Read Tesla Online

Authors: Vladimir Pistalo

Tesla

BOOK: Tesla
2.85Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
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.

A Lannan Translation Selection

Funding the translation and publication of exceptional literary works

Published by Graywolf Press

250 Third Avenue North, Suite 600

Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401

All rights reserved.

www.graywolfpress.org

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 them, “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.”

BOOK: Tesla
2.85Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

11.01 Death of a Hero by John Flanagan
Falling For A Cowboy by Anne Carrole
The Invisible Man from Salem by Christoffer Carlsson
Unwritten by Lockwood, Tressie
Borderlands: Gunsight by John Shirley
Force Me - Death By Sex by Karland, Marteeka, Azod, Shara
The Eye of Madness by Mimms, John D;
Just Killing Time by Julianne Holmes