I scoured this notice, and a shorter one that appeared in the Morning Post, for what information I might at last discover about him, but there was little that was new to me.
I had already suspected he was ill. The last time I saw him in the flesh he had a frail look about him, and I guessed he was the victim of some debilitating chronic ailment.
I can summarise the published obituaries, which I have before me as I write. He was born in Derbyshire in 1857, but moved to London at a young age, where he had subsequently worked for many years as an illusionist and prestidigitator, achieving a considerable measure of success. He had performed his act throughout the British Isles and Europe, and had toured the New World three times, the last occasion being earlier this year. He was credited with inventing several notable stage illusions, in particular one called BRIGHT MORNING (it involved releasing an assistant from what appeared to be a sealed flask held in full view of the audience), and this had been widely imitated. More recently, he had successfully devised an illusion called IN A FLASH, which he was performing at the time of the fatal accident. A master of legerdemain, Angier had been a popular performer at small or private gatherings. He was married, had fathered a son and two daughters, and until the end had lived with his family in the Highgate area of London. He had been performing regularly until the accident which led to his death.
30
It gives me no pleasure to write of Angier’s death. It has come as a tragic climax to a sequence of events which had been building up for more than two years. I disdained to record any of them because, I regret to say, they had threatened to renew the unpleasantness that existed between us.
As I noted earlier, I had reached a state of pleasant equilibrium and stability in my life and career. I felt and sincerely believed that should Angier make any kind of attack or reprisal against me I could merely shrug it off. Indeed, I had every reason to believe that the trail of false clues offered in Olive’s note to him was a concluding action between us. It was intended to put him off course, to send him searching for a secret that did not exist.
The fact that he vanished from my awareness for more than two years suggested my ruse had worked.
However, soon after I had completed the first part of this narrative I happened to notice a magazine review of a show taking place at the Finsbury Park Empire. Rupert Angier was one of the acts, and by all accounts was low on the bill. The notice mentioned him only in passing, observing ‘it is good to acknowledge that his talent remains undimmed’. This in itself suggested that his career had been going through a hiatus.
Two or three months later, all had changed. One of the magic journals featured an interview with him, even publishing a photographic picture of him alongside. One of the daily newspapers referred in an editorial to the ‘revival of the prestidigitator’s art’, pointing out that numerous magical acts were once again topping the bill in our music halls. Rupert Angier was mentioned by name, although so were several others.
Later still, because of the necessary delays in producing such things, one of the subscription magic journals published a detailed article about Angier. It described his present act as a triumphant departure in the art of open magic. His new illusion, called IN A FLASH, was singled out for special mention, and for expert critical acclaim. It was said to set new standards of technical brilliance, being such that unless Mr Angier himself chose to reveal the secrets of its workings, it was unlikely that any other illusionist would be able to reproduce its effect, at least in the foreseeable future. The same article mentioned that IN A FLASH was a significant development from ‘previous efforts’ in the field of transference illusions, and there was a slighting reference not only to THE NEW TRANSPORTED MAN but also to myself.
I tried, I honestly tried, to disregard such aggravation, but these mentions in the press were only the first of many to come. Unquestionably, Rupert Angier was at the top of our profession.
Naturally, I felt I should do something about it. Much of my work in recent months had involved touring, concentrating on smaller clubs and theatres in the provinces. I decided that to re-establish myself I needed a season at a prominent London theatre as a showcase for my skills. Such was the interest in stage illusions at this time that my booking agent had little difficulty arranging what promised to be a major show. The venue was the Lyric Theatre in the Strand, and I was placed top of the bill at a variety show scheduled to run for a week in September 1902.
We opened to a house that was half empty, and the next day our press notices were few and far between. Only three newspapers even mentioned me by name, and the least unfavourable comment referred to me as ‘a proponent of a style of magic remarkable more for its nostalgic value than its innovative flair’. The houses for the next two nights were almost empty, and the show closed halfway through the week.
31
I decided I had to see Angier’s new illusion for myself, and when I heard at the end of October that he was starting a two-week residence at the Hackney Empire I quietly bought myself a ticket in the stalls. The Empire is a deep, narrow theatre, with long constricted aisles and an auditorium kept fairly well in the dark throughout the performance, so it exactly suited my purposes. My seat had a good view of the stage, but I was not so close that Angier was likely to spot me there.
I took no exception to the main part of his performance, in which he competently performed illusions from the standard magical repertoire. His style was good, his patter amusing, his assistant beautiful, and his showmanship above average. He was dressed in a well-made evening suit, and his hair was smartly brilliantined to a high gloss. It was during this part of his act, though, that I first observed the wasting that was affecting his face, and saw other clues that suggested an unwell state. He moved stiffly, and several times favoured his left arm as if it were weaker than the other.
Finally, after an admittedly amusing routine that involved a message written by a member of the audience appearing inside a sealed envelope, Angier came to the closing illusion. He began with a serious speech, which I scribbled down quickly into my notebook. Here is what he said:
Ladies and Gentlemen! As the new century moves apace we see around us on every side the miracles of science. These wonders multiply almost every day. By the end of the new century, which few here tonight shall live to see, what marvels will prevail? Men might fly, men might speak across oceans, men might travel across the firmament. Yet no miracle which science may produce can compare with the greatest wonders of all . . . the human mind and the human body.
Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I shall attempt a magical feat that brings together the wonders of science and the wonders of the human mind. No other stage performer in the world can reproduce what you are about to witness for yourself!
With this he raised his good arm theatrically, and the curtains were swept apart. There, waiting in the limelight, was the apparatus I had come to see.
It was substantially larger than I had expected. Magicians normally prefer to work with compactly built apparatus so as to heighten the mystery of the uses to which they are put. Angier’s equipment practically filled the stage area.
In the centre of the stage was an arrangement of three long metal legs, joined tripodally at the apex and supporting a shining metal globe about a foot and a half in diameter. There was just room beneath the apex of the tripod for a man to stand. Immediately above the apex, and below the globe, was a cylindrical wooden and metal contraption firmly attached to the joint. This cylinder was made of wooden slats with distinct gaps between them, and wound around hundreds of times with thin filaments of wires. From where I was sitting, I judged the cylinder to be at least four feet in height, and perhaps as many in diameter. It was slowly rotating, and catching and reflecting the stage lights into our eyes. Shards of light prowled the walls of the auditorium.
Surrounding the contraption, at a radial distance of about ten feet was a second circle of eight metal slats, again much wound around with wires. These were standing on
the surface of the stage and concentric to the tripod. The slats were widely and evenly spaced, with a large gap between each one. The audience could see clearly into the main part of the apparatus.
I was totally unprepared for this, as I had been expecting some kind of magical cabinet of the same general size as the ones I used. Angier’s apparatus was so immense that there was no room anywhere on the stage for a second concealing cabinet.
My magician’s brain started racing, trying to anticipate what the illusion was to be, how it might differ from my own, and where the secret might lie. First impression – surprise at the sheer size of it. Second impression – the remarkable workaday quality of the apparatus. With the exception of the rotating cylinder just above the apex, there was no use of bright colours, distracting lights or areas of deliberate black. Most of the contraption appeared to be made of unvarnished wood or unbrightened metal. There were cords and wires running off in several directions. Third impression – no hint of what was to come. I have no idea what the apparatus was intended to look like. Magical apparatus often assumes commonplace shapes, to misdirect the audience. It will look like an ordinary table, for example, or a flight of steps, or a cabin trunk, but Angier’s equipment made no concessions to familiarity.
Angier began his performance of the trick.
There appeared to be no mirrors on stage. Every part of the apparatus could be seen directly, and as Angier went through his preparations he roamed about the stage, walking through each of the gaps, passing momentarily behind the slats, always visible, always moving. I watched his legs, often the part of an illusionist’s anatomy to observe closely when he moves around and particularly behind his apparatus (an inexplicable movement can indicate the presence of a mirror or some other device), but Angier’s walk was relaxed and normal. There appeared to be no trapdoors that he could use. The stage was covered in a single large rubber sheet, making access to the mezzanine floor beneath the stage difficult.
Most curious of all, there was no apparent rationale to the illusion. Magical apparatus normally serves to set up or misdirect audience expectations. It consists of the box that is obviously too small to contain a human being (yet will turn out to do so), or the sheet of steel that apparently cannot be penetrated, or the locked trunk from which it would be impossible to escape. In every case, the illusionist confounds the exact assumptions that his audience has made from their own assessment of what they see before them. Angier’s equipment looked like nothing ever seen before, and it was impossible to guess what it might be from simply looking at it.
Meanwhile, Angier strode around his stage set, still invoking the mysteries of science and life.
He resumed centre stage, and faced his audience.
‘Good sirs, mesdames, I request of one of you, a volunteer. You need not fear for what might happen. I require you for a simple act of verification only.’
He stood in the glare of the footlights, leaning invitingly towards the members of the audience in the first rows of the fauteuils. I suppressed a sudden mad urge to rush forward and volunteer myself, so that I might have a closer look at his machinery, but I knew that if I should do so Angier would instantly recognise me, and probably bring his performance to a premature close.
After the usual nervous hesitation a man stepped forward and mounted the stage by the side ramp. As he did so, one of Angier’s assistants walked on to the stage, carrying a tray laden with several articles, the purpose of which soon became apparent, as each one offered a means of marking or identifying. There were two or three wells filled with different coloured inks; there was a bowl of flour; there were some chalks; there were sticks of charcoal. Angier invited the volunteer to choose one, and when the man selected the bowl of flour, Angier turned his back on him and invited him to tip it across the back of his jacket. This the man did, with a cloud of white that drifted spectacularly in the stage lights.
Angier turned again to face the audience, and asked the volunteer to select one of the inks. The man chose the red. Angier held out his floury hands so that red ink might be poured across them.
Now distinctively marked, Angier requested the man to return to his seat. The stage lights dimmed, but for one brilliant shaft of light from a spot.
There was an unearthly crackling noise, as if the air itself were being split asunder, and to my amazement a bolt of blue-white electrical discharge abruptly curled out and away from the shining globe. The arc moved with a horrid suddenness and arbitrariness, dashing about inside the arena enclosed by the outer slats, into which Angier himself now walked. The crackling and snapping of the bolt seemed blessed with a vicious life of its own.
The electrical discharge abruptly doubled, then tripled, with the extra bolts snaking around, as if searching the enclosed space. One inevitably found Angier and instantly wrapped itself around him, seeming to illumine him with cyanic light that glowed not only around his body but also from within. He welcomed the shot of electricity, raising his good arm, turning about, allowing the snaking, hissing fire to encircle him and surround him.
More bolts of electricity appeared, fizzing malignantly around him. He disregarded these as he had disregarded the others. Each seemed to attack him in turn; one would snap back away from him like a raised whip, allowing another, or two others, to blaze across him and lash his body with ever-contorting fire.
The smell of this discharge was soon assaulting the audience. I breathed it with the others, mentally reeling from thoughts of what it might contain. It had an unearthly, atomic quality, as if it represented the liberation of a force hitherto forbidden to man, and now, released, exhaled the stench of sheer energy rampant.
As more streaming arcs of electricity swooped about him, Angier moved to the tripod at the heart of the inferno, directly beneath the source. Once here he seemed safe. Apparently unable or unwilling to double back on themselves, the brilliant arcs of light snapped away from him, and with ferocious bangs impacted on the larger, outer slats. In moments, each of these had one arc reaching across to it, fizzing and spitting with restless animation, but contained in its place.
So these eight dazzling streamers formed a kind of canopy above the arena in which Angier stood, alone. The spotlight was suddenly extinguished, and all other stage lights had been dimmed. He was illuminated only by the light that fell on him from the incandescent discharge. He stood immobile, his good arm raised, his head barely an inch or so below the metal cylinder whence all the electricity emanated. He was saying something, a declaration to the audience, but one that was lost to me in the noisy commotion that scorched the air above him.
He lowered his arms, and for two or three seconds stood in silence, submitting to the awful spectacle he had made.
Then he vanished.
One moment Angier was there; the next he was not. His apparatus made a shrieking, tearing sound, and appeared to shake, but with his going the bright shards of energy instantly died. The tendrils fizzed and popped like small fireworks, and then were gone. The stage fell into darkness.
I was standing; without fully realizing it I had been standing for some time. I, and the rest of the audience, stood there aghast. The man had disappeared in front of our eyes, leaving no trace.
I heard a commotion in the aisle behind me, and with everyone else I turned to see what was happening. There were too many heads and bodies, I could not see clearly, some kind of motion in the darkened auditorium! Thankfully, the house lights came on, and one of the manned spotlights turned from its position high above the boxes, and its shaft of light picked out what was going on.
Angier was there!
Members of the theatre’s staff were hurrying down the aisle towards him, and some of the audience were trying to get to him, but he was on his feet and pushing them away from him.
He was staggering down the aisle, heading back towards the stage.
I tried to recover from the surprise, and quickly made estimates. No more than a second or two could have elapsed between his disappearance f
rom the stage, and his reappearance in the aisle. I glanced to and from the stage, trying to work out the distance involved. My seat was at least sixty feet away from the front of the stage, and Angier had appeared well to the back of the aisle, close to one of the audience exits. He was a long way behind me, at least another forty feet.
Could he have dashed one hundred feet in a single second, while the darkness from the stage masked his movement?
It was then, and is now, a rhetorical question. Clearly he could not, without the use of magical techniques.
But which ones?
His progress along the aisle towards the stage briefly brought him level with me, where he stumbled on one of the steps before continuing onwards. I was certain he had not seen me, because self-evidently he had no eyes for anyone at all in the audience. His comportment was entirely that of a man wrapped in his own anguish; his face was tormented, his whole body moved as if racked with pain. He shambled like a drunk or an invalid, or a man finally exhausted with life. I saw the left arm he favoured hanging limply by his side, and the hand was smudged with flour, the red ink smeared into a dark mess. On the back of his jacket the burst of flour was still visible, still in the haphazard shape the volunteer had created when he slapped the bag against him, just a few seconds ago, and a hundred feet away.
We were all applauding, with many people cheering and whistling their approval, and as he neared the stage a second spotlight picked him out and tracked him up the ramp to the stage. He walked wearily to the centre of the stage, where at last he seemed to recover. Once more in the full glare of the stage lights he took his ovation, bowing to the audience, acknowledging them, blowing kisses, smiling and triumphant. I stood with the rest, marvelling at what I had seen.
Behind him, unobtrusively, the curtains were closing to conceal the apparatus.
32
I did not know how the trick was done! I had seen it with my own eyes, and I had watched in the knowledge of how to watch a magician at work, and I had looked in all the places from which a magician traditionally misdirects his audience. I left the Hackney Empire in a boiling rage. I was angry that my best illusion had been copied; I was even angrier that it had been bettered. Worst of all, though, was the fact that I could not work out how it was done.
The Prestige Page 10