The Lighthouse Keeper

• Afeefah Walker, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2019

Sophie. He called her Soferl.
He was handsome, his hands leaden with tarnished gold. On the streets of Austria, where linden and plane were planted alongside yet never touching, he called out to her. The shadows soaked lushly into his coat, the sun busied with polishing his shoes.
She blushed, cheeks heavy with dread.
“My prince?”
“To you and your people, I'm always Franz”, he said in fine Austrian.
Sophie felt as a bird feels upon finding a cuckoo in it’s nest; bewildered and snared but instinctively bowing to its whims.

I knew Austria. But it is Bosnia I am fondest of. Bosnia; where my blood brother was born. He was the most vital thing I salvaged of the shipwrecked carcass of my life.
He knew Sophie too. And Franz. He was a Princip.
The first time I saw him there was light flushing the dun road. Trees hunched magnanimously in the best of Austrian fashion. Leonine, his eyes followed the car that slunk like a panther; neither a true leopard nor a new creature, along the road. I was everywhere. In the dryness of his eyes, I was the squall of his heart. His forehead bore the furrows of an ancient crown. With muddy eyes and a well-used suit he followed the car.

Now I played my part. Whispered to their driver the name of a well-cobbled street. I watched as it happened. As my twin’s hand arced in a spray of jet and ivory. Smoky wind forced prostrate the linden, straddled them with boughs of plane. Great hanks of the road lay in rowdy bales everywhere. I didn’t pay mind to that. The choked screams, terrified whispers, frenetically calm voices; they were all the soundtrack to oblivion. A piece of music I’d composed; smelted with the wind, strung through the stars. I moved, humming that beat, towards Franz and Sophie. His collar was stiff; throat gilded with dust. A man rushed up to him. He didn’t see me. I saw though what he never would in time. The prince of Austria was wearing a crimson choker. One he never could take off.

I was about to leave. Sophie’s shoulder was hidden in ruby gloom, her stomach an obituary to the last remnant of her prince.
“I am alright”, a rigid, white collar tremulously sighed.
I am alright. Only the echo of his breath was felt by my ears.

I will never understand. I am War’s father; the son of Peace. Every person I have ever met I have given what they’ve never had; let them do the impossible. Yet each time they leave for another realm; be it shining or swarthy. They leave me. And I cannot follow them.
If they can do this irrevocable feat without me; why then am I still here?
I’ve never been able to answer that one. So I leave instead a rose by Sophie’s graveside. There, on that fine Bosnian road, where I was never born.