In the Matter of Nikola Tesla

by Anthony Flacco

  The older man resumed with his voice constricted nearly to a whisper. “I was fool enough to allow my own petty jealousy to keep me from giving my prize student a fair warning. In fact, I spent two years of labor in constructing fantasy castles inside his mind! Then I and the rest of this ‘august institution’ ordered him to go forth and slay the great scientific problems of our time. But I did nothing, you see, to provide him with protection!”

  “From what?” Nikola blurted it out before he could stop himself. He tensed for a rebuke, but this time the professor did not seem to mind the question. Nikola tried to recall any other time when Herr Doktor Poeschl did not mind a question.

  “These great abilities also have the capacity to create the very demons that haunt you. There is no need to turn to the afterworld to encounter demons, Mr. Tesla; they will appear in this earthly life, anywhere you allow yourself to be weak!”

  The professor fumbled to relight his pipe, thought better of it, and set the pipe aside. He looked straight into Nikola’s eyes. “You seem to possess unlimited memory skills. Naturally, the more you develop and refine these skills, the more they will impress people. They will impress people almost as much as they will make them feel stupid by comparison!”

  “Sir, I have been raised to show respect to—”

  “My experience is that people do not like to feel that they are stupid. Worst of all, as you may have already discovered, it is the truly stupid people who are the most opposed to being reminded of their condition.”

  The professor paused and looked away while he searched for the words. “If you are not very, very careful, then the stupid ones, Mr. Tesla, they will become your demons.”

  He again leveled has gaze straight back at Nikola. “So, when the inevitable time comes that the ignorami are using their stupidity as a weapon against you, you will not attempt to beat them by dealing on their terms, correct?”

  “I’m not sure what you—”

  “No! You will not! You will remove the white gloves! You will use your superior ability against them!” At this point he paused again. He stared off at some distant place.

  Nikola waited a few moments, then decided it must be time to go. With a little bow, he started to rise.

  Herr Doktor’s voice stopped him before his legs were fully straightened. He quickly sat back down.

  “I believe that’s how they got to him. Loneliness opens the doorway to despair, and despair is the worst demon of all! Many people will react to you with fear. The more they are afraid, the more envious and dangerous they become.”

  A dry smile played across his face. “But the smart ones are the worst. Listen to me, don’t scare the smart ones! Understand? You have to come up on them slowly! You do not simply introduce yourself at a party and then proceed to destroy their logic, as if it is some sort of exercise in conversation.”

  “Herr Doktor, it is never my intention to—”

  “I’ve seen you do it. Or things just like that. Close enough. Stop interrupting. People don’t like to be interrupted! That’s not part of the topic; that’s me telling you. The topic, the topic is isolation. Now you listen to me—a wonderful mind, a mind which I had the pleasure to know and to teach, somehow reached a point where oblivion was preferable to existence.

  “Why? Why would he do that? I think you know why! And better you should tell me, because I wonder what it is like to remember everything you read, to, to imagine complex things without writing them down—without even referring to drawings! To instantly grasp sophisticated concepts that the world’s great minds spend years or decades—”

  The professor’s voice broke. “I wonder how you volunteer to put an end to such a gift. Where do you get the right? You have no right, that’s all! What you do is avoid becoming weak enough to allow stupid people to make your life so frustrating that you give in to despair. This is how despair becomes a demon and destroys you!”

  Herr Doktor turned away with a heavy exhale. He took several deep breaths but otherwise remained silent, staring off through the wall.

  After a moment, when nothing else came from the older man, Nikola decided to test the situation. He took a deep breath and straightened his back as if he were about to stand. There was no reaction from Herr Doktor. Nikola put both hands on his knees and inhaled. The professor only stared into space. Nikola stood up, waited, picked up his books, waited again, then leaned forward and quietly uttered, “Thank you.”

  Herr Doktor still made no reaction. Nikola guessed that the correct response was to respect the man’s private thoughts and quietly leave. He turned and started up the steps, pausing for just a moment. There was nothing from the professor.

  Nikola sneaked a glance back toward Herr Doktor Poeschl once he reached the exit. The older man was busily dusting off the Gramme machine, making a real chore of it, working away as if no one else was there.

  Chapter Four

  1879

  On The Night Train

  Outside Budapest

  The steam locomotive thundered away on the night run from Budapest all the way out to the northeast provinces. The moon was already down for the night, so at two in the morning, the long freight train rumbled and squealed across the countryside nearly unseen. The meager starlight produced only dim flashes of light along the glass and steel of the swaying cars.

  Inside the single Pullman car, gas lamps were dimmed down to the glow of a single candle. Every one of the dozen other passengers was asleep except Nikola. He sat wide awake in the darkened car knowing he was unlikely to get any rest on the twelve-hour ride to his parents’ home.

  The telegram that sat folded into the breast pocket of his overcoat only contained a single stark line in his mother’s words, urgently summoning him.

  His head was still spinning. He took out the message and grappled with it again. The actual words were kind, but he saw their intent: Your father is dying. It had taken him only half an hour to pack his bags and be on his way. Now the clackity racket of steel wheels over wrought iron tracks combined with the rhythmic sway of the coach to lull the other passengers into sleep and leave Nikola staring into the darkness.

  He struggled to overcome motion sickness partially caused by the moving train. Most was a reaction to the images in his mind’s eye that appeared to float in all directions.

  He was certain that in order to get himself back into balance he needed to overcome the visual chaos, but had no idea how to go about it. When he tried closing his eyes as tightly as he could to block out the images with blindness, the floating devices simply took on a glow of their own and danced in the air before him.

  In desperation, he clenched his eyelids until the physical effort gradually moved across the muscles of his face, his neck, his torso. Finally every muscle in his body was clenched. He felt like he was made of stone, with no idea of why he sensed that he could staunch the flow of images if only he could bear down on them with enough strength.

  His awareness melted out from under physical reality while he concentrated on the task. At last, when the noise and motion of the train began to fade beneath his exertion, any sense of passing time dissolved away.

  The breakthrough moment happened when he squeezed all the muscles of his body so hard that the floating images began to fade. He kept up the pressure and gradually they disappeared. But they only stayed gone for a few seconds before they returned.

  Even though he could not explain why it worked, he had just proven that this full-body “squinting” somehow suppressed the gushing products of his vision. It was only a temporary effect, but it was some measure of control.

  He jerked forward with excitement and tried it again, this time with his eyes wide open, and once more it worked. If he clenched all of his muscles, the effort itself “squinted” his mind’s eye. His physical eyesight remained the same, but the distracting images quickly faded from mental view. His breathing came fast and shallow while he dared to wonder, had he truly just stumbled across a w
ay to stabilize his visions?

  Nikola burned through the next several hours practicing his control over the flow of images. He worked in stages. First he would relax, letting them pour through his mind, then he closed off the flow by bearing down with his new full-body muscle squeeze.

  Once he began to get the hang of it, he increased the challenge by standing up, then slowly pacing the aisle while he practiced tensing and walking at the same time. To make it work, he had to stiffen his joints and channel all of his energy into the effort, which left him moving along like a man with wooden legs. At least the unwieldy learning process was enough to distract him from his dread of going home, and it never occurred to him to wonder about his effect on the other passengers.

  It was hours later that he landed back in the hard world when the conductor called out his stop. But when the voice snapped Nikola back to full awareness, it broke the protective spell of his reverie. The purpose of his mission returned with all of its weight.

  He managed to squelch his dread for another few minutes while he went about disembarking and collecting his bags. It was some comfort to know that at least now with this new full-body squinting technique, he would avoid burdening his family with his reactions to the spontaneous images—especially since he could not explain them and had no idea why the things were there in the first place.

  * * *

  The frailness crept up on Djouka again while she waited for her Nikola to arrive. It caught her unaware while she busied herself with all the routine chores of preparing Nikola’s room and tending to her dying husband. The frailness gnawed at her like a sneaky parasite that works its way deep inside before the host realizes it is there.

  She retreated to Milu’s big rocking chair next to the red-orange glow of the fireplace and huddled under two extra blankets. The warmth defrosted some of the frailty back out of her, but her bones still felt hollow and thin. Most of what used to be Djouka’s bodily self was now simply otherness to her; it dangled from her skeleton like slow-dripping mud. It served no purpose but to anchor her in time and place, to pull her down into the awful frailty.

  On most days, she still felt strong enough to beat back the coldness in spite of her years. She could still fire up her blood using special breathing techniques she learned as a young girl. She could even employ a form of self-hypnosis that she picked up somewhere in her study of ancient arts, and with it she was able to drive away most ordinary aches and pains.

  None of that was working for her today. The sense of frailty gnawed at her joints like a hungry jackal. It rose from her spirit itself, because her spirit felt the pulse of this household and it told her the light and warmth of her husband Milu was nearly gone.

  More than ever before, Djouka felt thankful for the special knowledge accumulated over the course of her life. It helped her remain steady within herself now. And so she was not entirely alone. Today she clearly felt that her trait of insatiable curiosity, bequeathed to her by generations of her family’s best women, had given her the tools she had needed now to endure the terrible loss of her life mate.

  Generations of distilled folklore had long ago mixed with her personal store of myths passed down through her family’s women, plus an accumulation of white witchcraft learned from her own studies of the world and its universally desperate inhabitants.

  Throughout her life, Djouka had found great comfort in seeing beneath the world’s surface, watching the flow of life energy passing back and forth between people, connecting them and driving them apart. In such things, she found a source of comfort that had eluded her in her husband’s religion ever since the Lord so capriciously stole her precious boy Dane from her.

  The grim side of her unique ability was that it delivered knowledge to her whether she desired it or not. On this cold afternoon, in addition to whatever protection Djouka’s abilities gave her, there was a feeling of hollowness inside her chest. It told her that Milu was so close to dying that he only held on with the hope of seeing his son one last time.

  She reaffirmed for herself the idea that her husband was eager to see their son and make peace, surely to make peace between them at last. She pulled the two blankets tight around her shoulders and quietly made her way to the bedroom to check on Milu. The door was half open and the room itself was dim, with a thick daylight curtain covering the window. She stepped inside and lit a small candle at the bedside to see if the flame’s light would reveal any changes in his coloring.

  Djouka relaxed her eyes and focused her gaze a few inches above Milutin’s sleeping form. Shimmering heat waves appeared to rise from his body, forming a small energy cloud around him. The cloud looked weak and thin. Milutin Tesla was worn out from a life spent as the walking embodiment of his faith. She could feel that Milu’s spirit cried out for rest, but that he was determined to fight for life until his son came. The girls had already been there to hold their father and say their private goodbyes with him. Djouka sent them back to their homes and their young families with useful white lies about perhaps visiting Papa again tomorrow.

  She did not doubt that Nikola’s presence was crucial to her Milu, allowing him to let go. Within the family, Reverend Tesla’s lifelong disappointment in his only remaining son was no secret—Nikola had long since taken to withdrawing into a sullen shell every time he and his father occupied the same room. Since Djouka had eventually found that the ability to smooth the road between them was beyond her reach, she could only yearn for both men to greet each other with an open heart on this day.

  So she busied herself with small things. After she checked on Milu, the next thing to do was to get a pot of tea ready to offer her son. Perhaps Milu might take a few sips also, if he gathered his strength. After that, the next thing was to add wood to the fire.

  Just when the tea water reached a steamy rolling boil, there was a knock at the front door. It came in a funny little rhythm that Nikola always used, and Djouka’s heart cheered at the sound. She hurried to the door feeling sure that the synchronized timing of the boiling tea and her son’s arrival was more than coincidence. Perhaps it was a sign that there could be harmony for all of them in Milu’s final hour.

  When she swung the door back, the cold afternoon’s light revealed her son standing there—so tall—holding a dilapidated suitcase. He hardly seemed to see her at first. He stood on the porch slightly hunched over, staring at a blank spot on the ground. It appeared that he was tensing every muscle in his body.

  She dismissed his behavior as simple nervousness and stepped forward to embrace her son. She felt some of the tension in his body melt away as soon slid her arms around him and pulled him into the house.

  After a few hurried greetings, the pair moved toward the bedroom door. Nikola walked with his arm draped over her shoulder while she nervously prattled, “I can’t tell if he’s going to get through the night or not. This time, for some reason, I can’t see a thing.” She stopped Nikola outside the door and smiled up at him. “But I do have a feeling, as a mother, that he is hungry to put matters to rest between you. You will let him, yes?”

  Nikola took her hand and nodded in agreement. Djouka exhaled a deep sigh of relief, then gestured to the door and gave him a smile. “You should go in alone.” She patted his arm and walked back out to the main room to wait near the warmth of the hearth.

  Nikola took a deep breath and clenched his entire body to lock off the flow of images once again. Then he reached for the door handle.

  * * *

  Reverend Tesla lay in bed with his face sallow and sunken while Nikola sat next to him and held onto his hand. The old pastor struggled hard to speak. His weak voice faltered between labored breaths.

  “I was too hard on you, Nikola. After your older brother died—”

  “Dane.”

  “After your older brother died, I tried to push you to fill his shoes. But what could you do? You were a little boy, you tried to please, but it was hopeless.”

  “Not hopeless, father! I c
an still—”

  “You had nothing of his talent! And yet even after I saw that you lacked his spiritual potential, I pushed you to at least equal his intellectual powers. I did not take your problems seriously enough—one problem in particular, in fact.”

  “Well, Dane was so young. I mean, how can anyone know what he would have actually accomplished, if he—”

  “I want you to know that your mother gave me every paper you sent home from school over the years. I read all of them.”

  Nikola flushed with pleasure. “You did?”

  “Of course. I have a responsibility to be informed of the doings of all of my children. You are my son.” He paused for a moment and appeared to be gathering up all of his energy. Finally he took a deep breath and went on.

  “Nikola, your writings—they all seem to concern pieces of the same puzzle. Do you have some larger idea in mind?”

  Nikola was happily taken aback. “Yes! I do! Papa, I want you to take comfort in knowing that even though I didn’t go into the clergy, I am devoting my life to being a priest of sorts. A monk of science. And everything else in my life will be second to that mission.” He inhaled deeply and spoke with all of his energy, willing his father to grasp every word.

  “Papa, I am convinced that this force of electricity can be harnessed on a grand scale! There are fundamental discoveries yet to be made, but—”

  Nikola dropped his voice to an excited whisper and gleefully confided, “This force can provide power for far more than mere local telephone lines. It can drive messages around the entire planet. From anyone, to anyone!”

  The Reverend was listening carefully despite his illness. He held up his hand to interrupt. “Then you are describing communication back and forth freely? Between all of the world’s people?”