The Prestige

by Christopher Priest

  The séance began, as before, with the table-tipping trick, and as luck would have it I found myself standing unavoidably close beside Angier as he readied himself to begin.

  ‘Don’t I know you, sir?’ he said softly and accusingly.

  ‘I think not,’ I replied, trying to make light of it.

  ‘Make a habit of these occasions, do you?’

  ‘No more than you, sir,’ I said, as cuttingly as I could.

  He responded with a disconcerting stare, but as everyone was waiting for him he had no alternative but to begin. I think he knew from that moment that I was there to expose him, but to do him credit he carried out his performance with the same flair I had seen before.

  I was biding my time. It would have been pointless to uncover the secret of the table, but when he began the manifestations from within the cabinet it was tempting to dash across and throw open the door to reveal him inside. Without doubt we would then have seen that his hands were free of the ropes that were supposed to be restraining him, and the trumpet would be found held to his lips or the castanets clicking in his fingers. But I stayed my hand. I judged it best to wait until the emotional tension was at its greatest, when the supposed spirit messages were being sent to and fro. Angier performed this by using small scraps of paper, rolled up into little pellets. The family had earlier written names, objects, family secrets and the like on these scraps, and Angier pretended to read their ‘spirit’ messages by pressing the tiny pellets to his forehead.

  When he had but barely begun I seized my chance. I stepped away from the table, breaking the chain of hands that was supposed to set up a psychic field, and snatched the blind down from the nearest window. Daylight flooded in.

  Angier said, ‘What the devil—?’

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ I cried. ‘This man is an impostor!’

  ‘Sit down, sir!’ The male assistant was moving quickly towards me.

  ‘He is using legerdemain upon you!’ I said emphatically. ‘Look in the hand that hides beneath the table’s surface! There is the secret of the messages he brings you!’

  As the young man threw his arms around my shoulders I saw Angier moving quickly and guiltily to conceal the slip of paper he held, by which the trick was effected. The father of the family, his face contorted by rage and grief, rose from his seat and began to berate me loudly. First one of the children then the others began to wail with unhappiness.

  As I struggled, the oldest boy said plaintively, ‘Where is Mama? She was here! She was here!’

  ‘This man is a charlatan, a liar and a cheat!’ I shouted.

  I was by this time almost at the door, being forced backwards out of the room. I saw the young woman assistant hastening to the window to replace the blind. With a tremendous thrashing of elbows I managed to break free temporarily from my assailant, and lunged across the room at her. I grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her roughly to one side. She sprawled across the floorboards.

  ‘He cannot talk to the dead!’ I cried. ‘Your mother is not here at all!’

  The room was in an uproar.

  ‘Hold him there!’ Angier’s voice was audible above the racket. The male assistant grabbed me a second time, and spun me around so that I was facing into the room. The young woman was still on the floor where she had fallen, and was staring up at me, her face contorted with spite. Angier, standing by the table, was erect and apparently calm. He was staring straight towards me.

  ‘I know you, sir,’ he said. ‘I even know your damned name. I shall henceforward be following your career with the greatest attention.’ Then to his assistant: ‘Get him out of here!’

  Moments later I was sprawling in the street. Mustering as much dignity as I could, and ignoring the gawping passers-by, I straightened my clothes and walked quickly away down the street.

  For a few days afterwards I was sustained by the righteousness of my cause, the knowledge that the family were being robbed of their money, that the skills of the stage magician were being put to warped uses. Then, inevitably, I began to be assailed by doubts.

  The comfort that Angier’s clients gained from the séances seemed genuine enough, no matter how derived. I remembered the faces of those children, who for a few minutes had been led to believe that their lost mother was sending consoling messages from the other side. I had seen their innocent expressions, their smiles, their happy glances at each other.

  Was any of this so different from the pleasurable mystification a magician gives to his music hall audience? Indeed, was it not rather more? Was expecting payment for this any more reprehensible than expecting payment for a performance at a music hall?

  Full of regrets I brooded unhappily for nearly a month, until my conscience reached such depths of guilty feelings that I had to act. I penned an abject note to Angier, begging forgiveness, apologizing unconditionally.

  His response was immediate. He returned my note in shreds, with a note of his own challenging me sarcastically to restore the torn paper with my own superior form of magic.

  Two nights later, while I was performing at the Lewisham Empire, he stood up from the front row of the circle and shouted for all to hear, ‘His female assistant is concealed behind the curtain at the left-hand side of the cabinet!’

  It was of course true. Other than bringing down the main curtain and abandoning my act I had no alternative but to continue with the trick, produce my assistant with as much theatrical brio as possible, then wilt before the trickle of embarrassed applause. In the centre of the circle’s front row an empty seat gaped like a missing tooth.

  So was begun the feud that has continued over the years.

  I can plead only youth and inexperience for starting the feud, a misguided professional zeal, an unfamiliarity with the ways of the world. Angier should shoulder some of the blame; my apology, although not swift enough, was sincerely meant and its rejection was mean-spirited. But then, Angier too was young. It is difficult to think back to that time, because the dispute between us has gone on so long, and has taken so many different forms.

  If I committed both wrong and right at the outset, Angier must accept the blame for keeping the feud alive. Many times, sick of the whole thing, I have tried to get on with my life and career, only to find that some new attack was being mounted against me. Angier would often find a way of sabotaging my magical equipment, so that a production I was attempting on stage went subtly wrong. One night the water I was turning into red wine remained water; another time the string of flags I pulled flamboyantly from an opera hat appeared as string alone; at another performance the lady assistant who was supposed to levitate remained unmovably and mortifyingly on her bed.

  On yet another occasion the placards announcing my act outside the theatre were defaced with ‘The sword he uses is a fake’, ‘The card you will choose is the Queen of Spades’, ‘Watch his left hand during the mirror trick’, and so on. All these graffiti were clearly visible to the audience as they trooped in.

  I suppose these attacks might be dismissed as practical jokes, but they could damage my reputation as a magician, as Angier well knew.

  How did I know he was behind them? Well, in some cases he clearly declared his involvement. If one of my productions had been sabotaged, he would be there in the auditorium to heckle me, leaping to his feet at the very moment things started going wrong. But more significantly the perpetrator of these attacks revealed an approach to magic that I had learned was symptomatic of Angier. He was almost exclusively concerned with the magical secret, what magicians call the ‘gimac’ or ‘gimmick’. If a trick depended on a concealed shelf behind the magician’s table, that alone would be the focus of Angier’s interest, not the imaginative use to which it might be put. No matter what else might cause strife between us, it was Angier’s fundamentally flawed and limited understanding of magical technique that was at the heart of our dispute. The wonder of magic lies not in the technical secret, but in the skill with which it is performed.

  And it was for t
his reason that THE NEW TRANSPORTED MAN was the one illusion of mine he never publicly attacked. It was beyond him. He simply could not work out how it was done, partly because I have kept the secret secure, but mostly because of the way in which I perform it.

  16

  An illusion has three stages.

  First there is the setup, in which the nature of what might be attempted is hinted at, or suggested, or explained. The apparatus is seen. Volunteers from the audience sometimes participate in the preparation. As the trick is being set up, the magician will make every possible use of misdirection.

  The performance is where the magician’s lifetime of practice, and his innate skill as a performer, conjoin to produce the magical display.

  The third stage is sometimes called the effect, or the prestige, and this is the product of magic. If a rabbit is pulled from a hat, the rabbit, which apparently did not exist before the trick was performed, can be said to be the prestige of that trick.

  THE NEW TRANSPORTED MAN is fairly unusual among illusions in that the setup and performance are what most intrigue audiences, critics and my magical colleagues, while for me, the performer, the prestige is the main preoccupation.

  Illusions fall into different categories or types, of which there are only six (setting aside the specialist field of mentalist illusion). Every trick that has ever been performed falls into one or more of the following categories:

  1. Production: the magical creation of somebody or something out of nothing,

  2. Disappearance: the magical vanishing of somebody or something into nothing,

  3. Transformation: the apparent changing of one thing into another,

  4. Transposition: the apparent changing of place of two or more objects,

  5. Defiance of Natural Laws: for example, seeming to defeat gravity, making one solid object appear to pass through another, producing a large number of objects or people from a source apparently too small to have held them, and

  6. Secret Motive Power: causing objects to appear to move of their own will, such as making a chosen playing card rise mysteriously out of the pack.

  THE NEW TRANSPORTED MAN is not entirely typical, because it uses at least four of the above categories. Most stage illusions depend on only one or two. I once saw an elaborate effect on the Continent where five of the categories were employed.

  Finally, there are the techniques of magic.

  The methods available to magicians cannot be so neatly categorised as the other elements, because when it comes to technique a good magician will not disdain anything. Magical technique can be as simple as the placing of one object behind another so that it may no longer be seen by the audience, and it can be so complex that it requires advance setting up in the theatre and the collusion of a team of assistants and stooges.

  The magician can choose from an inventory of traditional techniques. The playing cards that have been ‘gimmicked’ so that one or more cards will be forced into use, the eye-dazzling backcloth that allows much necessary magical business to go on unnoticed, the black-painted table or prop that the audience cannot see properly, dummies and doubles and stooges and substitutes and blinds. And an inventive magician will embrace novelty. Any new device or toy or invention that comes into the world should provoke the thought: ‘How could I make a new trick with that?’ Thus, in the recent past we have seen new tricks that employ the reciprocating engine, the telephone, electricity, and one remarkable effect memorably created with Dr Warble’s smoke-bomb toy.

  Magic has no mystery to magicians. We work variations of standard methods. What will seem new or baffling to an audience is simply a technical challenge for other professionals. If an innovative new illusion is developed, it is only a matter of time before the effect is reproduced by others.

  Every illusion can be explained, be it by the use of a concealed compartment, by an adroitly placed mirror, by an assistant planted in the audience to act as ‘volunteer’, or by simple misdirection of the audience’s attention.

  Now I hold my hands before you, fingers spread so that you can see nothing is concealed within them, and say: THE NEW TRANSPORTED MAN is an illusion like every other, and it can be explained. But by a combination of a simple secret that has been kept securely, many years of practice, a certain amount of audience misdirection, and the use of conventional magic techniques it has become the keystone of my act and my career.

  It has also defied Angier’s best efforts to penetrate its mystery, as I shall soon record.

  17

  Sarah and I have been with the children on a short holiday along the south coast, & I took my notebook with me.

  We went first to Hastings, because it is years since I was there, but we did not stay long. The place has started a decline that I fear will prove irreversible. Father’s yard, which was sold on his death, has been sold again. Now it is a bakery. A lot of houses have been built in the valley behind the house, & a railway line to Ashford is soon to run through.

  After Hastings we went to Bexhill. Then to Eastbourne. Then to Brighton. Then to Bognor.

  My first comment on the notebook is that it was I who tried to humiliate Angier, & I, in turn, who was humiliated by him. Other than this detail, which is after all not too important, I think my account of what happened is accurate, even in its other details.

  I am putting in a lot of comments about the secret, & therefore making much of it. This strikes me as ironic, after I went to such pains to emphasise how trivial most magical secrets really are.

  I do not think my secret is trivial. It is easily guessed, as Angier has apparently done, in spite of what I have written. Others have probably guessed too.

  Anyone who reads this narrative will probably work it out for themselves.

  What cannot be guessed is the effect the secret has had on my life. This is the real reason Angier will never solve the whole mystery, unless I myself give him the answer. He would never credit the extent to which my life has been shaped towards holding the secret intact. That is what matters.

  So long as I can continue to monitor how it is being written, then I may proceed with my account of how the illusion looks to the audience.

  18

  THE NEW TRANSPORTED MAN is an illusion whose appearance has changed over the years, but whose method has always remained the same.

  It has progressively involved two cabinets, or two boxes, or two tables, or two benches. One is situated in the downstage area, the other is upstage. The exact positioning is not crucial, and will vary from one theatre to the next, depending on the size and shape of the stage area. The only important feature of their positioning is that both pieces should be clearly and widely separated from each other. The apparatus is brightly lit and in full view of the audience from beginning to end.

  I shall describe the oldest, and therefore the simplest, version of the trick, when I was using closed cabinets. At that time I called the illusion THE TRANSPORTED MAN.

  Then, as now, my act was brought to its climax with this illusion, and only details have changed since. I shall therefore describe it as if the early version were still in my current act.

  Both cabinets are brought on to the stage, either by scene-shifters, assistants or in some cases volunteer members of the audience and both are shown to be empty. Volunteers are allowed to step through them, open not only the doors but the hinged rear walls, and peer into the wheeled space below. The cabinets are rolled to their respective positions and closed.

  After a short, humorous preamble (delivered in my French accent) about the desirability of being in two places at once, I go to the nearer of the two cabinets, the first, and open the door.

  It is, of course, still empty. I take a large, brightly coloured inflatable ball from my props table, and bounce it a couple of times to show how vigorously it moves. I step into the first cabinet, leaving the door open for the time being.

  Reaching out through the door I bounce the ball in the direction of the second cabinet.

  From within, I
slam closed the door of the first cabinet.

  From within, I push open the door of the second cabinet, and step out. I catch the ball as it bounces towards me.

  As the ball enters my hands the first cabinet collapses, the door and three walls folding out dramatically to show that it is completely empty.

  Holding the ball I step forward to the footlights, and acknowledge my applause.

  19

  Let me briefly rehearse my life and career up to the last years of the century.

  By the time I was 18 I had left home and was working the music halls as a full-time magician. However, even with help from Mr Maskelyne, jobs were hard to find, and I became neither famous nor rich and I did not earn my own place on the bill for several years. Much of the stage work I did was assisting other magicians with their performances, but for a long time I paid the rent by designing and building cabinets and other magical apparatus. My father’s cabinet-making training stood me in good stead. I built a reputation as a reliable inventor and ingénieur of stage illusions.

  In 1879 my mother died, followed a year later by my father.

  By the end of the 1880s, when I was in my early thirties, I had developed my own solo act and adopted the stage name Le Professeur de Magie. I regularly performed THE TRANSPORTED MAN in its various early forms.

  Although the working of the illusion was never a problem, I was for a long time dissatisfied with the stage effects. It always seemed to me that closed cabinets were not sufficiently mysterious to raise audience expectations of peril and impossibility. In the context of stage magic such cabinets are commonplace. I gradually found ways of elaborating the illusion; first to boxes that looked barely large enough to hold me, later to tables with concealing flaps, then finally, in a bravura move to ‘open’ magic, much applauded in magic circles at the time, I used flat benches on which my body could be seen by everyone in the audience up to the moment of transformation.