Authors: Christopher Priest
I said to him, “I'm profoundly glad you are here to help me, Hutton.”
“I realize that, my Lord. I should not have cared to do this myself alone.”
“Then let us complete it quickly.”
This time we went back to the handcart together, and dragged down the second large sack.
My original plan had been to explore the crypt in full, looking for the best place in
which to store the prestige materials, but now I was here I lost all wish to do anything
of the sort. Because our lights were so inadequate at penetrating the darkness I knew that
all searching would have to be done at close quarters. I dreaded having to investigate any
more of those shelves and slabs that I was so readily envisaging. They were around me on
both sides, and the cavern extended far beyond. It was full of death, full of the dead,
redolent of finality, life abandoned to the rats.
“We'll leave the sacks here,” I said. “As far off the floor as possible. I'll come down
here again tomorrow, when it's daylight. With a better torch.”
“I completely understand, sir.”
Together we went to the left wall, and located another of the slabs. Bracing myself, I
felt across it with my hand. There seemed to be nothing significant there, so with
Hutton's help I lifted up the two sackfuls of prestige materials. With this done, and
without saying another word between us, we returned quickly to the surface, and pushed the
outer door closed behind us. I shuddered.
In the cold air of the night-time garden, Hutton and I shook hands.
“Thank you for helping me, Hutton,” I said. “I had no idea that it would be like that down
there.”
“Nor I, my Lord. Will you be requiring anything else from me this evening?”
I considered.
“Would you and your wife care to join myself and Lady Colderdale at midnight? We plan to
see in the New Year.”
“Thank you, sir. We shall be honoured to do so.”
And that was how our expedition ended. Hutton dragged the handcart away towards the garden
shed, and I crossed the East Lawn then walked around the periphery of the house to the
main entrance. I came directly to this room, to write my account while events were still
fresh.
However, a necessary delay arose before I could begin. As I entered the room I caught a
sight of myself in my dressing mirror, and I stopped to look.
Thick white dust clung to my boots and ankles. Cobwebs straggled across my shoulders and
chest. My hair had become matted on my head, apparently held down by a thick layer of grey
dirt, and the same filth caked my face. My eyes, red-rimmed, stared out from the hollow
mask my face had become, and for a few moments I stood there transfixed by the sight of
myself. It seemed to me that I had been hideously transformed by my visit to the family
tomb, becoming one of its denizens.
I shook off the thought with the dirty clothes, climbed into the filled bath waiting for
me in my dressing room, and washed away the grime.
Now this account has been written, and it is close to midnight. It is time for me to seek
out my family and household for the simple and familiar ceremony that celebrates the end
of one year and, in this case, one century, then welcomes in the next.
The twentieth century is the one when my children shall mature and thrive, and I, of the
old century, shall in due course leave it to them. But before I go I intend to leave my
mark.
1st January 1901
I have been back to the vault, and moved the prestige materials to a better position.
Hutton and I then put down some rat poison, but in future I shall have to find something
more secure than canvas sacks in which to store the materials.
15th January 1901
Idmiston Villas
Hesketh Unwin reports that he has received three bookings for me. Two of them are already
confirmed, while the other is conditional on my inclusion of In a Flash (which is now
temptingly described in Unwin's standard proposal). I have agreed to this, and so all
three bookings may be considered secure. A total of three hundred and fifty guineas!
Yesterday, the Tesla apparatus arrived back from Derbyshire, and with Adam Wilson's
assistance I immediately unpacked it and erected it. According to my clock it took under
fifteen minutes. We must be able to be sure of doing it within ten minutes, when working
in a theatre. Mr Alley's sheet of instructions declares that when he and Tesla were
testing its portability they were able to erect the whole thing in under twelve minutes.
Adam Wilson knows the secret of the illusion, as he must. Adam has been working for me for
more than five years, and I believe I can trust him. To be as sure as reasonably possible
I have offered him a confidentiality bonus of ten pounds, to be paid into an accumulating
fund in his name after each successful performance. He and Gertrude are expecting their
second child.
I have been putting in more work on my stage presentation of In a Flash, as well as
rehearsing several of my other illusions. As it is several months since my last public
performance I am a little rusty. I confess I approached such routine work without
enthusiasm, but once I settled down to it I began to enjoy myself.
2nd February 1901
Tonight I performed at the Finsbury Park Empire, but did not include In a Flash. I
accepted the commission as a way of testing the water, to experience the feeling once
again of performing before a live audience.
My version of The Disappearing Piano went down exceptionally well, and I was applauded
loud and long, but at the end of my act I felt myself frustrated and dissatisfied.
I hunger to perform the Tesla illusion!
14th February 1901
I rehearsed In a Flash twice yesterday, and will do so twice again tomorrow. I dare not
make it any more than that. I shall be performing it on Saturday evening at the Trocadero
in Holloway Road, then at least once again in the week following. I believe that if I can
perform it regularly enough then extra rehearsals, beyond stage movements, misdirection
and patter, should not be necessary.
Tesla warned me that there would be aftereffects, and these are indeed profound. It is no
trivial matter to use the apparatus. Each time I pass through it I suffer.
In the first place there is the physical pain. My body is wrenched apart, disassembled.
Every tiny particle of me is thrown asunder, becoming one with the aether. In a fraction
of a second, a fraction so small that it cannot be measured, my body is converted into
electrical waves. It is radiated through space. It is reassembled at its designated target.
Slam! I am broken apart! Slam! I am together again!
It is a violent shock that explodes in every part of me, in every direction. Imagine a
steel bar smashing into the palm of your hand. Now imagine ten or twenty more hammering
down in the same place from different angles. More fall on your fingers, your wrist. A
hundred more strike the back of your hand. The ends of your fingers. Every joint.
More explode out from inside your flesh.
Now spread the pain through your whole body, inside and out.
Slam!
A millionth of a second of total agony!
Slam again!
That is how it feels.
Yet I arrive in the selected place, and I am exactly as I was that millionth of a second
earlier. I am whole in myself, and identical to myself, but I am in the shock of ultimate
pain.
The first time I used the Tesla apparatus, in the basement of Caldlow House, with no
warning of what I was to experience, I collapsed to the floor in the belief that I had
died. It did not seem possible that my heart, my brain, could survive such an explosion of
pain. I had no thoughts, no emotional reactions. It felt as if I had died, and I acted as
if I had died.
As I slumped to the floor, Julia, who of course was there with me for the test, ran to my
side. My first lucid memory in the post-death world is of her gentle hands reaching into
my shirt to feel for a sign of life. I opened my eyes, in shock and amazement, happy
beyond words to find her beside me, to feel her tenderness. Quickly I was able to stand,
to reassure her that I was well, to hold her and kiss her, to be myself once more.
In truth, then, physical recovery from this brutal experience is itself speedy, but the
mental consequences are formidable.
On the day of that first test in Derbyshire, I forced myself to repeat the test in the
afternoon, but as a result I was cast into the darkest gloom for much of the Christmas
period. I had died twice. I had become one of the walking dead, a damned soul.
And the reminders of what I did then are the materials that later had to be put away. I
could not even face that gruesome task until New Year's Eve, as I have described.
Yesterday, here in London, in the electrical brightness and familiarity of my workshop,
with the Tesla equipment reassembled, I felt I should undergo two more rehearsals. I am a
performer, a professional. I must give an appearance to what I do, give it a sheen and a
glamour. I must project myself about the theatre in a flash, and at the moment of arrival
I must appear to be a magician who has successfully performed the impossible.
To sink to my knees, as if poleaxed, would be out of the question. To reveal even a
glimpse of the millionth-second of agony I have endured would also be unconscionable.
The point is that I have a double level of subterfuge to convey. A magician ordinarily
reveals an effect that is “impossible”: a piano seems to disappear, a billiard ball
magically reproduces itself, a lady is made to pass through a sheet of mirror glass. The
audience of course knows that the impossible has not been made possible.
In a Flash, by scientific method, in fact achieves the hitherto impossible. What the
audience sees is actually what has happened! But I cannot allow this ever to be known, for
science has in this case replaced magic.
I must, by careful art, make my miracle less miraculous. I must emerge from the elemental
transmitter as if I have
not
been slammed apart, and slammed together again.
So I have been trying to learn how to prepare for and brace myself against the pain, how
to react to it without keeling over, how to step forward with my arms raised and with a
flashing smile to bow and acknowledge applause. To mystify sufficiently, but not too much.
I write of what happened yesterday, because last night, when I returned home, I was in too
great a despair even to think of recording what had happened. Now it is the afternoon and
I am more or less myself again, but already the prospect of two more rehearsals tomorrow
is daunting and depressing me.
16th February 1901
I am full of trepidation about tonight's performance at the Trocadero. I have spent the
morning at the theatre, setting up the apparatus, testing it, dismantling it, then locking
it away again safely in its crates.
After that, as anticipated, came the protracted negotiations with the scene-shifters,
actively hostile to my intentions of boxing the stage. In the end, a straightforward cash
transaction settled the matter and my wishes prevailed, but it has meant a huge dent in my
income for the show. This illusion is clearly only performable if I can demand fees
greatly in excess of anything I have earned before. A lot depends on the show tonight.
Now I have an hour or two of free time, before I must go back to Holloway Road. I plan to
spend part of it with Julia and the children, and try to take a short nap in whatever is
left. I am so keyed up, however, that sleep seems only remotely possible.
17th February 1901
Last night I safely crossed the aether from the stage of the Trocadero to the royal box.
The equipment worked perfectly.
But the audience did not applaud because it did not see what was happening! When finally
the applause came it was more bemused than enthusiastic.
The trick needs a stronger build-up, a greater sense of danger. And the point of arrival
must be picked out with a spotlight, to draw attention to my position as I materialize. I
have talked to Adam about it, and he suggests, ingeniously, that I might be able to rig up
an electrical spur from the apparatus so that turning on the light is not left to a
stagehand but is commanded by me from the stage. Magic always improves.
We perform again on Tuesday at the same theatre.
I have left the best to last — I was able to disguise completely the shock of the impact
on me. Both Julia, who saw the show from the auditorium, and Adam, who was watching from
the rear of the stage through a small flap in the box screen, say my recovery was almost
flawless. In this case it works to my advantage that the audience was not fully attentive,
because only these two noticed the single weakness that occurred (I took one inadvertent
step backwards).
For myself, I can say that practice with the apparatus has meant the terrible shock is not
nearly as terrible as before, and that it has been getting slightly better each time I try
it. I can foresee that in a month or so I will be able to bear the effect with outward
indifference.
I also note that the consequent gloom I suffer is much less than after my first attempts.
23rd February 1901
In Derbyshire
My performance on Tuesday, much improved after the lessons of the weekend, gained me a
laudatory review in
The Stage
, an outcome more to my favour than anything else I can imagine! On the train yesterday
Julia and I read and re-read the words to each other, glorying in the undoubted effect
they will have on my career. By our temporary exile here in Derbyshire we will not learn
of tangible results until we are back in London early next week, when we have finished
here. I can wait contented. The children are with us, the weather is cold and brilliant,
and the moorland scenery is ravishing us with its muted colours.
I feel I am at last approaching the peak years of my career.
2nd March 1901