Tesla

by Vladimir Pistalo

  “Pop rebelled only after he died. Then he straightened up, but it was too late.”

  The boy continued as if he were talking about someone else’s life: “And so Pop got killed and Mom remarried a widower with kids. That fella used to come home late at night. Mom told him everything I did wrong that day, and he’d wake me up to beat me.

  “My late pop bragged about knowing you,” the boy ended his story. “And how you came over on the same boat. Our people talked about you wherever we went. And so…”

  The boy told Tesla that he only came to say hello, but it was obvious that he had nothing in the world except his clenched teeth.

  “Of course,” Tesla answered the unspoken question.

  He arranged with Scherff for the boy to sleep at his place and to later help him in the laboratory. From that day on, Tesla’s friends noticed his “Serbian servant” following him on his way to Wardenclyffe.

  CHAPTER 83

  Pygmalion

  Tesla did not live at Wardenclyffe—in the beginning, there was no place to sleep—but he visited every day. He boarded the Long Island train. He shared his compartment with Ali Baba’s magic basket that Oscar of the Waldorf filled and Stevan Prostran emptied.

  It was hard to tell if Tesla’s young companion complained of or bragged about the fact that he had worked hard even as a little child.

  “Look,” he boasted, “I can put out a cigarette on the palm of my hand. Want me to show you?”

  “I want you to quit smoking,” Pygmalion answered. “And I want you to find something to read.”

  Stevan Prostran obediently rustled open some pages. The first movement of the newspaper’s piece was allegro:

  The President Shot at Fair in Buffalo! Wounded in Chest and Stomach! One Bullet Taken Out, Other Not Found! Leon Czolgosz Anarchist, Assassin from Cleveland!

  The second one was adagio:

  The President Peacefully at Rest! He Will Recover, Doctors Say! Assassin’s Confession! Attack Planned for Three Days!

  It ended with a crescendo:

  President’s Health Sinking Today! Mrs. McKinley’s Condition Alarming! Mr. Roosevelt Is President!

  “Theodore Roosevelt is now the president,” Tesla repeated to the boy as Long Island’s light-blue bays sparkled beyond the train’s windows. “He says that black worry rarely sits on the shoulder of the person who rides fast enough. His house is over there. And look, there’s White’s family estate. Here’s Port Jefferson, we’re getting closer.”

  Stanford White’s chauffeur met the big Prospero and the little Caliban at the station and took them to Wardenclyffe in an open steam locomobile.

  “Ah, what a blue sky! What a sun!” the driver exclaimed, gripping the wheel firmly with his enormous hands.

  The car swayed and the travelers bounced. Above them, the blue sky whirled around with a white hole above Shoreham. After the endless potato fields, they saw the sight that brought joy to their eyes—Wardenclyffe.

  The steel tower with its mushroom-like top was to be eighteen stories tall, half the size of the original design.

  “Nevertheless,” Tesla told his assistants Scherff and Czitó, “with the additional underground rooms, the tower will stay proportional to my original plan.”

  The construction began. That was the only important thing. Let’s go!

  Despite all the rush, Tesla still found the time to pose for Dickinson Eli’s camera. “Get better looking,” Eli commanded him. In the picture, Tesla supported his head with a long index finger; crow’s feet showed at the corners of his eyes.

  Eli also took a picture of Stevan Prostran. Fear of being photographed and joy of being alive collided on his freckled face.

  Tesla ordered his photographer to take a picture of every machine and tube in Wardenclyffe.

  “This is the place from which we will wirelessly transmit energy for cars and ships,” he explained to the mocking Prostran. “By way of artificial lightning, we will produce rain and illuminate the firmament like an electric bulb.”

  Who cared if that was not exactly what was written on some piece of paper?! In moments of invention, walls and frames disappeared. With the gold visor over his eyes, in the joy of discovery, he could not pay attention to trivialities such as the fact that his project did not coincide with the contract he signed with one well-mannered gorilla who happened to own barely 10 percent of the world’s capital.

  “Watch out!” Johnson yelled. “Morgan never forgives—”

  Tesla cut him off. “Sure. We’ll also add the apparatus for the universal measurement of time and interplanetary communications. We’ll eliminate not only cables but newspapers as well, as they will become obsolete. How can newspapers survive if everyone possesses a cheap machine to print their own news?”

  Whom Do You Believe?

  To the next-door neighbor De Witt Bailey, the tower appeared to rise straight out of his nightmares.

  For Tesla, however, the tower was his Crystal, his Universe, his Cabaret with Spirits. It was an Eiffel Tower with an all-seeing eye. A place for examining the borderline between a life awake and a dream. A funnel that focused underground energies. In the tower, Tesla stood between the devil and an angel, like Pico della Mirandola’s man. In this scientific-futuristic wonder—with its wells reaching into the core of the earth and its tower rushing toward the heavens—Stevan Prostran was supposed to be raised.

  Stevan frowned habitually. Tesla tapped him on his forehead: “That will cause wrinkles.”

  Tesla’s friends sometimes called Stevan a boy and sometimes a young man, and he acted accordingly. Most of the time, he listened to Pygmalion’s pontifications with an “I’m being bullied” expression on his face. Sometimes he would give Tesla a serious look and ask him, “Are you my father now?”

  Stevan also wrinkled his freckled nose and showered him with questions:

  “Where’s hell?”

  “Why did God create a bad man?”

  “Who do you love?” he asked. “Who do you trust?”

  “That question is inadequately phrased.”

  “If you don’t trust anyone, you trust the devil.”

  Tesla eyed him with a look of heightened awareness. What could he read on the boy’s face? The eyes too far apart. The teeth too far apart. A wrinkled nose. A foolish and elated smile. Was he maturing inside? Did signs of some new wisdom or cunning appear on that face?

  “The world doesn’t need the unloved, right?”

  Stevan kept asking.

  And he also asked, “Are you my father now?”

  CHAPTER 84

  The Span of a Dog’s Life

  Stevan ran on the nearby Southampton beach and scattered the dignified seagulls. On the sand, they resembled stodgy bank clerks. In the air, they turned into something sacred.

  With a splash, he ran into the ocean. The Atlantic waves were so cold his foot cramped.

  Tesla and Robert Underwood Johnson watched him from the shore. Johnson’s thick mustache flowed into his beard. The throne for his pince-nez was swollen. The hair on his cheeks was still black, but it turned white around his mouth. His beard had thickened and looked frightening. Our once-handsome poet looked somewhat like a grieving lion.

  “Everything is still the same at 273 Lexington Avenue,” Robert said. “Nora the maid still sprinkles water on the laundry with her fingers, and steam rises above the iron. Katharine hides a silver dollar under the rug: if it’s still there—Nora didn’t clean properly; if it’s gone—she’s not trustworthy! Now, Richard Higginson II barks at the clock. You know, Luka, we’ve known each other for the span of a dog’s life.”

  Robert’s eyes were often red because he was allergic to cats. He kept them anyway because Kate loved them.

  “The big change is that my Owen got married. Except for you and me, the only boy around us now is your Stevan.”

  Tesla met Owen when he was a spoiled brat who loved to ride in his carriage. Owen Johnson became an athlete who complained about his tennis elbow, an
d a philosopher prone to tiresome definitions. He had already published a novel titled Arrows of the Almighty. He was handsome, but had a slight deviation to the nose. The one-time boy had every hair in place. His cobalt eyes peered from behind rimless glasses. Not even his own wife had ever seen him unshaven. Tesla had to admit that all of that was a little disappointing. Impeccability was all right. And yet, did not life offer greater opportunities than being merely well groomed?

  The dizzying fans of the Atlantic light shone through the clouds, hurt the eyes, and opened up horizons.

  The waves crashed.

  And crashed. And crashed. And crashed.

  Robert wore an exquisite gray suit. He undid his tie and took off his collar. He felt the wind on his neck. Then he took off his shoes.

  Their hands behind their backs, they walked along a section of the beach lapped by waves.

  Whoooooosh! Whoooooosh!

  “Would it be possible to send a message from Wardenclyffe to Morgan’s yacht, the Corsair?” Robert outshouted the waves and Stevan’s cries.

  “Sure,” Tesla responded indifferently.

  The waves drew back. The wet shadow of the ocean followed them.

  Robert looked at his old friend with the eyes of a wounded stag. He pleaded in a voice of a cursed soul: “Then do it. Forget about everything else and send him a message before Marconi does. I’ve told you this before, and I’ll tell you again.”

  Tesla’s big ear registered what Robert said, but his obsessions determined which words he would hear. To him—like to Socrates—his own daimon kept repeating something else. Perhaps it was vanity and lusting after the wind? Perhaps his obstinacy, necessary for contradicting the entire world this long, was turning against him? He did not follow what his reason dictated—it was his soul that made those profound decisions.

  Tesla surveyed the sharp grasses at the edge of the dunes in the incredible glare of the sunlight.

  “Don Quixote is a monster,” it dawned on Robert. “Any personal trait that swallows up all other traits is demonic. What remains from Don Quixote’s reason is the fragments of his potential life.”

  What was it that Johnson told Tesla? That one could combine haste with self-respect. That contractual obligations and other social games were worthy of the mind that would bring about the biggest spontaneous manifestation of energy on earth.

  The wind caressed the tall grass.

  Stevan took him by the hand. His nose wrinkled: “Are you my father now?”

  “No,” retorted Tesla.

  For the last few years, Tesla had been writing down each dream in which Dane appeared. Relieved, he noticed that sometimes there were six-month periods between them. He had no competitors anymore, dead or alive. Dangerous “others” did not exist. Time did not exist. He was at the center of the world, and Marconi was plotting on its gray outskirts.

  “Are you telling me that I should be afraid?” Tesla became irritated.

  Unused to anger, Johnson frowned. “What you do at Wardenclyffe violates your contract with Morgan. He only wants a small tower for transferring stock market reports.” Johnson’s eyes became larger behind his glasses till they nearly shouted, Remember the blooming nose! Remember the stinger in his tiny black eyes! Remember how you grew numb from his mossy whisper! Remember Morgan, Nikola!

  “Beware,” Robert muttered to himself. “Your feeling of superiority is one-dimensional, and it impoverishes life!”

  “What was that?”

  “Beware!” Robert repeated aloud. “Morgan never forgives.”

  La-de-da. What was a contract compared to…

  Robert was horrified. A halo of eccentricity and solitude surrounded his friend. He realized that—for this lotus-eater—people did not exist.

  “Are you aware of the number of ships that already use Marconi’s wireless system?” he continued with a constricted throat. “More than seventy! Mostly in his two homelands—Britain and Italy! The rest belong to the great shipping lines—the Cunard Line and the North American Lloyd.”

  Little Stevan did not stop yelling. He let the waves completely wash him out on the shore. Then he rushed back into the eternal ocean. He enjoyed being pulled out and then pushed back on the sand where he crawled in the rustling arabesques of foam.

  The dizzying Atlantic light intoxicated Tesla.

  Robert spoke in his tortured, cultivated voice. “Marconi’s transmitters have been installed at Poldhu in England and at Crookhaven in Ireland.”

  Trying to wake the sleepwalker in love was to no avail. Oh, the reader should become worried about him!

  The wind blew. Robert talked reasonably and tediously. Tesla remained silent. The eternal ocean rustled. Neckless seagulls waddled around the sand, as important as the Cunard Line officials. Tesla looked toward the ocean’s horizon with his Olympian eyes.

  The boy Prostran shot out of the cold waves, shivered, and hugged himself. With motionless wings, the seagulls flew at various floors of the wind. Stevan shook his feet. The withdrawing waves and the changing color of the sand delighted him. Directly from the light above, a seagull dove and snatched a sandwich from the basket they left on a rock.

  “Ha!” Stevan shouted with joy and pointed his finger at the sky.

  Hugging his bony ribs, he then came up to Tesla and grabbed him by the hand. “Are you my father now?”

  CHAPTER 85

  Three Quiet Miracles

  Stevan smoked cigarettes and walked on his hands around Wardenclyffe. Then he came up to Tesla and said, “This is what girls sing in Rastičevo: ‘America, may you lose all of your money; because of you, a widower is now my honey.’”

  “Go read something!” Pygmalion said.

  The boy threw a quick glance at him. Bored but obedient, he spread out a newspaper:

  Dutch Queen Quarrels with Husband. Circe Feeds Sailors Her Herbs of Evil. Race Riots in New York: Two Men Slashed with Knives. Odysseus’s Return to Ithaca Causes Bloodbath. Italian Government Insists on Italians’ Rights in America. In Luxor, Alexander Declared Amon’s Son. Desperate Turkish Troops in Albania with No Pay for Months.

  “Don’t read that rubbish.” Stevan’s unlikely adopted father frowned. “Read this.”

  Stevan was handed Plato’s Symposium. He took it with him to the dark corners of the laboratory where he smoked in secret.

  “The professors claim that Socrates said that we should be good and brush our teeth,” Stevan murmured. “I don’t think he meant that…”

  At times, it seemed to Tesla that it was impossible to make Stevan respect anything. Besides the gourmet meals prepared by Oscar of the Waldorf, Stevan loved fried potatoes. The Serbian Huckleberry Finn swore to stay forever wild like an American national park.

  Meanwhile, a Shakespearean tempest wiped out Marconi’s station in England. In November, the same happened to the one in Ireland.

  “This is a respite,” Robert wired him. “You need to hurry!”

  Stevan Prostran Jr. was ecstatic when he learned that Stanford White had become a member of the same auto club as President Roosevelt. Dark worry rarely sits on the shoulder of the driver who drives fast enough. With his glowing red hair, White raced to Wardenclyffe in his new electric two-seater.

  “It would glow like a lamp, if only I fixed it up a bit more,” he bragged.

  Stevan caressed the car.

  “White has tasted bread from many an oven,” he said with admiration. The ailing priapus hoped to cut his debt in half by selling the artifacts from his collection at an auction. White paced around the room, smoked nervously, and inquired about everything. Night fell. With his burning cigarette tip, he drew red circles in the darkness. Then he abruptly took his leave. The tires squealed on the gravel. A sparkling cigarette butt bounced down the night road behind him.

  Meanwhile…

  “Marconi decided to try using a less powerful but much sturdier tower in England,” Scherff informed Tesla. “He will install the receivers in balloons.”

  The obedient St
evan read Plato.

  “The Sophists do not crave knowledge but power,” he murmured. “However, they are curious and smart in spite of the power they crave, so their longing to know the Truth prods at them.”

  The more Stevan read, the more he thought that Tesla—like Socrates—preferred mankind to people.

  The Johnsons invited Tesla to Bar Harbor in Maine and to their place for Thanksgiving. He turned them down and signed the note: “The distant Nikola.”

  In The Symposium, Alcibiades spoke with his ancient mouth: Know that beauty, wealth, and honor—which many people crave—don’t mean anything to Socrates. He despises them and the people who possess them. People mean nothing to him.

  Oh, yes, Marconi and his assistants finally raised the receiving antenna. On Friday, December 13, when the atmospheric conditions settled after a hail storm, they received three dots for the letter S.

  “So what?” Tesla put his hands on his hips.

  At that moment, the mustached assistant stepped on the scene again.

  The eyeglass frames out of horses’ hooves! The boots from a military surplus store! The hands and the heart of pure gold: Scherff!

  Scherff’s unblinking brown eyes peered through monstrously thick lenses. The eyes focused on the Ideal. Scherff had never been sick. Had never complained. Tesla believed that he had two disassembled watches in his left pocket. He would not be surprised if a cockroach jumped out of his right one.

  Scherff!

  Hunched over. His feet wide apart. His body square.

  His honesty and his clumsiness, his awkward love for truth could not handle the current situation.

  Marconi received the three dots for the letter S.

  “Mother of God!” Scherff gasped under his breath.

  The mustached Scherff walked around the yard raising his arms. He put them down and raised them again, like a Jew in front of the Wailing Wall. Then he spat. “Three quiet signals! Those three signals will pull down our steel tower.”

  “So what?” Tesla repeated defiantly.