Tesla (6 page)

Nikola wore the shoes that had been bought for Dane when he was about to start high school. His father’s raised hand disappeared in the cloud of steam on the platform.

“My Niko,” murmured the father to his son, who could not hear him. “You’ve just barely learned how to be a child, and now you’re becoming a young man. When you learn how to be a young man, you’ll become mature. Then you’ll understand that in this life we’re always novices.”

“Here we go,” Mojo sighed.

A child with meticulously cropped hair entered their compartment, nudged on by his parents. The newcomers raised the window to protect themselves from sparks and soot. Nikola’s shoulders drooped. He and Mojo were adults now. They were supposed to discuss serious topics, which made Nikola’s tongue stick to his palate from boredom. But he had to be a man. He remembered how soldiers from Lika returned home from the war in Dalmatia in 1866, so he asked Mojo if the Austrian emperor had won that campaign.

“Yes, he did,” Mojo replied, ever the straight-A student. “He won at Vis as well as at Custoza.”

“But then why is the emperor losing territory in Italy?”

The steam in the engine’s boiler powered the merciless thundering of the wheels:
Chunkity-chunk, chunkity-chunk, chunkity-chunk.

They were on their way to start high school in Karlovac. Nikola’s heart beat in time with the wheels. The feeling of expanding space intoxicated him. As the world grew wider, he could take deeper breaths. The train roared like a dragon, curled its tail, and sped into the wide, wide world. The rails did not seem to exist but somehow materialized right in front of the locomotive.

In the compartment, the precocious boy put his head on his mother’s lap and said excitedly, “Let me tell you what I dreamed about. We went for a walk and all of a sudden some dragons came out of the ground… What’s a badger?”

“An animal,” his father explained. “With teeth this big.”

“Bigger than a rooster?”

“A rooster is nothing!”

Nikola and Mojo were glued to the window as they tried to catch the lay of the land.

“Look at that little house.”

“The railway guard lives there,” Mojo explained.

The little house, a horse tied to the fence, and the chickens in the yard flashed by and were replaced by other scenes.

“It’s really foggy in these parts.”

“Look at the castle.”

People disembarked at stations.

“There are open seats in the compartments. We have to be considerate to one another. We simply have to,” mumbled a woman standing in the corridor.

Hanging pots of geraniums swayed in the breeze in front of station buildings. Railroad men hit the car wheels with long-handled hammers and listened to the clang. Uniformed dispatchers raised their signs to signal the train’s departure. The sound of their whistles pierced the mouse-gray afternoon. The train’s entering and exiting tunnels resembled a game of peek-a-boo.

The engine cooed like a monstrous dove. A trail of sparks zigzagged behind it in the twilight.

Nikola felt helpless as he stared into the future that was so obscure, it resembled nothingness.

“There are no more hills,” he said.

They saw the flatlands for the first time in their life. The houses were much richer than those they were used to in mountainous Lika.

“People seem to be wealthier where the soil looks like shit,” Mojo concluded.

CHAPTER 14

Metamorphosis

Nikola’s uncle Branković met him in Karlovac and took him to a two-story baroque building, number seventeen. In front of her husband, Nikola’s aunt Kaja made the boy recite that—in addition to the famous Trbojevićes of Medak, the Milojevićes of Mogorić, the Bogdanovićes of Vrebac, and the Došens of Počitelj—the Mandićes of Gračac were among the families that had given the most Orthodox priests in all of Lika.

Then she put a finger on the boy’s mouth and said, “Remember, illness comes from overeating.”

Whenever his good-natured uncle threw a chicken leg into Nikola’s plate, the aunt would scream: “Niki!” and her quick hand made the leg disappear. She apparently had come to the mystical conclusion that spiritual food could replace earthly fare. After dinner, Nikola pulled on the sleeve of the buxom cook, Mara.

“Will you spread some lard on a slice of bread for me?”

“I dare not cross the mistress,” Mara said, sulking.

Although poorly fed, the boy’s body was changing. While other children were out playing, he withdrew into the pantry and grew up unseen. As he became taller, he assumed a stooping posture. Uncle Branković had a habit of slapping him suddenly on the back and yelling, “Straighten up!”

That friendly gesture was supposed to be encouraging. The uncle liked to be asked questions and Nikola accommodated him.

“Why does Karlovac have two sirens and two anchors in its coat of arms if it’s landlocked?”

“Karlovac is a true river town.” Major Branković raised one eyebrow. “Not only does it straddle two rivers, the Kupa and the Korana, but in fact there are four of them altogether, if you count the Dobra and the nearby Mrežnica. Our wealth is based on barges that bring wood and grain from Posavina. Then we ship those products to the Adriatic ports from here.”

Branković cleared his throat and continued: “And we’ll keep doing that until they build the railroad between Zagreb and Rijeka.”

Yes, in Karlovac water played an important role. Nikola stared through his aunt’s window at the rain, which had been coming down for a week.

“It’ll probably stop,” he guessed.

“There’s not a single hole left to fill,” the aunt responded.

After the water withdrew, rats invaded the cellar.

Mara the cook ran into the room. “They ate everything, even the garlands of dried hot peppers.”

The little wolf from Lika called the flatlands “ratlands.” He learned how to kill hostile rodents with a sling. With sad eyes, the rat hunter watched the endless rain and pined for home. Back in Lika it was spring, so lamb and coarsely cut potatoes were now served in place of wintry smoked mutton with cabbage and mush. He also missed the Dutch oven buried in the ashes. He missed the Lika round cheese and bread. He missed the stubborn wind and the traditional red Lika hats that looked like poppies in the field.

He also missed his sisters, Marica, Milka, and Angelina.

“Aren’t you doing well in Karlovac?” they asked him in their letters.

“I’m doing fine,” Nikola answered.

He studied languages in Karlovac and discussed history with Uncle Branković.

“Please, take a look.” The uncle handed Nikola books on Benvenuto Cellini, Lorenzo il Magnifico, various princes, popes, condottieri, the Sistine Chapel, and the imperfect leg of Michelangelo’s
David.
The uncle’s subtle suggestions did not bear fruit. After the three years of fasting at his uncle’s home, Nikola associated art with hunger for the rest of his life.

In Vienna, a long time ago, the major made friends with the antique shop owner Jehuda Altarac. Branković’s small art collection was the product of their long years of haggling. The major showed Nikola the Czech crystal and German brooches with images of human eyes. The paintings from his collection were metaphorical representations of the transience of life—the so-called vanities. They showed a dual “person,” the left side of whose face displayed a youthful peachy smile, while a skull grinned on the right. These paintings only confirmed Nikola’s belief that art represented starvation in disguise.

“She’s a snake.” That was what his old friend Mojo Medić called Nikola’s pale-eyed aunt.

The aunt fired the buxom Mara without giving her a letter of recommendation and replaced her with the much older Ružica.

“When you bake a fish, it’s done when the eye pops,” the aunt instructed her.

Once she slapped that elderly cook right in front of Nikola.

“Will you spread some lard on a slice of bread for me,” Nikola asked Ružica.

“I dare not cross the mistress,” Ružica responded through her nose.

Kaja Branković used such words as
naturally
and
obviously
, but under her timid mask, there was a person who would not meet anyone halfway. And yet, although her frequent pauses in conversation put a lot of distance between her and her nephew, she still took care of him. Kaja Branković’s salon in Karlovac resembled a white piano. It was frequented by the local pharmacist with his touchingly stupid wife. Jakob šašel, a globetrotter, also came. The Orthodox priest Anastasijević would sometimes drop by with his two good-looking daughters. In her nasal voice, the maid would invite them to the table. At dinner, Nikola’s uncle bored his guests with his stories about how a horse was shot from under him at the Battle of Solferino and how he retired just in time so that he did not have “to embarrass himself in the war against the Prussians.” A gas chandelier hissed above the table. The silverware clinked in the guests’ hands. The pharmacist’s wife whispered to šašel that the Solferino hero now lived in fear of his wife.

They would then recline into chairs whose backs were covered in needlepoint. Mrs. Anastasijević’s hands turned the keyboard into turbulent waves.

When a German opera company visited Karlovac, they all went to see
The Magic Flute.
The uncle talked the aunt into taking Nikola as well. In the opera, Sarastro whittled a magic flute during a stormy night while lightning illuminated him. Other characters asked Papageno if he was searching for wisdom.

“No!” Papageno responded. “Food, drink, and a good night’s sleep will do.”

Food and drink would also have done for the starving Nikola—if he could only get enough of them. His photographs from that time show him as an awkward youth with the same hairstyle that would make Tarzan famous later on. His aunt kept an eye on him all the time.

“Why are you failing in your drawing class?” she asked him.

“Because I don’t like it.”

“Who do you hang around with?”

Nikola admitted that boys at high school were as raucous as crows. An exclamation point was to be put after every statement they uttered: “How can I talk with that crocodile!” “Hey, tough guy!” “You’re insane!” They could not wait to graduate, throw their hats in the air, and turn their brains off.

Whom could he hang around with?

After some hesitation, he answered, “With Nikola Prica and Mojo Medić.”

“I see. The fat one!” She remembered Mojo.

Nikola Tesla was able to talk about everything with Prica and Mojo. That is, almost everything. Whenever he came across some philosophical topic, their faces would fall.

“What kind of poppycock is this?” they complained.

Everything Nikola considered important was like a tree that falls in the forest, without anyone to hear it. And yet his chest swelled as he sensed his own power. He felt like an expanding balloon. Sometimes he felt weightless, and with each breath he heedlessly embraced the world. There was a wide gap between his sense of inner exhilaration and the outer wave of crippling skepticism. Like a salmon, Nikola felt he was swimming against a current of disapproval. Surrounded by derision, his only consolation was in the thought:
They will forget all of their current “ideas.” I won’t forget mine.

The well-read boy remembered Ovid’s words: “There is a god within us. It is when he stirs us that our bosom warms; it is his impulse that sows the seeds of inspiration.”

He realized that in this world people allow us to be something but not to become something—because that unsettles them.

And yet, Nikola was changing…

Outwardly, it was quite obvious. He had come to Karlovac a gloomy provincial boy but was now turning into a dandy. He used to slouch but now his back was straight, thanks to the sudden correctional slaps from his uncle. In addition to German, he could also speak a little English and French. The voice with which he practiced conjugating irregular French verbs became manly. But more important was the change in his soul. At one point he felt that life was opening up for him. Surprised by these changes, he was listening to the voices in his own breathing just as Dane had done before him. He felt giddy. The sky made him tingle. The world expanded around him and mirrored his soul.

“If you stare into the looking glass for too long, you’ll see the devil,” scolded Kaja Branković.

Every day he carefully examined his face in the mirror. Something was spreading in his soul like oil over a table. Someone unknown was surfacing out of the other side of the mirror. That one was slowly—
pianissimo
—turning into something horrible. When that emerging phantom became more frightening than the dead brother, Nikola stepped back and gave a small scream.

CHAPTER 15