The Prestige

by Christopher Priest

  He begins by wheeling on to the stage a wooden cabinet, of the sort familiar to all magicians. This is tall enough to contain a man or a woman, has three solid walls (back and two sides), and a door at the front that opens wide enough to reveal the whole of the interior. It is mounted on castors, and these raise the entire thing high enough to show that no escape or entry would be possible through the base, without being noticed by the audience.

  With the usual demonstrations of present vacancy completed, Borden closes the cabinet door, then moves the apparatus up to stage left.

  Standing at the footlights he then delivers, in his wonderfully unconvincing French accent, a short lecture on the great dangers involved in what he is about to do.

  Behind him, a remarkably pretty young woman wheels on to the stage a second cabinet, identical to the first. She opens the door, so that the audience can see that it too is empty. With a swirl of his black cape, Borden then turns and steps briskly into the cabinet.

  On cue, the drummer starts a roll.

  What happens next takes place in an instant. Indeed, it takes longer to write down than it does to see it performed.

  As the drum rolls louder, Borden removes his top hat, steps back into the recesses of his cabinet, then tosses his hat high into the air. His assistant slams closed the door of the cabinet. In the same instant, the door of the first cabin bursts open, and Borden is now impossibly inside! The cabinet he entered only moments before collapses, and folds emptily on to the floor of the stage. Borden looks up to the rigging loft, sees his top hat plummeting towards him, catches it, puts it on his head, taps it down into place … then beaming and smiling steps forward to the footlights to take his bow!

  The applause was raucous, and I admit I joined in myself.

  I am damned if I know how he did that!

  16th October 1892

  Last night I took Cutter to the Watford Regal, where Borden was performing. The illusion with the two cabinets was not part of his act.

  During the long journey back to London, I described to Cutter again what I had seen. His verdict was the same as when I first told him about it, two days ago. Borden, he says, is using a double. He tells me about a similar act he saw performed twenty years ago, involving a young woman.

  I’m not sure. It didn’t look like a double to me. The man who went into one cabinet and the man who emerged from the other was one and the same. I was there, and that is what I saw.

  25th October 1892

  Because of my own commitments it has been impossible to see Borden’s act every night, but Cutter and I have been to his performances twice this week. He has still not repeated the illusion with the two cabinets. Cutter refuses to speculate until he has seen it himself, but declares I am wasting his time and my own. It is becoming a source of friction between us.

  13th November 1892

  At last I have seen Borden perform his two-cabinets illusion again, and this time Cutter was with me. It happened at the Lewisham World Theatre, on an otherwise straightforward variety bill.

  As Borden produced the first of his two cabinets, and went through his routine of revealing it to be empty, I felt a thrill of anticipation. Cutter, beside me, raised his opera glasses in a businesslike way. I glanced at him to try to see where he was looking, and was interested to note that he was not watching the magician at all. With quick movements of the glasses he appeared to be inspecting the rest of the stage area: the wings, the flies, the backcloth. I cursed myself for not thinking of this, and left him to get on with it.

  I continued to watch Borden. As far as I could tell the trick was conducted exactly as I had observed it before, even to an almost word-for-word repetition of the French-accented speech about danger. When he went into the second cabinet, though, I noticed a couple of tiny deviations from the earlier occasion. The more trivial of these was that he had left the first cabinet closer to the rear of the stage, so that it was not at all well lit. I again glanced quickly at Cutter, and found that he was paying no attention to the magician, but had his glasses turned steadfastly on the upstage cabinet.

  The other deviation interested me, and in fact rather amused me. When Borden removed his top hat and flung it into the air, I was leaning forward, ready to see the next and most amazing step. Instead, the hat rose quickly into the flies, and did not reappear! (Clearly, there was a stagehand up there, slipped a ten-bob note to catch it.) Borden turned to the audience with a wry smile, and got his laugh. While the laughter was still ringing out, he extended his left hand calmly … and the top hat skittered down from the flies, for him to catch with a natural and unforced movement. It was excellent stagecraft, and he deserved the second laugh for that.

  Then, without waiting for the laughter to die, and with dashing speed:

  Up went the hat again! The cabinet door was slammed! The upstage cabinet door burst open! Borden leapt out, hatless! The second cabinet collapsed! Borden skipped nimbly across the stage, caught the top hat, rammed it down on his head!

  Beaming, bowing, waving, he took his well-deserved applause. Cutter and I joined in.

  In the taxicab rattling back to north London I demanded of Cutter, ‘Well, what do you think of that!’

  ‘Brilliant, Mr Angier!’ he stated. ‘Quite brilliant! It is not often that one has the chance to see a completely new illusion.’

  I found this acclaim none too pleasing, I must say.

  ‘Do you know how he did it?’ I insisted.

  ‘Yes, sir, I do,’ he replied. ‘And so I fancy do you.’

  ‘I’m as baffled as ever I was. How the devil could he be in two places at once? I cannot see that it is possible!’

  ‘Sometimes you do surprise me, Mr Angier,’ Cutter said trenchantly. ‘It is a logical puzzle, solved only by the application of our own logic. What did we see before us?’

  ‘A man who transported himself instantly from one part of the stage to the other.’

  ‘That is what we thought we saw, what we were intended to see. What was the reality?’

  ‘You still maintain he uses a double?’ I queried him.

  ‘How else could it be effected?’

  ‘But you saw it as I did. That was no double! We saw him clearly before and after. He was the same man! The very same!’

  Cutter winked at me, then turned away and gazed out at the dimly lit houses of Waterloo past which we were presently driving.

  ‘Well?’ I clamoured of him. ‘What do you say?’

  ‘I say what I have said, Mr Angier.’

  ‘I pay you to explain the unexplainable, Cutter. Do not trifle with me about this! It is a matter of high professional importance!’

  At this he realised the seriousness of my mood, and not a moment before time, because the piqued admiration induced in me by Borden’s performance was being transmuted to frustration and anger.

  ‘Sir,’ he said steadily. ‘You must know of identical twins. There is your answer!’

  ‘No!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘How else might it be done?’

  ‘But the first cabinet was empty—’

  ‘So it did appear,’ said Cutter.

  ‘And the second cabinet collapsed the moment he left it—’

  ‘Very effectively too, I thought.’

  I knew what he was saying. These were standard stage effects for making apparatus that is concealing someone seem empty. Several of my own illusions turn on similar deceptions. My difficulty was the same I have always suffered. When I see another’s illusion from the auditorium, I am as easily misdirected as anyone else. But identical twins! I had not thought of that!

  Cutter had given me much food for thought, and after I had dropped him off at his lodgings, and I had returned here, I did some thinking. Now I have written down this account of the evening, I think I have to agree with him. The mystery is solved.

  Damn Borden! Not one man but two! Damn his eyes!

  14th November 1892

  I have told Julia what Cutter suggested last night, and to my su
rprise she laughed delightedly.

  ‘Brilliant!’ she cried. ‘We hadn’t thought of that, had we?’

  ‘Then you too think it’s possible?’

  ‘It is not merely possible, my dear … it is the only way it could be performed on an open stage.’

  ‘I suppose you are right.’

  Now, irrationally, I feel angry at my Julia. She has not seen the illusion herself.

  30th November 1892

  Yesterday I obtained an extremely interesting view on Borden, and, into the bargain, some remarkable facts about him.

  I should mention that all this week I have been unable to add to this diary because I have been appearing top of the bill at the London Hippodrome. This is an immense honour, one that has been signified not only by full houses at every performance (bar one matinée), but also by the audiences’ reactions. One other consequence is that the gentlemen of the Press are paying me some attention, and yesterday a young reporter from the Evening Star came to interview me. His name was Mr Arthur Koenig. This young man turned out to be an informant as well as an interviewer.

  During the course of a question-and-answer session he asked me if I had any opinions I would wish to record about my magical contemporaries. I duly launched into an appreciative summary of the best of my colleagues.

  ‘You have not mentioned Le Professeur,’ said my interlocutor, when I eventually paused. ‘Do you not hold an opinion on Mr Borden’s work?’

  ‘I regret I have not been present at any of his performances,’ I demurred. ‘Not recently, in any case.’

  ‘Then you must go to see his work!’ ejaculated Mr Koenig. ‘His is the best show in London!’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘I have seen his act several times,’ the reporter went on. ‘There is one trick he does, not every night for he says it exhausts him too much, but there is this one trick—’

  ‘I have heard of it,’ I said, affecting disdain. ‘Something to do with two cabinets.’

  ‘That’s the one, Mr Danton. He vanishes and reappears in a trice. No one knows how he does it.’

  ‘No one, that is, except his fellow magicians,’ I corrected him. ‘He is using standard magical procedures.’

  ‘Then you know how it is done?’

  ‘Of course I know,’ I said. ‘But naturally you will not expect me to divulge the exact method—’

  Here I confess I was torn. Over the last two weeks I have been thinking hard about Cutter’s theory that ‘Borden’ must in fact be played by two identical twins, and I had convinced myself that he must be right. Here was my chance to reveal Borden’s secret. I had an eager listener, a journalist with access to one of the great newspapers of our city, a man whose curiosity was already roused by the mystery of magic performance. I felt the lust for revenge that I normally suppressed, that I had told myself a score of times was a weakness to which I must never again succumb. Naturally, Koenig knew nothing of the bitterness between Borden and myself.

  But no magician gives away the secret of another.

  At length I said, ‘There are ways and means. An illusion is not what it seems. A great deal of practice and rehearsal—’

  Whereat the young reporter practically leapt out of his seat.

  ‘Sir, you believe he has an identical twin, and uses him as a double! Every magician in London thinks the same! I thought so too when I saw it the first time.’

  ‘Yes, that is his method.’ I was relieved to discover that I need give nothing away. I tried to sound uninterested by this commonplace revelation. ‘Identical twins are often used in illusions.’

  ‘Then you are wrong like all the others, sir!’ cried the young man. ‘Le Professeur does not use a double. This is what is so amazing!’

  ‘He has a twin brother,’ I said. ‘There is no other way.’

  ‘With respect, that’s not true. He has neither twin brother nor a double who can pass for him. I have personally investigated his life, and I know the truth. He works alone but for the female assistant seen on the stage with him, and a technical manager who builds his apparatus with him. In this he is no different from any other in your profession. You too—’

  ‘I do have an ingénieur,’ I confirmed readily. ‘But tell me more. You interest me greatly. You are certain of this information?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Can you prove it to me?’

  ‘As you know, sir,’ Mr Koenig replied, ‘it is not possible to prove that which does not exist. All I can say is that for the last few weeks I have been bringing journalistic methods to the investigation, and have not found a single jot of evidence to confirm what you assume.’

  At this point he produced a thin sheaf of papers and showed them to me. They contained certain information about Mr Borden that I found instantly intriguing, and I begged the reporter to let me have them.

  There followed something of a wrangle between our two professions. He maintained that as a journalist he could not impart the fruit of his researches to a third party. I countered that even if he were to discover the final, absolute truth about Borden, he would never be able to publish it while the subject remained alive.

  On the other hand, I said, if I were to start my own investigations, then I might be able at some future time to guide him to a truly uncommon story.

  The upshot of it was that Koenig agreed to let me take handwritten extracts from several of his notes, and these I scribbled down on the spot at his dictation. His conclusions were not conveyed to me, and to be candid I was not greatly interested in them. At the end I passed him five sovereigns.

  As I finished, Mr Koenig said to me, ‘May I ask what you are hoping to learn from this, sir?’

  ‘I seek only to improve my own magical art,’ I affirmed.

  ‘I understand.’ He stood up to leave, and took hold of his hat and stick. ‘And when you have so improved, do you suppose you too will be able to perform Le Professeur’s illusion?’

  ‘I assure you, Mr Koenig,’ I said with cold disdain, as I showed him to the door. ‘I assure you that should the occasion arise I could take his bauble of a trick and make it mine this very night!’

  Then he was gone.

  Today I have not been working, and so I have written up this account of the meeting. All through it that final taunt of Koenig’s has been in my thoughts. It is imperative that I learn the secret of Borden’s illusion. I can think of no sweeter revenge than to outshine him with his own trick, outperform him, outdo him in every way.

  And, courtesy of Mr Koenig, the facts I possess about Mr Borden will prove to be of immense value. First, though, I must check them.

  9th December 1892

  I have in fact so far done nothing about Borden. The American tour has been confirmed as definite, and Cutter and I are in the thick of preparations. I am to be travelling for more than two whole months, and to be separated from Julia and the children for such a length of time is almost unthinkable.

  However, I cannot miss the tour. Setting aside the matter of the generous fees, I am probably the youngest magician from Britain or Europe to have been invited to follow in the steps of some of magic’s greatest performers. The New World is the source and location of some of the finest magicians currently in performance, and it is a magnificent compliment to be invited to undertake this tour.

  And Borden has not so far visited the USA!

  10th December 1892

  I had been looking forward to a quiet Christmas at home. No magic, no rehearsals, no travelling. I wanted to submerge myself in my family and set everything else aside. But following a cancellation I have been offered a lucrative and irresistible two-week residency in Eastbourne, and it is such that I might take my entire household with me. My family shall spend Christmas at the Grand Hotel, overlooking the sea!

  11th December 1892

  A propitious discovery. Looking at a gazetteer this afternoon I could not help but notice that Eastbourne is just a few miles away from Hastings, and that the two towns are linked by a direct ra
ilway line. I think I shall spend a day or two in Hastings. I hear it is a pleasant place to visit.

  17th January 1893

  All of a sudden my life is overshadowed by the immensity of the journey before me. In two days’ time I leave for Southampton, and embark for New York City, thence to Boston and beyond, into the American heartland. The last week has been a nightmare of packing and preparations, and arranging for the apparatus I need with me to be dismantled, crated, then despatched ahead of me. Nothing can be left to chance, for without my equipment I have no stage show. A lot depends on this transatlantic adventure.

  But now I have a day or two of leisure in which to prepare myself mentally and relax at home for a while. Today I have visited London Zoo with Julia and the children, already feeling a sense of loss because I know I shall be away from them for so long. The children are asleep, Julia is reading in her sitting room, and in the calm of this dark January evening, quietly in my study, I may at last record, thanks to the industrious Mr Koenig, the fruits of my enquiries about Mr Alfred Borden.

  The following are facts I have personally verified.

  He was born on 8th May 1856, in the Royal Sussex Infirmary in Bohemia Road, Hastings. Three days after his birth he and his mother, Betsy Mary Borden, returned to their house at 105 Manor Road, where the father worked as a carpenter. The child’s full name was Frederick Andrew Borden, and according to the almoner’s records his was a single birth. Frederick Andrew Borden was not one of two identical twins at birth, so therefore neither can he be one today.

  Next I looked into the possibility of Frederick Borden having brothers of a close age to him, and bearing a strong family resemblance. Frederick was the sixth-born child. He had three older sisters and two older brothers, but of these one brother was eight years his senior, and the other had died at the age of two weeks.