he resumed his playing again.
Something about the way he said “My son” made me uneasy. I had already looked around the sitting room, and now this music room, and yet, there were no pictures whatsoever. No wedding pictures showing Uncle Alexander and his wife - if he had a wife. No pictures of Uncle Alexander as a child. No family pictures shot in black and white. No pictures of Uncle Alexander wearing a graduation gown, grinning and clutching a certificate, the pose I had seen replicated in many homes. No pictures of any children. No pictures of his son. And yet he had mentioned a son.
Mama would be very angry to find out that I had gone to a neighbor’s house without her permission. But maybe she would forgive me this once. I stuck my hands into the pocket of my shorts and felt something cold. I pulled it out – it was the house key! It had been in my pocket all along. I must have put it there that morning as I rushed to school, instead of leaving it for Mama to give it to Mama Peju. Well, if the key was here with me, then I had to go back home. I had no excuse for paying Uncle Alexander this unannounced visit.
“Come and play for me. I want to see how well you play.”
“Sir, I really need to leave now. My mother --”
“I will go back home with you and explain everything to her. She won’t punish you.”
I can’t tell you whether it was the promise of preventing my mother from punishing me or the allure of having someone invite me to play an instrument I had been dying to explore. Whatever it was, I found myself sitting beside him in front of the piano. Almost as soon as I sat down, he got up, telling me that he would watch me from the door. I placed my hands on the keys and started playing the song from the beginning. He stood by the door watching me.
Then I got to the part he had repeated over and over again. For some reason, I cannot fathom, I stopped playing and began to leaf through the pages of the red piano book. As I turned to Page 14, which was where Uncle Alexander had penned down the words and music to the Oluronbi song, something fell out of the book. I bent down and picked it up. It was an old newspaper story from The Daily Times, neatly cut out. The headline read: “TWO MEN MISSING – BOTH NAMED ALEXANDER.” A chill swept over me as I looked up from what I had just read.
By now, I was on my feet, still holding the piano book in my right hand. I turned my head to the left. In doing so, I faced the other two men in the room – the two Alexanders. For the first time since I had entered the house, I saw the faces of Alexander the First, and Alexander the Second. A muffled cry rose to my lips as I stared at their faces. The two men who sat beside me had grey, ashy skin. Their lips were sealed together – they would never sing again. They would never speak again. Their hands were folded across their laps, perfectly still. Their hands would never play the piano again. But, perhaps, the most fearful part was their eyes – they were gone. Empty sockets stared at me, as empty as the heart of the man who had extinguished the light from their eyes. I remembered Uncle Alexander’s own brown eyes.
“They are dead,” Uncle Alexander was saying, as he turned a key in the lock. Then he turned towards me.
“And if I had a son,” he said walking slowly towards me, “I would name him Alexander. Alexander the Fourth.”
About the Author
Sharon Abimbola Salu grew up in Lagos, Nigeria where she lived until she relocated to the United States of America where she currently resides. Her stories are mostly set in Nigeria, and she writes the kind of stories she would like to read. A professed lover of spicy foods, she loves experimenting with new recipes, to the dismay of non-spicy food lovers. Apart from writing, photography is her other hobby.
To learn more, you can visit her blog at https://sharonsalu.wordpress.com
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