The men came in from the fields, most with rough-handled hoes resting on their shoulders, a few driving dark buffalos and pale bullocks before them into the lanes, where the animals stayed, ruminating and urinating outside the houses while their masters ate the evening meal. India’s quick dusk settled into night, voices rose and fell from behind the mud walls, and we sat in the open beneath the paraffin lamp, that the villagers might see our every move and be assured there was nothing to fear: This land believes in the evil eye of strangers, and would come after us with sticks and fire if they thought us a threat to their crops and cows. The cooking aromas faded, replaced by the occasional whiff of the men’s pipes. When the cattle in the lanes began to be brought inside the walls, Holmes got to his feet, took up the three torches he had prepared from oil-soaked rags wrapped tightly around the end of a staff, and strolled out from under the shelter of the tree.

I followed, silent as always. I played the enigmatic one, never answering if a child called to us, rarely acknowledging a gift. I was also the one to warm the audience up, as soon as Holmes had snared their attention.

He began by planting the torches, forming an equilateral triangle with two straddling the road and one on the side away from the town. He worked methodically and with a touch of drama, as if the placing of the three staffs was a sacrament. Within seconds of his stepping onto the road, the village was hushed, every eye upon us from behind gate and walls.

When Holmes was satisfied with the position of the cold torches, he went to stand in the precise centre, extending his right arm to point his finger at the torch to his right, ten feet away. After a moment, during which he chanted some phrase continually under his breath, it burst into flame, and the darkness filled with exclamations. He did the same with the second, and the third—although his timing was slightly off and the two lit nearly simultaneously, the combustive reactions of chemicals under those circumstances being difficult to control with precision.

Then he retired, leaving the stage to me.

Luckily for me, the demands of our rural entertainments were on a fairly basic level. Indeed, putting on too slick a show would only alarm the simple folk, and cause any of the more knowledgeable residents to ask themselves why we were here rather than in some city or raja’s town where we might actually earn some rupees. Rudimentary and clumsy, and clearly tricks rather than the more sinister magic.