In the Matter of Nikola Tesla

by Anthony Flacco

“You spoke to my—?”

  “We sent a man on the train to explain how you are to be honored.”

  “She is delighted for you!”

  “And yes, as you predicted, she refuses to move.”

  “Even at company expense!”

  “But she strongly desires you to take the opportunity! She is sending you a letter to that effect. Our man would have brought it with him, but he had to come right back.”

  “And of course she needed time to write it.”

  “Gentlemen, why would you contact my mother without speaking to me first? She is not—”

  “Come now, Mr. Tesla! You are far too intelligent to play dumb with us. Are you holding out for more money?”

  Nikola snapped his eyes closed and turned away, then stooped over slightly, clenching all his muscles. A moment later he took a deep breath, stood up straight, and turned to them, moving as carefully as if he had a bottle balanced on his head. The representatives threw grim looks to one another.

  “Gentlemen, I am not ‘holding out’ for anything. I am simply overwhelmed by the company’s determination to, ah…”

  “Honor you. After all, for you to be able to move from our humble little local telephone office here, to the Continental Edison Company in Paris? Well!”

  “On Saint-Germain-des-Prés, yet!”

  “Not only that, you will be a ‘consultant’! Not just some bureaucrat!”

  “That’s almost like not having to work!”

  The representatives all laughed in appreciation of not having to work.

  “Better! It’s almost like not having a job!”

  A bigger round of laughter greeted the suggestion of not having a job.

  “Gentlemen, please—I do not seek to avoid work. Quite the opposite.”

  “Then work yourself to death, mister!” The largest one was tired of the game. “You need to grasp the simple fact that the City Manager has pulled strings, very high-up strings, to get you this opportunity! In Paris!”

  “But why?”

  “Because the Edison company there needs to figure out how to repair all of their failing generators, and the rumor is that you are a smart guy.”

  “But for you to have done all this in secret…”

  “The point is that if you turn up your long nose at this opportunity, if you slap the City Manager in the face and humiliate him in front of—”

  “I have no desire to offend him! And certainly not to humiliate—”

  “Good! You might as well have the rest of this week off to get your affairs in order here. You can take the train to Paris over the weekend. You start on Monday.”

  “This Monday?”

  The yes-men began to all talk at once.

  “Here’s your letter of introduction.”

  “Read it if you like.”

  “You’ll see how it praises you.”

  “Cheer up! This letter is like having a magic wand.”

  “It’s going to open up doors for you!”

  “Open, Ses-sa-meeee!” cried the formerly neglected telephone company spy, enjoying his new status. All five representatives rewarded him by howling with laughter.

  Nikola stumbled out of the Manager’s office and into the centuries-old metropolis of Budapest. He needed to burn off the confusion and anxiety overwhelming him. At least his feet were on familiar turf. He had taken many late night walks along the embankments of the Danube River when sleep eluded him. Long on daydreams and short on rest, at one time or another his boot heel had touched nearly every cobblestone within many blocks of his apartment. He could maneuver all of those streets and most of their alleys in complete darkness and never take a wrong turn.

  The ability came in handy that afternoon. He was so baffled by the honor of being transferred to Paris that his confusion kicked the spontaneous mental images into overtime. While he walked along, his vision filled with secondary lines and angles. They rose from physical objects and continuously joined themselves into odd shapes and configurations. Each completed object gave off a definite sense of function. The images soon crowded Nikola’s field of vision like frenzied children grabbing at bits of his attention. His awareness of the hard world dimmed to a background glow.

  It was late when he finally noticed his immediate surroundings; he was stumbling west on Victor Hugo Avenue, less than a block from the east bank of the river. He had been walking for long enough that the afternoon sun was low in front of him, nearly at the horizon. The shock of awakening into such an unusual situation sent a jolt of fear though him. He wondered if the hours he had spent virtually sleepwalking that afternoon could be excused as a condition of absent-mindedness, or had he come to inhabit places outside the boundaries of sanity? There was no answer, only the single admonition: you have to go to Paris. They need you in Paris.

  His inner demons sneered. They need you to go somewhere far away, so you will not embarrass the City Manager for allowing a madman to run the city’s telephone exchange.

  “Maybe it’s because of the repeaters I invented for the city’s phone system. More sound for less energy. Perhaps the Edison company hopes I can do a similar trick for them.”

  They are only doing what they have been told to do by political cronies.

  “Not true! There are people who value my abilities!”

  There are people who are afraid of you. They don’t know if you will do something dangerous.

  “I have never given anyone cause to believe such—”

  You have shamed yourself in front of your colleagues with your bizarre behavior!

  “No!” Nikola shouted as he passed a fruit vendor, who dropped the shiny apple he was holding out.

  Your demon gives off an evil stink. You can’t smell it, but others can.

  “Nobody has ever said—”

  Why should they take the chance of being honest about it?

  “No more of this!” Nikola grabbed the sides of his head, but he kept moving. He didn’t even slow down.

  So why shouldn’t they just get rid of you? Quietly.

  That one stopped him in his tracks. He immediately glanced around, relieved that no one appeared to have noticed him. He could practically smell his father’s dying breath. He had to do something to clear his thoughts.

  It occurred to him that he was standing next to the low stone wall along the river’s embankment. Only a few other people were around, and at the moment, none were looking in his direction. He stripped down to his bare feet, trousers, and shirt, then set his clothing in a neat pile on the wall, kicked off the stone surface, and dove into the chilly water. The bracing shock of cold felt wonderful, as if it could clean him inside and flush away his guilty fears. He swam hard.

  Eventually the effort and the cool water cleared his mind. A renewed sense of things allowed him to see that it no longer mattered if his detractors were right about him. As of that day, his fledgling professional life in Budapest was effectively over.

  He swam back to shore with all his strength, using the exertion to drain more energy away from his spinning thoughts. It was effective enough to help him remain focused after he climbed back on shore, and even while he slipped his dry clothes back over his wet body.

  He took bearings; the apartment was less than a kilometer away, and it was time to get off of the streets. He started out at a fast walk so that it only took a few moments for his blood to heat back up. Soon the geyser began to spew. Line segments floated up off of the sidewalk, the curb, the edges of buildings. Nikola employed his diminishing mental clarity to set a repeating command in the back of his mind, ordering his legs to continue moving toward home. Out of habit, he also set a mental timer to measure the trip. He focused on it for a second to set its image so clearly in his memory that the timer would continue to work even after he turned his attention away.

  By the time he had gone another block, Nikola was picking up spontaneous images from the surface of every object that came into view. It force
d him to choose his footsteps and to carefully separate the components of his inner world from the hard world around him. He moved down the sidewalk as if walking through a dream.

  This time, at least, the dream was not a nightmare. Rising sensations of delight began to tease him, sensations he had come to associate with the presence of Karina or whatever she is.

  It took all the willpower he could muster to keep from dissolving into the experience. Out on the streets, there was no choice but to hold back his awareness and control his behavior long enough to keep himself out of trouble.

  When he finally opened the door to his apartment, the geyser of images overwhelmed him, but not before his mental timer confirmed that he covered the distance from the river back to the apartment in four minutes and fourteen seconds.

  Chapter Eight

  Days Later

  Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris

  The building’s large sign proclaimed the home of the Continental Edison Society, and Nikola arrived beneath it dressed in humble finery. He eagerly strode up to the door of the building and found his way inside through a maze of hallways until he reached the Manager’s office. A prominent sign next to the door read, “Maurice Baudelaire, Manager-of-the-Works.” Nikola leaned into the doorway and gently knocked.

  Moments later he found himself standing across from Manager Baudelaire, a righteously fat man in his mid-fifties who sat wedged behind a bed-sized desk. Manager Baudelaire squinted and held Nikola’s reference letter at arm’s length, already radiating resentment and disgust. He wore his long side-hair swirled over a bald pate. The tonsorial self-delusion crowned a hundred and seventy-five kilograms of jellied anger. Three hundred and eighty-five pounds, Nikola automatically reminded himself.

  While Nikola waited, the room’s dead silence was broken only by the nearby sound of dripping water.

  Drip… drip… drip…

  Meanwhile he stood with posture so stiff he was nearly at formal attention. Finally Manager Baudelaire muttered under his breath, speaking in French, “The older I get, the smaller everybody writes.” He squinted harder at the letter. “They are making a very bad joke.” He glanced up and fixed his eyes on Nikola. “A dangerous joke.”

  Nikola had no idea how to respond, so he said nothing. Finally Manager Baudelaire tossed the letter down and regarded him with a bored smile. “Well! How does a genius from Budapest expect to communicate here in Paris? Impress me.”

  Nikola replied in perfect French, “I have found French to harbor a highly logical structure. I’m happy to converse for awhile if you’d care to test me. Of course, I must do more work on my accent.”

  Manager Baudelaire looked equally impressed and embittered. He glanced at the letter again and pretended to reread a line or two. “Now the vague referral in your little letter here seems to indicate some extraordinary talent on your part.”

  Baudelaire studied Nikola a moment, then snorted. “So this is the sort of utter shit that people are willing to say, just to get rid of you?”

  He laughed out loud at Nikola’s expression. “Oh, yes! I know about such things, believe me. Conspiracies? People do it all the time, just to get someone out of the way. You should never try to fool me on such a matter.

  “Well. You’re nice and young. Keep the syphilis out of your scrotum and you can have a good life.” He gave a dismissive wave with his left hand and set about scratching his pen across the surface of a printed form, pretending to fill in boxes.

  Nikola went on, unfazed, “You see, I have what one might call an enduring obsession with inventive science.” He added in a confidential tone, “That is what I have decided to call it, at least,” and smiled.

  Manager Baudelaire raised his gaze to Nikola as if he didn’t expect it to be worth the effort of lifting his head. He let out a long sigh and rubbed the palms of his beefy hands over his face. When he spoke, he switched to German, saying, “Some of our seasonal workers are from Deutschland. How would you communicate with them?”

  Nikola immediately replied in perfect High German, “My father was a pastor; he wanted me to be able to communicate with as many people as possible.”

  The Manager dropped his head slightly, took a breath, and then raised his face up once more. “Ach! A preacher’s boy! Brought up to follow after papa also, ya?”

  Nikola’s face darkened. “For a while. At first.” Then he broke into a delighted grin. “Do you know—well no, of course you don’t, but let me tell you—he actually gave me a one-day share of his salary, every time I learned a new language!” He paused, struck by the memory, “Think of that…”

  Manager Baudelaire switched to badly accented Italian. “And how many times did he have to pay your one-day cut of his salary?”

  Nikola’s Italian reply was fluent. “Eight, but I’m only truly fluent in six. He eventually grew tired of the game.”

  Manager Baudelaire slapped the desktop hard and leaned forward to growl, “if your brain is that good, why would you even want a job like this? The Edison dynamos are huge. They are filthy. They are completely unpredictable! You’ll spend your life tangled up in their guts, just trying to keep them working!”

  He stopped when he realized that he was addressing Nikola’s profile and that Nikola’s attention was distracted. Baudelaire decided to wait…

  After a moment Nikola turned back and asked in an affable tone, “Is that water, dripping? Somewhere out on the factory floor, I think?”

  Manager Baudelaire stared at Nikola for several seconds, trying to make himself believe this intruder’s impertinence. When he recovered his voice he replied, “Yes. Water. Yes.” He made a vague gesture in the general direction of the sound. “After a while, you don’t even hear it.”

  “However, would it be, dare I say, a poor combination? Electrical current and leaking water?”

  Manager Baudelaire leaped up from his desk, knocking his chair backward, ready for hand-to-hand combat. “You sneer at me? You dare to sneer while you are here asking for a job? You come in here and ignore me while I speak and worry yourself about something so trivial as a little dripping water?”

  Nikola stared for a moment, uncomprehending, then his face broke into a beaming grin. “Ahh! No! No indeed. I have not come to ask for a job!”

  “…No?”

  “No, no! Simply a misunderstanding, nothing more! I am here to report for work.”

  “You— You are here to report for work.”

  “Oh yes! It’s all in the letter. Right there.”

  “Oh I see. Thank you, yes, you are right. It’s all in the letter, and you don’t have to ask for a job because you are already here to report for work.”

  The Manager released a sardonic chuckle. “Why, you don’t even have to ask as a simple gesture of courtesy to me! Eh?”

  “How would that be a gesture of—”

  “Perhaps you are one of those people who assume a common man cannot also be brilliant? Far beyond his job function! A man who may have also fallen victim to any number of plots, eh? Plots by others to hold you down! Envious dimwits! Resentful plebeians! Every low-brow lickspittle who can finger the dial on a monkey wrench! When in fact, Monsieur Genius, my position also requires several languages, as you heard!” His eyes narrowed. “Perhaps you will soon want Manager Baudelaire’s job. Eh?”

  Nikola’s eyes glazed over. He slowly turned away from the Manager and squinted hard, then relaxed and took a deep breath. He opened his eyes again, stood up straight, then smiled and turned back again. He answered in reassuring tones, “I don’t believe your job is why I’m here. However, I am given to understand that there is a malfunctioning dynamo I can see? Somewhere nearby?” He added, “It’s all in the reference letter.”

  Manager Baudelaire stared at him, radiating disgust. “What did you just do? When you turned away just then?”

  Nikola stood gazing into Baudelaire’s eyes for a moment before he pleasantly replied, “Nothing.”

  “…Not
hing? Just now, that was nothing?”

  “Correct.”

  “Nothing. What you just did.”

  “Yes.

  “You are actually going to stand there and try to call that ‘nothing’?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  Manager Baudelaire let go of a deep sigh and rubbed his eye sockets with his fists. He twisted the knuckles back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

  Nikola politely cleared his throat. “The, ah, malfunctioning dynamo?”

  Baudelaire dropped his hands to the desk. Now his eyes were wide open, as if he had just remembered something. A sour yellow grin spread across his face. “Now that you mention it, I am reminded that we do have one. Of course you are correct. How silly of me.”

  He leaned toward Nikola and brought his face close enough to whisper, “In fact, Monsieur Genius, it is waiting for you right down the street!” A low-pitched giggle bubbled out of him. He squelched it before he stood, then gestured for Nikola to follow him out the door.

  * * *

  The cavernous warehouse served as a Continental Edison repair shop, and it was large enough to service dynamos the size of a railway locomotive. Stacked along the walls were ruined experimental devices ranging from breadbox-sized contraptions to major machines larger than the workers who toiled on them. The machines competed for space among piles of electrical scrap and boxes of spare parts.

  The center of the warehouse was dominated by a huge iron and copper dynamo. The burned-out machine was a scorched disaster, as if it had been repeatedly struck by lightning. Manager Baudelaire and a dozen rough-looking shop workers clustered on the front side of the machine while they waited for Nikola to finish his initial inspection in the back.

  Manager Baudelaire maintained a tense, expectant silence and a tiny smirk of anticipation; he already knew that this impossible remnant of ruined metal had no future beyond the nearest scrap pile. But he also knew that the combined size and complexity of the thing was guaranteed to intimidate anyone at first, even the most self-confident upstart.

  The silence finally ended when he heard Nikola break into a giggle from the other side. The giggle stopped immediately, but the sound echoed around the warehouse’s hard surfaces.