Tesla (10 page)

So it was that the following year he triumphantly unpacked the dynamo with his huge hands.

“The Jacobins marked the beginning of their calendar with the French Revolution,” he said. “I suggest that we mark ours with this moment—now!”

He tuned the dynamo on.

To the students’ amusement, the machine crackled loudly.

“This electrical discharge can be reduced but not eliminated,” the professor’s voice rose above the noisy static. “The Gramme dynamo will continue to crackle as long as there’s direct current and magnets have two poles.”

“Why does the current have to stream only one way?” Nikola whispered to his bench colleague, Szigety.

Pöschl gave a reproachful look first to Tesla and then to Szigety. He continued in a louder voice: “As long as magnets have two poles, each affecting the current in an opposite way, we will have to use a commutator that redirects the current at the right moment.”

“As long as a magnet has two poles, rather than—let’s say—five,” Szigety whispered to Tesla.

Józef Pliniecki, a nobleman from Krakow, raised his hand and observed, “That means both the machine and we who utilize it are limited by the direct current we are using.”

His comment was as reasonable as it was superfluous.

Pöschl gave a peevish nod. At that moment, Nikola’s face took on a look of horror. Something was happening to him. It looked as if he was about to sneeze. He sensed something approaching that just needed a catalyst. A more mature person would compare that feeling with an oncoming epileptic fit or an orgasm. For a moment, Tesla did not know where he was. The sphere of his forehead was bathed in light. Recovering from the powerful stress of intuition, he raised his hand and asked, “But why… why couldn’t we get rid of the commutator altogether?”

Pöschl threw his arms up in exasperation, like a man faced with an unreasonable suggestion. “What?” he barked, lifting his eyebrows.

“Why couldn’t we eliminate the commutator?” repeated Szigety in the archbishop’s basso.

Pöschl ignored him as he sought out Tesla’s almond-shaped eyes. His own large eyes swam in the lenses of his glasses. For a moment, the professor and his student faced each other like David and Goliath.

“Why? Let me tell you why,” sputtered Pöschl with a vengeance.

He pointed out the critical importance of the commutator, which was designed by André-Marie Ampère and first manufactured by the maker of electrical instruments Hippolyte Pixii. With ease and conviction, he spoke about the dangers of alternating current and the irreplaceability of direct current. Just a moment before, Nikola had known in his gut that eliminating the commutator must be possible. Pöschl’s eloquence confused him. At the same time, Nikola knew that his professor was wrong, just as he had known that his father Milutin was wrong when he wanted to send him to the seminary. Milutin was wrong because he was “only” a priest. Pöschl was only a professor.

This is not the truth
, he thought.
This is just a word game.

Tesla was not entitled to think that way. He was powerless. He was young. He did not have the right. He himself was shocked by what he felt in the depths of his soul. Pöschl smiled with malice and pity while delivering his final blow.

“Mr. Tesla may accomplish great things, but this he won’t be able to do. It would be like changing a constant force that attracts—like gravity—into a rotational force.”

Tesla nearly blurted out, “Well, isn’t precisely gravitation the reason why the moon orbits around the earth, and the earth around the sun?”

But he bit his tongue.

Pöschl waved his gigantic hands in victorious conclusion: “That’s not just difficult. That’s impossible!”

“We decide what’s possible!” slipped from Tesla’s mouth.

Pöschl did not say a word, but his eyes grew warmer. The man who used to say, “I hate my students!” suddenly got confused. His piteous smile encompassed Tesla, Szigety, Pliniecki, and the rest of the large auditorium overflowing with youth.

CHAPTER 22

And the Moon Is Your Neighbor

After he finished his first two years of college in one and earned grades “better than the best,” Nikola went back home. Both his Militärgrenze
²
scholarship and his decision to study electrical engineering were now justified. Upon his return to Gospić, his neighbor Bjelobaba wondered,
Is this the same one who went away?

Mother cast a spell of cleanliness over the entire house. Each window, table, dresser, even the chest, was decorated with embroidery that her fingers—“nimble as fire”—had created. In Nikola’s childhood, Mother used to kiss him on the head while his hair was still warm from the sun and say, “Home is your home and the moon is your neighbor.” When he came back from Graz, she put her hand on his shoulder and surprised him by saying, “My Niko! You can’t do small things, but you can do great things.”

And yet, something was strange. Father frowned, changed the subject, and avoided looking him in the eye.

“Yes, I’m in good health.” Nikola was puzzled as he answered Father’s questions.

When he found himself alone, Nikola made a face like he was about to play the trumpet and broke into tears.

He still hasn’t gotten over Dane’s death
, he thought.
He’ll never accept me. I can’t replace Dane!

In Graz he worked eighteen hours a day to please Father. He expected joy and recognition in return. And what did he get? Nothing!

“So that’s how it is,” he whispered. “All right then…”

After long months of nervous strain, Gospić made him feel drowsy. He snuggled under the bedcovers and pulled them up to his nose. His eyelids were heavy and sweet honey bound one thought to another. The stars in the sky over Lika buzzed like hornets, but they did not bother him in his sleep. The old wind groaned in the forests that God himself had forgotten. The language of dreams seemed to be the only real language, while everyday life looked like a foggy deception.

“Hey, Nikola! Nikola!” Mother’s shouted. “Nikola!”

“Who?” His hand reached out into empty space. Mist dissipated from his eyes, and he saw Mother’s dark eyes and understood the plea they conveyed.

“Nikola, please wake up,” she said. “Your relatives are here to see you!

Nikola got dressed and went down to the living room, where two oil lamps shed light on the dining table. The sons of his two aunts were sitting there. He was still sleepy and saw them as if in a dream.

The posture of the first one, an officer, revealed a sense of natural pride. While they hugged each other ceremoniously, it occurred to Nikola that the currency of his cousin’s dignity was not gold standard. The self-sufficient reticence of the tall, mustached man appeared to be a virtue by and in itself. His body simply radiated a natural sense of pride that was almost palpable.

The other cousin’s green eyes shone from dark circles. He was a village teacher. He smiled only with one side of his face, smoked cigarettes till they burned his lips, and crowed when he laughed. His insecurity made him boastful, so he never missed an opportunity to interrupt a conversation. “You are clueless,” he would say. “Let me tell you about that.”

The third cousin was a chubby man with a startled demeanor. He smiled freely, with both sides of his face. He spent most of his life as a shepherd trilling after his flocks only to stun his family members when he joined the Herzegovina rebels as a volunteer in 1875. With a shocked expression, he told Nikola and his parents about the severed Serbian and Turkish heads he saw on stakes in Bosnia. He also talked about Montenegrin volunteers who used to call any man who died of natural causes a coward.

The light from the oil lamps danced over their faces.

The visitors crossed themselves and dug into the roast lamb. The proud man with the mustache was silent, and the other two became agitated when the conversation touched upon certain people.

“Mitar!” The fat volunteer made a face. “God, what an idiot! You won’t find such an idiot on the moon! What do you say, scientist?” he asked Nikola in a serious voice.

“An idiot! An idiot!” the village teacher concurred.

The visitors drank red wine that stained their teeth and even sang a little as the evening progressed. The fat volunteer proved to be a good singer of Bosnian songs. He held one note for a long time. A shift of pitch would bring momentary relief, until the singer landed on another painful note.

My God, this sounds like a toothache singing!
Nikola Tesla thought.
How much pain there is in all of this! Even in bragging, even in joy!

As soon as a male child was born in the Militärgrenze, his name was entered into the ranks of a particular military unit. By birth, Nikola Tesla belonged to the First Lika Regiment, Medak Company Number 9, the same unit of the township his father belonged to by birth. As is well known, Nikola’s name joined the long list of officers and priests in the family. His ancestors’ duty was to secure the military border with Turkey. To be a “professional defender of Christendom” was not a particularly pleasant occupation. For centuries, brass buttons rippled on the chests of those officers, and feathers shimmered on the badges of their hats. They killed and were killed in the Austrian Empire’s endless wars, and the priests glorified their deeds. But was not human goodness more important in an uncertain world than good laws in a certain one? Did not someone have to pity the blood those men shed in vain, stitch together their shattered lives, feel sorry for the selfsame heroes, know how much that heroism cost in sorrow, and make lives, regulated by soldierly imperatives, a little softer? Did not someone shed the tears the men were not allowed to shed? The women.

The women knew the high price paid for life in the world of severed heads. They knew about all the pain. The pain! They told stories in order to soften reality. The women offered stories as the bandages for wounded life. Just as their hands washed the bloody shirts, their words washed the world.

That was what Nikola was thinking about as he looked into Mother’s hazelnut eyes that had grown darker with years.

After the guests had left, there was still enough food on the table to serve another supper.

Whenever a guest shut the door after him, Nikola’s family would say one of two things: “He’s a really good man” or “God, what an idiot.” This time, Father compromised. After he saw his visitors off, he sighed. “Good people—but idiots!”

The relatives faded into the dark, like three demons whose goal was to point out to the prodigal son how things were at home. As soon as they left, Nikola started to yearn for the lecture halls of the polytechnics. After twenty-four hours, the very blue of Lake Plitvice started to lose its magic. Everything back here was tangled up in knots. One could make one’s fingers bleed without being able to undo them.

The sobbing, metallic sound of dog’s barking resounded outside all night. The reflection of rosy light finally started to pulsate on the wall. The student sat up in his bed and looked into the ruddy dawn.

“The maternal light,” he muttered. “The maternal light.”

Despite the great peace that reigned under his mother’s roof, this young man with the divided heart felt a desire to leave immediately for Graz.

2
. The Military Frontier (
Vojna granica
or
Vojna krajina
in Serbian), created by the Habsburgs in the sixteenth century, was a military buffer zone between the Habsburg Empire (later the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and the Ottoman Empire. Among other territories, it incorporated all the regions with the Serbian majority in present-day Croatia, including Tesla’s homeland, Lika. The Military Frontier was abolished in 1881.

CHAPTER 23