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night.
    His famous goldfish bowl was with him on stage throughout his act, ready for its sudden
     and mysterious appearance. Its presence was deftly concealed from the audience.
    
    
     He carried it beneath the flowing mandarin gown he affected
    
    
     , clutching it between his knees, kept ready for the sensational and apparently miraculous
     production at the end. No one in the audience could ever guess at how the trick was done,
     even though a moment's logical thought would have solved the mystery.
    But logic was magically in conflict with itself! The only possible place where the heavy
     bowl could be concealed was beneath his gown, yet that was logically impossible. It was
     obvious to everyone that Ching Ling Foo was physically frail, shuffling painfully through
     his routine. When he took his bow at the end, he leaned for support on his assistant, and
     was led hobbling from the stage.
    The reality was completely different. Ching was a fit man of great physical strength, and
     carrying the bowl in this way was well within his power. Be that as it may, the size and
     shape of the bowl caused him to shuffle like a mandarin as he walked. This threatened the
     secret, because it drew attention to the way he moved, so to protect the secret he
     shuffled for the whole of his life. Never, at any time, at home or in the street, day or
     night, did he walk with a normal gait lest his secret be exposed.
    Such is the nature of a man who acts the role of sorcerer.
    Audiences know well that a magician will practise his illusions for years, and will
     rehearse each performance carefully, but few people realize the
    
    
     extent
    
    
     of the prestidigitator's wish to deceive, the way in which the apparent defiance of
     normal laws becomes an obsession which governs every moment of his life.
    Ching Ling Foo had his obsessive deception, and now that you have read my anecdote about
     him you may correctly assume that I have mine. My deception rules my life, informs every
     decision I make, regulates my every movement. Even now, as I embark on the writing of this
     memoir, it controls what I may write and what I may not. I have compared my method with
     the display of seemingly bared hands, but in reality everything in this account represents
     the shuffling walk of a fit man.

The Prestige
    2
    Because the yard was prospering my parents could afford to send me to the Pelham
     Scholastic Academy, a dame school run by the Misses Pelham in East Bourne Street, next to
     the remains of the mediaeval Town Wall and close to the harbour. There, amid the
     persistent stench from the rotten fish which littered the beach and all the environs of
     the harbour, and against the constant but eloquent braying of the herring gulls, I learnt
     the three Rs, as well as a modicum of History, Geography and the fearsome French language.
     All of these were to stand me in good stead in later life, but my fruitless struggles to
     learn French have an ironic outcome, because in adult life my stage persona is that of a
     French professor.
    My way to and from school was across the ridge of West Hill, which was built up only in
     the immediate neighbourhood of our house. Most of the way led along steep narrow paths
     through the scented tamarisk bushes that had colonized so many of Hastings’ open spaces.
     Hastings at the time was experiencing a period of development, as numerous new houses and
     hotels were being built to accommodate the summer visitors. I saw little of this, because
     the school was in the Old Town, while the resort area was being built beyond the White
     Rock, a former rocky spur that one day in my childhood was enthrallingly dynamited out of
     existence to make way for an extended seafront promenade. Despite all this, life in the
     ancient centre of Hastings continued much as it had done for hundreds of years.
    I could say much about my father, good and bad, but for the sake of concentrating on my