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.
A FEW DAYS AFTER MY RETURN TO PARIS, JEAN PERRIN writes me from L’Arcouëst. Ève has made new friends and loves to play all day, and Irène studies and continues to work on her maths. I have not seen the children in many months. But they are well and happy, and they want for nothing.
And I thought you should know, Jean writes at the very end of his letter, a postscript, Jeanne and Paul have reconciled now.
Reconciled?
Once that word might have hurt me, but I am surprised I do not feel anything when I read it. Everything I had with Paul is far away and feels unimportant after I have struggled so long to regain my health. I want Paul to be happy, and I do not believe he will ever be happy with Jeanne. But their marriage feels out of my reach. I no longer desire a life with him. I simply want a life of my own. I want to work and I want to learn and I want to run my new Institut and make more advancements in the field of radium.
Or perhaps I am just like Pavlov’s dog. And now at the ripe age of forty-six, nearly forty-seven, finally, finally I am learning. Every man I have ever loved has brought me pain in the end. What is the point of loving another man, of longing again for that kind of relationship in my life?
I have a tenuous grasp on my health. I have my mind and my work.
Good for Paul and Jeanne, I write back to Jean Perrin. But it is no longer any of my concern. I have more important things to worry about.
I DO HAVE MORE IMPORTANT THINGS TO WORRY ABOUT. FOR one thing, I cannot make it to L’Arcouëst the following week as I’ve planned, because France begins mobilizing troops, trains suddenly stop carrying civilians. A war really is building, and not just in Austria-Hungary, but in France, too. Within a week, all the men of age are conscripted, including my nephew, my former lab assistant, Maurice. Jacques writes from Montpellier with the news, and now it is my turn to reassure him.
Maurice is very smart, very quick on his feet, I write, he will be just fine. But my worry for him brings a new ache in my chest. Maurice is a scientist, not a soldier.
I walk to the post to mail my letter, and planes buzz overhead. Suddenly the ground shakes beneath my feet. There is a rumble, an explosion. I run into an alleyway, and when I peek out again, my ears are ringing, my hands shaking. In the distance, there is the rise of smoke plumes, the sounds of screams.
A German bomb has already fallen in Paris, on rue des Récollets, not even six kilometers away from my new lab.
A SINGLE GRAM OF RADIUM SITS INSIDE MY NEW LAB, DESIGNATED for research purposes. It is the only bit of radium in all of France, and irreplaceable, as we have neither the money nor the resources to obtain more.
After the first bomb, there are two more in quick succession. Irène writes me, begging me to find a way to L’Arcouëst, as she is worried for my safety in Paris. But I write her that I am fine, and I feel this strange safety in the fact that I have already touched death these past years and come through it, made it to the other side. It is the radium I worry for now, I write Irène. Not myself.
Perhaps in another life, one where my gentle and persuasive Pierre were still alive, I would find my way to L’Arcouëst to huddle in safety with my family. But in this life, where I am finally well again, my work is everything I have, everything I am. And I am deeply worried for my radium.
It is so expensive, I will never be able to replace it if something happens. And what will happen to my research if it is destroyed? I write letters, send urgent telegrams, until I finally convince the government of the importance of ensuring my radium’s safety. In the beginning of September they agree and let me accompany my radium, packed inside a heavy lead-lined box, on a train to Bordeaux.
Two soldiers accompany me to a bank, where I rent a safe deposit box to store it, and it is only once it is safely inside, locked away, and I clutch the key, that I allow myself to exhale.
“You must really have something valuable inside that box,” one of the soldiers says, frowning. His annoyance at being sent on this mission with me is clear. Perhaps he feels he could be doing more, fighting Germans on the front lines. I am dressed modestly in the same black dress I always wear to the lab, but perhaps he is mistaking me for a wealthy French woman, worrying about her silly diamonds.
“You want to know what is in the box?” I say to him, sharply. “One gram of radium. Only the entire scientific and medical future of France.”
The other soldier cocks his head and looks at me. “Radium. I know you… Madame Curie,” he says. “I remember reading all about you and your love affair in the papers.”
“You can’t believe everything you read,” I say, gritting my teeth.
“Yes…” The other soldier recognizes me now too. “You’re that fille who ruined that poor woman’s life.”
This story, this one choice, it will follow me around forever, no matter what else I do. It will continue to sicken and ruin and destroy me.
Only if you let it, mon amour, I hear Pierre say.
“I am nobody’s fille,” I say, firmly, petulantly. “I am a scientist.”
Marya
Krakow and L’Arcouëst, 1915
I did not believe that the war would touch us in Krakow at first. Fighting hovered around us—we read the news of the battles and invasions across Europe. But not in our city, our country. Life felt strangely normal, even as Hela sent a letter that they were evacuating Paris, leaving their lab for the safety of L’Arcouëst. After a scare with a German bomb falling too close, they grabbed Marie and Lou, who was still living with them, finishing her medical degree, and escaped to their home in the cliffs of Brittany.
Join us, Marya, Hela implored me. We have plenty of room.
She tried to convince Bronia too, but to no avail, as Bronia said she felt quite safe in Zakopane, and there might be a war raging but there were still sick people who needed to be treated. And she could not just abandon them. I resisted at first too, writing her that everything was perfectly safe in Krakow.
Our first sign in Krakow that the war would change us was when Chernikoff announced they were canceling the rest of the term and closing for the remainder of the war. It came just after a night of looting by Russian soldiers, outside the city, but still close enough to make people afraid. Jagiellonian also drastically cut down its staff for the spring term. Luckily Kaz had enough seniority in the math department that he was still kept on to teach, as was Professor Mazur. But there were no funds for her lab, or for me to assist. The irony was, in the last four years, I’d been helping her perfect a liquid-gas detonation device. Professor Mazur said she tried to explain that if we were allowed to finish, it could be helpful to the war effort, but the men in the university’s administration said there was no money for her women’s lab now.