Tesla (25 page)

“How?” Tesla asked.

“We still don’t know,” the bald doctor sighed.

“Cocaine overdose,” the beautiful monster said without moving.

They tactfully agreed that the body be transferred from the brothel on Twenty-Ninth Street to a hospital, and that the official report mention Szigety’s apartment as the location of his death.

They also suspected murder.

Tesla was nervous waiting for the results.

“A burst aneurysm,” the doctor told him after the autopsy. “Nothing could have been done. It is better that he didn’t know about it.”

“Did he suspect something was wrong?” Tesla asked as he remembered his friend’s moods.

“No,” the doctor said. Then he changed his mind. “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of…”

In Budapest, Szigety forced Tesla to live, but here Tesla hadn’t known how to return the favor. He went to the dead man’s apartment to pack his belongings and ship them to his family. He hissed like a snake and puffed up his cheeks. Szigety’s shoes were on the pillow, a knife and a piece of smoked sausage were on a pair of ironed underwear. Tesla whistled—he had never seen such a mess. A lithograph of a ruddy-faced Franciscan monk offering a burning heart to the Virgin hung above the bed. Next to the bed were a German translation of a book by Dostoyevsky and a tattered volume of Saint Augustine’s
Confessions.

In this room, Antal awoke bound in sweaty bedsheets. Here he suffered from hangovers and tried to kick a moth. Here he felt the coldness of coins scattered under his bare feet. Here he rolled his eyes, which were the color of the Plitvice Lakes, and wondered how to pay his bills. Every morning, this Pan’s ecstasy turned into Pan’s panic.

“Everyone likes to be forgiven for something,” he used to say.

Fame accelerated Tesla’s life to an awful pace, and an invisible hand snatched away those he loved. Obadiah Brown, Paddy, Prostran, Szigety were taken by the wind. People receded into the distance, their faces turning into masks. Due to the speed, their forms became elongated and merged into one another. Success smelled like a tempest.

He sat under the helmet of tightly combed hair, as pale as a lotus flower, his fingers locked together. What used to be a source of warmth changed into an icy pit. He felt powerless as he stared into the foggy future, which resembled nothingness.

“Destiny,” he whispered, horrified.

His larynx hurt.

The octopus of sentimentality wrapped him in its wet embrace and started to throttle him with its many tentacles. He gasped and dried his eyes with the first thing at hand—a pair of clean socks.

“Antal, Antal,” he whispered.

His nose narrowed, and he asked in full honesty, “Am I crying for the dead or for myself?”

Szigety’s blue eyes and the sweetness of his smile always cheered Tesla up. They shared fits of senseless laughter so often, swaying like poplars in the wind.

“You see, I can make you laugh about anything, anytime,” Szigety bragged, catching his breath.

And that same lewd Antal wanted to be a priest. He wanted to address the world with words of love, like Saint Francis of Assisi:

CHAPTER 51

After Never

Around us, everything spins,

everything moves—everywhere is energy.

Nikola Tesla, May 1891

The great day came.

Wearing shoes with thick cork soles, his six-foot-six frame looked eerily elongated onstage. The auditorium was enlivened by the faces of young and old electrical engineers. Both friends and enemies were there.

“Of all the forms of natural, omnipresent, and measureless energy, which constantly changes, moves, and brings the universe to life like a soul,” Tesla lectured, fingers dancing, “perhaps the most fascinating are magnetism and electricity.”

At that point, he raised his voice: “The explanation of these fascinating dual phenomena lies in the infinitesimal world, in its molecules and atoms which spin in their orbits, much like celestial bodies.”

The listeners imagined minuscule galaxies revolving in their thighs, eyes, hearts.

“There’s no doubt that we can directly make use of this energy and, from limitless resources, create light, which”—he paused as his gaze moved from one face to another—“can be transmitted wirelessly.”

The great scientific presentation was intended to counter Edison’s circus shows. With a wave of his hand, Tesla signaled his assistant, Gano Dunn.

There was a
click
, just like the one heard in the execution chamber.

The auditorium darkened.

The scientist Tesla vanished.

A lonely actor appeared within a shaft of white.

In the sharp light, his white tuxedo looked starched. The actor seemed sad and lonely. Every wrinkle on his face was visible.

On the desk in front of the actor there were several apparatuses, which, for the majority of the spectators, were mere “somethings” because they did not know their purpose. Next to the polyphase induction motor was a vertical wheel, a silver ball, and a few other more or less scary-looking devices.

The blue darkness began to hum. Two arcs of light leapt and crackled above the engine. The coil discharged a web of brilliant threads. The gorgon’s hair became entangled around the ball. Electricity buzzed and popped. Behind Tesla, a Faraday cage swallowed the flying sparks.

The audience watched with a mixture of religious humility and circus-like amazement.

Gano Dunn was as grave as a matador. At Tesla’s signal, he raised the frequency. The bright whip cracked between God’s finger and Adam’s. The lightning bolts grew longer. With his small mustache and his appallingly slick hair, Tesla straightened his back like a bullfighter before the kill. Without warning, he stretched his hand toward the machine. At that moment, the electrical cyclone puffed up his body. The lightbulb he held blinked three times and lit. Cries came from the audience:

“Look, Amelia! He’s on fire!”

“Electricity is running through his body.”

With his hair standing on end, the actor walked among the audience for fifteen minutes and turned lightbulbs and vacuum tubes on with a touch. He demonstrated that any lamp within the electrical field in the auditorium would work without being plugged in.

Then he returned to the stage.

The man with horns of blue light spoke from the podium like a singer hitting a high note.

“Even though a single electrical shock can be fatal, it is a paradox that the exposure to amplified voltage can be perfectly safe.” He had allowed a much stronger voltage to run through his body than the one that killed Kemmler.

The applause boomed like thunder. In the loud clapping, he hovered above the stage again. When he alighted, the world was changed.

After the performance, gasping reporters wanted to know how much voltage his body endured.

“You really weren’t in any danger?”

“When was it that you first dared to touch an exposed wire?”

“Were you
that
sure about your calculations? Did you try it out on an animal?”

“Only on myself,” responded Tesla. “I tried it only on myself.”

CHAPTER 52

The London Miracle

Paris [smudge—smudge] 1892

My dear King of the Waltz,

I apologize for not responding sooner. So many things have happened. Fame hit me in the face like heat from a smelter. After the success I had with my New York lecture, I received invitations to speak in London and Paris. And so:

I packed quickly. Hiergesell, my glass blower, made various types of tubes for me.

The best part of any journey is its end.

London was so gray that everything looked as if it were cut from the same cloth. The magic fog was suffocating precious lights. Even the fabric of people’s clothing looked like solid fog. Golden floods swallowed the Parliament building in Turner’s paintings. I spent a lot of time staring at William Morris’s wallpaper and eating underdone mutton.

My friend Westinghouse warned me that the English were full of blind prejudices, which their sense of humor softened on the outside and hardened on the inside. (The way he warned me brought anxiety to the traveler’s heart. He used words such as
coldness, unbearable conceit
, and even
abhorring arrogance.
) My experiences have been different. Entirely different. In February, I delivered a lecture to the London Royal Society. You know that a thousand volts are fatal. At the Royal Society, I allowed two hundred thousand volts to pass through my body and didn’t even feel a thing. A spark stung me only at the very beginning, and even that can be avoided. Such current doesn’t kill. Such current, my dear Mojo, oscillates a few million times per second. Our human nerves aren’t sensitive enough to feel it…

On the stage, I lit lamps with a touch and extinguished them with a wave. In my lecture, I expressed a conviction that—just like the lamps—motors can be operated from long distances, with no direct connection to an energy source.

My dear Mojo, I tried not to bother you with my complaints when I used to sleep in homeless shelters where the poor shred pillowcases to pieces with their sharp stubble. Now I’m trying to spare you from my bragging. However, this is such a success.

A great success.

A world success.

High society attended my London lecture—Sir William Crookes, Lord Kelvin, Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Preece. According to the press, I kept them enchanted for two full hours.

I’m a supporter of the honorable tradition of English eccentricity. I have never felt so much among my own ilk as in London. Major newspapers and especially illustrated journals published pictures from my lecture. They usually show me amid a maelstrom of electrical sparks. One caption reads: “Mr. Tesla is playing with lightning and thunderbolts.”

Lord Rayleigh impressed me with his sideburns. He told me that I have a special gift for invention, and that I should focus on one great thing. Sir William Preece looked strange to me. He reminded me of Murko the tailor from Graz. Namely, I wasn’t sure whether a fly had flown up his nose, or whether he was trying to smile charmingly. After we talked, I started to think about transferring voices and images wirelessly. That’s telepathy, Mojo—with a little mechanical help.

William Crookes wanted to use electricity to eliminate the nagging drizzle that harasses the island.

I also spent some time with Lord Kelvin, the sage with a high brow and drooping eyelids, who believes that the phenomena pertaining to electricity and life are identical.

Eventually, Professor Dewar sat me down in Faraday’s personal armchair, poured me some whiskey from Faraday’s personal bottle, and asked me to give one more lecture. I agreed, sensing the friendliness of the old armchair. The culmination of my visit to England was my acceptance into the London Academy of Sciences.

After many exciting adventures on the island, I crossed the windy channel. For a few weeks now, I’ve been resting at the Hotel de la Paix in Paris. I’ve met Prince Albert of Belgium and sold the rights to my patents to the Germans. So many things are going on that my pen is too slow to catch up with them. My intention is to go to Lika after Paris. Consider this letter an introduction to a lengthy conversation.

Cordially yours

(no signature)

P.S.—My colleague d’Arsonval is taking me around Paris and is trying to corrupt me.

CHAPTER 53