BACK IN KRAKOW, I THOUGHT ABOUT THAT MOMENT IN THE Djurgården with Pierre a lot. At night, when Kaz was working late in his lab and I was lying all alone in bed in the darkness, I reimagined it over and over again. I moved in just a little closer, put my lips on his. Felt the thrilling scratch of his beard against my chin. I held on to him, inhaled him. He did not smell like the pine cones and peppermint of my husband, but of the fire of my lab, the flowers of Sceaux.
There was a choice. There was always a choice. Had I made the wrong one? Could there be a happiness for me with Pierre that I would never have with Kaz? Or was it wrong to believe that my happiness, in and of itself, was inherently connected to any man at all? Maybe my true happiness was in the sound of Klara’s piano notes, in the smell of Professor Mazur’s smoke-filled lab.
“Mama,” Klara’s small voice called out for me in the darkness one night, interrupting my thoughts. I pushed Pierre away again, to the deepest back corner of my mind.
“What is it, mój mały kurczak?”
“I had a bad dream.” Her voice quivered, thick with tears. I remembered what she told me before I’d left. She was eight, old enough to take care of herself. But I felt a warmth coursing through my body now, knowing that she still needed me. She was my happiness, my heart.
“Come, lie in bed with me.” I patted Kaz’s empty side of the bed, and Klara ran up, got in. I held her close, smoothed back her tangled hair with my hands. “Do you want to tell me about your dream?” I asked her, kissing her head softly, reveling in the soft flower-petal feel of her hair. She shook her head vigorously. “Sometimes it helps to talk about it.”
“You went on the train again to Sweden,” she finally said a few moments later, her voice very quiet, very small. “And then something happened. You never came back.”
“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.