In the middle of November, Bronia shows up at our door one evening, unannounced. She is paler than I remember her; thinner. Zakopane has not been as kind to her as I would’ve expected, once. Not Zakopane, though. Life. And death.
“Moja mała siostrzyczka,” she says, embracing me. Her Polish shocks me. It has been too long since I have heard it regularly, since I have spoken it. “I did not want you to have this baby without me,” she says. She puts her hand on my belly, doctor and sister-mother. But maybe Bronia needs a sister-mother too. I wonder if she is here to see for herself that good things can happen to us, too, that children can live still, even once we have seen them die. Or maybe she is here because she is worried it will happen again, and she knows I cannot survive it another time, on my own.
I cling to her, so happy she is here, no matter what her reason. “Everything is terrible,” I admit to her in a way I can’t admit to Pierre. His leg pains have returned even worse since the summer, and he is busy with his students. And he is worried how much longer we can put off a trip to Sweden, and with writing the Academy to buy us more time. To him the baby will happen, it will come when it is ready, and everything will turn out fine this time. I cannot burden him with my own dread, with my worry. But Bronia. She is a different story. “Everything is darkness,” I tell her.
“I knew you needed me,” she replies, more to herself than to me.
BY THE BEGINNING OF DECEMBER, THE WEATHER HAS GROWN cool and my body is so heavy, the baby so large, pushing up into my chest, that I can barely breathe. And anyway, I hold my breath still, waiting, waiting, not daring to believe this baby is real. Refusing to name the baby or love it or imagine holding it. Even when the labor pains begin and drag on and on through the night. Even then, I do not allow myself to believe.
It is not until she comes out wailing and Bronia places her on my chest that I understand that she is real, that she is alive. And even then my body is overcome with pain. I’m numb with it, and I can’t quite believe. She comes out chubby and with a head of black hair, looking nothing like slender Irène with her pale hair. Is she really mine?
“She’s okay?” I say to Pierre when he comes in to see her, more a question than a statement.
She is still wailing, and Pierre lifts her from my chest, holds her close, and kisses her black swath of hair. “She is perfect,” Pierre says softly. “Should we name her after your father?”
“No, no,” I say. “She needs a new name. A beautiful, fresh French name.” I am done with darkness. I am done with death hovering, marking us and taking away our happiness.
“I like Ève,” Pierre says after a little while.
“Ève,” I repeat. A beginning.
Marya
Loksow, Poland, 1904
My Klara was a wonderful baby. She came into the world blond-haired and blue-eyed, bright pink and wailing. And then, she hardly ever cried, she was a good sleeper, and she was content to observe everything around her without much fussing, even when I began taking her with me to my university courses again in January. I wore her in a wrap across my chest, her heart beating close to mine, and I swore she was already listening, already learning, already feeling the heartbeats of my chemistry lessons.
I had returned to our apartment on Złota Street last August and picked up my life again as if I’d never left it all for a few months away in France. The remainder of my pregnancy felt long and filled with so much worry, but Klara was born perfect in November of 1903, and I was filled with a lightness I’d never known before. My love for my daughter was a different kind of love than I had ever felt, than I had ever imagined.
Kaz and I did not discuss what had happened between him and Leokadia, but before we left Paris, I forced myself to read all the letters he’d sent to me. They were filled with apologies, and promises. He swore he made a mistake, only once. He blamed what had happened on his sadness over losing baby Zosia. And then, how in the ensuing months, he believed I had lost myself. Which made him feel he had lost me too. It was hard to read that part, because the truth of it stung. I had lost myself, hadn’t I? Yes, I had nearly drowned, but instead of pulling me out, pulling me up, Kaz had turned to my closest friend.
Kaz promised he would never talk to Leokadia again. But by the time I came back to Poland, Leokadia was already gone.
Agata, not Kaz, told me that Leokadia had packed up one day last summer and moved to Berlin to study with a renowned pianist. And even Agata didn’t seem to understand why she had left when she had, so suddenly, with her father so ill and so against the move that he refused to give her any money for it.
I shook my head, as if it made no sense to me either. If I pretended whatever had happened between her and Kaz never had, then maybe I could forget it, too. Maybe, in time, it would become hazy enough that I would forgive Kaz, love him the way I used to. “Perhaps she couldn’t deny her talent any longer,” I suggested to Agata, convincing enough in my lie that I almost believed it myself.
Agata nodded, agreeing that made sense. The irony was, without Leokadia, my life felt much quieter, lonelier. I didn’t want to miss her, but she had been my closest friend in Loksow for many years.
Sometimes I thought about the life I’d tasted briefly in France, walking through Hela and Jacques’s lab, pedaling through the flowers in Sceaux with Pierre, and I felt a little pang of jealousy for Leokadia, learning and living freely in Berlin now. As a friend I both envied her and felt guilt for my role in making her feel she had to leave. But as Kaz’s wife it was a relief to know she was gone, to know that when he went to Hipolit’s to work each day, he wouldn’t be tempted.
KLARA TURNED SIX MONTHS OLD AT THE END OF APRIL, AND two days later, Kaz came home from work in the middle of the day and sat down at the table where I was feeding Klara lunch. He rested his cheek on the wood of the table and began to cry.
“What is it?” I stood up, alarmed. I had never seen Kaz cry before, not even when baby Zosia died. But it had been hard to see anything then, through the fog of my own tears.
“Hipolit is gone,” he said.
“Oh.” My heartbeat quickened, and I put my hand to my chest to steady it. The money we lived on now came from the salary that Hipolit paid Kaz to conduct his research. Hipolit had been sick for a while, but somehow in my mind I’d imagined him lingering on and on and on.
“It was just… my parents… Hipolit treated me…” Kaz shook his head, flooded with grief, not able to finish his thought. But I nodded, I understood. Hipolit was his mentor. Hipolit had taught him and cared for him and nurtured his talent even when his own parents had abandoned him.
I felt guilty now that my first reaction to the news had not been sadness, but a new, and familiar, worry about money. “Oh, Kaz,” I said gently. No matter that I was still angry with him, I cared for him, too.
Klara had taken the spoon from my hand while I was paying attention to Kaz, and she chose that moment to test it against the wood of the table, banging it, again, and again, and again, while babbling to herself.
Kaz pulled the spoon from her hands, abruptly, and her face turned, her eyes welled up with tears. Poland’s happiest baby turned, in an instant, into Poland’s saddest baby. Kaz’s mouth opened. “No, moje dziecko, don’t cry. Papa didn’t mean to upset you.”
He reached for her quickly, held her against his chest, until her tears stopped. Her heartbeat steadied against his heartbeat, and he kissed the top of her head, gently smoothed back her blond curls with his large fingers.