Christmas Box
Photo: Diego Jimenez
I had never met a CIO operative until I met Zven. The only CIOs I knew before him were the imaginary ones who lurked in shadows. They were hated and feared in equal measure, and they never showed face. Like the Stasi, the CIO were well resourced and enjoyed generous government funding. Their most effective weapon was psychological warfare, the exact replica of the Stasi’s Zersetzung programme, such that even without knowing a single CIO I feared them, like the rest of my countrymen.
This was the early noughties and we had just survived the big Y2K scare. Neither did our computers crash nor did our money vanish from our bank accounts. As the days raced towards Christmas, I was called in one morning by the partner who had direct charge over me and asked to take care of the new client who sat in his office. The man stood up and the partner did a quick introduction.
“This is Zven. He is from the president’s office.”
That meant one thing. A Central Intelligence Officer.
Zven towered over me. I looked up as I extended my hand. He pumped it, searching my unhappy face.
“This way.” I turned and led the way down the passage and to my office where I motioned him into a chair. He plonked down into it, unbuttoning his houndstooth jacket slowly and crossing a long leg which exposed a red sock. A languid smile lifted up just one side of his face and danced on his even features. I avoided eye contact but noted the confidence—or was it arrogance? The man was lithe and so fair he had freckles on his face and blue veins on the tip of his nose. His eyes were a faint ringed green. He had a lot of gingery hair on his head, casually combed up in that uneven style liked by men who don’t want to appear as if they spend too much time in front of a mirror even when they do. He wore an expensive fragrance which overpowered my feeble one and lodged itself in my nostrils.
I decided that I should dislike this man.
Perhaps sensing this, he reached into the bag at his feet and brought out a boxed bottle of whiskey.
“Vhuramuromo, my brother!” he said, swirling it and lifting it towards me like an oblation, his lazy smile graduating into a cheeky grin. Sensing my hesititation, he clutched it back in mock horror, his eyes widening.
“Yowe! Are you a mupostori?”
The mapostori are an indigenous Christian sect who do not touch alcohol although they touch women. I dropped my guard and laughed with him.
“What does Zven mean anyway? What language is that?” I asked, slightly warming towards this spook.
“It’s short for Zvenyika, my brother. I did it for the white people where I live,” he laughed again.
Zven had been posted to a foreign embassy as a defence attaché. I had worked out very quickly that the best clients were those, like him, from outside the country. They paid well and in proper currency which held value. There was also the added bonus of not being pestered with impromptu calls or visits as was often the case with local clients.
“I am going to tell you everything that happened because my mother told me never to lie to a lawyer or a doctor,” he said, and we had another shared laugh.
Zvenyika narrated his story as I wrote down notes in longhand. He had been charged with culpable homicide having run over an ageing priest one night at Beatrice Road, outside Harare. He had stopped when he heard a thud and grind, and came out to found the old man curled up on the verge. He lifted him into his car and drove to the nearest hospital where he was declared DOA. Zvenyika’s defence was that he had not seen the priest who had been wearing dark clothes on a dark rainy night and in a dip on the road. On paper, it looked like a viable defence to the charge of culpable homicide.
“But you see my brother, even if one dances in water, one’s enemies will accuse them of causing dust.” He unfurled his long legs and sat back in his chair.
“I thought you guys can make awkward dockets like this disappear? How come it’s gone all the way to trial?” I asked him.
“Nah, doesn’t work like that at all my brother. Our power, like all power, is exaggerated. It’s all myth,” he said.
“I went to school with a chap called Temba Temba, a relative of the president. He is a CIO. You know him?” I asked to test him.
Zven laughed. “It's not possible to know everyone in the CIO. There are thousands of us, you know.” He paused and looked at his socks for a moment. “But, of course, everyone knows TT. He is a bastard, with a rubbish name too. There are two types of CIOs in the service; there are those we call number 1s. They are from Zvimba and are either related or are neighbours of the president. Bastards. They are usually quite dull but very dangerous and they will use their positions for personal benefit, and carry their guns everywhere. Then we have the number 2s, usually the more educated types, people with actual diplomas, and they try to be professional about the job, hard as it is.”
“Which one are you then?” I asked him. He laughed again.
“Let us just say if I was a number 1, I wouldn’t be going on trial for running over an old priest on a dark road,” he smiled wistfully.
“Seems to me that all the bullies from school have either become CIO’s or war veterans.” I was thinking of Jumo, another schoolmate from Kutama Mission who had terrorised the juniors at school and who I had heard was now leading a chapter of war veterans even though he must have been just a baby at independence.
Zven’s trial was listed at Chitungwiza Magistrates Court and set over a whole week.
***
On the day of the trial, Zvenyika came by and picked me up in his mint twin-cab Toyota Hilux which he had driven all the way from South Africa. It had a shiny cowcatcher at the front and big hunting lights on its roof.
“I have to win this case, my brother. It has to be my Christmas box,” he said, fixing me with his strange eyes like a cat as we stood in the shade of the frangipani outside the court and waited for him to finish his cigarette. He puffed on it a few more times, blew billows of smoke through his nose and flicked the butt right over a bin and into the open gutter.
We trooped into court for the start of his trial.
***
We sat in the draughty court and waited, speaking only in whispers. Then came a ‘rat-a-tat’ and the door to the left side of the magistrate’s highchair flew open and a short man ran through it and into court.
“All rise, all rise,” he shouted.
The gowned magistrate followed quickly behind the short man bowing his head ever so slightly then sat down and looked around the court. The gallery was full of women in red blouses with starched white collars and white hats. They had their hymnbooks and bibles with them, as if their uniforms were not sufficient evidence of their piety, and clutched the books in their laps as if ready to be led in liturgy. At the front sat a couple of sombre clergymen in heavy belted coats and priestly collars, no doubt fellow soldiers of the cross of the deceased man.
Our magistrate was the regional magistrate, the most senior arbiter at the Chitungwiza court. He had an angry look and he was known for convicting often and exonerating rarely. He cast an accusatory look at Zven, my priest-killing CIO client, and the louche confidence that he had worn like a cloak since that first introduction immediately gave way to a schoolboy attentiveness. This magistrate was not to be trifled with.
“Is it your evidence to this court than that you never saw the deceased until after you struck him or that you did not see him until just before you struck him?” asked the prosecutor as he opened the cross.
“No, I did not see him until after I struck him,” Zven replied.
“And at what point did you realise that you had struck him?”
“When I heard a thud and grind,” he answered.
“And that is when you stopped?” he pressed.
“That is when I stopped, yes.”
“And that was what? 50 meters from the point of impact? 80 perhaps? A hundred?”
“About fifty.”
“Well, going by Investigation Office’s evidence which is derived from indications made after the accident and which is not challenged, it is 100, is it not?” The prosecutor’s face, always grim to begin with, had now taken on an animated grimace.
“If that is what the indications say, it must be correct.”
“Yes, it is. And I put it to you therefore that you were clearly going too fast and that is why you were not able to stop immediately.”
“No, sir.”
“Denial of a fact is not an answer,” the prosecutor pressed, breaking into a vulpine smile. I was itching to shout “objection, argumentative” but the moment passed. I winked at Zven to indicate that he was doing just fine so far.
“No sir, I was travelling at the permitted speed for that part of the road.”
“You do accept that you had an obligation as a driver to drive within the limit of your lights?”
“Yes, I do.”
“And you accept that the level of caution required will always depend on the circumstances of each case?”
“Yes, but in this case, I actually reduced my . . . “
“Yes or No?”
“Yes.”
“You accept therefore that you must have been driving at such speed and in such a manner that you were not able to stop safely in a place and at a time when it was dark.”
“No, I do not accept that. The deceased person was, unfortunately, walking on the wrong side of the road, in dark clothes, on a dark night as the Investigation Officer confirmed.”
“And a white collar?”
“A very small white collar.”
The hearing wore on in this fashion, and in the afternoon the magistrate took breaks to go and puff on his pipe. We were soon able to work out when a nicotine break was coming by looking at his hands which trembled a lot more as he rifled through his paperwork.
On the third day of the trial, the Investigating Officer gave evidence and relied on his sketch plans of the accident and medical reports for his conclusions that the accused drove dangerously and without due care and attention, giving regard to the road conditions and the weather. I stood to examine him. The magistrate grew even grumpier when I asked:
“How old was the deceased person, officer?”
“Seventy-four and some,” he said.
“When was he due to retire from his office?”
“In a matter of months.”
“Much as this may be unpleasant but was the deceased suicidal perhaps? Is this a possibility, however remote, that a man facing retirement in a few months might be feeling that way? That his life is not worth living anymore?”
There was an immediate uproar from the gallery.
“How dare you mock such a servant of the Lord? Shame on you!” The enraged clergymen and the parishioners rose in their seats and shouted at me.
“You do not have to answer that last question,” the magistrate said after order was finally restored. He glared down at me.
“Are you familiar with a message that he preached about ‘flying away to glory?’ Could it be indicative of his state of mind at the time?”
“Yes, but he was preaching at a funeral. That was his job as priest. In fact, on the same day, he conducted a christening and preached about ‘the joy of life’.”
“Yes, but which message did he preach first?” I doubled down.
The magistrate suddenly snapped and threw down his pen.
“Look, this is not going anywhere!” he bellowed. “The evidence is confusing. The witnesses are no good. The police sketch diagrams are worse than my granddaughter’s drawings.”
His hands were shaking.
“I want an inspection-in-loco,” he declared and said he would adjourn the trial for the arrangements to be made before bolting out for his nicotine fix.
There was immediate confusion in court. My client looked across at me, mouth open. The church women looked at one another and then to the priests for assurances. The priests were equally perplexed but remained stoic and mumbled prayers at the ceiling. It was a while before anyone moved and cleared the courtroom. Outside, I immediately levelled with my client who was leaning back on his vehicle and rubbing his chin.
“Look Zven, an inspection-in-loco is either a very good thing or a very bad thing.” I paused to allow him to catch up. “Because it is such a visual process, it’s very hard to change the Magistrate’s opinion once he has formed it at an inspection. He will be looking at the state of the road, the width, the stretch and whether you could have seen the old man and avoided him. It is effectively D-day.”
Zven blinked rapidly and fumbled for a cigarette. “I don’t have a good feeling about this at all,” he said. I kept mum as I could see he was clearly agitated and I didn’t want to say anything that could upset him further.
“I had a dream last week,” he continued. I braced myself—when a black man says they have dreamt a dream, it is never a good one.
“I was in a dark forest; the branches of the tall oaks shut out the sunlight. Under my bare feet, the undergrowth crunched. The hair on the nape of my neck bristled and I knew that I was in the presence of the paranormal. I looked around and, on the edge of a clearing, I saw her. A witch in a wicker basket, hovering under the branches like a dragonfly. She had flashing eyes in a face which had collapsed into itself and a hissing, darting, tongue. In her hands, she carried a pitchfork. I ran. She pursued and she was swooping down on me when I woke up. I wept with relief that I was in my bed and it had been a dream. I threw away my quilt and swung out of bed, still breathing heavily as if I had been really running. My foot hit something on the floor. I bent to look. It was the witch’s hat, right there in my house. I was still screaming when the pastor arrived to pray.”
“My brother, dreams are not always predictions and I don’t know if there are witches or not. What will you do?”
“I am receiving strong prayers. It is a foolish African who neither consults a diviner nor offers strong prayers.” He puffed on his cigarette and released a lazy ring of smoke. “An agnostic African does not exist.”
“That is no lie,” I said.
****
On the day of the resumed hearing, we drove in convoy to the scene of the accident and parked our cars alongside. We trooped out and huddled around. The tarred road stretched out and rose then disappeared behind crests on either side such that we were in the middle of a gentle “U”. On either side, it was bordered by tufted dun-coloured thatch grass taller than a fully-grown man, and which had not been cut for a while and leaned in like sea-waves in the gentle mid-morning breeze. Beyond the grass were line upon pristine line of crops under irrigation and herds of fatted cattle which roamed the Beatrice commercial farmland. Above, the sky was a clear azure and the sun poured down and danced off the tarmac. A crow flapped away above us and cawed into the big empty sky.
“We are still in court,” the magistrate cast a withering look at Zven who was chatting with a giggly female police officer.
The magistrate, in his black gown that billowed out behind him in the breeze, walked up and down the stretch of road. His eyes screwed up against the glare of the sun and in his mouth a piece of grass which he chomped on to suppress his nicotine craving. He kept behind the outside yellow lines of the road and at one time knelt on the hot tar and tapped it with his clipboard. At last he came back to where we were stood and gave the go-ahead for the prosecutor to resume with putting questions to the investigating officer.
We were about ten or so minutes into questions when a big truck suddenly rumbled into view on the rise above us at the same time a bus appeared on the opposite one. The vehicles hurtled down into the dip and towards our party. It looked like they would pass each other at about the spot where we stood.
Instinctively, we scattered off the road as they whistled and squeezed past each other. In the corner of my eye, I saw the magistrate fling himself against one of the cars, his gown billowing up and around him in the slipstream of the vehicles. The gust whipped off the female officer’s hat which flew off and into the tall grass. Everyone remained still for a good while and from where we were, we could hear the magistrate breathing. Even Zven, who was standing next to me, gripped me by the shoulder. I looked up at him. A small smile had lifted one side of his face.
Sad as the demise of the old priest was, I knew at that moment that Zven had just gotten his Christmas box.
About the Author
Taffi Nyawanza is a Zimbabwean lawyer living and working in the UK. He is on the Exiled Writers Ink writing programme and his debut collection of short stories will be published later in the year.