Tesla

by Vladimir Pistalo

  Another Serbian Youth delegation found Tesla in Pomaz. Laughing, they swarmed into the baroque mansion. They became serious in Tesla’s presence. A young man with long hair stepped forward adjusting his tie. Then he blushed and forgot all etiquette. “Would you make us all very happy and come to Belgrade?”

  CHAPTER 58

  The Midsummer’s Night Dream

  “I’m telling you, I waited and waited and waited for him,” Mojo Medić began.

  “First he wrote to me from London. So I went to Gospić to see him. They said: He’s sick. Then, out of the blue, I got this cable from Budapest: ‘I’ll be in Belgrade, why don’t you come?’ I decided to go on the spur of the moment and thus came to Belgrade by boat from Zemun. I knew he was in the Imperial Hotel.

  “So I went there myself.

  “I knew his whereabouts all the time because he was the talk of Belgrade. While I was killing time taking streetcar rides, he was being decorated by King Aleksandar.

  “The month of July endlessly stretched over Belgrade’s tree-lined streets and one-story houses. Young rascals made faces and hitched free rides hanging on to the streetcar. The conductor drove them away with his whip. I looked down the long street, wondering if the people at its far end were still living in the last century. Most citizens of Belgrade well remembered the day the Turks left the city. The older ones could even recall Granny Višnja and Master Jevrem after whom they named streets.

  “While the infant Serbian king praised Nikola’s ‘ideally enunciated’ Serbian, I was eating lunch in the shadows of linden trees on Skadarlija Street. On the wall of the tavern somebody wrote, ‘Woe to him who believes.’ Across the street, a lad was hacking a roasted lamb on a tree stump. A sleepy Gypsy tuned his violin and started to rasp a Romanian folk tune.

  “‘Get lost,’ a waiter yelled.

  “‘You’re one ornery gentleman.’ The Gypsy stopped playing, but didn’t leave.

  “Then a kinky-haired poet started to bother me. He offered to shake hands: ‘I’m the Muses’ favorite and the master of the sonnet.’ He was so glad, he said, to see a Serb from the Austrian-Hungarian lands. How d’you like Belgrade? These institutions—he pointed at the row of taverns—are our true academy. Some of them you can see here, but there are others too. Brimming with pride, the golden-tongued bard began to recite:

  At the Matchstick, the Golden Pit,

  the Astronomy Tower,

  the Peacock, the Moonshine, the Pigeon,

  the Gardeners’ Petka, Žmurko’s, Pete the Horse Trader’s,

  the White Lamb, the Jewish Tavern,

  At the Black Eagle, at the Seven Krauts,

  Who Owned This House—Whose House Will It Be?

  The Merry Mansion, the White Cat, Nine Coachmen…

  “But his tone implied:

  Racine, Cervantes, Goethe…

  Goya, Vermeer, Da Vinci,

  Beethoven, Vivaldi, Mozart…

  “I bought him a drink to get rid of him.

  “While they introduced Nikola to the king’s regents, I was at the Belgrade farmers’ market, eavesdropping on the fragments of a forgotten song dating back to the Great Migration of Peoples. I studied the expressions of surprise on the faces of the lions carved on the Terazije Fountain. Sweating, I felt flies crawling underneath my hair. While Nikola examined various collections at the University of Belgrade, I was in a store, not bigger than a brick closet, whose owner, a Serbian of Jewish faith, Moša Avram Maca, sold me an umbrella to protect me from the sun. In the afternoon, while two-story buildings started to sprout shadows like snails sprout their horns, Nikola lectured to Belgrade students on the glowing streets and illuminated nights of the future.

  “‘I’m trying to inspire you,’ he told them openly, ‘because I didn’t have anyone to inspire me when I was a student.’

  “The students shouted: ‘Long may you live!’

  “While the students listened to him, I read about him in the newspapers. From the printed page, a strange great man peered at me, not the boy with whom I spent my entire childhood. The excitement of meeting him overwhelmed me. They wrote that he was ‘a first-rate star’ and ‘a Serbian genius.’ They wrote that his eyelids were rarely wide open because he lived in his own waking dream. With a slow smile, they said, he woke up to the reality that amused him. I was much less amused with that reality since it was an extremely hot July day, and I was running from one piece of shade to another.

  “The mayor and some university professors took Nikola to Kalemegdan Park. A military band was playing. While Tesla was intoxicated with the view of the Sava and the Danube, I covered my face with a newspaper and took a nap. The heat eased some. I opened my hotel room window. In its frame, the raspberry-color fire was dying out in the sky above the Bežanija Hill. The wind from the Sava smelled like freshness. I heard a woman singing. The surface of the river shimmered. I went out for a walk and heard the whole city talk about him.

  “‘He has remained one of us,’ someone whispered.

  “They said that, in his speech at the university, Nikola pointed out that his successes did not personally belong to him but to the whole of the Serbian nation.

  “‘The nation, my ass.’ I was mad. ‘Has the nation invented the alternating current motor? Has the nation discovered the wireless transfer of power?’

  “Through the open door of the Dardanells spread the aroma that the ancient Greeks and Jews fed to the gods. The smell of barbecue lured me in. I ran into a boy with closely cropped hair who carried a mug of beer outside. He fell and spilled the beer. I tossed a silver coin on a table. It fluttered like a butterfly, and the boy snapped it between his thumb and forefinger.

  “A picture of a man with burning eyes hung inside. Mr. Sava Savanović was written in old-style calligraphy under it. On another photograph, a group of people in fur hats posed by a killed tyrannosaurus. The inscription said, ‘Georgiu Jonel—Djordje Janković, Negotin, 1889.’

  “A troupe of amateur actors performed the play The Nine Jugović Brothers. Ruddy-faced lads recited under their shining plumes. In the meantime, two poets got into a fight about who was to die first: ‘I’ll come up with a great eulogy for you!’ They outshouted each other.

  “Across the tables, the ‘master of the sonnet’ whom I met at Skadarlija waved at me. The place was full, so a certain bald gentleman invited me to join him at his table.

  “‘And—you would like?’ the waiter asked me. Taking me under his wing, the green-eyed bald man ordered for me: ‘Bring the gentleman something substantial.’

  “Giving up on Kant’s smoke and mirrors, the waiter brought me a foot-long steak.

  “‘That’s good! That’s good!’ the bald gentleman said. He offered me his hand and introduced himself as Bandi Fornoski, the Serbian vice-consul in Bucharest. The learned diplomat relayed to me that the Standard, the newspaper of the British conservative party, suggested that Serbia be divided between Austria and Bulgaria. Did I know about that? No, I didn’t. I added: ‘I don’t even know who Sava Savanović is.’

  “‘He’s a very famous man,’ Fornoski responded.

  “‘Was he a poet?’ I hazarded a guess.

  “Fornoski raised his hand. ‘A poet he was not. He was engaged in activities of a different sort.’

  “‘So what was he?’

  “‘He was a vampire,’ the vice-consul responded in a sweet voice.

  “While smoke probably turned into cats and cats turned into smoke out in the street, Fornoski—in his peculiar southern accent—told me about the tin mines he and his young friend, Prince Vibescu, opened in Romania.

  “‘That’s easy money,’ he concluded and grinned like a panther.

  “‘Nice,’ I said.

  “Many people waited for a table to open. Fornoski had barely taken his leave when a waiter grabbed the wooden back of his chair. ‘You don’t need this chair?’

  “At that very moment, the Belgrade mayor was hosting a dinner in Tesla’s honor at the Weifert Brewery. The po
et Laza Kostić was sitting at the high table stunned as if he had been just saved from a shipwreck. There were too many poets, bardic blowhards, and other hot-air windbags. The old Jovan Jovanović Zmaj recited verses dedicated to our guest:

  Was it the very essence—I don’t know,

  Or were our feelings glorified,

  But as soon as we learned you were coming,

  We all felt electrified.

  “The old poet’s chin was trembling. The tall American stooped and kissed his hand. Everyone was crying. And while they were drowning in tears, I scratched out of boredom sitting in my chair at the tavern. I parted the curtains and saw that it started to drizzle.

  “‘What’s the time?’ I asked the waiter.

  “‘Twelve-thirty,’ answered the boy through his nose.

  “The rain ticktocked like a thousand clocks.

  “Finally, I heard the clatter of the carriage and some voices. A group of people came in. He stood with his back to me as he was taking his leave of the mustached Andra Mitrović. (I remembered all their names as if they were my relatives.) I got up at the moment when he turned around. He came up to me. He smelled of violets. He kissed me. ‘How are you, my king of the waltz?’

  “I was trying to see if America had changed him.

  “Always energetic, always forlorn!

  “‘How did you get so thin?’ I was worried.

  “‘And how did you get even bigger?’

  “I rubbed my belly without taking my eyes off him. His almond-shaped eyes became softer and moister. I expressed my condolences. He shuddered and waved his hand. I told him that I taught high school, that our old teacher Milan Sekulić, who created the electrical ball, had died, and that all our friends—Jovan Bijelić, Nikola Prica, and even Djuro Amšel—got jobs and got married. Then I sighed: ‘I was bored to death today.’

  “‘I wasn’t,’ he responded, and we both burst into laughter.

  “‘What kind of person is our King Aleksandar?’ I wanted to know.

  “‘Chinless.’

  “‘Anything else?’

  “‘Plump.’

  “We went out for a walk. The smell of dust after the rain tickled our nostrils. Deep in conversation, we swam through the fragrances of the summer night. Instead of the king, he insisted on telling me about Jovan Jovanović Zmaj. He most appreciated the poet’s innocence. His whole family had died, he said. And yet, his eyes were meek, as if his ‘soul spoke through them.’

  “Sleep was out of the question. He told me—what did he say? Oh, he wanted to translate Zmaj into English but didn’t know anyone who could help him with the translation.

  “I asked him if he remembered Nenad and Vinko Alagić.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘They’re my relatives.’

  “‘Nenad killed Vinko over the family inheritance,’ I informed him. ‘Then he spent years in prison. Later, gendarmes cornered him and his gang under the Biokovo Mountain and wounded him in the stomach. He died a painful death in a cave, like a wolf.’

  “‘Oh my!’ Nikola moaned.

  “We gave up on the news and talked about the old days.

  “I remembered how Djuka and Milutin were different in character. Once they spread the wheat to dry. A cow came by and ate half. Djuka was so mad she almost died. Milutin consoled her: ‘Let it go, Djuka. Our cow ate our wheat.’

  “‘I have completely forgotten about that one!’ Nikola was surprised.

  “We laughed as we remembered Djuka, which is the only appropriate way to remember the deceased.

  “Do you remember was the refrain we often used that fragrant Belgrade night.

  “‘Yes, I remember now!’ It came back suddenly to Nikola, and he beamed, adding, ‘But do you remember…’

  “We reminisced about how he was being starved at his aunt’s house in Karlovac and about Strauss’s waltzes. We talked as the night rolled on.

  “‘Look at the shards of the sky.’ I pointed my finger. ‘Someone shattered all the stars.’

  “It rarely happens that a middle-aged, stocky man like myself laughs a loud laugh of youth.

  “The sky reddened above the cathedral. The streetlamps were extinguished. We were still talking. Surrounded by people wearing tall and low hats, white head scarves, and high fur hats, we crossed the white Sava on a boat. Leaning drunkenly on the unneeded umbrella, I raised my chin. Birds sang in the willows along the banks. The world was waking up. It smelled like silt and rising humidity. Fishermen were in their places. The bobbers splashed on the surface. The early morning seagulls followed our wake. Without having slept a wink that night, we parted at the Zemun rail station.

  “‘How long has it been since we saw each other last?’ He sighed and squeezed my hand.

  “I returned the squeeze and said:

  “‘Time doesn’t exist!’”

  CHAPTER 59

  You Will See!

  Whenever the ship fell from the ridge of a wave into the trough, it looked as if the water might swamp the smokestacks and extinguish the fires in the boilers. In place of a prayer, Nikola kept repeating the words of Tiresias to Odysseus: “A fair wind and the honey lights of home are all you seek.”

  The center of his world had been in Gospić, at Mother’s home. Now, his world did not have a center.

  And his home was Manhattan.

  The moment Tesla put his foot on American soil, Westinghouse and his assistant Gano Dunn sandwiched him.

  “For God’s sake, where’ve you been? There’s so much going on here!”

  Westinghouse slapped him on the shoulder with a folded newspaper: “Read.”

  No man in our time has with one stroke achieved such a universal scientific reputation as this gifted electrical engineer.

  “It’s your trip they’re writing about,” Westinghouse exclaimed in his bright tenor.

  Dunn laughed. “Did they bring the blind and the crippled for you to touch while you were over there in Europe?” he asked.

  “There’s one more thing,” Westinghouse shouted over the ships’ horns. “Edison’s General Electric is switching over to alternating current. They’re hiring engineers to redesign your motor so they can get their own patents.”

  With a capricious, wild grimace, Tesla tried to conceal his joy. “Really?” His voice was distorted.

  “I’m not done yet,” Westinghouse bellowed amid the noises of the harbor. “You know who’s going to build the electrical plant at Niagara Falls?”

  “What?” Tesla cupped his ear with his hand.

  “Not what,” Westinghouse shouted into his large ear, “but who!”

  “So who?” Tesla yelled back.

  “Us!”

  “Naturally, General Electric carved out a piece of the pie for themselves.” The talkative Gano Dunn crooked his mouth. “That has to be. Pierpont Morgan is backing them.”

  Westinghouse’s eyes had a boyish gleam. “That’s it, Nikola! It’s over. We won.”

  Tesla turned into a tomcat. The tomcat dashed under the bed, grabbed the rooster by the throat, and snapped its neck.

  “I’d like to get some rest now,” Nikola sighed.

  “There’s no time for rest,” Westinghouse whispered and ground his teeth. “Never!” Then he added: “Let Gano take your luggage to the Hotel Gerlach. We’ll celebrate at Sherry’s.”

  All of a sudden, the screeching of streetcars in the city of Walt Whitman appeared to be part of a great song. When Tesla first came to America, he felt the country was lagging a hundred years behind Europe. Westinghouse’s news now gave him the impression that it was leading by seven-league-boot steps. He, Nikola Tesla, was part of Whitman’s poem. He noiselessly ran before the change, like a blind figurehead on the prow of a ship.

  When a uniformed doorman closed the door of Sherry’s behind them, Nikola felt like a mouse that had crawled into the soundboard of a piano. Silence deepened like a yawn. There was an atmosphere of calming security. The discreet aromas of roasted meat and side dishes were more intriguing t
han the smell of flowers on the tables. The mirrors emitted tempestuous reflections. The silverware gleamed amid the starched napkin tiaras. Ice chinked in silver buckets and sparkled in glasses.

  A galaxy of waiters quickly surrounded the famous arrival from Europe.

  “This way, please. This way!”

  In the partitioned area of the restaurant, a group of men with straight backs and heroic gray hair practiced putting on their friendliest smiles.

  “The bankers!” Westinghouse whispered to him. “Our new investors.”

  Near the head of the table, Tesla noticed a few faces straight out of the herbarium, the grandchildren of the Anglo-Dutch elite dating back to the city’s beginnings.

  With an absentminded smile, Nikki Vanderbilt presided over the meeting. The warm-eyed Martin, Tesla’s biographer, was the most glad to see him. A man with lively eyes, gray hair, and black eyebrows was sitting next to Westinghouse.

  Westinghouse introduced him:

  “Hiram Maxim, the inventor of the machine gun.”

  He turned to Tesla:

  “Hiram hates priests.”

  He turned to Maxim:

  “Nikola is a longtime admirer of Voltaire.”

  The two inventors exchanged smiles while the headwaiter droned on about fifty different oyster dishes. Each guest picked one dish, but they all ordered champagne together. Frosty images on the bottles and silver dragons on the pitchers drew Tesla’s attention. White-gloved hands served them food and drink. Silent waiters brought trays arranged with red pliers, lobster tails, and crab cakes topped with swirls of mayonnaise. They served candied lotus flowers for dessert. Nikola was different from the man he was when he came to America long ago. He had turned into a lotus-eater. Futuristic New York was an ideal place for amnesia.

  “To Niagara!” Tesla raised his glass.