The Prestige

I have told Unwin to continue accepting bookings through to the end of the year, and for the early months of 1904. However, I shall be dead by the end of September. Probably it will occur on Saturday, 19th September.

15th May 1903

In Lowestoft

After the dizzy experiences of New York, Washington DC, Baltimore, Richmond, St Louis, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, Los Angeles… I am in Lowestoft, Suffolk. In the USA I might make my fortune, but in places like the Pavilion Theatre in Lowestoft I earn my living.

I open tomorrow for a week.

20th May 1903

I have cancelled both my performances tonight, tomorrow's are in jeopardy, and as I draft these words I am anxiously awaiting Julia's arrival.

I am a fool, a damned, bloody fool !

Last night, second performance, halfway through. (I can barely bring myself to set this down in writing.) I have recently added a new card trick to my repertoire. In this, a member of the audience is invited up to the stage. He takes a card and writes his name on the face of it. I tear off a corner of the card, and give it to the volunteer to hold. The rest of the card is placed inside a paper envelope, which is ignited. When the flames have gone out I produce a large orange. I cut it in half and it is found to contain the signed card, and the torn-off corner still of course fits.

Last night my volunteer was what I thought must be a local man; he was tall and burly, had a florid complexion, and when he spoke I heard a Suffolk accent. I had spotted him earlier in the show, sitting in the centre of the front row, and as soon as I noticed his amiable, unintelligent face I had picked him out as a likely volunteer. He did in fact offer himself as soon as I called for someone to come up on stage, something which should have alerted me to likely trouble. However, while I was doing the trick he was the perfect foil, even drawing a laugh or two from the audience with his homely sense of humour and commonplace observations. ("Take a card," said I. "What, you want me to take it home, sor?" said the man, all wide-eyed and seemingly eager to please.)

How could I not have guessed it was Borden?! He even gave me a clue, because the name he wrote on the playing card was Alf Redbone , a transparent near-anagram, yet in my preoccupations I took it to be his real name.

With the card trick completed I shook his hand, thanked him by name, and added my applause to that of the audience as he was led by Hester, my present female assistant, towards the stalls ramp.

I did not notice that Redbone's seat was still empty a few minutes later, as I moved towards the start of In a Flash.

In the tensions leading up to this performance, his absence registered only at the back of my mind; I knew there was something wrong, but because of the moment I could not think exactly what it might be. As the current started to flow through the Tesla apparatus, and the long tendrils of high-voltage discharge snaked around me, and the anticipation from the audience was at its greatest, I noticed his absence at last. The significance of it came at me like a thunderbolt.

By then it was too late; the apparatus was in operation and I was committed to completing the trick.

At this point in the show nothing can be modified. Even my chosen target area is fixed; setting the coordinates is too intricate and time-consuming to be done at any time other than before a performance. The previous night I had set the apparatus for both of yesterday's performances so that I would arrive in the highest loge at stage left, which by arrangement with the management was kept empty for both shows. The loge was at the same approximate height as the main balcony, and could be seen from almost every other part of the auditorium.

I had arranged it so that I should materialize on the very rail of the box itself, picked out by the follow-spot, facing down into the stalls a long way below, apparently struggling to keep my balance, arms windmilling, body jerking wildly, and so on. Everything had gone exactly to plan during the first performance, and my magical transformation brought screams, roars of warnings and shouts of alarm from the audience, followed by thunderous applause as I swung down to the stage on the rope thrown up to me by Hester.

To arrive on the rail of the loge facing down to the audience, I have to stand inside the Tesla apparatus with my back towards the loge. The audience cannot know it, of course, but the position in which I arrange my body is exactly recreated at the instant of arrival. From my place inside the apparatus I could not therefore see where I was about to arrive.