That cold sensation was on Tara’s hands as she traveled first to Cleveland, Tennessee, and then to her uncle, who was a doctor in New York. There she completed a typing course and found a room on Riverside Drive, close to Grant’s Tomb. The dark monument frightened her, even more so after she gave up praying. She checked out one book a week from the library on Forty-Second Street.
New York fired her up like a sultry sigh. She talked too loud. She loved to blow noisy kisses. With her few friends, she went to Coney Island, to minstrel shows, to the Bowery theaters, to the penny arcades.
She loved to buy brightly colored dresses and wore them while she was looking for work. Eventually, she was hired as a secretary at a private laboratory. She wrote to her sister that she worked on the twentieth floor of the Metropolitan Building, right under the famous clock.
“My boss is middle-aged but young looking. Very cultured,” she bragged to her sister.
Her strange boss came in right at the stroke of noon. He insisted that Tara buy three pounds of rapeseed, hemp seed, and bird food every day and that she meet him by the door and take his hat, cane, and gloves. The office curtains had to be drawn. Thus the room acquired an evening feel.
“Open the curtains!” he ordered only when a storm rolled in.
Then a hatatitla—which means “lightning” in Apache—flashed in all three windows. The panes rattled. Thor, Perun, and Zeus shook the sheets made of blue light. Her mysterious boss opened the windows, and it smelled of danger and freshness.
He observed the sparkling arcs as they appeared in regular intervals above the roofs. Using his fingers, he measured the length, distance, and power of each thunderbolt. The lightning purified his nerves.
One hand he held against his heart and the other between his legs. He gasped.
Sitting on the sofa, he grumbled with the storm. He loudly preached to the open windows. He felt fortune’s spurs in his sides. His voice merged with the voice of God. He triumphantly joined in a duet with the heavenly guffaw. He cheered the flashes in unknown languages. He sang with them.
“I have created more powerful bolts!” he yelled.
Then the sound of rain became stronger. Its bright multiple jets again danced on the windowsill.
Once he opened a telegram, started to cry, and went out of the room. Tara tiptoed up to the piece of paper, picked it up, and read:
Mark Twain left with Halley’s Comet. He came with the comet and has left with the comet.
Yours,
Robert
When she got her first paycheck, the modern girl Tara Tiernstein treated herself to dinner at Hammerstein’s Roof Garden. What else could a single girl do who was becoming a spinster?
Food shielded her from the big city.
Tara tried to calculate how many hands were in the city. Millions of them waved to someone, grabbed jewelry, grabbed the hands of fiancés. All those hands were able to snatch something out of life. Hers were empty.
Under gaslight in her kitchen, Tara guarded her plate of food with her elbows. She squeezed bread into hard, rubber-like balls and shoved them into her mouth. Her gut howled like Scylla: feed me! Her hands turned into pistons and moved on their own.
Abstract notions can assume various shapes, especially the shapes of our cravings. She craved the truth and spiritual improvement.
Lord, from the time you threw us out of the Garden, we have constantly hungered and thirsted—men for women and women for men. Why do you do this to us? Why do you send us the itch that is pain?
Even after she had heard in the office that her boss could not stand fat women, Tara continued to fantasize about him. From a distance, she stroked his hair, the back of his head, his pale lips. Oh Lord, why do you do this to me? She dreamed about the snakes from Locust Valley in Tennessee. She wished her bed would squeal in her place.
She grew out of her flowery dresses.
She liked to stay alone in the office late in the evening. She opened a newspaper and read about what John Jacob Astor and his son Vincent felt when they got lost on the open sea. She used the forbidden private restroom, where Mr. Tesla went whenever someone unexpectedly shook his hand. The bar of soap sloshed between her palms. He avoided the contaminated others. He used to say that he was protecting himself against the germs that devour each other in the invisible world beneath the world. The germs he talked about were probably people.
Tara Tiernstein started buying the special black underwear that “those” girls wore. Her stockings swished whenever she crossed her legs.
Well?
Miss—he always addressed her that way. He never used her real name.
He described the bladeless turbine to her, which would produce ten horsepower per pound.
She understood him.
She was feeding off of him, her breadwinner.
The smile of playful Eros altered her face. He deserved to be loved.
He gave her daily bread. The bread she squeezed and shoved into her mouth.
One Friday evening, she stayed late to type his letter to the superintendent of New York public schools, Mr. Maxwell:
“We will include fifty mentally retarded schoolchildren in our study,” her deft fingers typed. “Electricity has the potential to raise the intelligence level of mankind and to even cure the insane.”
The windows of the Metropolitan Tower were wide open. The dogs of summer barked. The month of June was fragrant. The only thing that was heard in the whole building was the chatter of her typewriter. She had been suffering from sudden fits of hunger lately. That was why she carried bread in her purse. Alone in the laboratory, Tara sat astride the corner of her desk. On the table, right under her chin she opened Carlyle’s book On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, which her boss was reading. She pulled out slices of bread. Her hands moved like pistons. She squeezed bread and shoved it into her mouth. Faraway pulsations determined her individuality. She ate out of horror. She had no control over her state.
“Miss!” a shocked voice exclaimed.
“Mr. Tesla!” she screamed.
Nikola Tesla approached Tara. His restraint was palpable. “What you do to yourself… such a lack of self-control… I simply cannot condone such behavior.”
His tie made of ice gleamed before her blurry eyes.
“Of course, that’s not my business, but…”
Her gaze sank powerfully into his. She cried out, “Mr. Tesla!”
He stood before her, tall, with his chiseled features, in his armor made of ice.
“I will pay you next week’s wages, but you don’t need to come in Monday.”
She had no one except him in this city. Her whole body jerked forward from the waist, while her head jerked backward. Foam gushed from her mouth. The man looked at the floor so that he did not have to look at her. From some distant center of the universe, tremors shook this woman. Her ample breasts flopped out, revealing a rash between them. Her eyes were pure helplessness. Her empty hand clawed at the air and grabbed the spot where her dress was buttoned together. The buttons flew all over the office.
CHAPTER 99
The Light of Shanghai
Three months after Tesla let her go, Miss Tara Tiernstein found a job at the Light of Shanghai, a missionary organization that saved souls in China. She was not the same girl who used to blow loud kisses on Bowery Street and draw catcalls from young men with her brightly colored dresses: “Hey baby!”
She practiced restraint on each and every bite she took. She made a long face as she drank tea without sugar. The rumbling of her stomach before she went to bed was a sign that she spent her day well.
Every morning Miss Tara Tiernstein swam through rivers of unknown people. During the day, she observed New York—which was no longer hers—from the tall balcony of the redbrick Light of Shanghai building. Swirls of black smoke flew over the gray smoke like scarves over coats. The tops of buildings disappeared in the clouds. Omnibuses bellowed like whales. Passersby slept as they hurried along. People blank
ly stared at each other like ants.
In the newspaper, Tara Tiernstein found and circled a few evening courses. It took three sessions of the course titled John Locke and Charles Darwin—the Quiet Revolutionaries before she realized that she had no interest in it.
She suddenly realized that reason was not her home. She realized that reason was nobody’s home. She realized that the question “Whom do you love?” is never asked there. She realized that the whole city was a bottomless pit.
Confused, she asked herself, “Where’s the soul? Where has the soul gone to in the city?”
On her wall, the young man covered in blood spread his arms in a gesture of wonder. Henchmen prevented the embrace he offered the world. The bloody man was the sole nourisher of Tara’s heart.
“Why are you tempting me?” she asked him.
Whenever she did not think about Christ, she thought about the Mother of God and her pilgrimage through hell. The Virgin was kneeling in the midst of hell and prayed to her son to have mercy on the souls of the damned.
Tara lived peacefully and did not bother anyone. But Mr. Tesla came to her at night and touched her with his long, unusually cold fingers, extended with veins of electricity. He suddenly handed her a stiff snake, which turned into a blue thunderbolt. The Laocoön snake squeezed Tara in its lusty embrace.
She did not look for anything. She did not bother anyone.
In her office, while she counted copies of the Bible bound for Shanghai, something moved up her spine and lifted her hair. She knew who was behind it. She dreamed of him. He conspired with Martians who had horns. He resembled a frozen cat. Two tiny thunderbolts protruded from his helmet-like, combed back hair. How come she did not recognize him earlier?
She started to feel scared.
Really scared.
At any hour, he would touch her thighs with blue cold fire.
She went to visit her uncle in Brooklyn and stole the revolver from his desk. She hugged the heavy purse against her breast.
She still doubted: “Why are you tempting me?”
Then Pastor Hensley’s words spoke in her ear: “No evil can befall him who labors in the name of the Lord… Through faith, the sons and daughters of Adam overcome Original Sin and tame the symbol of the Evil One.”
She set off toward the library where—as punctual as a clock—he fed pigeons.
The wind roughly swirled horses’ manes. The wind whipped her hair across her face. Despite her thin little jacket, Tara was not cold. Everything was clear to her. To herself, she repeated the words from the Gospel according to Luke: “Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.”
Her fear was replaced by resolve. She heard the music of all beings. The wind gleamed like diamond powder. He called to her through the sounds of car horns and brakes, the rumble and drone of the subway: “Taaaa-raaa!”
Meanwhile, in the Palm Room at the Waldorf Astoria, Tesla was taking his leave of Westinghouse, whom he had not seen for years. Westinghouse still looked like a swaying cupboard squeezed into a topcoat. Tesla serenely looked into his friendly fish eyes and told him, “Yesterday the French Supreme Court judge, Bonjean, ruled in my favor against Marconi.”
“Congratulations!”
Westinghouse, whom people considered a crashing wave rather than a human being, had been ebbing for a long time. His mustache was completely white, his gaze still clear. He apologized to Tesla because his company’s legal department had sued him for unpaid debts.
“They also signed me off,” he mumbled apologetically.
He wanted to know what was going on in the Balkans. “Could you explain that war to me?”
“Serbia, Greece, and Bulgaria joined forces in order to drive Turkey out of the Balkans,” Tesla responded.
“You know, Mr. Westinghouse, it’s not all that pleasant to be a ‘professional defender of Christiandom.’ In my family, officers killed and were killed in endless wars, while priests sang their praises. Only women knew the pain of all of that.
“Personally, I don’t support the cruel measures that many people preach these days, filled with prejudices against the Turks,” Tesla concluded. “The greatest victory the Balkan countries could ever achieve will be their ability to show that they are ready for the twentieth century and can start dealing equitably with everyone—both Turk and Christian.”
Westinghouse looked at him with polite incomprehension. He did not know that this pacifist was assigned to a military unit by the very act of being born.
“The two of us are heading in the right direction.” Tesla smiled at his old comrade in arms as they were about to part. “I work with the New York public school system. Our electricity has the potential to raise mankind’s intelligence and cure mental retardation.”
Two partners from the old times bade each other farewell.
Tesla hurried on, followed by the sound of his steps in the hall. He was late for his meeting with the pigeons. As usual, he whistled as soon as he stepped from Forty-Second Street into the park behind the library.
A few solitary pigeons fluttered down, struggling against the wind.
Two mounted policemen rode by along the path.
Tesla glanced at the wrought iron clock. It was 12:20 p.m.
Suddenly, an unknown woman sprang up in front of him, dark and tall—as if he had stepped on a rake.
The expression on her face was icy.
The treetop of Tesla’s nerves caught on fire in response to the frequency of the constellations. Something spoke to him and he pushed the woman away. At that moment, something slammed into his shoulder.
A policeman jumped from his horse, tackled the madwoman, and wrenched her gun away.
“You’re wounded,” he warned Tesla.
In court, Miss Tara Tiernstein’s piled-up hair made her look elongated.
How well she knew that the city was empty of living souls. They would not take pity on her. She held her hands against her breast like a corpse. In a hissing voice, she explained to the judge, “He cast electricity on me.”
Tesla told newspaper reporters, “I feel sorry for the poor thing.”
“I’ve suffered a lot,” Tara Tiernstein said repeatedly to Judge Forster.
Judge Forster sent her to an asylum where they treated her with electricity.
CHAPTER 100
For the Souls!
And there was a tremendous earthquake and all-consuming fire…
and only after the fire a soft voice was heard, and the Lord was in it.
Akathists, Kondak 6
And then the Serbian conspirator who suffered from tuberculosis fired a shot at the chest of the Austrian archduke who also suffered from tuberculosis. The archduke’s last words were:
“It is nothing.”
Enthusiastic crowds in Berlin, Moscow, and Paris rushed to the slaughterhouse as if they were going to a wedding. Just like Tesla, all the Europeans knew:
The laws are becoming more just.
The first victories of the war were Serbian. In the West, there came months and years in trenches. Cannon barrages mixed French mud with human clay, which God blew life into by mistake.
Between strings of barbed wires, heavy guns buried and unburied corpses. The soldiers still believed:
The laws are becoming more just and the rulers better.
Then came gigantic guns. Then came flamethrowers and suffocating smoke. In the era of industrial death, people poisoned other people like rats. The entire Serbian army retreated through the Albanian gorges. Serbian ghosts took with them some forty thousand Austrian ghosts. The conscripts sang:
So long summer, winter, fall,
We’ll never come back at all.
The laws are becoming more just, the rulers better, music sweeter.
Turkish machine guns decimated New Zealanders at Gallipoli. Austrians and Italians slaughtered each other among the mountain crags as sharp as razor blades. Gunboats be
llowed smoke in front of Jutland. The forks of seagulls’ wings fluttered above the slanted sea.
The laws are becoming more just, the rulers better, music sweeter, people wiser and happier, and the heart of an individual…
People asked themselves if the age of light was the age of enlightenment. Howitzers pummeled twelfth-century cathedrals that were erected by a rooster’s crow. Austrians hanged Serbian peasant women in Mačva. Germans forced Belgian civilians to labor for them. The British fleet imposed a blockade on an increasingly starving Germany. German submarines sunk merchant ships.
… and the heart of individuals were becoming more just and more tender.
Progress enhanced evil.
Uranus ate his own children.
A certain Edgar Bérillon distinguished himself with his claim that an average German produced more excrement than other members of the human race. Turks massacred Armenians. In the Royal Village, Rasputin killed birds with a glance. Like insects, Russian armored trains quivered their gun barrels as they sped across the steppes. Stars fell like figs shaken off a tree. The drowned exited oceans wearing white dresses. The Serbs, the French, the Germans, the Romanians, the English, the Russians, the Italians—all of them—hated with a “healthy futuristic hatred.” The fatal verses finally fell into their place:
We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist! We want to glorify war—the only cure for the world.
Up until then, Doctor Jekyll was sitting in Europe, while Mr. Hyde was sent away to the colonies. In White Man’s Burden, Kipling sang praises to Hyde’s achievements in the heart of darkness. Now Hyde was back from the Congo, and he rushed to the Somme.
Something whispered in the ear: the horror!
Something growled from the darkness: the horror!
Something screamed in the mind: the horror!
Tesla’s foster son, Stevan Prostran—his “Serbian servant”—became a Serbian volunteer on the Salonica Front and sent him a postcard through the Red Cross.
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