Bidding on the House

A couple of days ago Bart came and picked me up. Riding shotgun was a guy named Swidden. I had heard about him before. Bart had mentioned him to me earlier as a “dodgy fellow” who had lived illegally in America for 8 years before returning home to manage the properties and enterprises his father left him upon his death. When I got in the car, they told me they had a plan. They needed me to do something for them. Swidden owned a house, they explained, which he wanted to sell to the guy who had been living in it for the past 17 years. But the guy was cheap, they said—an Indian—and he was low-balling Swidden. The original idea had been to present Bart as a rival bidder for the property, but they thought I would make a better candidate. Shit, Bart said, that cunt will probably know who I am and realize that me, I’m scheming. It does seem that just about everybody in town knows Bart.

I declared myself to be up for the ruse. In work boots and a John Deere button-down picked up for a dollar at an African market in Livingstone, I looked very much the part. We drove for awhile, with Swidden explaining how he wanted to get about $50,000 for the house, and that the guy had offered $30,000. How much would a three-bedroom ranch house cost in America, he asked. I gave him a ballpark figure of $200,000, and his purpose was steeled. He was going to get more than $30,000 out of the man. Intoxicated by righteousness, they elaborated the game plan. I was an American come to invest in the mines, and Bart was my Zambian contact. We wanted the house as a sort of base station in town for “the boys” as they either prepared for or recuperated from stints out in “the bush.”

I felt very much the charlatan from the start. The house’s resident was a small, highly energetic Indian man who pumped our hands as if the gesture of the handshake were going out of style. After we had introduced ourselves he began to speak rapidly—whether to distract us or himself I didn’t know. As we patrolled around the yard he spun off a lengthy discourse on how council bylaws prevented him from building either up or out. I remember him saying there needed to be nine feet of space between the house and the perimeter wall. I mmm’ed and ah-ha’d. Bart tried to make small talk about the local sewerage, while Swidden sat silently by, watching his ruse take effect. I gathered that the fellow was mentioning the building restrictions to make the house seem to have less potential, and thus less value.

Once inside he continued to emphasize the house’s modesty. There were only two bedrooms, and they were really nothing to look at. But he had been living here for 17 years, he said, and by God he had taken care of the place. I live here, isn’t it? I felt a twinge of shame when I saw his wife and daughter preparing food in the kitchen.

But you stick by your friends, and once outside again I explained how the house really seemed perfectly suited to our needs. We didn’t need anything much, I said. Just a couple of bedrooms where we could throw some mattresses down for the boys when they came back in from the bush. The man sensed an opportunity and tried to regain the upper hand: How many bedrooms did we need, he asked. Really no more than two, I explained—this house seems just right.
Ah! he said. You should have come to me a week ago. I’m in property, too, you know. I could have sold you a really nice little house not far from here. 2 bedrooms, a pool, everything. He seemed to be doing his best to ignore the fact that we were there because Swidden owned that house (a proper fact) and we were there because we were interested in buying it (a ‘datum’). He went on to say that although he was known for charging very fair prices on properties, the price was set with the understanding that the new owners would buy all their furnishings from his store in town. That’s the deal, you understand, he said, beaming. Bart said that sounded okay, as long as he didn’t sell the buyers anything out of the shop that they didn’t need.

My charlatanism almost came to the light of day when the man then turned to me and asked if I or my outfit might be interested in purchasing some drilling supplies from him as well. It was one of the new lines of work he was getting into, you see. For instance, he said, I can guarantee you that you’ll find no better price on a diamond drill bit than what I can offer you. You guys, he said, indicating me, I know you guys. You have no time to come to town and bargain hunt. You have to be prospecting out in the bush. I can relieve you of the burden. I have a one-stop shop for everything you might need out there. I’ve got bush showers, tents, stoves, water purifiers, everything. Go on, just tell me what you need.

I tried to straighten out the lifting corners of my mouth, and allowed that we might need a spare diesel generator or two, but as for the camp supplies in general, we were pretty much squared away. At that the man gave me his card and told me to keep him in mind.

We all shook hands and parted. I don’t believe that Swidden said a word the whole time. Once in the car their opinion of the exchange came out. Man that cunt is a motormouth! Swidden said that the talk about all the restrictions on expansion was bullshit. He was a Zambian, he said, and this was Zambia. He could build as it suited him, and nobody would give a shit. And did we notice how he had knocked out all the walls in the house? It’s like that with all the Indians. They like to knock down all the walls so they can keep an eye on their wives and children. These Indians live in a different world. They said some more nasty things about the man and the group of people of which he was an example, but I don’t care to repeat them here.

I asked Swidden if he thought our ruse had worked. He said he thought so. For my part, I hope the fellow living there gets the better of Swidden. Though of course I could just as easily have been a pawn on the other side, with the Indian man explaining to me afterwards how all these blacks are the same...