The Prestige (3 page)

Any one of these was more involving to me than the news of a feud between
great-grandparents of whom I had never heard. One of them had written a book, though.
Maybe that was interesting to be told about.

“I haven't had these out for ages,” Kate said, her voice slightly muffled by her exertions
of reaching inside the drawer. She had removed some photo albums, and these were piled on
the floor while she reached to the back of the deep drawer. “Here we are.”

She was clutching an untidy pile of papers, apparently old and faded, all in different
sizes. She spread them on the settee beside her, and picked up her glass before she began
to leaf through them.

“My great-grandfather was one of those men who is obsessively neat,” she said. “He not
only kept everything, he put labels on them, compiled lists, had cupboards specifically in
which to keep certain things. When I was growing up my parents had a saying: ”Grandpa's
stuff“. We never touched it, weren't really allowed to look at it, even. But Rosalie and I
couldn't resist searching some of it. When she left to get married, and I was alone here,
I finally went through it all and sorted it out. I managed to sell some of the apparatus
and costumes, and got good prices too. I found these playbills in the room that had been
his study.”

All the time she had been talking she was sifting through the bills, and now she passed me
a sheet of fragile, yellow-coloured paper. It had been folded and refolded numerous times,
and the creases were furry with wear and almost separating. The bill was for the Empress
Theatre in Evering Road, Stoke Newington. Over a list of performers it announced a limited
number of performances, afternoons and evenings, commencing on 14th April until 21st
April. (“See Newspaper Advertisements for Further Arrangements.”) Top of the bill, and
printed in red ink, was an Irish tenor called Dennis O“Canaghan (”Fill Your Heart With The
Joy Of Ireland“). Other acts included the Sisters McKee (”A Trio of Lovely Chanteuses’),
Sammy Renaldo (“Tickle Your Ribs, Your Highness?”) and Robert and Roberta Franks
(“Recitation Par Excellence”). Halfway down the bill, pointed out by Kate's prodding
forefinger as she leaned over towards me, was The Great Danton (“The Greatest Illusionist
in the World”).

“This was before he actually was,” she said. “He spent most of his life being hard up, and
only really became famous a few years before he died. This bill comes from 1881, when he
was first starting to do quite well.”

“What do all these mean?” I said, indicating a column of neatly inked numbers inscribed in
the margin of the playbill. More had been written on the back.

“That's The Great Danton's Obsessive Filing System,” she said. She moved away from the
settee, and knelt informally on the carpet beside my chair. Leaning towards me so she
could look at the bill in my hand, she said, “I haven't worked it all out, but the first
number refers to the job. There's a ledger somewhere, with a complete list of every gig he
did. Underneath that, he puts down how many actual performances he carried out, and how
many of those were matinees and how many in the evenings. The next numbers are a list of
the actual tricks he did, and again he had about a dozen notebooks in his study with
descriptions of all the tricks he could do. I have a few of the notebooks still here, and
you could probably look up some of the tricks he did in Stoke Newington. But it's even
more complicated than that, because most of the tricks have minor variations, and he's got
all those cross-referenced as well. Look, this number here, ”10g“. I think that's what he
was paid: ten guineas.”

“Was that good?”

“If it was for one night it was brilliant. But it was probably for the whole week, so it
was just average. I don't think this was a big theatre.”

I picked up the stack of all the other playbills and as she had said each one was
annotated with similar code numbers.

“All his apparatus was labelled as well,” she said. “Sometimes, I wonder how he found time
to get out into the world and make a living! But when I was clearing out the cellar, every
single piece of equipment I came across had an identifying number, and each one had a
place in a huge index, all cross-referenced to the other books.”

“Maybe he had someone else do it for him.”

“No, it's always in the same handwriting.”

“When did he die?” I said.

“There's actually some doubt about that, strangely enough. The newspapers say he died in
1903, and there was an obituary in
The Times
, but there are people in the village who say he was still living here the following year.
What I find odd is that I came across the obituary in the scrapbook he kept, and it was
stuck down and labelled and indexed, just like all the other stuff.”

“Can you explain how that happened?”

“No. Alfred Borden talks about it in his book. That's where I heard about it, and after
that I tried to find out what had happened between them.”

“Have you got any more of his stuff?”

While she reached over for the scrapbooks, I poured myself another slug of the American
whiskey, which I had not tried before and which I was finding I liked. I also liked having
Kate down there on the floor beside my legs, turning her head to look up at me as she
spoke, leaning towards me, affording more glimpses down the front of her dress and
probably well aware of it. It was all slightly bemusing to be there, not fully
comprehending what was going on, talk of magicians, meetings in childhood, not at work
when I should have been, not driving over to see my parents as I had planned.

In that part of my mind occupied by my brother, I felt a sense of contentment, unlike
anything I had known from him before. He was urging me to stay.

Outside the window the cold afternoon sky was darkening and the Pennine rain continued to
fall. An icy draught came persistently from the windows. Kate threw another log on the
fire.

I write in the year 1901.

My name, my real name, is Alfred Borden. The story of my life is the story of the secrets
by which I have lived my life. They are described in this narrative for the first and last
time; this is the only extant copy.

I was born in 1856 on the eighth day of the month of May, in the coastal town of Hastings.
I was a healthy, vigorous child. My father was a tradesman of that borough, a master
wheelwright and cooper. Our house at number 105 Manor Road was in a long, curving terrace
built along the side of one of the several hills which Hastings comprises. Behind the
house was a steep and secluded valley where sheep and cattle grazed during the summer
months, but at the front the hill rose up, lined with many more houses, standing between
us and the sea. It was from those houses, and from the farms and businesses around, that
my father took his trade.

Our house was larger and taller than others in the road, because it was built over the
gateway that led to the yard and sheds behind. My room was on the street side of the
house, directly above the gateway, and because only the wooden floorboards and some thin
lath-and-plaster lay between me and the open air the room was noisy through every day of
the year, and viciously cold in the winter months. It was in that room that I slowly grew
up and became the man that I am.

That man is Le Professeur de la Magie, and I am a master of illusions.

It is time to pause, even so early, for this account is not intended to be about my life
in the usual habit of autobiographers, but is, as I have said, about my life's secrets.
Secrecy is intrinsic to my work.

Let me then first consider and describe the method of writing this account. The very act
of describing my secrets might indeed be construed as a betrayal of myself, except of
course that as I am an illusionist I can make sure you only see what I wish you to see. A
puzzle is implicitly involved.

It is therefore only fair that I should from the beginning try to elucidate those closely
connected subjects — Secrecy and the Appreciation Of Secrecy.

Here is an example.

There almost invariably comes a moment during the exercise of my profession when the
prestidigitator will seem to pause. He will step forward to the footlights, and in the
full glare of their light will face the audience directly. He will say, or if his act is
silent he will seem to say, “Look at my hands. There is nothing concealed within them.” He
will then hold up his hands for the audience to see, raising his palms to expose them,
splaying his fingers so as to prove nothing is gripped secretly between them. With his
hands held thus he will rotate them, so that the backs are shown to the audience, and it
is established that his hands are, indeed, as empty as it is possible to be. To take the
matter beyond any remaining suspicion, the magician will probably then tweak lightly at
the cuffs of his jacket, pulling them back an inch or two to expose his wrists, showing
that nothing is there concealed either. He then performs his trick, and during it, moments
after this incontrovertible evidence of empty-handedness he produces something from his
hands: a fan, a live dove or rabbit, a bunch of paper flowers, sometimes even a burning
wick. It is a paradox, an impossibility! The audience marvels at the mystery, and applause
rings out.

How could any of this be?

The prestidigitator and the audience have entered into what I term the Pact of Acquiescent
Sorcery. They do not articulate it as such, and indeed the audience is barely aware that
such a Pact might exist, but that is what it is.

The performer is of course not a sorcerer at all, but an actor who plays the part of a
sorcerer and who wishes the audience to believe, if only temporarily, that he is in
contact with darker powers. The audience, meantime, knows that what they are seeing is not
true sorcery, but they suppress the knowledge and acquiesce to the selfsame wish as the
performer’s. The greater the performer's skill at maintaining the illusion, the better at
this deceptive sorcery he is judged to be.

The act of showing the hands to be empty, before revealing that despite appearances they
could
not
have been, is itself a constituent of the Pact. The Pact implies special conditions are
in force. In normal social intercourse, for instance, how often does it arise that someone
has to prove that his hands are empty? And consider this: if the magician were suddenly to
produce a vase of flowers without first suggesting to the audience that such a production
was impossible, it would seem to be no trick at all. No one would applaud.

This then illustrates my method.

Let me set out the Pact of Acquiescence under which I write these words, so that those who
read them will realize that what follows is not sorcery, but the appearance of it.

First let me in a manner of speaking show you my hands, palms forward, fingers splayed,
and I will say to you (and mark this well): “Every word in this notebook that describes my
life and work is true, honestly meant and accurate in detail.”

Now I rotate my hands so that you may see their backs, and I say to you: “Much of what is
here may be checked against objective records. My career is noted in newspaper files, my
name appears in books of biographical reference.”

Finally, I tweak at the cuffs of my jacket to reveal my wrists, and I say to you: “After
all, what would I have to gain by writing a false account, when it is intended for no
one's eyes but my own, perhaps those of my immediate family, and the members of a
posterity I shall never meet?”

What gain indeed?

But because I have shown my hands to be empty you must now expect not only that an
illusion will follow, but that you will acquiesce in it!

Already, without once writing a falsehood, I have started the deception that is my life.
The lie is contained in these words, even in the very first of them. It is the fabric of
everything that follows, yet nowhere will it be apparent.

I have misdirected you with the talk of truth, objective records and motives. Just as it
is when I show my hands to be empty I have omitted the significant information, and now
you are looking in the wrong place.

As every stage magician well knows there will be some who are baffled by this, some who
will profess to a dislike of being duped, some who will claim to know the secret, and
some, the happy majority, who will simply take the illusion for granted and enjoy the
magic for the sake of entertainment.

But there are always one or two who will take the secret away with them and worry at it
without ever coming near to solving it.

#############

Before I resume the story of my life, here is another anecdote that illustrates my method.

When I was younger there was a fashion in the concert halls for Oriental Magic. Most of it
was performed by European or American illusionists dressed and made up to look Chinese,
but there were one or two genuine Chinese magicians who came to Europe to perform. One of
these, and perhaps the greatest of them all, was a man from Shanghai called Chi Linqua,
who worked under the stage name Ching Ling Foo.

I saw Ching perform only once, a few years ago at the Adelphi Theatre in Leicester Square.
At the end of the show I went to the stage door and sent up my card, and without delay he
graciously invited me to his dressing room. He would not speak of his magic, but my eye
was taken by the presence there, on a stand beside him, of his most famous prop: the large
glass bowl of goldfish, which, when apparently produced from thin air, gave his show its
fantastic climax. He invited me to examine the bowl, and it was normal in every way. It
contained at least a dozen ornamental fish, all of them alive, and was well filled with
water. I tried lifting it, because I knew the secret of its manifestation, and marvelled
at its weight.

Ching saw me struggling with it but said nothing. He was obviously unsure whether I knew
his secret or not, and was unwilling to say anything that might expose it, even to a
fellow professional. I did not know how to reveal that I
did
know the secret, and so I too kept my silence. I stayed with him for fifteen minutes,
during which time he remained seated, nodding politely at the compliments I paid him. He
had already changed out of his stage clothes by the time I arrived, and was wearing dark
trousers and striped blue shirt, although he still had on his greasepaint. When I stood up
to leave he rose from his chair by the mirror and conducted me to the door. He walked with
his head bowed, his arms slack at his sides, and shuffling as if his legs gave him great
pain.

Now, because years have passed and he is dead, I can reveal his most closely guarded
secret, one whose obsessive extent I was privileged to glimpse that night.

His famous goldfish bowl was with him on stage throughout his act, ready for its sudden
and mysterious appearance. Its presence was deftly concealed from the audience.
He carried it beneath the flowing mandarin gown he affected
, clutching it between his knees, kept ready for the sensational and apparently miraculous
production at the end. No one in the audience could ever guess at how the trick was done,
even though a moment's logical thought would have solved the mystery.

But logic was magically in conflict with itself! The only possible place where the heavy
bowl could be concealed was beneath his gown, yet that was logically impossible. It was
obvious to everyone that Ching Ling Foo was physically frail, shuffling painfully through
his routine. When he took his bow at the end, he leaned for support on his assistant, and
was led hobbling from the stage.

The reality was completely different. Ching was a fit man of great physical strength, and
carrying the bowl in this way was well within his power. Be that as it may, the size and
shape of the bowl caused him to shuffle like a mandarin as he walked. This threatened the
secret, because it drew attention to the way he moved, so to protect the secret he
shuffled for the whole of his life. Never, at any time, at home or in the street, day or
night, did he walk with a normal gait lest his secret be exposed.

Such is the nature of a man who acts the role of sorcerer.

Audiences know well that a magician will practise his illusions for years, and will
rehearse each performance carefully, but few people realize the
extent
of the prestidigitator's wish to deceive, the way in which the apparent defiance of
normal laws becomes an obsession which governs every moment of his life.

Ching Ling Foo had his obsessive deception, and now that you have read my anecdote about
him you may correctly assume that I have mine. My deception rules my life, informs every
decision I make, regulates my every movement. Even now, as I embark on the writing of this
memoir, it controls what I may write and what I may not. I have compared my method with
the display of seemingly bared hands, but in reality everything in this account represents
the shuffling walk of a fit man.