YD6-73(MVDH) – Why Aetheria Leads a Flanders Bus Ride to Fetch a French Newspaper in Brussels

 

BOOK SYNOPSIS: Step into this journey of becoming, where the cosmos whispers its secrets, and identity blooms like dawn. 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. 

Chapter Synopsis:  A bus departs through mist-veiled Flanders, chasing the glint of Helios across hedgerows and towns where languages divide and blend. Guided by Aetheria’s hush, the search for a French newspaper becomes something more—a navigation through memory, estrangement, and subtle hauntings. But where light falters, Nyx waits. This is a quiet passage through thresholds, both geographic and unseen.

YD6-73(MVDH) – Why Aetheria Leads a Flanders Bus Ride to Fetch a French Newspaper in Brussels

Amidst Mariette and I, breathing, a flock of words wavers over the table. Youthful, she kindles the Somers household like striking a match to the wick of a lamp light flame--the thread of our conversation into a glow of the Somers family i didn’t know existed--ideas, warmth holographic image to mind, expanding Ingrid’s brief explanation, yesterday from the north station, parisian payphone call, the foster family. In my mind, a tangle of sisters, 9-year-old Ilse, her 14, Ingrid and 16, Ilona capering in the street, heading with Mariette’s Father--appears up the street in the phantom of a distancing earlier taxi--toward a junction ith a concrete road, Entering the corner bar. the hydra of my mind, outside the window, the girls weaving behind men and women at stand-up tables, chatting with eyes shifting on the girls--elaborating on the subject of the girls repatriated from the Belgian Congo. 

Standing up, Mariette chills the subject of our conversation over the kitchen table, her focus adrift.  She rises from her chair, her steps dithering scuffle. Her hands scuffle the backrest of the vacated chair, oblivious to an heirloom decor nestled by the buffet-vaisselier cabinet, flanked by the sentinels of rich red-grained doors--the one behind her chair, though our earlier entryway, shielding a particular mystery within a household atrium. Her eyes drift past the head of the table, arch the shadow of the juxtaposed right-hand door slips away into ceramic floor gleam, 

She grazes the tall broom cupboard opposite, the fridge bulk cramped against the debut of the worktop. Her hand settled on the worktop. ‘Let’s concentrate,’ language of her hesitation. She butts up--at the heart a relic of continuity. Her hair is still untouched by gray, brushing the bottom ridge of the overhead cabinet doors. my vantage sealed from the percolator. She lifts the jug off the percolator heating pad, with a slight tremor in her grips, she sidles toward the kitchen sink, its chrome glinting beneath the window’s spill of light. 

She liberates her right hand from following the outlines of her kitchen, reaching for the spiky knob of the faucet. Twisting, to water spouts, echo the hollow carafe, troubling at sight filling a soft choking. Cutting off the stream, and returns with the carafe quivering a stream into the percolator’s tank. 

Behind the top cabinet door, on an eye-level shelf, a filter moth-flutters between her fingers before sitting into the holder. From a brick-wrapped packet of coffee, she scoops, pouring the ground grains into the filter. I waste away watching, expecting her to falter, but she doesn’t, and flicks the switch. The percolator exhales a sigh of vapor release, left to imagine its breathing morphing to a trickle.

Mariette dithers in her gait, little footsteps swirling away, only to coil back, and again, her gaze orbiting the percolator until its gargles subsides into silence. She pours the brewed coffee into a fine bone porcelain cup, unhooked from underneath the cabinet’s bottom shelf, pairing it with a saucer drawn from behind the top door. Returning to her seat across from me, she falters--her gaze sinking into the cup after a sip, sifting through memories. Her eyes lift, a narrow-lips smile untouched by wrinkles, eyes waving me on. “Help yourself,” she intones, echoing the unspoken--’I used to have a family, a brother to care for.’ 

I rise from my chair, help myself to a cup--the warmth steeping my fingers--pair it with a saucer, then settle back into my seat, blurting. “... After boarding school, here in Kain, by Tournai, Igor and I landed in Kyalami.” 

“Kyalami” awakes Mariette driving me south around Brussels, suscitated in my mind the map to the crossroads to Mechelen. Playing holographic, a school-going girl in a beige uniform growing up etched against a landscape, as echoes ‘Kontich,’ De-M’ma’s, mother’s birthplace in the longitude of my birth town perching on the edge of Antwerp. 

Chatting into the afternoon, the sun peeks Helios’ shaft at an angle into the kitchen. She drives me, painting the canvas of my mind--the street where the taxi dropped me off earlier. Mariette’s old lady’s glimpse through the window, where she had sought her husband--no longer on the scene. Only to seek through curls of smoke her son Frans at standby tables. Headed inside the beer hall, pull him from the midst of beer-drinkers--her hands on the reins holding this small family of batchelors.

We’ve exhausted the sunlight talking, unearthing the twin-closeness Mariettes had shared with her cousin through childhood and adolescence, The evening chill a bouncing Nyx’s apparition, my mind flips, snapping back to my survival mode in this world where social and job values orbit the tangible. Breaking the thread of memories, I ask, “Ou puis-je me procurer d’un journal? Where can I get a French newspaper?”

“Attention!--Careful!” Mariette repeats. Her hand snaps upward, forceful waves slicing the air--up and down, her brows knit tights, her voice rising. Her words clash against the tranquil hush of her enclave. I blink, oblivious to what this is about. 

Breaking the evening’s rhythm as we drift through stories of the family--from which De_P’pa, father, seemed to have rifted us into isolation--Mariette rises from her chair. On that note, she says, “Laisse-moi te montrer ta chambre--let me show you to your room.” 

She rises, dithering away around the backrest of her chair, swinging back the door alongside the buffet-vaisselier cabinet, slipping into the hollow shadow of the atrium. She rounds the corner of the blind stairway shaft wall to the basement, she dithers small steps. Crossing toward the flight of stairs, she reaches the bottom tread, when I nip off pulling the offside door clearing the gazebo vestibule. I veer, tugging my suitcases from underneath the stairs, catching up with Mariette a few risers up the carpet runner, silhouette in the last filtering daylight. 

My feet stick, on the rug creeping up the risers. At her slow treads, my mind dwindles to grips vitality in each of the classic brass rods pinning the carpet into the creases, tacked by rings into the redwood. My balance on the edge of tilting. She turns the dogleg ahead, yawning open into the atrium, on the landing she vanishes. 

I catch up with her at the right-hand gaping doorway, she paused, glancing over my shoulders, nods toward the sentinel of a door “C’est la chambre de Frans--That’s Frans’ room,” the sigh of a widow intoned in her voice, her living sole echo, ‘Don’t go in there.’ while red-wood sentinel stand among doors that ghost each member of the family, lingering in the grains, shadows cast where footsteps once fell. 

Her invitation leads me to a mansard room, pausing before the side-panel of a wardrobe jutting toward a single bed in the room. A slit window opens on the street, cloaked under Nyx’s veil of the night. Mariette dithers with little steps, turning back. Her little eyes settle on the bed--blanket. Top sheet and pillow, saying. “C’est la seule chambre disponible--It’s the only room available—You can stay here.’ 

She dithers past me, and I offer her a quiet goodnight and thanks. I remain behind, stepping deeper into the room, past the double door wardrobe, settling my suitcases, feeling a family atmosphere for my luggage--safe at home, My gaze following mariette, half-departed, I’m unpacking my hygiene bag. Half-there, with a sigh, she says. “C’etait la chamber d’August--It was August’s room,” she intones, “He wasn’t my favored brother.” 

Out from the atrium’s hollow dark--behind the door’s faint crack--Mariette’s figure waxes, emerges, eyes shifting as the night gives way to bright morning light--Aetheria’s mirage at her encounter, the welcoming of a queen returning to her morning court. 

Through a blush of new light, Mariette dithers beside the buffet-vaisselier, her hand trailing over the straight wooden backrest. Aetheria, aglow, stirs between us, as I cradle a cup of brewed coffee. Mariette rounds to sit at the table, meeting the coffee I pose. In a breath of conversation, picking up where the hush of the night had paused us. I settled with my coffee, slipping in: “Ou puis-je avoir un journal français--Where can I get a French newspaper?”

After giving me directions in the now--present--she drifts into recollection. In her youth, the Flemish bourgeoisie spoke French across the Flanders. Now her brows pinch, betraying a generational turn: the Flemings growing intolerances of French. Yet, she’s sending me off--Brussels-bound--toward the capital’s bilingual enclave. 

“Merci--Thanks,” I say, rising from my chair, offering a parting glance. I step past the head of the table, toward the red-wood sentinel of a door. Between the buffet-vaisselier and the tall broom cupboard, I crank the lever--swing the door open, after me I pull shut behind. 

Aetheria leads me in the glow--her seek-me-and-find me peeking through the slotted quartet of fluted windows, ousting the last of Nyx’s chill night-air from the vestibule. Her warmth breath in, reaches for me, call me to side step, to brush a hand by the door lever--swinging the leaf wide to the fir’s golden glimmer of majestic palm-branches--without voice, saying: ‘Do you realize why, all these years, I've led your path here?’ 

I'm briefly distracted--beneath the fir’s skirt, Nyx still hides, witchy in the shadows of brushwood--where Helios’ light falters. I step forward, crunching the gritty driveway, open to Helios' golden glow.

Aetheria anchors the silent church steeple, her mirage efflorescent in white stone. I turn away in the morning hush, stepping out through the gateway. The hamlet peels away--a furlong of modern asphalt still holds a breath of the night, absent of souls I'd rather not meet. Yet I have to progress, at leisure--my gaze slipping into overgrown hedges, toward the fragmented looming of enigmatic mansions submerged in woodlands, half waking in shadows. 

At the corner, the pink brasserie leans into an age of flat-boxed architecture--sun-bleached, daylight-derelict. But, Mariette’s words return, echoing. “Across the street. There, you can catch the bus into Brussels.”

Across the intersection, Aetheria guides my eyes to the woman--lustrously dressed--stands by a weather-darkened wooden stall, African-effaced, half swallowed by overgrown vegetation. Her presence alone dispels my doubts: this country road still breathes, and shuttle buses still come. 

I jaywalk the deserted concrete road toward the inbound lane with a distant wave of trickling traffic, as I step the curb, to stand by the bus halt.

As I gaze into the oncoming stream of traffic--searching for signs of the bus--my eyes drift again to the woman’s dark-blond mane, glinting at the whoosh of passing cars--I’ve misread the hamlet’s silence, isolation, a mere veil. 

First one, then others--young men leave the weekend behind. Fresh in monday suits, they begin to appear in long shadows, a glint on slender briefcases in hand. They emerge from an array of distant dark cracks, drawn toward a scatter of bright houses. One by one, they jaywalk the concrete road, converging at the halt. 

Then, over a wave of the undulating rooftops, gleaming in the upcoming light, a broad windshield draws near. The Lijn bus snout pulls up with a huff--and the gathered funnel, pressed at the doors, pivots aside.

I follow the quiet queue, spying on their hands--some clocking a ticket, others paying cash. After handing a few coins to the driver, the shelter slips backward, and I find a seat at the front. 

Through the windshield, waves of cars overtake the bus, pulling distance from the African-halt slipping behind. I shift my gaze to the efflorescent concrete road ahead--Aetheria threading the whiteness with a hush of caution, etching my map. 

I pinpoint a milestone: the ingress cobblestone farm road, tracing yesterday’s taxi ride into Beigem’s hamlet. The bus curves in a wide, slow S-bend--into a four-ways strip mall off the corner brasserie. 

Helios' golden paw, lays on the corner paved traffic yard, to bus shelter terminals diesel smudge driveway and fuel pumps, before launching onward an absurd fencing to far spreading farms lands, of street-front rows of townhouses. As I settle with the bus' course. Hence, promising my taste buds, ‘I’m going to treat you--real Belgian fries.’ 

The bus ride punctuates itself with huffs and pivotal doors--passengers boarding. We duck in the shadows of underpass--Brussel’s Ring--then thread through thickening suburbia, until, in its midst, a fourway morph: rows of townhouses, their ground-floor facades fenestrated, are overwhelmed. 

Aetheria flares--an unmistakable burst of kaleidoscopic plinths, storefront insignia flickering, brand logos flaring across glass. Early pedestrians slice shadows through the  bright signs. Flashing publicity, intuitive, voiceless--nag and alert me: ‘look out.’ 

The driver veers the bus through the traffic lights. A mounting anxiety stirs--Mariette’s words, uncertain but resonant: “Les feux, descendre--traffic lights, get off.” At leisure, yet inwardly compelled, I rise from my seat. As if dedicated to pressing the stop button. The street straightens ahead. The bus coasts--a huffing glides into pause. Glass doors rotate, clip to the sides, waving me down into the street mall where retailers spread wings before me. 

The bus roars away, its spectral reflection slipping off the storefront glass. My gaze follows its course--then catches, a few stores further, on an easel: a woman in oversized sunglasses leans against a wrought-iron café chair—the Eiffel Tower blurred behind her in shimmering heat. Paris Match blazoned in thick white Helvetica. Below it: “ÉTÉ ’91 : Le Monde Change, Le Style Reste. 

She lures me. Inside, a narrow passage flanked by racks--magazines in garish rows, names I barely register as I walk toward the rear, where the storekeeper is buried behind a bloated counter of clutter. I lean in, ego emboldened by small classified dreams--asks. “Quel est le journal français le plus populaire?--Which is the most popular French newspaper”

The newspaperman answers, “Le Soir.” His eyes point over the counter. My own gaze stumbles into a clutter of headlines, scattered across the desk front shelf. I settled on the tallest pile. Pick up a copy. Hand over a few coins. 

Greedy eyes already scan for the exit. Back in the street, I drift again into Helios' glow overwhelming the bus’ route--a corridor morphing margined fenestrated townhouses to town-mansions of the early 1900s blue stone fenestrated facades retreating shades facades a cluttering distant haze with the sky peeking over the rooftops. 

As I stroll up the boulevard, the distance haze irons out the sculptured stone facades--a blend of brick, and ashlar quoins--into a seamless stretch where the street splits bending the boulevard. a traffic web surges a flurry of motion before storefronts of cars intertwined with pedestrians. But in my approach the bustling thins into order. Cars slipping through the street, pedestrians cross in quieter streams, vanish behind blind corners. 

As I turned the corner, in the hollow of the day, Helios’ golden glow rest across a wide and deep square. I search--to my disappointment: ‘No Frit Kot--No French Fry kiosk’ amongst the threading silver tram rails, and bustling platforms, connecting a periphery of bus shelters, encircled by brasseries, snack bars. 

I gasp, ‘That can’t be true?’ Scanning closer--on the very sidewalk beneath my steps--I spot a middle-aged man, tall behind the counter, tucked among the storefronts. I step up. Alongside his chef’s face, my greedy eyes run down the price listing on the back wall. And say. “Un grand, s'il vous plait--A large one, please.”

The man, dressed in a chef’s white, turns his back. My guts stir, kneading, sniffing the odor in the oil vapor, my thoughts doodles--blind hands. He scoops the stainless-steel shelf, from a mount of cooling a first of briefly fried potato chips. Dumps them into the oil - drizzle - in the tank he stirs. He lifts the basket--dripping--shaking the residual oil, flips the portion into a conic strainer, while fishing with his backet a few last frizzling shards. Shakes lose the oils. I feel cheated as the spatula spills, the shaking conic carton, like grasshoppers from the conic flare’s brim back into the oil. I follow the chef’s held French fries approach handing over it across the counter. Coins clink in trace. “Merci--Thanks,” I say, the newspaper beneath my arm. I step aside, fingers finding a fry. Pinch the tip. The pad of my fingers sting from the heat. My teeth nip, the morsel rolls, leaving a trail of fire, through my mouth, tongue tip, inner cheek, my mouth now pepper hot, and proceeding to nip the fry, and another. 

Helios fooled me into sunset, as I retraced my steps toward the halt where I alighted this morning. Crossing through the outbound flow of evening traffic, I reach the opposite curb--the De Lijn bus stop signpost casting a long shadow. The bus pulls up with a huff. I board, paying my fare, entering into a quiet scatter of passengers. As the young driver pulls off, I ask, “Vous pourriez me dire ou descendre pour Beigem--Could you tell me where to alight for Beigem?” The man mumbles. “The bus terminal.” between his lips, I didn’t think further than the slender young driver’s nod--a quiet glut of concentration held to his route--’after all he is driving a bus.’ I gave him credit.

I step around the grip pole, settle onto a bench just behind the driver’s cabin, across the aisle--in profile behind the wheel he steers, through green and red traffic lenses, crawls around the corner, to heads for an evanescent glow--the last hush of the day sinking into the horizon. 

The bus threads beneath the City Ring’s underpass, anxious as Nyx’s witchy cloak draps the rooftops. Through the windshield, the world wavers--half-there, half-not, lost tracking back the morning’s map, morphing yesterday’s taxi’s ride. The corridor of townhouses fencing the farmlands to oblivion, while a mile of dim lanterns trails uncertain in the meager beam of the bus’ headlights. until the driver steers off the main road, through the crack of a sidestreet, into Nyx’s watch--where she keeps vigil over the farmer's fields. 

He steers the bus into the quiet depths of a flemish suburb--block deep of still villas. We circles a roundabout. A loop. Off the corner, a modest De Lijn signpost--

He rolls his head toward the opened door, leading his eyesight, drifting past me into the side street. Feeling abandoning my assurance, nevertheless I step off--search through the scattered sparced lampost, doubts to proceed. But the doors close behind me, my cradling glowing in the bus, tugs away, pulls off the warm window light, its bright windows vanishing in the distant hazy interstice to the main street. 

With Nyx, in a forest of villas retrieved from the street lanterns--witchy in newly established bush, wrapped in backyards--I grab my fear from my chest, hold steady, and concentrate on following the driver’s directive. Then, I step off. 

Ahead, running parallel to the main road, through the hazy procession of lamppost fading into the distance, I imagine soaring--a bird’s-eye glimpse to both my path and the ghosting taxi cross the ingress, where the cobblestone farm road bends inward toward the medieval church. 

I walk through the night’s paw--Nyx’s velvet weight lain over evanescent hip-and-ridge tiled eaves. Misty street lanterns are all the last semblance of life. I pass bare driveways, close garage doors, roller blinds settled on windowsills, a lone bulb glow by entrance. One villa to the next--families nestled cozy behind their television set, their warmth sealed tight from the cosmic vacuum. A neighborhood black cat shadows across my path, but not a soul I could accost. ‘Where am I?’ 

Then, Nyx teases me. As I cross a side street, a train of bright windows--an empty bus--slips across the interstice and disappears. ‘I could have been sitting, cradled by light?’ I’m left with only the reassurance of the main street accompanying me, carrying the thought. ‘I’ve been had!’ I cursed into the night at the Lijn driver--a dark mile stretched into an eternity. 

Dancing in the air, kaleidoscopic alongside storefronts, lights spill--partying in a mainstream. At the distant edge, Nyx hovers--poised behind tricolor lenses, policing the ghosting taxi through the empty four-way. A lure. But I continue on my shortcut path, into a wall of darkness. 

The urge for comfort between options had vanished--once more. Despite Nyx’s witchy, disorienting forest of night, I crossed over, emerging onto the paved path of gleaming dark skulls. I recollect the pattering taxi ride wavering across the cobblestone farm road. But, I vouch now for the severing misty light--tunneling the straight concrete road--and settle into my pace. 

From the blur, the sidewalk mushrooms into the dirty, flat-roofed, squatting corner brasserie. My anger and gladness wrestle as I turn away--refusing the sketchy African-bush shelter it pretends to be. My calves ache, gripped by tiredness, I peer through the brasserie windows--a somber hush stains the interior. Men had lingers there, in patronizing air, having left their women deceived. Where Frans and his father still breathed--through Mariette’s words.

The brasserie derelict--a legend of shifting population, I walk the dirt sidewalk. The properties sag behind flocculent, overbearing hedge--Nyx stalking me from yards already swallowed. Until the pitch-black clears the corner, shadowing the massive thatched-roof silhouette, and the driveway, drawn in a moonless moonlight—cat’s eyes sketching the drawn curtain--Nyx,perched on the fir’s palm branches, beside the waking sentinel of a stealth door to the chalky whitewashed facade. I veer press my way past the door--Nyx ahead of me, in the dim whitewashed vestibule, to the sentinels of doorways. I follow the calling light into the atrium, step askew into the doorway’s pivot, leaving the dining room’s slumbering furniture untouched. Back toward the wide gaping opening--Mariette standing profiled, still as a wick before a flame, before the light absorbing drawn of curtains. 

As I approach, the lounge opens--its hashed furniture dimly behind Mariette’ stance. Rooted, calm, planted to her soles, her eyes locked in obsessive fixation on the television screen--on Nagui, the host. 

Nagui shifts his weight besides a panel of six contestants at the bench. The top quiz card tucked beneath the stack, he calls the next player into participation, and steps up. 

“Nathalie!” Nagui hails.

She requests, “Deux”--two points for a question on le droit des sociétés publiques--Public Company Law. 

Nagui, grins, teasing: “Quelle est ta date d'anniversaire ?--What’s your birthday?” 

“Le cinq juin,--Fifth of June,” she answers. 

Nagui vaults the joke onward, roping the next contestant into play. Laughter canned, cascading into applause. He clutches the next quiz card, hurls it onto the stack, and with a mock flourish, wraps the round.

As the credits roll, and Nagui falls into the hush, Mariette remains fixated: ‘I could have watched you all night. . .’ She dithers forward, restless--tapping television’s fascia string of buttons, streaming through channels, settling with the late-night news. Until the screen blanks. Her little dithery steps carry her forward again--the screen flares once more, screams with static. She turns away, calling it a night.

---

You are welcome to read all the chapters and explore more at my website: How the Universe Sculptured Our Mind. I spend an absurd amount of time chasing expressions—perhaps to shame. But the challenge is mine, updates may occur without notice, shaping the timeline, perceptions. The gift is yours: thoughts, echoes, reflections. I take them with gratitude. And you—who are you, reading these lines, stepping into my genre, my style, the quiet current of my subject?

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