In the Matter of Nikola Tesla

by Anthony Flacco

  He reasoned that as long as his father never found out what he was doing, then the internal voice would just have to remain in its mental corner and talk to itself. He laughed at the thought, which set off another series of racking coughs.

  This time he didn’t care.

  “What is he doing up there?” Milutin bolted up from his chair at the fireplace and started for the stairs. “For the love of God, he sounds like a madman!”

  As if to punctuate the Reverend’s words, rasping laughter came again from Nikola’s room, followed by another round of deep coughing.

  “Wait,” Djouka stepped in front of her husband, laying one hand on his arm. He stopped in surprise. On the rare occasions when she spoke out with such force, he knew it was pointless to object.

  Djouka turned toward the upstairs bedroom. “He needs to spend this time alone.”

  Milutin exhaled. He shrugged and turned back to the fireplace but didn’t move toward it. His big chair now seemed uninviting. Instead he began to slowly pace before the fire, asking himself why a sincere man of God should have so much trouble understanding any of God’s children—especially his own son.

  He got no answer, but he kept on pacing. The throw rug under his slippers was deeply worn, and the frayed pattern matched his steps.

  Nikola knew that the beautiful Karina had only been marginally aware of him. She was two years younger—two classes behind him at the local school. They were only acquainted through his tutoring sessions at her home over the past year, after her parents hired him on the school’s recommendation. The study process frustrated her—something about not seeing letters correctly on the page—but she proved to be a quick and able student. To Nikola she was not only the most fascinating girl in the province, she was also the most graceful and charming and feminine creature he had ever seen. Despite her frustrations with the written word, all he could see when he looked at her was a young woman blessed with the best of graceful human traits.

  He even loved to watch other people’s reactions to her. She carried a radiant sense of ease about herself and remained graceful and outgoing in any situation where he got the opportunity to observe her. Other girls at school clearly envied her, which she seemed to easily ignore. Clever young men became loud and brash in her presence, and perfectly mannered boys transformed into oafs simply because she walked into the room. He might have done the same thing during their lessons if not for the comforting constraints of his professional role.

  He had always kept himself tight and proper in her presence in spite of his fascination. There was really no choice, given the difference in the social positions of their families.

  None of that mattered to anyone but him. For all of his pains, Karina barely seemed to notice anything about him. If she had ever held special feelings for him, she kept them to herself. He hadn’t been able to do more than follow her with his eyes in the agonizing knowledge that she was most likely indifferent to whatever feelings he harbored for her.

  He never even knew that she was ill until early that same morning. Lying upstairs in his room and already sick with a heavy chest cold, he overheard a neighbor downstairs tell his mother the girl of his dreams had died and was to be buried that morning. The woman spoke in a matter of fact tone, having no idea that her words had stopped time for him. She confided that the burial was being rushed in spite of the heavy autumn rain due to fears of contagion.

  When he heard that, Nikola felt his movements compelled by a force beyond his control. He had barely taken time to dress before charging past both women and out into the relentless downpour. He rushed to the cemetery and lingered outside the fence during the abbreviated service. Afterward, he remained behind until all of the invitees left and only approached the grave site after everyone was gone. He remained for hours, feeling the need to honor her with a vigil. The long wait undid him.

  Tonight, laid flat with fever, Nikola raged at the obscene circumstances. He raged at himself for not seizing some opportunity to get to know Karina when he had the chance. Finally he turned his fury toward his own illness and at the fever for being strong enough to put him in this bed while still failing to distract him away from the depth of his shock.

  A wave of familiar pain seemed to pinch every nerve in his body; he knew this meant the pneumonia was settling in. But his anger powered his muscles and made him strong enough to sit upright while he gathered every ounce of his energy.

  He realized what he was about to do would be more difficult than anything he had ever attempted. Such a thing might be considered a sacrilege. Perhaps it was. He could already hear his inner version of his father’s voice screaming warnings of eternal doom.

  A blinding flash of lightning distracted him for an instant, then he began focusing his eyes at a spot in mid-air, just beyond the foot of the bed. In seconds, the air began to shimmer as if heat waves were rising through it. He kept his gaze focused there while the “heat waves” grew thicker. Before long, his entire body pitched into the strongest act of visualization he had ever attempted.

  He vowed to raise Karina’s image into the air in front of him tonight or expend his life in the attempt, simple as that. The strength of his will locked out any other possibility. For the first time, his power of visualization was going to be good for something more than parlor tricks and some impressive school work. Tonight he would raise her image so clearly she would appear to be solid flesh. She would be a sculpture no one else could see, and her image would be his to cherish. He had no better way to honor her or bring her close to him.

  His gaze went straight to the center of what appeared to be a mass of congealing light. The mass hovered in the air accompanied only by the sounds of the driving rain and Nikola’s labored breathing. His body trembled under the force of the effort.

  All sense of time fell away.

  The storm outside subsided, but there was no peace in the darkened bedroom. To Nikola it simply felt as if the storm had moved into him. Sweat rolled down his forehead without cooling his fever. He felt the hot droplets and the salt stinging his eyes, but his concentration was locked onto his task. Nothing mattered anymore but this new portrait of Karina. Brushstroke by mental brushstroke her image took shape in the air before him, sharp in every detail.

  * * *

  Djouka Tesla stood alone at the foot of the stairway and listened to the sounds of her husband pulling the carriage from the barn and hitching up the snorting horses in preparation to hurry away with their sleepy-eyed daughters. The couple had agreed it was best to get the girls out of there after they woke up complaining about their brother’s shouting. Milu was glad enough to grab them and go. By then the good Pastor had taken all he could stand.

  For her part, Djouka had no doubt that the forces at work in their house were better left alone. Her son could deal with them as well as anyone else might. This was the first time she had seen his power truly tested, but so far her clandestine support of Nikola’s power was one of the great secret projects of her life. Beyond this point, she could only hope he had inherited enough of her infamous abilities to win his current struggle. For now, he would have to ride his chosen roadways alone up in that room, just as her Milu and their three daughters were riding the rain-soaked roads out there in the gloom.

  She moved to the fireplace and sat in her husband’s big chair, keeping the door of Nikola’s room within sight. If the town fathers could hear Nikola’s unchecked ranting, they would surely be convinced that the Pastor’s house played host to some kind of devil’s holiday. Still, Djouka Tesla simply smiled and began to slowly rock in the big chair, comforting herself with the thought that most of the graces a mother radiates onto her family take place without their knowledge.

  * * *

  Nikola was panting with exertion by the time he found himself staring, astonished, at the image just past the foot of his bed. It looked just like Karina—exactly as he remembered her. Impossibly, her image actually showed fine points of detail that he did
not consciously recall. And yet there she was.

  Rather, there it was.

  “It doesn’t simply look like her,” he breathed, “she looks… it looks alive.” He smiled at his own words, referring to a hallucination as a living thing. If the Doctor reappeared and observed that, Nikola would take a short trip to the nearest mental prison.

  But it was still true, and there it was. She (it) not only looked just like Karina, but somehow Nikola felt self-conscious in the presence of this illusion, as if there actually was another conscious entity in the room.

  Trembling, he inched closer, and her eyes (its eyes) flashed with a presence unlike any of the other simple images he had ever raised before. In the first moment, he tried to pretend that he was analyzing his work. A moment later, he threw away pretense and drank in the lure of her beauty.

  “It,” he reminded himself out loud this time. “Its beauty.”

  She or it, he gave himself over to drinking up every detail of this life-sized image that seemed so real. But instead of finding solace, somehow his frustration only increased—the impact tightened his chest until it felt as if it would cave in his ribs.

  He picked up a wooden match from a small matchbox next to the oil lamp on his nightstand. A globe of red-yellow light enveloped his bed and the floor around it, leaving the walls in shadow. But the detail that nearly stopped Nikola’s heart was that the lamplight played across the image’s face, as if the real Karina stood before him.

  His fingers trembled while he reached out to touch her (it). Even though he knew there was nothing to touch, the act itself made him feel as if he was chasing an orgasm through an erotic dream, racing against awakening.

  Temptation had him firmly in its clutch, as he did not doubt his father would frantically remind him, so he forgot he was sick and rose on the bed. He forgot he was in bed and clambered to his feet while he stretched his arms, his hands, his fingers closer to the image of her. He moved with equal amounts of anticipation and dread.

  He hadn’t yet been able to take the full vision of her, and didn’t notice himself getting used to thinking of it as a “her.” The face was as much of her that he had dared to really study–as if the rules of modesty somehow applied to illusions projected from a fevered brain.

  Now he was close enough to the image that the end of the bed no longer blocked her lower half from view. He could see she was dressed just as he last saw her. He stepped onto the floor and stood, staring. A rush of excitement tingled through him while he allowed his eyes to travel down the pale skin of her neck…down to her breasts, her belly, her hips, her thighs…all the way to her feet.

  Her feet. They were tucked into light slippers, and to all appearances, she was standing on the solid wood floor.

  He had no explanation. None of his past visualizations were this complete, and they always faded away if he stared at them too hard. This image appeared solid.

  It baffled him to feel so timid in the presence of a beautiful illusion. When he raised his eyes to meet the gaze from this illusion, a hot rush blasted through him.

  “My God!” he whispered without meaning to. “It’s as if you’re really there.”

  The image’s lips seem to curl just a bit at the corners, sharing the delightful joke in this scandalous secret of their aloneness together in a darkened bedroom. He knew that he needed more of whatever this experience was, but he had to wonder if this girl’s image was an actual creation of his own doing, something of his natural ability. Was this an illusion born in illness? Was all of this the simple product of a fever?

  If so, once he recovered from his illness, he would find himself without the ability to do it over, wouldn’t he? And in that way, Karina would be torn from him again. This phenomenon he had created in the air before him might be something he would never be able to repeat.

  Talk to her.

  “Say your name,” he whispered, no longer caring if the fever had made him insane. He didn’t even care if anyone should come in and see him. “I promise I will hear it, even if you just move your lips. I will hear it.”

  The image of Karina appeared to look at him quizzically, as if asking him why he should want to hear her name. Nikola had never visualized an image that was accompanied by sounds, and he had no reason to hope that anything like that would happen now. Still he still kept his gaze fixed on her lips and waited.

  And then in a clear and perfectly natural voice, the image looked directly into his eyes and said, “Karina.”

  Nikola gasped from the bottom of his lungs and grabbed his nightshirt, twisting it in both fists while he stumbled backward and struck his calves on the bed board. He fell backward onto the mattress amid a squeal of bed springs. For several seconds, the room remained silent.

  He kept his gaze turned away from the image while he tried to slow his breathing and wondered what to do if the thing spoke to him again. He stalled for time by taking stock of his condition—strangely enough, he felt all right. Any awareness of being ill or of being in any pain had completely left him. It was as if his pneumonia and fever dissipated under the sheer power of his amazement.

  Oh yes. This one did it all right.

  So it seemed this visualization talent of his was a power of both the eyes and the ears. He took a deep breath, then slowly turned back toward the image.

  It was still there. He quickly reminded himself that it was all right for the image to be there. It was good for it to be there.

  “Say my name,” he whispered out loud.

  For God’s sake, he told himself, the damned thing is an illusion. You don’t have to be nice to it, just control it. Make it do something.

  “Your name is Nikola,” the image replied in a voice that sounded exactly like Karina’s voice. Again the image appeared to smile, as if this was all some amusing game Nikola would surely explain in a moment.

  This time he kept calm. After all, the hallucination hadn’t done anything more than respond to his own suggestions. The voice sounded exactly as he recalled—clear, sweet, feminine, and slightly low in timbre. But at that moment the image gave him a wan smile and added: “And you’re under the impression that you created me.”

  Nikola had no awareness of bellowing in shock while he involuntarily leaped sideways. He was also unaware of bouncing off the wall and ricocheting over to the other side of the room. He landed on his back and rolled halfway across the floor, knocking over dozens of his homemade models in the process. Each one represented days of work, yet he paid no attention to the destruction—not even when his prized little chariot, built to run on bug power, flew into splinters. Or when he felt himself flatten the fragile turbine water wheel made out of twigs. A score of his most prized possessions became instant trash under his flailing body, and he felt no concern for them at all.

  By the time he was able to collect himself and scramble back to his feet, Nikola happened to be facing away from the image. He rubbed a bump that was quickly rising on his head and vaguely noticed that whoever was doing all the yelling had finally shut up. So he inhaled deeply and counted to three, then gritted his teeth and turned to face her.

  She was gone.

  He spun in a circle, stopped, spun in the other direction, stopped, then staggered to the door. When he reached the door, he realized he had no desire to leave, so he turned back toward the foot of the bed again as if she might reappear. But the room remained dark and quiet. Heaps of freshly manufactured trash reflected points of pale silver from the moonlight streaming through the open window.

  The realization faded upward into existence like a lantern flame being cranked higher: The window is open. During a rainstorm?

  The window had been tightly closed against the storm, and there had been no time to open it after the rain stopped. He shuffled toward it on stiff legs. When he grew close, he heard a voice—Karina’s voice. He stopped in his tracks. It was faint, but there it was.

  “Nikky!”

  He spun around once more. Nothi
ng.

  But a moment later the voice came again, stronger, though still far away. “Out heeerrre!”

  He reached the window, looked out, and there—perhaps a hundred meters away—the image of Karina hovered in the air. She was as high as his second story window, floating at his eye level.

  “Come out, Nikola,” she called again. When he didn’t move, speak, or even blink, the image laughed. He could barely hear it at this distance, but he knew the sound of that particular laugh. Karina used to laugh often.

  “What are you?” he demanded, his voice a dry rasp. She only answered by laughing again, then turned as if she were about to float away.

  “What are you?” he bellowed after her.

  Farther away now, she turned and called back to him. He had to strain to catch her words.

  “You really want to see, Nikola?”

  “Yes,” he barely breathed the answer. His voice so weak that no one could have heard him from more than an arm’s length away. She heard him anyway.

  “All right,” she called from out in the distance but sounding if her lips were pressed to his ear. In the next instant, the image rushed toward him. It struck with the force of a heavy sandbag and crumpled him to the floor.

  Several moments passed while he lay stunned, able to do little more than breathe. Disorienting sounds filled his mind, mechanical sounds unlike any he had ever heard. The depth of their power vibrated his bones.

  He tried to rise and got as far as his hands and knees, but then the floor began to feel like it was mounted on a swing. When he raised his head and opened his eyes, the image of Karina hovered right in front of him.

  “Are you…” he whispered in awe. “Are you Karina?”

  She smiled and raised a finger to her lips, then pointed to her eyes. Before he could question the gesture, a flash of light exploded from her eyes and blinded him for several seconds. He remained helpless on his hands and knees while a metallic thunderstorm pounded between his ears.