A story by Yordie Sands
Copyright © 2012

Annabella Portabello (née Gallachi) was far too young to be a widow. She had immigrated to America with her husband in 1880 and he died in 1882.

Annabella Portabello 1884

She was an educated lady, schooled in the manner of young women of her class. In university, she had special interests in languages and religions, and wrote papers about religions of the world.

She was petite and had classic Italian features with naturally wavy, brown hair, and brown eyes. She was a beautiful woman.

Her marriage had been a marriage of love, yet her parents arranged the meeting of the couple.

The loss of her husband left Annabella with significant personal wealth including vast land holdings in Florida. However, her own family remained in Italy, and her husband family consisted of his aging mother only. She had few friends due to her trustee attorneys and servants dedication to protecting her from the unscrupulous. In a deep sense, her wealth and protection left her lost in the cold anonymity of New York City.

Her church became increasingly important in her life, and advisors introduced Annabella to various groups catering to the wealthy. In time, she found enjoyment is the work she did for charitable causes. And increasingly her interest in helping others led her to a group she identified with strongly, an organization established to assist promising immigrants in finding a sound beginning in America. It was in her work with this group that she found her purpose.

On June 4th, 1884, Annabella and her attendants waited at a New York port of entry station for a well-educated young Serbian man, Nicola Tesla. The man came to her attention through a business associate of her husband, Charles Batchelor. They had made arrangements to provide the young man with a paid room for a full week. Nonetheless, Annabella had taken to meeting her beneficiaries personally, greeting them, and giving them information and useful items, plus a small stipend.

The moment Annabella found Mr. Tesla, it was clear that he was profoundly exhausted from his trip. And in a moment of compassion, she took personal responsibility for the weakened man. Instead to taking him to the hotel, she directed her entourage to escort him to her home in Manhattan.

The chef prepared a fine meal and Mr. Tesla and his host dined quietly. Nicola was very hungry and as he ate, his strength and spirit improved. Servants treated him as an honored guest, and after his meal he was encouraged to bathe in the luxurious spa. Nicola, being a man of cleanliness, welcomed the opportunity to bathe. And he found the bath cool and soothing in the heat of summer. After his bath, the butler escorted Nicola to the guest room which had been prepared for him. A cool breezes freshened the room and for a moment he felt recovered, then his sense of exhaustion hit again. He went to his bed, collapsed and fell quickly into troubled sleep.

And this story would be of no significance, except what happened that night.

{the final part tomorrow}

A story by Yordie Sands
Copyright © 2012

Nicola Tesla

At the beginning of the twenty-first century the ideas of an eccentric scientist, born in the nineteenth century, were being rediscovered and reexamined for application in modern technology.

The man had been a penniless immigrant to America in the 1880s, but within a year he invented a technology that changed the world.

His name was Nicola Tesla and not only was he a genius, but he was a human being whose mind functioned in higher dimensions.

It was Tesla, not Edison, who invented the technology used for commercial electricity, Alternating Current. However, it took Tesla most of his life to win the rights to his patents.

Tesla pioneered scientific exploration in electromagnetism, and his discoveries led him outside the focus of his universe and far ahead in time. The War Department even contracted with Tesla to develop secret weapons, including a death ray. And when he died, the FBI seized 80 trunks worth of Tesla’s papers and possessions, to assure they wouldn’t fall into unfriendly hands.

Tesla was an extraordinary man on many levels, with rare abilities including the gift of being able to visualize completed  inventions in his mind. He also has a mental condition which enhanced his perceptions, Synesthesia.  His mind was a gift to mankind, but as in today’s world, few truly understood abilities they themselves do not possess.

In a controlled and deliberate way, Nicola Tesla was a man obsessed. He lived for his work to the exclusion of  physical pleasures. Yet, he was a lover of poetry, and a poet. He was a vegetarian who believed food should be grown and not killed. He believed in selective breeding. He found women’s subservience to men to be wrong and believed our world would be run by women in the future, by “Queen Bees.”

And Tesla denied himself sexual pleasures. A self-declared asexual, he asserted that his ”chastity” gave him the drive for discovery and invention. Some questioned Tesla’s sexuality. Some assumed he was perhaps a sexual deviant. However, in studies and biographies, there has never been evidence of this.

Tesla could have been a man of great wealth. But his battles over patents, especially with Edison, and failed enterprises left him impoverished at the end of his life.

Tesla’s lived on an extreme edge throughout his life. In younger years, he suffered a mental breakdown. In his final years he was troubled by conditions of sensory overload. And yet he lived to the age of 86. When Tesla died, he died alone in a small hotel room.

Much is known about Tesla and his vast body of  work. His life has been and continues to be studied and analyzed. However, a single extraordinary event in Tesla’s life has remained secret.

(to be continued tomorrow)

I’m ready to begin telling stories related to my novel. I’m using the seemingly esoteric title Repubblica, for now, and all stories will be collected in the “Republica” tab.

The stories introduce background material for the novel, but also are experiments in writing in this blogging format. I hope this work will lead to actual writing and form a foundation for the novel. All of the work related to the novel will be collected in the ”Repubblica” tab.

The first story, The Penniless Man, is about ready. It will be about 1,500 words presented in three parts. I’ve serialized it because I’m trying to “keep it brief” to use Mr. Crap Mariner expression. And while this is not brief by his standard, we’ll just have to see how this goes.