The Prestige Read Online Free PDF Page A

concern and curiosity. It was as
     if she used him as a way of getting under my defences. All my life the existence of my
     brother had been my secret certainty, a part of myself that I kept completely private. Yet
     here was this stranger speaking of him as if she knew him.
    “Why are you interested in this?” I said.
    “When you first heard of me, saw my name, did it mean anything to you?”
    “No.”
    “Have you ever heard of Rupert Angier?”
    “No.”
    “Or The Great Danton, the illusionist?”
    “No. My only interest in my former family is that through them I might one day be able to
     trace my twin brother.”
    She had been sipping quickly at her glass of whiskey while we spoke, and now it was empty.
     She leant forward to mix another drink, and tried to pour more into my glass. Knowing I
     was going to have to drive later, I pulled my glass back before she could completely fill
     it.
    She said, “I think the fate of your brother is connected with something that happened
     about a hundred years ago. One of my ancestors, Rupert Angier. You say you've never heard
     of him, and there's no reason why you should, but he was a stage magician at the end of
     the last century. He worked as The Great Danton, because in those days all the magicians
     used grandiose stage names. He was the victim of a series of vicious attacks by a man
     called Alfred Borden, your great-grandfather, who was also an illusionist. You say you
     know nothing about this?”
    “Only the book. I assume you sent it.”
    She nodded. “They had this feud going, and it went on for years. They were constantly
     attacking each other, usually by interfering with the other one's stage show. The story of
     the feud is in Borden's book. At least, his side of it is. Have you read it yet?”
    “It only arrived in the post this morning. I haven't had much of a chance—”
    “I thought you would be fascinated to know what had happened.”
    I was thinking, again: why go on about the Bordens? They are too far back, I know too
     little about them. She was talking about something that was of interest to her, not to me.
     I felt I should be polite to her, listen to what she was saying, but what she could never
     know was the resistance that lay deep inside me, the unconscious defence mechanism a kid
     builds up for himself when he has been rejected. To adapt to my new family I had had to
     throw off everything I knew of the old. How many times would I have to say that to her to
     convince her of it?
    Saying she wanted to show me something, she put down her glass and crossed the room to a
     desk placed against the wall just behind where I was sitting. As she stooped to reach into
     a lower drawer her dress sagged forward at the neck, and I stole a glimpse: a thin white
     strap, part of a lacy bra cup, the upper curve of the breast nestling inside. She had to
     reach into the drawer, and this made her turn around so she could stretch her arm, and I
     saw the slender curves of her back, her straps again becoming discernible through the thin
     material of her dress, then her hair falling forward about her face. She was trying to
     involve me in something I knew nothing about, but instead I was crudely sizing her up,
     thinking idly about what it might be like to have sex with her. Sex with an honourable
     lady; it was the sort of semi-funny joke the journalists in the office would make. For
     better or worse that was my own life, more interesting and problematical to me than all
     this stuff about ancient magicians. She had asked me where in London I lived, not who in
     London I lived with, so I had said nothing to her of Zelda. Exquisite and maddening Zelda,
     with the cropped hair and nose-ring, the studded boots and dream body, who three nights
     before had told me she wanted an open relationship and walked out on me at half past
     eleven at night, taking a lot of my books and most of my records. I hadn't seen her since