Tesla (7 page)

The King of the Waltz

Mojo Medić and Nikola Tesla went for a stroll along the fortress in the center of Karlovac. Above the roofs, smoke rushed toward the sky. The friends stayed close to the buildings to avoid the ice.

“We shouldn’t be out when it’s so slick,” Tesla said rationally.

Instead of answering him, Mojo grabbed his arm and looked into his eyes.

“Outside of school, I only see you at church,” he said hoarsely. “What’s going on with you?”

Nikola assumed a half-inspired and half-anguished expression. He had been in love many times—with his mother’s hair, with his father’s library, with his brother’s fame, with his nocturnal flights, with the sense of the world expanding. Now, he was in love again, but not with one of the dark-eyed Karlovac beauties. In each of them this great hero found a fault—so said the folk song. But Nikola’s love of electricity was unlike any other youthful love.

The young Tesla remembered that Saint Augustine said, “Where is it? Where is the heart of the mystery?” As far as Tesla was concerned, the heart of the mystery revealed itself in the shape of a silent ball that danced in Mr. Martin Sekulić’s school laboratory.

The experimental ball that Sekulić invented was covered with layers of tin foil. Once connected to the static generator, it turned into a swift, soundless spinning top, which beckoned to Nikola like light that lures a moth until he responded, “Here I am!” He wanted to worship the power that the ball made visible. If that pedagogical toy was no more than a tool of the experiment, then Nikola wanted to be an experimenter. If that was called science, Nikola wanted to be a scientist. He wanted to partake in that indescribable excitement. As the date of his graduation neared, he became more and more certain that he wanted to jump on, fly, and grow with
that.
Without hesitation, he confided in his friend.

“An inventor?” Mojo raised his eyebrows.

“Yes!” Nikola affirmed. “He who removes the blindfold from the eyes of the world.”

“And how do you plan to remove it?” his friend mocked.

“Imagine, for example, if we made a ring around the equator that would freely hover in place, held by inertia and the resistance of air. Using that circular road around the earth, people could travel thousands of miles a day.”

“And who would pay for that?” Mojo Medić grunted. “Come on, wake up, Nikola.”

Nikola had never been more awake in his life. During that pivotal year, he became Sekulić’s assistant.

“Nikola is a quick-minded creature. God’s greyhound,” Sekulić praised him in front of everyone.

For the first time, the word
brilliant
was used to describe him and not his late brother, Dane. His knowledge was not of the dry, academic kind. In fact, it was no knowledge at all. At night, in place of the faraway cities he envisioned as a boy, Sekulić’s ball spun in front of his eyes. Nikola’s thoughts danced with it.

After graduation, he refused to study theology.

“That’s what my father wants, not me.”

Mojo grabbed him by his arm.

“Be careful!”

On the ice, people were falling as though they were in a slapstick comedy. The two friends skated more than walked along Karlovac’s cobbled streets. In front of Miller’s tavern, Pavo Petrović, a red-nosed policeman, slipped and got up. Brushing his jacket too briskly, he popped a button off his fine uniform.

“Steady!”

“Good job!” the town bums hooted.

“You son of a bitch…” Pavo growled.

The boys tipped their hats to greet the gunsmith and painter Jakob šašel. This friend of Nikola’s uncle was a local celebrity. He had traveled in Egypt, Nubia, and Sudan and written a travelogue based on his journeys that was praised at an exhibition in Zagreb. Responding to the boys’ greetings, he touched his hat. That slight gesture was enough to make him lose his balance. As he fell, he broke a vial he had bought at the pharmacy and stifled a curse. Waving off their offer of help, the globetrotter disappeared through a carriage gate.

“Shall we go on?”

“Don’t be afraid,” Mojo said. “Just walk with your knees bent. Also take your hands out of your pockets. That way you won’t break anything if you fall.”

As they walked across Wheat Market Square, Mojo sensed an aura of eccentricity and solitude engulfing his friend, and he pitied him. So he switched the topic to something more interesting than inventions. Smiling broadly, he challenged his friend with a plural noun Nikola did not want to hear:
women!
Women with milky skin! Women with fragrant hair! Women with
those
eyes! Women! Waltzing with women was a less banal topic than Nikola’s preaching about science and humanity.

How could Mojo Medić explain to his sad, pathetic friend that the very marrow of his bones tingled from a mere glance from a girl? Nikola did not hear the tickling whisper of life, while a million rosebuds were opening in Mojo’s ear. Now it was Mojo’s turn to get inspired, and it was Nikola who felt that his friend was blind to the real secrets of life.

Mojo breathlessly told Nikola how he, together with Jovan Bijelić, Nikola Prica, Julije Bartaković, and even Djuro Amšel, took dancing lessons with Pietro Signorelli. Anyone who knew Mojo Medić from his Gospić days had to be surprised by his newly developed taste for dancing. Among Gospić’s urchins, Mojo the “Teddy Bear” was remembered as a pensive, chubby kid who waddled as he walked. In high school in Rakovac, he grew taller and slimmer and started to walk straight. He began to dress up and now was delivering a lecture on waltzing to his indifferent friend Nikola Tesla!

Mojo told Nikola in confidence that in his dance class they learned not only old waltzes, such as “The Morning News” and “The Blue Danube,” but also newer ones. Mr. Signorelli promised that he would shortly get the latest composition Johann Strauss announced for the current year, “The Vienna Blood.” Mojo chuckled as he told of his quarrel with Jovan Bijelić over whether Strauss wore only a mustache or if he also sported sideburns like Emperor Franz Joseph. Mojo insisted his indifferent friend show some surprise that the Waltz King, under whose baton all of Europe revolved, confessed that he himself did not know how to dance.

“He doesn’t know how, but I do!” beamed Mojo. “And the waltz is a simple dance. One, two, stand on your toes!”

“Isn’t that a little silly?” Nikola asked.

“Maybe it is,” exclaimed Mojo. “But it’s fun. One, two, stand on your toes.”

Nikola was surprised to see the once clumsy Mojo pirouette on the Karlovac cobblestones. Not just the body of Mojo Medić, a high school senior, danced—his thoughts danced as well. The wide world was full of whispers and promises, and above it swayed Mojo Medić, the romantic lover, the Pushkin and the Byron of our time.

“One, two, stand on your toes.” As he twirled without fear, Mojo lost his balance and fell on his back. He tucked his chin to avoid hitting the back of his head against the icy road.

“Mojo!” Nikola Tesla quit frowning and showed genuine concern. Running to help, he slipped himself and was almost paralyzed by pain as he hit the ice. He rubbed his buttocks slowly to help the pain subside.

A new wave of pain made him cough. He grimaced. Mojo looked at him and puffed up his cheeks. Tesla returned the look and broke out laughing.

Nikola’s laughter was contagious. The king of the waltz stretched back on the ice and convulsed with the raucous laughter of youth.

CHAPTER 16

Lusting after the Wind

It is highly unlikely that a young man,

especially he who studied at a university for several years,

will dare to follow the valorous path of the priesthood.

Milutin Tesla in a letter to the city government of Senj, 1852

Although the human mind cannot find the answers to every question, Milutin Tesla believed it was still possible to know that people dye eggs for Easter. It was also possible to know that a priest blesses the bread baked for the Patron Saint’s Day and that the bride and the bridegroom, wearing crowns, walk around the table three times. He believed pondering a dilemma did not necessarily lead to the truth—the truth was revealed through a daring effort to stop dithering and declare what was and what was not.

“Father! Please listen!” Nikola pleaded, to no avail.

Milutin could not bear the inspired look on his son’s face.

“Please understand,” his son said, raising his voice, “that the very idea of becoming a priest horrifies me. It’s like pushing a cat into the water, and I can’t do that. I can’t because I am who I am!”

“What does
I
mean?” His father looked at him as if he heard the word for the first time. “
We
need priests.
We
can barely make ends meet in this poverty-stricken country.
We
need men who will open minds and hearts of our people.”

Milutin slid his glasses down his nose.

“This science you crave is nothing but vanity. Vanity and lusting after the wind! It’s childish to flee from the censer to please your own ego.”

Nikola’s blood grew cool. He was barely able to protest: “Father, I’m talking but you’re not listening.”

“I don’t have to,” Milutin crowed. “There’s no law that says that those who speak should be heard.”

Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed friends:

When Nikola Tesla refused to become a priest, his father used all the means at his disposal to force him to do so. Under pressure, lacking the will to live, Nikola came down with cholera. One can die from it on the first day. Nikola suffered from vomiting and diarrhea. His nails turned blue. His sunken eyes stared out from deep, black circles. Spasms gave him chills and tore his innards apart. He alternated between burning and freezing. His voice turned hoarse. His heartbeat was barely audible.

The fever turned his room into a maelstrom.

Nikola was not in this world. He was in a narrow corridor whose walls were hung with the portraits of his ancestors. On the left—the damned priests. On the right—the damned military officers. Both rows stared at him with empty eyes.

His father sat at his feet.

The devil sat at the head of his bed.

“I’ll kill him, you understand?” the devil whispered to the priest.

“That can’t be,” Milutin growled. “In our family, we’ve all been priests.”

The devil’s green eyes bored into Milutin’s skull. “You’re not listening,” he said. “He won’t live to see the morning.”

“All my hopes…” A sob tore out of the depth of Milutin’s bosom.

“Come to your senses, man, or he’ll die.”

“He’s my only son.” The priest started to rock back and forth, like a woman. “My Dane died. The rest are girls. Only he can continue the family tradition.”

“I’ll kill him,” repeated the devil.

Large drops of sweat beaded on young Tesla’s forehead.

“Let him go,” cried the priest.

“I’ll kill him.”

Nikola jerked his sweaty head on the pillow. His nostrils narrowed.

“For the grace of God, leave him alone,” the priest wanted to say, but he only sighed. “Let him go.”

“Kill.”

“Nikola, my son,” Father Milutin said in such a powerful voice that the apparition on the other side of the bed faded away. “Get well, son. Just get well, and I’ll let you study polytechnics. Go to Graz. Study what you want. Just get well.”

“Really, Father?” Nikola’s chapped lips barely opened.

“Don’t you leave me too,” Milutin said gazing at his son’s forehead. “Go where you want. Study what you will.”

At that moment Nikola opened his eyes.

The fever roulette stopped spinning.

And slowly… the things in the room came to a halt in their proper places.

CHAPTER 17

In the City of Styrian Grand Dukes

When Nikola ran into the university building, the outside voices became hushed. The atrium whooshed like a seashell. Students playfully skated across the marble floor. They mostly spoke in German, although one could also hear Serbian, Hungarian, and Polish.