The Prestige

by Christopher Priest

  When I got a chance I explained to Julia the limits of my bodily existence. I told her how I would fade from sight without bright light, how I could slip inadvertently through solid objects.

  Then she told me of the cancers from which I, my prestige, had been suffering, and how by some miracle they had seemed to recede on their own, allowing me, him, to return home.

  ‘Will he recover completely?’ I asked anxiously.

  ‘The surgeon said that recovery sometimes occurs spontaneously, but in most cases a remission is only for a short while. He believes in this case, you, he—’ She looked ready to cry, so I took her hand in mine. She steadied herself and spoke sombrely. ‘He believes that this is just a temporary reprieve. The cancers are malignant, widespread and multifarious.’

  Then she told me the matters that most surprised me. It was from her that I learned Borden, or more accurately one of the Borden twins, had died, and that his notebook had come into my, our, possession.

  I was astounded to hear these things. For instance, I learned that Borden had died only three days after my failed attempt on his life.

  The two events seemed to me inviolably connected. Julia said it was thought he had suffered a heart attack. I wondered if it could have been brought on by the fear I instilled in him? I remembered his terrible noises of anguish, his laboured breathing, and his general appearance of fatigue and ill-health. I knew that heart seizures could be caused by stress, but until this moment I had supposed that after my departure Borden regained his senses and would eventually have returned to normal.

  I confessed my story to Julia but she seemed to think the two events were unconnected.

  Even more of interest was the news about Borden’s notebook. Julia told me she had read some of it, and that most of Borden’s magic was described within its pages. I asked her if I, my prestige, had any plans about what to do with it, but she said that the illness had interrupted everything. She mentioned that she shared some of the contrition I felt towards Borden, and that my prestige was of much the same mind.

  I said, ‘Where is he? We must be together.’

  ‘He will be waking soon,’ Julia replied.

  8

  My reunion with myself must be one of the most unusual in history! He and I were perfect complements to each other. Everything I lacked was in him; everything I had he had lost. Of course we were the same, closer to each other than identical twins.

  When either of us spoke, the other could easily finish the sentence. We moved in the same way, had the same gestures and mannerisms, came to the same thought in the same moment. I knew everything about him, and he knew the same of me. All we lacked between ourselves was our separate experiences of the last few months, but once we had described these to each other even that difference was eliminated. He trembled at my description of my attempt on Borden’s life, and I suffered at second hand some of the pain and wretchedness of his disease.

  Once we were together there was nothing that would separate us again. I asked Hutton to make up a second bed in the garden room, so that the two halves of myself could be together the whole time.

  None of this could be kept from the rest of the household and soon I was reunited with my children, with Adam and Gertrude Wilson, as well as Mrs Hutton, the housekeeper. Everyone exclaimed about the uncanny double effect we created. I dread to think what impact this revelation of their father will have on my children in the future, but both parts of me, and Julia, agreed that the truth was better than yet another lie.

  It was not long before the chilling fact of the cancers lent an urgency to the time we spent together, and we realised that if there was anything remaining to be done, now was the time.

  9

  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 entries for him until his demise.

  So it happened, yesterday, that our double life was brought to an end by his death, and with it comes the end of my own short life story.

  Now there is only me, and once more I live beyond death.

  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 realise what the duplicating apparatus can best be used for.

  Later

  There are only a few hours remaining before the funeral, and I 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 when I was a child.

  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. 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 for 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 plan to transmit myself across the aether for the most sensational manifestation of my career.

  I have spent the last hour measuring and checking the coordinates to the tiniest fraction of accuracy I can manage. I am preparing myself, rehearsing as if an audience of thousands will be watching. But this act of magic must uniquely take place while I am alone, with no one at all to witness it.

  I plan to 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 materialise inside my prestige’s poor, cancer-ridden body, dead for two days, stiff with rigor mortis. I too will instantly be 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, so 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.

  PART FIVE

  The Prestiges

  1

  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.

  I returned to the miserable bedroom, but could not bring myself to get back into the chilly bed. I remembered the easy chair beside the log fire in the dining-room, so I put on my clothes quickly, grabbed my stuff and went downstairs. I looked at my watch. It was after 2.00 a.m.

  My brother said: all right, now.

  Kate was still in the dining room, sitting awake in her chair next to the fire. She was listening to a portable radio balanced on the fire surround beside her. She seemed unsurprised to see me.

  ‘I was cold,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t get to sleep. Anyway, I’ve got to go and find him.’

  ‘It’s much colder out there.’ She indicated the blackness beyond the windows. ‘You’ll need all this.’

  On the chair opposite her she had placed several items of warm clothing, including a chunky wool sweater, a thick overcoat, scarf, gloves, a pair of rubber boots. And two large torches.

  My brother spoke again. I could not ignore him.

  I said to Kate, ‘You knew I was going to do this.’

  ‘Yes. I’ve been thinking.’

  ‘Do you know what’s happening to me?’

  ‘I believe so. You’ll have to go and find him.’

  ‘Will you come with me?’

  She shook her head vehemently. ‘No way on earth.’

  ‘So you know where he is?’

  ‘I think I’ve known all my life, but it’s always been easier to put it out of my mind. The hardest thing about meeting you has been that knowledge. What traumatised me when I was a child is still down there.’

  2

  It had stopped snowing, but the wind was an insistent rush of freezing air, penetrating everything. The snow had piled deep around the edges of the large garden, but in the centre it was shallow enough to allow me to walk through, stumbling on the uneven ground. I slipped several times, without falling.

  Kate had switched on the intruder alarm, which flooded the area with brilliant light. It helped me see my way, but when I looked back I could see nothing but the glare.

  My brother said: I’m cold, waiting.

  I kept going. On the far side of what I supposed must be a lawn, where the ground rose up suddenly and dark trees blocked the view ahead, the light from the torch picked out the brick-built archway where Kate had said it would be. Snow was piled up against the base of it.

  The door was not locked and it moved easily when I pulled at the handle. The door opened outwards, against the drifted snow, but it was made of solid oak and once I got a good hold on it I was able to push the snow far enough out of the way for me to squeeze through.

  Kate had given me the two torches, saying I would need as much light as possible. (‘Come back to the house for more, if you need them,’ she had said. ‘Why won’t you come with me and hold one of the torches?’ I had asked her. But she shook her head emphatically.) When I had the door open, I peered inside, letting the beam of the bigger of the two torches play ahead of me. There was nothing much to see: a rocky roof slanting down, some rough-hewn steps, and at the bottom a second door.

  The word Yes formed, inside my head.

  The second door had no lock or hasp, and opened smoothly at my touch. The beams of my torches swung around; one in my hand searched all about, the other tucked under my arm followed my direction of sight.

  Then my foot collided with something hard that jutted up from the floor and I stumbled. The torch under my arm broke as I banged against the rocky wall. Crouching on the ground, resting on a knee, I used one torch to examine the other.

  There’s a light, said my brother.

  I swung the single torch beam around again, and this time, close to the inner door, I noticed an insulated electricity cable, neatly tacked to the wooden frame. At shoulder height was an ordinary light switch. I flicked it on. At first nothing happened.

  Then, further down in the cavern, deep inside the hill, I heard the sound of an engine. As the generator picked up speed, lights came on for the full length of the cavern. They were only low-power light bulbs, roughly attached to the rocky ceiling, and protected by wire visors, but there was now enough light to see without the torch.

  3

  The cavern appeared to be a natural fissure in the rock, with extra tunnelling and h
ollowing carried out latterly. There were several natural shelves created by jutting rock strata, and many of them had been deepened and lengthened by cavities hollowed out later from the softer layers around them. There had also been an attempt to smooth the floor, as it was laid with numerous small chips and chunks of rock. Close to the inner doorway a spring trickled water down the wall, leaving a yellow calciferous deposit in its course. Where the water reached the floor, a crude but effective drain had been put together with modern pipes, which conducted the water into a rubble-filled soak-away.

  The air was surprisingly sweet, and significantly warmer than the chill gale outside.

  I went several paces down the cavern, balancing myself with my hands against the rocky walls on each side. The floor was uneven and broken, and the light bulbs were weak and widely spaced, so in places it was difficult to find a safe foothold. After a distance of about fifty yards, the floor dropped steeply and turned to the right, while to the left of the main tunnel I noticed a large cavity which to judge by the roundness of the entrance had been hollowed out artificially. The ceiling was about seven feet high, giving plenty of headroom. The opening was not electrically lit, so I shone my remaining torch inside.

  I immediately wished I had not. It was full of ancient coffins. Most were stacked horizontally in heaps, although about a dozen were leaning upright against the walls. They were of all sizes but the greater number of them, depressingly, were small ones obviously designed for children. All the coffins were in various degrees of decay. The horizontal ones were the most decrepit: the wood dark, curled and fractured with age. In many cases the lids had fallen in on the contents, and several of the ones placed on the tops of the piles had sides which had fallen away.