Christopher Priest - The Prestige

21st September 1892

In London

I had expected to be basking in the afterglow of the tour, but instead I find that while I have been away Borden has been gaining lavish attention. It seems that one of the illusions he has been performing for years has finally caught the public's fancy, and he is in terrific demand.

Although I have watched his act several times, I have never seen him attempt anything unusual. This could of course be that for various reasons I have rarely stayed to the end of his act!

Cutter knows as little about this applauded trick as I do, for the obvious reason that he has been in Europe with me. I was about to shrug it off as an irrelevance until I read through some of the correspondence that was waiting for me here. Dominic Brawton, one of my magic scouts, had sent a terse note.

Performer : Alfred Borden (Le Professeur de la Magie). Illusion : The New Transported Man. Effect : brilliant, not to be missed. Adaptability : difficult, but as Borden manages it somehow, so I imagine could you.

I showed this to Julia.

Later I showed her another letter. I have been invited to take my magic show to the New World! If I agree we would begin touring in February with a week-long residency in Chicago! And then a tour to the dozen or so largest American cities!

The thought of it simultaneously thrills and exhausts me.

Julia said to me, "Forget Borden. You must take your show to the USA."

And I too think I must.

14th October 1892

I have seen Borden's new illusion, and it is good. It is devilishly good. It is the better for being simple. It galls me to say it, but I must be fair.

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 we saw bursts open, and Borden is now impossibly there! 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 it 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 be saw performed twenty years ago, involving a voting 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?"