I laughed at the bizarre notion, that here we were, two Polish women, trying desperately to teach ourselves in secret in the dark of night, setting up two men, two mathematicians.
I thanked her, and then I said, “Well, I am married to a mathematician. Who knows. Maybe one day you will find one you like, too?”
Now it was her turn to laugh. “Silly Marya. I am never getting married. I have my piano.” She spoke so matter-of-factly, so sure of herself.
I’d watched her in Krakow on a stage otherwise occupied only by men. When she played piano, she’d sparkled under the lights, her music pouring out of her like a sudden rainstorm. I knew she did not want to get married right now, that she wanted to achieve more as a pianist first, but I hadn’t known she believed she would never get married.
I wondered what it would feel like, to be so good at something you loved so much that you believed in it more than anything else. It must be freeing, in a way, to know that you and you alone possessed everything you needed for your own happiness and survival.
TWO MONTHS LATER, KADI CAME THROUGH ON HER PROMISE and invited Kaz to come over for tea one afternoon to meet her father. When I arrived back at our apartment from the Kaminskis that evening, he was already home, waiting for me at the table. He saw me and jumped up, a wide smile across his face. Then he ran to me, hugged me so tightly he lifted my feet from the ground, and spun me. It reminded me of our days together in Szczuki, when we were so young and free and in love, holding on to each other on the ice. His meeting had gone well.
“Hipolit agreed to teach me,” Kaz said, his voice rising with excitement.
He put me down and I clapped my hands together for him, delighted. “Oh, Kaz, how wonderful.”
He wrapped me up in an embrace, kissed the top of my head, and laughed, a bright beautiful deep laugh like the sounds that used to echo off the river in Szczuki in the summer.
“And he says if I am a quick study in applied mathematics, which I will be, he will put in a good word for me, help me find a university position in Poland.”
He grabbed my cheeks in between his hands, pulled my head toward him, and kissed me on the lips. It was thrilling to feel him so excited about his work again, to know that he would have the chance now to learn and be what he wanted. His mother had been wrong. I hadn’t ruined his life by marrying him. And the possibilities now! We might have more money soon, and be able to live in a nicer place and have whatever we wanted to eat. And then, Paris. Eventually he could get a job in Paris and I could be near my sisters and I could study, too.
It was so easy to hope in that moment, that when Kaz kept kissing me, pulling at the buttons of my dress, wanting more, I didn’t allow myself to think what might come next. I only allowed myself to feel, to remember exactly the way I loved him.
Marie
Paris, France, 1895
For a few weeks, everything feels perfect. Pierre and I spend long weekdays working together in the lab. As spring turns warmer, the air fragrant with cherry blossoms, we ride Pierre’s and Jacques’s rickety bicycles together on weekends, stopping by the lake to enjoy the breeze and discuss the finalization of Pierre’s dissertation on paramagnetism and temperatures. I insist that his doctoral work be completely finished before we leave Paris, so that once he learns enough Polish, he will be able to work as a scientist in Poland, too, or at the very least, teach science, not just French. And he says he is glad he has me to push him through, push him to the finish.
I feel both strange—outside myself—and wonderful (or, what was the word Pierre used? Wondrous.) too. Sometimes, I lie awake in my bed at night, worrying that it is a crazy idea to marry Pierre, to tie myself to a man, any man, even a great one. But then the next morning, I see him again in the lab, and my body feels oddly weightless, my brain more alive. It is easier to move, and breathe, and even think. If Pierre says I push him, then he pushes me, too. Asks questions, demands answers, helping me achieve more, greater work than I might come to on my own. And by the end of each day my mind is full and exhausted.
Maybe this is happiness. And maybe happiness is quantifiable.
If so, I imagine happiness has an almost unbearable lightness, giving it the same atomic weight as helium.
IN JUNE, THE LETTER I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR FROM POLAND finally arrives. I applied for a teaching position at the University of Krakow months ago, and I’ve been eagerly awaiting my acceptance so I can begin to chart out the rest of my life beyond my education. Even more so, now that I know Pierre is readying himself and finishing his studies to come with me.
But I open up the envelope, read the letter once, then twice, blinking back disbelief and tears. I hand it to Pierre without a word, and he reads it, then turns to me, his eyes ablaze with something I have never seen in them before: anger.
“What do they mean, they will not offer you a permanent position because you’re a woman?” He turns the letter over, as if looking for answers on the other side of the paper, which is blank.
“It’s Poland,” I say, trying to keep calm, though I hear my voice wavering. “It’s not France, Pierre.” It’s why I’d left, after all, why I didn’t choose to stay behind even once Kazimierz had asked. I always knew I couldn’t get the education I wanted as a woman in Poland. It had been so naïve of me to believe that if only I were the best in Paris, passed first in all my examinations, applied in the more cosmopolitan city of Krakow outside of the Russian partition of Poland, then… what? That Poland would welcome me back to work there? That all those insufferable men would not care about being beat out for a university opening by a woman with pretty hair? I want to laugh now at how stupid I was. It doesn’t matter how smart or good my science is. All that matters, all that will ever matter in my home country, is that I am a woman.
“Marie.” Pierre puts the letter down on our worktable and gently grabs ahold of my shoulders. “Marry me here, in France. We’ll go to Sceaux and celebrate with my parents. We can wait until your father and Hela can make it here to have the wedding. And then we’ll live in Paris and work together in our lab. You’re such a brilliant scientist, you cannot return to Poland if you cannot work there.”
His words are like fire, burning everything I thought to be true just an hour earlier, turning it all into ash and smoke. I am a Pole. I belong in Poland. I blink back tears. The ache of homesickness is palpable, a heaviness in my chest that makes it difficult to breathe.
But Pierre is right. I know, he’s right. I will not go back to Poland if I can’t work there. Science is the most important thing. Science is everything.
But no. Science is not everything, any longer. There is also Pierre.
Kazimierz was a young love. It felt sweet and pretty and fresh like the poppies that bloomed in Szcuzki in the spring. I’d liked the way Kaz had held me up, on the ice. But with Pierre, I do not need him to hold me up. I hold myself up, and he stands by my side, or, often, content to be behind me. And then what I love about him is his mind. His beautiful, brilliant mind. I could live inside a scientific conversation with him, going on forever and ever. Poland isn’t home, I realize by the middle of July, when we are set to get married. Pierre is home.
I tell Bronia and Hela this in the hours before my wedding on July 26th, as they help me steam my dress and fix my hair, and Hela gives me a funny look, like she thinks living in Paris these last years has made me mad. She and Papa made the long journey here for my wedding—and Papa has accepted my decision to stay in Paris much better than I might have expected. But Hela is in love with Stanislaw, back in Warsaw. How can she possibly understand? “Maybe someday,” she says, wistfully. “Poland will be better for women, and you and Pierre will come back to us.”