Fractured Curie
by sacredlilac
Maria Skłodowska paused outside her father's Warsaw home to look at the paper that was starting to wear thin along the crease lines. "Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel," she whispered as she ran her finger over the author's names, something she'd done daily since her sister, Bronisława, sent the paper from Paris on a whim that Maria would be interested.
After a great deal of trial and error, she'd built a simple machine to measure the uranium rays that Curie and Becquerel had discussed over the course of several papers. Her heart hammered in trepidation because now she was finally ready to reveal what she'd discovered.
With a heavy heart over the secret she bore, Maria pushed open the door and called, "Father, are you here?"
Władysław Skłodowski leaned back in his chair to peer at his youngest daughter who came around the corner with slumped shoulders and downcast eyes. "What has happened, my dearest Mania?" Even her family nickname didn't bring the barest hint of a smile to her face.
Maria slowly lowered herself to the chair beside her father's desk and clasped her hands in her lap. "What are you working on, Father?"
Władysław frowned ever so slightly, but let Maria avoid answering his question. "I'm working on that new formula we went over with your husband. How is Kazimierz today? Over his cough?"
"Yes, he's much better now," Maria replied absently.
Her father narrowed his eyes slightly in concern. "Are you two fighting? Is Kazimierz's family stirring up trouble again?"
Maria shook her head, but pursed her lips. Her husband's family had not made life easy for the couple. They resented that Kazimierz was willing to choose her over them when they opposed the cousin's marrying, and that their beloved son threatened to walk away from his mathematics doctorate and run away to Paris with Maria to join her sister.
They ignored that fact that Maria had given up her own studies at the Flying University so she could take on more tutoring students to support them financially while Kazimierz finished school. Like so many others, they didn't think women needed, or were intelligent enough, for education beyond basic reading and writing, which flew directly in the face of her own parent's beliefs that had shaped her.
Kazimierz's family focused solely on his preference for her over them, and how they could make Maria pay for that allegiance by making life hell at every turn.
Maria knelt in front of her father and clasped his cool hands upon his knees. Hands that had held her, nurtured and encouraged her all her life. Hands that had rescued the school laboratory equipment when the laboratory program was scrapped, then patiently used that equipment to instruct his daughters at home.
Time had passed more quickly than she expected, though, and now she was struggling with the feeling that her life was... lacking.
Yet, the paper currently burning a hole in her pocket was filling up that void. Not for the first time she wondered if Fate had designs on linking her with Paris.
"Father, you know I have always loved tutoring students." She smiled warmly. "Seeing the light of understanding, come on in a student's eyes is one of the most satisfying things."
Władysław smiled back. "To be part of someone's development is an undeniable gift."
Her father watched Maria push to her feet, clasp her arms around herself again and stride back and forth across the room in a state of agitated emotion it was rare for her to display.
She returned to kneel in front of him and clasp his hands once more. "The Flying University has hinted they are considering awarding me a position there. To teach among such illustrious people would be a great honour I never expected." She dipped her head and quietly said, "In all honesty, I have been contenting myself with just my tutoring."
"Maria, you do yourself a disservice. Your students flourish under you. The Flying University would be the one honoured if you were to teach there."
"Father, you flatter me. There is so much I do not know. To learn and help others and improve the world is all that I desire." Maria dropped her head forward, brushing her chest with her chin.
Her eyes were troubled when she looked up. "The mathematics work I do with you and Kazimierz is very gratifying. I am happy through and through that you both won that award last year."
Her father's frowned deepened. "It was an award that you deserved as much as we did. That committee was wrong to shut you out just because you are a woman!"
Maria smiled sadly. "If only the whole world thought as you do, Father. You've always encouraged us to follow our ambitions and better ourselves."
"And why not? You are as capable at mathematics as myself or Kazimierz. In fact, we wouldn't have made some of the breakthroughs without your help!"
"Father, you flatter me again! I am most certain that you would have reached the same conclusions I did."
"Perhaps, but it would have taken much more work than leapfrogging through it as your input allowed us to do, Maria."
Once again, Maria suddenly took to her feet, pacing around the space, hands fluttering absently in reflection of her agitated mind. She straightened a picture, picked up a book and riffled through the pages before setting it down again, tucked the chairs in around the dining table.
Władysław watched patiently, sucking on his pipe, as his daughter wrestled with herself. Finally she came back and sat down in the chair kittycorner to his.
After vigorously rubbing her forehead with both hands, she pressed her hands to her eyes, murmured quietly to herself, then looked at her father with disquiet etched onto her features.
"I fear I am having a crisis of self. Something has been weighing heavily on me, and I must make a confession about it." She closed her eyes briefly and drew in a large breath. "I have been working on something in the shed behind our house."
Władysław smiled and reached to squeeze his daughter's hands happily. "That's wonderful news, Maria! Tell me about it." He had wondered at the pile of gardening equipment that was heaped at the end of their garden, but figured it was just Maria organizing again.
Slowly she reached into the folds of her jacket and withdrew the paper. Timidly she laid it on the desk and slid it across with downcast eyes.
"It was inspired by this paper by two gentlemen in Paris, Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel. When I read it, I could immediately see where their work could be taken. So I went out and cleared the shed to begin work. That same night. There is more to this finding than has been plumbed. I can just feel it in my bones. " As she'd spoken, her voice had elevated in excitement and she'd risen half off her chair. She slowly sank back down as her father's eyes skimmed the paper.
She picked at a speck of lint on her dress and quietly said, "I don't want you to think I will abandon the work I do with you and Kazimierz. By my last breath, I will do all I can to not fail you in that, but this work... it has ignited a spark within me that I wasn't aware I had."
Władysław lowered the paper and peered at his youngest child over the rims of his spectacles. "My darling daughter, why ever would you think your husband or I would be upset that you are pursuing your own scientific work? You are mistress of your own mind and heart. We do not own you or command you. You are destined for far greater things than to be a lab assistant. So, tell me what you have been working on."
Two hours later, Maria walked slowly along the road back to her own house. Her mind was spinning with the possibilities she'd discussed with her father.
So deep in thought was she that only her elderly neighbour Mrs. Krakow calling her name made her realise she'd reached her own home. With an absent wave, she turned onto her own path, bypassing the house.
As she walked up the flagstones towards the shed, she dimly registered her neighbour calling her name repeatedly and insistently. It was probably just to give her some goulash for supper. Food could wait. A scientific breakthrough was forming in her mind that was more important.
Pushing open the door to the leaky, cramped shed where she'd been working, she blinked owlishly at the two men in brown uniforms who were standing at her table, holding her beakers and other equipment aloft.
"What now? Who are you?" she asked, coming out of the depths of her mind and realizing that two complete strangers were standing in her private shed and examining her workbench. She hadn't published any of her findings thus far, and she didn't want to have anyone poking their nose in her experiment and running off to duplicate it and take the credit before her.
"What is all this?" the man barked in German. "Is this junk yours?"
Maria drew herself up straight. "Yes, it's mine. Now, who are you? This is private property. You're trespassing!"
The men laughed raucously and exchanged a meaningful look. "None of this is yours anymore!" With that, he swept her table clean with his arm.
"No!" Maria screamed and leapt forward in a futile effort to save the glass beakers and other delicate equipment that was smashing to the ground.
"What right do you have to come in here and destroy my property?" she shrieked and slapped the man's arm.
Within a heartbeat, Maria found herself looking down the barrel of a very large, black gun. She could smell the grease the man had used on it - the soldier, she corrected herself as in her peripheral vision she took in the badges and insignias on his uniform that matched the other man's. She could also smell the acrid scent of gunpowder from the barrel that meant he had recently fired his weapon. Maria's heart raced and her mind flew to her husband and children, out for the day in the countryside, then to her neighbours who she just registered had not been out in their gardens like normal. Now at least she knew what Mrs. Krakow was trying to tell her.
"It is inadvisable to strike a soldier of the Third Reich, " he said coldly. Quick as a snake, he struck Maria savagely on the side of her head with the butt of his gun.
As she lay crumpled on the ground, fading in and out of consciousness, she could hear the men's laughter above her, then the sound of their boots fading as they stomped out of the building. Just before she relented to the crowding darkness, she caught the scent of smoke from somewhere nearby.