Tesla (37 page)

“Look at ‘im,” one of them remarked as the long-legged scientist passed by. “Like a bizarre animal.”

“He looks kind of down. I’d like to give ‘im some cocaine,” the other grinned.

“Good luck with that, buddy,” another one said. “He was born on cocaine.”

CHAPTER 74

The Astoria

In June, Tesla was invited once more to the town of palaces and lawns on the rocky shores of Rhode Island.

“Hail, white masts! Hail, blue sky!”

This time it was John Jacob Astor IV who invited him to Newport for sailing. Tesla arrived in front of Astor’s marble summer cottage hugging the world’s largest bouquet of roses. Katharine had written to remind him not to forget his real friends while rubbing shoulders with millionaires.

The coastline shimmered.

The frosted surface of the glass door seemed to melt, revealing two symmetrical peacocks.

“May the universe hold no limitations for you,” Tesla greeted Astor jokingly.

“May no limitations be imposed on your universe,” Astor responded in kind.

The millionaire’s face came straight from a herbarium. His smile was as cold as soup in an orphanage.

“What’s in those eyes—melancholy, peevishness, or simply emptiness?” The guest could not decide. He could not figure out if personality still existed at such a high level of acting a part. With his ascetic fingers, Tesla picked up Astor’s book,
A Journey in Other Worlds
, from the table and complimented the author.

Astor smiled and made the mistake of asking his guest what he had been working on lately. Tesla embarked on a lengthy discourse about guided torpedoes and other teleautomatons. He spoke the way Goethe would have spoken had he somehow turned into a traveling salesman.

Tesla’s wounded and flaming eyes anticipated his words: Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Vivekananda. The life principle, apparent in the formation of crystals, is operative in people. Alternative sources of energy! The concept of parallel universes! The possibility of surviving without food in the future!

“If the earth were exposed to periodical vibrations, it would split in half, like an apple,” the lanky inventor stared into Ava Astor’s eyes and smiled ambiguously. “The trick is to be in phase with the world’s vibrations and not to oscillate against them.”

His soul intuitively licked her soul.

Ava Astor, née Shippen Willing, was considered the most beautiful woman in America. She reminded Tesla so much of Salome that he feared she might offer him John the Baptist’s head on a platter. Her elongated eyes addled men with their green color and unblinking, steady gaze.

In her, Katharine Johnson saw only “an enormous quantity of arrogant emptiness.” Men usually saw the narrow waist, the fierce curvature of her hips, and the balcony-like bust. “She’s not a woman—she’s a tiger,” Stanford White mumbled.

Despite Tesla’s superhuman politeness, the temptress sensed his absentmindedness. She developed an interest in him. Ava Astor looked into his eyes without blinking and asked him without smiling, “Why do they attack you in the newspapers?”

“Because my inventions threaten many established industries.”

At these words, John Jacob smiled with the liveliness of a Madame Tussaud’s figure. To the befuddled Tesla it seemed that Astor was saving his energy for the afterlife.

Ahem…

The war was the topic of all topics. Johnson introduced Tesla to the war hero Richard Hobson, whose cheeks twittering girls kissed at all public events. John Jacob let the military use his yacht the
Nourmahal
for the war.

The inventor cleared his throat and mentioned that he had also offered the military the use of his—

“What?” Ava asked.

“Guided torpedoes and wireless transmission of messages.”

The millionaire became interested. “So what happened?”

“I called an official in Washington to talk about practical applications of these inventions,” Tesla said. “The secretary of the navy turned my proposal down because he was afraid of ‘sparks that were bound to fly everywhere.’ Where did he see any sparks? Afterward, a group of officers with sideburns, the straightest backs possible, and the clearest eyes in the world came to see me. They moved to and fro in my laboratory like automatons for a couple of hours.”

“So what happened?” Ava Astor asked.

“After two long hours of conversation, it became clear to me that intelligence and vision do not abide in deep voices, proud straight backs, and male beauty.

“In a word: in the war with Spain, the navy is using balloons tethered to ships with telegraph lines.”

Ava Astor laughed for the first time in Tesla’s presence, releasing a shrill, unpleasant sound, similar to a peacock’s scream.

“That’s enough to turn one’s hair gray,” the inventor said, laughing in agreement. “The balloons make easy targets, but the soldiers have to carry out their orders—that’s all there is to it.”

The days with the wind in his hair were replaced by business meetings in New York. Astor’s eyes said “we’ll wait” and “we’ll see.” Tesla realized that the millionaire—just like his former professor Pöschl—lacked a golden ball showing him direction and blindly felt his way through life. However, Astor was slowly warming up to the idea of Tesla’s fluorescent lights.

“My lamps will last forever,” the tireless inventor insisted, his hair sleekly brushed back. “They emit light five thousand times stronger than the ones we use now…”

During those conversations, Astor’s blasé yet anxious stare softened a bit. “May the universe hold no limitations for you,” he exclaimed at the end of their negotiations.

“May no limitations be imposed on your universe,” Tesla chimed.

They signed the contract in the middle of the war’s excitement. Astor became a board member of Tesla’s company. Tesla received one hundred thousand dollars. The entrance to the world’s most glamorous hotel materialized before him out of the blue. With a tiny shiver of pleasure, Tesla moved into the Waldorf Astoria. His room number—two hundred and seven—was divisible by three. The maid always left eighteen towels in his room. He dined at eighteen hours at a table with eighteen cloth napkins.

He lived a life divisible by three.

The wrought iron eaves above the entrance resembled a railway station. The first floor windows were covered with round double cloth awnings. Mornings smelled of fine soaps. It was so quiet that he felt he was observing things through a magnifying glass. One could skate across the marble floors.

Here at the Waldorf people came to be seen.

He lived there.

“Kisses don’t last long. Culinary art does,” Oscar of the Waldorf hummed as he arranged his dishes between glass pedestals topped with fruit and pyramids made of flowers.

The soundless elevator turned Tesla’s stomach upside down and lifted him to the top of the castle where his rooms were. Human sight could not measure the depth of the hallways. Next to each column stood a uniformed boy with a gold-fringed hat on his head. The Ming dynasty vases were taller than those patient boys. Restrooms smelled of jasmine. Even though Stanford White did not provide all the furniture, it looked as if he did. Orchids were moved away from the windows so that the light would not hurt them.

“How are you doing in Versailles?” Johnson wanted to know.

CHAPTER 75

We Won’t

A week after he moved to the Waldorf Astoria, Tesla invited his faithful assistant Scherff for a visit. With his disheveled hair, Scherff looked like a deer that had strayed into the Palm Room.

The head waiter came up holding his nose as high as a Lipizzaner stallion. He turned toward Scherff, whose outfit puzzled him.

“May I help you…”

The movement of Tesla’s hand was quick and commanding.

The waiter did not know what to do, so he disappeared.

Scherff was somewhat squarely built. Many of those who could not remember his name called him Mr. Mustache. He kept repeating himself because he thought people did not understand what he was saying. After his eyes grew weak, he bought glasses with the ugliest frames possible.

“Are those frames made of horses’ hooves?” White mocked.

Tesla defended him: “Scherff’s hair is gray. His eyes are brown. But his hands and heart are made of pure gold.”

With a lot of tact, Tesla insinuated to Scherff that there were fine and not-so-fine items of clothing to wear. To no avail. Just like treason, fashion was an incomprehensible concept to the honest mechanic.

Scherff loved heavy, roughly knitted sweaters. His footwear looked like it came from an army surplus store. His boots sank into the thick carpet of the Astoria up to the ankles. The good mechanic did not know whether he was in a church or a bar. He kept turning his head around in awe. He had difficulty deciding what to order. He read the menu carefully, narrowed it down to three dishes, and then started to peruse it again.

To save time, Tesla ordered Oscar’s veal and a Waldorf salad for him. They split half a bottle of wine. After the meal, the honest mechanic’s mood lightened.

“It seems to me,” he stammered, “that now we’re going to settle down in New York and get rich on lightbulbs and oscillators.”

“We won’t,” the inventor responded.

Scherff’s face collapsed.

“It seems to me…,” he began.

Tesla looked at him warmly and even put his hand on his shoulder:

“The laboratory on Houston Street is too small and there’s always the risk of fire and spies. That’s why I’ll journey to the wilderness, east of the sun and west of the moon. To the place where thunderbolts crack more than anywhere else in the world.

“I’ll work with millions of volts, with still unnamed phenomena.

“Without human guidance.

“Without a precedent.

“As for you, please stay here and make sure everything runs smoothly on Houston Street.”

“It seems to me…,” the honest Scherff mumbled.

CHAPTER 76

Without Soiling Them

The range of vapor to the southward had arisen prodigiously in

the horizon, and began to assume more distinctness of form.

I can liken it to nothing but a limitless cataract, rolling silently into the sea from some immense and far-distant rampart in the heaven.

Edgar Allan Poe,
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

He fell asleep and woke up on the train. While riding, he experienced the greatness of this land and the way she breathed. “Europe has cathedrals. America has Holy Nature,” the quiet and noble John Muir (another famous person out of Johnson’s top hat) used to tell him.

Tesla passed through godforsaken towns with lanes of trees and a cat in each window, where the wheels on coaches turned backward. From those towns, the train rushed toward America’s horizon.

“I’m inviting you to a monthlong adoration of Nature,” Muir told him. “It won’t cost you a thing except your time, and even that’s nothing because most of the time you’ll dwell in eternity.”

During his eternal train trip, Tesla decided to accept Muir’s invitation. He looked through the window and saw a multitude of black birds scattered across the mountain. He remembered the lecture titled On the Damage That Crows Do to Crops from his childhood with a smile. The whistle of the engine startled him. It spiraled up through the magnificent landscape.