Half Life

two and two together. Hipolit is only the most brilliant applied mathematician in all of Poland.” Kaz’s voice rose in the darkness. How wonderful, to hear him sound excited about mathematics again.
I felt my whole body relax against our mattress, and I rolled over and stroked his shoulder softly with my thumb. “And you want me to see if I can get Kadi to set up a meeting for you, hmm?”
We still could not afford Kaz’s university tuition, and he was desperate to further his education in mathematics, to have a more stimulating job than teaching basic maths to young boys, which he described as tediously mind-flattening, and not to mention, poorly paying.
“Yes, a meeting!” Kaz said, interrupting my thoughts. He reached up to hold on to my hand on his shoulder, and he squeezed my fingers between his own. “If I could only talk with him. Maybe he needs a research assistant and would be willing to teach me?”
I FELT STRANGE SAYING SOMETHING TO KADI ABOUT HER FATHER when I saw her next, Wednesday night. We were together in a bigger group—seven of us had turned out to discuss an English novelist at Emilia’s tiny apartment. Kadi’s father was a complicated and touchy subject for her, and I did not relish bringing him up. But I had promised Kaz I would, and besides I felt like I owed him, too—this uncomfortable ask my penance for lying to him about going to see Kadi in Krakow.
“My father?” Kadi bit her lip and frowned after I asked. Her blond hair was down today, and her face looked prettier, softer than it did when she wore her hair in a bun.
I explained what Kaz had told me, and why he wanted the meeting. “Please,” I said. “If nothing comes of it, you don’t need to worry. But it will make him so happy if I can set this up for him.”
She sighed. “Papa is always inviting mathematicians over for supper, trying to fix me up to marry.” She shook her head, and the waves of her hair hit her shoulders. “Maybe now it is my turn to invite one over? Fix Papa up a bit?”
I laughed at the bizarre notion, that here we were, two Polish women, trying desperately to teach ourselves in secret in the dark of night, setting up two men, two mathematicians.
I thanked her, and then I said, “Well, I am married to a mathematician. Who knows. Maybe one day you will find one you like, too?”
Now it was her turn to laugh. “Silly Marya. I am never getting married. I have my piano.” She spoke so matter-of-factly, so sure of herself.
I’d watched her in Krakow on a stage otherwise occupied only by men. When she played piano, she’d sparkled under the lights, her music pouring out of her like a sudden rainstorm. I knew she did not want to get married right now, that she wanted to achieve more as a pianist first, but I hadn’t known she believed she would never get married.
I wondered what it would feel like, to be so good at something you loved so much that you believed in it more than anything else. It must be freeing, in a way, to know that you and you alone possessed everything you needed for your own happiness and survival.
TWO MONTHS LATER, KADI CAME THROUGH ON HER PROMISE and invited Kaz to come over for tea one afternoon to meet her father. When I arrived back at our apartment from the Kaminskis that evening, he was already home, waiting for me at the table. He saw me and jumped up, a wide smile across his face. Then he ran to me, hugged me so tightly he lifted my feet from the ground, and spun me. It reminded me of our days together in Szczuki, when we were so young and free and in love, holding on to each other on the ice. His meeting had gone well.
“Hipolit agreed to teach me,” Kaz said, his voice rising with excitement.
He put me down and I clapped my hands together for him, delighted. “Oh, Kaz, how wonderful.”
He wrapped me up in an embrace, kissed the top of my head, and laughed, a bright beautiful deep laugh like the sounds that used to echo off the river in Szczuki in the summer.
“And he says if I am a quick study in applied mathematics, which I will be, he will put in a good word for me, help me find a university position in Poland.”
He grabbed my cheeks in between his hands, pulled my head toward him, and kissed me on the lips. It was thrilling to feel him so excited about his work again, to know that he would have the chance now to learn and be what he wanted. His mother had been wrong. I hadn’t ruined his life by marrying him. And the possibilities now! We might have more money soon, and be able to live in a nicer place and have whatever we wanted to eat. And then, Paris. Eventually he could get a job in Paris and I could be near my sisters and I could study, too.
It was so easy to hope in that moment, that when Kaz kept kissing me, pulling at the buttons of my dress, wanting more, I didn’t allow myself to think what might come next. I only allowed myself to feel, to remember exactly the way I loved him.

Marie
Paris, France, 1895
For a few weeks, everything feels perfect. Pierre and I spend long weekdays working together in the lab. As spring turns warmer, the air fragrant with cherry blossoms, we ride Pierre’s and Jacques’s rickety bicycles together on weekends, stopping by the lake to enjoy the breeze and discuss the finalization of Pierre’s dissertation on paramagnetism and temperatures. I insist that his doctoral work be completely finished before we leave Paris, so that once he learns enough Polish, he will be able to work as a scientist in