“Mama, you have to go,” Klara insisted. “I’m almost eight. I can take care of myself.”
I smiled and leaned over to kiss her forehead. “I know you can, mój mały kurczak.”
THE TRAIN RIDES TO STOCKHOLM WERE VERY LONG, AND after nearly twenty-four hours alone in a cold and bumpy train car, I wondered whether going all alone to Sweden, leaving Klara and my life in the beginning of winter, had been a mistake. But then I finally made it, and Hela hugged me so tightly. Her face glowed pink; I had never seen her so beautiful, so happy.
Hela and Jacques had splurged for the occasion—the Nobel came with a handsome amount of prize money—and got us lovely large hotel rooms. Bronia and I shared a room, and Pierre stayed next to us in his own room. It felt very strange, all of us here without our children, without our adult responsibilities. We went out to eat dinner and stayed out very late, talking and talking and drinking brännvin.
Bronia and Jacques got into a heated discussion about the potential uses of his and Hela’s magnets in the field of medicine—Jacques believing they could be helpful, Bronia arguing they could not be. She told Jacques he should stick to the lab and let her understand medicine. Hela tried to mediate, posing her own arguments on both sides. And me? I just sipped my brännvin slowly, careful not to have too much. Pierre caught my eye across the table, shrugged a little, smiled at me, and raised his glass in my direction. “Do you want to go back?” he mouthed to me.
I nodded, and we excused ourselves. Bronia and Hela and Jacques were still arguing back and forth and barely seemed to notice us.
“Tell me about your work with combustion,” Pierre said as we walked slowly back toward the hotel. The night air was crisp, quite chilly. I shivered a little. “Are you warm enough? Would you like my coat?” Pierre asked.
“I’m fine,” I lied, not wanting to take his coat. I had this strange feeling if I put it on, if I wrapped myself up in the warmth and the smell and the feel of him, I would never be able to take it off.
Hela had asked about my combustion work at dinner, but just as I’d begun to speak about it, Bronia had interrupted with a question for Jacques about his speech tomorrow. “There’s not too much to tell,” I said to Pierre now. “It is Ola Mazur’s work, really. I’m helping her. We’re trying to liquefy gas right now, to see how it works as a detonator.”
“That sounds… dangerous,” Pierre said.
I shrugged. “We take all the proper precautions. Neither of us has exploded yet.” I was making a joke, but Pierre didn’t laugh. I was used to the fires and smoke and the explosions in the lab now. It didn’t feel dangerous. It simply felt like my job. “What have you been working on Pierre?”
“Becquerelium,” he said with a sigh. Then he added, “Sort of.” I slowed down my pace and turned to look at him, wanting to know more. “I think there’s a second element with radioactive properties in the pitchblende. My readings can’t be explained by becquerelium alone. I believe there is another element with an entirely different chemical composition, too.”
“That’s fascinating,” I said.
“Yes.” He rubbed his beard. “But I haven’t the space in the lab or the strength as one man to try to chemically wash the ore on my own.”
“Perhaps you could publish a paper explaining your theory?” I suggested.
He laughed, bitterly. “Yes, I have tried that. The French Academy refuses to publish it without results or the backing of an established scientist. And Jacques is busy with his own work.”
“Well, you can’t give up,” I implored him. “You will find a way.”
“Perhaps,” he said, his voice trailing off, as if he didn’t believe me. “Perhaps.”
THE NEXT MORNING, A FEW HOURS BEFORE JACQUES AND Hela were to present their acceptance speech, Pierre knocked on our door and asked if we would like to take a walk, explore the city with him.
“Go ahead,” Bronia implored me. “I’m feeling tired. I’m going to rest a bit, and I’ll meet you both at the ceremony later.” She’d come in late last night, and I wondered just how much brännvin she’d allowed herself so far away from her husband, children, home, and patients.
I was wearing my nicest dress, a blue chiffon that had been made just for me in Paris many years earlier for Hela’s wedding. And I had been overjoyed to find it still fit before I left. It was a little tight around the middle, not the most comfortable for walking around, exploring a city, but I took a breath, kissed Bronia goodbye, and left to walk with Pierre.
We walked slowly, not saying much of anything at first, as we had already exhausted our talk of work the night before. We took in the sights and sounds and smells of this new and beautiful city. All around us there was the bluest water and quaintest red roofs, and now that we were here today, walking in the daylight, it felt strangely like we were on a holiday. Together.
We walked along the river path in the beautiful, flowering Djurgården, and I wondered out loud about the various species of flowers, different than the ones I knew so well, native to Poland.
“I have been thinking so much of you, Marya,” Pierre said suddenly, out of nowhere. “Ever since I returned to Paris, I have been greatly missing our hikes.” He had written that to me in a recent letter, too.
“Yes,” I agreed now. “The Carpathians were so beautiful last summer, weren’t they?”
“The mountains, yes,” he said. “But I mean I’ve been missing this. Your company. Our talks.”
We had talked about everything on our hikes, science and family and love and loss. About getting older and failing and happiness. And the truth was, I missed our talks too. Back in Krakow I talked to Klara and to Professor Mazur. Kaz and I gave each other an obligatory peck on the lips in the mornings, and exchanged quick pleasantries, but I was focused on Klara, and then my work in the lab. He had his own work, and in the evenings, we were both much too tired to truly talk as we once had when we were younger.
“Look,” Pierre said, tugging gently on my hand. “Look across the water, Marya. Swans.”
I did as he asked, and there they were, swimming toward us, an entire splendid family of swans in tandem, their beautiful white long necks bobbing across the water.
The male and female pecked each other playfully, and then Pierre took my other hand, pulled me close enough to him that I could feel his chest against mine, his breath against my face. “Marya,” he said my name, his voice raspier than usual.
I had the strangest feeling that he wanted to kiss me, and that if I let him, if I kissed him back, everything would change.
“I can’t,” I whispered, our faces close enough that my breath became his breath, my words became his words. I felt the frown that stretched across his face in my own self, a heaviness that coursed through my entire body, all the way down to my toes.
“What if you and I were destined to be together?” he said softly.
It sounded so logical in his quiet voice. But I did not believe in destiny. I believed in science, in making our own choices. And if I kissed him now, if I let myself get even an inch closer to him, I would be making a choice I could never take back, the way Kaz had, many years ago.
I pulled away from him, took a step back. “I almost moved to Paris once,” I said. “But then I got married instead. And now I have a life in Krakow, a beautiful daughter.”
“And what if we had met in Paris, so many years ago? Everything might have been different,” he said quietly.
We stood there for a little while longer, staring at the water, watching the swans, not touching, not saying anything else at all. And perhaps we were both imagining it, what could’ve happened, what might’ve happened, if once, so many years earlier, I had stepped on that train.