Tesla (2 page)

The parishioners ignored their priest’s efforts to enlighten them. They griped about him being sickly and, actually, ridiculous. They were of the opinion that he was guilty of his ailments and wanted to fire him. The priest answered that being around people like them would make anyone sick.

“Do you think I get anything out of being here?” Milutin Tesla asked them sarcastically. “I wouldn’t be much worse off if I moved to Bessarabia.”

But instead of Bessarabia, Father Milutin got transferred to the village of Smiljan in Lika. During his stay there, he never failed to mount his horse to go administer last rites to the dying, even when the winter nights glowed with wolves’ eyes. After a long ride, the priest would shake the snow from his mink coat and enter the sick man’s shack. He would come up to the bed, bend over the dying, and speak in a low voice: “Now you can open your heart and whisper to me what weighs you down because God hears best the whispered word.” And the rough men would open up their hearts and tell the stories of their lives in ways no one had ever heard before. The priest tried in vain to forget most of what he heard.

In his house buried in the snow, Milutin Tesla spent a lot of time reading. He read about railways, the Crimean War, and the new palace built of glass in London. For a local paper, the Smiljan priest wrote an article on cholera spreading from Dalmatia to Lika “like oil over a table.” He also wrote about the “countless impediments” that a champion of public education encountered in the most backward parts of the Karlovci Diocese. For the
Serbian Daily
, he reported on a “beautiful phenomenon” created by atmospheric light, which occurred right on St. Peter’s Day. Milutin Tesla described it as a waterfall of sparks that appeared both distant and yet so close he could touch it with his hand. The light left blue tracers behind as it vanished over a hill. At the same time, something rumbled loudly, as if a huge tower collapsed to the ground. The echo reverberated across the southern slopes of Velebit for a long time.
God’s little phenomenon
“made the stars look pale.” This occurrence gave common people a lot to talk about, while a more thoughtful observer (apparently Milutin Tesla himself) felt sorry that it did not last longer—this display of God’s nature ended in the blink of an eye.

The weather was sweltering just before it all happened. Afterward it rained, but the clouds dissipated in the evening:
The air was cold, the sky smiled, and the stars glowed brighter than ever; but all of a sudden, something flashed in the east and—as if three hundred torches were lit—the light stretched all the way to the west. The stars withdrew, and it appeared that all nature stood still…

It always frightened the children when their father went through a transformation. Milutin forbade his family to enter his room when he worked on his Sunday sermons. All of a sudden his angry, deep voice would resound from behind the locked door, followed by a soothing female voice, and then several incoherent shouts. Anyone listening would swear that there was more than one person in there. The sermon was theater. Djuka Tesla and her sons were scared as they listened to Milutin alter his voice and argue with himself inside the locked room. Even the girls did not dare open the door. They were afraid to find their father transformed into unknown shapes. Behind the ordinary door, which suddenly looked mysterious, the priest whispered in German, shouted in Serbian, hissed in Hungarian, and purred in Latin, while in the background someone droned in Old Church Slavonic.

What was going on in there? Was it another “beautiful phenomenon” that called for an explanation? Did this Saint Anthony from Smiljan actually converse with his temptations? Did he feel lonely? Did this secluded polyglot see himself as
the Parliament of the World?
Did he practice delivering his sermon as a play in which he was both the tragic and the comic hero, as well as the chorus?

CHAPTER 2

Mother

While Nikola and Dane listened, their eyes shone like fireflies. The head of a skinny chicken dangled from Mother’s lap as she posed riddles:

“What goes through the forest without a rustle, through the water without a splash?”

“A shadow!” said Dane, always quicker than Nikola.

“What hates water?” asked Mother.

“Cats and clocks!”

The folktales Nikola, the younger boy, liked the most were “Justice and Injustice,” “What the Devil Is Scheming While Pretending He Is Good,” and “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” In the last tale, the devil asked the apprentice if he has learned anything. “No, I’ve forgotten even what I used to know,” the apprentice replied. Nikola liked these stories because in them fools and younger brothers were really important. Djuka lulled him and his sister Marica to sleep by spinning yarns:

“As he traveled all over the world disguised as a beggar, Saint Sava came to the manor of a wealthy baron who possessed enormous riches…”

Nikola’s eyes almost closed. He hovered on the edge of sleep.

“Then Saint Sava made the sign of the cross with his staff and the baron’s manor turned into a lake…”

Was he dreaming?

“People say that every year on that day the water gurgles as a rooster crows from the bottom of the lake…”

Because her mother was blind, Djuka Mandić had to start managing her parents’ household at an early age. Except for the stories her mother told her, she did not have a childhood. She wove all the linen in the house and took care of the younger children. To make things worse, cholera began to spread itself over Lika like “oil over a table.” While her father was off administering last rites, the disease killed their next-door neighbors. The girl herself washed and dressed the bodies of five of them.

When she got married, Djuka had to shoulder the responsibilities of another household. Milutin Tesla, following the advice of some Greek philosophers, insisted that “wherever a priest takes up a hoe, the idea of progress is dead.”

Thus Djuka and the crossed-eyed servant Mane tilled the church land.

“Don’t aim for where you’re looking, but where you want to strike,” she told Mane as he split firewood.

Mother explained to Nikola that the drone bee mated with the queen high up in the sky, and that there would be plenty of bees if the queen could escape the swallows. “The enemies of bees are swallows and hedgehogs.”

Once Nikola fell and hit his forehead on a chair. Mother kissed his triangular head to make it better, caressed him, laughed, and quoted: “A strike liberates a spark from the flint, which would have otherwise despaired within it.” When his stomach ached, she put her hand on his navel and started to chant softly:

The pain melted away and the boy felt very safe.

During the day, Djuka always wore a head scarf. Every morning, she got up two hours before anyone else. She sat in front of the kitchen stove with its door open. Nikola woke up and furtively observed her as she combed her hair. The fire glowed through the door and cracks of the stove. He spied… Mother turned bronze from the glow. She became something else. He watched in secret.

His mother’s life was deep.

Her life was soundless, like a tree falling in the forest without anyone to hear it.

She turned to the forest on Bogdanić Hill: “Can you hear it?”

“What?” said Nikola.

“Can you hear the trees talking to each other on Bogdanić?”

“What about?”

“The birches sigh: How long till spring comes? When are we going to take off these icy shackles? The deep-voiced pines advise: Be patient. We’ll take off our icy armor in three months. The streams will gurgle and you birches will sprout new leaves.”

“What else do they say?” Nikola asked.

“The birches croon: The morning star will open the sun’s gate and let the god Jarilo ride through it. Thus he will speak to Mother Earth: O moist Earth, love me, be my only one, and I, the sun god, will cover you with emerald lakes and golden sandbars, with green grass and swift brooks, with birds, fruit, and flowers, red and blue. Oh! You will bear me many, many children. With their new leaves, the birches will greet the rays of the spring sun and the gurgle of waters.”

Nikola listened in awe and then laughed. “That can’t be true. You’re making things up.”

His mother told him stories about plants instead of fables. She knew the herbs and insisted that many of them contained a spirit. Elm, fir, and maple belonged to the fairies.

“Where do fairies come from?”

“They come from the
mrazovac
,” Mother replied. “That’s why young men would never step on this plant. I’ll teach you how to recognize it, so that you’ll never step on it.”

“Where do fairies live?”

“I’ve already told you what trees they dwell in. Yew is also a fairy tree. It grows only in unspoiled places,” Djuka answered.

Nikola continued with the game. “How long do they live?”

Mother shrugged. “They eat garlic seeds and live until life becomes too boring, and when this happens they quit eating and die a painless death.”

Nikola was proud that Mother was so knowledgeable, as if she herself used to be a fairy. He never understood why Father frowned upon the stories about a world full of radiant spirits in which plants were just like people. At that time, Nikola did not comprehend that those stories were not just about fairies and plants but also about gods older than God.

“When there’s no church around, you can pray under a fir or linden tree,” Mother pointed out to Dane and Nikola.

She created the world, and then along came Father and cataloged it in books. Father wrinkled his nose at Mother’s stories. He wondered how such myths could have survived in a family full of priests.

“Let it go,” Milutin murmured. “Let evil go, and embrace the good. Let illness and misery go. Turn to health.”

CHAPTER 3

The Snowball

On the second day of Serbian Orthodox Christmas, Nikola and his two older cousins Vinko and Nenad slipped out of their parents’ sight and went deep into the forest above Smiljan.

“The snow’s really beautiful!” Nikola laughed.

“Beautiful, whatever… It gets in my eyes,” said Vinko.

Nenad snapped at snowflakes like a young dog.

They looked down at their feet. After the climb, it was hard to tell which one was the most winded.

Covered with icicles, the boulders looked like monsters. A deep silence reigned among the pines. From time to time, the wind moaned through the treetops and a heavy white burden fell off the branches. It was as if the forest were breathing.

The boys plowed deeper into the snow, and their feet became soaked. They pushed their hands against their knees to help them climb up the slope. They scrambled on a big boulder in the middle of a ravine, on top of which the wind played with drifting snow dust.

“We shouldn’t go any farther if we want to get home before nightfall,” Nikola announced.

The boys clutched their sides and breathed heavily. On the rock in the middle of the ravine, the two very different cousins stood on either side of Nikola, each with an arm flung over his shoulders. Vinko was a quiet and squeamish boy with bags under his eyes. He disappeared once and his parents looked for him the whole day. Finally they found him sitting huddled in the church. In Nikola’s family, men usually chose a religious or a military career. It seemed as if Vinko, with his quiet demeanor and bags under his eyes, had already made his choice.

His brother, Nenad, was hardly officer or priest material. Once he hoisted a big rock above his head and slammed it down on a turtle with all his might. When the Teslas’ cat had kittens, he drowned them in a bucket. When Nikola created a windmill powered by junebugs, Nenad grabbed the junebugs and ate them.