Christopher Priest - The Prestige

I calculate that they too have lost about seventeen per cent of their mass. They look the same, they have the same dimensions as ordinary coins, they even make the same ringing sound when dropped on a stone floor, but somehow or other they have lost some of their weight .

29th May 1903

The week has shown no improvement. I remain debilitated. Although I am well , in that I have no fever, no apparent wounds, no pain, no sickness, in spite of all this as soon as I make any physical effort I am overtaken with fatigue. Julia continues to try to feed me back to health, but I have made only a marginal gain in weight. We both pretend I am improving, but in doing so we are denying what is obvious to us both — I shall never recover the part of me that has gone.

In this enforced physical languor my mind continues to work normally, which adds to the frustration.

Reluctantly, but on the advice of everyone close to me, I have cancelled all future bookings. To distract myself I have been running the Tesla apparatus, and passing through it a quantity of gold. I am not greedy, and I do not wish to draw unwelcome attention to myself by becoming excessively wealthy. I need only enough money to ensure the long term wellbeing of myself and my family. At the end of each session I weigh each coin carefully, but all is well.

Tomorrow, we return to Caldlow House.

18th July 1903

In Derbyshire

The Great Danton is dead. The demise of the illusionist Rupert Angier came as a result of injuries sustained when a trick went wrong during a performance at the Pavilion Theatre in Lowestoft. He died at his home in Highgate, London, and leaves a widow and three children.

The 14th Earl of Colderdale remains alive, if not in the rudest of health. He has had the mixed pleasure of reading his own obituary in The Times , a privilege not granted to many. Of course the obituary was unsigned, but I was able to deduce that it had not been written by Borden. The assessment of my career is naturally shown in a fair and positive light, but in addition I detect no jealousy, no undercurrent of subtle resentment, usually perceptible on these occasions when a rival is invited to record the passing of one of his colleagues. I am relieved that Borden was not involved in this at least.

Angier's affairs are now in the hands of a firm of lawyers. He is of course really dead, and his body was really placed inside the coffin. This I saw as Angier's last illusion; the provision of his own corpse for burial. Julia is officially his widow, and his children are orphans. They were all present at Highgate Cemetery for his funeral, a ceremony kept strictly to his immediate family. The press stayed away at the personal request of the widow, and no fans or admirers were seen on the day.

On that same day I was myself travelling back anonymously to Derbyshire with Adam Wilson and his family. He and Gertrude have agreed to remain with me as paid companions. I am able to reward them well.

Julia and the children arrived back here three days later. For the time being she is the widow Angier, but as we fade from people's recollections she will quietly become, as is her right, Lady Colderdale.

I thought I had grown familiar with surviving my own death, but this time I have done it in a way that I can never repeat. Because I can not go back to the stage, and because I am now in the role that my elder brother had previously denied me, I find myself wondering how I am to fill the days that lie ahead.

After the disagreeable shock of what happened to me in Lowestoft, I have settled down to what has become my new existence. I am not in decline, and my condition remains stable. I have little physical energy or strength, but I do not seem likely to drop dead suddenly. The doctor here repeats what I was told in London: there is nothing apparently the matter with me that good food, exercise and a positive outlook will not cure in time.

So I find myself taking up the life I had briefly planned after I returned from Colorado. There is much to attend to in the house and around the estate, and because nothing has been run properly for years much of it is in decay. Fortunately, for once my family has the financial wherewithal to tackle some of the most serious problems.

I have had Wilson erect the Tesla apparatus in the basement, telling him that from time to time I shall be rehearsing In a Flash in preparation for my return to the stage. Its real use is, of course, otherwise.

19th September 1903

Merely to record that today is the day I had originally planned for the death of Rupert Angier. It has passed like all the others, quietly and (given my continuing restlessness about my health) peacefully.

3rd November 1903

I am recovering from an attack of pneumonia. It nearly got me! I have been in Sheffield Royal Infirmary since the end of September, and I survived only by a miracle. Today is the first day at home where I have been able to sit up long enough to write. The moors look splendid through my window.

30th November 1903

Recovering. I am almost back to the condition I was in when I returned here from London. That is to say, officially well, unofficially not too good.

15th December 1903

Adam Wilson came to my reading room at half past ten this morning, and informed me a visitor was waiting downstairs to see me. It was Arthur Koenig! I stared at his calling card in surprise, wondering what he wanted. "Tell him I'm not available for the moment," I said to Adam, and I went to my study to think.

Could his visit be something to do with my funeral? The faking of my own death had a deceptive side to it that I suspect could be construed as illegal, even though I can't imagine what harm might befall anyone else as a consequence. But the fact that Koenig was here at all meant he knew the funeral had been a sham. Was he going to try to blackmail me in some way? I still do not fully trust Mr Koenig, nor do I understand his motives.

I let him sweat downstairs for fifteen minutes, then asked Adam to bring him up.

Koenig appeared to be in a serious mood. After we had greeted each other, I sat him down in one of the easy chairs facing my desk. The first thing he said was to assure me that his visit was unconnected with his job on the newspaper.

"I'm here as an emissary, my Lord," he said. "I'm acting in my private capacity for a third party who knows of my interest in the world of magic, and who has asked me to approach your wife."

"Approach Julia?" I said, in genuine surprise. "Why should you have anything to say to her?"

Koenig was looking distinctly uncomfortable.

"Your wife, my Lord, is the widow of Rupert Angier. It is in that guise that I have been commissioned to approach her. But I thought, bearing in mind what has happened in the past, it would be wisest to come to you first."

"What's going on, Koenig?"

He had brought with him a small leather case, and he now picked this up and laid it on his lap.

"The… third party for whom I'm acting has come across a notebook, a private memoir, in which it is felt your wife would have an interest. In particular, it is hoped that Lady Colderdale, that is, Mrs Angier, might wish to purchase it. This, er, third party is not aware that you, my Lord, are still alive, and so I find myself not only betraying the person who is sending me on this task, but also the person to whom I should be speaking. But I really felt, under the circumstances—"

"Whose notebook is it?"

"Alfred Borden’s."

"Do you have it with you?"

"Of course I do."

Koenig reached down into the case, and produced a cloth-bound notebook of the sort that comes equipped with a lockable clasp. He handed it to me so that I might examine it, but because it was locked I could not see what was inside. When I looked back at Koenig he was holding the key.