She seemed to be able to understand Tesla more than Paul ever could. She was more adept at deciphering his tortuous grammar. She was even fascinated by his rambling monologues.
“You like him,” Paul said to her one night as they ascended the staircase to Tesla’s room. He’d just arrived and his cheeks were still red from the cold. Her quarrel with W. H. Foster still loomed over them, but Paul had already decided that another letter would not do the trick. He would have to come up with something better.
“It surprises you that I like Tesla?”
“He doesn’t seem of a piece with most of your circle.”
“I’ve spent a lot of time performing. On the stage, for money, and off the stage, for respect. He’s never done so a day in his life. It would never even occur to him. He cares about no one’s opinions but his own.”
Together they entered Tesla’s room. They found him, as usual, mumbling to himself. The winter wind slapped hard against the thick windows, providing a low accompaniment to their quiet conversation.
“Ships,” said Tesla. “The particles that are moving, sliding, pressing up against. They are like tiny ships. We must see what they bring. We must trace the waters of their journey.”
Paul looked at Agnes. Together they had heard so many of these monologues. Together they would be here the next night and the night after that, to hear so many more.
“Particles, they are ships only, are they not? I will make a machine to push them into the waters. To connect one port with another. I cannot believe no one has thought of it previous. It is obvious when you have seen the boats.”
Agnes leaned over the bed, hoping to hear him better.
“It’s a coil, Miss Agnes Huntington. The shape is coiled. Can’t you see it there? It shines from its wonder.”
Paul looked around the cramped bedroom. “There’s nothing here,” said Paul. “Your mind is conjuring up things that aren’t there.”
At this, Tesla turned to Paul and, for the first time since his reappearance, matched Paul’s gaze with genuine consideration.
“Exactly,” said Tesla.
“You’re hallucinating, Nikola,” said Paul.
“No,” replied Tesla with the very first smile that Paul had seen on his face in a long time. “I’m inventing.”
When an abnormal man can find such abnormal ways…to make his name known all over the world…[and to] accumulate such wealth with such little real knowledge…I say such a man is a genius—or let us use the more popular word—a wizard.
—FRANCIS JEHL, AN ASSISTANT IN EDISON’S LABORATORY, 1913
THE NEXT TIME Paul entered the Huntington house, he was met with an alarming development.
The man he found by Tesla’s bedside was of a solid build. Bald, but wearing a bushy white beard across his cheeks with more than enough hair to make up for the lack up top. He was leaning over Tesla as Paul entered.
“Ah,” said the man, looking his way. “You’ve brought the saltines.”
“Who are you?”
Agnes, at the foot of the bed, supplied an answer. “Don’t worry, Cravath,” she said. “This is Dr. Daniel Touff. He’s an alienist.”
This proved the occasion of their first quarrel. After the doctor had left, Paul questioned her angrily.
“How could you bring a stranger here without asking me?” He hadn’t intended to yell, but he found his voice rising.
“I don’t need your permission to determine how to take care of Nikola,” she replied calmly.
Agnes had met Dr. Touff months previous at Mrs. Astor’s Halloween party. He was known among a certain crowd to be trustworthy. Men in his line of work could not afford to be otherwise.
They were in the sitting room by then. Agnes sat patiently on the sofa while Paul paced about the room. She explained that the alienist was highly fascinated by Tesla’s “subconscious,” as he described it. Paul asked what the word meant; Agnes admitted she hadn’t a clue. She explained that the good doctor thought Tesla seemed to suffer from démence précoce—something like a “precocious madness.” Paul asked if that meant he was insane. But apparently Dr. Touff didn’t think the term applied. This was the thing about these alienists, Agnes said. “They’re doing away with ‘sane’ and ‘insane’ as categories. They’ve been working to mess the classifications up a bit. Scientists of the mind, such as they are.”
“Did the doctor suggest a treatment?” he asked.
“Rest.”
“We’ve been doing that.”
“He pointed out something else as well. Tesla’s amnesia—it hasn’t extended to certain skills.”
“Such as?”
“English, for a start. Has it occurred to you that he hasn’t been speaking to us in Serbian this whole time?”
Paul had to admit that was an interesting point.
She continued. “And his facility with mechanics. His speech is peppered with scientific terms, with discussion of machines. Particles, as well as winged beasts.”
“His visions…his hallucinations,” said Paul. “He keeps saying that they’re inspiring him to build a new machine. He sees these things, he believes they’re real—and that, to him, is inventing.”
“A flash of light, like Saint Paul on the road to Damascus.”
“He told Westinghouse that he had the idea for his alternating-current motor in a similar fit. This is Tesla’s process—he has a series of hallucinatory episodes and then there it is. His device is invented. And he moves on to something else.”
Agnes seemed fascinated by this process, if suspicious of its efficacy. “But you haven’t ‘invented’ something until you’ve built it. If I spend an afternoon staring down at sheet music and imagining how I’m to sing it, it cannot be said that I’ve performed the piece. I don’t actually create the thing until I stand on a stage and move my mouth. My throat gets a bit tired and then there’s some applause at the end.”
“It’s different for him.”
“Just saying that you’ve invented something is not the same as inventing it.”
“I think Mr. Westinghouse would agree with you…” Paul trailed off.
“Cravath?” said Agnes. “Is something the matter?”
“What if Mr. Edison would not agree with you? What if Edison believes that saying that you’ve invented something is just as good as inventing it?”
Agnes’s expression indicated that she had no idea what Paul was talking about.
“Edison claimed to have invented the incandescent electric light bulb on September sixteenth, 1878,” said Paul. “Everyone knows that, because Edison made a grand public declaration of his achievement. He announced it in The Sun. He gave private demonstrations to adoring reporters from the Herald and The Times. He patented the basic design of the device—the base, the circuit, all of that—right away. But he didn’t actually file for his patent on the bulb piece itself until a year later, on November fourth, 1879.” Paul felt a surge of energy. “Here’s what I’m asking. What evidence have we that Edison invented the light bulb when he said that he did?”
“You think he lied?”
“The first patent Edison filed was vague. Or at least that’s been my legal argument thus far. Edison filed a vague patent that covered far too wide an area. Only, what if Edison hadn’t actually gotten the thing working at all? What if he simply told everyone he had? Imagine the situation from his perspective. He’s working on the lamp. He’s got dozens of engineers working twenty-four hours a day. He knows he’s close. But he also knows that a number of other inventors are working on the exact same problem. And they’re close as well. Hibbard, Swan, and Sawyer…they were all almost there.”