Tesla (8 page)

Now I’m in a different world, a castle
, the young man from Lika thought.

Nikola was able to breathe more easily in the City of Styrian Grand Dukes. For the first time in his life, he could choose the subjects he preferred. He even liked the cold room he rented on Attems Street. There was the small problem of his roommate, though. Once, Nikola bought some apples and, on the way home from school, smiled as he imagined their taste. Then he entered the room…

“Why are you eating my apples?” he shouted from the doorway.

“Because they’re here,” his roommate, Kosta Kulišić, answered, chewing.

Nikola gargled warm salt water because of his sore throat.

“You look like a bird swallowing a snake,” Kulišić told him.

In the morning, when Nikola was about to wash his face, he stopped short: “Why did you use my towel?”

“Because it was clean,” Kulišić responded with composure.

It was easier to laugh than fight. Kulišić, who had a broken nose and the eyes of a bear, suffered tremendous pain because of the current bloodbath near his native town of Trebinje. Whenever Kulišić put on a brave face, it seemed to Nikola that he was barely able to contain his tears. On Sundays, Graz was quiet as if inhabited only by butlers. The two roommates lingered in bed. Frost dotted their window and they could see their breath. Nikola told Kosta about his flying engine while the wind swayed their room.

“Where do you think hell’s located?” Nikola suddenly asked.

“I don’t know,” Kosta said, “but it must be closer than we think.”

Kosta could not follow most of what Nikola talked about. He also did not understand why his roommate had to get up so early on the coldest weekdays.

“How can you get up when it’s still dark?” he murmured. “God hasn’t created the world yet.”

“It’s a shame to miss a single class. They’re such great professors,” Nikola explained.

In Nikola’s opinion, the most brilliant lecturer at the university was Doctor Allé, an expert in integral and differential equations. Allé considered stupidity a form of brazenness. At the end of each class, he looked for Nikola and asked, “Shall we?”

For an entire hour he would make him solve special problems.

“Bravo!” Allé shouted.

After these mathematical sessions, they left the building together. The student surprised his professor with a question: “Do you see these carriages on the streets of Graz?”

Allé’s eyelids fluttered in assent, magnified by his spectacles.

“Many of them are mounted on springs, and their upholstery follows the fashion of the nineteenth century.”

“Yes?”

“But in principle, those are still the same carriages found in Homer and the Old Testament.”

“So?”

Nikola opened his bag and produced the blueprints for a flying engine powered by electricity. “Isn’t it time for people to fly?” he asked.

During that first year, Nikola had no interest in the world outside the library and the lecture hall of the School of Polytechnic. He was not impressed by the region’s temperate climate or the hot springs in Tobelbad, and he didn’t care for the sixteenth-century watchtower. Not for the Mura. Not for its bridges. Not for the breweries. In the city known for its hatmakers and lensmakers, his only interest was in electrical engineering and books.

He pretended not to be surprised by the life of the city and its incomprehensible fashions. Ladies wore what looked like lace bibs, while gentlemen’s overcoats were fastened just below the chin so that they resembled tents. In rooms, people danced to Schubert’s “Graz Waltzes.” Gentlemen in black and ladies in lace swirled underneath chandeliers. In those circles, Plato’s
animus
and
anima
seemed to merge. Officers softened their bows with subtle smiles. People discussed the Herzegovina uprising, the recent economic crisis, Czech cuisine, and the advantages of the academic style in painting over French impressionism.

And Nikola?

Nikola was free. Until recently, he had appeared to be an imaginary character and was only now becoming real. Every day he took a walk on top of the Schlossberg, where an invincible fortress defied first the Turks and then Napoléon. He claimed to like the “electric air” of the place. Soon, Murko the tailor made him a suit and a few shirts on credit, with interest. Up until then, everyone had called him Nikola. Now they started calling him Tesla. Mr. Tesla.

Mr. Tesla spent every evening in the library. Hegel’s reptilian eyes stared at him from the wall. Baroque angels fluttered under the ceiling, and it smelled like the seventeenth century. In his head, Father continued to gripe and to cast doubt on Nikola’s decision.

I see that Progress is now your God
, Milutin said in his son’s head.
But even if progress exists, it doesn’t focus on anything in particular—it enhances everything, including evil. It enhances
Homo homini lupus.

Embittered, Nikola pushed those thoughts away. He studied Voltaire to arm himself against his father. Voltaire convinced him that “the exquisite is the enemy of the good.” So Mr. Tesla started working eighteen hours a day.

He passed nine exams his first year—twice the number necessary. “Your son is a first-rate star,” the dean wrote to the priest in Gospić. Milutin, however, showed little enthusiasm for Nikola’s success and a lot of concern for his health. Nikola dismissed his father’s worries as commonsense banalities. “Knowledge—if real—leaves you breathless,” he would say. “It’s much more exciting than the business of living.”

Warm and cold loves clashed within him. Warm love was for human beings. Cold love was for what his father called God (whom Milutin gave warm love). Nikola’s cold love was focused on the fierce, flame-like power of invention. Warm love was nothing in comparison. Nothing at all. A shadow. For Nikola, the library was the place of certainty that Father Milutin had never experienced. Other students absorbed science by rote, like a poem they would later live by and recite for the rest of their lives. For his part, Tesla was truly interested in the very essence of things. In addition to physics, he devoured volume after volume of classical and philosophical works.

He read and the world expanded for him. After all, he wanted to be an inventor, and inventing meant the expansion of the world. Just before the library would close, he went out and stared into Kant’s starry night. He felt that he was growing under the explosions of stars. Soon, his pointed ears would be at the same height as the city’s towers. And then? Galaxies would become entangled in his hair.

And then?

CHAPTER 18

A Tract on Noses

From the lecture Nikola Tesla gave to the Young Serbs Society on December 3, 1875

My dear colleagues, where would we be without noses?

Believe me—nowhere!

Noses connect us to the invisible world. They inform us about things healthy and unhealthy, let us know if the bed is clean or if the soup is hot, endow us with the smells of the morning and of the coming storm, and unite us with nature.

This is why noses are often compared to plants. We’re all familiar with so-called bulbous, cherry, or spud noses.

Human noses are bridges between us and the animal world. You’ve all heard of beak, snout, or pug noses. Many unfortunate young men are called toucans, unicorns, or rhinos.

Noses also tune us in to the seasons. They bring us the aroma of the frost in February and the linden blooms in June. A whiff of roasting peppers heralds August.

The nose is a kind of tool. People wonder if you can use it as a can opener. They often compare it to a spade, ax, or adze.

It’s a musical instrument similar to a trumpet, bassoon, or trombone. The nose provides a notorious sound box for snoring, which makes it unpopular with roommates.

The nose defines the timbre of the voice and therefore blesses singers and curses those who talk through it.

People sniff each other out in social situations as well. We’re all familiar with the “smell of money” and the “stench of poverty.”

The nose mirrors the features of Mother Earth, invoking her glorious mountain peaks as well as her deep, fathomless caverns.

The nose is a maze through which the light and the air find their way down to the darkness of the throat. It keeps us alive. Don’t forget that the nose gives us breath even before it endows us with fragrances.

The topic of noses has always inspired thinkers. Pascal believed that the fate of the world wouldn’t be the same if Cleopatra had had a shorter nose. Heine joked that “no matter how hard somebody sobs, he always blows his nose in the end.” Voltaire insisted that people come into this world with ten fingers and a nose but without the knowledge of God.

Picking one’s nose shows our eternal immaturity and unmasks our pretense of refinement.

Tycho Brahe had a nose of gold.

Just like the ear, the nose can be embellished with a ring.

My dear colleagues, we’ve all seen a man tugging his dog who refuses to budge until he’s finished reading some smelly story left by the roadside.

The nose is a storyteller.

This supreme awakener of memories still remembers the smells of the attic and of the cellar of our parents’ home.

The nose is the throne for our pince-nez.

Perfume makers from Paris and Cologne are the great friends of the human soul.

The nose gifts us the fragrances of basil, coffee, and lemon rind.

The Greeks, Jews, and other ancient peoples believed that the gods, just like us, loved the smell of barbecue. Those gods of antiquity received burnt sacrifices with their—undoubtedly beautiful—noses.

In front of inns, beggars try to satisfy their craving for food as they anxiously inhale the smell of soup, stew, and roasted meat.

Eskimos kiss with their noses.

The nose is fragile and delicate, and boys like to punch that precious thing.

“Hit him in the nose!” they yell. “His eyes will well with blood. He won’t be any good after that!”

According to legend, one of Napoléon’s gunners blasted the Sphinx’s nose off her face because it was too perfect.

Many people are unsatisfied with their noses. Visionaries dream of being able to swap noses or even establish a nose stock exchange under the control of the East India Company, with its centers in both London and Amsterdam.

My grandfather used to say that any face with a nose is beautiful.

What works for horses, works for noses: a good horse has a thousand imperfections, while a nag has only one—it’s no good.

My dear colleagues, spirited colleagues—follow your noses!

As he reached this salient conclusion, Tesla raised his chin and presented the audience with his profile.

Big-nosed Kulišić, who was sitting in the first row, turned sideways, like a parrot, in order to get a better look.

CHAPTER 19

Kisses and Voltaire

In the darkness of a baroque entryway, a young man and a girl clung to each other. The shadow of the gate was thick with cuddles and kisses. The girl unwrapped her fingers only to have them intertwined with the boy’s again. Her cheek rubbed against his and that was so interesting. Their bosoms touched and that was so exciting. They could not have kissed with less passion even if the world were to end the next day, or if the young man were to leave for war. His lips brushed her lips, her cheeks, her eyes. Then the girl put her fingers across his lustful lips.

“I have to go.”

“Wait,” the young man said dreamily. “Just a bit more.”

She tried to push him away.

“Just one more.”

When their magnetic lips parted, the girl touched her brow and whispered, “I really have to…”

At that moment, a window on the upper floor banged open and a harsh voice spoke: “Ulrike, you little slut! Get in here!”

The girl flushed and stiffened. Frightened, she hissed, “My landlady is calling.”

“You have no shame,” the voice boomed from the window.

The girl looked at the young man with horror. She tore herself away, but turned back to blow him a kiss. Then she vanished into the entryway. The young man adjusted his clothes. He raised his eyes and noticed that the roofs and the chimneys on the houses stood awry. Only the moon above them remained straight. His feet felt unsteady. He smiled to himself and admitted, “I have no clue where I am.”