[YD6-58(SHEm) Chapter Code] (revision) Landing in France: A Thread of Hope Woven from Family Roots
This story is an unfolding suite of chapters clarifying my book, The Code: Horizon of Infinity—a philosophical memoir exploring how the universe sculpted our minds. Through Aetheria, the lens of consciousness, aware of her need for a body to reveal herself and exercise her wishes, the narrative leads to her birth and the name she will claim: Sunshine -- Step into this journey of becoming, where the cosmos whispers its secrets, and identity blooms like dawn.
From landing at Charles de Gaulle Airport, I weave through the sleep-laden crowd, slipping past the fresh-faced passport controller. Stepping onward to stand amidst circling passengers. I step forward and tug my calf-bloated suitcase off the carousel. Little wheels trundle behind me across the arrival concourse to widespread figures. My objective, ‘Paris.’ guided by overhead RER signs, until the train in the terminal shrouded in stillness.
I heaved my suitcase up the narrow stairs to the carriage’s airlock - Hiss - the glass doors part. Stepping through - Hiss - close behind as I turn to the luggage rack, stowing my bags away to face the aisle. Reassured by a few and scattered passengers, I settle into a seat, my belongings within sight.
After a wait, the station platform slips behind, speeding up the tunnel, unfurl into the vast, dark countryside. The horizon smolders with light pollution, amber glimmers shaping villages, herd of peeking houses through vegetation flicker streetlights on sleepy roads. Punctuating air-streams by my window fenestrated villa facades and capped roofs, alternating backyards, and bare parking spaces to industrial sheds.
The ride abandons rural stillness, plunge into the chaotic city outskirts, onto merging, sharp angles spiking against the night sky. Somber, glazed architectures — industrial and commercial — press closer as we pull into shadowed punctuation minor stations, to crescendo: Gare du Nord. I alight the train, accosting the conductor striding away, his word trailing in my thoughts, “Gare de l’Est.” stepping into the cavernous hall, a clock giant dial overhead, hands, 4:00 a.m.
At the rhythm of my pace, I orient myself, swinging through the station’s doors out into the street, waking with drivers in waiting taxis. I lean toward the window, asking. “Elle est loin la Gare de l’Est? — is the East Station far?” Pacing in the wake of my mind, I catch his faint reply, “Quinze minutes — fifteen minutes,” with a head nod, ‘Straight ahead.’ I take distance from the taxi, begin to wonder, into regretting as the weight of my life condensed in my overstuffed suitcase tugging my arm. Summon my courage, I press on, passing a whining vacuum, lamenting against the sidewalk. Onto rattling tables and chairs, figuring a cleaner arranging the sidewalk-terrace, of a waking restaurant.
My self-reproach fades as the classic white-stone station comes into view. Push past the doors, to my relief, pose my luggage. The ticket office opens. “Puis-je avoir un simple pour Belfort? Can I have an on-way ticket to Belfort?” The agent hands me my ticket, his instructions reluctant and faint. I turn from the counter, with a mixture of relief and impatience. Crossing the hall, on searching the series of rail tracks’ silver light thread, tapering toward the countryside, to my relief, facing my last leg of the journey, I sidestep to the platform boarding the train.
The station recedes, breaking a lit shelter, to a pale dawn that softens cluttered facades. Paris begins to unspool — chaotic buildings thinning into the quiet of stucco-front villas. Onto yielding to open fields, alternating with expanses of woods, their hues deepening under the morning’s embrace. My anxiety ebbs by sobering sunlight, as I focus on not missing the Belfort station, where the tracks lead onward to Switzerland.
I couldn’t imagine how this very countryside — a tangible demonstration of Aetheria, with her unyielding hands and boundless vision, molding the surrounding air, her breath weaving a tapestry of existence — sprawling beneath an endless sky, etched by time and tempered by history, would come to shape my career. Yet, I would step into a role unforeseen in its unfolding. Armed with tree javelins and staking them into the ground. I would advance step by step, charting a linear course — aligning past and future through the woods. With a team of land surveyors, lay the groundwork for bulldozers to clear the paths. We would refine angles and levels with theodolites, through land contours and rugged terrain. The course would shape amidst bulldozers carving through hills and filling valleys, preparing the way for the future tracks of the TGV high-speed train.
The train’s faint hum whispers of an unfurling destiny as it glides past the Alstom factory. In the dedicated rail yard, a TGV machine stands poised mid-test, framed by the colossal shed’s bold silhouette. The thought drift to Rico, Ingrid’s husband, managing a team of fifty engineers within those walls. Ahead, traffic glitters across a wrought-iron arched bridge, to slip through the deck’s shadow. No sooner coasts amid Belfort’s historic station to a standstill.
I step down, tugging my luggage, walking amidst youth straps shouldered backpacks of the summer vacation. Beneath the 9:00 a.m. hands of the platform clock, and along the rail tracks’ light thread vanishing in the distance. Passengers flow into the platform’s hatchway.
I descend the stairs into the underpass, at the tunnel’s far end, emerging onto the station platform. Carried by the flow of passengers, I swerve indoors, the crowd’s hum folding around me. Ingrid waits, her face a beacon among the passing tufts of hair in through the bustling hallway. She relieves me of my hand luggage, with a warm smile, greets me. “Et comment va tu? — And how are you?” as she turns, leading me into a conversation about her waiting household.
We walk toward the wood-framed glass doors, reassured, we step out to the station apron. Before us, a spread of windows reflecting the skies, to a welcoming seven-story fenestrated apartment facades — a vibrant expression of classic French architecture, rising in quiet grandeur, shielding Belfort’s downtown from view.
Ingrid pays no mind across the street. A few women browsing storefronts, and men linger, their steps trailing to and from the brasseries. On the driveway, Ingrid swirls toward the Audi. She lifts the tailgate, tagged “Quattro 100.” Guiding my handbag inside as I heave my calf-bulged suitcase into the station wagon trunk. Smack - the tailgate closes.
In unison, we split, step around the rear fenders to the car’s front doors. Meeting again as we slip into the front seats - smack, smack - doors sealing us inside. Ingrid tweaks the ignition key, shift into gear, and shifting in gear, we reverse, distancing from the railway station’s window, where restaurant patrons on the move.
Fallen into conversation, our words meander to our South Africa families. Ingrid steering away from questioning me about Francine, her best friend’s daughter, whom I left behind in New York. As she drives along the station, to steer through the curb ends of the sidewalk, weaves into trickling street traffic. Bound to detours around the block, weaving through city streets, meeting the passing railway. Her Sagittarius, dutiful and direct, surfaces as brings up meeting Rico. “Il est au courant de l’offre d’emploi — He’s clued-up on the job offer,” she says.
We pass the mouth of the underpass, before the supermarket edging the Alstom factory, driving along the railway. Until, the city says; I’m leaving the suburb’s a last villa. Passing barriers boom risen skyward. The car rattles over the rail tracks, as the road sweeping away. We drive the winding along the sloping contours of Mont Salbert. Ingrid’s eyes flick into a branching dirt track. “You can walk through the forest, on a loop route to the fort over weekends,” she says.
The countryside unfurls before us, the winding road straightening through a handful of reallocated barn farmhouses. Their gritty road shoulders are softened by gleaming parked cars, hinting at families calling home. Ingrid’s gaze shifts, catching glimpses through the interstices of rear yards: remnants of goats, geese, and chickens mingling behind weathered fences. Beyond the fence, down the hill, an L-shaped contemporary house, with hip-and-valley roof tiled in black.
As the asphalt road ripples across hilltops - Tick, tick, tick . . . - the rhythmic indicator before Ingrid steers the car onto a side road. Descending into the exurb, where scattered villas punctuate the piedmont. Rounding a block of villas, she pulls into the driveway of the double-story house, nestled in a wide hillside cove — the sanctuary of her family. Ingrid parks before the garage door. We head up to the entrance door, cross the airlock, into the entrance hall.
Ingrid hangs up the car keys and hooks her coat onto the rack, her steps leading past the ajar door of the playroom. Inside, a piano, and bookshelves frame the lively energy of the siblings’ quarters. We climb the dogleg stairs, on the cross facing doors landing, the right door hinges with mousy squeaks open onto a round table huddled by chairs, across which Ingrid shows me into a passageway of facing door. I set down my luggage, still tugged along by our ongoing conversation, I spare a glance on the deserted street to the neighborhood, leaving the room.
Ingrid brushes past the backrest of the dining table chairs, turning through the yawning doorway, and vanishes into the resonant bustling beyond. Cabinet doors and drawers open and close in a rhythmic clatter of pots and utensils emerge to scatter across the peninsula worktop.
Instead of following her flurry, I linger, tracing across the countertop to the window. Framing a canvas — a sky torn jagged by the telephone cable cutting across the first line of houses in the street — jarring a crude intrusion, Ingrid notes with regret. Rooftops cascade down the slope, yielding to the retreating neighborhood and the railway line. Flocculent canopies concede to an expansive green plain, dissolving into the blurry etched silhouette of mountains across the far horizon.
I turn back, observe Ingrid’s arm — a whirlwind, a many-handed Shiva conjuring lunch with nimble fingers. She’s a vision of exhaustion, and I offer my help, steeped in the rhythm of a pleiad of childhood siblings, each sharing the household chores.
With a Tupperware bowl in hand, Ingrid strides toward the dining table, to reach the patio door. I follow her out into the backyard, across a carpet of lawn, and up the garden stairs to a terrace where fruit trees share a spot with a log garden shed. From one of the terraces above, Ingrid plucks string beams. I helped her fill the bowl, with a tethering conversation over Rico’s duties at maintaining the tennis court.
Ingrid retraces her steps, back inside, through the dining room to the kitchen. There, I settle on a stool by the worktop, nipping the ends off the beans, which Ingrid grabs, takes over to wash the beans. As I hand-wipe the bits off the cutting board into the compost bin, Ingrid to prepare them.
Ingrid turns down the stove knobs, her duty etched in her mind. She heads off, descending the stairs, stepping through the airlock and into the car. I join her in the passenger seat as she backs out onto the street. As we drive away, I feel a quiet lameness creeping in, stripped of striving as Ingrid taking over. I’m left to piece together the meaning of her words, pulling into the driveway of the countryside preschool school, Evette-Salbert.
“Philip went here too,” Ingrid says, as her youngest, Chantal, steps up, and climbs into the rear seat. “But now he’s at the Belfort elementary — the bus drops him off.”
We return home, pulling to a stop before the garage door. “After lunch,” Ingrid says, “We’ll drive Chantal back for the afternoon session.” Inside, the kitchen hums with the warmth of simmering pots, and Ingrid bustling through the air. Outside the window, the otherwise deserted street stirs with the passing of lunch-bound cars.
“Le bus dépose Philip — The bus drops off Philip,” Ingrid remarks as I stand by the window. “Il descend depuis la route. Eric et Karin restent dans l’enceinte de leur lycée jusqu’au soir — He walks down from the main road. Eric and Karin stay at their high school grounds until evening.” Her words in a timer, syncing with the muffled rhythm of the house. The stairwell faint echoes from the entrance. Soon Philip breaks the airlock doors as he appears upstairs, joining his sister at the dining table as though drawn by the shared scent of lunch wafting from the kitchen.
Earlier, Ingrid had mentioned, “Rico, il viendra à vélo — Rico will come by bike.” And now, the garage door creeps open, resonates through the walls, A lapse of silence follows allowing to park a bike, with the closing of the garage door, onto swinging the interleading door. Exchange for slippers, Upstairs, the hinges - squeak, squeak - as the door swings - Twock - shut, Rico’s frail frame appears in the gapping doorway.
Intertwining talks with the chaotic spills of children’s babble and laughter, I exchange greetings with Rico, His voice carries the familiar warm of a Pisces, “_‘Beau-Frère’ he says with a smile, a term that translates literally to ‘handsome brother,’ but mean ‘brother-in-law.’_” His words resonate as though I’ve always belonged with Ingrid. While his day at Alstom, etched into his expression.
Shadows the Dragon, ‘I’m majestic. I rule men. I am invincible,’ the conversation turns to Didier, his adoptive son, spills with pride studying at the school of landscape architecture, in Brest. As Ingrid places a pot and pan in the middle of the table, dishing up lunch. While conversing, around the meal, and sharing a glass of red wine clink, ‘Cheers!’ Rico had fetched the bottle from the storeroom under the stairs, celebrating my arrival.
Afterward, Rico excuses himself, retreating for a siesta, leaving a soft pause in the afternoon. The house exhales, flowing empty once more.
After dropping Chantal at preschool, the day stretches into an errand. Ingrid pulls into the supermarket covered parking. We step out. I relay Ingrid, wandering with the trolley indoors. Ingrid leads through the aisles, her hands dancing between the shelves' panoply, refrigerators, and fresh produce, stacking the basket. The quiet murmur of our conversing, shut past the cashier, packs the Audi, and purr out the parking. Driving home across the river, the railway crossing, whining into the hills, saying, “Quand Rico sera à la maison, vous pourrez discuter ensemble — When, he’s home, you can talk together,” Ingrid says as we arrange groceries into cupboards and the fridge.
The late afternoon faints into evening. The stairwell walls resonate with the familiar cadence of the garage door opening, followed by a brief, telling silence. “C’est Rico, qui rentre à la maison — That’s Rico, coming home.” Ingrid remarks, as the echo settles. Until - squeak, squeak - the door swings open - Twock - shut. Rico appears in the dining room. Greeting, and calling me along, into the backyard, heads toward his chickens pen in the far-left corner of the tennis court.
Dinner gathers the family around the table, a symphony of clinking utensils, playful squabbles, and bursts of laughter. Rico restores order among the children with a playful referee’s authority, wielding yellow and red cards in hand. His presence is calm, yet commanding, his smile bearing the subtle weight of a long day.
Once the desert concludes, the children scatter from the table, their footsteps fading through the house. Lending Ingrid a hand clearing the last plates, passing by as she loads the dishwasher. Rico, pose glasses, lingering before a quiet withdrawal. With a tethering conversation - squeak, squeak, twock - crossing the stairwell landing through the opposite small pane wooden door. Leading the quiet, soulless wing of the house.
The stretch of the dining table looms in the space, reserved for weekend family gatherings. Beyond, the facebrick fireplace chilled, sentinel to the sunken lounge. Pressing the remote control, switches on the Television. The screen bursts to life with a static hiss, settling into an African wicker rocking chair in the drone of an evening broadcast.
I’m left puzzled by the endless monotony of the reporters, their voices melding into a low hum. Rico interrupts the flow, his voice pragmatic. “Giobbini’s son, and Eric, are close friends. They played in the local league.” Rico says, cutting through the noise. “We meet at indoor football matches.” He pauses. “Il ne peut pas te garantir un emploi avant de te rencontrer — He can’t guarantee you a job, before meeting you.”
‘That’s to be expected,’ crosses my mind. As I return, looking at Rico’s focus. François Mitterrand’s face fills the frame, his speech unfurling from behind the imposing desk. My mind measuring the French president’s art of speaking for hours without saying anything.
After spending Monday with my sister Ingrid and family, I find myself attune to the rhythm of French culture. Driving her Fiat Uno, through the quirks of intersection tricolor lenses, comical dwarf besides the peculiar international traffic lights. Until, in a Belfort adjoining town, I pull up to a barrier. The guard waves me through toward a banal cubic structure — modern oversized glazed windows, at the forefront of the construction yard. I drive down the gritty two-way driveway to tandem-axel, dumping trucks in the distance. I veer to pulling up on the apron before the glazed entrance.
Curiosity sharpens as I step out and enter the reception area. A sturdy Italian — Giobbini — emerges from a sleek glazed executive office without preamble. He walks me outside, approaching a waiting BMW. Without much ado. He gestures toward the passenger side, saying. “Monte dans la voiture — Get in the car.” I join him. Slipping into the driver’s seat, he starts the engine and drives off. The car purrs by the lifted boom, into the suburban street.
The outskirts unfurl before us in a sprawl of villas. Giobbini stops the car, where through the side window past the man’s profile — a bulldozed expanse of land, to a concrete slab, leaves to believe won, a town planning block of apartments. Giobbini leads me onto the site, where rugged workmen, are laying out the superstructure’s formwork, across a raw concrete slab. Left with an excavated moat delineates the underground parking concrete skeleton. We leave the surveyed site, returning to the BMW, and drive on. He shows me another project — a school slated for an additional wing — We head back to the office. Before parting, Giobbini, says, “The Paris project is yours. But first, show us what you can do.”
“Prouvez-vous, et le site est à vous. Planifiez-le. — Prove yourself and the site is yours. Lay it out.”
By Monday, I was stepping into Pierrot’s domain: the second phase of the “Lycée de Tales à Valentigney-Montbéliard.” Only later would I realize the weight of Giobbini’s decision, taking the site away from Pierrot’s pride.
By Wednesday morning, I’m pulling up in Ingrid’s Fiat Uno, stepping into Giobbini’s reception. The man walks out of his office. He strides down the wide, beaten driveway to a shed at the yard’s edge. He pushes open one leaf of the double door, revealing a cozy stretch table surrounded by seated workers indulging in a casual French breakfast, leaving me baffled.
I linger behind Giobbini as he weaves through the men, extending a hand over their shoulders and breaking their chatter. The workers look up from chunks of baguettes and steaming coffee mugs to exchange casual handshakes. My mind, alert and unsettled, questioned. ‘What’s going on here?’ As Giobbini introduces me to each man, repetitive and demanding patience, I suppress the urge to rush through a fifteenish of men before reaching the table’s end. Giobbini heads back along the opposite side, with the same rigor, toward the door. Pulling it open and existing to the driveway.
Walking abreast, he drops me by Ingrid’s Uno, through a pause and a few words. Giobbini heads to his office, as I’m backing up and driving off, leaving the yard behind. I pass through the gate, the morning faded as I trace my way home to Ingrid.
Each morning, I stepped into the shed, greeted by a sea of rough faces. Handshakes followed—a ritual spanning workers, drivers, and even office staff. By the end, I couldn’t help but sigh, ‘What a waste of time.
Monday morning, I watched the guys. Before starting up the truck, the driver did his round of handshakes. The men in charge did the same, the office staff did too. “Get in there,” I told myself. I scheme to speed up the ritual. Skipping every second man, extending a hand between shoulders to those who don’t even glance back. Then, every third interval, I shake hands with a bunch of men, all too sudden, to absorb identifying the one for the others with loose handshakes.
In the week's course, stepping out of Ingrid’s Fiat Uno into summer morning sunlight, a figure, trailing a shadow, emerges from the distant shed door. I bear no heed to this new milieu until approaching along the yard’s driveway. The slender Maghrebian workman, who, I thought, was leaving the yard. He twirls at my level and accosts me. “Tu ne m’aides plus ? — Don’t you like me anymore?”
The Maghrebian’s words pierce my consciousness. If it had been any other of the rugged workman. I might have brushed it off. But he’s the most gentle, handsome and friendly of the crew. “Pourquoi tu demandes ? — why you’re asking?” I frown.
“Parce que tu ne me serres plus la main — Because you don’t shake my hand.” the young Maghrebian man replies.
I drive into a neighboring town, reminiscing about how I frizzled the man’s feelings. Pulling up to the construction site, I step out, trailing behind Latino French men emerging from the side office, sturdy in their boots. I couldn’t at a glance see a pair meant to fit me.
Blending into the morning rhythm, I am left to trail toward French artistry in the school's architecture. My shoes grown heavy and thick with mud churned by the past week’s rains. Tread along the truck tracks pooling with water. A path winds toward the skeletal structure — windows absent, a crane towering besides doorways outlined beneath an open stairway.
During the day, the handsome father-and-son team stands out, managing the construction site with their quiet allure — shadow among the cargo-clad figures. The son hands me a theodolite to set up on the tripod, my ego masking the novelty. Schooling myself in marking the levels for a classroom’s surface bed in a corner of the site — a process I carried out with an assistant at either end of a see-through tube, marking the water levels.
At lunch break, I follow the team into the site office, feeling the need to integrate. Lunch boxes open as place markers, my isolation from the men. After fumbling among them the previous day as an outcast, I diverted my course before reaching the site mess room. I stopped by a kiosk to purchase a copy of the Wall Street Journal. Seated on a corner chair, I unfold the newspaper pages, retreating into its words, stealing over-the-top glances at the men.
During the week, a quiet storm gathers. The father figure — no more than an older brother and foreman — watches me from the corner of his eyes, his distant gaze trailing me. Meanwhile, the son like age difference and build, and younger brother, who handed me the theodolite to mark the surface bed, passed on his confrontational glances then, and weighs stone heavier by the day. Their eyes dart my way through a little brother’s immaturity to a big brother’s protection, peering through interstices of workmen. The air ripples with a palpable tension — a blend of resentment and judgement that drifts across the site with an unspoken indictment.
By Friday, at lunch break, the site office fills with men, the tension rising to a crescendo. A quiet animosity thickens the atmosphere as their eyes linger on the cover pages of The New York Times in my hands. Sidelong glances whisper a collective thought: ‘You don’t belong here.’
The younger, slight brother seems to embody a simmering frustration, stocking an undercurrent of disdain for American influence. On the way back to the construction site, his words lash out: “...vous sales Américains ! — …you dirty Americans!”
He retreated after conferring with his older, stout brother, their eyes flicking in my direction, as if asking. “What is he doing here? He doesn’t fit into our system. He doesn’t know his job.” These unspoken looks anchor in my routine, raising my Sun in Warthog to the forefront, nurturing as I drive away for the weekend.
Merging from suburban streets onto the highway, I pirated the slight brother’s mind, wondering, ‘Is it the fear of losing his auto-promised position to an outsider?’
While I’m unconscious, of my fading enterprising stamina that defined me — arriving in the United States, to enroll at New York University. Brought myself up to date with laws and construction management, carving a path to influential positions in the construction industry.
Driving Ingrid’s Uno on Monday morning, I pull up in the Giobbini’s yard, where the building sits at the foot of the parent’s house, with their family villa overlooking the scene. Passing Mr. Giobbini between parked cars, behind him the sign overhead: “Bureau — Office.” His words carry the construction site’s mood as he addresses me: “Je respecterai notre accord. La période d’essai de deux semaines — I’ll honour our agreement. The two-week trial period.”
Giobbini’s tone was a stark contrast to the warmth of his initial invitation, offering coffee and politeness. “You’re not suited!”
‘Why does he tell me that? After my first week?’ I reflect.
“Monsieur Giobbini! Comment pouvez-vous me dire que je ne suis pas adapté ? — Mr. Giobbini! How can you tell me I’m not suited?” I ask. Adding, “Il a plu toute la semaine ! Je n’ai rien fait d’autre que d’observer et d’apprendre comment les choses se passent… ici, en France. Je comprendrais si j’avais fait une erreur ou si j’avais dirigé un chantier. Mais vous condamnez mon travail avant même qu’il ne commence ? — It rained the entire week? I have done nothing but watch and learn how things are done… Here in France. I’d understand if I had made a mistake, or if I’d run a site. But, you condemn my work before it even begins?”
Mr. Giobbini leaning against one of a staff’s cars, his gaze dropping to the grit on the driveway apron. “I’m thinking,” he says.
“What has he to think about?” I wonder.
He steps indoors, the stud brother fitting the picture, Danie, the contract manager, or Pierrot, the slight foreman. I had Pierrot’s site in mind. “Si j’avais commencé à creuser des trous avec une pelle dans la boue, n’aurais-je pas été adapté ? — Had I started digging holes with a shovel in the mud, wouldn’t have been suitable?” It sits deeper than my work. “Je ne suis pas venu de New York pour faire le travail d’un maçon… — I didn’t come from New York to do a mason’s job…” I say. As Danie sits at the desk of an open-plan office.
Mr. Giobbini deliberates, his thoughts impenetrable to both Danie and me.
In time, I’ll find myself walking the Parisian streets, and come upon a square, my eyes catch a sign perched high atop a construction site enclosure: “Giobbini Entrepreneur en Bâtiment — Giobbini Building Contractor.” Highlighted by a tandem-axle dumper truck maneuvering through the trickle of traffic. One of those trucks building up the tarmac with red clay track out into the street. In crossing the gateway, an excavator digging a pit amid a backdrop, conserving brick facades of adjoining properties. Giobbini’s words echoing in my mind. “Le chantier n’est pas prêt. — The site isn’t ready.” But what he didn’t say, writing in the thoughtful glances exchanged around me. “Où allons-nous le mettre en attendant ? — Where will we put him meanwhile?”
Giobbini shakes my hand, after taking ample time to think, pushing the brothers aside, “Venez nous rejoindre. — Come and join us.”
As we walked towards the shed at the bottom of the builder’s yard, I felt myself weltering under the mistrust. Yet, Giobbini wiped from my mind the surging problems around me. I needed to pierce through the core of it and mount my defense. The younger brother’s unwillingness — his youth measured against my experience — had sown seeds of doubt, his lies feeding his older brother’s ear.
“Votre français… — Your French…” Mr. Giobbini began, his words in the air. After a pause, he adds, “Le français sur un chantier est essentiel ? — French on a building site is essential?”
My mind drifts to a distant memory, reaching into a vocabulary drawer formed during my time at Goma’s Belgian-French elementary school. More recent, I recall struggling to ask Ingrid for a rag helping at the sink, fumbling for the translation. When I finally pronounced “loque,” the word came to sit in the forefront of my mind. Recalling Francine’s wild laughter, when I asked with a curious phrasing, “Tu veux me marier?” Instead of the more intimate “Tu veux m’épouser?” The choice of words lingered in the air then, which wasn’t simply asking a question of wanting her a partner to share a life. ‘No!’ I had asked about the act, the ritual — the formal moment of standing before others and sealing the union.
“Est-ce une raison pour mon incapacité à travailler sur un chantier en France ? — Is that a reason for my inability to work on a construction site in France,” I asked Giobbini. “Is there is anything wrong with me speaking to you?”
“Non. -- No.” Giobbini replies, without further explanation.
Running out of excuses, Mr. Giobbini leads the way towards the shed. At the bottom of the yard, he pushes the door to reveal a table surrounded by workers. Their rough, weathered faces turn toward us, eyes gleaming with curiosity. The table, draped with a white cloth, scattered with baguettes and bottles of wine, while women staff, in their midst — rich with camaraderie and tradition.
Giobbini’s voice carries addressing the shed: “Danie est avec nous depuis trente ans. Trente ans de service continu dans l’industrie de la construction, et c’est pourquoi je lui remets cette médaille — Danie’s been with us for thirty years. Thirty years of continuous service in the construction industry, and I offer this medallion.”
My vision not falters, not extending beyond the rejection of workers on site. A preemptive discrepancy before Giobbini can afford me a site. From excavations and raising the concrete skeleton of a project. Thoughtful, with gantries overhead to tight packed road signs attempting to blur my way. I veer off the highway onto a two-lane road’s brief wine, raising from sleek fields over the horizon’s thin trails of false brick and concrete rubble. Beginning to emerge from the outskirts of the city, rising, unfolding as a cubist tableau. Village houses huddle closer, narrowing the streets to thickening traffic, culminating in a roundabout that attempts to spin me off course. But I caught a Belfort pointer, discarding signs to foreign orientations, to overpass another cross county highway.
From day to day, I shortcut my course across the city — prolonging the river’s edge to the bridge to weave across, crossing the famous Paris-Swiss railway, winding into the hill to steer off the country road into the Evette-Salbert exurb, on the piedmont pulling into the driveway. Stepping indoors, I greet Ingrid and the trickling-in homecoming family. We share the evening’s rhythm: dinner, then the shedding-card game of Uno, playing deep into the night. Until, Ingrid and Rico retreat behind their door. As they vanish, across the corridor, I slip behind my door, shutting, kicking off my shoes, shedding my clothes. I dive into bed, with a stifling liberty of a stranger at home with my sister’s family.
The first distant ring of the phone, echoes sharp, bouncing in circles lost among the dining room walls, the tiled floor, and the ceiling. I leap out of a dream, knowing I have to catch the lost intrusive rings from ghosting into the adjacent room, awaking Ingrid. Darting out, I launch my eyesight into the darkness, grope up to flick the light switch, across the dining table, attempt to stifle the rings. ‘My Little Sparrow,’ I murmur, imagining her across the Atlantic. ‘Only your Fire can take the oxygen out of my breath.’ Besides the roller blinds shutting out the night from reaching the patio door, her rings persist. In a last leap, I whisk the handset, bringing a fist full of warm knuckles to my cheek, “Hello!”
My heart melts at the soft whisper of her voice. “It’s silly, isn’t it? It’s just… You’re out there in France, ‘…in my hometown!’ New York, feels… bigger, somehow. Or maybe smaller. I can’t tell. The studio is emptier — even ‘SHE’_” Francine’s laughter crackles through the line, tinged with longing. Her voice ebbs and then falls silent, leaving me with the chill of her departure—the fire she stoked extinguished too soon — her, he, a silent presence in her meeting in New York. My mind flashes back to welcoming the French cowgirl, unbridled, like a stallion for her to ride.
Her words press against my chest as I glance at my wristwatch, ‘2 am?’ Only an audacious Francine. ‘My little Sparrow!’ I murmur, imagining her across the Atlantic. ‘It’s 8 p.m. in New York.’
“I’m still on SHE…” Without saying as much, ‘… It’s our storyline.’ Francine leaves me to reminisce about her pointillist hand over the canvas, but my mind smokes out, my heart stirring more than I can bear. A pause lingers. Her voice softens, vulnerable. Her loneliness is palpable, yet I can’t offer the solace she seeks.
I listen and entangle answers, too brief, as I’m measuring the weight of her call - tick-tock … - as though we’re sitting at the opposite end of an Aladdin rug. The cost of the distance feels heavier than the soothing phone call, raising my anxiety, a promise I cannot tether to resolve.
Francine talks, while my unease as my voice wafts over and under the dining table and chairs, turning the corner of the wall, into the corridor, finding door cracks, and the adjoining wall resonates. I sense Ingrid listening, connecting my voice to her best friend’s daughter, and let be to fall asleep again.
Francine’s voice, doubt, my implication in her dilemma. Her thoughts in waves, she exhales and ebbs. Why aren’t you saying anything? “_’SHE’ stretches her thoughts to doubt me, the question feeling bigger somehow… Or maybe smaller, falling off the edge.” She catches herself, voice brightening, “How’s France?” But my mind wouldn’t engage my cracked heart at trusting her again.
I couldn’t encourage Francine with a promise, couldn’t abandon the path Aetheria had assured — a destiny that stretches beyond New York, beyond Francine. Aetheria’s future is timeless ahead, beyond what I dared trust in Francine’s heart. I thaw, hang up, return to bed, and lay awake, untangling the weight of her call.
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