The Prestige

Because of my own commitments it has been impossible to see Borden's act every night, but Cutter and I have been to his performances twice this week. He has still not repeated the illusion with the two cabinets. Cutter refuses to speculate until he has seen it himself, but declares I am wasting his time and my own. It is becoming a source of friction between us.

13th November 1892

At last I have seen Borden perform his two-cabinets illusion again, and this time Cutter was with me. It happened at the Lewisham World Theatre, on an otherwise straightforward variety bill.

As Borden produced the first of his two cabinets, and went through his routine of revealing it to be empty, I felt a thrill of anticipation. Cutter, beside me, raised his opera glasses in a businesslike way. (I glanced at him to try to see where he was looking, and was interested to note that he was not watching the magician at all. With quick movements of the glasses he appeared to be inspecting the rest of the stage area; the wings, the flies, the backcloth. I cursed myself for not thinking of this, and left him to get on with it.)

I continued to watch Borden. As far as I could tell the trick was conducted exactly as I had observed it before, even to an almost word-for-word repetition of the French-accented speech about danger. When he went into the second cabinet, though, I noticed a couple of tiny deviations from the earlier occasion. The more trivial of these was that he had left the first cabinet closer to the rear of the stage, so that it was not at all well lit. (I again glanced quickly at Cutter, and found that he was paying no attention to the magician, but had his glasses turned steadfastly on the upstage cabinet.)

The other deviation interested me, and in fact rather amused me. When Borden removed his top hat and flung it into the air, I was leaning forward, ready to see the next and most amazing step. Instead, the hat rose quickly into the flies, and did not reappear! (Clearly, there was a stagehand up there, slipped a ten-bob note to catch it.) Borden turned to the audience with a wry smile, and got his laugh. While the laughter was still ringing out, he extended his left hand calmly… and the top hat skittered down from the flies, for him to catch with a natural and unforced movement. It was excellent stagecraft, and he deserved the second laugh for that.

Then, without waiting for the laughter to die, and with dashing speed:

Up went the hat again! The cabinet door was slammed! The upstage cabinet door burst open! Borden leapt out, hatless! The second cabinet collapsed! Borden skipped nimbly across the stage, caught the top hat, rammed it down on his head!

Beaming, bowing, waving, he took his well-deserved applause. Cutter and I joined in.

In the taxicab rattling back to north London I demanded of Cutter, "Well, what do you think of that!"

"Brilliant, Mr Angier!" he stated. "Quite brilliant! It is not often that one has the chance to see a completely new illusion."

I found this acclaim none too pleasing, I must say.

"Do you know how he did it?" I insisted.

"Yes, sir, I do," he replied. "And so I fancy do you."

"I'm as baffled as ever I was. How the devil could he be in two places at once? I cannot see that it is possible!"

"Sometimes you do surprise me, Mr Angier," Cutter said trenchantly. "It is a logical puzzle, solved only by the application of our own logic. What did we see before us?"

"A man who transported himself instantly from one part of the stage to the other."

"That is what we thought we saw, what we were intended to see. What was the reality?"

"You still maintain he uses a double?" I queried him.

"How else could it be effected?"

"But you saw it as I did. That was no double! We saw him clearly before and after. He was the same man! The very same!"

Cutter winked at me, then turned away and gazed out at the dimly lit houses of Waterloo past which we were presently driving.

"Well?" I clamoured of him. "What do you say?"

"I say what I have said, Mr Angier."

"I pay you to explain the unexplainable, Cutter. Do not trifle with me about this! It is a matter of high professional importance!"

At this he realized the seriousness of my mood, and not a moment before time, because the piqued admiration induced in me by Borden's performance was being transmuted to frustration and anger.

"Sir," he said steadily. "You must know of identical twins. There is your answer!"

"No!" I exclaimed.

"How else might it be done?"

"But the first cabinet was empty—"

"So it did appear," said Cutter.

"And the second cabinet collapsed the moment he left it—"

"Very effectively too, I thought."

I knew what he was saying; these were standard stage effects for making apparatus that is concealing someone seem empty. Several of my own illusions turn on similar deceptions. My difficulty was the same I have always suffered; when I see another's illusion from the auditorium, I am as easily misdirected as anyone else. But identical twins! I had not thought of that!