Distant Waves (7 page)

T
hat afternoon I had my first ride on a train, which ran up- and downtown on an elevated track. The train took us to a part of the city known as Chinatown because the vast majority of its citizens were from China.

Before arriving at the restaurant, Thad and I got off at Fourteenth Street at a place called Union Square. "Come on," Thad said. "There's something here I want to show you."

"What is it?" I asked.

"You'll see. You'll like it."

I hurried behind him down the metal stairs to an open area dominated by a statue of George Washington on horseback. In front of it, a band of five scruffy boys, one with a homemade drum, another with an actual harp, played an off-beat song while the others danced and sang for the coins passersby threw in their rusted pot. I tossed in a few pennies of my own, not because their music was good but because they were so adorable.

It wasn't easy to keep up with Thad's long strides as we crossed the bustling square, but we quickly came to a sort 
of theater on the side. A large sign over an arched doorway declared: AUTOMATIC ONE CENT VAUDEVILLE. "What is this?" I asked him.

"It's a nickelodeon, which is a kind of kinetoscope."

"A what?"

"They show short films," he explained. "This is the biggest one in the city."

My hands flew to my mouth with excitement. I'd read about these in the papers. They were like films, only shorter and less expensive.

"Come on," he said, and I followed him in. The place was gigantic, with row upon row of shoulder-high machines lined up along the walls and forming center aisles. Each one of them displayed a placard that told the name of the brief film it played.

"I've never even seen a movie before," I told him excitedly. This was true; although I read all about the movie actors in them and devoured the reviews, I had never actually seen a movie or a nickelodeon.

"Well, now's your chance," he said with a smile. "Tesla believes that someday every home will have its own private nickelodeon."

I hurried off toward a bank of nickelodeon machines on the right but Thad grasped my shoulder firmly. "Not those," he said. "They're not suitable for a young lady."

A second glance made me realize that they were all being used by young men dressed in boater hats with their 
suit jackets slung over their shoulders. "Oh, I see," I said, trying to sound worldly wise and knowing.

"There are some good ones over here," he said, directing me to the wall on my left. "This is my favorite," he told me as he dropped a penny in a machine marked: BOATING DISASTER. "Take a look."

A funny little man was taking his rather large girlfriend for a canoe ride on a lake. He had trouble with the oars, turning the canoe in circles at first. Then his girlfriend readjusted her seat and the canoe tilted so that the little man was lifted up along with the canoe's bow. He frantically rowed in the air. Finally, the two of them slid into the lake, looking none too happy.

The film lasted no more than three minutes. "Funny, huh?" Thad said, wanting my reaction.

"It is funny, but I felt sorry for them," I replied, smiling despite my sympathy for the characters.

"Don't. They're only actors," Thad said. "Come on. I'll show you some of my other favorites."

We spent the next half hour working our way down the line of nickelodeon machines, watching film after film. It was such fun!

We came to a film called
Dance of the Ghosts.
Five women in white, hooded, flowing robes did a sort of ballet around a glowing ball in a darkened room.

"Isn't that one crazy?" Thad checked enthusiastically.

"Crazy," I agreed. I didn't dare tell him how much it reminded me of home.

Eventually we got back on the train and took it to Canal Street. It was the most amazing place! Every sign was in Chinese. Vendors sold all manner of exotic clothing, toys, and even baby turtles out on the street. We browsed in small shops that sold exotic carved knickknacks and porcelain curios. We passed a Chinese apothecary with bizarre items such as dried wings and powdered rhino horn displayed in the window. With a little imagination, I could easily believe I was really in China.

We reached an electric neon sign that flashed the name Wo-Hop, and Thad took us down a flight of stairs to a belowground restaurant of plain chairs and tables set with white dishes on white paper tablecloths. Nearly everyone there was Chinese, many more men than women, dressed in traditional Chinese garb.

A small man in a white shirt and black pants ran out to greet Thad. He clearly knew him and was delighted at his arrival.

"Jane, I'd like you to meet Mr. Wang, a friend of my family's. Mr. Wang, meet Jane Oneida Taylor. She's a journalist writing about Tesla."

Mr. Wang shook my hand enthusiastically. "Mr. Tesla a very great man. Very big brain. I am pleased to meet you."

Once we were seated, Thad ordered for us both, speaking Chinese to the waiter. "I hope you don't mind," he said to me when he'd finished. "I think you'll like what I ordered. I never met anyone who didn't."

"Where did you learn to speak Chinese?" I asked. Thad, it seemed, was full of secrets and surprises.

"I was born in China. My parents were missionaries."

"My father was a missionary, too."

While we waited for our food, we had a lively conversation. I told him that Father had passed and all about our life in Spirit Vale, even admitting that the
Dance of the Ghosts
nickelodeon made me think of home. In the hours since we'd first met, I'd grown increasingly at ease with him. "Does it sound insane?" I asked.

"It sounds like a lot of fun," he replied. "What a great place to grow up."

"It's not meant to be fun," I said. "They take it very seriously. Being a scientist, you must think it's a lot of rubbish."

He shrugged. "Who knows? I believe in life after death but I don't know how long a soul hangs around before it moves on."

Thad told me that he'd lived in China until the age of ten and then he'd returned with his parents. At seventeen his parents had wanted him to go to seminary college to become a minister, but he'd had other ideas.

Thad was interested in science even though his parents 
were adamant that science was the enemy of religion. Thad thought that was absurd. "They're so behind the times," he said. "They don't realize that we're on the brink of a new, modern age. Everything will soon change. Everything!" He and his parents had fallen out bitterly over this. And so he'd come to New York to live on his own.

"The greatest thing that happened to me was being hired as Tesla's assistant," he told me. "In the last three years I've learned more about science than I would have in Harvard and Yale put together."

I realized that made him twenty. I decided to make no mention of my own age. There were only four years' difference between us -- not really so much. We were getting on so well and I didn't want anything to spoil it.

"Do you want to be an inventor like Tesla?" I asked.

"I could never be like him. I'm no genius. But I
have
invented a few things."

"What?" I asked eagerly.

He pushed the white plates to the side and took out a pencil. He began to draw an airplane different in every way from the propeller planes I'd seen.

"It's a glider," he told me. "Tesla is working on something he calls a flivver plane, which is a cross between a gyroscope and a plane, but it needs fuel. This is a glider that would ride the air currents like a hawk. I believe that we can't be so reliant on fossil fuels. It's going to run out someday."

Tearing off a piece of paper tablecloth, he began to fold it in intricate ways. "I learned origami in China," he said with a grin as he folded. When he was done, he got up and opened a high window. "Have to let some air currents in here," he explained. Then he shot his paper plane into the room.

Everyone stopped eating and gasped as it sailed over their heads. Every second, I thought it would crash into someone's food, but it kept going. I couldn't believe it.

Finally, the little paper plane glided in for a landing on the windowsill, The entire restaurant erupted in applause, and so did I. "That's wonderful. How can you say you're not a genius?" I praised him sincerely.

"I'm not," he said, retrieving his plane. "But I would like to take what I'm learning from Tesla about magnetic resonances and apply it to aeronautical design. Planes are going to be huge."

"Do you think so?" I asked. "They seem so clumsy right now."

"They won't stay that way for long," he said. "There are guys like me everywhere who are working on sleeker, better designs. You'll see, Jane. It's the future."

Our meals came, interrupting us. They were a sort of egg pancake with shrimp, onions, and vegetables cooked in and topped with gravy. "Shrimp Egg Fu Young," he told me. "What do you think?"

"I'm sure this is better than anything Mimi and Ninette are having back at the hotel," I said. "I still can't believe I met Benjamin Guggenheim."

"All those rich backers are like that Guggenheim guy," he said as he ate with chopsticks. "They're so full of their own importance. And it's absurd that he has that young girlfriend, Ninette Aubart. She's divorced or something. People gossip about them. She's not his wife. She's his side girlfriend. He's forty-six and she's about twenty-four or -five."

"I suppose it's the trend with wealthy men," I suggested. "I read that John Jacob Astor is marrying a woman twenty years younger than he is next month."

"Madeleine Force. Yeah. She's twenty! He's getting married next month
if
they can find a minister to marry them. Nobody will do it."

"Because of their age difference?" I asked.