Tesla (60 page)

Pain, Time, and the Importance of All Things Cease to Be

This world is… what?

What is the purpose of existence?

Milutin Tesla

When Tesla returned to the New Yorker Hotel from his midnight walk, Dane opened the door for him. “Welcome, brother!” he said.

A young woman curtsied in front of him. White thunderbolts streamed up from her temples. She stood before him, with stitches underneath her chin, straight and insane looking.

He addressed her with tenderness: “Katharine!”

Deaf from her death, Katharine only smiled.

In the newly created light, everything looked ecstatically clear. The world appeared starched and plated with silver. In the mirror, Tesla could see each and every wrinkle on his brow.

Fritz Lowenstein, Koloman Czitó, George Scherff—all his assistants as well as his two secretaries—came out grinning, accompanied by vaudeville music, lifting their knees high.

An emphatic, almost frightening cheerfulness reigned among those present. The small room turned into a fiery opera stage.

From the left and the right, Szigety with a lipstick blotch on his face and Stanford White with a hole in his forehead came to the center of the stage and bowed.

“Look at her! Look at her!” the invisible shouted.

With her breasts bared, holding snakes in her hands, Tara Tiernstein looked like a Cretan goddess.

“Whom do you love?” she asked him in a husky whisper.

The sting of lightning shivered. Just like in King David’s psalms, the breath from God’s nostrils laid bare the foundation of the world.

The light-footed John Muir and the fairy-eyed Vivekananda made such deep bows that they swept the floor with their hair.

Tesla smelled the fresh electrical air. The animated parquet started to sparkle.

“What’s that?” he asked, upset.

“The end of the show,” the invisible responded.

“Everyone loves to be forgiven for something,” Szigety said, starting to sob.

But why?

A flashbulb went off. In its light, Tesla appeared as white as the ghost of the Swedish Queen Astrid.

With his canine mouth and dead hair, Edison raised his hand toward the uncatchable star and recited, “Pain ceases to be…”

A chatter of approval came from the invisible in the background.

Smiling Tannhäuser, Mojo Medić, and Kosta Kulišić materialized before Nikola. They bowed and pointed at each other.

As if in a circus ring, Stevan Prostran rode once around on the back of his hunchbacked father.

Marquis Marconi and his father, Gepetto, smiled in triumph.

The Four Hundred—who could all fit into Lady Astor’s salon—flashed their tooth enamel and jewelry. All of those who used to go sailing and spent summers in the Newport castles were there, from Nikki Vanderbilt to John Jacob Astor IV with seaweed in his hair.

The orchestra of the blind started to play the tunes of John Philip Sousa with which the twentieth century commenced. Imperceptibly, their playing turned into a musical avalanche. That was an infernal cancan announcing death. Girls screamed and fell into splits. Scrappy clarinets and pouting trumpets reared up. And—quite inexplicably—an opera choir started to sing: “Celestial spirit, descend upon us, give us glory.”

Nikola’s skeletal face lit up. He sang with the chorus from
Aida
, like he once had sung with the thunder.

Robert Underwood Johnson and Westinghouse held hands. Knightly visors gleamed above their foreheads.

“Time ceases to be!” they shouted in unison.

“Make room for the boiling nose of John Pierpont Morgan!”

“Don’t look at the nose!” wailed Tesla.

The nose looked like fireworks: dandelions made of hissing sparks, red and white stars, a propagation of bangs and smoke.

“It thunders. It will explode,” a joyful voice from the studio of the Mercury Theatre was heard. “It turns into flame!”

“Encore! Encore!” the specters shouted.

The choir enthusiastically sang the songs of the ghosts that Mr. Jaubert, the municipal judge in Carcassonne, had collected.

Father Milutin had no legs. His black frock undulated like an octopus. In his moving bass voice he announced, “The importance of All Things ceases to be.”

That was almost the end.

Mother’s eyes were the center of the whirlpool. “My Niko,” she whispered. “One needs to feed the birds for the souls of the dead.”

Among the ghosts and pigeons, Tesla looked more fatigued, more exhausted than anyone else. The reader has been worried about him for a long time.

“Encore! Encore!” the invisible audience shouted.

“Take your mask off!”

“Everyone, take your masks off.”

“What mask?” He was horrified.

“What do you mean—what mask?”

Like wine enveloping the palate, Szigety’s merciful voice nested in his ear: “Everyone loves to be forgiven for something.”

The midnight room was Nikola’s Crystal, his universe, his cabaret with spirits. Everything became magical and frightfully profound. It also hurt terribly.

He was submerged into the unforgiving power of nature, he was married to a wonder as enormous as death.

That was when Dane touched his shoulder.

A lethargic smile made the brother’s face much more beautiful. His hands were blue. His hair was full of icy powder. Mysterious with the mystery of youth, he eagerly asked:

“Do you know the story of the Siamese twins, brother? Their names were Chang and Eng,” he explained confidentially. “Chang died first. Eng dragged along his conjoined brother’s dead body. The brother’s dead blood mixed with his live blood. The heart pumped it into both bodies. Eng dragged along the dead Chang and screamed as he went through the distorted world.

“Do you know the story of the Siamese twins, brother?”

Vladimir Pistalo
was born in Sarajevo in 1960. He studied law in Belgrade and Sarajevo and received a PhD in American history from the University of New Hampshire. He is currently a professor of liberal arts at Becker College in Massachusetts where he teaches US and world history. Pistalo’s first story came out in a literary magazine when he was eighteen, and his first book was published when he was twenty-one. Since that time, he has published eleven books of fiction, ranging from poetic prose to novels, and his stories have been included in major anthologies of Serbian and Bosnian prose. His novel
Millennium in Belgrade
has been translated into four languages and was a finalist for the Prix Femina, a prize for the best translated novel in France.
Tesla: A Portrait with Masks
won the NIN Literary Award, the most prestigious literary award in Serbia, for best novel in 2008, and has already appeared in ten languages. This is his first book to be translated into English.

Funding the translation and publication of exceptional literary works

The Scattered Papers of Penelope
by Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke, edited and translated from the Greek by Karen Van Dyck

The Last Brother
by Nathacha Appanah, translated from the French by Geoffrey Strachan

The Accordionist’s Son
by Bernardo Atxaga, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa

The Lovers of Algeria
by Anouar Benmalek, translated from the French by Joanna Kilmartin

The Star of Algiers
by Aziz Chouaki, translated from the French by Ros Schwartz and Lulu Norman

Before I Burn
by Gaute Heivoll, translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett

Child Wonder
by Roy Jacobsen, translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett with Don Shaw

A House at the Edge of Tears
by Vénus Khoury-Ghata, translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker

Nettles
by Vénus Khoury-Ghata, translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker

She Says
by Vénus Khoury-Ghata, translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker

A Wake for the Living
by Radmila Lazic, translated from the Serbian by Charles Simic

June Fourth Elegies
by Liu Xiaobo, translated from the Chinese by Jeffrey Yang

No Shelter
by Pura López-Colomé, translated from the Spanish by Forrest Gander

The Life of an Unknown Man
by Andreï Makine, translated from the French by Geoffrey Strachan

New European Poets
, edited by Wayne Miller and Kevin Prufer

Look There
by Agi Mishol, translated from the Hebrew by Lisa Katz

Karate Chop
by Dorthe Nors, translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken

I Curse the River of Time
by Per Petterson, translated from the Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund with Per Petterson

Out Stealing Horses
by Per Petterson, translated from the Norwegian by Anne Born

To Siberia
by Per Petterson, translated from the Norwegian by Anne Born

In Times of Fading Light
by Eugen Ruge, translated from the German by Anthea Bell

Shyness and Dignity
by Dag Solstad, translated from the Norwegian by Sverre Lyngstad

Meanwhile Take My Hand
by Kirmen Uribe, translated from the Basque by Elizabeth Macklin

Without an Alphabet, Without a Face
by Saadi Youssef, translated from the Arabic by Khaled Mattawa

Book design by Rachel Holscher. Composition by BookMobile Design & Digital Publisher Services, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Manufactured by Edwards Brothers Malloy on acid-free paper.