Jillian Cantor: Half Life

In the distance, we could hear the whistle of the train approaching. I let go of the embrace, picked up my things, and stepped closer to the tracks. The city of Warsaw, majestic and gray and stifling, would be behind me now. And suddenly, I felt lighter, dizzy with excitement at what lay ahead of me.

AS THE TRAIN PULLED INTO THE STATION, I THOUGHT I HEARD my name in the distance, from somewhere across the street. I ignored it, sure I was imagining it, because it sounded just like Kazimierz’s voice.

But then I heard it again: “Marya, wait!”

I turned around, and there he was, running across the street, waving his arms. Kazimierz was tall and lovely, with a long face and deep-brown brooding eyes. Now he was red-faced, and sweating, out of breath from running. The fall air was crisp, and it suddenly chilled me. All of my skin turned to ice. My own voice froze inside my throat, and I could not respond.

Papa turned toward Kazimierz and frowned. “What is happening?” he asked, turning back to me. He knew about Kazimierz, but only in a general way. Kaz was the man who’d broken his daughter’s heart, who did not believe she would ever be good enough to marry him.

“What are you doing here?” I put my suitcase down, put my hands on my hips, and demanded an explanation of my own.

He stood in front of me, his breath jagged. “You can’t go,” he said, glancing behind me at the train, which had begun to board. “Wherever it is you are going, you… you can’t. Stay here. Stay with me.” His voice broke, making him sound desperate in a way I hadn’t heard before. My love for him ran through my body, a shiver.

“How did you even find me?” I asked. The question slipped out, but what I truly meant to ask was why? Why was he here? His parents disapproved of us; he would never disappoint his parents or risk them disowning him, making him penniless, just like me. That’s what he’d told me, wasn’t it?

“I went to your apartment first. Helena told me maybe I could still catch you, before it was too late.”

“Too late?” I asked.

Papa stepped from behind me and put his hand on Kazimierz’s shoulder. “I think it’s best you leave.” Papa spoke calmly, but forcefully. He was not a menacing man—Kazimierz was several inches taller, but Papa seemed to grow in that moment, and Kazimierz took a step back.

“I love her,” he said to Papa now, not me. “I want her to be my wife.”

“But your parents,” I said.

“I don’t care about my parents. There is no one in all of Poland, no, all of the world, as smart and as beautiful as you, Marya. Remember that last afternoon, skating on the river, what you told me?” I had told him that he steadied me, that my entire life had been one giant river of ice before him: I kept falling and falling and falling, being so poor and often prone to bouts of emotional darkness. But holding on to him, I knew I wouldn’t fall any longer. “Well, it is the same for me,” he was saying now. “I have been falling these last weeks without you.”

“Marya is on her way to Paris,” Papa said, bringing me back, here.

“Paris,” Kazimierz exhaled, and his face fell. He knew about my deal with Bronia, but after we had gotten engaged, we had agreed that I would stay in Poland instead, that I could be his wife and teach at a girls’ gymnasium, the way Hela did. I wanted to attend university, but I was not going to upend my life over it if I had love, if I had him, here in Poland.

“You can write letters,” Papa was saying now.

Friends wrote each other letters; siblings wrote each other letters. Husbands and wives did not live half a continent apart.

Kazimierz turned back to me, grabbed my hands. Not squeezing them hard, but gently now, and I warmed again at his touch. “Please, Marya. Stay here with me. Marry me. Our love means more to you than university. You said so. And if Paris is really that important to you, we can go there together, someday, after I get my degree here.”

I had told him that, too, skating on the ice-covered river in Szczuki: his love meant more to me than university . But that was when the Sorbonne still felt so far away, perpetually out of my reach. Now, I wasn’t so sure.

I looked from Kaz to Papa. Papa was frowning; Kaz was smiling. His smile was infectious. I could not let go of his hand. I wanted to go to Paris, wanted to continue my studies, but I wanted to be with the man I loved, too.

And then I made a choice.

Poland, 1891–1892

You have a choice. There is always a choice.

Kazimierz and I chose each other. We were married a month after that day on the train platform. I became Marya Zorawska at a small church in Warsaw with only Papa and Hela in attendance. His parents disowned him, as they’d promised they would, refused to speak to him, or come to our wedding, or give him any money. But I had never had money, and anyway, what was money when we had love? We had each other, and that was everything.

I worried Papa would be disappointed in me, but at my wedding, the only thing I could detect on his face was joy. My sweet Marya. He held on to me and kissed my cheeks after the ceremony. All I want is for you to be happy.

I am very happy , I assured him. And I was. I really was. The periods of my life where I had felt sadness weighing me down, darkening my every thought, felt behind me. Being with Kazimierz filled me with an all-consuming sort of joy and contentment that I could never remember feeling in my life before. At least not since Mama had died of tuberculosis when I was ten. Being with him made me feel permanently steady.

Hela told me she envied me, and she admitted that she had been in love with a man in Warsaw when I was in Szczuki. Josef had told her he couldn’t marry her because she was poor. You’re not the only one , she’d said into my darkness .

“You did the right thing,” Hela said to me, just after my wedding. And with the reassurance of my sister-twin, I felt even more certain, even happier.

Only Bronia, who could not make it back to Poland for the wedding, expressed her doubts in a letter. We had an arrangement , she wrote. I want you to come to Paris and get your education. I owe you for all the help you gave me in achieving my degree. Bronia, our sister-mother, always wanted everything to be fair. And besides, you cannot pass up your chance for an education.

I wrote her back and told her not to worry about old promises, or owing me anything. I told her I still could come to Paris in time, but there wasn’t any rush. Education would be there, whenever we could afford it. And besides, she must understand how I was feeling—she had recently found love herself, married a doctor, also named Kazimierz. Papa now had a running joke that if only we could find a third Kazimierz, Hela would finally be happy, too.

Then Bronia found out she was carrying a child, and it was joyous news, and she had more to worry about than her little sister. Her letters came less frequently, and when they arrived they were filled with details of her condition.

And I did not need her to worry about me anymore. Now I had a husband for that.

WE WERE POOR, BUT WE WOULDN’T BE FOREVER, WE PROMISED each other that. Kazimierz had a brilliant mind for mathematics. He’d almost completed his doctoral studies in analytical geometry, and he was able to secure a teaching position at a secondary school in Loksow, a small city about an hour train ride from Warsaw. He had been accepted into a program at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, to obtain his complete doctorate in mathematics. But without his parents’ support, we could not afford for him to enroll or for us to live in the beautiful and cultural city of Krakow, in Austrian Poland. Kazimierz said it didn’t matter, that we would save up, and we could move, he could enroll in another year or two.