Tesla: A Portrait with Masks
Tesla: A Portrait with Masks
A NOVEL
Vladimir Pištalo
Translated from the Serbian
by Bogdan Rakić and John Jeffries
GRAYWOLF PRESS
Copyright © 2008 by Vladimir Pištalo
English translation copyright © 2015 by Bogdan Rakić and John Jeffries
This publication is made possible, in part, by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, and through a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota. Significant support has also been provided by Target, the McKnight Foundation, Amazon.com, and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. To these organizations and individuals we offer our heartfelt thanks.
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Published by Graywolf Press
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Published in the United States of America
ISBN 978-1-55597-697-2
Ebook ISBN 978-1-55597-332-2
2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1
First Graywolf Printing, 2015
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014948533
Cover design: Scott Sorenson
Translators’ Note
This translation was done after the publication of the 2008 edition (second edition) of Vladimir Pištalo’s novel. As we had the pleasure of frequently discussing the novel’s main points with the author, he decided to make a few minor additions to the original text in order to better accommodate it to the spirit of the English language. This is why the text of this translation differs slightly from its Serbian original. The epigraph to chapter five from The Republic by Plato was translated by Benjamin Jowett. The quote from Fasti by Ovid that appears on page 42 was translated by James G. Frazer. We want to dedicate this translation to Svetlana Rakić and Elizabeth Weiss-Jeffries.
Contents
PART I. Youth
1. Father
2. Mother
3. The Snowball
4. Winters
5. The Visors
6. Brother
7. The Horror
8. Let Me Go!
9. An Aside on Flying
10. The First City
11. Secret and Sacred
12. The Theologians
13. Life’s Novices
14. Metamorphosis
15. The King of the Waltz
16. Lusting after the Wind
17. In the City of Styrian Grand Dukes
18. A Tract on Noses
19. Kisses and Voltaire
20. The Light
21. The Impossible
22. And the Moon Is Your Neighbor
23. The Duel
24. A Different Graz
25. Disappearing
26. All Nature Stood Still
27. Do You Want to See Golden Prague?
28. The Smart Cabbage
29. The Decadent
30. The Park
31. Without Love
32. The Crossing
33. The Light of the Mortals
PART II. America
34. The Deaf Man’s House
35. The Death of the Skeleton
36. Nothing
37. Come!
38. To Bite Off an Ear
39. “The Dangerous Classes”
40. The Blind Tiger
41. The Transformations of Athena
42. From the Stuttering Diary
43. Success
44. Pittsburgh
45. The Engineers
46. The Blind Say That the Eyes Stink
47. For Everything That Lives
48. The Bearded Lady
49. Put the Hands in Jars of Water
50. Through Our Sister Bodily Death
51. After Never
52. The London Miracle
53. Paris
54. The Rush
55. Ba-Bam
56. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
57. The Glare
58. The Midsummer’s Night Dream
59. You Will See!
60. The World Expo
61. In a Fantasy World
62. On Top of the World
63. People from the Hat
64. Così fan tutte
65. The Ice Palace
66. Pulse! Pulse!
67. A Hole in the Gut
68. Even the Soul
69. Days of 1896
70. Yen-yen
71. The Maelstrom
72. The Marriage of Dušan
73. The War
74. The Astoria
75. We Won’t
76. Without Soiling Them
77. The Gorgon’s Hair
78. Zeus Commands the Thunderbolt
79. Tesla Toasts the Twentieth Century
PART III. The New Century
80. The Fearsome Nose
81. The Big Nameless
82. The Belt
83. Pygmalion
84. The Span of a Dog’s Life
85. Three Quiet Miracles
86. Behemoth
87. The Crash
88. Sorrowfully Yours
89. The Sinking Ships
90. The Swan, the Bull, and the Shower of Gold
91. Coney Island
92. The Shaman Dandy
93. From the Diary
94. I Have Three Sons
95. The Night Train to Wardenclyffe
96. Distant Rhythms
97. The New Automaton
98. They Shall Take Up Serpents
99. The Light of Shanghai
100. For the Souls!
101. East of the Sun, West of the Moon
102. On the Too-Merry Carousel of the Merciless Sunset
103. Millions of Screaming Windows
104. Um-Pa-um-Pa!
105. Lipstick
106. The Nose and the Parted Hair
107. Choose the Best Possible Life
108. But People Never
109. Only Pains Hear, Only Needs See
110. Did We Live the Same Life?
111. I Didn’t Know How…
112. Dear Tesla
113. Whenever…
114. A Letter to the Dove
115. And Then
116. The Honoree
117. Forgotten
118. The Bride of Frankenstein
119. Because There’s No Money
120. The Ghost Taxi
121. I’m Not Afraid Anymore
122. The War of the Worlds
123. The Furies
124. Continuity
125. The Bard
126. Ghosts and Pigeons
127. Pain, Time, and the Importance of All Things Cease to Be
Tesla: A Portrait with Masks
PART I
Youth
CHAPTER 1
Father
A Beautiful Phenomenon
What is this world?
What is the purpose of existence?
Such thoughts played in Milutin Tesla’s head like kittens until he settled on the ultimate, frightening question: What is “what”? At this point the priest’s thoughts died out and he started to feel dizzy.
The human mind is pragmatic—it’s basically a tool, Milutin concluded. A saw cuts trees. One can take a bow and play music on it, but that’s not what a saw’s made for.
He advised his students to stop dithering and make up their minds. “I, for example, was about to graduate from a military academy,” he told th
em, “but I quit and became a priest.”
Milutin’s first parish was in Senj, the windy city mentioned in many Serbian epic songs. There he kept telling his parishioners: “So I ask a favor and advise you for your own good: Don’t be uncouth—you are folks endowed with common sense. Therefore, embrace the spirit of progress, the spirit of the people. Focus on liberty, equality, and brotherhood.”
The parishioners ignored their priest’s efforts to enlighten them. They griped about him being sickly and, actually, ridiculous. They were of the opinion that he was guilty of his ailments and wanted to fire him. The priest answered that being around people like them would make anyone sick.
“Do you think I get anything out of being here?” Milutin Tesla asked them sarcastically. “I wouldn’t be much worse off if I moved to Bessarabia.”
But instead of Bessarabia, Father Milutin got transferred to the village of Smiljan in Lika. During his stay there, he never failed to mount his horse to go administer last rites to the dying, even when the winter nights glowed with wolves’ eyes. After a long ride, the priest would shake the snow from his mink coat and enter the sick man’s shack. He would come up to the bed, bend over the dying, and speak in a low voice: “Now you can open your heart and whisper to me what weighs you down because God hears best the whispered word.” And the rough men would open up their hearts and tell the stories of their lives in ways no one had ever heard before. The priest tried in vain to forget most of what he heard.
In his house buried in the snow, Milutin Tesla spent a lot of time reading. He read about railways, the Crimean War, and the new palace built of glass in London. For a local paper, the Smiljan priest wrote an article on cholera spreading from Dalmatia to Lika “like oil over a table.” He also wrote about the “countless impediments” that a champion of public education encountered in the most backward parts of the Karlovci Diocese. For the Serbian Daily, he reported on a “beautiful phenomenon” created by atmospheric light, which occurred right on St. Peter’s Day. Milutin Tesla described it as a waterfall of sparks that appeared both distant and yet so close he could touch it with his hand. The light left blue tracers behind as it vanished over a hill. At the same time, something rumbled loudly, as if a huge tower collapsed to the ground. The echo reverberated across the southern slopes of Velebit for a long time. God’s little phenomenon “made the stars look pale.” This occurrence gave common people a lot to talk about, while a more thoughtful observer (apparently Milutin Tesla himself) felt sorry that it did not last longer—this display of God’s nature ended in the blink of an eye.
The weather was sweltering just before it all happened. Afterward it rained, but the clouds dissipated in the evening: The air was cold, the sky smiled, and the stars glowed brighter than ever; but all of a sudden, something flashed in the east and—as if three hundred torches were lit—the light stretched all the way to the west. The stars withdrew, and it appeared that all nature stood still…
The Parliament of the World
It always frightened the children when their father went through a transformation. Milutin forbade his family to enter his room when he worked on his Sunday sermons. All of a sudden his angry, deep voice would resound from behind the locked door, followed by a soothing female voice, and then several incoherent shouts. Anyone listening would swear that there was more than one person in there. The sermon was theater. Djuka Tesla and her sons were scared as they listened to Milutin alter his voice and argue with himself inside the locked room. Even the girls did not dare open the door. They were afraid to find their father transformed into unknown shapes. Behind the ordinary door, which suddenly looked mysterious, the priest whispered in German, shouted in Serbian, hissed in Hungarian, and purred in Latin, while in the background someone droned in Old Church Slavonic.
What was going on in there? Was it another “beautiful phenomenon” that called for an explanation? Did this Saint Anthony from Smiljan actually converse with his temptations? Did he feel lonely? Did this secluded polyglot see himself as the Parliament of the World? Did he practice delivering his sermon as a play in which he was both the tragic and the comic hero, as well as the chorus?
CHAPTER 2
Mother
A Spark from Flint
While Nikola and Dane listened, their eyes shone like fireflies. The head of a skinny chicken dangled from Mother’s lap as she posed riddles:
“What goes through the forest without a rustle, through the water without a splash?”
“A shadow!” said Dane, always quicker than Nikola.
“What hates water?” asked Mother.
“Cats and clocks!”
The folktales Nikola, the younger boy, liked the most were “Justice and Injustice,” “What the Devil Is Scheming While Pretending He Is Good,” and “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” In the last tale, the devil asked the apprentice if he has learned anything. “No, I’ve forgotten even what I used to know,” the apprentice replied. Nikola liked these stories because in them fools and younger brothers were really important. Djuka lulled him and his sister Marica to sleep by spinning yarns:
“As he traveled all over the world disguised as a beggar, Saint Sava came to the manor of a wealthy baron who possessed enormous riches…”
Nikola’s eyes almost closed. He hovered on the edge of sleep.
“Then Saint Sava made the sign of the cross with his staff and the baron’s manor turned into a lake…”
Was he dreaming?
“People say that every year on that day the water gurgles as a rooster crows from the bottom of the lake…”
Because her mother was blind, Djuka Mandić had to start managing her parents’ household at an early age. Except for the stories her mother told her, she did not have a childhood. She wove all the linen in the house and took care of the younger children. To make things worse, cholera began to spread itself over Lika like “oil over a table.” While her father was off administering last rites, the disease killed their next-door neighbors. The girl herself washed and dressed the bodies of five of them.
When she got married, Djuka had to shoulder the responsibilities of another household. Milutin Tesla, following the advice of some Greek philosophers, insisted that “wherever a priest takes up a hoe, the idea of progress is dead.”
Thus Djuka and the crossed-eyed servant Mane tilled the church land.
“Don’t aim for where you’re looking, but where you want to strike,” she told Mane as he split firewood.
Mother explained to Nikola that the drone bee mated with the queen high up in the sky, and that there would be plenty of bees if the queen could escape the swallows. “The enemies of bees are swallows and hedgehogs.”
Once Nikola fell and hit his forehead on a chair. Mother kissed his triangular head to make it better, caressed him, laughed, and quoted: “A strike liberates a spark from the flint, which would have otherwise despaired within it.” When his stomach ached, she put her hand on his navel and started to chant softly:
Almighty God, what a great event,
When Milić the standard bearer got married…
He couldn’t find a girl to match his beauty
A great hero, he found a fault in each of the lasses
And he was about to forsake his marriage…
The pain melted away and the boy felt very safe.
During the day, Djuka always wore a head scarf. Every morning, she got up two hours before anyone else. She sat in front of the kitchen stove with its door open. Nikola woke up and furtively observed her as she combed her hair. The fire glowed through the door and cracks of the stove. He spied… Mother turned bronze from the glow. She became something else. He watched in secret.
His mother’s life was deep.
Her life was soundless, like a tree falling in the forest without anyone to hear it.
The Trees
She turned to the forest on Bogdanić Hill: “Can you hear it?”
“What?” said Nikola.
“Can you hear the trees tal
king to each other on Bogdanić?”
“What about?”
“The birches sigh: How long till spring comes? When are we going to take off these icy shackles? The deep-voiced pines advise: Be patient. We’ll take off our icy armor in three months. The streams will gurgle and you birches will sprout new leaves.”
“What else do they say?” Nikola asked.
“The birches croon: The morning star will open the sun’s gate and let the god Jarilo ride through it. Thus he will speak to Mother Earth: O moist Earth, love me, be my only one, and I, the sun god, will cover you with emerald lakes and golden sandbars, with green grass and swift brooks, with birds, fruit, and flowers, red and blue. Oh! You will bear me many, many children. With their new leaves, the birches will greet the rays of the spring sun and the gurgle of waters.”
Nikola listened in awe and then laughed. “That can’t be true. You’re making things up.”
His mother told him stories about plants instead of fables. She knew the herbs and insisted that many of them contained a spirit. Elm, fir, and maple belonged to the fairies.
“Where do fairies come from?”
“They come from the mrazovac,” Mother replied. “That’s why young men would never step on this plant. I’ll teach you how to recognize it, so that you’ll never step on it.”
“Where do fairies live?”
“I’ve already told you what trees they dwell in. Yew is also a fairy tree. It grows only in unspoiled places,” Djuka answered.
Nikola continued with the game. “How long do they live?”
Mother shrugged. “They eat garlic seeds and live until life becomes too boring, and when this happens they quit eating and die a painless death.”
Nikola was proud that Mother was so knowledgeable, as if she herself used to be a fairy. He never understood why Father frowned upon the stories about a world full of radiant spirits in which plants were just like people. At that time, Nikola did not comprehend that those stories were not just about fairies and plants but also about gods older than God.
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