Christopher Priest - The Prestige

"I have never spoken to you about that," I said. "How do you know?"

"Because I am not a fool, Rupert, and I have seen occasional remarks in the magic magazines." I had not known she continued to subscribe to those. "You are still prime amongst my concerns," she said. 'I wonder only why you have never spoken to me of his attacks."

"Because I am, I suppose, a little ashamed of the feud."

"Surely he is the aggressor?"

"I have had to defend myself," I said.

I told her about my investigations into his past, and my attempts to discover how he worked the illusion. Then I described the hopes I had for Tesla's equipment.

"Borden relies on standard stage trickery," I explained. "He uses cabinets and lights and make-up, and when he transports himself across the stage he does so by concealment. He enters one apparatus and emerges from another. It is brilliantly done, but the mystery is not only concealed by his props it is also made banal by them. The beauty of the Tesla device is that the trick can be carried out in the open, and the materialization uses no props at all! If it works as planned I shall be transporting myself instantly to any position I like: to an empty part of the stage, to the royal box, to the front of the grand circle, even to an empty seat in the centre of the stalls! Anywhere, indeed, that will produce the greatest impact on the audience."

"You make it sound a little provisional," Julia said. "You say this is still being planned?"

"As Alley says in his letter, it has been despatched to me

… but I have yet to receive it!"

Julia was the perfect audience for my enthusiasms about Tesla's device, and for the next hour or more we discussed all the possibilities it presented to me. Julia quickly identified the instinct that had been at the heart of it; if I were to perform this illusion on any public stage it would thwart Borden forever!

Were there any remaining doubts about what I should be doing, Julia dispelled them forever. Indeed, so excited was she that we began our search for the shipment at once.

I proposed, gloomily, that it would take several weeks to tour around the many shipping agents’ offices in London, trying to trace an undelivered crate. But Julia said, in her familiar way of cutting through the Gordian Knot: "Why do we not begin our enquiries with the Post Office?" So it was, two hours later, that we located two immense crates addressed to me, waiting safely in the dead-letter section of the Mount Pleasant Sorting Office.

15th December 1900

Most of the last three weeks have been an agony of frustration, because I have been waiting for electricity to be supplied to my workshop. I have been like a small boy with a toy I could not play with. The Tesla apparatus has been erected in my workshop ever since I picked it up from Mount Pleasant, but without a supply of current it is useless. I have read Mr Alley's lucid instructions a thousand times! However, after my increasingly frequent reminders and urgings, the London Electricity Company has at last done the necessary work.

I have been rehearsing ever since, wrapped up mentally and emotionally in the demands this extraordinary device makes on me. Here, in no particular order, is a summary of what I have learned.

It is in full working order, and has been ingeniously designed to work on all presently known versions of electrical supply. This means I may travel with my show, even to Europe, the USA and (Alley claims in his instructions) the Far East.

However, I cannot perform my show unless the theatre has electrical current supplied. In future I will have to check this before I accept any new bookings, as well as many other new matters (some of which follow).

Portability. I know Tesla has done his best, but the equipment is damnably heavy. From now on, planning the delivery, unpacking and setting up of the apparatus is a priority. It means, for instance, that the simple informality of a train-ride to one of my shows is a thing of the past, at least if I wish to perform the Tesla illusion.

Technical rehearsals. The apparatus has to be erected twice. First for private testing on the morning of the show, then, while the main curtain is down and another act is in progress, it has to be re-erected for the performance. The admirable Alley has included suggestions as to how it might be carried out speedily and silently, but even so this is going to be hard work. Much rehearsal will be necessary, and I shall require extra assistants.

Physical layout of the theatres. I or Adam Wilson will always need to reconnoitre beforehand.

Boxing the stage. This is practicably straightforward, but in many theatres it antagonizes the backstage staff, who for some reason think they have an automatic right to have revealed to them what they consider to be trade secrets. In this case, allowing strangers to see what I am actually doing on stage is out of the question. Again, more preparatory work than usual will be necessary.

Post-performance sealing of the apparatus, and private disassembly, are also procedures fraught with risk. I cannot accept any bookings until these procedures have been worked out and ensuing problems resolved.

All this special preparation! However, careful planning and rehearsal are in the essence of successful stage magic, and I am no stranger to any of them.

One small step forward. All stage illusions are given names by their inventors, and it is by these that they become known in the profession. The Three Graces, Decapitation, Cassadaga Propaganda, are examples of three illusions at present popular in the halls. Borden, stodgily, calls his second-rate version of the trick The New Transported Man (a name I have never used, even when I was employing his methods). After some thought I have decided to call the Tesla invention In a Flash, and by this it will become known.

I also use this entry to note that as of last Monday, 10th December, Julia and the children have returned and are living with me at Idmiston Villas. They will see Caldlow House for the first time when we spend the Christmas holiday there.

29th December 1900

In Caldlow House

I am a happy man, given this, my second chance. I cannot bear to think of past Christmases when I was estranged from my family, nor the thought that somehow I might again lose this happiness.

I am therefore busily preparing for what must follow, all in order to avert that which might otherwise follow. I say this with deliberate obscurity, because now that I have rehearsed In a Flash a couple of times, and I have learned its true working, I must be circumspect about its secret, even here.

"When the children are asleep, and Julia encourages me to attend to business, I have been concentrating on the affairs of the estate. I am determined to put right the neglect my brother allowed.

31st December 1900

I write these words as the nineteenth century draws to a close. In an hour from now I shall descend to our drawing room, where Julia and the children are waiting for me, and together we shall see in the New Year and the New Century. It is a night resonant with auguries for the future, also with unavoidable reminders from the past.

Because secrecy again has a hold on me, I must say that what Hutton and I did earlier this evening had to be done.

What I am about to write will be written with a hand that still trembles from the primaeval fears that were aroused in me. I have been thinking hard about what I can record of the experience, and have decided that a straightforward, even bald, description of what happened is the only way.

This evening, soon after nightfall, while the children were taking an early nap so that they could be awake later to see in the new century, I told Julia what I was about to do, and left her waiting in her sitting room.

I found Hutton, and we left the house and went together across the East Lawn towards the family vault. We transported the prestige materials on a handcart sometimes used by the gardeners.