Hey, it’s Marie.
So. Poland doesn’t exist anymore. I should probably start there.
The Russian Empire swallowed us whole, and now they run everything — the language, the books, who gets to learn what. Women can’t attend university. It’s not a suggestion. It’s the law. And if you break it, you go to prison.
I’m breaking it.
There’s an underground school that moves between apartments so the police can’t find it. We call it the Flying University. Last Tuesday I learned thermodynamics in a kitchen that smelled like cabbage. The week before, electromagnetism in a parlor with floral wallpaper peeling off the walls. This is how I’m getting my education — in rooms that were never meant for it, alongside women who could lose everything for being there.
It’s not enough.
I can feel the edges of what these classes can give me, and I’ve already reached them. No degree. No laboratory. No future in science unless I leave. The Sorbonne in Paris actually admits women, which still strikes me as almost unbelievable — a university where I could just be there, openly, without watching the door.
The money problem is simple: there is none. My father teaches. We get by, barely. So five years ago, my sister Bronya and I made a pact. I’d work as a governess, send her everything I earned, and she’d go to medical school in Paris first. Then she’d send for me.
Five years I’ve been doing this. Living in other people’s homes. Raising other people’s children. Smiling. Being small. And then at night, after the house goes quiet, I study until I can’t keep my eyes open. Because if I stop — if I let even one week go by without learning something — I’m afraid I won’t start again. I’m afraid I’ll settle.
Bronya wrote last month. Come. I have space.
I’ve saved enough for the train and first term tuition. My French is bad. I don’t own a winter coat. Everyone in my life has told me, in one way or another, that I should want less.
I don’t know how to want less.
I’m going.
They say at the Sorbonne you can walk into the library and just sit down. Open any book. Nobody asks if you’re allowed. I think about that more than I should.
— Marie
