The Prestige

by Christopher Priest

  However, I must bide my time. I wish my revenge to be sweet.

  On my return Julia was uncommunicative with me, and even after I told her what I had been doing she remained cold towards me.

  O Julia! You were not like this before that day!

  19th January 1879

  We both mourn the loss of the child we never knew. Julia’s grief is so deep, so inner-directed, that she sometimes seems unaware that I am even in the same room with her. I am just as miserable, but I have my work to distract me. This is the only difference between us.

  For the last week I have been applying myself to perfecting my magic, trying by intensive application to relaunch myself into my intended profession. To this end:

  I have tidied up my workshop, thrown away a lot of junk, repaired and repainted several of the illusions, and generally made the workshop into a businesslike place where I might prepare and rehearse properly.

  I have started discreet enquiries through Hesketh Unwin’s office, and through other magic contacts, for an ingénieur to work with me. I need expert assistance. Of this there is no question.

  I have set myself a practice schedule, to which I adhere absolutely: two hours every morning, two hours every afternoon, one hour (if time with Julia permits) in every evening. The only breaks I allow myself are when I am actually working.

  I have ordered myself and Letitia new costumes, to give the act professional polish.

  Finally, I have promised myself to quit the séances as soon as I can afford to do so. Meanwhile, I am taking on as many of them for which the time can be found, because they are my only secure means of making a living. My financial responsibilities are immense. I have the lodgings to pay for, rent to find of the workshop and stable, wages to pay for Nugent and Letitia, and soon for my new ingénieur too … as well as running the household and feeding Julia and myself.

  All this to be paid for by the credulous bereaved!

  (Tonight, though, another theatrical performance.)

  31st December 1879

  Total Income From Magic for 1879: £637 12s 6d.

  Before expenses.

  31st December 1880

  Total Income From Magic for 1880: £1,142 7s 9d.

  Before expenses.

  31st December 1881

  Total Income From Magic for 1881: £4,777 10s 0d.

  Before expenses.

  1881 is the last year in which I shall record my earnings here. This twelvemonth has been sufficiently successful for me to purchase the house in which, hitherto, we have merely rented our lodgings. Now we occupy the whole building, and we have a domestic staff of three. The restlessness that beset me when I was younger is directed fruitfully into the energy of performance, and I may record that I am probably the most sought-after stage illusionist in Britain. My bookings diary for next year is already full.

  2nd February 1891

  Ten years ago I put aside my diary, intending never to reopen it, but the humiliating events earlier this evening at the Sefton Theatre of Varieties in Liverpool (whence I am returning to London en train as I write this) cannot go unrecorded. As it has been so long since I wrote in my diary these loose sheets will tonight have to suffice while I am without my notebook and file system.

  I was in the second part of my act, heading towards what is currently the climax of my performance. This is the UNDERWATER ESCAPE, an effect which combines physical strength, a certain amount of controlled risk, and a little magic.

  The illusion begins with my being tied, apparently inescapably, to a stout metal chair. To effect this I invite on to the stage a committee of six volunteers: these are all genuine members of the audience, none planted, but Ernest Nugent and my ingénieur Harry Cutter do keep an eye on things.

  With the committee on stage I engage them in humourous banter, partly to relax them, partly to misdirect the audience while Ellen Tremayne (my present assistant; it is a long time since I wrote in here) begins the JACOBY ROPE TIE.

  Tonight, though, I had just taken my seat in the chair when I realised that Alfred Borden was one of the committee! He was the Sixth Man! (Harry Cutter and I use codes to identify and place the on-stage volunteers. The Sixth Man is positioned furthest from me during these preparatory stages, and is given the task of holding one end of the rope.) Tonight Borden was the Sixth Man, only a few feet away from me. The audience was watching us all! The trick had already begun!

  Borden played his part well, moving clumsily and with well-faked embarrassment about his small part of the stage. No one in the audience would have guessed that he is almost as practised a performer as me. Cutter, apparently not realising who he was, propelled Borden into his place. Ellen Tremayne was meanwhile roping my hands together, and tying my wrists to the arms of the chair. It is here that my preparations went awry, because my attention was on Borden. By the time two other volunteers had been given the ends of the rope and instructed to tie me as tightly as possible to the chair, it was too late. In the full glare of the limes I was trussed helplessly.

  Amid a roll of drums I was hoisted by the pulley into the air space above the glass tank, and I dangled and rotated on the end of the chain as if a helpless victim of torture. In truth tonight I was, but during a normal performance I would by this stage have freed my wrists, and moved my hands to a position from which I could release them instantly. (My rotating on the chain is an effective cover for the necessarily quick arm movements as I release myself.) Tonight, with my arms tied immovably to the chair, I could only stare down in horror at the cold, waiting water.

  Moments later, according to plan, I was plunged into it in a gouting spray of overflow. As the water closed over my head I tried by facial expressions to signal my predicament to Cutter, but he was already engaged in lowering the concealing curtain around the tank.

  In semi-darkness, half inverted in the chair, tied hand and foot, and entirely submerged in cold water, I began to drown—

  My only hope was that the water would cause the rope to loosen a little (part of my secret preparations, in case the volunteers have tied the secondary knots too tightly for a timely escape), even though I knew that the little extra movement this would allow would not be enough to save me tonight.

  I tugged urgently at the ropes, already feeling the pressure of air in my lungs, desperate to burst out of me and allow the deadly water to flood in and take me—

  Yet here I am writing this. Obviously I escaped.

  I would not be alive to write were it not, by an irony, for Borden’s own intervention. He overplayed his hand, could not resist gloating at me.

  Here is a reconstruction of what must have happened on the remainder of the stage, hidden from me by the curtain.

  In a normal performance, all that can be seen on the stage is the committee of six standing self-consciously around the curtain that encloses the tank. They no more than the audience can see what I am doing. The orchestra plays a lively medley, partly to fill the time, partly to mask any noises I cannot avoid making while I escape. But time goes by, and soon both the committee and the audience start to feel disquiet at how much time has elapsed.

  The orchestra too becomes distracted, and the music peters out. An anti-climactic silence falls. Harry Cutter and Ellen Tremayne run anxiously on to the stage, as if in response to the emergency, and the audience makes a hubbub of concern. With the help of the committee Cutter and Ellen snatch away the concealing curtain, to reveal—

  —The chair is still in the water! The ropes are still tied around it! But I am not there!

  While the audience gasps in amazement I dramatically appear. It is usually from the wings, but if I have time I prefer to announce myself in the middle of the auditorium. I run to centre-stage, take my bow, and make sure that everyone notices that my clothes and hair are perfectly dry—

  Tonight Borden was there to ruin it all, and, inadvertently perhaps, to save me from a watery end. Long before the illusion was due to finish, thankfully long before, and while the orchestra yet played, he l
eft the position on the stage where Cutter had placed him, strode across to the curtains and snatched them aside!

  My first awareness of this was that a shaft of bright light burst upon me. I looked up in vast and sudden hope, as the last air from my lungs bubbled up around my eyes! I felt then my prayers had been answered, that Cutter had interrupted the performance to save my life. Nothing else mattered in that second of bursting hope. What I saw, through the horrid distortions of swirling water and strengthened glass, was the jeering visage of my deadliest enemy! He leaned forward, pressing his face triumphantly against the tank.

  I felt unconsciousness rising in me, believed myself to be on the point of death.

  Then there is a gap. My next awareness was that I was lying on a hard wooden floor, in semi-darkness, freezing cold, with faces staring down at me. Music was playing close at hand, deafening me as the water drained in gulps from my ear passages. I could feel the floor moving up and down rhythmically. I was in the wings, on the floor of one of the rope alcoves next to the stage. When I raised my head I saw, unfocused and wandering in my sight, the brightly lit stage just a few feet away from me, where the chorus was treading the boards, while the coryphée strutted to the bawdy tune from the orchestra pit. I groaned with relief, closed my eyes, and allowed my head to fall back to the floor. Cutter had dragged me to safety, somehow restored my breathing, brought the humiliating spectacle to an end.

  Not long after I was carried to the green room, where my recovery properly began. For half an hour I felt as wretched as ever I have felt in my life, but I am in general strong and as soon as I was able to breathe without choking on the water in my lungs I began to recover quickly. It was still reasonably early in the evening, and I believed fervently (and still believe, as I write) that I had plenty of time to return to the stage and attempt my illusion again, before the show ended. I was not allowed to do this.

  Instead, in a sad postmortem of the ruined performance, I convened with Ellen, Cutter and Nugent in my dressing room. We arranged to meet in two days’ time at my workshop in London to improve the method of the escape, so that never again would my life be put in peril. At last my three stalwarts conducted me to the station, satisfied themselves of my mental and physical well-being, then returned to the hotel where we had all been planning to stay.

  For myself, I seek only a swift return to London to see Julia and the children, as the incident, the brush with what felt like certain death, has made me hungry to be with them. This train will not arrive in Euston Station until just before dawn, but it makes it possible to see them sooner than would otherwise be possible.

  By an irony, my failure to keep this diary has been caused by the domestic contentment to which I now hurry to return, and of which I could have written volumes or (as happened) nothing. For most of the past decade I have been not only successful in my career but unprecedentedly happy at home.

  At the beginning of 1884, Julia at long last found herself with child again, and in due course safely delivered our son Edward. Two years later came the first of my daughters, Lydia, and last year, belatedly but to our delight, our baby Florence was born.

  Against this background, the feud with Borden has taken on trivial proportions. True, we have played pranks on each other over the years. True, the spirit behind them has often been malicious. True, I have shown as much malice as he, and of this I am not in the least proud. It is no coincidence that none of these exploits made reopening the diary seem worthwhile.

  Until tonight, though, Borden and I have not directly threatened each other’s lives.

  Once, years ago, Borden was directly responsible for the miscarriage of my first child. Although my instinct then was one of revenge, as the months went by my anger slowly died, and I satisfied myself instead with a number of retaliations on him designed only to embarrass him or to confound his illusion-making at just the moment he least enjoyed it.

  In his turn, he has exacted a few moments of unexpected revenge on me, though none, I declare, as cleverly designed as my own have been on him.

  What happened tonight has forced our feud to a new level. He tried to kill me. It is as plain as that. He is a magician. He knows how ropes must be tied to ensure a rapid and safe release.

  Now I want revenge again. I hope and pray that time will quickly pass, soothe my feelings, bring sense and sanity and calmness to me, that I do not act as tonight I feel!

  4th February 1892

  Last night I saw an extraordinary thing. There is a scientist called Nikola Tesla visiting London, and the extravagant claims he makes were last week the talk of the town. Veritable miracles were being spoken of and several informed newspapers reported that in Tesla’s hands lay the future of our world. The interviews he gave, and the articles that were written about his work, did not manage to explain why it should be so. It was widely said that his work must be seen demonstrated before its importance might be grasped.

  So, swept along by curiosity, yesterday I and several hundred others clamoured at the doors of the Institution of Electrical Engineers to see the great man in action.

  What I witnessed was a thrilling, alarming and mostly incomprehensible display of the powers of electricity. Mr Tesla (who spoke excellent American English, almost without hint of his European roots) is an associate of the inventor Thomas Edison. To modern-minded Londoners the use of electrical power for lighting is becoming a commonplace, but Tesla was able to show that it has many other uses.

  I watched his sensational experiments uncritically, dazzled and impressed. Many of his effects are astonishing, and many more are deeply mysterious to a layman. When Tesla spoke, it was in the tones of an evangelist. More than his sparking, fizzing outbursts of lightning, his visionary words thrilled me beyond anything I had hitherto known. He is indeed a prophet of what the next century will hold for us. A worldwide net of electrical generating stations, power given over to the humble as well as the mighty, instantaneous transmission of energies and matter from one part of the world to the other, the air itself vibrating with the essence of the aether!

  I grasped an important truth from Mr Tesla’s presentation. His show (for it was nothing less than this) bore an odd resemblance to any good illusionist’s. The audience did not need to understand the means to enjoy the effects. In short, Mr Tesla described many scientific theories. While few in that audience understood more than the most basic concepts, every one of us was afforded a compelling glimpse into the future.

  I have written off to the address Tesla supplied, and requested copies of his explanatory notes.

  14th April 1892

  I have been busy preparing for my European Tour, which starts in the latter half of this summer, and have had little time for anything else. To complete the above entry from February, though, I eventually received Mr Tesla’s explanatory notes, but could not make head nor tail of them.

  In Paris 15th September 1892

  They have hailed me in Vienna, Rome, Paris, Istanbul, Marseilles, Madrid, Monte Carlo … yet now that all this is behind me I crave only to see my beloved Julia once more, and Edward and Lydia, and of course my little Florence. Since we spent our weekend together here in Paris two months ago, I have had only letters to buoy me up with news of my precious family. Two days from now, should the sailing be on time, and the trains reliable, I shall be at home and able to rest at last.

  We are all exhausted, though mainly through the endless round of travelling and staying in hotels, than because of the exigencies of life on the European stage. But it has overall been a famous success. We planned to be home by the middle of July, but such was our popular reception that a dozen theatres clamoured for us to make an additional visit, and to bless them with our magic. This we were only too glad to do when we realised the scale of the interest, and concomitantly the fees we could command for these extra performances. It would be unwise to record the extent of my earnings until all expenses have been calculated, and the agreed bonuses paid to my assistants, but I may safely say that f
or the first time in my life I feel I am a wealthy man.

  In London 21st September 1892

  I had expected to be basking in the afterglow of the tour, but instead I find that while I was away Borden has been gaining lavish attention. It seems that one of the illusions he has been performing for years has finally caught the public’s fancy, and he is in terrific demand.

  Although I have watched his act several times, I have never seen him attempt anything unusual. This could of course be that for various reasons I have rarely stayed to the end of his act!

  Cutter knows as little about this applauded trick as I do, for the obvious reason that he has been in Europe with me. I was about to shrug it off as an irrelevance until I read through some of the correspondence that was waiting for me here. Dominic Brawton, one of my magic scouts, had sent a terse note.

  Performer: Alfred Borden (Le Professeur de Magie). Illusion: The New Transported Man. Effect: brilliant, not to be missed. Adaptability: difficult, but Borden manages it somehow, so I imagine you could too.

  I showed this to Julia.

  Later I showed her another letter. I have been invited to take my magic show to the New World. If I agree we would begin touring in February with a week-long residency in Chicago. And then a tour to the dozen or so largest American cities.

  The thought of it simultaneously thrills and exhausts me.

  Julia said to me, ‘Forget Borden. You must take your show to the USA.’

  And I too think I must.

  14th October 1892

  I have seen Borden’s new illusion, and it is good. It is devilishly good. It is the better for being simple. It galls me to say it, but I must be fair.