Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [147]
EIGHTEEN
ITHINK YOU MUST like keeping me in the dark,” Colette said to Younger in their lurching airplane, shouting to make herself heard over the propeller’s roar.
Younger had refused to give Colette any explanation of his changing their destination from Bremen to Paris except to say that he had questions only Marie Curie might be able to answer. Far below he could see the twisting Danube, whose course the pilot was evidently following. “Yes, it must be frustrating,” he replied to Colette, “when you’ve been such a model of transparency yourself.”
When they finally reached Paris, they passed so close to Mr. Eiffel’s tower they seemed almost about to graze it. At the airstrip a few other planes warmed themselves in the afternoon sun, haphazardly arranged, and there was even a ticket office, but the entire place was deserted. The pilot, himself a Parisian, eventually gave them a lift to the city center in a ramshackle car.
Colette pointed out favorite sights as they crossed the bridge to the Trocadéro and its spectacular crab-shaped Oriental palace, where, around calm reflecting pools, top-hatted men and parasol-carrying women promenaded. She gave the pilot directions to the Radium Institute. “You must remember,” she said to Younger, “that Madame is not in the best health anymore, and her sight is failing.” Colette shook her head. “They almost rumored her to death a few years ago. Now she is the toast of Paris, and they all try to pretend it never happened.”
Viewed from the Rue Pierre Curie, the Radium Institute looked more like a comfortable bourgeois house than a scientific laboratory. “When I first went through these doors and saw Madame’s equipment inside,” said Colette, “I thought it must be the grandest, finest laboratory in the world. Then I saw your marble halls of science in America. It must seem like nothing to you.”
Inside the equipment was indeed of very high quality: banks of electrometers, gas burners, twisted-necked glass beakers, all sparkling with scrupulously maintained sterility. Colette, after greeting old friends, eventually led Younger to the doorway of a room with a high ceiling, a large window, and a desk rather than a laboratory table. A gray-haired woman stood inside this room, instructing an assistant who was carefully packing equipment into a box.
Colette knocked on the open door and said, “Madame?”
Marie Curie turned and stared: “Who is it?”
“It’s Colette, Madame,” said Colette.
“My child,” cried Madame Curie, beaming with delight. “Come here. Come here at once.”
Marie Curie, fifty-two, looked older. Her upper lip was pinched with little vertical lines, her hands were spotted, her fingertips red. She wore her gray hair in a tight bun. A simple black dress covered her entirely, from tight collar to long sleeves to floor-length skirt. Her posture, however, was straight and proud, and she had one of those brows so clear, so fine, that it conveys a serenity beyond the slings and arrows of human misfortune.
“These dreadful cataracts,” Madame Curie went on. “My surgery is next month. The doctors promise me a complete recovery. Let me look at you close up—why, you’re lovelier than ever.”
Colette introduced Younger and explained to Madame Curie that he wished to ask her a few questions, if she could spare the time.
“Dr. Stratham Younger,” said Madame Curie, shaking his hand. “I know that name. Were you one of the soldiers who took training with us last year?”
“No, Madame, but I treated many with your X-ray units in France. America owes you an unrepayable debt.”
“I remember now,” she said. “You were the one who initiated the entire program. I saw your name in the correspondence. I can’t thank you enough. Your army kept us afloat last year when we had no other funding.”
Colette looked at Younger in surprise.
“The benefit was ours,” replied Younger. “Your mobile radiological apparatus is far superior to anything we have. Which I only knew because Miss Rousseau