The Prestige

"That's The Great Danton's Obsessive Filing System," she said. She moved away from the settee, and knelt informally on the carpet beside my chair. Leaning towards me so she could look at the bill in my hand, she said, "I haven't worked it all out, but the first number refers to the job. There's a ledger somewhere, with a complete list of every gig he did. Underneath that, he puts down how many actual performances he carried out, and how many of those were matinees and how many in the evenings. The next numbers are a list of the actual tricks he did, and again he had about a dozen notebooks in his study with descriptions of all the tricks he could do. I have a few of the notebooks still here, and you could probably look up some of the tricks he did in Stoke Newington. But it's even more complicated than that, because most of the tricks have minor variations, and he's got all those cross-referenced as well. Look, this number here, "10g". I think that's what he was paid: ten guineas."

"Was that good?"

"If it was for one night it was brilliant. But it was probably for the whole week, so it was just average. I don't think this was a big theatre."

I picked up the stack of all the other playbills and as she had said each one was annotated with similar code numbers.

"All his apparatus was labelled as well," she said. "Sometimes, I wonder how he found time to get out into the world and make a living! But when I was clearing out the cellar, every single piece of equipment I came across had an identifying number, and each one had a place in a huge index, all cross-referenced to the other books."

"Maybe he had someone else do it for him."

"No, it's always in the same handwriting."

"When did he die?" I said.

"There's actually some doubt about that, strangely enough. The newspapers say he died in 1903, and there was an obituary in The Times , but there are people in the village who say he was still living here the following year. What I find odd is that I came across the obituary in the scrapbook he kept, and it was stuck down and labelled and indexed, just like all the other stuff."

"Can you explain how that happened?"

"No. Alfred Borden talks about it in his book. That's where I heard about it, and after that I tried to find out what had happened between them."

"Have you got any more of his stuff?"

While she reached over for the scrapbooks, I poured myself another slug of the American whiskey, which I had not tried before and which I was finding I liked. I also liked having Kate down there on the floor beside my legs, turning her head to look up at me as she spoke, leaning towards me, affording more glimpses down the front of her dress and probably well aware of it. It was all slightly bemusing to be there, not fully comprehending what was going on, talk of magicians, meetings in childhood, not at work when I should have been, not driving over to see my parents as I had planned.

In that part of my mind occupied by my brother, I felt a sense of contentment, unlike anything I had known from him before. He was urging me to stay.

Outside the window the cold afternoon sky was darkening and the Pennine rain continued to fall. An icy draught came persistently from the windows. Kate threw another log on the fire.

PART TWO

Alfred Borden

1

I write in the year 1901.

My name, my real name, is Alfred Borden. The story of my life is the story of the secrets by which I have lived my life. They are described in this narrative for the first and last time; this is the only extant copy.

I was born in 1856 on the eighth day of the month of May, in the coastal town of Hastings. I was a healthy, vigorous child. My father was a tradesman of that borough, a master wheelwright and cooper. Our house at number 105 Manor Road was in a long, curving terrace built along the side of one of the several hills which Hastings comprises. Behind the house was a steep and secluded valley where sheep and cattle grazed during the summer months, but at the front the hill rose up, lined with many more houses, standing between us and the sea. It was from those houses, and from the farms and businesses around, that my father took his trade.

Our house was larger and taller than others in the road, because it was built over the gateway that led to the yard and sheds behind. My room was on the street side of the house, directly above the gateway, and because only the wooden floorboards and some thin lath-and-plaster lay between me and the open air the room was noisy through every day of the year, and viciously cold in the winter months. It was in that room that I slowly grew up and became the man that I am.

That man is Le Professeur de la Magie, and I am a master of illusions.

It is time to pause, even so early, for this account is not intended to be about my life in the usual habit of autobiographers, but is, as I have said, about my life's secrets. Secrecy is intrinsic to my work.