Authors: Christopher Priest
We sprawled together, and fell heavily on the stone floor of the corridor. He was briefly
on top of me, but I was able to slide out. I reached towards him.
“Stay away from me!” he cried, and crouching forward, stumbling and tripping, he scrambled
away.
I dived at him, got my hand around his ankle, but he slipped it from my grasp. He was
bellowing wordlessly with fear.
I shouted at him, “Borden, we must stop this dangerous feud!”, but once again my voice
came out hoarsely and inaudibly, more breath than tone.
“I didn't mean it!” he cried.
He was on his feet now and getting away from me, still looking back at me with an
expression of dread. I gave up the struggle, and let him flee.
ii
After that night I returned to London, where I lived for the next ten months, by my own
choice and decision, in a half-world.
The accident in the Tesla apparatus had fundamentally affected my body and soul by placing
them in opposition to each other. Physically, I had been rendered into a ghost of my
former self. I lived, breathed, ate, passed bodily waste, heard and saw, felt warm and
cold, but I was physically a wraith. In a bright light, if you did not look too closely at
me, I appeared more or less normal, if somewhat wan of aspect. When the weather was
overcast, or I was in an artificially lit room after nightfall, I took on the appearance
of a spectre. I could be seen but also
seen through
. My outline remained, and if people looked hard enough at me they could make out my face,
my clothes, and so on, but I was to most people a hideous vision of the ghostly
underworld. The female attendant and Borden had both reacted as if they had seen a ghost,
and indeed they had. I quickly learned that if I let myself be noticed in these
circumstances, I not only terrorized most of the people whom I encountered, but I put
myself in some danger too. People react unpredictably when frightened, and once or twice
strangers hurled objects at me, as if to ward me off. One of these missiles was a lighted
oil-lamp, and it nearly caught me. As a rule I therefore stayed out of sight when I could.
But against this my mind suddenly felt liberated from the constraints of the body. I was
always alert, fast-thinking, positive, in ways I had only ever glimpsed in myself before.
One of the paradoxes this produced was that I usually felt strong and capable, whereas the
reality was that I was unable to tackle most physical tasks. I had to learn to hold
objects like pens and utensils, for example, because a careless grip on something would
usually make it slip away from me.
It was a frustrating and morbid situation in which to find myself, and for much of the
time my new mental energy was directed as pure loathing and fear at whichever of the two
Bordens had attacked me. He continued to sap my mental energy, just as his action had
sapped my physical being. I had become to all intents and purposes invisible to the world,
as good as dead.
iii
It did not take me long to discover that I could be visible or invisible as I chose.
If I moved after dusk, and I wore the stage clothes I had been in during the performance,
I could go almost anywhere unseen. If I wanted to move normally then I wore other clothes,
and used greasepaint to give my features some solidity. It was not a perfect simulation;
my eyes had a disconcertingly hollow look, and once a man in a dimly lit omnibus loudly
drew attention to the gap that had inexplicably appeared between my sleeve and my glove,
and I had to make a quick departure.
Money, food, accommodation presented no problems to me. Either I took what I wanted when
in the invisible state, or I paid for what I needed. Such concerns were trivial.
My real consideration was the well-being of my prestige.
I learned from a newspaper report that my fleeting glimpse of the stage had completely
misled me. The report stated that The Great Danton had suffered injuries during a
performance in Lowestoft, that he had been forced to cancel future engagements, but was
resting at home and expected to return to the stage in due course.
I was relieved to hear it, but greatly surprised! What I had glimpsed as the curtains came
down was what I assumed was my own prestige, frozen in the half-dead, half-live condition
I called "prestigious’. The prestige is the source body in the transportation, left behind
in the Tesla apparatus, as if dead. Concealing and disposing of these prestigious bodies
was the single greatest problem I had had to solve before I could present the illusion to
the public.
With this news about ill-health and cancelled engagements I realized something different
had happened that night. The transportation had been only partial, and I was the sorry
result. Most of me had remained behind.
Both I and my prestige were much reduced by Borden's intervention. We each had problems to
cope with. I was in a wraithlike condition, my prestige was in debilitated health. While
he had corporeality and freedom of movement in the world, from the moment of the accident
he was doomed to die; meanwhile, I had been condemned to a life in the shadows, but my
health was intact.
In July, two months after Lowestoft, and while I was still coming to terms with the
disaster, my prestige apparently decided of his own accord to bring forward the death of
Rupert Angier. It was exactly what I would have done in his position; the moment I thought
this I realized that he was me. It was the first time we had reached an identical decision
separately, and my first intimation that although we existed separately we were
emotionally but one person.
Soon after, my prestige returned to Caldlow House to take up the inheritance; again, this
is what I would have done.
I, though, remained in London for the time being. I had macabre business to attend to, and
I wanted to conduct it in secret with no risk of what I intended to do attaching itself to
the Colderdale name.
In short, I had decided that Borden, finally, must be dealt with. I planned to murder him,
or, more exactly, to murder one of the two. His secret double life made murder a
practicable revenge: he had interfered with the official records that revealed the
existence of twins, and had lived his life with one half of himself concealed. Killing one
of the brothers would put an end to his deception, and would for my purposes be as
satisfying and effective as killing them both. I also reasoned that in my wraithlike
state, and with my only known identity publicly buried and mourned, I, Rupert Angier,
could never be caught or even suspected of the crime.
In London, I set my plans in progress. I was able to use my virtual invisibility to follow
Borden as he went about his life and affairs. I saw him in his family home, I saw him
preparing and rehearsing his stage show in his workshop, I stood unseen in the wings of a
theatre as he performed his illusions, I tracked him to the secret lair he shared in north
London with Olivia Svenson… and once, even, I glimpsed Borden with his twin brother,
briefly, furtively meeting in a darkened street, a hurried exchange of information, some
desperate business that had to be concluded at once and in person.
It was when I saw him with Olivia that I decided, finally, he must die. Enough feelings
remained about that old betrayal to add hurt to the outrage.
Making a decision to commit premeditated murder is the hardest part of the terrible deed,
I can reliably say. Often provoked, I believe myself even so to be a mild and reticent
man. Although I never want to hurt others, all through my adult life I have frequently
found myself swearing I would “kill” or “do in” Borden. These oaths, uttered in private,
and often in silence, are the common impotent ravings of the wronged victim, into which
position Borden so often forced me.
In those days I had never seriously intended to kill him, but the Lowestoft attack had
changed everything. I was reduced to wraithdom, and my other self was wasting away. Borden
had in a real way killed us both that night, and I burned for revenge.
The mere thought of killing gave me such satisfaction and excitement that my personality
changed. I, who was beyond death, lived to kill.
Once I had taken the decision, commission of the crime could not be made to wait. I saw
the death of one of the Borden twins as the key to my own freedom.
But I had no experience of violence, and before I could do anything I had to decide how
best to go about it. I wanted a
modus operandi
that would be immediate and personal, one in which Borden, as he helplessly died, would
realize who was killing him and why. By a simple process of elimination I decided I would
have to stab him. Again, imagining the prospect of such a terrible act raised a heady
thrill of anticipation in me.
I rationalized stabbing thus: poison was too slow, dangerous to administer and impersonal,
a shooting was noisy, and again it lacked close personal contact. I was more or less
incapable of acts of physical strength, so anything that involved this, such as clubbing
or strangling, was not possible. I found, by experiment, that if I held a long-bladed
knife in both hands, firmly but not tightly, then I could slide it with sufficient force
to penetrate flesh.
iv
Two days after I had completed my preparations I followed Borden to the Queen's Theatre in
Baiham, where he was top of a variety bill running all week. The day was a Wednesday, when
there was a matinée performance as well as one in the evening. I knew it was Borden's
habit to retire to his dressing-room between shows for a nap on his couch.
I watched his performance from the darkened wings, then afterwards followed him along the
gloomy corridors and staircases to his dressing-room. When he was inside with the door
closed, and the general backstage turmoil had quietened down a little, I went to where I
had secreted my murder weapon and returned cautiously to the corridor outside Borden's
room, moving from one darkened corner to the next only when I was certain no one was about.
I was wearing the stage clothes from Lowestoft, my habitual apparel when I wished to move
unobserved, but the knife was a normal one. If I had been seen by anyone it would have
looked as if the knife were floating along unsupported in the air; I could not risk having
attention drawn to me.
Outside Borden's room, I made myself stand quietly in a shadowy alcove opposite, calming
my breathing, trying to control the racing of my heart. I counted slowly to two hundred.
After another check that no one was approaching I went to the door and leaned against it,
pressing my face gently but firmly into the wood. in a few seconds the front part of my
head had passed through, and I was able to see into the room. Only one lamp was alight,
casting a dim glow through the small, untidy room. Borden was lying on his couch, his eyes
closed, his hands clasped together on his chest.
I withdrew my face.
Clasping the knife I opened the door and went inside. Borden stirred, and looked towards
me. I closed the door, and pushed home the bolt.
“Who's that?” Borden said, narrowing his eyes.
I was not there to bandy words with him. I took two steps across the narrow floor, then
leaped up on to the couch and crawled on top of him. I squatted on his stomach, and raised
the knife in both hands.
Borden saw the knife, then focused on me. In the dim light I was just visible. I could see
my arms outlined as I sat over him, the blade trembling above his chest. I must have been
a wild and dreadful sight; I had been unable to shave or cut my hair for more than two
months, and my face was gaunt. I was terrified and desperate. I was sitting on his
abdomen. I was holding a knife, preparing for the deadly thrust.
“What are you?” Borden gasped. He had taken hold of my spectral wrists, trying to hold me
back, but it was a simple matter to work myself free of him. “Who—?”
“Prepare to die, Borden!” I shouted, knowing that what he would hear was the hoarse and
horrifying whisper that was all I was capable of producing.
“Angier? Please! I had no idea what I was doing! I meant no harm!”
“Was it you who did it? Or was it the other?”
“What do you mean?”
“Was it you or your twin brother?”
“I have no brother!”
“You are about to die! Admit the truth!”
“I am alone!”
“Too late!” I shouted, and I deliberately set my hands in the grip I had learned would
give me the strongest grasp on the knife. I would lose the hold if I stabbed too savagely,
so I brought the blade down to a place above his heart and began the steady pressure I
knew would take the blade through to its target. I felt the fabric of his shirt slit open,
and the knife point pressed down into his flesh.
Then I saw the expression on Borden's face. He was transfixed with fear of me. His hands
were somewhere above my head, trying to get a grip on me. His jaw had fallen open, his
tongue was jutting forward, saliva was running out of each corner of his mouth and down
his jowls. His chest was convulsing with his frantic breathing.
No words came out of his mouth, but he was trying to speak. I heard the hiss and splutter
of a man drowning in his own terror.
I realized that he was not a strong man any more. His hair was streaked with grey. The
skin around his eyes was wrinkled with fatigue. His neck was lined. He lay beneath me,
fighting for his life against an insubstantial daemon who had come to squat on his body
with a knife ready to slay him.
The thought repulsed me. I could not take murder through to its conclusion. I could not
kill like this.
All the fear, anger and tension poured away from me.
I threw the knife aside, and rolled adroitly off. I backed away from him, now defenceless
and in my turn petrified of what he might do.
He remained on the couch, where he continued to rasp his breath painfully, shuddering with
horror and relief. I stood there submissively, mortified by the effect I had had on this
man.