Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction
Page 50
“I would not touch the hair of other people except, perhaps, at the point of a revolver,” he once wrote.
Tesla could certainly be said to have had hyperhearing. Nicola saved his neighbours from fires several times, as his hearing was so sensitive that he could not only hear the ticking of a clock several rooms away, but also the small crackles made by a fire igniting miles away.
According to his own claims, Nicola could also levitate. In his short autobiography he wrote:
“Like most children I was fond of jumping and developed an intense desire to support myself in the air. Occasionally a strong wind richly charged with oxygen blew from the mountains rendering my body as light as cork and then I would leap and float in space for a long time.”
Already at an early age, Nicola’s mother led him in memory exercises, the quality of which Tesla doesn’t specify. He later continued mental exercises, demonstrating admirable self-discipline. The catalyst for these exercises was a novel by the Hungarian author Jósika. According to Nicola, it awakened his willpower.
“After years of such discipline I gained so complete a mastery over myself that I toyed with passions which have meant destruction to some of the strongest men,” he—otherwise such a modest person—boasts.
Tesla does not specify the nature of the passions he refers to. His autobiography does mention gambling, to which he was addicted in his youth for a time. On sexual matters, Tesla is silent. As far as is known, he never had relationships with women, nor did he have homosexual ones. His whole being and life was marked by a sort of innocense and puritanism, also extending to his financial matters.
After seeing an avalanche form from a small snowball, he wondered at how great events can grow out of small deeds. This awe inspired by the laws of nature stayed with him to the end of his days.
Nicola had an exceptionally developed ability of visualization. From early on, he could see with his mind’s eye all the details of entire systems with motors and generators that didn’t yet exist. He saw them functioning, he could make out their material, the shining and hard metal. The images or films were as real as any object before his eyes.
These visions soon began to flow in front of his eyes in an endless stream. In less than two months he invented several new types and variations of motor.
Tesla writes of having once strolled down a riverbank with his uncle. The sun was setting and trout seemed to be playing as they were hunting. Now and then one of them would leap into the air, and its shimmering body would stand out against the rock face on the other side of the river.
Nicola told his uncle what he intended to do. He would hurl a stone at a trout, so that it would slam against the rock and be cut in two. He picked up a stone and in the next moment did exactly what he’d promised. His uncle was so thoroughly frightened that he yelled: “Vade retro, Satanas!”
Days went by before he spoke to his nephew again.
When studying at the higher Real Gymnasium in Carlstadt, Croatia, Nicola lived with his aunt, who fed him like a canary. The meals were refined and delicious, but very frugal. Tesla writes that he suffered like Tantalus, but turned this, too, to his advantage.
At the Polytechnic School in Gratz, Tesla completed an unbelievable number of degrees in a short time. His professors wrote to his father and asked him to take his son out of the school, so that he wouldn’t kill himself from overexhaustion.
In Budapest, Nicola suffered a severe nervous breakdown. His senses were sensitized to the point of it being an illness. A fly walking on the table was like a hollow hammering in his head. He had a hard time walking under bridges, because he felt their crushing weight in his skull. The whistle of a locomotive engine thirty miles away made the chair underneath him tremble so that the pain was almost unbearable.
Nicola felt that the ground beneath him was constantly shaking. (This reminds me of Strindberg, who complained while living in Paris that the city was continuously trembling.)
His eyesight also became so acute that he could make his way in the darkness like a bat and could distinguish objects at a distance before anyone else noticed the first sign of them.
Tesla’s pulse fluctuated strongly and could rise up to 260. He was pestered by muscle spasms. He could recite complete novels from memory. One day Tesla was reciting Faust to his friend, verses that described the evening sun: “Sie rückt und weicht, der Tag ist überlebt, Dort eilt sie hin und fordert neues Leben . . . ” He then describes having had a flare in his brain like a lightning bolt, a new vision. He drew a diagram of the induction motor in the sand.
”I cannot begin to describe my emotions. Pygmalion seeing his statue come to life could not have been more deeply moved,” Tesla wrote.
The Second Seed Pod
The Pendulum Man and Un-Me
Before eating anything, even at a restaurant, The Pendulum Man would always use his pendulum, a four-inch-long piece of string weighted with a five mark coin on the end. He claimed that this instrument told him whether the food was edible and if it was suitable for his digestion.
“I have a very sensitive stomach,” he said. “It starts growling very easily.”
And, indeed, at that very moment, I thought I heard a sound like an irritated dog growling somewhere out of sight.
The Pendulum Man had written us a short article about his experiences of being a pendulum man. He said that I could treat him to a good lunch, as he wouldn’t accept payment for his article.
I took him to an Italian restaurant, where he ordered just soup. I watched him dangle the pendulum above his minestrone. The coin swung lazily back and forth, back and forth. I watched both amused and nervous. He had explained to me that if the pendulum started making circles, he would unfortunately have to decline eating the food. But the coin didn’t change its path, and I gave a sigh of relief when he finally picked up his spoon.
“Hang on a minute,” he said, his spoon halting mid-way. “Should we see what it has to say about your food?”
I’d already started to eat my tortellinis, which tasted delicious, and I didn’t want to risk having the pendulum steal my meal from me, so I politely declined.
“The pendulum knows. Although to the question of whether the food is edible, it can only answer yes or no,” he said. “But that’s all it has to do.”
Only after we’d emptied our plates did I let him teach me the basics of pendulum use.
“The pendulum should hang freely, held between the thumb and forefinger. It will start swinging lightly back and forth. That’s oscillation,” he said.
“I see,” I said and tried to keep my hand steady.
“Sooner or later the movement becomes circular. When that happens depends on the element in question. The pendulum has a different reaction to different materials, even colors,” he said. “The number of revolutions the pendulum makes varies. Iron, copper, silver, they all have their own trajectories.”
He said many other things as well, told me his pendulum’s exact trajectories for several different materials, but now I can remember only silver: 56 centimeters and 22 revolutions.
“By the way, if I put a strip of aluminum foil on my forehead, the pendulum no longer answers my questions correctly,” the Pendulum Man told me.
“But doesn’t that just go to show that it’s all about some human ability and not the pendulum itself? Have you considered that the movements of your hands unconsciously control the pendulum?” I asked him.
“Of course,” he said. “That’s exactly what I think. Unconsciously, that’s the important word! In fact, the pendulum works better when I don’t focus on it particularly. You see, it’s not me controlling the pendulum. It is un-me.”
“Un-me?” I asked.
“Precisely. You see, the pendulum also reacts to completely abstract things, such as thoughts and emotions. In fact, the pendulum reacts only to those, as material objects are just forms of thought to it. It communicates with our consciousness, or more precisely our unconscious. That is the un-me, a trem
endous being, several beings you could say, that know so much more than the conscious mind. The un-me gathers information with incredible efficiency. It then mediates those vast amounts of information to our consciousness through the pendulum. Without the un-me we couldn’t survive in this world.
“The pendulum has its foibles,” the Pendulum Man said at the end of his demonstration. “Can you imagine that a small drop of whiskey substantially improves its precision? I wonder why that is? I don’t know why, but I’ve noticed that four centiliters—no more, no less—is the ideal dosage for the pendulum.”
I took the hint and ordered the ideal dosage of scotch along with coffee and mille-feuille. The Pendulum Man downed the whiskey to the health of his instrument, and lo and behold! The coin at the end of the string did seem to revolve at a more lively pace above the mille-feuille.
The Puddle
“Take a look at this,” I said to Penjami. I passed him a small, black plastic box. “You can have it.”
“What is it?”
He took the box carefully in his hands and shook it.
“It rattles.”
“Open it,” I said.
He peeked inside the box.
“Are those bones?”
“They’re supposed to be,” I said. “Of course, they’re not real. They’re fake bones. Tip them out onto the table and turn off the light.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see.”
He stretched out his hand and turned off the lamp with the green lamp shade. The white bones, thin as matches, glowed on the table and illuminated his young face.
“Wow,” he said, enchanted, “they’re glow-in-the-dark.”
“Yes, it’s a glow-in-the-dark skeleton puzzle. You can put it together now if you like. You can test it. Your father bought thirty of them, for the parastore. I want to make sure that they really make a complete skeleton. Otherwise the customers will complain and we’ll have to give them their money back.”
“This was a very small person,” he said, contemplative. “A very small toy person,” he corrected himself.
I remember well the first time I met little Penjami. It was October, after weeks of rain.
“This here is Penjami,” the Marquis said.
Penjami had on blue overalls and a red bomber’s hat. He was about four feet tall then. He didn’t pay me much attention. He stood in front of the largest puddle in the yard and looked at it with deep, thoughtful eyes.
The old factory building in which The New Anomalist was published is located at the lowest point of the street, and its front yard tends to stay moist even in dry weather. The pavement is uneven, the asphalt cracked. Especially after rain, the yard is covered by a network of slowly drying puddles, to the nuisance of bypassers.
“Hi!” I said.
“Hi,” Penjami replied absent-mindedly, still not looking at me. “I wonder where you got that puddle?”
“Hm,” I said. It was a novel and unexpected question. I had to think for a minute before answering.
“Where was it again . . . I think we bought it from that grocery store on the corner,” I said.
He lifted his grave gaze from the puddle and seemed to see me for the first time. He wasn’t the slightest bit amused by my answer.
“Oh.”
“I think it was on sale,” I said.
“Was it? How much did it cost?” he asked. “Do they still have them?”
“Do you want one like that? Are you sure it’s the right size? Not too big or too small?”
He nodded. “It’s neat.”
I looked at the puddle and saw that he was right. It really was a neat puddle, although I’d never been able to look at it that way before. A miraculous looking-glass, fallen from a cloud. The puddle itself lay in the shadow of the factory, but the cloudless autumn day that it partially reflected made it look deep and pure. The bird that flew across the sky also swam in our puddle. There was a small heaven in our yard. I was thankful to Penjami for making me understand the value of the puddle, and I felt embarrassed that I had teased him.
“Actually you can only get puddles from the sky, not the store. You just have to wait for it to rain,” I said. “And then, of course, there has to be a suitable place for a puddle.”
“Yeah,” he said and fell silent. Now his eyes examined the old factory warehouse critically. “Did you build this?” he asked.
“No, not me,” I said. “I just work here. This is an old factory, older than me. Can you believe that?”
“The person who built this building was really smart,” he continued.
“What makes you think that?” I asked.
“Because he built it in just the right place.”
“How so?” I asked.
“This close to the puddle,” little Penjami said.
A Visit to the Hair Artiste
Sometimes the Marquis decided that my duties as subeditor included making house calls. Most of the time it was a task I was reluctant to do, and I tried to explain to the chief editor that it wasn’t customary at publishing houses to have their subeditors running around visiting the homes of their readers and contributors.
“But it is our custom,” the Marquis simply said.
It was extremely awkward to have to enter the territory of a stranger, step into the circle of their smells and memories. Every time I came back from these house calls, my asthma was worse and a headache would start to throb in my left temple.
“Häikälä the Hair Artiste called today,” the Marquis said. “She has some interesting documents, photos apparently, and she insisted that someone come over and take a look at them.”
“I see,” I said and tried in vain to concentrate on my article on the Voynich manuscript. I knew what was coming and who that someone would be.
“Maybe you could pay her a visit . . . ”
“I’m sure she can just send her photos to us,” I said. “Or come over herself.”
“No, she’s afraid they’ll get lost in the mail.”
“So what? We certainly don’t have to dance to the tune of her fears.”
“I already promised her,” the Marquis said.
I let out a sigh of submission. “Is a hair artiste the same as a hair dresser?” I asked aloud.
“I guess it’s a more respected title,” the Marquis replied.
On my way to visit the Hair Artiste, I drove by a building that summoned up an unpleasant memory. I’d never been inside, nor did the building itself have any repellent qualities as such. On the contrary, it was well-proportioned for a building its size, neat and recently painted a pale shade of yellow. But in my early youth it had served as a slaughterhouse.
I took a bus to school that, towards the end of its route along the highway, passed by this building I didn’t like to think about what was happening inside the building. I saw those actions as a crime that we all tolerated and had gotten used to, or even worse: a crime we all wished for, without which we couldn’t dream of living.
A scene is etched into my mind. It caught my eye years ago while I stood, hemmed in by winter coats, in the aisle at the front of that bus. It was strange, nearly incomprehensible, and I have wondered whether I truly saw it or only imagined the whole thing.
Right before descending to the street below, the highway ran for some twenty yards at the level of the third floor of the building. That day I looked straight into the building through a window and saw a room or a hallway. The only furniture I could make out was a long and narrow table.
On the table lay a woman in a white flower-patterned summer dress, the kind of pattern that was popular at the time. She was maybe the same age as my mother. She lay on her back, motionless, her dark hair spread around her head. I’m no longer certain whether there were other people around her, but I was left with that impression.
The bus drove on. A reddish-white cloud drifted up from the chimney of the coffee- roasting factory. A terrible thought had burned into my mind, an impossible and sickening one.
To my horror , the Hair Artiste, a lady nearing retirement who had blue highlights in her silvery hair, wanted to give me a grand tour of her home, which I politely tried to decline. I told her that The Anomalist was not an interior design magazine. With a noticeable air of satisfaction, she walked ahead of me from room to room: the kitchen with French oak cupboards and new copper pots and pans on open shelves; the living room with a sofa upholstered in shiny lurex; the bedroom with a bed spread that the Hair Artiste had designed herself and that had dried rose petals sewn into it.
All through the house, mirrors of various sizes reflected my long nose back at me, and many times I bumped accidentally into unstable little faux rococo tables covered with candelabras, more porcelain animals, dried flower arrangements, ornate mantel clocks, and gilded picture frames. They held not only photos of her relatives, but also of her well-groomed celebrity customers.
“This is my office,” she said, and opened yet another door.
I expected the room to have yet more mirrors and a hairdresser’s chair and that it would be the place where she received customers who wanted the services of a hair artiste instead of just a regular hairdresser. There was a mirror, a tall trumeau mirror, but instead of a hairdresser’s chair there was an ordinary office chair and a writing desk, on which stood a tall pile of hair styling magazines.
“This is where I work on my doctoral thesis,” the Hair Artiste said. “I’m in a Ph.D. program.”
I must have looked astonished as the Hair Artiste explained that even cosmetologists, hair artistes, and confectioners had Ph.D. programs.