“What would you have me do, Marya?” he’d asked me, grabbing my hand again, lowering to his knees as if he were begging me to understand him, to forgive him, which, of course, I wouldn’t. “If I disobey my parents they would disown me, and then…”
“And then, what?” I’d snapped, pulling away again. “We would be penniless together? Or, what is it you said your mother said about me, I am worthless? I’ll never amount to anything?”
“I do love you,” he’d said softly.
“Do you?” I’d asked him, and then when he didn’t say anything else, I’d turned and run back to the house alone.
I’d spent the rest of the afternoon crying in my bed, not even bothering to tend to the children when they woke from their naps. How could I continue to be their governess now, knowing what Pani Zorawska truly thought of me? Now knowing that Kazimierz agreed with her, that he and I could not be together.
I threw everything into my valise, and after the house grew dark, the night quiet, I snuck out without so much as even a goodbye to my employers. I put my bag on my shoulder and walked into town to hire a carriage to drive me through the beet sugar plantations that seemed to stretch for an eternity—it was a five-hour carriage ride to the closest train station. But I would use all the rubles I had left to pay the carriage man, then the train back to Warsaw, back to Papa and Hela. And I would arrive home, truly penniless.
BACK IN WARSAW, I STAYED IN BED, AND WHAT MUST PAPA and Hela have thought? Poor Marya, too thin, too fragile, and destined to be unloved forever. Hela was my closest sister in age—she was just one year older than me, and I had always been so advanced in school that we’d been placed in the same grade at the female gymnasium as girls. We had been something like twins, and she was the one I’d written to about Kazimierz the past few years. I’d even told her the secret I’d told no one else, that we’d been engaged. But all I would tell her when I first returned home was that it was over, and that I did not wish to talk about it.
“Marya,” Hela called for me through my bedroom door, her voice so high and sweet like a songbird. I wanted to go to her, to hold on to her, the way I had as a young girl when our oldest sister, Zofia, had died. But the absence of Kazimierz was a heaviness in my chest, and I could not move. I pretended to be asleep, turning on my side, and squeezing my eyes tightly shut.
Hela opened the door, called my name again into the darkness. I didn’t answer her, or move. “You’re not the only one,” she finally said, before giving up, shutting the door behind her.
And part of me wanted to ask her what she meant; the other part of me wanted to sleep forever.
ONE AFTERNOON, A FEW WEEKS AFTER RETURNING TO WARSAW, Papa knocked on my bedroom door, and unlike Hela, he walked right in, without waiting for my answer. “It’s time to get up, get ready,” he said.
My mind felt dull, my body listless. I was weak from hunger, or disappointment, but I had no desire to get up and eat or live my life. “I have nothing to get ready for,” I moaned. Eventually, I supposed I would have to get out of bed and try to secure another governess position, but I could not face that prospect yet. Bronia was just about finished with her degree, and she said I could move in with her and her new husband in Paris, but I would need enough money to register for classes and pay my fees, and I had nothing to my name. Penniless.
“You are leaving for Paris soon,” Papa said, brightly. He walked to my window and threw open the curtains. “There is much to be done.”
“Paris?” I sat up in my bed, squinting my eyes to adjust to the sunlight streaming in. “I cannot afford Paris yet. I quit the Zorawskis, remember?”
“I have some money saved that will help cover your first year of tuition at the Sorbonne. You can begin classes in November.”
“But Papa… I can’t let you do that. You can’t possibly have enough money for that.”
The Sorbonne. Even the very idea of it felt like a confection for my mind, and my body hummed, alive again, in a way it hadn’t since I’d left Kazimierz in the woods, weeks earlier.
“Helena and I will get by. You need to go and get your university education,” Papa said. “You are brilliant, Marya. And you have worked so hard, for so many years. You deserve this.”
Who was right—Papa or Pani Zorawska? Was I brilliant or worthless? But Papa was going to help me get to Paris. That was enough to get me out of bed.
I stood up and kissed his cheek. “Thank you,” I said to him.
He embraced me, kissed the top of my head. “You will thank me by earning your degree at the Sorbonne.”
That night I did not dream about Kazimierz or the way his kisses had left the feel of sunshine upon my skin as we’d traversed the woods, hand in hand. Instead I dreamed about the beautiful laboratories that surely awaited me now. The fantasy lingered in my mind in the moments after waking the next morning, leaving a sweetness in my mouth like I’d just eaten a kolachke, the jam still on my tongue. Paris was waiting for me, only two train rides away now: everything I’d ever wanted.
Well, almost everything.
THE MORNING I WAS TO LEAVE, PAPA OFFERED TO WALK WITH me to the train station to help me with my things. Hela hugged me goodbye at our apartment door, saying it would be too hard, too emotional to say goodbye at the train. She was right. I already felt teary-eyed as Papa and I walked the short distance, mostly in silence.
I was not bringing much, and did not truly need Papa’s help, but I was glad for his quiet company all the same. I had only a folding chair to sit on—my fourth-class ticket did not come with a seat—and one suitcase of belongings. My suitcase was heavy, as it contained more books for the long ride than clothing. I only owned a few dresses, and I had sent the rest of my things ahead by freight.
“You take care of yourself,” Papa was saying now. “And remember to eat.” Papa was always saying I was too thin, and truth be told I did have a habit of forgetting food when my mind was otherwise engaged. Whether it was Kazimierz or my studies.
“Don’t worry, Papa. Bronia will keep me fed.” If Hela was my sister-twin, Bronia was my sister-mother. She was the oldest, and most responsible, and when we were younger, after our mother died, she was the one who’d stepped into the mothering role in our household. Even all these years later, even living so far away, her worry for me and Hela came through in her letters.
“And you have all your papers in order?” Papa asked, though he had already asked before we’d left the apartment. He was nervous about the Russian officers examining me too closely on the checkpoints out of Poland, a woman traveling alone and with the Sklodowska last name. Years ago, before I was born, Papa had been involved in the January uprising against the Russian army—it was how we’d lost our family’s money and property and become poor in the first place. But in the years since, the Russians had many others to worry about. The Sklodowskis kept out of their way. And Bronia had traveled this route herself several times with no trouble.
“You know I do, Papa,” I reassured him. “You worry too much.”
“I can’t help it. I worry because I love you, my dear sweet Marya,” he said as we arrived at the station.
We both stopped walking, and I grabbed Papa in a tight embrace. I couldn’t hold back tears any longer, and for just a moment, I buried my wet cheek into the stale wool of his jacket. I’d already been away from him and Hela for years in Szczuki, but this felt different. Paris was so far—forty hours by train. And Papa was placing all his money, all his trust, in me to succeed at the Sorbonne, something we’d long thought out of reach for me, growing up both poor and female in Warsaw.