The Prestige

by Christopher Priest

  I intend another discussion with Root, since the last one had little effect. In spite of the excellence of his performance he is a trouble to me, and another reason for returning to this diary is to record the fact that he and I will at last be having words.

  7th July 1895

  There is a cardinal rule in the world of magic (and if there is not one, let me formulate it) that you do not antagonise your assistants. This is because they know many of your secrets, and they therefore have a particular power over you.

  If I fire Root I shall be at his mercy.

  The problem he presents is partly his alcoholic addiction, and partly his arrogance.

  He has often been inebriated during my performance, a fact he does not deny. He claims he can control it. The trouble is that there is no predicting the behaviour of a heavy drinker and I am terrified that one evening he will be too drunk to take part. A magician should never leave any aspect of his act to chance, yet here am I, dicing with it every time I perform the switch with him.

  His arrogance is, if anything, a worse problem. He is convinced that I am unable to function effectively without him, and whenever he is around me, be it in rehearsal, backstage at the theatres, or even in my own workshop, I have to suffer a constant stream of advice based on his years of experience as a thespian.

  Last night we had our long-planned ‘discussion’, although in the event he did most of the talking. I have to report that much of what he said was nasty and threatening indeed. He said the words I most feared to hear: that he could expose my secrets and ruin my career.

  And worse. He has somehow found out about my relationship with Sheila Macpherson, a matter which I had thought was strictly under the wraps. I am being blackmailed, of course. I need him, and he knows it. He has power over me, and I know it.

  I was forced even to offer him a raise in his performance fees, and this, of course, he promptly accepted.

  19th August 1895

  This evening I returned early from my workshop because there was something (I forget what) I had left at home. Calling in first on Olivia, I was surprised, to say the least, to discover Root with her in her parlour.

  I should explain that after I bought my house at 45 Idmiston Villas I left it in its former configuration of two self-contained flats. During our marriage Julia and I moved freely between the two, but since Olivia has been with me we have lived apart under the same roof. This is partly to preserve the proprieties, but it also reflects the more casual nature of our association. While maintaining separate households, Olivia and I call without ceremony on each other whenever it pleases us.

  I heard laughter while I climbed the stair. When I opened the door to her flat, which opens directly into her parlour, Olivia and Root were still merrily laughing away. The sound quickly died when they saw me standing there. Olivia looked angry. Root attempted to stand up, but swayed unsteadily and sat down again. I noticed, to my intense aggravation, that a half-empty bottle of gin stood on the table to the side, and that another, completely empty, was beside it. Both Olivia and Root were holding glasses containing the liquor.

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’ I demanded of them.

  ‘I was calling in to see you, Mr Angier,’ replied Root.

  ‘You knew I was rehearsing in my workshop this evening,’ I riposted. ‘Why did you not seek me there?’

  ‘Honey, Gerry just called round for a drink,’ said Olivia.

  ‘Then it is time he left!’

  I held the door open with my arm, indicating he should depart, and this he did, promptly in spite of his inebriation, but staggeringly because of it. His gin-soaked breath curled briefly around me as he passed.

  A tense conversation ensued between Olivia and I, which I shall not record in detail. We left it at that, and I retired to pen this account. I have many feelings I have not described here.

  24th August 1895

  I learnt today that Borden is taking his magical show on a tour of Europe and the Levant, and that he will be out of England until the end of the year. Curiously, he will not be performing his own version of the two-cabinets illusion.

  Hesketh Unwin informed me of this when I saw him earlier today. I made the pleasantry that I hoped that by the time he reached Paris Borden’s spoken French would be better than when I last heard him at it.

  25th August 1895

  It took me twenty-four hours to work it out, but Borden has just done me a favour. I finally realised that with Borden out of the country I have no need to keep performing the switch illusion, and so without delay or scruple I have given Root the sack.

  By the time Borden returns from his tour abroad, either I shall have replaced Mr Root or I shall no longer be performing the illusion at all.

  14th November 1895

  Olivia and I worked on the stage together for the last time tonight, at a performance at the Phoenix Theatre in Charing Cross Road. Afterwards, we drove home together, holding hands contentedly in the back of the cab. Since Mr Root departed, we have been perceptibly more contented. (I have been seeing less and less of Miss Macpherson.)

  Next week, when I open for a short season at the Royal County Theatre in Reading, my assistant will be a young lady I have been training for the last two weeks. Her name is Gertrude, she is blessed with a supple and beautiful body, she has both the prettiness and the mental ability of a china ornament, and is the fiancée of my other new employee, a carpenter and apparatus technician named Adam Wilson. I am paying them both well, and am satisfied with their contributions so far to my act.

  Adam, I must record, is an almost exact double for me in terms of physique, and although I have not yet broached it to him I shall keep him in mind as Root’s replacement.

  12th February 1896

  I have tonight learned the meaning of the phrase one’s blood runs cold.

  I was engaged in one of my customary tricks with playing cards in the first half of my show. In this, I ask a member of the audience to select a card and then to write his name upon it in full view of the audience. When this is done I take the card from him and tear it up before his eyes, tossing aside the pieces. Moments later, I show a live canary in a metal cage. When my volunteer takes the cage from me it unaccountably collapses in his hand (the bird vanishes from sight), and leaves him holding what appears to be the remains of the cage in which can be seen a single playing card. When he removes it, he discovers that it is the very one on which his name is inscribed. The trick ends, and the volunteer returns to his seat.

  Tonight, at the conclusion of the trick, as I beamed towards the audience in anticipation of the applause, I heard the fellow say, ‘Here, this isn’t my card!’

  I turned towards him. The fool was standing there with the remains of the cage dangling from one hand, and the playing card in the other. He was trying to read it.

  ‘Let me take it, sir!’ I boomed theatrically, sensing that my forcing of the card might have gone wrong, and preparing to cover the mistake with a sudden production of a multitude of coloured streamers which I keep on hand for just such an eventuality.

  I tried to snatch the card from him, but calamity piled on disaster.

  He swung away from me, shouting in a triumphant voice, ‘Look, it’s got summat else written on it!’

  The man was playing to the audience, making the most of the fact that he had somehow beaten the magician at his own game. To save the moment I had to take possession of the card, and I did, wrenching it out of his hand. I showered him with coloured streamers, cued the bandmaster, and waved the audience to applaud, to waft the appalling fellow back towards his seat.

  In the swelling music and the paltry applause I stood transfixed, reading the words that had been written there.

  They said: ‘I know the address you go to with Sheila Macpherson – Abracadabra! – Alfred Borden.’

  The card was the trey of clubs, the one I had forced on the volunteer for the trick.

  I simply do not know how I managed to get through the rest of the p
erformance, but somehow I must have done so.

  18th February 1896

  Last night I travelled alone to the Empire Theatre in Cambridge where Borden was performing. As he went through the rigmarole of setting up a conventional illusion with a cabinet, I stood up in my seat in the auditorium and denounced him. As loudly as I could I informed the audience that an assistant was already concealed inside the cabinet. I immediately left the theatre, glancing back only as I exited the auditorium, to be rewarded by the sight of the tabs coming down prematurely.

  Then, unexpectedly, I found I had to pay a price for what I had done. Conscience struck me as I took my long, cold and solitary train journey back to London. In that dark night I had abundant opportunity to reflect on my actions. I bitterly regretted what I had done. The ease with which I destroyed his magic appalled me. Magic is illusion, a temporary suspension of reality for the benefit and amusement of an audience. What right had I (or he, when he took his turn) to destroy that illusion?

  Once, long ago, after Julia lost our first baby, Borden wrote to me and apologised for what he had done. Foolishly, O how foolishly!, I spurned him. Now the time has come when I anxiously desire a surcease of the feud between us. How much longer do two grown men have to keep sniping at each other in public, to settle some score that no one but they even know about, and one that even they barely comprehend? Yes, once, when Julia was hurt by the buffoon’s intervention I had a valid case against him, but so much has happened since.

  All through that cold journey back to Liverpool Street Station, I wondered how it might be achieved. Now, twenty-four hours later, I still think about it. I shall brace myself, write to him, call an end to it, and suggest a private meeting to thrash out any remaining scores that he feels have to be settled.

  20th February 1896

  Today, after she had opened her letters, Olivia came to me and said, ‘So what Gerry Root told me about is true!’

  I asked what she could possibly mean.

  ‘You’re still seeing Sheila Macpherson, right?’

  Later, she showed me the note she had received, in an envelope addressed to ‘Occupant, Flat B, 45 Idmiston Villas’. It was from Borden!

  27th February 1896

  I have made peace with myself, with Olivia, even with Borden!

  Let me simply record that I have promised Olivia I shall never see Miss Macpherson again (nor shall I), and that my love for her is undying.

  And I have decided that never again shall I conduct a feud with Alfred Borden, no matter how provoked I feel. I still expect a public reprisal from him for my ill-advised outburst in Cambridge, but I shall ignore him.

  5th March 1896

  Sooner even than I had expected, Borden tried successfully to humiliate me while I was performing a well-known but popular illusion called TRILBY. (It is the one where the assistant lies on a board balanced between two chair backs, then is seen to hover apparently unaided in the air when the chairs are removed.) Borden had somehow secreted himself backstage.

  As I removed the second chair from beneath Gertrude’s board, the concealing backdrop lifted quickly to reveal Adam Wilson crouched behind, operating the mechanism.

  I brought down the main curtains, and discontinued my act.

  I shall not retaliate.

  31st March 1896

  Another Borden incident. So soon after the last!

  17th May 1896

  Another Borden incident.

  This one puzzles me, for I had already established he was also performing this same evening, but somehow he got across London to the Great Western Hotel to sabotage my performance.

  Again, I shall not retaliate.

  16th July 1896

  I shall not even record any more Borden incidents here, such is my disdain for him. (Another one this evening, yes, but I plan no retaliation.)

  4th August 1896

  Last night I was performing an illusion comparatively new to my act, which involves a revolving blackboard on which I chalk simple messages called out to me by members of the audience. When a certain number have been written for all to see, I suddenly spin the blackboard over … to reveal that by some apparent miracle the same messages are already written there too!

  Tonight when I rotated the blackboard I found that my prepared messages had been erased. In their place was the message:

  I SEE YOU HAVE GIVEN UP TRYING TO TRANSPORT YOURSELF.

  DOES THIS MEAN YOU STILL DON’T KNOW THE SECRET? COME AND WATCH AN EXPERT!

  Still I shall not retaliate. Olivia, who perforce knows every fact relating to our feud, agrees that a dignified disdain is the only response I should make.

  3rd February 1897

  Another Borden incident. How tiresome it is to open this journal only to report this!

  He is becoming more daring. Although Adam and I carefully check our apparatus before and after every performance, and scour through the backstage parts of the theatre immediately before going on, somehow tonight Borden gained access to the mezzanine floor, beneath the stage.

  I was performing a trick known simply as THE DISAPPEARING LADY. This is an attractive illusion both to perform and see, as the apparatus is straightforward. My assistant sits on a plain wooden chair in the centre of the stage, and I throw over her a large cotton sheet. I spread it out smoothly around her. Her figure can be plainly seen still sitting on the chair, thinly veiled by the sheet. Her head and shoulders, in particular, may easily be made out as proof of her presence.

  Suddenly, I whip away the sheet in a continuous movement … and the chair is empty! All that remains on the bare stage is the chair, the sheet and myself.

  Tonight, when I pulled away the sheet, I discovered to my amazement that Gertrude was still in the chair, her face a torment of confusion and terror. I stood there, aghast.

  Then, compounding the moment, one of the stage trapdoors snapped open, and a man came rising into view from below. He was wearing full evening dress, with silk hat, scarf and cape. As calmly as the devil, Borden (for it was he) doffed his hat to the audience, then strode in a leisurely way towards the wings, a drift of tobacco smoke swirling in his wake. I dashed after him, determined at last to confront him, when my attention was drawn by an immense discharge of brilliant light, from over my head!

  An electrified sign was being lowered from the flies! In bright blue lettering, picked out in some electrical device, it said:

  LE PROFESSEUR DE MAGIE

  AT THIS THEATRE – ALL NEXT WEEK!

  A ghastly cyanic pallor imbued the stage. I signalled to the stage manager in the wings and at last the curtain came down, concealing my despair, my humiliation, my rage.

  When I arrived home and told her what had happened, Olivia said, ‘You got to take revenge, Robbie. And you better make it good!’

  At last I agree with her.

  18th April 1897

  Tonight, for the first time in public, Adam and I performed the switch illusion. We have been rehearsing it for more than a week, and technically the performance was faultless.

  Yet the applause at the end was polite rather than enthusiastic.

  13th May 1897

  After many long hours of work and rehearsal, Adam and I have developed our cabinet switching routine to a standard which I know cannot be bettered. Adam, after eighteen months working closely with me, can imitate my movements and mannerisms with uncanny accuracy. Given an identical suit of clothes, a few touches of greasepaint and a (most expensive) hairpiece, he is my double to the last detail.

  Yet each time we perform it we bring the show to what we imagine will be a devastating climax, and our audiences declare themselves, by their lukewarm ripples of applause, to be unimpressed.

  I do not know what I have to do to better the illusion. Two years ago the mere suggestion that I might be prevailed upon to include it in my act was enough to double my fee. These days, it is almost an irrelevance. I am brooding long.

  1st June 1897

  I have been hearing rumours for some tim
e that Borden has ‘improved’ his switch illusion, but without further information I have taken no notice. It is years since I saw him performing it, and so yesterday evening I betook myself and Adam Wilson to a theatre in Nottingham, where Borden has been in residence for the last week. (I have a show tonight in Sheffield, but I left London a day early so that I might visit Borden at work en route.)

  I disguised myself with greyed hair, cheek pads, untidy clothes, a pair of unnecessary eye-glasses, and took a seat only two rows from the front. I was just a few feet away from Borden as he performed all his tricks.

  Everything is suddenly explained! Borden has substantially advanced his version of the illusion. He no longer conceals himself inside cabinets. There is no more stuff-and-nonsense with some object tossed across the stage (which I have been continuing to work with until this week). And he does not use a double.

  I say with certainty: Borden does not use a double. I know everything there is to know about doubles. I can spot one as easily as I can spot a cloud in the sky. I am as sure as I can be that Borden works alone.

  The first part of his act was performed before a half-drop, which only allowed the full stage set to be seen when he came to the climactic illusion. At this, the half-drop was raised and the audience saw an array of jars fuming with chemicals, cabinets adorned with coiling cables, glass tubes and pipettes, and above all a host of gleaming electrical wires. It was a glimpse into the laboratory of a scientific fiend.