What the Wind brings

What the wind brings, short story by Alseny Janneh

She could always recognize his muffled steps among those of the many other inhabitants of this house.
They were only four now but his steps had a distinctness to them that always perked her ears.
She always wondered how thought and motion blended into one.
His steps spoke of a solicitous nature, a gentle soul but it belied an undeniable strength to the man.
He was weary of disturbing her.
She sometimes wondered about those that spoke of love evaporating with time.
She was 49 years old.
She had been married for close to 24 years and had known the man for a score more years but she loved him as much as he exasperated her.
He was hard working, humble , direct sometimes rude but always there for her.
She would have thought that he would have left her when the diagnosis came in her thirties that she would lose her sight.
For better or for worse the Priests say at weddings but very few can stay when things go awry.
They usually do not stay.
The world was as such.
But he had stayed and if anything he had been more cloying.
He sometimes acted as if she would break at any moment but he knew better.
He knew her strength

" Pilar you are a pillar "

He often had said.
It was an awful pun.
Her name was Pilar, a common name in her home country of Spain.
But she was also a pillar.
Her condition had only made her stronger.
He sometimes said that she had more strength than him and though she always denied it when he said it, she sometimes thought that her energy was more masculine than his.
He has been fascinated with her name when he first heard it.
He was a big Hemingway fan and " For Whom the Bell Tolls" was his favourite novel.
Pilar had been a seminal character in that novel.
But she was different than that Rebel leader.
She had been born in Sevilla.
Her father had been a local milkman before veering towards local politics and his mother had been a seamstress.
Their marriage had not survived her father's rise to prominence.
He had gotten a younger wife one from a prominent family.
Her mother had never remarried nor even been with another man.
She had once asked her mother why she did not try to find love again and she said to her with a sad wistful smile

" A setting Sun, never rises again for a living heart"

She had never inquired again.
Her father had not neglected her for of all his children she had been the brightness so he had paid her studies and seen to her wants.
She had studied journalism and had done a Masters in law.
She had met her now husband, Kevin, as he was vacationing in Seville.
She had been drinking at a local cafe as she remembered and reading a journal when he approached her.
The man had not struck a striking figure.
He had even then been portly and not overly tall.
He had a pudgy nose and he had a tendency to squint a lot.
His cheeks were always rosy and they had been made more so by the heat in that July sweltering day and he was smiling as he often was.
His dark brown hair fad been plastered to his brow with sweat as he haltingly asked her in broken Spanish where was the Plaza xxxxxx .
She had been fluent in English even then and her subsequent answer had sparked a long conversation that lasted a few hours. He had quite bodily taken a chair at her table  and they has talked mightily.

" What about your friend " she has asked for she had thought that he had people to meet.

" They can wait" he had said evasively.

And they had talked and then taken a walk and they had seen each other the next day and the day after that up until he left Seville.
But he came at least twice a year up until he decided to move to Spain and they got married.
It was only years later, after some probing, that he had admitted that he had come alone to Seville the first time they met and he had no friends to meet that fatal say.
He had been riveted by her beauty, he said, at first glance.
Her skinned had been a brilliant tanned olive gleaned at that time and her her hair had been dark and full and curly.
She had seldom found a reason to tidy her cascading mane and it had often fallen in rivulets down her back,
She has been wearing a blue sun dress that first day and had a summer straw had that had been holding down on the table at that time,