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The writer discovers Aetheria (consciousness) amid a journal, through a 10-year odyssey. Until birth, as an infant communicates a wish: Call me, “Sunshine.” Sunshine’s first two years, at nine-month intervals, she’s resuscitated under particular conditions. Aetheria’s puppeteering through a hostile milieu, persistent through Intensive Care Unit, challenges, until her mother packed and left home, the witches and wizards volatilized, to lead a healthy life.

YD6~21 Through Mansion Walls: My Trials, but Destiny Triumphs

In the reflection to a beckoning Helios’ morning light at my bedroom window, I’m called to rise, breaching the chill, dressed, bend with a finger shoehorn slip in my shoes, stepping out the room into the corridor. I’m stepping along the hardwood floorboard run. The day’s bright reflection over my shoulders, I’m stepping behind a gleaming cascade, tread in the middle the deep and long white marble stairs, exuding chill. I’m U-turning along the hefty balustrades to the staircase niche. short of the pristine wash across the crisscrossing hallways, I counter turn palm the offside brass doorknob, with a wrist twist. at a pace press the heavy service oak panel door hinge left, through the crack profiling De-M’ma. She's thoughtful, stirring a wooden spoon around the pot on the coal stove.

The distant tall window reflects the snow blanket across the Baroque rear garden, a sunlight luminescent over De-M’ma’s shoulder. De-M’ma glances away, telling by her side stepping off. ‘_Warm yourself here._’ With an embracing kitchen warmth, I ease the door close to De-M’ma’s trailing words.  “[Flemish] How did you sleep?” She awakes the night’s genie powdering snow’s inspiration, permeating my mind, heart, and soul crafting harmony — awakened from sleep, lying in bed, heralding beyond the castle’s roof. In the skies, a cloud kneaded with giant hands platting a challah. The realms of my consciousness, which can only be Aetheria cracking off, for a latent break away piece to develop a conscious independence. 

As I’m seeking to rebuild my life, home away from home, I spiked. ‘_Like a prince,_’ The return to reason, saying. “[Flemish] Well.”

De-M’ma steps into the window’s serene glaring snow blanked. My clothes thawed out, I turned away from the coal stove, after the wooden handle, a peek, to a simmering soup. As De-M’ma rounded the table, blotting the snow severed horse paddock. The edging concrete stakes fence, snow fluffy paired pipes stretched short of fluffed up brushwood woodland. De-M’ma’s eyes attempting to pluck my silence, as I seek etch my enterprising dared with a flashback to Sandton travel agency --. 

A trip I booked destined for New York City, landing without knowing a soul or having a job. Although with a safeguard, a return to South Africa. When I walked out of the travel agency, dawn rhyming cosmic to my mind. ‘_. . . If I can make it there, I’ll make it, Anywhere, It’s up to you, New York, New York. . ._’

By midmorning I head downstairs to the crux of white marble hallways, turned toward the rear portal pane picturing the Baroque garden axial lane, gorge to the woods, to sideways spread through the last snow. By the day, I've grown frustrated, in need of shaking my idle lifestyle. As I grew familiar, to step into the woods at first light, I scouted a bridle or hunter’s path along the woods. I discovered my way around the grounds of the Château Du Bois’ grounds, during cold snap - crunch, crunch, crunch . . . - I’m breaking the ice to return along the farm road, by the gateway - crunch, crunch, crunch . . . - crusher stone lane straight to the castle’s bluestone sculptured front portal. I step around the girdling drive past the castle basement windows to the rear and step the half-hexagonal bluestone wrap stairs to enter the rear portal. By the juxtaposed door, I step to the kitchen, chatting, De-M’ma, says. “[Flemish] Gerard made Our-Ilse the way she became — She was such a sweet girl. . .” 

Outdoor, rubber tire treads roll the crusher stones to a halt, car doors slam close, De-M’ma steps out of the kitchen to the hallway, by the portal cranks the door lever, pulling the door to step out onto the half-hexagonal bluestone platform. Ilse and Gerard converging, by the dark Volkswagen Golf’s muzzle, at the greeting with shopping bags. Ilse leads the way to the kitchen, with Gerard unpacking a week’s pastry and bread loafs. De-M’ma trailing, as the little crowd vanishes behind the niche to the imperial staircase, across to the doorway to the barrel wall’s turret corner room, where De-P’pa stokes logs to the fireplace.

After lunch, snippets of conversations over time paint a complete picture. Ilse raises a farewell voice, saying. “[Flemish] Gerard has to get up at four in the morning.” Among themselves, the thought of a slogging routine in a cellar workshop. Mixing, fermenting, makeup, proofing, baking, to bring up from the cellar to Ilse’s back office. Hands clap the loaf out of a bread basket, release it to the racks before the oven heat burns fingertips, while cricket crust crackles among the loafs. By seven o’clock, Ilse can slice and package, at the jingle of the doorbell, customers entering. Ilse ringing up the corner cash register drawer, along displays an assortment of pastries and pralines before an exit jingle with a loaf and a confection._

Ilse and Gerard descend the rear portal, greeting, step into the Golf, Gerard drives away in a circle crunching a medieval moat, worthless in a 1912 design, landscaped by crusher stone to a useful driveway. The Golf disappears behind the blind corner. De-M’ma turns away, saying. [Flemish] That’s our-Ilse’s Monday routine — they’re obligated to close shop a day in the week.” 

By the following Wednesday, De-P’pa drops me off at Nivelle’s train station. I steps to the clerk at the hatch window, asking. “Brussels South!” I pivot away, exit the hall, to the platforms. With the coming of the train, I board the train, after a brief ride, I alight in Brussels, onto roaming rail track stations to the subway.

I awoke sensing a foam firm mattress, opening an eye, at first light through a roof window, close to a slapping ceiling, along a mansard room. I rose to my feet, beyond the single bed’s foot, I pulled my clothes from the corner chair, slipped into pants, my head duck in my shirt, picked my sock out my shoes, pulled up socks, finger a shoehorn slipped into my shoes pacing away. With a lingering thought, I descend stairs, to the next landing door. Shameful of my tease mind, Ilse and Gerard’s permanent warm matrimonial bed. 

A glance I spare by Ilse’s office to the bread racks empty, further down the shoulder squeeze stairway. At the bottom I turn the corner, passing a white flour powder to an S-kneading hook, to an industrial-scale dough mixer bowl. In the depth, I greet Gerard. Sturdy as his Chinese zodiac sign, the Ox, closing the door to French Bread shining behind a bread oven window. I greet Gerard, stepping away and leaving behind a stainless-steel chocolate melting pot, streaks run over the cold heating pad, with drips along the cabinet. I ascend the narrow staircase to Ilse’s office. Turn away, I pace by the swing door to an early morning deserted side street.

I head toward the rear of the block, the disgusting dark streaks not pristine. I neared the far corner, prolonged to the ditched Metro line and Molenbeek community border. As I fret over unclean chocolate, I imagine plunging the melting pot in soap and water, and wipe the cabinet. Distracted crossing the overpass, from behind a kiosk a blue translucent Belgica metro station balloon in Jette’s community. Dropped my attention to a mouthwatering behind the shut kiosk. I track back to enter side streets, promising myself, on my return from work, to savor French fries.

Into the Porte Cochere I stepped alongside planted back barn doors, to a sheltering construction depot, by a Toyota panel van to the tailgate, with a pudgy man, and an African man introduced himself, saying. “[French] I’m married to a white woman!” Which remark I dismiss as a blunder. The African stepped ahead of me, to the cabin’s passenger seat, meeting the pudgy man steps behind the steering wheel. He turned the ignition key to an engine purr under the seat, he shifted the gear lever into drive, pulling into daylight to swerve up the street. 

Seated tall riding with the dashboard across to the upright windshield, major arteries, until the Senne river canal, which we prolonged, turning off at the south station, penetrating the communities rows of townhouses, the community of Uccle aerating to city outskirts larger properties. In a close amid stylish villas, the driver steers coasting, ingress a driveway’s open gates. Alongside the house’s lateral facade, creeps along deformed concrete slabs paired tracks through wild grown grass. We halt a van length past the entrance door, with a hand turn of the ignition, the doors fling open - smack, smack - stepping away from the cabin. I head along the van’s flanks to the rear. Turning the van’s tailgate, the African catching up, the two ancient men converge alongside the brick facade, to face the van’s trundled back door, to construction slang, mocking the dead weight of cement and gypsum bags awaiting manual transportation. The pudgy driver bends, grabs a bag heaving to his shoulder, straightens and turns away, conceding his spot. Without another word, the African man proceeds, after which I pick up a bag, trailing the men indoors.

At the encounter, the pudgy driver, huff and puff midway along the balustrades to the flight of stairs. I held my step from crossing the spacious bare and dusty room, then watching if he would reach the landing. I’m taking the occasion to attune my body to a discrete show, calculating my rhythm before engaging the flight of stairs at reaching the landing. Another flight of stairs awaited, the men walked away upstairs, as I’m arising through the ceiling cutout, to step into the loft room. A few strides along the floor bend and off my shoulder deposit my bag, facing the pudgy driver by hip rafter, telling me. “_’imagine!_’ [French] This is the woman’s art studio.”

By Friday, as I progressed skimming the mansard walls, to skimming between raw rafters, to the ridge beam. The contract manager arose from the cutout floor, the stairs to the loft floor. He holds me up, a plastering trowel at hand, a blob of gypsum to the hand hawk, as he turns around with an inspecting eye, to stand facing me, and chatting he asks. “[French] How many workmen did you have working for you?” 

The question arose. ‘_Did I ever count the people working for me? — No!_’ Flashback on my wide wall by the slender awning windows, my visual landscape Lego Modulex planning board. Client contract to finish spanning two years, at the time of acquiring Hilton Rogoff, and the Saber brothers as partners. I replied. “[French] I had about ten contracts. . . ‘_Averaging on the go.’_” 

Instead of accepting an idea, the cousin of the owner-contractor, insisted. “[French] What was your turnover?” Flashback to my office’s Lego Modulex portrait board, in plain view of the visitor, visual behind my desk executive chair, a doubling growth every year. To answer the contract manager, I’m taking a random contract, multiplying by ten, to string zeros, in the conversion to Belgian Franc my mid flip-flops, entangling chains of zeros without a decimal point, with the apparition of a three, my mind dives, and I said to ride. “Three million.” 

The contractor’s cousin with a smirk says. “[French] That’s nothing.” Turning away. 

My ego pinched, I’m too exhausted catching up with the man, with a mental juggling half-a-dozen zeros, to say. “[French] I must be confusing the zeros.” My words trail the contract manager stepping away toward the floor cutout. He descends into the void, at the pace of the stairs. He disappeared, leaving me telling my ego. ‘_What’s the use of defending yourself? His mind is made up!_’

Every evening inside the mansion’s walls, with a second skin of sticky masonry, and plaster dust after the pudgy, with the African co-workers. I extend my hands underneath a hose bibcock spout of water, wash my hands, splash my face. Step out construction shoes in socks, step on a cardboard sheet. I strip my work jeans, lie on my toolbox, pull my dusty shirt over my head, off a trestle I pull my city clothes to don and step away in my moccasins. Step in the HiAce panel van, trundled from the site under construction, finishing plastering the artist women’s studio, ready for the painters.

From Uccle’s ‘Embassy community,’ to the ‘Embassy alley,’ along Tervuren Avenue, I toiled in mansion walls, breaking doorways, raising masonry, and plastered walls. My coworkers bantered. I’m hearing a consistent raise. “[French] . . . the North . . . ” rhythm during our days. By Wednesday evening, as we climb to the cabin of the Toyota HiAce panel van. Unashamed, I surprised the pudgy driver, asking. “[French] Can you pass along the North?” I sparked an unexpected reaction, the African seated on the seat over the purring engine, glanced at the pudgy driver, eyes flash surprised, to a bemused fixation. ‘_Why not?_’ The men exchanged. 

The pudgy driver steered us inbound with a come-and-go through city street traffic at peak hour, to coast toward a dead end. He steers to a crawl bumper-to-bumper a margin vertical concrete wall to the elevated railway tracks running out of sight ahead of a snail’s pace single lane traffic.

The row of workmen’s brick townhouses, through the car’s back window shadows a driver's head turned, fixing the first woman seated in a display window. I peer at cars farther ahead, moving at a snail’s pace, the line of cars running out of sight, at the crack of the striated red neon window. The pudgy driver, and the African, gaze at the alternating drawn closed curtains, imagining by the next window paired by entrance doors. The odd vitrine in front of a deep curtain folds wraps a staged vacant classic single lounge chair. Next door, a lady in lingerie occupied the chair, crossed legs with crossed wrists on her knees. I’m skipping a lady in a silky nightgown, standing on the threshold, overseeing apparent negotiations with a client. A pedestrian gazing past near the display windows, unashamed. A subtle beginning to the red district, tapering off display windows. Across the end of the street block, we crawled the curb, into the railway underpass westward. The men are eerie silent in the cabin, emerging from the underpass to daylight. He drives on, meandering through the communities’ streets. Until we trundle steering by the barn doors into the Porte Cochere’s shadow to the construction company’s workshop, the engine rattling to silence, we alight the van.

As I muster the willpower, to endure my morning cold shower, change clothes and pick up tools. Wielding my tools, warming up, working out, stretching muscles, invigorating, accumulating dirt through the day, encouraging exercises. settling my restlessness, to a mechanical surgical rhythm, surpassing leisurely my personal best throughout the day. Until the evening’s ritual: clean tools, pack away, wash up, and change my dirty clothes. Steeling myself, re-adapting to a stranger in my city clothes once again, I trail the pudgy driver to the sidewalk.

As we egress the mansion’s front yard, the pudgy driver vanishes behind the parked panel van. He reappears, opening the door and grabbing the steering wheel. The driver pulls himself onboard, while the African climbs into the passenger side of the cabin, for our ride home. Firing the engine to a purr under the seat, I pull the door - smack -. 

With the two men’s end of the day exiting chats, we pull away from the curb’s train of cars, in a traffic’s wake crossing the paired lanes. But contrary to inbound traffic through the intersection lenses, we trundle contouring the wide grass median, to throttle outbound toward the city Ring. The pudgy man drives a stretch along tram tracks and through wooded alleyways. We diverge at the intersection, to engage the city Ring. full throttle in a traffic flow along a plain roadway’s stretch bands. We circled the city’s outskirts. Exit the western off-ramp on our daily course, the inbound arteries to Jette’s narrow community street, coast toward the familiar crack in the wall of facades to the open barn doors. 

The pudgy driver's arms swing, turning the steering wheel - huff - ‘_We’re here!_’ as we trundle through the Porte Cochère. Short of the distant construction company’s workshop, halting. I alight with the pudgy driver, followed by the African, when offside’s recessed wing office door opens. The construction manager emerged from the doorway, approaching. He calls us, leads us converging, to a pause. Gathered by the Toyota HiAce’s muzzle between headlights. With a glum look, the contract manager says. “[French] We have no further contracts.” 

Crashed by my destiny once again, I walked away against the construction company with a mounting wrath. ‘_While we were working, why didn’t the office assure a continuity of contracts?_’ With the pair of coworkers, we stepped out in the street, along a stretch toward the Belgica metro station. The pudgy tradesman crosses an acquaintance, shaking, he says. “[French] We’re out of work. . . Going for relief benefits!_’ The African artisan steps in, with a leading handshake. The African’s words awake my wits, and fog my anger, reflecting his persistent, self-introduction. “[French] I’m married to a white woman.” After hesitating, I left the men behind. Continued alone, to step up the French Fries kiosk to turn toward the chef in a white outfit, behind the counter to attention. I ask. “[Flemish] May I have a large one?” 

My fingertips pick the tail of a potato-stick out the paper cone’s flowering sticks, as I turn away from the kiosk. growling lips, my incisor nips, burning my tongue, tumbling the morsel around my mouth, chewing here-and-there to swallow. I’m unable to wait for the cooling, at my pace I nip and chew away, to the next stick, my route past the parapet brick wall with copings. I cross the metro’s ditched railway overpass straight down the block to classic mansions along Jubilee Boulevard. 

Nibbling french fries ticks, dissipating my anger, to a comforting sense, the caring of destiny for my well-being. I turn the street, and appear to sight the distant corner bakery. The windows spill bright lights to the sidewalk. Nibbling cooled sticks In my approach to the side street junction joining the boulevard’s green grass median. 

I cross the asphalt toward the opposite curb, fixing the slit basement window, signs of Gerard’s absence in the dark workshop. I step up to the entrance door, pick the lock, hinge back, I step across the threshold, close the door. In Ilse’s office, I climb to the apartments, to the landing, telling myself. ‘_Gérard must be sleeping._’