The Prestige

by Christopher Priest

  Money, food, accommodation presented no problems to me. Either I took what I wanted when in the invisible state, or I paid for what I needed. Such concerns were trivial.

  My real consideration was the well-being of my prestige.

  I learned from a newspaper report that my fleeting glimpse of the stage had completely misled me. The report stated that The Great Danton had suffered injuries during a performance in Lowestoft, that he had been forced to cancel future engagements, but was resting at home and expected to return to the stage in due course.

  I was relieved to hear it but greatly surprised! What I had glimpsed as the curtains came down was what I assumed was my own prestige, frozen in the half-dead, half-live condition I called ‘prestigious’. The prestige is the source body in the transportation, left behind in the Tesla apparatus, as if dead. Concealing and disposing of these prestigious bodies was the single greatest problem I had had to solve before I could present the illusion to the public. Every new performance created yet another prestige.

  With this news about ill-health and cancelled engagements I realised something different had happened that night. The transportation had been only partial, and I was the sorry result. Most of me had remained behind.

  Both I and my prestige were much reduced by Borden’s intervention. We each had problems to cope with. I was in a wraithlike condition, my prestige was in debilitated health. While he had corporeality and freedom of movement in the world, from the moment of the accident he was doomed to die; meanwhile, I had been condemned to a life in the shadows, but my health was intact.

  In July, two months after Lowestoft, and while I was still coming to terms with the disaster, my prestige apparently decided of his own accord to bring forward the death of Rupert Angier. It was exactly what I would have done in his position. This was the moment when I realised that he was me. It was the first time we had reached an identical decision separately, and my first intimation that although we existed separately we were emotionally but one person.

  Soon after, my prestige returned to Caldlow House to take up the inheritance. Again, that is what I would have done.

  I, though, remained in London for the time being. I had macabre business to attend to, and I wanted to conduct it in secret with no risk of my actions being attached to the Colderdale name.

  In short, I had decided that Borden, finally, must be dealt with. I planned to murder him, or, more exactly, to murder one of the two.

  Borden’s secret double life made murder a feasible revenge. He had interfered with the official records that revealed the existence of twins, and had lived his life with one half of himself concealed. As only one Borden had legal existence, what would stop me from killing the other? It would finally put an end to their deception, and would for my purposes be as satisfying and effective as killing them both. I also reasoned that in my wraithlike state, and with my only known identity publicly buried and mourned, I, Rupert Angier, could never be caught or even suspected of the crime.

  In London, I set my plans in progress. I was able to use my virtual invisibility to follow Borden as he went about his life and affairs. I saw him in his family home, I saw him preparing and rehearsing his stage show in his workshop, I stood unseen in the wings of a theatre as he performed his illusions, I tracked him to the secret lair he shared in north London with Olivia Svenson … and once, even, I glimpsed Borden with his twin brother, briefly, furtively meeting in a darkened street, a hurried exchange of information, some desperate business that had to be concluded at once and in person.

  It was when I saw him with Olivia that I decided, finally, he must die. Enough feelings remained about that old betrayal to add hurt to the outrage.

  Making a decision to commit premeditated murder is the hardest part of the terrible deed, I can reliably say. Often provoked, I believe myself even so to be a mild and reticent man. Although I never want to hurt others, all through my adult life I have frequently found myself swearing I would ‘kill’ or ‘do in’ Borden. These oaths, uttered in private, and often in silence, are the common impotent ravings of the wronged victim, the position Borden had so often forced me into.

  In those days I had never seriously intended to kill him, but the Lowestoft attack had changed everything. I was reduced to wraithdom, and my other self was wasting away. Borden had in a real way killed us both that night, and I burned for revenge.

  The mere thought of killing gave me such satisfaction and excitement that my personality changed. I, who was beyond death, lived to kill.

  Once I had taken the decision, commission of the crime could not be made to wait. I saw the death of one of the Borden twins as the key to my own freedom.

  But I had no experience of violence, and before I could do anything I had to decide how best to go about it. I wanted a modus operandi that would be immediate and personal, one in which Borden, as he helplessly died, would realise who was killing him and why. By a simple process of elimination I decided I would have to stab him. Again, imagining the prospect of such a terrible act raised a heady thrill of anticipation in me.

  I justified stabbing thus: poison was too slow and dangerous to administer, and it was anyway impersonal, a shooting was noisy, and again it lacked close personal contact. I was more or less incapable of acts of physical strength, so anything that involved this, such as clubbing or strangling, was not possible. I found, by experiment, that if I held a long-bladed knife in both hands, firmly but not tightly, then I could slide it with sufficient force to penetrate flesh.

  4

  Two days after I had completed my preparations I followed Borden to the Queen’s Theatre in Balham, where he was top of the week’s variety bill. The day was a Wednesday, when there was a matinée performance as well as one in the evening. I knew it was Borden’s habit to retire to his dressing-room between shows for a nap on his couch.

  I watched his performance from the darkened wings, then afterwards followed him along the gloomy backstage corridors and staircases to his dressing-room. When he was inside with the door closed, and the general backstage turmoil had quietened a little, I went to where I had secreted my murder weapon. I returned cautiously to the corridor outside Borden’s room, moving from one darkened corner to the next only when I was certain no one was about.

  I was wearing the stage clothes from Lowestoft, my habitual apparel when I wished to move unobserved, but the knife was a normal one. If I had been seen by anyone it would have looked as if the knife were floating along unsupported in the air.

  Outside Borden’s room, I made myself stand quietly in a shadowy alcove opposite, calming my breathing, trying to control the racing of my heart. I counted slowly to two hundred.

  After another check that no one was approaching I went to the door and leaned against it, pressing my face gently but firmly into the wood. In a few seconds the front part of my head had passed through, and I was able to see into the room. Only one lamp was alight, casting a dim glow through the small, untidy room. Borden was lying on his couch, his eyes closed, his hands clasped together on his chest.

  I withdrew my face.

  Clasping the knife I opened the door and went inside. Borden stirred, and looked towards me. I closed the door, and pushed home the bolt.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Borden said, narrowing his eyes.

  I was not there to bandy words with him. I took two steps across the narrow floor, then leaped up on to the couch and crawled on top of him. I squatted on his stomach, and raised the knife in both hands.

  Borden saw the knife, then focused on me. In the dim light I was just visible. I could see my arms outlined as I sat over him, the blade trembling above his chest. I must have been a wild and dreadful sight. I had been unable to shave or cut my hair for more than two months, and my face was gaunt. I was terrified and desperate. I was sitting on his abdomen. I was holding a knife, preparing for the deadly thrust.

  ‘What are you?’ Borden gasped. He had taken hold of my spectral wrists, trying to hold me back, but it was a
simple matter to work myself free of him. ‘Who—?’

  ‘Prepare to die, Borden!’ I shouted, knowing that what he would hear was the hoarse and horrifying whisper that was all I could produce.

  ‘Angier? Please! I had no idea what I was doing! I meant no harm!’

  ‘Was it you who did it? Or was it the other?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Was it you or your twin brother?’

  ‘I have no brother!’

  ‘You are about to die! Tell me the truth! This is your last chance!’

  ‘I am alone!’

  ‘Too late!’ I shouted, and I deliberately set my hands in the grip I had learned would give me the strongest grasp on the knife. I would lose the hold if I stabbed too savagely, so I brought the blade down to a place above his heart and began the steady pressure I knew would take the blade through to its target. I felt the fabric of his shirt slit open, and the knife point pressed down into his flesh.

  Then I saw the expression on Borden’s face. He was transfixed with fear of me. His hands were somewhere above my head, trying to get a grip on me. His jaw had fallen open, his tongue was jutting forward, saliva was running out of each corner of his mouth and down his jowls. His chest was convulsing with his frantic breathing.

  No words came out of his mouth, but he was trying to speak. I heard the hiss and splutter of a man drowning in his own terror.

  I realised that he was not a strong man any more. His hair was streaked with grey. The skin around his eyes was wrinkled with fatigue. His neck was lined. He lay beneath me, fighting for his life against an insubstantial daemon who had come to squat on his body with a knife ready to slay him.

  The thought repulsed me. I could not take murder through to its conclusion. I could not kill like this.

  All the fear, anger and tension poured away from me.

  I threw the knife aside, and rolled adroitly off. I backed away from him, now defenceless and in my turn petrified of what he might do.

  He remained on the couch, where he continued to rasp his breath painfully, shuddering with horror and relief. I stood there submissively, mortified by the effect I had had on the man.

  Finally, he steadied.

  ‘Who are you?’ he said, his frightened voice uneven, breaking into falsetto on the last word.

  ‘I am Rupert Angier,’ I replied hoarsely.

  ‘But you are dead!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then how—?’

  I said, ‘We should never have started this, Borden. But killing you is not the way to end it.’

  I was humbled by the awfulness of what I had been trying to do, and the basic sense of decency that had ruled my life until this point was returning in force. How could I ever have imagined that I could kill a man in cold blood? I turned away from Borden sorrowfully, and forced myself against the wooden door. As I passed through slowly I heard him make his yelping rasp of horror once again.

  5

  I was thrown into a fit of despair and self-disgust by my attempt on Borden’s life. I knew I had betrayed myself, betrayed my prestige (who was aware of none of my actions), betrayed Julia, my children, my father’s name, every friend I had known. If ever I needed proof that my feud with Borden was an appalling mistake, at last I had it. Nothing we had done to each other in the past could justify such a descent into brutality.

  In a state of wretchedness and apathy I returned to the room I had rented, thinking there was no more I could do with my life. I had nothing more for which to live.

  6

  I planned to waste away and die, but there is a spirit of life, even in one such as myself, that stands in the way of such decisions. I thought that if I did not eat and drink then death would simply follow, but in practice I found that thirst becomes such a frantic obsession that it takes a greater resolve than mine to resist it. Every time I took a few drops to slake it, I postponed my demise a little more. The same was true with food. Hunger is a monster.

  After a while I came to an accommodation with this and stayed alive, a pathetic denizen of a half-world that was as much of my own making as it had been of Borden’s, or so I came to believe.

  I went through the winter in this miserable state, a failure even at self-destruction.

  During February I felt something profound growing in me. At first I thought it was an intensification of the loss I had felt since Lowestoft, the fact that I was never able to see Julia or the children. I had denied myself this, believing that on balance my need to be with them was outweighed by the horrific effect my appearance would have. As the months slipped by, this sadness had become a horrible ache in me, but I could detect nothing around me that made it suddenly grow in the way it had.

  It was when I thought of the life of my other self, the prestige left behind me after Lowestoft, that I felt a sense of sharp focus. I knew at once he was in trouble.

  There had been an accident to him of some kind, or he was being threatened (perhaps by one of the Bordens?), or even that his health had deteriorated more quickly than I had expected. He was ill, dying even. I had to be with him, help him in whatever way I could.

  By this time I was myself no great figure of physical strength. In addition to the attenuated body the accident had given me, my poor diet and lack of exercise had made me into a virtual skeleton. I rarely moved from my sordid room, and did so only at night when no one could see me. I knew that I had become hideous to behold, a veritable ghoul in every sense. The prospect of the long journey to Derbyshire seemed fraught with dangerous possibilities.

  I therefore embarked on a conscious effort to improve my appearance. I began to take food and drink in reasonable quantities, I hacked at my long and dishevelled hair and stole a new set of clothes. Several weeks of care would be necessary to restore me even to my appearance after Lowestoft, but I did start feeling better almost at once, and my spirits rose.

  Against this was the knowledge that the pain being suffered by my prestige was almost unendurable.

  Everything was heading ineluctably towards my return to the family home, and in the last week of March I bought a ticket for the overnight train to Sheffield.

  7

  I knew only one thing about the impact of my return home. My sudden appearance would not surprise the part of me that I called my prestige.

  I arrived at Caldlow House in mid-morning, a bright Spring day, and in the unwavering sunlight my physical appearance was at its most substantial. Even so, I knew I cut a surprising figure, because during my short daytime journey from Sheffield station by cab, omnibus and then cab again I had drawn many an inquisitive look from passers-by. I had grown used to this in London, but Londoners are themselves accustomed to seeing the city’s stranger denizens. Here in the provinces a skeletal man in dark clothes and large hat, with unnatural complexion, raggedly cut hair and weirdly hollow eyes, was an object of curiosity and alarm.

  At the house I went and hammered on the door. I could have let myself in, but I had no idea what I should expect to find. I felt it best to take my unheralded return one step at a time.

  Hutton opened the door.

  I removed my hat, and stood plainly before him. He had begun to speak before he looked properly at me but he was silenced as he saw me. He stared wordlessly, his face impassive. I knew him well enough to realise that his silence revealed his consternation.

  When I had given him time to accept who I might be, I said, ‘Hutton, I’m pleased to see you again.’

  He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came.

  ‘You must know what occurred in Lowestoft, Hutton,’ I said. ‘I am the unfortunate consequence of that.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he said at last.

  ‘May I come in?’

  ‘Should I advise Lady Colderdale you are here, sir?’

  ‘I should like to speak to you quietly before I see her, Hutton. I know my arrival here is likely to cause alarm.’

  He took me to his sitting room beside the kitchen, and he gave me a cup of
tea from a pot he had just been making. I sipped it while I stood before him, not knowing how to explain. Hutton, a man I had always admired for his presence of mind, soon took control of the situation.

  ‘I think it best, sir,’ he said, ‘if you would wait here while I take it upon myself to announce your arrival to her ladyship. She will then, I believe, come to see you. You may best decide how to proceed together.’

  ‘Hutton, tell me. How is my—? I mean, how is the health of—?’

  ‘His lordship has been gravely ill, sir. However, the prognosis is excellent and he has returned this week from hospital. He is convalescing in the garden room, where we have moved his bed. I believe her ladyship is with him at this moment.’

  ‘This is an impossible situation, Hutton,’ I ventured.

  ‘It is, sir.’

  ‘For you in particular, I mean.’

  ‘For me and for you, and for everyone, sir. I understand what happened in that theatre in Lowestoft. His lordship, that is, you, sir, took me into his confidence. You will remember, no doubt, that I have been much involved with the disposal of the prestige materials. There are of course no secrets in this house, my Lord, as you directed.’

  ‘Is Adam Wilson here?’

  ‘Yes, he is.’

  ‘I’m glad to know that.’

  A few moments later, Hutton left and after a delay of about five minutes returned with Julia. She looked tired, and her hair was drawn back into a bun. She came straight to me and we embraced warmly enough, but we were both so nervous. I could feel her tensing as we held each other.

  Hutton excused himself, and when we were alone together Julia and I assured each other I was not some kind of gruesome impostor. Even I had sometimes doubted my own identity during those long winter months. There is a kind of madness where delusion replaces reality, and many times such a malaise seemed to explain everything; that I had once been Rupert Angier but I was now dispossessed of my own life and only memories remained, or alternatively that I was some other soul who in madness had come to believe he was Angier.