The Trial Of The Beast…

AARON ANSAH-AGYEMAN

THE TRIAL OF THE BEAST

EPISODE 15

The broken Faddah Kissiedu was now facing an equally shocked Judge Tutu Kuntu. His face was tortured, and he could barely look at Zak.

“Your Honour,” he said heavily. “In view of facts that have come to light in the course of this trial, it is our wish to withdraw all charges against the accused and take time to review all documents and verbal facts we’ve heard, and at the appropriate time, process these cases again in the right direction!”

Thunderous applause greeted this. Even members of the jury joined in.

Judge Tutu Kuntu leaned back, and he could barely prevent his guilt from showing on his face as he looked at Zak. All his hatred against the boy had dissipated and, in its place, he felt a strong urge to reach out and hold the boy, and soothe away some of the pains he had gone through all his life.

“You may all sit down,” he said softly into the microphone. He sighed deeply. “Before I issue a mistrial, there are a few remarks I want to make. Mr. Zak Twum, in the past few weeks, you have driven a message home to all of us. You have changed us, and caused us to look inward and acknowledge that we’re all human, and no human is perfect. I don’t know your parents, but I’m sure that if they had been here, they would have been really proud of you. You’ve never known them, have you?”

And Zak Twum looked at the judge for several minutes before speaking, and his voice was calm again, but his piercing eyes never left the judge’s face.

“According to the staff of the orphanage, I was two years old when my mother took me to the Sasam Orphanage fifteen years ago,” Zak said softly. “So you see, I’m not twenty years old, I’m seventeen. I was told it had been a very rainy night, and she was wet through, but surprisingly she had sheltered me from the rain with her body and I was dry. She had a high temperature; she was very ill. Unfortunately, she did not last the night. She died.”

The court was dead silent.

People sighed audibly with pity. This boy, indeed, had lived a very trying life.

“She must have been a very brave woman,” Judge Kuntu said, his voice tinged with sadness.

“She was,” Zak said, and this time his voice was unsteady. “I found a file in Mr. Nhyirah’s safe the night I made the photocopies of his documents. It was a very old file. It contained letters which parents had left for the children they abandoned at the orphanage. I doubt if Mr. Nhyirah ever read them. Inside that file, I found a letter from my mother to me, recounting all she had gone through, and why she brought me to the orphanage.”

Judge Tutu Kuntu leaned forward. All eyes were on Zak. This was something no one had ever heard, and it set many hearts throbbing with hope.

“A letter from your mother?” Kuntu asked. “Then surely, it must have mentioned your father, your family, your tree and given you hope of where to find them!”

“Oh yes, it did, Judge, it really did,” Zak said calmly. “My mother was a maid in the house of a very wealthy and powerful family. They had only one son, and he professed love to my mother. At first, she was scared, because she had never known any man in her life. She had come from her village to serve. This rich boy told her how much he really loved her, and that he would marry her.

In the end she gave in and allowed him to have his way with her, and she became pregnant. He was the first man she ever loved, the only man to sleep with her. But, her employers were angry with their son for stooping so low, as they put it.

In the end, he did not protect the innocent girl, and he did not accept responsibility for the pregnancy. They threw her out of the house. She was too ashamed to return to her village, and thus she started toiling in the city to earn enough to feed herself and her child. When I was two years old, she fell ill, and knew she was dying. She took me to the orphanage, and died.”

“My God!” Faddah Kissiedu whispered. “How terrible! Such an irresponsible family! Didn’t your mother write the name of your father and his wicked parents who did this to her?”

“She did,” Zak said, and his head was bowed now as he was overcome by the strong emotions that assailed him.

“What’s their name?” Kuuku Eduafo demanded angrily. “Tell me! I will personally drag them to court for this atrocity! Ahhh, what nonsense!”

Zak looked up slowly.

Gone was his iron control and calm expression. Great tears were falling down his cheeks, and he was trembling uncontrollably. He raised his right hand, and his trembling forefinger pointed…straight at an ashen-faced Judge Tutu Kuntu.

“That man who is my judge today, that man who saw it fit, evidently, to drag me to court and prosecute me as a twenty-year-old instead of a seventeen-year-old, that man who has been the cause of my travails, and the torture of my poor mama, that man who denied me a home, and the prolonged love of a beloved mother…Mr. Tutu Kuntu, sitting there and judging me, he and his parents, did this to me!” Zak said amidst great sobs.

“He made my mother pregnant, and allowed his parents to drive her out into a world of pain and strife that killed her! He is responsible for all the pain I’ve been through! I’m not the guilty one here, and I’m not the beast as you claim…the guilty man is you, Mr. Judge, and your family! You are the beasts, and you have absolutely no right to sit on my case and judge me! I curse your blood that runs through me and that is why I never bothered to ever look for you after I read my mother’s letter…and I have absolutely no wish, ever, to acknowledge you as my father!”

Still his hand remained stiff and trembling!

Judge Tutu Kuntu’s face was all broken up with indescribable torture and great pain as he stared at the boy. He half rose to his feet, arms stretched toward Zak. He tried to speak, but no word came out, only a painful croak came out.

On his face was devastation and judgement. He was a broken man, too shocked to assimilate the horror his ears had heard, and even as he moved his vision clouded…and then he keeled over backward and crashed heavily in his own dock.

No one moved. The shock was that great!

Zak Twum put both his hands on his face.

His great show was over, and he had finished spinning his magic. The drama had ended, and the curtains were falling, and his strength was ebbed in the face of the guilt that had forced his father to fall down in the face of the truth.

And once the façade had been pulled off, once he brought his act to a close, he was no longer cloaked in the dress of a strong man, but finally reduced to the very young teenager that he was.

Weak, drained, hurt, and in turmoil.

And so he cried finally, strongly and bitterly.

His shoulders shook, and he did not stop his agony and tears because he could not, the dam of human passion was natural and too strong.

As Zak Twum cried, many in the court cried too, and many that were watching it live on their screens at home cried to.

And no one cried harder than Gyamaan Afriyie as she sat beside her stunned father.

And so, it was no wonder when Zak’s friends went to him and put their arms around him, Maa Afia first. It was no wonder when Mrs. Adjetey went to him, and it was no wonder when Faddah Kissiedu and Kuuku Eduafo went to him.

And one by one the seven people who formed a jury to pronounce sentence on this young man, came down and surrounded him.

Judgement had fallen on humanity, and revealed the frailties and vexatious vanities of the human race in a very massive kind of way.

***

Front page excerpts from some newspapers:

DAILY SPECTACULARS

Chief Justice and Supreme Court Judge Designate Resign

…Judge Tutu Kuntu said at the press briefing that he had been so sickened by the purported crimes of Mr. Zak Twum that he produced fake documents that made the young teenager twenty years old, and not seventeen. He did this so that he could sentence Zak to death, a boy he did not know was his own son, his only child, as it is.

This atrocious behaviour from a man expected to uphold truth and honour in all areas has sent shock waves all over the country and beyond. Judge Tutu Kuntu thus tended in his resignation today after recovering from a mild stroke he suffered in court. This was after he learnt that the boy he had wanted to kill was his own son whom he abandoned even before the baby was born…

In a related incident, the Chief Justice, Ayew Afriyie, also tended in his resignation. He cited deteriorating health conditions, but this paper has found out that he might have known of the false documents that Judge Kuntu adduced to, which prevented Zak Twum from being tried as a juvenile, and did not do anything about it.

Legal action could be brought against Judge Tutu Kuntu for doctoring evidence, and he stands the chance of going to prison for a very long time if found guilty. However, due to his excellent record so far, and the general air of hatred against Zak Twum at the time he was arrested, it is believed his resignation would be enough…

Meanwhile, the office of the Attorney-General has formally began legal prosecution of Messrs Kwadwo Pamfo, Kudadze and Ato Nyirah. It would be recalled that…

PRIME SCOOPS NEWSPAPER

…and in a related development, Opanyin Osumanin, an akpeteshie distiller at Densua who rescued Zak from the wreckage of his car, has been rewarded for being such a Good Samaritan. Kuntu & Son Associates, the multi-million group of companies owned by Judge Tutu Kuntu and his father, presented a cheque for an undisclosed sum (believed to be in the region of several millions) to the shocked old man yesterday. Tawiah, the old man’s son, however, is still in police custody for attempting to steal huge sums of money he took from Zak’s car after the accident. Master Zak Twum had earlier purportedly waylaid Mr. Kudadze and taken the car, money and drugs from him because he wanted the drug lord to stop selling drugs through the Sasam Orphanage…