The Last Days of Night

Paul and Westinghouse spend the next few weeks requesting aid from all the New York moneymen and connections they can think of. They promise that the Westinghouse Electric Company has adopted a more frugal approach, halting new design and focusing on existing products.

They emphasize the difference between themselves and Edison, with the “bottomless war chest that J.P. Morgan provided’’ (250). They abandon even the new light bulb design. Many financiers refuse them, citing that everything depends on victory over Edison. If Edison wins and direct current becomes the standard, alternating current will be a terminal pursuit.

The pair manage to secure some investments, however, and the company’s life is extended by a few weeks. Paul and his colleagues unanimously vote to suspend their own legal fees, not knowing if they’ll ever be paid. Paul continues paying his associate attorneys in secret, from his own pocket and from embezzled funds from the firm.

Agnes visits Paul at his office one day. Neither of them has reached out or written since they last saw each other on the train platform in Nashville. Both are hurt by the other’s silence. She asks about Tesla, who Paul has received cryptic updates about via Erastus. Since his mail may be intercepted, Erastus’s letters refer to Tesla as sunflowers in his garden: “His most recent letter had said that the flowers were blooming nicely. Not as tall as he’d hoped, but they were showing their color” (252).

Agnes praises Paul’s cleverness, to his joy. She tells him that Jayne is taking her on a trip to France, most likely to propose. She doesn’t say whether she’ll accept when he asks but defends Jayne’s character. She may stop singing professionally, she says, “I can sing for anyone” (253), when Paul asks if she will quit for Jayne. They are both very emotional in this conversation.

Agnes wipes her tears and tells Paul some information she’s gleaned from Jayne. In addition to owning 60% of Edison General Electric, J.P. Morgan possesses parts of almost half the companies on the New York Stock Exchange. He’s offered favorable turns to financiers who don’t invest in Westinghouse.

Morgan’s power is almost unfathomable to Agnes and Paul, both wondering how he knew who Paul would approach. Paul muses on the seeming hopelessness of their case against such stark opponents. He won’t give up, however. Agnes and Paul have a tender goodbye, with Agnes lingering in the doorway, holding his hand for a significant moment before pulling away.

The global banking system begins to shift, teetering into possible worldwide depression. The Bank of England tries to secure the Baring Brothers’ losses, but even their backings prove insufficient. New York doesn’t go down with London, however. Due to record wheat production in the U.S., the New York stock exchange experiences unprecedented highs.

Even so, fewer and fewer are investing in Westinghouse: “[T]he three-card monte that Paul had been playing as he shuffled Westinghouse’s debts from investor to investor was revealing itself for the cheap trick that it had been” (256-57). Money is drying up. What seems like triumph is turning into bankruptcy. The safety of A/C is becoming more widely accepted and large municipalities are choosing Westinghouse’s generators over Edison’s, but the expenses are too great to overcome.

Paul and his partners make the seemingly unconscious decision to prepare Westinghouse’s company for bankruptcy. They concentrate on keeping Westinghouse’s successful and lucrative rail air brake business separate from his failing electrical endeavors so that Westinghouse won’t lose his house.

The paperwork is drawn up in less than a week, an unemotional and disassociated business ordeal, to Paul. He is emotionally distant from his own uncertain future in light of this huge step. The only thing left to do is tell Westinghouse.

Paul travels to Pittsburgh to deliver the news to Westinghouse that they must file for bankruptcy. He feels like a failure, reflecting on his bright potential as a young prodigy, his early accomplishments, and how he’s squandered the opportunities given him.

He blames the loss on himself, noting that Westinghouse took big gambles in business that turned out to be correct. Paul believes this to be the end of his career as a lawyer.

Thinking this will be the last time he sets foot in Westinghouse’s estate, Paul can’t bring himself to step through the doorway into his study: “Westinghouse was seated at his enormous desk. He was absorbed in diagrams of some sort. Mechanical designs that, most likely, would never come into being” (260). He distractedly bids Paul enter.

Just as he’s about to deliver the news, the butler brings Paul an urgent telegram. It’s from Agnes (signed by her true initials: A.G.) cryptically stating that something extraordinary has happened with Tesla: “‘The Tennessee sunflowers have bloomed,’ the message read. ‘They are the most beautiful sight. You must see them for yourself. Please come to Nashville posthaste’” (261).

Agnes is at Paul’s parents’ home in Nashville. Paul arrives, asking confrontationally about Tesla, who is not home. Agnes is wearing a huge diamond engagement ring.

Tesla has been corresponding with Wilhelm Roentgen, a scientist at the University of Würzburg. The German scientist wants to meet with Tesla on his next trip to America. Tesla has told him he needs permission from Agnes first. Agnes and Tesla have become family.

Paul is angry that Tesla has been communicating with the outside world, especially within the close-knit scientific community. He worries that this puts Tesla at great risk. Agnes calmly insists that is the reason she is there: to make sure Tesla is still safe.

Tesla has created something “magical.” Paul asks if it’s the new lightbulb he’s been working on. Ruth suggests they visit Tesla’s laboratory, to Paul’s surprise, “Agnes turned to Erastus. ‘You should tell him,’ she said to Paul’s father. ‘It was your idea’” (263-64).

Erastus takes Paul and Agnes to Tesla’s laboratory in the basement of one of Fisk’s buildings. Though only 25 years old or so, the university already hosts over a thousand students. Paul reflects on his father founding the school for former slaves and how much it has thrived.

Tesla’s laboratory is spotless and well-organized, as are the appearances of his student assistants, huddled around something on a table. On the table is a large silver plate and metallic tube, attached to a generator. Tesla has one student, Robert, lie on the table with one of his legs raised. Another student turns on the generator. Nothing seems to happen. Robert stays completely still for 20 seconds or so. Finally, Tesla triumphantly declares that it’s worked, and Robert gets off the table. The plate begins to turn black. Tesla notices his visitors for the first time and welcomes them into the room. A white image has begun to develop on the black surface of the plate. It’s Robert’s femur.

Tesla has invented the X-ray, which he calls a shadowgraph:

Quietly, in secret, from an impromptu subterranean laboratory in the Tennessee plains, Tesla had teamed with the precocious sons of the southern freemen to engineer wonders stranger than anything Edison and his well-heeled peers might have dreamed (269).

Paul sees Tesla and his students of former enslavement as a distinctly second-generation American kind of ingenuity. This creativity, intelligence, and curiosity cannot be harnessed by Edison’s intimidation nor his checkbook: “Paul wanted always to live in an America in which Thomas Edison would fear a smart kid in a basement whose father had harvested enough cotton that his son might harvest volts” (269).

Paul praises Tesla’s invention and asks if it can help in his lightbulb patent case. Tesla nearly laughs, asking who cares about the lightbulb anymore: we already have them. Paul is disheartened. Tesla is the only one who can save Paul’s case and his career. He wonders if Tesla cares about him as Paul cares about Tesla. Paul tells Tesla the entire story of the case, hoping to impress upon Tesla the importance of his alternating current work. Paying attention to his father’s reaction, Paul sees neither sympathy nor pity in Erastus’s face.

When he’s finished telling his story, Robert speaks up. He paraphrases one of Tesla’s lessons. There are two types of problems: known and unknown. Known problems have been struggled over already, getting solved or not. Unknown problems are new, uncharted, and unthought of to tackle until now. He asks Paul what kind of problem this is. Paul begins to answer that his problem with Edison is unknown, since Edison hasn’t lost before. Then he remembers that Edison has lost before, and Robert tells him he should consult the person who “solved” the problem before. Thus, inspiring Paul to ring up Alexander Graham Bell on the telephone. Only, Bell doesn’t have a telephone.