“What has the magician from Vienna seen in America?”
“Manhattan.” Viereck scribbled down the answers. “Coney Island, Central Park, Chinatown, the Jewish quarters in the Lower East Side. The Count of Monte Cristo at the movie theater.”
“Has anything bothered you?” Viereck grinned.
Freud paused. He was used to being the person with a notebook. He cleared his throat and responded, “I was fasting for a day due to the rich American food.”
He failed to mention that he organized his Vienna group of followers like a castle under siege. That was why open doors in America—both entryways and bathroom doors—greatly disturbed him.
When they got a little bit tired, the poet abruptly asked the magician if he had heard about his friend Nikola Tesla.
Freud frowned because his cigar was going out.
“The Austrian whose fingers emit lightning,” he answered as he reached for the matches. “I remember the time French and British newspapers elevated him to stardom.”
He blew out smoke and looked at Viereck. He had heard that the boy with the elongated head and frog-like mouth was not just a journalist but also a symbolist poet, the author of a vampire novel. They called him “the new Poe” and “the American Oscar Wilde.” He had also heard about Viereck’s connections with the German royal family. Viereck was an out-of-wedlock grandson of Wilhelm I and thus an illegitimate kaiser.
The youthful, balding doctor came to the door for a second.
“Ferenczi has a funny smile,” Viereck commented.
They were reclining in leather armchairs in the dusky library of Clark University. The armchairs smelled like dry apricots. In the bluish smoke, the atmosphere in the room resembled a spiritualist séance. The afternoon buzzed around them.
Before he interviewed Freud, Viereck did an informal interview with Katharine Johnson.
She told him about Tesla’s childhood dreams of flying, his ability to project images through objects, his fragility and great vitality, the transforming illness that was followed by his famous epiphany in the Budapest park.
Freud took the last puffs from his Dominican cigar.
Hmmm, all that appeared to be a metamorphic experience like coming out of a cocoon and the shamanic ecstasy described by Mihailovsky and other Russian scientists.
Wait a minute, what was it that Jung had told him?
Out of habit, he reached for his notebook.
The semidivine state of the heightened intensity of personality, the ability to mesmerize people and change laws. A refusal to hold a conventional job—such individuals were either kings or paupers.
A man like that was not necessarily a part of a religious community. He was a religion. Among the Buriats and in the Altai Mountains region, the role of lightning was an important factor in the process of such a man’s selection as shaman. If his soul flew westward, he turned into a black shaman. If it flew eastward, he turned into a white one.
Everything fit. No one could acquire such a gift and its dualistic good and evil nature by choice. Had to be sickly as a child or right before the initiation. Epilepsy-like symptoms and the experience of traumatic ecstasy. Deep dreams. Dying and returning. Flights across the sky or under the ground on the epic quest in search of the knowledge essential for the survival of the tribe. Permanent hypersensitivity. Flashes.
“Shaman!” Freud scribbled down in his lined-paper notebook. “A Victorian shaman!”
It’s getting quite interesting now, Viereck thought.
Tesla’s unofficial biographer could not restrain himself anymore. He told the story and now could ask the main question he actually had for Freud. “I have to ask you one thing: Was the theft of his father’s blessing more brutal than the biblical Jacob’s?” he finally uttered. “Did he kill his brother?”
“That’s obvious,” Freud exclaimed.
With a glimmer of bitterness in the corner of his eye, he explained that…
CHAPTER 93
From the Diary
The terrain was rough, the time was wintry and dark,
the heart was vain and sly, the eyes were burdened with sleep,
the body was clayey and sad, the hands were muddy and weak.
Old Serbian Manuscripts and Inscriptions, 1535
When they told me that Marconi was awarded the Nobel Prize, I stared at the floor for a long time. I felt stripped of glory, like Achilles or Milton’s Satan. Someone else’s voice resounded in my mind:
“Rage was the song of Achilles. What will be yours?”
“The man puts in my coil some kind of a gap. So he received the Nobel Prize…” I responded. “I couldn’t prevent it.”
After a while, I pulled myself together and spoke in a softer voice: “Like the wind, the spirit goes wherever it wants, but we can only judge it by the sound.”
Something happened to me a week after Marconi received the award. We were in the opera. The chorus from Aida was singing: “Heavenly spirit, descend on us, give us glory…”
The world became granular and started to rustle. I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand.
The opera house went through a metamorphosis. The singer who played Radamès looked at me with deeper and darker eyes.
“Let me go!” I told him.
The voices echoed in the boxes and ladies’ décolletés. They were not singing on the stage—instead, ventriloquists were singing from the audience. The ladies’ and gentlemen’s eyes became identical. Katharine, Robert, and George Sylvester Viereck joined the raccoon parade.
I could not follow the abrupt changes of mood in Verdi’s opera anymore.
I thought I had thrown him off, like a horse its rider.
I rose very, very slowly.
I excused myself. I went out.
The marble staircase glittered like sugar. As I was leaving, they mocked me with a stinging tune. Had Radamès and Aida already started to sing their hymn to death, seen as an ideal and eternal love?
“From the darkness of our bosoms, our bird-souls fly away into the everlasting day…”
An usher in uniform watched me go with very clever eyes.
Skulking and stumbling, I left the opera house. Coachmen and scalpers followed me with the same eyes.
I waved down a taxi. The taxi driver kept turning the steering wheel, which stuck out between his legs like a round coffee table. I paid him, and he gave me a look.
He gave me a look.
The eyes of a cat glowed from atop a garbage can next to the laboratory door. The next moment, those eyes were not bright—they were brown.
The cat gave me a look.
The secretary, who was staying late, said hello and looked at me…
She gave me a look.
Yes.
With the same eyes that the rest of the world looked at me.
My throat constricted.
Ghostly. Anguished. Warm. Deep.
The eyes of my dead brother, Dane.
CHAPTER 94
I Have Three Sons
Medak
March 21, 1910
Dear Brother,
Let me briefly tell you how I live. My Jovo became a priest here in Lika, and we live in Medak now. I have three sons: Petar, Uroš, and Nikola.
It’s been a long time since we wrote to each other. That’s really strange because we’re brother and sister. I’m not blaming you for anything, as I know how you live, and my sisterly heart plainly tells me that we’re still brother and sister like we once were when we lived together.
Your sister,
Angelina
CHAPTER 95
The Night Train to Wardenclyffe
At night, Nikola’s dead brother often sat by the bed and placed his hand on Nikola’s forehead.
“Nikola!” he called out to the man whom others had for years called Mr. Tesla. “Nikola!”
Tears poured down Nikola’s drawn face and into his ears. He wanted to scream, but knew that doing so would not get him out of his own skin. During the day
, he waited for the night to come, while at night he waited for the dawn. A moralist, just like his father before him, he could not understand people. He did not need anything from them except the tribute of their admiration. His emotional development froze in his childhood, and he engaged in quarrels with the imaginary mankind that peopled his solitude.
After midnight, Tesla headed for the slumbering colossal hall of Grand Central Station. That station was once Cornelius Vanderbilt’s “court.” The massive bronze chandeliers reminded Tesla of the ones at Breakers Villa. He climbed the marble staircase that overlooked the deserted passenger arena. There was an orb in the middle of it. Four clocks ticked on the orb. The enormous windows were partitioned with supple wrought iron bars. In the relief on the wall he made out winged wheels—the symbols of the railway. Constellations of stars connected by gold lines were painted inside the green cupola. His solitary footsteps resounded in the empty hall beneath the gods. Following the echo of his steps and thoughts, Tesla went through the station, which looked like Piranesi’s small town, and came to the “tunnel” with parked trains.
He caught the night train to Wardenclyffe.
The elevated train rumbled two stories above the ground.
The inquisitive traveler stared at other people’s windows. Like a moth, he peeped into lit-up rooms from the darkness.
In one room, a hairy man with curlers on his chest soundlessly shouted into the distorted face of a woman.
In another room, a ballerina hooked her thumbs against her collar bones. A pirouette transformed her into a white smudge.
In a third room, Saint Jerome hugged the lion.
In a fourth room, a matador posed frozen in silence. Confronting him, a black bull pawed the parquet with his hoof.
On the wall of the last room hung bloody Prometheus with the eagles perched on his belly.
Rows of golden windows…
Ah, the rows of golden windows whipped through deserted streets.
When the windows trickled away, Tesla became bored.
Then he opened a newspaper.
The newspaper was the New York Sun.
Flying through sleeping New York two stories above the ground, he was reading Little Nemo in Slumberland.
At the beginning of each new episode of that magic comic book, Little Nemo found himself in King Morpheus’s kingdom.
That was familiar, so familiar.
Once upon a time, Nikola was a boy and light caught him by surprise in his bed. Then, from the golden light in the heart of the world, images started to flow out. He was flying among the exploding stars and deep-sea fish. On his left was day and on his right was night. He saw countries and cities. He saw town squares and people who spoke different languages. He saw the sacred monkeys of Benares. He flew from Samarkand to Japan. Nikola hovered above the world, directing his flight from a spot within his bosom. He wanted to return to his bed in the room in Lika, but the bed stayed a thousand miles behind him. There was no returning for the floating spirit.
Drawn away. Drawn away.
All of that happened again when—on the night train to Wardenclyffe—Nikola Tesla, Little Nemo, and the Princess of Slumberland found themselves in the emperor Jack Frost’s ice palace. The clocks and shadows were frozen. They went across an endless polished floor, full of skating harlequins. The huge Emperor Frost towered above them with a sharp halo made of icicles. Emperor Frost resembled J. P. Morgan. Mister Frozen Face looked at his watch, which was frozen. Time was frozen. He told visitors: Emperor Jack Frost is here. He is a cold-mannered gentleman. Don’t shake hands. His grip is terrible.
“You’ll see that this is the most beautiful place in all of Slumberland,” the courtier Icicle explained.
Palm trees looked like icy explosions.
Furniture was made of ice. Rooms were made of ice. Chandeliers were made of ice.
The Ice Palace glittered all around them with multiple soft tinkles. Courtier Icicle warned: “Since the ice caught fire and the palace almost burned to the ground, smoking isn’t allowed here.”
In a hall too large for an eye to take in, thousands of Snowmen destroyed each other with snowballs.
They were drawn away. Drawn away.
The train pulled up.
Little Nemo always ended his flights bundled up in the bedcovers on the floor next to his bed.
Tesla threw the newspaper away.
He transferred from the train to a car.
He arrived in Wardenclyffe.
He relaxed in his ice palace, beneath his steel crown that was eaten by rust.
There, at the place of cold fire, he felt safe. He completely undressed in silence. His sharp shoulder blades were where his wings used to be. He stood under the apparatus and turned the switch on.
Light rose upward from his toes. It splashed his calves and washed up over his knees. The flood of inner light was…
Oh, to cleanse oneself from dirty others…
This bright cyclone now replaced his inner flashes.
In the world of dollars and cents, he had an enormous need to occasionally submerge himself into sacred. A bright hurricane of high voltage went through his heart. The clean essence of the world disinfected the world’s filth. Was the cyclone he used to disinfect himself the same wind that blew people from his life?
Tesla’s frozen, eruptive soul relaxed. Bathed in the cold fire he fell into a lethargic sleep.
CHAPTER 96
Distant Rhythms
Man is the sum of outside influences. Our desires are the desires of others.
Man doesn’t become anything because he isn’t anything.
Mark Twain
After the collapse of his life’s work, the Wardenclyffe project, Nikola Tesla shielded himself with the warmth that radiated from his belly, his being, his heart, his chakras, with the ball of golden yarn that unraveled in front of him and showed him the way.
“You don’t need anyone—such an inhumane creature that you are,” Katharine Johnson scolded him.
“Remember, I warned you,” people told him.
“When times are bad, you hear the music only for you,” he whispered to himself.
Confronted with the possibility of defeat, the creator of the automaton for the first time started to reflect on the ancient question regarding free will. With those philosophical speculations, he hid the truth of his defeat, which was not his truth.
The Buddhists believe that the soul does not exist and that the world is a succession of momentary flashes.
Things became clearer in the nonexistent soul of the philosopher Nikola Tesla: from the central source that Aristotle called entelechy, people not only received energy but also ideas that rang in their heads like a streetcar at the stop.
His father argued with himself in multiple voices behind the closed door.
White was obsessed with sacred points on the female body.
Distant pulsations brought Dane’s image into his dreams.
All features of individuality were rented like carnival masks.
People vibrated within the intervibrations of the world.
Sorrows!
Passions!
Infatuations!
The distant, oscillating rhythms brought all of these into people’s minds and hearts.
On the streets of New York, seductive machines smiled wryly, machines delivered charismatic speeches, melancholic machines gazed from the windows into the silver lining of the rain. Humans were not automatons in the whirlpool of dead forces. Machines made of flesh were parts of the world that were interconnected and alive as a whole. People themselves noticed the rhythm of ebb and flow in nature. There was no doubt that they perceived the succession of fashions in dress as well as other fashions—in their heads.
And everyone was invited to a dance.
So, hypnotized crowds swayed.
The succulent and terrifying faces of “the vanities” grinned.
Although the swinging orchestras did not play.
Nor were mil
itary bands in parks.
CHAPTER 97
The New Automaton
And he had a new laboratory. Old Scherff in his terrifying sweaters worked in it. And hunched Czitó with his raccoon eyes. And we have almost forgotten: within the great pulsations of the world, yet another automaton pulsed into Tesla’s life.
It was his new secretary.
CHAPTER 98
They Shall Take Up Serpents
Tara Tiernstein was just blossoming into a young woman when they brought snakes into the church. Pastor Hensley wore a martyred frown as he noted that no evil can befall him who labors in the name of the Lord.
“My brethren, do not doubt,” with a beneficent smile, the pastor raised his voice, “that through faith, the sons and daughters of Adam can overcome Original Sin.”
After these words, Pastor Hensley took a rattlesnake out of a sack. Deep wrinkles cut his cheeks off from his mouth while he read from the Gospel according to Mark: “They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them.”
The church smelled of fresh wood. Jaws clenched. The viper wriggled from hand to hand along the pews. A red-haired girl handed it to Tara. Death slithered through her hands, and she offered it to a pregnant blond next to her. She left the church holding her chin high. At home, before Sunday lunch, she received everyone’s congratulations.
“Soup is ready,” Aunt Pam called out.
“I’ll bring it!” Tara jumped up.
A crash rang out from the kitchen. They found her convulsing in a puddle of soup.
The epileptic fit never happened again.
“We’ll see.” Purple-faced and gray-haired Doctor Martinson frowned.
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