He’s a character I’ll write
I’ll bear my witness to that
Take your stand or sit it out
Hang the jury in the night
“How would you characterize the character of Saint Stephan?”
“He’s arrogant.”
“Is that so – meaning that he thinks he’s better than everyone else or that he carries himself in a manner suggesting a dignity incapable of communion with any who would expect of him the slightest moral, professional or personal compromise?”
The witness’s eyes go into a protracted swirl within their orbits as he tries to muster a suitable response, as if the length and relative complexity of the defense attorney’s question had overwhelmed his cognitive faculties to the point of putting his mind in screen saver mode but not a complete system shutdown.
“That’s right.”
“What’s right? You’ve just testified under oath in a court of law that Saint Stephan, former editor of the Kyiv Poster turned left-bank loner, a virtual apostate in the North American branch of the Ukrainian Diaspora, the inspiration and guiding force behind the Kyiv Unedited website, is arrogant! You didn’t say that he was ‘overconfident,’ ‘aloof,’ ‘indisposed to human fellowship’ or ‘insensitive to others’ feelings.’ You said that he was arrogant, indicating a supercilious demeanor, a haughty disposition, an unfounded and misplaced overestimation of his own worth…”
“That’s right. That’s what I meant, all right… just what you’ve just said: He overestimates his own worth.”
“Well, now we’re beginning to get somewhere, Mr. Zamazda. Your Honor, let the court note for the record that the witness himself had once been engaged in precisely the same professional capacity as Saint Stephan – namely, chief editor of Ukraine’s window to the world – albeit for a much shorter and dubiously truncated term of tenure…”
“Objection, Your Honor! Mr. Zamazda’s professional reputation is not on trial here. He’s taken the stand in the capacity of a character witness, not to have his own character scrutinized by the Defense.”
“Your Honor, the Defense begs indulgence towards the aim of demonstrating to this court that Zippy Zamazda is not and cannot be fair, objective or impartial in assessing the character of the defendant.”
Zamazda’s eyes have stopped swirling and taken on a blank beady-eyed stare. He’s sure he’s been slighted or is about to be. It’s just that the precise nature of the slight is not entirely clear to him, making a response on his part untimely and ultimately disadvantageous.
“Zippy,” continues the defense attorney. “Going back to those heady days of late 2007, were you not privy, if not an accomplice, to the machinations then in play at the Kyiv Poster, which saw a completely unsuspecting and some might say fecklessly naïve Saint Stephan unceremoniously unseated as head of the Poster’s editorial team?”
“It was The Ferret who got him fired, if that’s what you mean?”
“Come, come, now Zippy.”
“Your Honor!”
The judge says nothing. He’s planted his long and usually serious face into a large upturned hand serving as the capital of the pillar that is his forearm, itself firmly erected in front of him on his bench.
“Would you have this court entertain the notion of your complete and utter indifference to controlling the flow of English-language information and images about the country of your forebears to the outside world? Is it not the unstated but empirically demonstrated dream of so many a member of the Ukrainian Diaspora with a college education or less to shape, deliver and indeed represent the truth as it pertains to this interminably embattled recently independent state?”
“Somebody’s got to do it.”
“Your Honor,” shouts the prosecutor, whose face now expresses that rare shade of indignation verging on embarrassed laughter, “he’s indicting an entire ethnic group.”
“Just those living outside the country,” Your Honor, quips the Defense over his shoulder.
“You are pushing it, Counselor,” says the judge.
“Exhibit A,” shouts the defense attorney, then extends his hand to receive an old but remarkably well-preserved copy of the Kyiv Poster from a member of his legal team.
The newspaper is unfolded to the opinion section where a fedora-clad Zippy Zamazda is photographically featured above a neatly laid-out text attributed to his person.
“Zippy Zamazda… that’s you, isn’t it,” reads the defense attorney. “Zippy Zamazda… a freelance whatchamacallit… currently working as something or other… ah, here it is: is a former chief editor of Ukraine’s window to the world, the Kyiv Poster.”
“Your Honor, an ample introduction to the witness’s biography was presented at the start of today’s session…”
“Get to the point Counselor.”
“My point,” the defense attorney mutters, scratching his head as he drops then nods it.
“My point is WHY IN HELL’S HALF ACRE WOULD A FULL-GROWN MAN CARVING OUT A REASONABLY SERIOUS PROFESSION FOR HIMSELF AS AN ANALYST, COMMENTATOR OR HEAVEN KNOWS WHAT ELSE, IN THIS DAY AND AGE, SQUASH AN OUTDATED ARTICLE OF HEADWEAR OVER HIS FACE IN SOME HALF-WITTED ATTEMPT AT CREATING A PERSONAL BRAND?”
The courtroom erupts, slowly at first, in a roar of laughter and then muffled, occasionally raucous discussion.
“Your Honor!
“That’ll be enough Counselor.”
Zippy, his face tense and flushed, looks incapable of ordinary respiration, as if his entire head might implode beneath the weight of some invisible but unbearable burden bearing down on it from all sides.
Instead, he drops his face into his hand, his arm visibly trembling, and removes himself from the witness stand, escorted by the prosecutor’s assistant with a kindly hand on the shoulder out of the courtroom.
A gentle murmur rises out of the public seating section, eventually giving way to heated dispute.
“It was The Ferret… Just like he said. ”
“Zippy didn’t do it. Why would he?”
Meanwhile, back in the newsroom, Chief Editor Bret Boner’s putting his newspaper to bed.
“Hah, they’re gonna hang Saint Stephan. Where’s my Cocoa and Laxatives, for fuck’s sake?”
“Cocoa? She’s crossed the pond to work someone else…”
“Who said anything about Jim Book?”
“Not me, that’s for sure.”
“Bret, who’s covering that dust-up with the giant clown in Podil… Can I take it?”
“Will the paper cover a phone call to New Jersey? Welsh Losser’s been missing for over a month, and Handwriting International is simply unreachable.”
Filed by 47L, now working at home, February 2, 2016