The Prestige

by Christopher Priest

  Borden, in his embarrassing persona of a French academic, strolled around the equipment, lecturing the audience on the perils of working with electrical power. At certain moments he touched one wire against another, or to a flask of gas, and there came an alarming flash of light, or a loud bang. Sparks flew around him and a mist of blue smoke began to hover about his head.

  When he was ready to perform, he indicated that a roll of drums be played from the orchestra pit. He seized two heavy wires, brought them dramatically together and made an electrical connection.

  In the brilliant flash that followed, the switch took place. Before our very eyes, Borden vanished from where he was standing (the two thick wires fell snaking to the stage floor, emitting a trail of dangerous fizzing sparks), and he instantly reappeared on the other side of the stage – at least twenty feet away from where he had been!

  It was impossible for him to have moved across that distance by normal means. The switch was too quick, too perfect. He arrived with his hands still flexed as if gripping the wires, the ones that even at that moment were zigzagging spectacularly across the stage.

  Borden stepped forward in tumultuous applause to take his bow. Behind him the scientific apparatus still frothed and fumed, a deadly backdrop that seemed, perversely, to heighten his ordinariness.

  As the applause continued to thunder, he reached into his breast pocket as if to produce something. He smiled modestly, inviting the audience to urge him to one final magical production. The applause accordingly lifted, and with his smile broadening into a full beam Borden thrust his hand into the pocket and produced … a paper rose, brilliant pink in colour.

  This production was a reference back to an earlier trick. In this he had allowed a lady from the audience to select one flower from a whole bunch, before wonderfully making it vanish. To see the rose reappear utterly charmed his audience. He held the little flower aloft – it was most definitely the one the lady had chosen. When he had displayed it long enough he turned it in his fingers, to reveal that part of it had been charred black, as if by some infernal force. With a significant glance towards his apparatus behind him, Borden made one more sweeping bow, then departed the stage.

  The applause continued for long afterwards, and I report that my hands were clapping as loudly as anyone’s.

  Why should this fellow-magician, so gifted, so endowed with skill and professionalism, pursue a sordid feud against me?

  5th March 1898

  I have been working hard, with little time for the diary. Once more, several months have passed between my last entry and this. Today (a weekend) I have no bookings, so I may make a brief entry.

  To record that Adam and I have not included our switch illusion in my act since that night in Nottingham.

  Even without this mild provocation, the soi-disant greatest living magician has meanwhile dignified me with two more unprovoked attacks while I was performing. Both involved potentially risky interruptions to my act. One of them I was able to joke away, but the other was for a few minutes an unsustainable disaster.

  I have as a result abandoned my façade of disdain.

  I am left with two apparently unachievable ambitions. The first is to try to forge some kind of reconciliation with Julia and the children. I know I have lost her forever, but the distance she puts between us is terrible to endure. The second is minor in comparison. It is that now my unilateral truce with Borden has ended, I of course wish to discover the secret of his illusion so that I might again outperform him.

  31st July 1898

  Olivia has proposed an idea!

  Before describing it I should say that in recent months the ardour between Olivia and myself has noticeably cooled. There is neither rancour nor jealousy between us, but a vast indifference has been hanging like a pall over the house. We continue to cohabit peacefully, she in her apartment, I in mine, and at times we behave as man and wife, but overall we no longer act as if we love or care for each other. Yet we cling together.

  The first clue I had came after dinner. We had eaten together in my apartment, but at the end she absented herself with some haste, taking with her a bottle of gin. I have grown used to her solitary drinking, and no longer remark on it.

  A few minutes later, though, her maid, Lucy, came up and asked me if I would step downstairs for a few minutes.

  I found Olivia seated at her green-baize card table, with two or three bottles and two glasses standing on it, and an empty chair opposite her. She waved me to sit down, and then poured me a drink. I added some orange syrup to the gin, to take away the taste.

  ‘Robbie,’ she said with her familiar directness. ‘I’m going to leave you.’

  I mumbled something in reply. I have been expecting some such development for months, although I had no idea how I would cope with it if, as at this moment, it happened.

  ‘I’m going to leave you,’ she said again, ‘and then I’m going to come back. Do you want to know why?’

  I said that I did.

  ‘Because there’s something you want more than you want me. I figure that if I get out there and find it for you, then I have a chance to make you want me all over again.’

  I assured her I wanted her as much as ever, but she cut me short.

  ‘I know what’s going on,’ she declared. ‘You and this Alfred Borden are like two lovers who can’t get along together. Am I right?’

  I tried to prevaricate, but when I saw the determination in her eyes I quickly agreed.

  ‘Look at this!’ she said, and brandished this week’s copy of The Stage. ‘See here.’

  She folded the paper in half and passed it across to me. She had circled one of the classified advertisements on the front page.

  ‘That’s your friend Borden,’ she said. ‘See what he says?’

  An attractive young female stage assistant is required for full-time employment. She must be terpsichorally adept, strong and fit, and willing to travel and to work long hours, both on and off stage. Pleasing appearance is essential, and so is a willingness to participate in exciting and demanding routines before large audiences. Please apply, with suitable references, to …

  The address of Alfred Borden’s rehearsal room followed.

  ‘He’s been advertising for an assistant for a couple of weeks, so he must be finding it difficult to hire the right one. I guess I could help him out.’

  ‘You mean you—’

  ‘You always said I was the best assistant you ever had.’

  ‘But you …? Going to work for him?’ I shook my head sadly. ‘How could you do this to me, Olivia?’

  ‘You want to find out how he does that trick, don’t you?’ she said.

  As it dawned on me what she was saying I sat silently before her, staring at her and marvelling. If she could gain his confidence, work with him in rehearsal and on stage, move freely in his workshop, it would not be long before Borden’s secret was mine.

  We soon got down to details.

  I was worried in case he recognised her, but Olivia was not.

  ‘You think I’d dream up this idea if I thought he knew my name?’ she drawled. She reminded me that he had once had to address her as ‘Occupant’. The need to supply references seemed for a time to be an insurmountable problem, because Olivia had worked for no one but me, but she pointed out that I was entirely capable of forging letters.

  And I had doubts, I don’t mind admitting here. The thought of this beautiful young woman, who had wreaked such exciting emotional havoc on me, and who had given up her own life to be with me, and who had shared almost everything with me for five years, the thought of her preparing to enter the camp of my blackest enemy was almost too much to countenance.

  Two hours or more went quickly by while we discussed her idea, and began to lay our plans. We emptied the bottle of gin, while Olivia kept saying, ‘I’ll get the secret for you, Robbie. That’s what you want me to do, isn’t it?’ And I said yes, but that I did not want to lose her.

  The spectre of Bord
en’s ruthlessness loomed over us. I was torn between the euphoria of making a definitive strike against him, and the prospect of him taking some even greater revenge should he realise Olivia was mine. I voiced these fears. She replied, ‘I’ll come back to you Robbie, and I’ll bring you Borden’s secret—’ We were soon both of us inebriated, both of us frolicsome and affectionate, and I did not return to my own apartment until after breakfast this morning.

  At the moment she is in her own apartment, drafting a letter of application to Alfred Borden. I must go to forge one or two testimonials for her. We are using the address of her maid for poste restante; as a further subterfuge she is taking her mother’s maiden name.

  7th August 1898

  It is a week since Olivia applied to Borden for a job, and there has been no reply. In some ways this is almost an irrelevance, as since the idea came into being Olivia and I have been as tender and loving to each other as we were during those heady weeks of my American tour. She looks more comely than she has for many months, and she has entirely given up her gin.

  14th August 1898

  Borden has replied (at least, an assistant called T. Elbourne replied on his behalf), proposing an interview early next week.

  I am suddenly dead against it, having in the last few days found a renewal of happiness with Olivia, and more unwilling than ever to see her fall into Borden’s clutches, even if it should be for something we dreamed up together.

  Olivia still wants to go through with it. I argue against her. I minimise the importance of his trick, shrug off the earnestness of the feud, try to laugh the whole thing off.

  I fear that in the past I gave Olivia too many months and years to think alone, however.

  18th August 1898

  Olivia has been to the interview and returned from it, and she says the job is hers.

  While she was gone I was in a torment of fears and regrets. Such is my suspicion of Borden that the moment she had left me I imagined that he had placed the advertisement in an attempt to snare her, and I had to restrain myself from dashing after her. I went around to my workshop and tried to distract myself with mirror practice, but at last I came home and paced around my room again.

  Olivia was gone far longer than either of us had expected, and I was seriously wondering what I should do when suddenly she arrived back. She was safe and sound, elated and excited.

  Yes, the job is hers. Yes, Borden read the references I had written, and he accepted them as genuine. No, there was no apparent suspicion of me, and no, he appeared not to suspect there was any link between us.

  She told me about some of the apparatus she had seen in his workshop, but it was all disappointingly ordinary.

  ‘Did he say anything at all about the switch illusion?’ I queried her.

  ‘Not a word. But he told me there were several tricks he did alone, and for which he did not need a stage assistant.’

  Later, saying she was tired, she went to her flat to sleep, and here I am, once more alone. I must try to understand. It is tiring going through an audition, no matter what the circumstances.

  19th August 1898

  It transpires that Olivia has started work with Borden immediately. When I went to the door of her flat this morning the maid told me Olivia had risen early, and would not be home until this afternoon.

  20th August 1898

  Olivia came in at 5.00 p.m. yesterday, and although she went straight to her flat she did admit me when I went to her door. She looked tired again. I was eager for news, but all she would say was that Borden had spent the day showing her the illusions in which she would be needed, and she had been rehearsing them intensively.

  Later we had dinner together, but she was plainly exhausted and went again to sleep alone in her flat. This morning she departed at an early hour.

  21st August 1898

  A Sunday, and even Borden does not work. At home with me all day Olivia is being tight-lipped about what she is seeing and doing in his workshop, and it puzzles me. I asked her if she felt constrained by professional ethics, that she perhaps felt she must not reveal to me the workings of his magic, but she denied it. For a few seconds I glimpsed Olivia in the mood of two weeks ago. She laughed and said that of course she realised where her loyalties lay.

  I know I can trust her, however difficult it is proving, and so I have let the subject rest all day. As a consequence, we have together enjoyed an innocent, ordinary day today, while we went for a long walk in the warm sunshine on Hampstead Heath.

  27th August 1898

  The end of another week, and still Olivia has no information for me. She seems unwilling to talk to me about it.

  Tonight she gave me a free pass to Borden’s next series of performances. Billed as an ‘extravaganza’, his show will occupy the Leicester Square Theatre for a two-week run. Olivia will be on stage with him at every performance.

  3rd September 1898

  Olivia has not returned home at all this evening. I am mystified, alarmed, and full of forebodings.

  4th September 1898

  I sent a boy to Borden’s workshop with a message for her, but he returned to say the place was bolted up with no one apparently inside.

  6th September 1898

  Abandoning subterfuge I went in search of Olivia. First to Borden’s workshop, which was empty as described, then to his house in St Johns Wood, and propitiously discovered a coffee shop from where I could observe the front of the building. I sat there as long as I was able, but without being rewarded with a single glimpse of any significant matter. I did however see Borden himself, leaving his house with a woman I took to be his wife. A carriage drew up outside the house at 2.00 p.m., and after a short pause Borden and the woman appeared, then climbed into the carriage. Shortly afterwards it drove off in the direction of the West End.

  Having waited for a full ten minutes to be certain he was away from the house, I walked nervously across to the door and rang the bell. A male servant answered.

  I said directly, ‘Is Miss Olivia Svenson here?’

  The man looked surprised.

  ‘I think you must be calling in error, sir,’ he said. ‘We have no one here of that name.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, remembering just in time that we had used her mother’s maiden name. ‘I meant to ask for Miss Wenscombe. Would she be here?’

  Again the man shook his head, politely and correctly.

  ‘There is no Miss Wenscombe here, sir. Maybe you should enquire at the Post Office in the High Street.’

  ‘Yes, indeed I shall,’ I replied, and, no longer wanting to draw attention to myself, I beat a retreat.

  I went back to my vigil in the coffee shop and waited there for another hour, by the end of which Borden and his wife returned to the house.

  12th September 1898

  With no further sign of Olivia coming home, I took the pass she had given me and went to the box office of the Leicester Square Theatre. Here I claimed a ticket for Borden’s show. I deliberately selected a seat near the rear of the stalls, so that my presence might not be noticed from the stage.

  After his customary opening with CHINESE LINKING RINGS, Borden quickly and efficiently produced his assistant from a cabinet. It was of course my Olivia, resplendent in a sequined gown that glittered and flashed in the electrically powered lights. She strode elegantly into the wings, whence she emerged a few moments later, now clad in a fetching costume of the leotard type. The blatant voluptuousness of her appearance quickened my pulse, even in spite of my intense and despairing feelings of loss.

  Borden climaxed his show with the electrical switch illusion, performing it with a flair that plunged me further into depression. When Olivia returned to the stage to take the final bow with him my gloom was complete. She looked beautiful, happy and excited, and it seemed to my troubled gaze that as Borden held her hand for the applause he did so with unnecessary affection.

  Determined to see the thing through, I raced from the auditorium and hurried around to the Stage Doo
r. Although I waited while the other artistes filed out into the night, and until the doorman had locked the door and turned off the lights, I saw neither Borden nor Olivia departing the building.

  18th September 1898

  Today Olivia’s maid, whom I have retained in the household for the time being lest Olivia should return, brought me a letter she had received from her erstwhile mistress.

  I read it anxiously, clinging to the hope that it might contain a clue as to what had happened, but it merely said:

  Lucy—

  Would you kindly make up packages and cases of all my belongings, and have them delivered as soon as possible to the Stage Door of the Strand Theatre.

  Please be sure that everything is clearly labelled as being for myself, and I will arrange collection.

  I enclose an amount to cover the costs, and that which is left over you must keep for yourself. If you require a reference for your next employment Mr Angier will of course write it for you.

  Thank you, &c

  Olivia Svenson

  I had to read this letter aloud to the poor girl, and to explain what she had to do with the five-pound note Olivia had enclosed.

  4th December 1898

  I am currently engaged for a season of shows at the Plaza Theatre in Richmond, by the side of the River Thames. This evening, I was relaxing in my dressing room between first and second performances, just prior to going out to find a sandwich meal with Adam and Gertrude. Someone knocked on the door.

  It was Olivia. I let her into the room almost without thinking what I was doing. She looked beautiful but tired, and told me she had been trying to locate me all day.