The Prestige

9

My performance always opens with the Chinese Linking Rings. It is a routine which is a pleasure to work, and audiences love to watch it, no matter if they have seen it before. The rings gleam brightly in the limelight, they jingle metallically against each other, the rhythmic movements of the prestidigitator's hands and arms and the gentle linking and unlinking of the rings seem almost to Mesmerize the audience. It is a trick impossible to see through, unless you are standing a few inches away from the performer and are able to snatch the rings away from him. It always charms, always creates that electrifying sense of mystery and miracle.

With this accomplished I roll forward the Modern Cabinet, which has been standing upstage. A yard or so from the footlights I rotate the cabinet to show both sides and the back. I make sure that I am seen to pass behind it, so that the audience may glimpse my feet through the gap between the stage and the floor of the cabinet. They have seen that no one was clinging to the back of the cabinet, and now they can satisfy themselves that no one may be secreted beneath it. When I fling open the door to reveal the interior, then step inside to release the catch that holds the rear panel in place, the audience can see right through from front to back. They see me pass through, likewise from front to back, and close the back wall once more. The door hangs open, and while I am apparently busy behind the cabinet they take their chance to peer more intently at the interior. There is nothing for them to see, though: the cabinet is, must be, completely empty. Quickly, then, I slam the front door closed, rotate the cabinet on its castors, and throw open the door. Inside, large, beautiful, bulkily dressed, smiling and waving her arms, entirely filling the cramped interior of the cabinet, is a young woman. She steps down, takes her bow to thunderous applause and leaves the stage.

I roll the cabinet to the side of the stage, whence it is quietly retrieved by Thomas Elbourne.

So to the next. This is less spectacular, but involves two or three members of the audience. Every magic act includes a few moments with a pack of cards. The magician must show his skill with sleight of hand, otherwise he runs the risk of being thought by his professional colleagues merely to be an operator of self-working machinery. I walk to the footlights, and the curtains close behind me. This is partly to create a closed, intimate atmosphere for the card tricks, but mainly so that behind them Thomas may set up the apparatus for The New Transported Man.

With the cards finished, I need to break the feeling of quiet concentration, so I move swiftly into a series of colourful productions. Flags, streamers, fans, balloons and silk scarves stream out unstoppably from my hands, sleeves and pockets, creating a bright and chaotic display all around me. My female assistant walks on stage behind me, apparently to clear away some of the streamers, but in reality to slip me more of the compressed materials for release. By the end, the brightly coloured papers and silks are inches deep around my feet. I acknowledge the applause.

While the audience is still clapping the curtains open behind me, and in semi-darkness my apparatus for The New Transported Man may be seen. My assistants move quickly on to the stage and deftly clear away the coloured streamers.

I return to the footlights, face the audience and address them directly, in my fractured, French-accented English. I explain that what I am about to perform has become possible only since the discovery of electricity. The performance draws power from the bowels of the Earth. Unimaginable forces are at work, that even I do not fully comprehend. I explain that they are about to witness a veritable miracle, one in which life and death are chanced with, as in the game of dice my ancestors played to avoid the tumbril.

While I speak the stage lights brighten, and catch the polished metal supports, the golden coils of wire, the glistening globes of glass. The apparatus is a thing of beauty, but it is a menacing beauty because everyone by now has heard for themselves of some of the deadly power of the electrical current. Newspapers have carried accounts of horrible deaths and burns caused by the new force already available in many cities.

The apparatus of The New Transported Man is designed to remind them of these appalling accounts. It carries numerous incandescent electric lamps, some of which come alight even as I speak. At one side is a large glass globe, inside which a brilliant arc of electricity fizzes and crackles excitingly. The main part of the apparatus appears, to the audience, to be a long wooden bench, three feet above the floor of the stage. They can see past it, around it, underneath it. At one end, by the arc-lit glass chamber, a small raised platform is bestrewn with dangling wires, their bare ends dangerously exposed. Above the platform is a canopy where many of the incandescent lamps are placed. At the further end is a metal cone, decorated with a spiral of smaller glowing lamps. This is mounted on a gimbals device that allows it to be swivelled in several directions. All around the main part are small concavities and shelves, where bare terminals lie in wait. The whole thing is emitting a loud humming noise, as of immense hidden energies within.

I explain to the audience that I would invite some of its members on to the stage to examine the device for themselves, but for the immense danger to them. I hint at earlier accidents. Instead, I say, I have devised a few simple demonstrations of the power inherent within the machine. I allow some magnesium powder to fall across two bared contacts, and a brilliant white flash momentarily blinds the members of the audience closest to the stage! While the smoke from it balloons upwards I take a sheet of paper and drop it across another semi-concealed part of the apparatus; this immediately bursts into flame, and its smoke also rises dramatically to the rigging loft above. The humming sound increases in volume. The apparatus seems to be alive, only barely constraining the frightful energies that lie within.

At stage left my female assistant appears with a wheeled cabinet. This is strongly made of wood, but because it is built on wheels she is able to turn the thing around so it might be seen from all sides. Then she lets down the front and sides to show that it is empty.

I grimace sadly at the audience then signal to the girl, who brings to me two immense dark-brown gauntlets, made to seem as if they are of leathern material. When these are covering my hands she leads me to the apparatus, until I stand behind it. The audience can see most of my body still, and satisfy themselves that there are no concealed mirrors or shields. I lower my two gauntleted hands to the surface of the platform, and as I do so the sound of electrical tension increases, and there is another brilliant discharge of electrical energy. I reel back, as if in shock.

The girl moves away from the apparatus, cowering a little. I break off from my introduction to plead with her to leave the stage for her own safety. At first she resists, then gladly hurries into the wings.

I reach up to the directional cone, grip it gingerly with my heavily gauntleted hands, and move it with great care until its apex is pointed directly at the cabinet.

The illusion is approaching its climax. From the orchestra pit there comes a roll of drums. I place both hands on the platform once more, and magically all the remaining lamps shine out brightly. The sinister hum increases. I first sit on the platform, and swivel around so that I can stretch my legs out, then lower myself until I am lying full length, surrounded by the evidence of the terrible electrical forces.

I raise my arms, and pull off first one, then the other gauntlet. As I lower my arms I allow my hands to droop below the level of the platform. One of them, the one the audience can see, falls casually into the receptacle where, a few seconds earlier, a piece of paper had been ignited.

There is a brilliant, blinding flash of light, and all the lights on the apparatus fuse into darkness.

In the same instant… I vanish from the platform.

The cabinet bursts open, and I am seen hunched up inside.

I roll slowly out of the cabinet, and collapse on to the floor. I am bathed in stage lights. Gradually I come to my senses. I stand. I blink in the brightness of the lights. I face the audience. I turn towards the platform, indicate where I had been, turn back to the cabinet immediately behind me, and indicate where I had arrived.

I take my bow.

The audience has seen me transmogrified. Before their eyes I was catapulted by the power of electricity from one part of the stage to another. Ten feet of empty space. Twenty feet, thirty feet, depending on the size of the stage.

A human body transmitted in an instant. A miracle, an impossibility, an illusion.

My assistant returns to the stage. Clasping her hand I am smiling and bowing as the applause rings out and the curtains close before me.

If I say no more of this, it will be acceptable. I shall not intervene again. I may continue to the conclusion.