Christopher Priest - The Prestige

From the beginning of April until the middle of May we worked together on the revision of Borden's notebook, preparing it for the publisher. My twin brother (for so it became convenient to think of my prestige) was soon ill again, and although he had done much of the initial work on the book it was I who completed the work, and negotiated with the publisher.

And I, using his identity, maintained the journal for him until his demise. So it was, yesterday, that our double life came to an end, and with it comes the end of my own short life story. Now there is only me, and I live beyond death once more.

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8th July 1904

This morning I went with Wilson down to the cellar, where we inspected the Tesla apparatus. It was in full working order, but because it was a long time since I had used it I went through Mr Alley's notes to check that everything was in place. I had always enjoyed the sense of collaborating with the far distant Mr Alley. His meticulous notes were a pleasure to work with.

Wilson asked me if we should dismantle the device.

I thought briefly, then said, "Let's leave it until after the funeral."

The ceremony is planned for tomorrow at midday.

After Wilson had left, and I had locked the access door to the cellar, I powered up the device and used it to transmit more gold coins. I was thinking of the future, of my son the 15th Earl, of my wife the dowager lady. All these were responsibilities I could not fully address. Once again I felt the crushing weight of my own ineffectuality holding back not only me but my innocent family.

I had not counted the wealth we had created with the device, but my prestige had shown me the hoard he had made, kept in a closed and locked compartment in the darkest recess of the cellar. I removed what I estimated to be two thousand pounds’ worth, for Julia's immediate requirements, then I added my few new coins to what was left, thinking that no matter how much we forged there would never be enough.

However, I would see to it that the Tesla device remained intact. Alley's instructions would be kept with it. One day, Edward will find this journal and realize what the apparatus can best be used for.

Later

I have only a few hours left before the funeral, and cannot spend too much of that time writing in these pages. Therefore let me note the following.

It is eight in the evening, and I am in the garden room I shared with my prestige before he died. A beautiful sunset is making gold the heights of Curbar Edge, and although this room faces away from the setting sun I can see amber tendrils of cloud overhead. A few minutes ago I walked softly around the grounds of the house, breathing the summer scents, listening to the quiet sounds of this moorland country I loved so much during my childhood.

It is a fine warm evening in which to plan the end, the very end.

I am a vestige of myself. Life has become literally not worth living. All that I love is forbidden to me by the state I am in. My family accepts me. They know who I am and what I am, and that my circumstances are not of my own making. Even so, the man they loved is dead, and I cannot replace him. Better for them that I depart, so that they might at last start to grieve fully and freely for the man who died. In the expression of grief lies recovery from grief itself.

Nor have I any legal existence: Rupert Angier the magician is dead and buried, the 14th Earl of Colderdale will be interred tomorrow.

I have no practical being. I cannot live except in squalid half life. I cannot travel safely without either assuming an unconvincing disguise, or scaring people half to death and putting myself in peril. My only expectation of life is as a ghost of myself, forever hovering on the fringes of my family's real lives, forever haunting my own past and their future.

So now it must end, and I shall die.

But the curse of life also clings to me! I have already found how fierce the spirit of life burns in me, and that not only is murder ethically beyond me but suicide too is an impossibility for me. When once before I wished myself dead, the wish was not strong enough. I can make myself die only by convincing myself that there is also a hope I shall not succeed.

As soon as I have completed these notes I will conceal this journal, and the earlier volumes of it, somewhere amongst the prestiges which lie in the vault. Then I will unlock the compartment in the cellar, leaving the gold for my son or his son eventually to find. This journal must not be discovered while the gold is yet to be spent, for it amounts to a confession of the forgery I have committed.

With all this completed I will charge up the Tesla device again and use it for the last time.

Alone, in secret, I will transmit myself across the aether for the most sensational manifestation of my career.

I have spent the last hour measuring and checking the coordinates, preparing myself, rehearsing as if an audience of thousands will be watching. But this act of magic must take place while I am alone, because I shall project myself into the deceased body of my prestige, and there my end will come!

I shall arrive there; of this there is no doubt, because the Tesla apparatus has never faltered yet in its accuracy. But what will be the result of this morbid union?

If it is a failure, I shall materialize inside my prestige's poor, cancer-ridden body, dead for two days, stiff with rigor mortis . I too will be instantly dead, and will know nothing about it. Tomorrow, as they lay the body to rest they will lay me with it.

But I believe there is a chance of another outcome, one that acknowledges my desperation to live. This materialization might not succeed in killing me!

I am certain, almost certain, that my arrival in the body of my prestige will return life to it. It will be a reunion, a final joining. What remains of me will fuse with what remains of him, and we will become whole once more. I have the spirit that he never had. I will reanimate his body with my spirit. I have the will to live that was taken from him; I will restore it to him. I have the vital spark that now he lacks. I will heal his lesions and sores and tumours with my purity of health, will pump blood once more through his arteries and veins, will soften the rigid muscles and joints, give bloom to his pale skin, and he and I will join once again to make wholeness of my own body.

Is it madness to think such a thing might be possible?

If madness it be, then I am content to be mad because I shall live.

I am mad enough, while I yet plan, to believe there is hope. That hope allows me to press ahead.

The mad reanimated body of my prestige will rise from its open casket, and be quickly gone from this house. Everything that has become forbidden to me will be left behind. I have loved this life, and have loved others while in it, but because my only remaining hope of life is an act that every sane person would find reprehensible, I must become an outcast, leave behind all those I have loved, go out into the world, make what I can of what I find.

Now I shall do it!

I will go alone to the end.

My brother's voice was speaking ceaselessly to me: I am here, don't leave, stay with me, all your life, not far from you, come.

I was trying to sleep, turning to and fro in the large, cold and much too soft bed, cursing myself for not having left the house before the snowstorm set in, when even now I would have been in my own bed in my parents’ house. But every time I thought of this the voice insisted: stay here, don't go, come at last to me.

I had to get out of bed. I pulled my suit jacket across my shoulders and went for a pee in the bathroom across the galleried landing. The house was dark, silent and cold. My breath fumed white as I stood shivering over the bowl. After I had flushed the toilet I had to cross the landing again, naked but for the jacket, and when I looked down the large stairwell I noticed a gleam of light from the floor below. One door had a crack of light showing beneath it.