The Hangman's Replacement: Sprout of Disruption (BOOK 1)

by Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

  “One more thing. Do you subscribe to Zuva Redu?”

  “No. I only bought the last edition to read of my unfortunate interview. Why?”

  “Get a subscription. Your vine may creep to other stories, which may become relevant to your work one day. Welcome to the team.”

  “But—”

  The man hung up before Professor Khupe could ask any further questions. Who was he, and why was he interested in plants that ate dead bodies? And a lawyer?

  * * *

  Gweta, Hurudza & Mpeto LLP

  Professor Khupe had heard of Gweta, Hurudza & Mpeto LLP. It was the top corporate law firm in Harare. When he told the head of the Botany Department about his meeting, he was advised to be indulgent. The firm represented Africa University in a range of matters. These included research and development agreements, real estate contracts, and intellectual property protection.

  Professor Khupe remembered his interaction with the law firm when the Botany Department was buying equipment from Canada. The lawyers had drafted the contract with the vendor in Regina, Saskatchewan. Professor Khupe had dealt with Mr. Hurudza, the law firm’s senior partner who had handled the transaction for the university.

  Mr. Hurudza was a legend. He was reputed for drafting brilliant legal documents that made judges cry with admiration. But the man himself was an antisocial bastard. In fact, there was a rumour that he never left his office. Apparently, he was not allowed to, and he did not want to either. His colleagues simply stuffed his assignments under his door. They would return a few hours later to collect the ingenious by-product of his isolation. Again, the exchange would take place under the door. This way, Mr. Hurudza did not have to interact with other humans. And fortunately for other humans, they would not have to interact with him. This arrangement worked well for everyone.

  If Professor Khupe had known this background, he would have avoided calling Mr. Hurudza’s private line. As the professor quickly learned, genius hates interruption. The reclusive lawyer had spat a jet of phlegm and acid into Professor Khupe’s ear. Of all the vulgar words sprayed at him, Professor Khupe would never forget how Mr. Hurudza called him a ‘fibrous beef clod’. It was one thing to be referred to as a piece of meat. It was quite another to be associated with the cheapest cut that any cow had to offer. Professor Khupe had fumed for weeks after the confrontation. As he walked to his appointment with Mr. Gweta that evening, he let out a sigh of relief. There was no chance of meeting Mr. Hurudza today. The demon would be inside his tomb, marinating in his own brilliance.

  Professor Khupe arrived at Karigamombe Centre fifteen minutes early. He entered the main lobby and walked towards the elevators. After a brief wait, one of them opened up. As he was about to press the button to shut the doors, a young woman stepped in. She had that sort of beauty that deserved to be prosecuted for appearing without notice. Professor Khupe was confident that an appropriate law existed for such a purpose. However, no prosecutor could remain undistracted for long enough to find the said law in the criminal code. The young lady would enjoy a life of impunity.

  “Which floor are you going to?” she asked with a smile.

  Professor Khupe had forgotten that he had to go anywhere at all.

  “Twenty-second,” he finally said.

  “Oh, good. I see you are coming to Gweta, Hurudza & Mpeto?”

  “Yes I am. Do you work there?”

  “I do. I am Mr. Hurudza’s assistant.”

  “I see,” replied Professor Khupe as he glanced at the young woman’s waist.

  How could such a lovely young lady work for someone like Mr. Hurudza? The question did not bother Professor Khupe for too long. His gaze had migrated back up her undulating profile and locked into her hypnotic brown eyes. They had magnets in them.

  “Who are you meeting with?” she asked.

  “Mr. Gweta,” replied Professor Khupe with an air of importance. After all, his host was honoured with the first appearance in the firm’s name. If such an important man was making time to see him, the young woman would be impressed.

  “I see,” she replied.

  “Yes,” continued Professor Khupe casually. “We have important matters to discuss.”

  “Of course. Mr. Gweta’s time is precious. He only entertains our most important clients.”

  Professor Khupe felt his chest swell with pride. It was doing so without his encouragement. If an electrical fault had stopped the elevator from rising, his inflating ego would have powered the remainder of their journey to the twenty-second floor.

  This girl was dangerously beautiful.

  “So how long have you worked here?” he asked.

  “Two years.”

  “I see. You must be proud to work in such a prestigious law firm.”

  “Well, sort of. I am not keen on the legal elements, but I enjoy the customer service aspect of the job.”

  Hmm. Customer service.

  “Well, are there other tasks that you would prefer?”

  “Well, I do enjoy the pro bono work. The firm provides free legal services to several charities. Those assignments are more fulfilling, but they are only a small part of our practice. We are a business law firm after all. Our corporate clients take priority.”

  Professor Khupe sensed an opportunity. It punched him in the gut and would not be denied.

  “Well, maybe I can speak with Mr. Gweta. Maybe we can work something out for you. I do not mean to boast, but I have special leverage with your boss.”

  “That is kind of you, sir, but that’s okay. I do not want to impose.”

  “It’s no imposition at all. I like to help the young ones as they find their way in the world. Especially in this male-dominated society. If I have the power to make things easier for others, why shouldn’t I? I am happy to use my special leverage.”

  The young lady smiled.

  “You are too kind, but I cannot accept.”

  Professor Khupe was in no mood for being rejected by a woman of such coma-inducing beauty.

  “I insist. Not a word more. I will not tell Mr. Gweta that we talked about this. I will simply make a subtle indication that my continued business relies on the perception of a more socially-minded firm.”

  The girl smiled and looked away.

  Victory.

  The elevator door opened to an expansive office with majestic views of Harare. The jacaranda trees were in full bloom. They smothered the city in a thick blanket of purple flames. This was a splendour that could only be appreciated from such heights.

  Directly in front of the elevator was an open area with a large reception desk in the centre. It was staffed by four smartly dressed women. Each was the most dazzling representative of her respective race. Professor Khupe did not know which one to focus on. He felt like a man struggling to capture the vibrant chaos of a fractal pattern in a single sentiment. His humility led him to express the only feeling that the grandeur allowed:

  “This is overwhelming ...” he whispered to himself.

  The office had been furnished and staffed to inspire awe in clients and opponents alike. The message was clear: We are that good.

  Professor Khupe suddenly felt light-headed. A dull nausea quickly followed. The heights of success were causing him altitude sickness. His elation was tempered by a strange smell. Instinctively, he turned to look towards a large door at the end of a hallway. Immediately, he knew: that was Mr. Hurudza’s office. The odour of the Devil’s sulphur was drifting out from beneath his door. Professor Khupe felt a shiver down his spine. The vibration quickly dispersed the smell. Everything was beautiful again.

  Though Professor Khupe earned a healthy salary, he could never afford the services of such a firm. He began to feel uneasy about his boastful performance in the elevator. He realized that even as an assistant to Mr. Hurudza, the young lady probably earned as much as he did in academia.

  As he was recovering from the visual assault he had sustained from the reception desk, Professor Khupe heard a loud and friendly voice be
hind him.

  “Professor Khupe! Welcome.”

  The professor turned to face a tall man walking towards him in confident strides.

  “My name is Giorgio Gweta. It is a pleasure,” said the man with a disarming smile.

  “It is a pleasure to meet you too, Mr. Gweta.”

  Professor Khupe was impressed. Mr. Gweta looked ten years younger than Professor Khupe had expected. His jet-black hair was trimmed so neatly that it would make a manicured golf course look scruffy. His face was exceptionally smooth, giving the impression that he had been born without skin pores and transitioned through puberty devoid of any facial hair to pockmark his countenance. Mr. Gweta’s face was perfectly symmetrical. An ant walking from one side to the other would experience a serious case of déjà vu.

  The man’s attire was designed to convey an overwhelming sense of sophistication. His charcoal grey suit gave off an aura that made it possible for Professor Khupe to feel its exquisite texture stroking his eyeballs. The garment was so perfectly tailored that Professor Khupe was convinced Mr. Gweta had been born in it. The lawyer wore a gold watch with a dark leather strap. It had been designed to assure the aspiring middle class that they had a long way to go. This timepiece cost more than their homes.

  Despite his elegant appearance, Mr. Gweta’s most striking asset was his alluring personality. Professor Khupe had met few such men in his life. Their warmth made everyone feel like they were their best friend. They were good men. However, they tended to be morally ambidextrous. If a stranger confessed to having been involved in a horrible crime, they would reserve judgment until they found out whether the confessor was the victim or victimizer. Once they knew, they would immediately lend their sympathies to the confessor’s position. Their worldview was simple. They supported the first person to confide in them. Such men made good lawyers.

  “I see you’ve met my daughter, Ketiwe,” said Mr. Gweta with a smile.

  “Yes. We met in the elevator,” said the young lady with a straight face.

  Professor Khupe almost fell over.

  “That is true! We did meet in the elevator!” he said with a nervous laugh. Mr. Gweta smiled. If he felt the misplaced amusement was awkward, he gave no indication.

  “I am trying to convince Ketiwe to practise corporate law,” said Mr. Gweta. “But her heart is elsewhere. Besides, she doesn’t like lawyers. Except the lawyers in this firm, right, Ketiwe?”

  The young woman frowned.

  “I only dislike the heartless lawyers,” she answered.

  “How can I argue with that? Fortunately, every lawyer in this firm is humane to a fault,” replied Mr. Gweta without acknowledging the obvious exception of his antisocial partner. He turned to Professor Khupe and grinned at him like a long lost friend.

  “This way, Professor,” he said, motioning towards a large door at the end of a hallway.

  * * *

  Angustï Canibalis

  Mr. Gweta’s office was at least half the size of Professor Khupe’s entire house. It had an en-suite bathroom and an adjoining room with a bed and gym equipment. There were Shona sculptures looking at him from all around the office. Hanging on the wall behind the expansive desk was a large picture of Mr. Gweta. He was dressed in a lawyer’s black robe with a stiff wing collar and white bands hanging from his neck. The golf-course hair was hidden beneath a powdered wig.

  Mr. Gweta was a good-looking man. With all his charm and money, it was not a surprise that he had found a gorgeous woman to have dazzling offspring with. Ketiwe was a fistful of lightning. If her mother looked anything like she did, then Mr. Gweta deserved a knighthood. He was the man that other men wanted to be.

  Mr. Gweta noticed Professor Khupe looking at his portrait.

  “That was taken twenty years ago. I had just been called to the bar. Finally, I was a lawyer.”

  Professor Khupe frowned. The man in the picture looked exactly the same age as the one he was speaking with.

  “You have not aged a day, Mr. Gweta,” said Professor Khupe.

  Mr. Gweta laughed.

  “Thank you. It’s genetic. My mother was often courted by twenty-year-old kids. This continued well into her late sixties. Unfortunately, some of those kids were my friends.”

  “I see,” said Professor Khupe with a nod. “You looked very confident. I am sure you found it easy to recruit clients.”

  “Confident? I was faking it. My greatest asset was the overpowering sense of outrage I felt towards injustice. The desire to safeguard the integrity of all humanity can inspire the most mediocre lawyer to greatness. It is impossible to get there without such a focused passion.”

  “Unless you are Mr. Hurudza,” muttered Professor Khupe to himself. Mr. Gweta heard him and chuckled.

  “I heard of your unfortunate telephone encounter. My apologies. I don’t know how on earth you got his direct line. We do not make it public. To be fair, Luxon has a heart of gold. The organ is equally cold and metallic, but it glows ... in its own way.”

  “Well, based on our limited interaction, that ‘glow’ was as obvious as the seventh face on a cube.”

  “Well, Luxon Hurudza is the only man I know who can craft a persuasive argument for the existence of a seventh face. He was born competent in the legal martial arts. His learning curve appears to have been vertical. Law school was a dull chore for him. He hardly studied. In fact, the only books I ever saw him with were not assigned for our courses. He was always reading religious mythology.

  “Luxon showed up late to every exam and always left early. Still, he achieved the highest ever grades in all the courses he took. One professor hated him for it. In fact, apart from Mr. Mpeto and me, all the other students hated him. Luxon liked it that way. Other people’s hatred stabilized his mood. He believed that being despised was necessary for his spiritual balance.

  “Apart from being antisocial, the only effort he invested more energy in was being brilliant. Savagely so. The rest of us had to work like mules to accomplish modest results. The young man you see in that portrait did not know much, even after graduation. My false confidence was greater than my true competence.”

  “I am sure you were highly competent, Mr. Gweta. Otherwise, you would not have built such a successful firm so quickly.”

  “Well, the success did not come until much later. But I had the good fortune of being tested by tremendous challenges early in my career. I sought out difficult cases where the chances of failure were high. I recommend every young lawyer to do the same. You grow the most when you force yourself to run uphill every day, even when a level road is available. Experiences that your peers will regard as crises will feel like mere inconveniences to you. Eventually, when you face them in court, you will crush them, even when you take pains to limit your blows to achieving victory without destroying their reputations. Sometimes, you can even ruin the unprepared opponent after doing your best to moderate your onslaught. Oh well. The unwinnable case provides the best education for such exceptional competence. Especially the first one. No matter how prepared you are, you will mess something up. And yet, you must walk into it with the feigned courage of the man in that photograph. I started practising law the same day that picture was taken.”

  Mr. Gweta folded his hands and gazed at his portrait.

  “What was your first case?”

  “I had to defend a strange couple that was charged with conspiracy to commit ‘gross and immoral acts’.”

  “What kind of ‘acts’?”

  “The wife wanted to eat her husband’s earlobes.”

  Professor Khupe looked at him blankly.

  “It’s true,” said Mr. Gweta with a nod of reassurance. “I am not sure if her obsession was with earlobes in general or only her husband’s. Either way, she wanted to eat them.”

  “What did the husband think about his wife’s obsession?” asked Professor Khupe.

  Mr. Gweta threw his hands in the air.

  “He was supportive. He simply pointed out that some people were
born without earlobes. Up to that point, he had never heard any of them complaining about it. Therefore, he was sure he would not miss his own.”

  “So how did the case end up in court?”

  “The couple shared their plan with the police.”

  “Why?”

  “To seek permission. They wanted to show their respect for the justice system. Though they seemed a little unbalanced, they were rational enough to realize that such an act could violate some law. They wanted to make sure they were not doing something illegal. Unfortunately, the officer on duty at the police station was as obsessed with conservatism as the woman was with earlobes. He arrested them both on the spot. Zuva Redu caught the story and ran with it. Back then, the newspaper was already planting its journalists in the waiting rooms of police stations. What better place to find juicy stories?”

  “I hate that newspaper,” muttered Professor Khupe.

  “I know. The couple learned to hate it too. The paper treated them so viciously before the trial that it became impossible to find a sympathetic judge. I was working for the Office of the Public Defender at the time. None of the senior defence lawyers wanted to be associated with the case so they gave it to me. The couple was lovely. Especially the wife. I found it hard to reconcile her pleasant nature with her ‘limited intraspecific predation’.”

  “Her intra-what?” asked Professor Khupe.

  “Cannibalism.”

  “That’s disgusting!”

  “Sure. Regular cannibalism is pretty disgusting. But you cannot call it by that name in court. It gives the judge images that are impossible to erase, despite the grandest oratory by the defence lawyer. In any event my client was not that bad. She suffered from a milder form called angustī canibalis.”

  “What is that?”

  “It is a cannibalistic urge that is drawn to a specific part of the body. My client’s angustī canibalis was limited to earlobes.”

  “Does this condition actually exist?” asked Professor Khupe.

  “Of course not!” replied Mr. Gweta. “I made it up. I had to tell the judge something. He was as conservative as the policeman who arrested the couple. I needed to present the facts as a harmless manifestation of a more harmful instinct. I argued that the practice was no different from biting one’s finger nails or swallowing a strand of hair that fell into one’s soup.”