

  I have a tenuous grasp on my health. I have my mind and my work.

  Good for Paul and Jeanne, I write back to Jean Perrin. But it is no longer any of my concern. I have more important things to worry about.

  I DO HAVE MORE IMPORTANT THINGS TO WORRY ABOUT. FOR one thing, I cannot make it to L’Arcouëst the following week as I’ve planned, because France beg
ins mobilizing troops, trains suddenly stop carrying civilians. A war really is building, and not just in Austria-Hungary, but in France, too. Within a week, all the men of age are conscripted, including my nephew, my former lab assistant, Maurice. Jacques writes from Montpellier with the news, and now it is my turn to reassure him.

  Maurice is very smart, very quick on his feet, I write, he will be just fine. But my worry for him brings a new ache in my chest. Maurice is a scientist, not a soldier.

  I walk to the post to mail my letter, and planes buzz overhead. Suddenly the ground shakes beneath my feet. There is a rumble, an explosion. I run into an alleyway, and when I peek out again, my ears are ringing, my hands shaking. In the distance, there is the rise of smoke plumes, the sounds of screams.

  A German bomb has already fallen in Paris, on rue des Récollets, not even six kilometers away from my new lab.

  A SINGLE GRAM OF RADIUM SITS INSIDE MY NEW LAB, DESIGNATED for research purposes. It is the only bit of radium in all of France, and irreplaceable, as we have neither the money nor the resources to obtain more.

  After the first bomb, there are two more in quick succession. Irène writes me, begging me to find a way to L’Arcouëst, as she is worried for my safety in Paris. But I write her that I am fine, and I feel this strange safety in the fact that I have already touched death these past years and come through it, made it to the other side. It is the radium I worry for now, I write Irène. Not myself.

  Perhaps in another life, one where my gentle and persuasive Pierre were still alive, I would find my way to L’Arcouëst to huddle in safety with my family. But in this life, where I am finally well again, my work is everything I have, everything I am. And I am deeply worried for my radium.

  It is so expensive, I will never be able to replace it if something happens. And what will happen to my research if it is destroyed? I write letters, send urgent telegrams, until I finally convince the government of the importance of ensuring my radium’s safety. In the beginning of September they agree and let me accompany my radium, packed inside a heavy lead-lined box, on a train to Bordeaux.

  Two soldiers accompany me to a bank, where I rent a safe deposit box to store it, and it is only once it is safely inside, locked away, and I clutch the key, that I allow myself to exhale.

  “You must really have something valuable inside that box,” one of the soldiers says, frowning. His annoyance at being sent on this mission with me is clear. Perhaps he feels he could be doing more, fighting Germans on the front lines. I am dressed modestly in the same black dress I always wear to the lab, but perhaps he is mistaking me for a wealthy French woman, worrying about her silly diamonds.

  “You want to know what is in the box?” I say to him, sharply. “One gram of radium. Only the entire scientific and medical future of France.”

  The other soldier cocks his head and looks at me. “Radium. I know you . . . Madame Curie,” he says. “I remember reading all about you and your love affair in the papers.”

  “You can’t believe everything you read,” I say, gritting my teeth.

  “Yes . . .” The other soldier recognizes me now too. “You’re that fille who ruined that poor woman’s life.”

  This story, this one choice, it will follow me around forever, no matter what else I do. It will continue to sicken and ruin and destroy me.

  Only if you let it, mon amour, I hear Pierre say.

  “I am nobody’s fille,” I say, firmly, petulantly. “I am a scientist.”

  Marya

  Krakow and L’Arcouëst, 1915

  I did not believe that the war would touch us in Krakow at first. Fighting hovered around us—we read the news of the battles and invasions across Europe. But not in our city, our country. Life felt strangely normal, even as Hela sent a letter that they were evacuating Paris, leaving their lab for the safety of L’Arcouëst. After a scare with a German bomb falling too close, they grabbed Marie and Lou, who was still living with them, finishing her medical degree, and escaped to their home in the cliffs of Brittany.

  Join us, Marya, Hela implored me. We have plenty of room.

  She tried to convince Bronia too, but to no avail, as Bronia said she felt quite safe in Zakopane, and there might be a war raging but there were still sick people who needed to be treated. And she could not just abandon them. I resisted at first too, writing her that everything was perfectly safe in Krakow.

  Our first sign in Krakow that the war would change us was when Chernikoff announced they were canceling the rest of the term and closing for the remainder of the war. It came just after a night of looting by Russian soldiers, outside the city, but still close enough to make people afraid. Jagiellonian also drastically cut down its staff for the spring term. Luckily Kaz had enough seniority in the math department that he was still kept on to teach, as was Professor Mazur. But there were no funds for her lab, or for me to assist. The irony was, in the last four years, I’d been helping her perfect a liquid-gas detonation device. Professor Mazur said she tried to explain that if we were allowed to finish, it could be helpful to the war effort, but the men in the university’s administration said there was no money for her women’s lab now.

  “Our funding has been completely canceled,” she said, frustration wrinkling across her small forehead. “But we will be back at work, after the war. We will not give up, Marya. I promise you, we will not.”

  I nodded, but I swallowed back my own uncertainty. It already felt impossible to imagine a time after this war when life would be normal again.

  Klara was bereft without her intense schedule of piano. At home she moped and lay on the parlor couch like she was dying.

  “Why don’t you go and practice, chicken?” I implored her. “You have to keep up your skills in spite of the war.”

  “What’s the point?” she complained. “There’s nowhere for me to perform now anyway.”

  At twelve years old, Klara was looking more and more like a woman and sounding more and more like a piano virtuoso, both when she performed and in her entitled attitude. Her teacher had spoken to me about a program in Berlin he’d wanted us to consider for the summer, and I’d liked the idea for nurturing her talent. I’d disliked it for what it might do to her already inflated ego. But that was all before the war. Klara was not wrong. There was no more music in the city now. Nowhere for her to perform. Even the Philharmonic had stopped giving concerts.

  By the summer of 1915, Klara and I were trapped in the house. Looting outside the city grew worse and worse, and when two houses a few blocks from us were stormed by Russian soldiers one night in June, Kaz suddenly agreed with Hela, that Klara and I would both be much safer in L’Arcouëst.

  L’ARCOUËST WAS A CITY TUCKED AMONG THE CLIFFS AND THE seashore in the northwest corner of France. A summer playground for the faculty of the Sorbonne, many of them owned summer homes here, including Hela and Jacques, who had built theirs after collecting their Nobel Prize money a few years earlier. Though Bronia had complained to me that she worried about them spending their prize on the extravagance of a second home, a vacation home, now it felt the most practical decision they had ever made, as there was strange protection from the war here. Even though the occasional warplane would buzz overhead, it was only a wayward and distant reminder.

  Hela and Jacques had a full house: Marie and Lou, Pierre, me and Klara, and their neighbor from Paris, who had recently been abandoned by her good-for-nothing husband, as she told me the first morning over breakfast, Jeanne Langevin.

  I had not seen Pierre in person for the past few years, though we had continued with the occasional letter, mostly to share our advancements in our respective labs. Pierre had finally gotten Jacques to take interest in his research and to help him explore the possibility of the second radioactive element he believed to be in the pitchblende. But everything was left behind in Paris when they fled, and their favorite topic of conversation each morning in L’Arcouëst was fretting over the lab’s current status and safety.

  Now, seei
ng him again, he really had aged. His beard was completely gray, he walked a little slower, his shoulders stooped. But what I noticed most of all was his relationship with Jeanne Langevin. The two of them strolled along the beach together each morning, arm in arm. Pierre would stop to bend down and collect seashells or other treasures, until his suit pockets were filled or until Jeanne would seem to lose interest and start to walk on, without him. He would run to catch up to her, catch her hand in his own. I watched them from the window enough mornings that finally Hela said, “Marya what is so interesting out there on the beach that has you staring and staring? Is it the water, hmmm?” This was my first time being so near such a large body of water, and it frightened me too much to go in, though Klara swam in it with no fear, a strong swimmer from all her summers at the lake with Jakub.

  Hela peered over my shoulder, saw Pierre and Jeanne walking together, and frowned. “Leave it be, Marya,” she said softly. “Poor Pierre has been lonely for so many years, and he’s finally found a companion in Jeanne.”

  “I’m confused,” I said. “Is she still married or not?”

  “It’s complicated,” Hela said. “Her husband, Paul, ran off with a house servant and their two youngest children last year, leaving her with nothing. Their marriage was quite difficult. She always told me how terribly he treated her, but I’m afraid I never really paid enough attention, until he left. I suppose she and Paul are still legally married, for all the good it does her now. She’s had a rough year. And Pierre makes her happy.”

  “A house servant?” I repeated, stuck on that part, softening toward Jeanne. I felt sad that not only had her husband betrayed her, but also that he had abandoned her, taken her children. How awful. That poor woman.

  Hela shrugged. “It’s not unusual in Paris these days for a man to take a mistress of that standing. But he certainly doesn’t run off with her.” She said it like it was so commonplace, nothing. And I turned to her, raised my eyebrows, wondering if Jacques had ever taken a mistress. “I’m a scientist first. Jacques’s partner in the lab. His wife second,” she said, addressing the question I hadn’t even asked out loud. “What Jacques does on his own is his own business. But, he would never leave me.” She said it so matter-of-factly, like his indiscretions were of no consequence to her.