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.
I throw all the papers in the fire, lies upon lies upon lies. And I stand there watching the flames grow higher and higher, watching the lies burn hot and blue and orange.
A FEW DAYS LATER, AN UNEXPECTED TELEGRAM COMES FOR ME.
Irène is huddled in the corner of the parlor, reading the latest papers, in tears. Ève plays a song on her piano, indifferent, or uncaring, or simply too young still to understand—it is hard to tell which. My stomach aches and aches; I have barely been able to keep down a thing since returning from Brussels.
“Madame Curie.” The house servant brings me the telegram, her own face drawn, her hands shaking, as if she thinks I might blame her for whatever terrible news it must contain.
But none of this is her fault. I thank her and take the telegram, and then I notice it has come from Sweden. Suddenly a memory hits me like a punch and I inhale sharply: Pierre running into our lab once, so many years ago, when I was drowning in loss and sorrow and grief over my dead baby, my dead nephew. A telegram from Sweden, mon amour! They are giving us half of the Nobel Prize for our work on radium. You and I. Half the Nobel Prize!