Tesla (40 page)

“Too dangerous!” the inventor flinched in horror and quickly pushed out of his mind the words he had once written in his
Tract on Noses.

The Maharaja of Kapurthala with his smoky mustache, the English aristocrats with their narrow faces—how could they match the glory of John Pierpont Morgan?! What about that old woman who—in her sleepless bed—caressed the plaster hand of her dead Albert? Could the Russian tsar’s trimmed beard equal the power of Morgan? Who cared about the sagging cheeks of the Austrian emperor compared to the volcanic, hallucinatory nose of John Pierpont Morgan?

My dear colleagues, spirited colleagues—follow your noses…

He struggled to extinguish those words.

Medical science referred to Morgan’s condition as rhinophyma. His nose was stolen from the decaying portrait of Dorian Gray. Raspberry-like, yellow, blue, red, blooming, disfigured with moles. That nose was the focal point of any room it entered. It required courage to carry such a nose through the world. It required courage to look at it and pretend it was nothing.

“Good day!” the voice affected Tesla like novocaine.

During their first meeting, Morgan left a strange impression on Tesla: “It was as if someone pulled a sack over my head!” he later said.

Despite everything, he took a peek into the abyss and looked at the nose as if it was nothing.

They sat by a fireplace that was large enough to house an entire immigrant family. A Byzantine breviary made of carved ivory lay on the table. The wall was covered with paintings in which men were brown and women were white. A dark study of
Susanna and the Elders
, a John the Baptist who held his own haloed head in the crook of his arm, and a Flemish vanity caught Tesla’s eye. A roasted pig came to mind—as it always did in an art gallery.

Morgan was like a Poseidon who never laughed—but all those around him wore eternal smiles on their faces.

Cartoonists represented him as an octopus with each tentacle squeezing an industrial branch. Responding to the efforts of reformers who wanted to regulate monopolies, he claimed that one could not unscramble scrambled eggs. In addition to steel, he controlled the new electronic industry, shipbuilding, mines, railroads, insurance, and banking.

The contrast between the lily-like whiteness of his skin and his collar, the blackness of his hair and his suit, and that alarming redness was frightening. His nose glowed like Mount Etna. It thundered.

Is the whole room going to erupt?
His visitor was frightened.

And—just imagine—that gloomy gorilla with his phantasmagorical nose once wanted to abandon everything for love…

A host of young bankers with extraordinary physical beauty—whom they called “Morgan’s Cherubs”—worked for him. Many of those greedy idealists died from overwork.

Morgan’s bride was so feeble that he had to support her during the wedding ceremony…

That gigantic antiquary had a collection of ancient coins, jewels, tapestries, engravings, paintings, books, original manuscripts, statues. Mark Twain called Morgan’s treasure trove a collection of the permanent in the transitory. Tesla, however, thought that its monetary value was its sole organizing principle.

“People save up their whole lives,” he pondered as he observed a painting by Sebastiano del Piombo. “But they can’t save what’s most important—life itself.”

He took her to Algiers for her health. Then she died. He went back and took over his father’s bank.

The atmosphere in the room was oppressive, as if the Angel of Death kept a continual vigil by the fireplace.

Morgan had read Tesla’s article “The Problem of Increasing Human Energy” in the
Century.
He praised the piece and then said with his habitual directness, “Describe your system.”

Tesla screamed inside:
Don’t look at the nose.

“My device enables the transfer of sound and images to any distance,” the inventor responded softly. “Without wires. With complete privacy.”

“What about Marconi’s system?”

“He uses instruments others have designed, but they’re set at the wrong frequencies,” Tesla explained in a pleasant voice. “The smallest atmospheric change interferes with his transmissions.”

Don’t look into the abyss
, he cried in desperation.

A spark of madness flashed in Morgan’s eyes. His spy network was better than those in most countries. Yes, this man was controversial and they attacked him in the newspapers.

And yet…

Without uttering a word, Morgan waved to Tesla to continue.

“You should be the first to support this enterprise that will greatly benefit mankind.”

The bony fingers of anxiety clutched Tesla’s throat. Once again he felt that the Angel of Death was in the room.

With an eloquence that seemed to flow independently from him, Tesla explained that, in addition to the wireless transmission of messages, his system made possible the production and manipulation of hundreds of thousands of horsepower, which enabled the instruments to work at any point on earth regardless of the distance from the transmitter.

“Go on,” Morgan said in his narcotic bass.

Tesla intuitively tried to lick Morgan’s soul, but found only a void. The Buddhists were right as far as Morgan was concerned.

Tesla felt as if he were asleep. He bit his lip but did not feel it. Morgan’s deep, drawling voice numbed his consciousness. The spark of insanity burned in the gorilla’s tiny eyes! He and Morgan began negotiations in the spacious hall. The space narrowed—one wall was at the back of Tesla’s head while another was in front of his nose. Terror enveloped him whenever he fell silent.

“The one in possession of these patents,” he pointed out to Morgan in a voice not his own, “will be in a much stronger position legally than those who own the rights to my energy transfer system and alternating current motors.”

The taciturn financier blew out smoke. “How much time do you need?” he asked.

“Eight months.”

Silence deepened an octave.

Morgan said, finally, “Will you please send the financial estimate to my office.”

The mosaic goddess kissed Tesla’s feet as he left.

CHAPTER 81

The Big Nameless

Stanford White was chained to his drafting table. In several weeks, he completed the blueprints for the International Telegraph Center with its central tower from which the underground energy would be pumped all over the world.

“In terms of structure, it’s the same as the Brooklyn Bridge,” he explained. “The main difference is that it’s a tower.”

The thundering barn in Colorado was a toy compared to the tower: It would be built in the middle of a park; it would have the power of two Niagaras; Tesla would use it to send his stormy messages into the chaos of the stars. White penciled the tower in an exemplary futuristic town, with homes, shops, and public buildings that could accommodate two and a half thousand people.

“Airships and dirigibles will fly above the streets.” Tesla rejoiced like a child.

They bought the land on Long Island in Shoreham, Suffolk County, some sixty miles from Manhattan. The construction of the roof was offered to the American Bridge Company, while McKim, Mead, and White was contracted to build the rest. The project was supposed to give an answer to…

“To everything.” Tesla rejoiced.

The plot was cleared by July.

“The Wardenclyffe Project will be the greatest enterprise of its kind in the world!”

The local paper
Port Jefferson Echo
animatedly explained that the building of the tower was a visible sign of the clash between Tesla and Marconi.

And yet!

In the so-called real world, the financier E. H. Harriman secretly bought half of Morgan’s Northern Pacific Company.

Morgan thundered—and the whole world turned a summersault.

“Buy it back at any price!”

Like elevators, shares started to rush up and down.

On May 9, Northern Pacific shares jumped from a hundred and fifty to one thousand dollars. Other shares sank. In the first year of the century in which the individual heart was becoming at once more just and more gentle and music was becoming sweeter, many investors lost everything they had.

The war between the corporations cast a gigantic shadow not only on the stock market but on Tesla’s enterprise as well.

“Come quickly!” the redheaded White yelled into the phone.

They had known each other for almost two decades by now.

Both of them believed that they were beyond human laws and norms.

“At the Waldorf,” Tesla hissed.

“No. In my office.”

The office was in the building White designed. Tesla listened to the neurotic White sigh as he put the papers on his desk in order. He reminded Tesla of a male version of Rossetti’s
Beata Beatrix.
The room was large and empty; the drafting tables with green lamps on them faced the windows. Above them was Leonardo’s
Uomo Vitruviano.
One mask from Oceania also grinned from the wall. How did it get here? Whenever the sun shone through, the surrounding buildings responded with their own internal light. White’s hair flared at each “strike” of the sun. He still complained that old hags in love with their priests would be the end of him. Since Wilde had published his famous book, some people called White Dorian Gray. He looked incredibly well for his age.

When they asked him if the person who drank as much as he did was an alcoholic, he answered, “Of course!”

“It doesn’t apply to you. You’re something else,” Tesla appeased him in his Sunday best voice.

And so…

White gazed into the distance with his snotty eyes.

“This is my colleague McKim,” he somehow found the strength to say.

McKim had a likable bold rosy head and thin, animated eyebrows. He liked to play tennis and to fish, and fishermen do not talk much. He spoke so little that his own voice surprised him. His frowning eyebrows made Tesla confront the numbers for the first time.

Before he signed the papers, Morgan wanted to get Tesla’s other patents as collateral. He concluded the negotiations having obtained control of two new industries—wireless transfer and Tesla’s iridescent light.

“You have both your arms and legs bound by that contract,” McKim explained.

In return, Tesla had not only his key patents and a system better than Marconi’s but the backing of the greatest financial power in America as well.

Here McKim raised his voice in caution. “Your plans were based on the assumption that Morgan will quickly hand you the money, and that the market will be stable!”

“I see,” Tesla admitted. “Morgan is slow to pay. And it’s impossible to buy anything on credit these days.”

“The crisis cut your one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in half,” McKim explained rudely. “You know what that means.”

Just like Jacob with his angel, Tesla wrestled with his own megalomania.

Factories and stores vanished in a blink of an eye.

There remained the question whether to build one or more towers.

“Wait a minute.” Stanford White grew serious. “Even the building of a tower—only one tower—will be much more expensive than we thought.”

“Let the airships and dirigibles fend for themselves!” McKim thundered.

CHAPTER 82

The Belt

At six o’clock on a rainy Tuesday afternoon, in the first year of the new century, a pair of amber eyes, a hundred golden freckles, and a curl of blond hair surfaced in front of Tesla.

“I’m Stevan Prostran,” the boy introduced himself.

To Tesla, he looked like Huckleberry Finn. He constantly squinted as if he were looking at the sun. His hat had two holes for ears because a horse used to wear it.

“Stevan’s son,” he added.

“He’s been waiting for the last three hours,” the receptionist at the Astoria’s desk said.

Tesla intuitively licked the boy’s soul. The soul was brazen, unreal yet present. It touched Tesla with a thousand tiny paws. It flashed and then grew dark, so that only a small space remained. For that boy anything was possible, yet something gnawed at him inside… It was fear. Tesla backed off.