"Christopher Priest - The Prestige" - читать интересную книгу автора (Priest Christopher)

separated by hundreds of miles or living in different countries, such twins will share feelings of


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pain, surprise, happiness, depression, one twin sending to the other, and vice versa. Reading this
was one of those moments in life when suddenly a lot of things become clear.
All my life, as long as I can remember, I have had the feeling that _someone else_ is sharing
my life. As a child, with nothing to go on apart from the actual experience, I thought little of it and
assumed everyone else had the same feelings. As I grew older, and I realized none of my friends
was going through the same thing, it became a mystery. Reading the book therefore came as a
great relief as it seemed to explain everything. I had a twin somewhere.
The feeling of rapport is in some ways vague, a sense of being cared for, even watched over,
but in others it is much more specific. The general feeling is of a constant background, while
more direct "messages" come only occasionally. These are acute and precise, even though the
actual communication is invariably non-verbal.
Once or twice when I have been drunk, for example, I have felt my brother's consternation
growing in me, a fear that I might come to some harm. On one of these occasions, when I was
leaving a party late at night and was about to drive myself home, the flash of concern that
reached me was so powerful I felt myself sobering up! I tried describing this at the time to the
friends I was with, but they joked it away. Even so I drove home inexplicably sober that night.
In turn, I have sometimes sensed my brother in pain, or frightened, or threatened in some
way, and have been able to "send" feelings of calm, or sympathy, or reassurance towards him. It
is a psychic mechanism I can use without understanding it. No one to my knowledge has ever
satisfactorily explained it, even though it is common and well documented.
There is in my case, however, an extra mystery.
Not only have I never been able to trace my brother, as far as records are concerned I never
had a brother of any kind, let alone a twin. I do have intermittent memories of my life before
adoption, although I was only three when that happened, and I can't remember my brother at all.
Dad and Mum knew nothing about it; they have told me that when they adopted me there was no
suggestion of my having a brother.
As an adoptee you have certain legal rights. The most important of these is protection from
your natural parents: they cannot contact you by any legal means. Another right is that when you
reach adulthood you are able to ask about some of the circumstances surrounding your adoption.
You can find out the names of your natural parents, for instance, and the address of the court of
law where the adoption was made, and therefore where relevant records can be examined.
I followed all this up soon after my eighteenth birthday, anxious to find out what I could about
my brother. The adoption agency referred me to Ealing County Court where the papers were
kept, and here I discovered that I had been put up for adoption by my father, whose name was
Clive Alexander Borden. My mother's name was Diana Ruth Borden (n├йe Ellington), but she had
died soon after I was born. I assumed that the adoption happened because of her death, but in
fact I was not adopted for more than two years after she died, during which period my father
brought me up by himself. My own original name was Nicholas Julius Borden. There was nothing
about any other child, adopted or otherwise.
I later checked birth records at St Catherine's House in London, but these confirmed I was
the Bordens" only child.
Even so, my psychic contacts with my twin remained through all this, and have continued
ever since.


The book had been published in the USA by Dover Publications, and was a handsome, well-