The Prestige

12

It gives me no pleasure to write of Angier's death. It has come as a tragic climax to a sequence of events which had been building up for more than two years. I disdained to record any of them because, I regret to say, they had threatened to renew the unpleasantness that existed between us.

As I noted in the earlier part of this journal, I had reached a state of pleasant equilibrium and stability in my life and career, and had no wish for anything more than what I had at that time. I felt and sincerely believed that should Angier make any kind of attack or reprisal against me I could merely shrug it off. Indeed, I had every reason to believe that the trail of false clues offered in Olive's note to him was a concluding action between us. It was intended to put him off course, to send him searching for a secret that did not exist. The fact that he vanished from my awareness for more than two years suggested my ruse had worked.

However, soon after I had completed the first part of this narrative I happened to notice a magazine review of a show taking place at the Finsbury Park Empire. Rupert Angier was one of the acts, and by all accounts was low on the bill. The notice mentioned him only in passing, observing “it is good to acknowledge that his talent remains undimmed”. This in itself suggested that his career had been going through a hiatus.

Two or three months later, all had changed. One of the magic journals featured an interview with him, even publishing a photographic picture of him alongside. One of the daily newspapers referred in an editorial to the “revival of the prestidigitator's art”, pointing out that numerous magical acts were once again topping the bill in our music halls. Rupert Angier was mentioned by name, although so were several others.

Later still, because of the necessary delays in producing such things, one of the subscription magic journals published a detailed article about Angier. It described his present act as a triumphant departure in the art of open magic. His new illusion, called In a Flash, was singled out for special mention, and for expert critical acclaim. It was said to set new standards of technical brilliance, being such that unless Mr Angier himself chose to reveal the secrets of its workings, it was unlikely that any other illusionist would be able to reproduce its effect, at least in the foreseeable future. The same article mentioned that In a Flash was a significant development from "previous efforts’ in the field of transference illusions, and there was a slighting reference not only to The New Transported Man but also to myself.

I tried, I honestly tried, to disregard such aggravation, but these mentions in the press were only the first of many to come. Unquestionably, Rupert Angier was at the top of our profession.

Naturally, I felt I should do something about it. Much of my work in recent months had involved touring, concentrating on smaller clubs and theatres in the provinces. I decided that to re-establish myself I needed a season at a prominent London theatre as a showcase for my skills. Such was the interest in stage illusions at this time that my booking agent had little difficulty arranging what promised to be a major show. The venue was the Lyric Theatre in the Strand, and I was placed top of the bill at a variety show scheduled to run for a week in September 1902.

We opened to a house that was half empty, and the next day our press notices were few and far between. Only three newspapers even mentioned me by name, and the least unfavourable comment referred to me as “a proponent of a style of magic remarkable more for its nostalgic value than its innovative flair”. The houses for the next two nights were almost empty, and the show closed halfway through the week.

I decided I had to see Angier's new illusion for myself, and when I heard at the end of October that he was starting a two-week residence at the Hackney Empire I quietly bought myself a ticket for the stalls. The Empire is a deep, narrow theatre, with long constricted aisles and an auditorium kept fairly well in the dark throughout the performance, so it exactly suited my purposes. My seat had a good view of the stage, but I was not so close that Angier was likely to spot me there.

I took no exception to the main part of his performance, in which he competently performed illusions from the standard magical repertoire. His style was good, his patter amusing, his assistant beautiful, and his showmanship above average. He was dressed in a well-made evening suit, and his hair was smartly brilliantined to a high gloss. It was during this part of his act, though, that I first observed the wasting that was affecting his face, and saw other clues that suggested an unwell state. He moved stiffly, and several times favoured his left arm as if it were weaker than the other.

Finally, after an admittedly amusing routine that involved a message written by a member of the audience appearing inside a sealed envelope, Angier came to the closing illusion. He began with a serious speech, which I scribbled down quickly into a notebook. Here is what he said:

Ladies and Gentlemen! As the new century moves apace we see around us on every side the miracles of science. These wonders multiply almost every day. By the end of the new century, which few here tonight shall live to see, what marvels will prevail? Men might fly, men might speak across oceans, men might travel across the firmament. Yet no miracle which science may produce can compare with the greatest wonders of all… the human mind and the human body.

Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I will attempt a magical feat that brings together the wonders of science and the wonders of the human mind. No other stage performer in the world can reproduce what you are about to witness for yourself!

With this he raised his good arm theatrically, and the curtains were swept apart. There, waiting in the limelight, was the apparatus I had come to see.

It was substantially larger than I had expected. Magicians normally prefer to work with compactly built apparatus so as to heighten the mystery of the uses to which they are put. Angier's equipment practically filled the stage area.

In the centre of the stage was an arrangement of three long metal legs, joined tripodally at the apex and supporting a shining metal globe about a foot and a half in diameter. There was just room beneath the apex of the tripod for a man to stand. Immediately above the apex, and below the globe, was a cylindrical wooden and metal contraption firmly attached to the joint. This cylinder was made of wooden slats with distinct gaps between them, and wound around hundreds of times with thin filaments of wires. From where I was sitting, I judged the cylinder to be at least four feet in height, and perhaps as many in diameter. It was slowly rotating, and catching and reflecting the stage lights into our eyes. Shards of light prowled the walls of the auditorium.

Surrounding the contraption, at a radial distance of about ten feet was a second circle of eight metal slats, again much wound around with wires. These were standing on the surface of the stage and concentric to the tripod. The slats were widely and evenly spaced, with a large gap between each one. The audience could see clearly into the main part of the apparatus.

I was totally unprepared for this, as I had been expecting some kind of magical cabinet of the same general size as the ones I used. Angier's apparatus was so immense that there was no room anywhere on the stage for a second concealing cabinet.

My magician's brain started racing, trying to anticipate what the illusion was to be, how it might differ from my own, and where the secret might lie. First impression — surprise at the sheer size of it. Second impression — the remarkable workaday quality of the apparatus. With the exception of the rotating cylinder just above the apex, there was no use of bright colours, distracting lights or areas of deliberate black. Most of the contraption appeared to be made of unvarnished wood or unbrightened metal. There were cords and wires running off in several directions. Third impression — no hint of what was to come. I have no idea what the apparatus was intended to look like. Magical apparatus often assumes commonplace shapes, to misdirect the audience. It will look like an ordinary table, for example, or a flight of steps, or a cabin trunk, but Angier's equipment made no concessions to familiarity.

Angier began his performance of the trick.

There appeared to be no mirrors on stage. Every part of the apparatus could be seen directly, and as Angier went through his preparations he roamed about the stage, walking through each of the gaps, passing momentarily behind the slats, always visible, always moving. I watched his legs, often a part of an illusionist's anatomy to observe closely when he moves around and particularly behind his apparatus (an inexplicable movement can indicate the presence of a mirror or some other device) but Angier's walk was relaxed and normal. There appeared to be no trapdoors that he could use. The stage was covered in a single large rubber sheet, making access to the mezzanine floor beneath the stage difficult.

Most curious of all, there was no apparent rationale to the illusion. Magical apparatus normally serves to set up or misdirect audience expectations. It consists of the box that is obviously too small to contain a human being (yet will turn out to do so), or the sheet of steel that apparently cannot be penetrated, or the locked trunk from which it would be impossible to escape. In every case, the illusionist confounds the exact assumptions that his audience has made from their own assessment of what they see before them. Angier's equipment looked like nothing ever seen before, and it was impossible to guess what it might be intended to do from simply looking at it.

Meanwhile, Angier strode around his stage set, still invoking the mysteries of science and life.

He resumed centre stage, and faced his audience.

“Good sirs, mesdames, I request of one of you, a volunteer. You need not fear for what might happen. I require you for a simple act of verification only.”

He stood in the glare of the footlights, leaning invitingly towards the members of the audience in the first rows of the fauteuils . I suppressed a sudden mad urge to rush forward and volunteer myself, so that I might have a closer look at his machinery, but I knew that if I should do so Angier would instantly recognize me, and probably bring his performance to a premature close.

After the usual nervous hesitation a man stepped forward and mounted the stage by the side ramp. As he did so, one of Angier's assistants walked on to the stage, carrying a tray laden with several articles, the purpose of which soon became apparent, as each one offered a means of marking or identifying. There were two or three wells filled with different coloured inks; there was a bowl of flour; there were some chalks; there were sticks of charcoal. Angier invited the volunteer to choose one, and when the man selected the bowl of flour, Angier turned his back on him and invited him to tip it across the back of his jacket. This the man did, with a cloud of white that drifted spectacularly in the stage lights.

Angier turned again to face the audience, and asked the volunteer to select one of the inks. The man chose the red. Angier held out his floury hands so that red ink might be poured across them.

Now distinctively marked, Angier requested the man to return to his seat. The stage lights dimmed, but for one brilliant shaft of light from a spot.

There was an unearthly crackling noise, as if the air itself were being split asunder, and to my amazement a bolt of blue-white electrical discharge abruptly curled out and away from the shining globe. The arc moved with a horrid suddenness and arbitrariness, dashing about inside the arena enclosed by the outer slats, into which Angier himself now walked. The crackling and snapping of the bolt seemed blessed with a vicious life of its own.

The electrical discharge abruptly doubled, then tripled, with the extra bolts snaking around, as if searching the enclosed space. One inevitably found Angier, and instantly wrapped itself around him, seeming to illumine him with cyanic light that glowed not only around his body but also from within. He welcomed the shot of electricity, raising his good arm, turning about, allowing the snaking, hissing fire to encircle him and surround him.

More bolts of electricity appeared, fizzing malignantly around him. He disregarded these as he had disregarded the others. Each seemed to attack him in turn; one would snap back away from him like a raised whip, allowing another, or two others, to blaze across him and lash his body with ever-contorting fire.

The smell of this discharge was soon assaulting the audience. I breathed it with the others, mentally reeling from thoughts of what it might contain. It had an unearthly, atomic quality, as if it represented the liberation of a force hitherto forbidden to man, and now, released, exhaled the stench of sheer energy rampant.

As more streaming arcs of electricity swooped about him, Angier moved to the tripod at the heart of the inferno, directly beneath the source. Once here he seemed safe. Apparently unable or unwilling to double back on themselves, the brilliant arcs of light snapped away from him, and with ferocious bangs impacted on the larger, outer slats. In moments, each of these had one arc reaching across to it, fizzing and spitting with restless animation, but contained in its place.

So these eight dazzling streamers formed a kind of canopy above the arena in which Angier stood, alone. The spotlight was suddenly extinguished, and all other stage lights had been dimmed. He was illuminated only by the light that fell on him from the incandescent discharge. He stood immobile, his good arm raised, his head barely an inch or so below the metal cylinder whence all the electricity emanated. He was saying something, a declaration to the audience, but one that was lost to me in the noisy commotion that scorched the air above him.

He lowered his arms, and for two or three seconds stood in silence, submitting to the awful spectacle he had made.

Then he vanished.

One moment Angier was there; the next he was not. His apparatus made a shrieking, tearing sound, and appeared to shake, but with his going the bright shards of energy instantly died. The tendrils fizzed and popped like small fireworks, and then were gone. The stage fell into darkness.

I was standing; without fully realizing it I had been standing for some time. I, and the rest of the audience, stood there aghast. The man had disappeared in front of our eyes, leaving no trace.

I heard a commotion in the aisle behind me, and with everyone else I turned to see what was happening. There were too many heads and bodies, I could not see clearly, some kind of motion in the darkened auditorium! Thankfully, the house lights came on, and one of the manned spotlights turned from its position high above the boxes, and its shaft of light picked out what was going on.

Angier was there!

Members of the theatre's staff were hurrying down the aisle towards him, and some of the audience were trying to get to him, but he was on his feet and pushing them away from him.

He was staggering down the aisle, heading back towards the stage.

I tried to recover from the surprise, and quickly made estimates. No more than a second or two could have elapsed between his disappearance from the stage, and his reappearance in the aisle. I glanced to and fro the stage, trying to work out the distance involved. My seat was at least sixty feet away from the front of the stage, and Angier had appeared well to the back of the aisle, close to one of the audience exits. He was a long way behind me, at least another forty feet.

Could he have dashed one hundred feet in a single second, while the darkness from the stage masked his movement?

It was then, and is now, a rhetorical question. Clearly he could not, without the use of magical techniques.

But which ones?

His progress along the aisle towards the stage briefly brought him level with me, where he stumbled on one of the steps before continuing onwards. I was certain he had not seen me, because self-evidently he had no eyes for anyone at all in the audience. His comportment was entirely that of a man wrapped in his own anguish; his face was tormented, his whole body moved as if racked with pain. He shambled like a drunk or an invalid, or a man finally exhausted with life. I saw the left arm he favoured hanging limply by his side, and the hand was smudged grey with flour, the red ink smeared into a dark mess. On the back of his jacket the burst of flour was still visible, still in the haphazard shape the volunteer had created when he slapped the bag against him, just a few seconds ago, and a hundred feet away.

We were all applauding, with many people cheering and whistling their approval, and as he neared the stage a second spotlight picked him out and tracked him up the ramp to the stage. He walked wearily to the centre of the stage, where at last he seemed to recover. Once more in the full glare of the stage lights he took his ovation, bowing to the audience, acknowledging them, blowing kisses, smiling and triumphant. I stood with the rest, marvelling at what I had seen.

Behind him, unobtrusively, the curtains were closing to conceal the apparatus.

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

I did not know how the trick was done! I had seen it with my own eyes, and I had watched in the knowledge of how to watch a magician at work, and I had looked in all the places from which a magician traditionally misdirects his audience. I left the Hackney Empire in a boiling rage. I was angry that my best illusion had been copied; I was even angrier that it had been bettered. Worst of all, though, was the fact that I could not work out how it was done.

He was one man. He was in one place. He appeared in another. He could not have a double, or a stooge; equally he could not have travelled so quickly from one position to the other.

Jealousy made my rage worse. In a Flash, Angier's catchpenny title for his version of, his damnable improvement on, The New Transported Man, was unmistakably a major illusion, one which introduced a new standard into our often derided and usually misunderstood performing art. For this I had to admire him, no matter what my other feelings about him might be. Along with, I suspect, most of my fellow members of the audience, I felt that I had been privileged to witness the illusion for myself. As I walked away from the front of the theatre I passed the narrow alley that led down to the stage door, and I even momentarily wished it were possible for me to send up my card to Angier's dressing room, so that I might visit him there and congratulate him in person.

I suppressed these instincts. After so many years of bitter rivalry I could not allow one polished presentation of a stage illusion to make me humiliate myself before him.

I returned to my flat in Hornsey, where at that time I happened to be staying, and underwent a sleepless night, tossing restlessly beside Olive.

The next day I settled down to some hard and practical thinking about his version of my trick, to see what I could make of it.

I confess yet again: I do not know how he did it. I could not work out the secret when I saw the performance, and afterwards, no matter what principles of magic I applied, I could not think of the solution.

At the heart of the mystery were three, possibly four, of the six fundamental categories of illusion: he had made himself Disappear , he had then Produced himself elsewhere, somehow there seemed to be an element of Transposition , and all had been achieved in apparent Defiance of Natural Laws .

A disappearance on stage is relatively easy to arrange, placement of mirrors or half-mirrors, use of lighting, use of magician's “black art” or blinds, use of distraction, use of stage trapdoors, and so on. Production elsewhere is usually a question of planting in advance the object, or a close copy of it… or if it is a person, planting a convincing double of the person. Working these two effects together then produces a third; in their bafflement the audience believes it has seen natural laws defied.

Laws that I felt I had seen defied that evening in Hackney.

All my attempts to solve the mystery on conventional magical principles were unsuccessful, and although I thought and worked obsessively I did not come even close to a solution that satisfied me.

I was constantly distracted by the knowledge that this magnificent illusion would have at its heart a secret of infuriating simplicity. The central rule of magic always holds good — what is seen is not what is actually being done .

This secret continued to elude me. I had only two minor compensations.

The first was that no matter how brilliant his effect, my own secret was still intact from Angier. He did not carry out the illusion my way, as indeed he could never have done.

The second was that of speed. No matter what his secret, Angier's performance effect was still not as quick as mine. My body is made to transport from one cabinet to the other in an instant. Not, I emphasize, that it happens quickly; the illusion is worked in an instant . There is no delay of any kind. Angier's effect was measurably slower. On the evening I witnessed the illusion I estimated one or at most two seconds had elapsed, which meant to me that he was one or at most two seconds slower than me.

In one approach towards a solution I tried checking the times and distances involved. On the night, because I had had no idea what was about to happen, and I had no scientific means of measurement, all my estimates were subjective.

This is part of the illusionist's method; by not preparing his audience, the performer can use surprise to cover his tracks. Most people, having seen a trick performed, and asked how quickly it was carried out, will be unable to give an accurate estimate. Many tricks are based on the principle that the illusionist will do something so quickly that an unprepared audience will afterwards swear that it could not have happened, because there was insufficient time .

Knowing this, I made myself think back carefully over what I had seen, re-running the illusion in my mind, and trying to estimate how much time had actually elapsed between Angier's apparent disappearance and his materialization elsewhere. In the end I came to the conclusion that certainly it had been no less than my first estimate of one or two seconds, and maybe as many as five seconds had passed. In five seconds of complete and unexpected darkness a skilled magician can carry out a great deal of invisible trickery!

This short period of time was the obvious clue to the mystery, but it still did not seem enough for Angier to have dashed almost to the back of the stalls.

Two weeks after the incident, by arrangement with the front-of-house manager, I went round to the Hackney Empire on the pretext of wishing to take measurements in advance of one of my own performances. This is a fairly regular feature of magical acts, as the illusionist will often adapt his performance to suit the physical limitations of the theatre. In the event, my request was treated as a normal one, and the manager's assistant greeted me with civility and assisted me with my researches.

I found the seat where I had been, and established that it was just over fifty feet from the stage. Trying to discover the precise point in the aisle where Angier had rematerialized was more difficult, and really all I had to go on was my own memory of the event. I stood beside the seat I had been using, and tried to triangulate his position by recalling the angle at which I had turned my head to see him. In the end the best I could do was to place him somewhere in a long stretch of the stepped aisle; its closest point to the stage was more than seventy-five feet, and its furthest extremity was greatly in excess of one hundred feet.

I stood for a while in the centre of the stage, approximately in the place where the tripod's apex had been, and stared along the central aisle, wondering how I myself would contrive to get from one position to the other, in a crowded auditorium, in darkness, in under five seconds.

I travelled down to discus: the problem with Tommy Elbourne, who by this time was living in retirement in Woking. After I had described the illusion to him I asked him how he thought it might be explained.

“I should have to see it myself, sir,” he said after much thought and cross-questioning of me.

I tried a different approach. I put it to him that it might be an illusion I wished to design for myself. He and I had often worked like this in the past; I would describe an effect I wanted to achieve, and we would, so to speak, design the workings in reverse.

“But that would be no problem for you, would it, Mr Borden?”

“Yes, but I am different! How then would we design it for another illusionist?”

“I would not know how,” he said. “The best way would be to use a double, someone already planted in the audience, but you say—”

“That is not how Angier worked it. He was alone.”

“Then I have no idea, sir.”

I laid new plans. I would attend Angier's next season of performances, visiting his show every night if necessary, until I had solved the mystery. Tommy Elbourne would be with me. I would cling to my pride so long as I could, and if I were able to wrest his secret from him, without arousing his suspicions, then that would be the ideal result. But if, by the end of the season, we had not come to a workable theory we would abandon all the rivalry and jealousies of the past, and I would approach him direct, pleading with him if necessary for an insight into the explanation. Such was the maddening effect on me of his mystery.

I write without shame. Mysteries are the common currency of magicians, and I saw it as my professional duty to find out how the trick was being worked. If it meant that I had to humble myself, had to acknowledge that Angier was the superior magician, then so be it.

None of this was to be, however. After an extended Christmas break Angier departed for a tour of the USA at the end of January, leaving me fretting with frustration in his wake.

A week after his return in April (announced in The Times ) I called at his house, determined to make my peace with him, but he was not there. The house, a large but modest building in a terrace not far from Highgate Fields, was closed and shuttered. I spoke to neighbours, but I was repeatedly told that they knew nothing of the people who lived there. Angier obviously kept his life as secure from the outside world as I did.

I contacted Hesketh Unwin, the man I knew to be his booking agent, but was rebuffed. I left a message with Unwin, pleading with Angier to contact me urgently. Although the agent promised the message would reach Angier in person it was never answered.

I wrote to Angier directly, personally, proposing an end to all the rivalry, all bitterness, offering any apology or amends he would care to name in the cause of conciliation between us.

He did not answer, and at last I felt I had been taken to a point that was beyond reason.

My response to his silence, I fear, was insensible.