The Prestige (7 page)

The room was in an uproar.

“Hold him there!” Angier's voice was audible above the racket. The male assistant grabbed
me a second time, and spun me around so that I was facing into the room. The young woman
was still on the floor where she had fallen, and was staring up at me, her face contorted
with spite. Angier, standing by the table, was erect and apparently calm. He was staring
straight towards me.

“I know you, sir,” he said. “I even know your damned name. I shall henceforward be
following your career with the greatest attention.” Then to his assistant: “Get him out of
here!”

Moments later I was sprawling in the street. Mustering as much dignity as I could, and
ignoring the gawping passers-by, I straightened my clothes and walked quickly away down
the street.

For a few days afterwards I was sustained by the righteousness of my cause, the knowledge
that the family were being robbed of their money, that the skills of the stage magician
were being put to warped uses. Then, inevitably, I began to be assailed by doubts.

The comfort that Angier's clients gained from the séances seemed genuine enough, no matter
how derived. I remembered the faces of those children, who for a few minutes had been led
to believe that their lost mother was sending consoling messages from the other side. I
had seen their innocent expressions, their smiles, their happy glances at each other.

Was any of this so different from the pleasurable mystification a magician gives to his
music hall audience? Indeed, was it not rather more? Was expecting payment for this any
more reprehensible than expecting payment for a performance at a music hall?

Full of regrets I brooded unhappily for nearly a month, until my conscience reached such
depths of guilty feelings that I had to act. I penned an abject note to Angier, begging
forgiveness, apologizing unconditionally.

His response was immediate. He returned my note in shreds, with a note of his own
challenging me sarcastically to restore the paper with my own superior form of magic.

Two nights later, while I was performing at the Lewisham Empire, he stood up from the
front row of the circle and shouted for all to hear, “His female assistant is concealed
behind the curtain at the left-hand side of the cabinet!”

It was of course true. Other than bringing down the main curtain and abandoning my act I
had no alternative but to continue with the trick, produce my assistant with as much
theatrical brio as possible, then wilt before the trickle of embarrassed applause. In the
centre of the circle's front row an empty seat gaped like a missing tooth.

So was begun the feud that has continued over the years.

I can plead only youth and inexperience for starting the feud, a misguided professional
zeal, an unfamiliarity with the ways of the world. Angier should shoulder some of the
blame; my apology, although not swift enough, was sincerely meant and its rejection was
mean-spirited. But then, Angier too was young. It is difficult to think back to that time,
because the dispute between us has gone on so long, and has taken so many different forms.

If I committed both wrong and right at the outset, Angier must accept the blame for
keeping the feud alive. Many times, sick of the whole thing, I have tried to get on with
my life and career, only to find that some new attack was being mounted against me. Angier
would often find a way of sabotaging my magical equipment, so that a production I was
attempting on stage went subtly wrong; one night the water I was turning into red wine
remained water; another time the string of flags I pulled flamboyantly from an opera hat
appeared as string alone; at another performance the lady assistant who was supposed to
levitate remained unmovably and mortifyingly on her bed.

On yet another occasion the placards announcing my act outside the theatre were defaced
with “The sword he uses is a fake”, “The card you will choose is the Queen of Spades’,
”Watch his left hand during the mirror trick", and so on. All these graffiti were clearly
visible to the audience as they trooped in.

I suppose these attacks might be dismissed as practical jokes, but they could damage my
reputation as a magician, as Angier well knew.

How did I know he was behind them? Well, in some cases he clearly declared his
involvement; if one of my productions had been sabotaged, he would be there in the
auditorium to heckle me, leaping to his feet at the very moment things started going
wrong. But more significantly the perpetrator of these attacks revealed an approach to
magic that I had learned was symptomatic of Angier. He was almost exclusively concerned
with the magical secret, what magicians call the “gimac” or “gimmick”. If a trick depended
on a concealed shelf behind the magician's table, that alone would be the focus of
Angier's interest, not the imaginative use to which it might be put. No matter what else
might cause strife between us, it was Angier's fundamentally flawed and limited
understanding of magical technique that was at the heart of our dispute. The wonder of
magic lies not in the technical secret, but in the skill with which it is performed.

And it was for this reason that The New Transported Man was the one illusion of mine he
never publicly attacked. It was beyond him. He simply could not work out how it was done,
partly because I have kept the secret secure, but mostly because of the way in which I
perform it.

An illusion has three stages.

First there is the setup, in which the nature of what might be attempted is hinted at, or
suggested, or explained. The apparatus is seen. Volunteers from the audience sometimes
participate in the preparation. As the trick is being set up, the magician will make every
possible use of misdirection.

The performance is where the magician's lifetime of practice, and his innate skill as a
performer, conjoin to produce the magical display.

The third stage is sometimes called the effect, or the prestige, and this is the product
of magic. If a rabbit is pulled from a hat, the rabbit, which apparently did not exist
before the trick was performed, can be said to be the prestige of that trick.

The New Transported Man is fairly unusual among illusions in that the setup and
performance are what most intrigue audiences, critics and my magical colleagues, while for
me, the performer, the prestige is the main preoccupation.

Illusions fall into different categories or types, of which there are only six (setting
aside the specialist field of mentalist illusion). Every trick that has ever been
performed falls into one or more of the following categories.

1.
Production
: the magical creation of somebody or something out of nothing,

2.
Disappearance
: the magical vanishing of somebody or something into nothing,

3.
Transformation
: the apparent changing of one thing into another,

4.
Transposition
: the apparent changing of place of two or more objects,

5.
Defiance of Natural Laws
: for example, seeming to defeat gravity, making one solid object appear to pass through
another, produce a large number of objects or people from a source apparently too small to
have held them, and

6.
Secret Motive Power
: causing objects to appear to move of their own will, such as making a chosen playing
card rise mysteriously out of the pack.

Again, The New Transported Man is not entirely typical, because it uses at least four of
the above categories. Most stage illusions depend on only one or two. I once saw an
elaborate effect on the Continent where five of the categories were employed.

Finally, there are the techniques of magic.

The methods available to magicians cannot be so neatly categorized as the other elements,
because when it comes to technique a good magician will not disdain anything. Magical
technique can be as simple as the placing of one object behind another so that it may no
longer be seen by the audience, and it can be so complex that it requires advance setting
up in the theatre and the collusion of a team of assistants and stooges.

The magician can choose from an inventory of traditional techniques. The playing cards
that have been “gimmicked” so that one or more cards will be forced into use, the
eye-dazzling backcloth that allows much necessary magical business to go on unnoticed, the
black-painted table or prop that the audience cannot see properly, dummies and doubles and
stooges and substitutes and blinds. And an inventive magician will embrace novelty. Any
new device or toy or invention that comes into world should provoke the thought: “How
could I make a new trick with that?” Thus, in the recent past we have seen new tricks that
employ the reciprocating engine, the telephone, electricity, and one remarkable effect
memorably created with Dr Warble's smoke-bomb toy.

Magic has no mystery to magicians. We work variations of standard methods. What will seem
new or baffling to an audience is simply a technical challenge for other professionals. If
an innovative new illusion is developed, it is only a matter of time before the effect is
reproduced by others.

Every illusion can be explained, be it by the use of a concealed compartment, by an
adroitly placed mirror, by an assistant planted in the audience to act as “volunteer”, or
by simple misdirection of the audience's attention.

Now I hold my hands before you, fingers spread so that you can see nothing is concealed
within them, and say: The New Transported Man is an illusion like every other, and it can
be explained. But by a combination of a simple secret that has been kept securely, many
years of practice, a certain amount of audience misdirection, and the use of conventional
magic techniques it has become the keystone of my act and my career. It has also defied
Angier's best efforts to penetrate its mystery, as I shall soon record.

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

Sarah and I have been with the children on a short holiday along the south coast, & I took
my notebook with me.

We went first to Hastings, because it is years since I was there, but we did not stay
long. The place has started a decline that I fear will prove irreversible. Father's yard,
which was sold on his death, has been sold again. Now it is a bakery. A lot of houses have
been built in the valley behind the house, & a railway line to Ashford is soon to run
through.

After Hastings we went to Bexhill. Then to Eastbourne. Then to Brighton. Then to Bognor.

My first comment on the notebook is that it was I who tried to humiliate Angier, & I, in
turn, who was humiliated by him. Other than this detail, which is after all not too
important, I think my account of what happened is accurate, even in its other details.

I am putting in a lot of comments about the secret, & therefore making much of it. This
strikes me as ironic, after I went to such pains to emphasize how trivial most magical
secrets really are.

I do not think my secret is trivial. It is easily guessed, as Angier has apparently done,
in spite of what I have written. Others have probably guessed too.

Anyone who reads this narrative will probably work it out for themselves.

What cannot be guessed is the
effect
the secret has had on my life. This is the real reason Angier will never solve the whole
mystery, unless I myself give him the answer. He would never credit the extent to which my
life has been shaped towards holding the secret intact. That is what matters.

[I am still unclear for whom this account is intended. What is this “posterity” for which
I write so knowingly? Is the account for publication & circulation within the magical
fraternity? If so, I must remove many of the personal details. One or two of my colleagues
(including, of course, David Devant & Nevil Maskelyne) have published technical
explanations of their illusions, & my great mentor, Anderson, paid his bills by regularly
selling small trade secrets. There is a precedent. Circulation of this sort would be
acceptable, although I think it should only be released after Angier's demise (his certain
demise, that is). I presume it is not intended for general publication.

So long as I can continue to monitor how it is being written, then I may proceed with my
account of how the illusion looks to the audience.]

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

The New Transported Man is an illusion whose appearance has changed over the years, but
whose method has always remained the same.

It has progressively involved two cabinets, or two boxes, or two tables, or two benches.
One is situated in the downstage area, the other is upstage. The exact positioning is not
crucial, and will vary from one theatre to the next, depending on the size and shape of
the stage area. The only important feature of their positioning is that both pieces should
be clearly and widely separated from each other. The apparatus is brightly lit and in full
view of the audience from beginning to end.

I shall describe the oldest, and therefore the simplest, version of the trick, when I was
using closed cabinets. At that time I called the illusion The Transported Man.

Then, as now, my act was brought to its climax with this illusion, and only details have
changed since. I shall therefore describe it as if the early version were still in my
current act.

Both cabinets are brought on to the stage, either by scene-shifters, assistants or in some
cases volunteer members of the audience and both are shown to be empty. Volunteers are
allowed to step through them, open not only the doors but the hinged rear walls, and peer
into the wheeled space below. The cabinets are rolled to their respective positions and
closed.

After a short, humorous preamble (delivered in my French accent) about the desirability of
being in two places at once, I go to the nearer of the two cabinets, the first, and open
the door.

It is, of course, still empty. I take a large, brightly coloured inflatable ball from my
props table, and bounce it a couple of times to show how vigorously it moves. I step into
the first cabinet, leaving the door open for the time being.

I bounce the ball in the direction of the second cabinet.

From within, I
slam closed
the door of the first cabinet.

From within, I
push open
the door of the second cabinet, and step out. I catch the ball as it bounces towards me.

As the ball enters my hands the first cabinet collapses, the door and three walls folding
out dramatically to show that it is completely empty.

Holding the ball I step forward to the footlights, and acknowledge my applause.