Short Story
The Two Desperate Brothers
By Lawrence Kadzitche
In a small shop at Chitakale Trading Center, two brothers were engrossed in a discussion. Moya, the older of the two, was short and fat. His younger brother, Supada, was equivalently fat but very tall.
It irked them that their business was ailing at the bustling trading centre which not only serviced the surrounding vibrant tea estates but also the hordes of tourists who visited the majestic Mulanje Mountain.
For five years, the two brothers had unsuccessfully struggled to manage their small business. Now the shop was as empty as a shop looted during the ‘free Zuma’ protests in South Africa. They either had to close it or borrow money to revive it.
Of course the reality was that they did not have any choices; the altenatives were only hypothetical. No one in his right mind would lend a sinking business any money. What would they repay the loan with? But closing was also not an option. How would they survive without the shop?
It was at this point that they remembered Che Sinjinji. He was the richest businessman at Chitakale. The man had been rich since they were kids. If there was someone who would understand their plight, then he was the one. They decided to approach the business tycoon. The two desperate brothers met him at his shop.
Nothing in Che Sinjinji’s looks betrayed the fact that he owned the biggest shop at the trading center. An exceedingly small man and very black in complexion, he had the appearance of a charred statue and was all the time shabbily dressed. His clothes- he had only a few- were threadbare and always looked as if they had been rescued from a cow’s mouth. Some even had patches. The worn out sandals he wore were made of tyre soles. His extreme frugality was compensated by equally excessive profligacy to marry and bear children; each of his three wives had seven children.
“We’re at the end of our tether,” Moya confessed. “We need some money if we’re to save our business.”
Che Sinjinji took out a dirty tobacco pouch from his pocket and put it on the counter. From under the counter, he fished out an old newspaper and cut off a piece. He poured some tobacco on the piece and rolled a smoke. With deliberate slowness, he pulled at the makeshift cigar and blew the smoke at the two brothers. At another time and in different circumstances, the two brothers would not have taken this affront sitting down. But they needed the dwarf and so they let the insult pass.
The little man finished his smoke without speaking. He snubbed the cigarette and threw the remainder on the floor. “I’ve seen you two guys struggle for a long time,” he finally said running his hands through his bushy beard that made him look like the late Jonas Savimbi. Some said he kept the luxuriant beard because he was so stingy that he did not want to pay for a shave. “It’s not that you don’t know how to run a business. The problem is you don’t know the secret of running a business.”
The two bothers glanced at each other.
“For a business to run successfully, it needs customers,” went on Che Sinjinji. “The secret of running a successful business is to know how to attract customers.”
“We did our best to try to attract customers. Painted the shop. Advertised on the radio. Reduced prices. It never worked,” said Supada.
Che Sinjinji got up. “Let me show you something.”
They followed him out of the shop. “Look at my store. What do you see?”
The two brothers regarded the building. The vast shop looked like some ruins of an ugly long gone civilization. The walls had cracks, the paint flaking and what prevented the rusty roof from being blown away by the wind were stones placed here and there.
“See? My shop looks like something that survived a hurricane. I don’t advertise, I treat my customers like shit, my prices are the highest at this trading center but my customers keep coming back,” Che Sinjinji said proudly.
The eyes of the two brothers met. They let the little man go on.
“Learn from me; attracting customers is not about advertising.”
The curiosity of the two brothers was fully aroused. “How do you manage it?”
“This is a secret I’ve kept to myself. I’ll tell you because I’ve seen you sweat for nothing,” he lowered his voice conspiratorially. “You need magic charms if you want to attract customers. That’s the only way.”
Moya pursed his lips. “We considered that. But we’ve seen a lot of our friends ruined by bogus witchdoctors.”
“Just last week, Chikupira lost all his capital to a witchdoctor who claimed that he could make money,” pointed out Supada. “When he tried to get his money back, the accursed witchdoctor threatened to turn him into a snake.”
Che Sinjinji laughed to show a row of tobacco stained teeth. “So what did he do?”
“Nothing,” Supada said with resignation. “He couldn’t take the chance. You know what people do to snakes.”
“I understand,” Che Sinjinji nodded. “But, I know a witchdoctor in Mocambique who’s not fake. Just pay him a visit. A month from now you’ll be rich.”
The two brothers did not have much faith in witchdoctors-whether plying their trade in Malawi or Mocambique. But the name that came out of Che Sinjinji’s mouth froze their hearts to a stand still.
“You consult Kanyatula and all your financial problems will be relegated to the dustbin,” Che Sinjinji said.
The name was not new to the two brothers. It was a name that was associated with all kinds of black magic and the witchdoctor was even known to consult the spirits of the dead. While his medicines were known to be infallible, there was also a known downside; grave consequences awaited whoever failed to follow his instructions.
But the two brother were in a situation of a drowning man, clutching at anything afloat. So the next day, using uncharted routes, they crossed into Mocambique to see the witchdoctor that the little businessman had recommended.
“Young men, you’ve done the best thing to visit me,” Kanyatula said. “But getting rich is not an easy thing. I’ll require female private parts to make the charm that will make you rich.”
“Where will we get the private parts?”
The witchdoctor laughed. “You know where female private parts are found, don’t you?”
“Yes, but how will we get them without killing the owner?”
“You interest me, young men,” said Kanyatula. “Who has talked about murder here? I said get me female genitals. How you get them is your problem.”
The two brothers left distraught with worry. Murder hadn’t been on their minds when they had approached the shaman.
It was Moya who quickly found a solution. “We will get them from a mad woman. That won’t be murder: what does a lunatic need life for of what need is life for?”
In their perverted minds, that made sense. So two days later, they went to see the witchdoctor with the female private parts wrapped in a plastic bag.
“Good. You know why I use female genitalia?” the witchdoctor asked, staring at the contents of the plastic bag. “There’s nothing men love like female genitalia. So people will get attracted to your shop the way a man is aroused by naked female beauty.”
The witchdoctor gave them a magic charm that was shaped like a tablet of soap. “One last thing. You won’t have to order your goods. I’ll give you a snake.”
“A snake?” the two brothers asked in unison.
“Yes. The snake will be going out at night and steal goods for you.”
“So the snake will be bringing us goods and the charm will be bringing us customers?”
“Exactly. But let me warn you about one thing. If the snake is killed you’re finished. Make sure it is never killed.”
Moya smiled brightly. “We’ll guard it with our life.”
But the witchdoctor had turned and started chanting. The consultation was over. The two brothers went back. Every night the snake went out to steal and came back with goods, which it would vomit. Within a month, their small grocery was full. Customers started flooding into the shop.
Six months later they moved into a big store, which they called “Brothers Investments”. Business boomed. In two years, they were among the richest men at the trading center. They bought a BMW, minibus and a cattle ranch near Luchenza.
However, as they grew richer, they also became greedier. So far they had protected the snake by only sending it into small shops where they knew the owners did not have magic charms which could trap the snake. Now they were careless, sending the snake into any shop.
The snake was finally caught and killed one Sunday night by Cholopi, a big wholesaler at Limbuli Trading Centre. The two brothers were not worried. They were now rich and no longer needed the snake. It had served its purpose.
They opened their shop on Monday. They didn’t notice anything unusual until noon when Moya remarked. “Hey, what a bad day for business. Not even a customer.”
The afternoon was the same. No one visited the shop. The two brothers were alarmed. It was impossible for not even one customer to visit the shop. They were discussing this when Moya received a telephone call. Their minibus was involved in a terrible road accident at Bvumbwe Trading Center and was damaged beyond repair. With sinking hearts, they remembered that its insurance had expired just a few days ago.
They were about to close when the phone rang again. Supada picked it. It came from Luchenza. The farm had just been wrecked by a storm. All the cattle had been stolen during the storm.
Then it hit them. The snake. Without the snake, they had nothing. They had to see Kanyatula immediately. Early the next morning, they presented themselves at the witchdoctor’s house. But there, even more heart rending news awaited them.
“He died last year,” the witchdoctor’s wife told them.
They went back looking like condemned men. It was late in the afternoon when they arrived back home where they found more horror waiting for them in the form of four armed policemen. The BMW they had bought was stolen from South Africa and the policemen were there to confiscate it.
The two brothers realized they would be left with nothing if they did not move fast. A sickening feeling gripped them that they would lose the shop too. They had to sell the business before something happened to it.
Although it was late in the evening and there was a power failure, they decided to go to the shop and do a quick stock take using candles. It was almost midnight when they finished the stock taking so they decided to sleep in the shop.
It was the heat that woke them up. One of the candles they had been using had fallen and started a fire. They tried to put out the blaze but it was too late. The shop and its contents were burned to ashes. The only things they managed to save from the inferno were their own miserable lives.
By the next morning, the two siblings were poorer than they were on the day they had visited the witchdoctor!
End
