The Invention of Everything Else (26 page)

"We have many strange guests, but he's the strangest by far." It is the assistant general manager, Mr. Hammond, dreaded for his bean counting. The taps on his shoes strike the metal guard of each stair.

"Yes, sir." And his secretary Mr. Verbena.

"I don't have to tell you, Mr. Verbena, but Mr. Tesla's bills are months and months over—" The door closes again on Mr. Hammond's sentence.

There is one question she still wants to ask Mr. Tesla.

If Mr. Tesla were from the future, wouldn't he be able to read the stock reports that will one day be printed and place his money accordingly? Yes, he would, Louisa figures. If he were from the future, he would be rich. It is important because if Azor is wrong about Mr. Tesla, he might also be wrong about Arthur and Louisa.

Louisa climbs from floor fourteen all the way up to floor thirty-three, taking two steps at a time. There is a resupply linen closet on thirty-three, the key for which she fishes out of her uniform. She begins to count. One, two, three, four, five, six, and up to eighteen. With the towels wedged between her hand and her chin, Louisa knocks on Mr. Tesla's door.

"Why, you devil!"

A small group has assembled on the street outside the laboratory. Katharine and Robert, Samuel and the author Marion Crawford. Katharine is clutching the string of the bell I had rigged. She gives it an extra tug or two, though I've already opened the door.

"Come inside this instant or we'll risk alerting the officers of the law." In they file, giggling in explosive bursts. It is not uncommon for the police to show up at my doorstep, following up on neighborhood complaints of blue flashes or sixteen-foot-long bolts of lightning streaming from the roof. And, of course, there was the time I nearly destroyed the entire neighborhood, having accidentally unleashed a
miniature earthquake with a small pocket resonator that, through a series of gentle taps applied at the exact same point on each wavelength, multiplied the vibration so that all of Mulberry Street began to tremble. Mortar and steel bent. Walls were ready to collapse underneath my mini-resonator, and a thought struck me at the time: with this device, the world could be split into two halves just like an apple. The police came then.

I look both ways before closing and locking the laboratory door.

Earlier that evening the Johnsons had urged me to join them for supper at the Waldorf, but I'd resisted temptation. Dane guarded the door, staying by my side as I worked, though he's made himself scarce now that they've arrived.

"Tell me what you dined on," I ask Sam, torn and sorry to have missed the dinner.

"Yes. Let's see. First, dates and cured meats, then oysters served raw on the half shell, some Spanish sherry, a Bordeaux, a leg of lamb served with white beans and parsnips. A selection of Irish cheeses, a chocolate tart, and a samovar of coffee. They all asked for you," he says.

"Who did? The lamb?"

"New York's tender flowers. That's who. They wondered where their reticent and alluring bachelor had gotten off to."

"Oh," I say. "Them."

Katharine looks away while Robert watches her.

"And there was a phalanx of journalists as well. Hoping for another smoky image of those dark, mysterious Serbian eyes."

"No," I say. He is teasing my vanity.

"Well, I suppose you'll never learn the truth if you keep hiding out in the lab," Katharine says.

"But now we demand a demonstration." Robert stomps his foot, which sends Sam and Marion into fits of laughter. I suspect that more than a few bottles of wine have been consumed.

"Yes, since you insisted on missing dinner in order to work, we've come by to inspect your progress. Just to be certain you didn't simply get a better invitation and sneak out the back door," Katharine says.

"A better offer? Impossible," I tell them.

I ready a device I've been working on of late, a trick of sorts. I switch the small platform on and watch as the indicator climbs all the way up to two million volts. Pointing out the extraordinarily high voltage to
my friends, I do not smile. I want them to understand the potential dangers involved. A fraction of this voltage could easily kill a man. I take my place on the platform. Within moments I'm ensconced in a force field of fire; glowing rays of brilliant white light surround my figure. They radiate from my very being. I shine as though I am myself the sun, while my audience, people I would have imagined immune to the spectacles often created for them here in my laboratory, stand with mouths agape.

"You see," I tell them, "a high voltage such as this one skims the surface, dances over the skin of an object, while a lower voltage would easily enter my body and kill me instantly. It is all a matter of volts," I say, jumping down off the platform, still throwing an occasional spark from my person.

"But how did you know the first time that it wouldn't kill you?" Sam asks.

"Yes, that's a good question. I wasn't certain." I start up another small platform on the other side of the laboratory.

"Please," Sam says. "Might I?" He wants to lead the demonstration.

"I suppose, but you must come down when I tell you to."

"Of course."

This platform is set on top of a mechanical oscillator, some rubber and cork. It produces a very steady and pleasing vibration. I've found that a number of physiological benefits are produced by the vibrations.

Sam climbs aboard and the oscillator begins to move him. He starts to shake, a black and white pudding in his dinner suit. The contours of his large mustache curl up into a terrific grin. "Good heavens!" he says. "I've never felt such paradise. It's, it's..." and for perhaps the first time words escape the great orator. The others again break into fits of laughter, watching as Sam dances on the platform, moving by magic.

After a few minutes I give Sam my warning. "You'd better come down now. I think you've had enough."

"Not by the jugful!" he says.

"Sam, it would be best if you came down from there."

"You couldn't get me off this with a derrick!"

"Remember, I advised you, Sam."

"I'm having the time of my life. Nothing could get me off this wondrous device, not you, not an army of—oh! Dear Lord. Where is it, Niko? Where?" he asks, his face suddenly desperate.

"Right over there in the corner, through that small door." And now I chuckle, pointing out the bathroom, Sam having just discovered the device's potent laxative effect.

"Why, you devil!"

Louisa stands back from the door, concerned she is being addressed.

"You'd better come down now. I think you've had enough" The door swings open. Despite the stack of towels pressed close against Louisa's chin, her jaw does drop slightly.

"Mister," Louisa says, and then, "Tesla. Here are your towels, sir, all of them."

"Ah, yes. Please. Come in. You can leave them..." He spins. "Here. By the washstand." And so Louisa enters the room, craning her neck in every direction, eager to see to whom he'd been speaking. The room is empty. "Louisa, I must thank you again for your help the other day."

"It was no trouble at all. Indeed, I enjoyed myself."

"As did I," he says.

"You're looking much better."

"You think so?"

"Yes."

"I'll take your word for it."

On the bed is a small device resembling a fan. There are a number of tools scattered beside it as though he'd been tinkering. "What's that?" she asks, pointing to the bed, careful not to touch anything this time.

"That," he says, scraping his hands down the length of his jacket as if trying to iron any wrinkles from it, "is a polyphase alternating-current motor. It takes electrical energy and turns it into mechanical power. That is the basis for almost all electricity in use today."

Louisa stares, waiting for it to do something.

"I'm afraid it's not much to look at."

"Oh," she says.

"But—oh, I know. I've got something for you." In the far room he opens the doors to a large wardrobe, one she hadn't looked in yet. Inside is a terrific laboratory in miniature. Coils of wire, small boxes of bolts, canvas satchels filled with tools whose purposes Louisa can't even begin to fathom.

"What is that?" she asks.

"That is a rather large resonating coil," he says, as if that makes any sense at all. "Here we are," he says, placing his hands above her shoulders, not touching her but getting close. He steers her to a spot in the room where he wants her to stand.

"Please stay here," he says and crosses the room, pulling open yet another drawer.

Mr. Tesla rummages. Throwing open any number of cabinets while Louisa watches at attention, her fingers burrowing into the folds of her uniform.

"One," he counts and pulls an oddly shaped item from the box. "And two," he says, unsheathing the second. They are light bulbs of a sort. Homemade light bulbs, Louisa conjectures, as one is long and skinny, more of a tube than a bulb, while the other is nearly a complete sphere, with a stem attached. "Here we are," Mr. Tesla says, placing one bulb in each of her hands. He checks the window curtains, making sure they are shut. They are. Louisa feels like a scarecrow. She holds the bulbs out from her body as best she can.

He shuts out the lights and the room falls dark, though a small trace of dull gray January sky sneaks in underneath the curtains. Louisa inhales, ready for whatever it is he wants her for: electrocution, blood, mutual scientific discourse and inquiry. She is prepared.

"Are you quite ready?"

"Yes, sir," she tells him.

"All right," he says and hesitates a moment. "It's an old trick," he says and stands without moving, waiting in the dark. Louisa can hear only their breathing and the tug of the elevator cables down the hall. Finally she hears a click, a switch being thrown, and then a growing whir as something begins to churn. "Hold fast," he tells her. By then Louisa is holding so fast that every muscle in her body feels like it is made of the most brittle quartz, rigid with alarm and excitement.

"All right," he repeats. "Hold fast, Katharine," he says, and Louisa, though her name is Louisa and not Katharine, does.

I snap my fingers and a ball of fire appears. I hold it as if it were a wounded bird, a beating heart. I cradle it in my hand and present it
first to Katharine, then to Robert. Their faces become visible in the fire's glow. Once Marion has also had a look, I deposit the fire into a small wooden box where it gets extinguished. I place a variety of light bulbs in each one of their hands, including Sam's, who has returned from the lavatory. We stand together in the dark. The city is very quiet, as it must be approaching two in the morning. I throw the switch, and the bulbs, catching the charge wirelessly, illuminate. The room fills with light. Katharine and Robert joust the air with their now glowing light bulbs. Sam simply twirls.

And then the miraculous happens. She thinks at first that she is seeing things. She thinks that since every muscle in her body is tense her eyes might be playing a trick on her, until it becomes undeniable. The bulbs she holds in her hands are glowing. Initially the light is dim, but it builds. The bulbs are not touching anything. Her hands begin to sweat. Despite this, the glowing grows.

"What?" she asks him.

"It's in the air. It's even in your own body. Electricity can travel unseen all around us anytime. It can move through the ether like radio waves. It can move through you without leaving a scratch. In fact," he says, stepping into the light that is coming from the palm of Louisa's hand, "I think it could even be beneficial to our health."

Louisa stares at the light. It's beautiful. It is, she realizes, unbelievable, magic, and so it seems a good time to ask her question. "Mr. Tesla, did you come here from the future?"

"The future?" He is unastonished, as if already grown tired of that question. "No, dear. From Smiljan," he says, shaking his head, staring down at the floor. "No."

"But then how do you do this?" Louisa shows him how two light bulbs, bulbs that are not attached to any power source or wires, are glowing wonderfully from the center of her hand. "It's magic," she tells him. "So it seems that either you're magic or you're from the future."

"Those are my only two choices?" he asks.

She can make out his profile in the light of the bulbs. He is shaking his head no.

"No," he says. "I'm not from outer space or the future. And this is not magic, just science, pure engineering." He catches her eye directly. "Magic, religion, the occult—all of it—they are all excuses
to not believe that wonders are possible here on Earth. I don't want to be magic. I want people to understand that things they never even dreamed of are possible. Automobiles that run on water. Surgery that never even punctures the skin. Wireless transmission of intelligence and energy. I want to be believed, Louisa," he says and, closing the switch, turns off the electricity, plunging the room back into darkness. "Do you believe me?" he asks.

***

What about any suspicious-looking papers? Things written in foreign languages?

He was once in love, but I think that was a very long time ago. And he denies it.

What does that have to do with anything?

A man is a god in ruins.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

I
THOUGHT PERHAPS
, Sam, that we might want to stop here. Wrap it up. The end.

Yes, I know there are many years in between then and now. But they were bad ones. I thought, if you have to, you could record the years that followed by simply inserting a black page, a solid black square of ink. It would be the best way to describe the darkness that came next—a page of black ink, printed on both sides.

Someone has already done that? Well, then, there is my first unoriginal thought. At eighty-six years of age I don't suppose that is too bad.

But does that mean I must tell you what came next?

The electric canopy of crystal is as broad as an elm tree's branches. "The chandelier," the chief maid on staff cries out from below. "It won't do." After a number of jerky turns applied to a hand crank hidden on the wall beneath a set of velvet curtains, the chandelier is lowered to the floor. The Romanian gardener is called in to drape the lamp with a heavy burlap cloth most commonly used to collect dead leaves in the fall. "Perfect," the chief maid declares and turns her back on the now shamed chandelier.