Christopher Priest - The Prestige

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 sйances 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 ingйnieur 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: Ј637 12s 6d. Before expenses.

31st December 1880

Total Income from Magic for 1880: Ј1,142 7s 9d. Before expenses.

31st December 1881

Total Income from Magic for 1881: Ј4,777 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 ingйnieur Harry Cutter do keep an eye on things.

With the committee on stage I engage them in humorous 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 realized 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 realizing 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 suppress while making my 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 left 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.