Hey, it’s Marie.
Paris update. I’ve been at the Sorbonne for two years now and I should be honest with you — it’s been brutal.
When I first got here I could barely follow the lectures. My French was awful. The other students grew up in proper schools with proper teachers. I grew up in secret apartments dodging the Russian police. I was so far behind in mathematics that I spent my entire first year just trying to catch up.
I also can’t afford to eat. That’s not me being dramatic — there are days where my meals are bread with chocolate and tea. That’s it. I live in a tiny room on the sixth floor of an apartment building with no heat. In winter I sleep with every piece of clothing I own piled on top of me and I still wake up shivering. I fainted in the library once. A friend carried me home, checked my kitchen, found nothing in it. She was furious. I told her I’d been busy.
But here’s the thing. I’m happy. Stupidly, unreasonably happy. I can walk into any lecture I want. I can sit in the library until midnight and nobody tells me to leave. After five years of hiding my education like it was something shameful, I’m just a student. A freezing, starving student with bad French. But a student.
I graduated first in my physics class. I’m not saying that to brag. I’m saying it because every person back in Warsaw who told me to be realistic can hear about it and choke.
I’ve been looking for laboratory space to do my own research. Lab space in Paris is expensive and nobody gives it to a young Polish woman with no connections. A friend introduced me to a man named Pierre Curie because apparently he had extra room in his lab.
I went expecting to make a quick arrangement about sharing equipment. Instead I met the strangest person I’ve ever encountered.
Pierre is tall, a little awkward, and completely uninterested in anything that isn’t science. Within ten minutes of meeting me he’d forgotten to offer me a chair because he was too busy explaining his research on crystals. He talks about magnetism the way other men talk about women — with this intense, dreamy focus that’s either very beautiful or mildly concerning. I haven’t decided.
Most men at the university hear that I’m a physicist and they get this look — like they find it cute. Like a dog walking on its hind legs. Amusing, not serious. Pierre didn’t do that. Pierre heard me talk about my research and leaned forward like I was the most interesting thing that had happened to him all year. He asked real questions. He listened to the answers. At one point he disagreed with me and we argued for forty minutes and it was wonderful.
He’s asked to see me again. I said yes because I need the lab space. That’s the only reason. I’m here to work, not to get distracted by a Frenchman who gets emotional about magnets.
Although I’ll admit — it’s nice to finally meet someone who’s exactly as obsessed as I am.
I’ll keep you updated. Don’t read into this.
— Marie
