Momma took it and held it out toward Jason. “Take a look through this and we’ll talk.”
Hands behind his back as though afraid to touch the proffered book, Jason retreated a step. “No thanks. I’m behind in my reading as it is. My Kindle is loaded up. Besides, we really don’t have anything to talk about. I’m retired. I mean it this time.”
Undeterred, Momma laid the volume in the seat of the chair she had occupied. “Take it as a gift. Retired, you got plenty of time before Dr. Bergenghetti — Maria — comes back, certainly enough to at least look through it.” She glanced around the room, taking mental inventory. “Not like you got anything else to do. You don’t even have a TV.”
True. The European Yagi aerial got blown off the roof in the first week of Jason’s residency, ending what fuzzy reception it provided. He detested the ugly mushroom-on-steroids dishes required for satellite, which provided equally poor service during the six-month rainy season. And, even when functioning, the viewing menu might as well have consisted of events on Mars: soccer, foreign language reruns of American sit-coms and films, and news from world capitals on CNN Europe. TV on Sark was a classic example of something not worth the effort.
“That’s a blessing, not a hardship.”
Momma pointed to the book as Samedi opened the door. The howl of the wind all but drowned her out. “At least take a look.”
Jason started to reply, but she was gone.
11
Nikola Tesla was born in humble circumstances in Smiljan, Lika, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now Croatia, on July 10, 1856. His father, Milutin, was an Orthodox priest and his mother, Djuka Mandic, an inventor in her own right of household appliances. Young Nikola attended the Polytechnic Institute in Graz, Austria, and the University of Prague, where he became fascinated with electricity. He was working for a telephone company in Budapest when he conceived the idea of a rotary magnetic field, an idea that would play a significant role in his later life.
Having been employed by the Continental Edison Company in Paris, he emigrated to the United States in 1884 to work with the great American inventor. It was during this association that a divergence of opinion began. Edison had invested millions in producing direct current (DC). The alternating current (AC) invented by Tesla obviated the need for power stations every two miles. Alternating current, by its very nature, moves back and forth, needing little of the “boost” required by direct current.
Edison refused to pay the bonus he had promised should his young protégé be able to improve Edison’s system. Outraged, Tesla quit. Recognizing genius, George Westinghouse hired the young émigré and the “Battle of the Currents” was on.
Edison’s propaganda described direct current as flowing “smoothly, like a river while alternating current runs roughly like rapids,” although this simile’s influence on the public is unclear. To make his point, Edison even arranged the first execution by electricity, having the warden of a prison employ alternating current instead of hanging before a horrified press corps. The anticipated national revulsion against alternating current did not occur.
Propaganda or not, alternating current was selected to illuminate the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, and, subsequently, streets and homes across the country.
The battle was over.
12
Recently published novel in hand, Jason was swaddled in a comforter, a mummy wrapped in eiderdown, stretched out on the bed that occupied the sole room of the cottage’s upstairs. Corelli’s Concerto Grosso No. 4 in D Major filled the room, violins punctuated with occasional brass. Fundamental order, yet tuneful, sometimes exuberant. The sound came from a turntable playing a 33⅓ LP vinyl record. CDs were digital, records analog. Since actual sound is analog, digital reproduction is like comparing a photograph to the real thing. Jason’s ear could distinguish between the two.
The kitchen downstairs had been quiet for some time now. Mrs. Prince had done the supper dishes and gone home for the night. The snow had turned to sleet, now clicking against the window panes in the language of winter. The room’s gas heater whispered in conversation with Pangloss’s rhythmic snores from his hooked rug in a corner. There was an occasional low growl as the dog stretched, pursuing a mole through doggy dreamland. Robespierre was somewhere in the house, conducting his solitary nocturnal patrol.
Jason surprised himself by not nodding off within minutes after a day of travel followed by his hike through the snow. He put down the book and looked around the room. Whether it was Momma’s observation about being bored in Maria’s absence; the span of empty, cold sheet beside him; or his rare feeling of loneliness, he couldn’t concentrate on the book’s plot line.
His eyes went to the pine table that served as a desk and the volume on one corner, the book Momma had left. Maybe… Nah, no reason to even think about getting involved in whatever problem Narcom was handling.
Momma had charmed Maria at their first and only meeting; but, then, Maria had no idea of what Momma and her company did. If she had an inkling of the mayhem caused by the woman with the radiant smile, knew of the volume of blood on those huge hands that had given Maria’s arms a friendly squeeze, heard the death sentences uttered in the same mellifluous voice that had made small talk, Jason’s mere association with Momma would be grounds for Maria’s final and permanent departure. She had all but left him a year or two ago when an unfortunately placed TV camera had implicated Jason in the assassination of an African dictator. That and nearly getting her killed in Sardinia within the early months of their relationship.
Maria believed that there was always a peaceful solution no matter how many times she was proved wrong. An English language bumper sticker on the Fiat she owned when they first met proclaimed war is not the answer. That, of course, depended on the question. Like so many who believed in ideals rather than reality, she insisted if one side to a dispute simply refused to resort to violence, the other would follow suit. Violence, no matter the justification, was simply evil, brutish, and unacceptable. Jason supposed that, at some time in his life, he might have held views equally idealistic. He just couldn’t remember when or what they were.
No doubt about it: Any further involvement with Narcom that Maria discovered would be his third and final strike.
Wait a minute.
It was the ever-annoying voice inside his head again.
On the average of every couple of months, Maria takes off to some place to observe a volcanic eruption.
“So? That’s what volcanologists do,” Jason retorted, unaware he was speaking out loud.
In his corner, Pangloss opened one eye, assured himself nothing requiring action was taking place, and resumed his snoring.
So, what do you do? the voice persisted.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, I paint. Make almost enough selling in the galleries in Guernsey and Jersey to pay the rent here.”
Swell. Maria studied, became a volcanologist, has a job with the Italian government, doing…?
“Like most people in the field, she hopes by studying eruptions, they might find some way to predict them. You can see why that might be of interest to the Italians.”
And you were trained…?
Jason saw where this was going. “I’ve retired from what I was trained to do. Now I paint.”