YD6-74(MVDH) – Aetheria Choreographs a Cascade of Visitors to the Thatched-Roof House
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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 that deepen the vision of 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 PREFACE: Visitors arrive as if summoned by something older than memory—ghosts, cousins, gardeners, even the narrator himself—all ushered through Mariette’s atrium as Aetheria stirs the air. Each presence lingers like a stanza, unfolding beneath thatched eaves and cafe curtains. But behind every polite sip of coffee, something brews: a rendezvous approaches, silent and precise, while the house breathes its secrets in shadows and half-glances.
YD6-74(MVDH) – Aetheria Choreographs a Cascade of Visitors to the Thatched-Roof House
“Mon jardinier est supposé de venir—My gardener is supposed to be coming.”
Had I not been so preoccupied with finding work, I might have heard Aetheria whispering through her mirage—Mariette, refusing to conjure ‘Jephte.’ Though her scolding tone betrays her brother, August—the thread in a feud with a nobility that lingers, half-spoken, in the ‘van der Ackeren’ name. In her treading of “My gardener. . .”—the windmill of repetition—I read a genie that doesn’t rise from the lamps.
“Go ahead, go ahead, help yourself to coffee,” Mariette entices, her warmth exuding—‘make yourself home.’ I rise from my chair and step toward the window. Before the percolator, I pour a short stream from the carafe into my used cup—my gaze drifting beyond the rim. blind to my hands returning the carafe to the hot pad. Over a cafe curtain’s plume of lace-ruffle, sunlight leans into the flower beds. The lawn, soft-fuzzed, ghosting green hands—tending, whispering to bloom. A garden alive in its absence.
I’m living with a vivid image from childhood—Aunt Carla, De_M’ma’s elder sister—hand-cultivators’ fingers deep in the soil, spade glinting, enrooting nursery flowers. I return, settle at the table, sip my coffee.
Mariette bemoaning, “Encore, il n’est pas venu—Still he hasn’t turned up.” Yet she lends no glance toward the cafe curtain streaming a morning sunlight onto the worktop’s embedded sink. I expected a pointing glance through the narrow window strip—onto a neglected side yard, framed by the neighbor’s wild hedging woods. But her indignation holds. The gardener ought to be there. She remains blind to a yard that feels owed—like a regular check-up, waiting to be groomed.
As I’m locked in thought—At dawn, I dressed. Shook out the pillow, sleeked the bed sheets and blanket. Stepped out across the room’s threshold. In the hush, I dropped a glance across the atrium’s round of sentinel doors—but weird in the deep western wall: through the ajar door, whispered an old housemaid’s moves in the air. Ghost arms removed the bed sheet, but not an underpad, and laid down fresh linen.
But then, as the house wasn’t yet engaged in the day’s activity, I slipped back on track. Sidesaddle the bed, I spread yesterday's newspaper from my journey to Brussels, across the foot. Pages crackled as I flipped past headlines—a peek past a quilt of meddled profession block ads, until the small columns of ads, in my league. I trace the construction columns trailing across pages.
Over my shoulder, a body moved past my gaping doorway. I read Mariette’s glance—the headwater of her thought on me—as she moved through the air. I let myself remain, a guest suspended in her hospitality.
Crinkling pages folded, I laid the newspaper on the dresser, thoughtful—’should I need to delve further?’ I descend the stairs. A passing glimpse toward the atrium’s western wall: the crack of the laundry door reeked of arid damp. In stealth, ghostly Mariette moved in the hush—mysteriously rid of wet linen.
I turn clockwise around the mass of the core wall, in hush, to a blind flight of stairs descending to the basement. With due respect for the privacy of spectral family members. Besides the barrel of the fluted vestibule a quartet of windows spill light. I push the kitchen into a gaping glow, shut the door behind, and help myself—preparing a carafe of coffee, sitting at the table through the gargles to a sight of vapor, then sipping.
Then—Mariette’s figure waxes before me, emerging through her gaping doorway. Eyes low against the flare, she dithers in small steps past the backrest of her chair. She crosses the aisles—where I stood earlier—grabs the carafe from the hot pad, pours a trembling dark stream into her cup, and returns. I spur the silence with a few loose words: “Comment va le bâtiment ici—How is construction here?” She settles in her chair.
A snippet from the classified ads—the construction column nagging at hand, as Mariette rambles on about her gardener—duty stirs: “Le Soir” and a phone number to call. After a pause—feeling the words glow at heart—I count the notches on my wristwatch, without my eyes betraying. I hold, in the hush, for the distant city hum to settle, the offices bustle to settle boss in and staff to duty. ‘Ten o’clock!’ I break away from Mariette’s circling tale. I ask. “Puis-je telephoner—May I make a call?”
In an accommodating voice, Mariette says. “Le téléphone est là-bas—The phone is there,” pointing a finger over her shoulder, past the sentinel of her doorway.
I rise from the conversation table—take the long way out, between the broom cupboard and the buffet-vaisselier cabinet, around the shaft of hush where blind stairs descends to the basement, and step into the atrium.
Against the far western wall, between the twin sentinels of the toilet and bathroom-laundry, and just before a far southern door, the muzzle of a rotary phone perches on a crochet tablecloth atop spindled legs.
I lift the handset, dial the number from the sliver of Le Soir’s blurb for a construction manager. A woman with a Flemish accent answers: “Je vous transfère vers monsieur duchatel—I’ll transfer you to Mister Duchatel.”
A man replies, his accent Parisian. After a few words—I’m exhilarated: I’ve won a rendezvous.
After huffing the drain of steam and nerves, I turn away from the phone, and return into the brilliance of the kitchen—Mariette still seated where I left her, engrossed in her obsessive tale of the gardener. I pour myself another coffee to regain my seat across from her. “J’ai rendez-vous pour mercredi—I have an appointment for Wednesday.” Letting it hang. “Do you know where Anderlecht is—Avenue Clemenceau?”
“Ho!” Mariette exclaims. “Tu dois prendre le bus pour la gare du midi—You have to take the bus to the South Station.”
Her words tug me forward, but I’m still half-weaseling through the veil where Nyx welcomed me—my flight from New York trailing smoke, Paris already a fading seam. Aetheria lingers, just a breath ahead, mirage-bound in Helios’ wake, guiding me to the South Station’s milestone—my arrival at Mariette’s threshold.
Mariette surges out our conversations, dithering in tiny steps, her hand brushing the wooden backrest. She pauses, hiding her fingers curling to crank the lever, in the western shadow that flanks the buffet-vaisselier. The red-wood door groans to its hinge—she circles the mortice-lock’s edge, draws the blind lever, then evansces behind the closing leaf. A slow metallic turn of the key—its cringing spiral—slips the deadbolt smooth into the jamb.
But the hush of the door stirs—sentient of Mariette lowering her head, one eye to the keyhole, peeking at me. Satisfied I’am staying put, she straightens—teasing my mind, a voluminous figure drifting—turning, distancing, swallowed whole in the hush of the somber atrium. ‘That’s the last I’ll hear—and see,’ crossed my mind. But no—the Hydra-head of my mind still gropes, tethers to her flimsy existence.
I scout her shadow—Mariette—through the right-hand stained-glass cottage door, one of a pair filtering a northern-curtained light. The hinge offering a sentinel’s muted squawk. ‘Follow her. She’s hiding something,’ whispers my thought.
Her body—muffled in motion—presses through the air, slipping back behind those cottage doors. A gesture half-seen, half-felt, trailing the unsaid. Helios’ eastern rays—just a few—filter past the drawn lounge curtain, casting a dim light through the archway, piggybacking Mariette’s shoulders. Past the shadowed high-pad backrest, huddled at the head of the dining table, she reaches in the depth, pausing before the buffet-vaisselier.
Her body bends far over, drawn by the call of her hand, lowering behind a low cabinet door to the buffet-vaisselier. She gropes into the plinth shelf’s depth, past crowded glass—withdraws with a palm gripping the bottleneck. into the somber room she straightens, glints rising with her, hands meeting. She unscrews the cap, lifts the bottle’s bottom, pouts to her lips, rolls back her head—gulps. Then the bottle comes down. Her hand leads, reverse-engineering the motion, tucking the bottle in the depth.
The princess of her brothers, she retrieves her hand—a thief’s bipolar stealing from herself—she assured the cabinet door sits flush, innocent of all suspicion. Rising from a genuflect, she wipes her hands down her skirt, as if she wore an apron—cooking, still in some other kitchen.
Then, her gait resumes, circling away—here mind strobing. She leaves the dining table, ghosting an eight-fold of high backrest—the Somers and van der Ackeren families staring up her back. The Little Ugly Duckling slips into the hush between the parted stained-glass doors.
Such regular interludes, drawn out of her past—out of the hush of the atrium crossing, behind her dedicated door: the key turns, the mortice lock’s deadbolt slides, the lever cranks unlatching.
At the seam, in the crack, her figure waxes—Mariette, little eyes catching the glare. She dithers from the shutting door, lends a hand to the backrest, circles round. With a few fluid words, she settles into her chair—grafting in her brother Frans, though widowed only yesterday from a wedding still dancing in her mind.
My curious mind breaks through her lament: “What is your birthday?” I had already asked, when her thought traced to Mechelen. Unaware the key to opening the gates to her soul—finding her Moon in Taurus, cast under Helios’ sunlight. The shadow of that stubborn bull, frozen in the arena, fixated—then charging, unstoppable—exudes in her character.
In her brother August, she sees the toreador—her disdain etched in sighs, in whispers, in breath. The entrepreneur, marked at the margins of the family. Entangled in a medley of estrangement: a wife, a son, a lover—Antoinette, after the death of their father, the fostering of three ‘van der Ackeren’ children: Paul, Jephte, Victoria—siblings spaced five years apart.
Mariette’s effaced eyes—her gaze drifting through the aisle, past me, and into the peeking sunlight at the ruffled cafe curtain stretched across the three kitchen sashes. She speaks—of Frans—through the backyard layered tapestry, framed by the glazed door-panes. A diamond shadow falls from the kick panel. And in the crease of the corner. The glow bends into a mirage: a holographic, cadaveric man reclined in a wheelchair, a blanket covering his legs.
Mariette sighs. “Ten years!”—the tangs of disgust rising in her voice. “August était allongé là—August laid there…” Another sigh, hollow with terminal memory. “Pourquoi n’ai-je pas pu soigner Frans—Why couldn’t I have nursed Frans instead of August, into a procession to the cemetery for his burial?”
The glow chills behind me, insects—silverfish of time—feasting on the blueprints—architectural design dissolving into dust, laced with once-steadfast communal visions. Her fixation falls silent. A nod lingers. Her heart sobs. She had heard—I’ve been there, mind sunk in riffling stacks of blueprints, inches thick, back from New York. Mariette ruminates through her senses: a man needs a workspace. She rises, dithers around the backrest of her chair, She cranks the lever of her dedicated doorway, beside the flank of the buffet-vaisselier—the spill of light precipitating ahead, the phantom of her thoughts carried within, drifting through the atrium—a quiet tour though the lingering traces of Frans’ design.
Ghosting a family’s flurry, sentinel of doors breathes a come-and-go around the ground-floor atrium. Away from the northern streetfront—drawn curtain shroud the dining room, its meek luminescent filtering through stained glass doors. Before us, along the western plane, Mariette gestured toward the toilet, to a shouldering door left ajar. A bathtub’s corner glimpse in opposition to a wash trough—the laundry-bathroom speaks for itself. But then, she veers south, toward the corner. She pauses before the sealed door—almost the wife, warned not to open the forbidden one, when Bluebeard offers his keys to the castle. Unable to resist, she gently turns the key. Her fingers pause on the lever—then cranks. Light cracks the door, until the glare burns our eyes.
Unable to help herself, the lever draws her forward—she dither into the swathe of light, effaced, frowning, in a quiet secretary ushering a client of her own mind. She releases the door blind lever, dithers along the glazed wall shelved assortment of book spines. she turns to pause at the center of the room—addressing the other wall-to-wall bookcase in an introductory voice. “Frans’ ...”
Her eyes wave me toward the executive chair—a ghost of Frans lingering behind the heavy wooden desk. Then, in a lucid voice, Mariette says. “Tu peux utiliser le bureau de Frans—You may use Frans’ Study.” She turns away.
I thank her, stepping out, thinking to bring in Rico’s leather executive briefcase, my stowed Toshiba laptop—to prepare myself for an eventual landing of a job.
She pulls the door closed, stifling the bright spill of light. The latch clicks. She turns the key. Then dithers back toward the kitchen.
Twilight creep closer to the panes of the window and backdoor, until darkness boxes us into the island of kitchen’s light. By eight o’clock, Mariette rises from her chair with an assertive voice. “Je vais regarder les nouvelles—I’m going to watch the news.” She slips into a kind of rush, dithering around her chair, then vanishes through her private doorway.
She neglects to shut the door—her usual secret latching and locking into that private world, but leaves ajar. I’m given to reflect on De_M’ma’s motherly warmth in Mariette. I rise, round the table, tracking her. Across the atrium, her shadow flits behind the right-hand leaf of the lead-glass cottage doors, veiled by the blind wall—a trailing glimpse. I catch up to a strobing dim light—her dithering figure reappears, profiled through the gapping archway. She takes a step back, idyllic in her eye-fixation—straightening. Her moon-face flickers, caught in the tremulous glow of the program.
I step down the two treads into the sunken lounge, settling behind her—behind, to peer in the shadow cast by her old man and old woman’s ghost, seated across in their opposing upholstered chairs, before the brothers, Frans and August.
I lounge in the novelty of the Belgian broadcast, until boredom infiltrates, and I drift—my journey folding back—pianoing my laptop keyboard to appease a restless mind. I hold out—watching—until she switches off the set. Then, as she dithers toward the dining room, circling the stained-glass cottage doors, heading for the stairs. I’m trailing. Upstairs, with a quiet goodnight, I vanish behind the door, into August’s room for the night—leaving her with the sentinels of her family of doors.
In the morning, descending to the vestibule, I hover behind the door, snooping the stairwell’s drop to the basement onto the muzzle of a golden Opel Kadette— before easing into the kitchen’s morning glow. Aetheria’s anchors her mirage there, urging progress, coaxing her wish toward form. i ready the percolator, to a morning gargle, until a hollow steaming sigh, announcing: ‘Coffee! Ready.’
Mariette enters through her private door, reaches out and helps herself to settle behind a cup of coffee. A sip—her voice drifts beyond the frayed weave of family threads, offering snippets. Her mind seems to trumpet. ‘Yvonne’s son lodges with me.’ Suchs as the siblings’ visits to her cousin, De_M’ma, at the castle in Houtain-le-val.
But then like a call, the sentinel of the red wood door between the buffet-vaisselier and the tall broom cupboard—spooks its own lever. A slow crank down, until the door seam fractures open with a hush. A pause to popping eyeballs rises, sneaking in. A podgy old man, suited in a solicitor’s jacket and pants, his delicate entry from the vestibule.
The grandfather figure—Jean-Francois Smeets, will never be pronounced—his allure haunts in the air. Flat-footed, he paws after his creeping eyeballs—out running him. Sentient of an imminent danger, his gaze fixed on me. ’Who is he?’ speaks, though no words escape. While I sith in quiet harmony, chatting with Mariette across the kitchen table.
He halts—freezes—then reforms his mind—thawing into a scuffling few paces before pausing besides the buffet-vaisselier. He lends no eye to his hand, but holds the beacon of his mind steady—his gaze trained in our midst. Yet the hand breaks away from his suit, drifting, groping—and with a silent slap, lands flat atop the serving-height shelf.
Retracting, the hand withdraws with Mariette’s morning mail—sliding off that shelf’s bullnose edge in a stealth-flood of his palm, white-cornered peeks of a squarish official bank envelope flashing. Behind Mariette’s back, his hand folding hand retrieves it—then ducks it in his wide trousers’ hip pocket.
‘I’ve only been around for a few days—a guest. My observations bear no witness.’ I drop the thought. ‘He is a terrible magician.’ The hand returns empty. Though I feel like screaming. ‘What are you up to?’—the echo might slap back. ‘It’s none of my business?’ I remind myself. Then, from the corner of her eye, Mariette startles at the stranger’s slink forward, “Hé, Tonton… ben jij het?—Ho Tonton. . . Is it you?”
He eases the door shut, buying a reflection, then nods me a greeting. He turns to charm Mariette into the ignorance of his deed. “En, hoe gaat het vandaag met je, Mariette?—And, how are you today, Mariette?” At the head of the table, fingers wrap the backrest. On behalf of Mariette, I say in silence. ’I’ve seen through your act.’
Mariette lags a twist in her chair—a hint of a turn, a glint in her eyes. “C’est Tonton—That Uncle-?” But on second thought, a shadow crosses her gaze: ‘Who are you, actually? I don’t know you. . . not even your name. . . only to remember he came in the shadow of Victoria?’
He pulls the chair into the kitchen aisle—angled for an interrogation, laying bare a religious fake charm for the lonely woman. He shuffles, settling to the seat. A spearhead of family-ties drives into his chest—his eyes flare, the archer’s bow and arrow that had tracked him down. In response, Mariette—without a qualm, had said: “Dat is Yvonne’s zoon. Hij is langsgekomen om hier te logeren—That’s Yvonne’s son. He came by to lodge here.”
Tonton purrs, pampering her with concern. “You shouldn’t be riding your bicycle...”
“Tonton. . .” says Mariette, teased like a little schoolgirl. glitter kindling in her eyes after her messenger brought gossip. And I, a lodger in the hush, foreign to their names—hear them lashed out like accusations. A boy—“Pipo”—caught in the midst—surging beside a father, “Andre,” bemoaning a marriage he can’t consume. Tonton lays the little family overt—casting himself grandfather, vilifying Andre as a Scrooge. Whining still, “Victoria needs money to run the household.”
An hour in, and Tonton has insinuated himself into the little fold of a family. Yet his popping eyeballs flash unease—troubled, not by me catching him in the wake of a postman taking an envelope—he doesn’t care for that. His flabby face droops with concern—because of the unsettling blood relationship. He excuses himself, rising, circling the backrest, distancing himself behind the swing of the door—evanescing in the vestibule’s shadow.
Mariette’s wrist hinges her hand up and down by her face as she exclaims, “Tonton. . .” Not glancing over her shoulder, she spills her thought: “Il pense que je ne sais pas ce qui se passe—He thinks I don’t know what is going on?” While I watch that door crack—without hesitation—not an eavesdropping—the seam seals into the jamb, latching shut.
At the cadence where Nyx draws her veil, shading Helios’ glow from a day to the next since my arrival—into the twilight beyond the kitchen window—the night thickens, clinging to the glaze of glass. Mariette withdraws from the hush beneath the fluorescent tubes and, at the click of a switch, proceeds into dim globes awakening the atrium, the dining room. But in the lounge, she gropes around the blind corner—until the television exhales its breath of light. The glow compels her, pressing her dithering steps backward into the dining chair. Square up to the television screen, her hungry gaze held steady—devout in awe of Nagui.
I meet up, descend the treads, join a blind audience—eyes glazed by the glow—Nagui in command of the plateau. Animated, radiant, teasing fate. “Que le meilleur gagne—May the Best One Win.” Before him, a half-dozen guests—worshippers at the edge of a nave—curl fingers over the guard handrail, awaiting their cue. He taunts them, grinning in ironic flair—Scorpio wit sharpened to sting—delivering satirical jabs with Egyptian-Parisian finesse. Reads aloud from a card: “François Mitterrand’s La Baule. . .” speech, the tumults of the Revolution, the incense haze of the ‘60s counterculture—each reference a relic, flung like a riddle.
After the show, Mariette rises from her chair, steps forward, drops a leading finger—presses an invisible button along the television fascia. A Dutch newsreader flashes to life. She presses again—French French broadcasts. Again—channels alternating, each emission blinking across her face, until none hold her. Her finger slips to the edge—nips it clean—the screen blanks in a thistle of static. Thisshig. She returns away, dithering up the steps away, trailing hesitation like a veil, retreating to August’ room for the night.
In the light of dawn, I gaze at the mansard ceiling, construing the hidden poles, the battens stretched across, the yarn threaded through bunches of threshed, combed savanna grass. A straw mattress caps the streetfront corner; beside me, the window under its brow. After dozing, I’m touched by Helios’ golden rays through the neighbour’s treetop foliage peeking skyward. I rise—dress—and descend to the vestibule. Through the common door, I enter the welcoming brightness of the kitchen. A while later, Mariette’s private door gives a spectral crank, her figure growing into the backswing. With little eyes, she shuts the door, and reaches out for the percolator. She doesn’t expect service—but with a carafe of coffee, I foresee a trembling stream pouring, missing her cup. Words like moths in the air—fluttering, catching between us—as she comes around to settle into a conversation across the table.
Yesterday, Tonton’s words echoed in my mind when I stepped outside. The fir, with its wide skirt of palm branches, half-shielding Mariette—dithering to a halt, balancing her two-wheeler city heavy bicycle—heavy-framed and thick-tired, seeming out of the 1930s—at the far side of the looping driveway. Reality surged as Tonton’s fear flared: Mariette riding her bicycle. She tempts the bicycle to a crotch, freeing one foot to swing across the ladies frames to saddle. By then, I had moved on—thinking no more than an old lady struggling to lift a foot, step the pedal, crank her weight into motion, and gain speed—riding away, left as a flickering feature in my mind.
My step crunching the grit by the thick, bristly eaves—organic brows of the upstairs windows, tucked in the thatch roof. The white-painted, fenestrated facade opens onto the cobblestone stretching from the distant church—reminiscent of my path arriving—draped in a hazy morning sunlight. Just short of which, a patch of terrain in the street corner lingers, where a flower cultivator’s farming paraphernalia lies scattered.
I turned away from the far quarter—scattered tanks, hand tools, powered equipment—before a series of white tunneled polyhouses. A lingering curiosity rises: ‘blurry rambling rose, or could they be tomatoes?’ I leave it dwindling behind, as I turn away out the gritty driveway, for the charcoal sleekness of the asphalt street.
I meet the derelict corner brasserie, patronized in my visions by the men in Mariette’s family. Turning onto the white concrete country road, I walk along the whish-whoosh of passing traffic. Mariette's course unfolds ahead of me—just another cyclist among cars—overtaking, folding back into the lane, and disappearing in the distance.
At the four-way, with a fifth street branching from behind the brasserie, I turn the corner and follow the paved sidewalk—strangely severing the fields—toward landowners so vast it’s unimaginable I might encounter a supermarket. But from within the organic fields, as I approach, a plate’s dark angles and straight edges rise—etching flat rooftops from the soil to structural walls, unfolding into a streetfront glitter of parked cars.
I cross the sleek asphaltic lot, glittery with sparse spread cars, nearing the slender, straight-edge facade filling my view—the gleam of brands, the parting doors opening into a field of kaleidoscopic shelves I loose myself meandering, and walk out relieved—with snacks to take back, feeding myself.
As I breathe my way, I couldn't imagine tracing back scent along the country road—a path Mariette regularly rides, bicycling out, whobbling along the open road, barely balanced.
Passing insinuating without telling as much her wobbles—unacrobatic—on a two-wheeler, in stealth, riding to the supermarket to purchase her bottles of alcohol —
Soon, around the wild hedgerow, the corner clears to reveal the dominant thatched-roof house—its driveway leading toward the interstice between the dominant fir and the dwarf entrance: a thatched pea-cap crowning the half-gazebo.
I left the echo of my footsteps on the hush trail of yesterday—the crunch of gritty driveway yielding to the morning shade beneath the fir. It's skirted palm of branches outstretched, a porter’s green sleeve waving the door open to the shadows—a threshold crossed into the vestibule.
Then, I reached left—among the sentinels of doors, the north sheen of a lever crank in hand. My grip pushing back—greeted by the glow of sunlight. A silhouette cast: a thirtyish, uncouth farmhand seated in the aisle—a stage of waking before the distant backdoor panes, arms crossed with ease. Blind to Mariette, habitual corner around the flank of the vaisselle cabinet.
I shadow past the uncouth farmhand, shadowing his gaze, and Flemish chatter still lurking on Mariette. A ball of his shoulder lends shade to the broom cupboard and the fridge, his spine aligned with their seam. The uncouth Fleming nods his respect, sways his sturdy, crossed legs into the spill of window light cascading before the kitchen sink—freeing the aisles for my passage around the table head. In that hush depth, I grab the backrest, pull the chair, and settle across Mariette.
An hour on, Mariette’s visitor rises from his chair, egresses through the buffet-vaisselier—his farewell brushing past the broom cupboard. His boot-stomps cascade muteness—from the vestibule’s shut door to the entrance—when Mariette, mid-thought, blurts: “C’est un fermier. . .—he labors at the mushroom farm.”
My mind, drawn to the canvas of their warm exchange, lifts into a bird’s-eye drift above the hamlet's properties—his bootfalls echo around the block, onto a narrowed down cobblestone farm road—evanescing through fields, tunneling into rows of polyhouses.
Flashed—my teen at Kyalami—and over the brow of the hill along the Jukskei River, a cultivator of white-headed mushrooms on tables, in manure compost, in the warmth of darkened rooms. I left the uncouth farmhand there with the discrepancies of my vision.
All the while, Mariette draws her gaze from the backyard doorpanes, as if still trailing the uncouth farmhand—lingering through the poplar screen, extracting her view from the looming villa of her back street neighbor. Her mind weaves the gossip—and mine reads the thread: a holographic tapestry etched in the mirage of sunlight's shifting scenes—the farmhand’s petite Latino wife, her small girl clings to her skirt, while the Spanish woman, thick black mane of hair, dark-works as housemaid for the scattered villas around the block. Mariette withdraws her gaze onto the kitchen tabletop, as if tunneling inward—a hush acknowledging the delinquent family she dare not denounce. Her thoughts drift forward, to the streetfront cultivator. She blurts: “He helps out by the flower cultivator. . .” Undoubtedly, she means the polyhouses in the shadow of the medieval church.
The evening creeps in, Nyx settles by the kitchen window, and boxed us into a fluorescent light, as Mariette’s doesn’t recant—not after these few days, while I remain enshrouded by a range of controversial visitors. At the globe of light, I trail her into the lounge, where she sinks—standing still—into Nagui, like a teenager starstruck. The news, an after-thought. Her finger lingering as she changes channels, until, in frustration, she presses the button—the television screen blinking dead to the next cycle.
Heading upstair, I slip in August's room, leaving the house to her hush. Until morning—when a golden thread tugs me: ‘Get-up now. . .’ I’m lure downstairs by the thought before a grinding day, making coffee, the scent summons Mariette—quiver a stream to her cup onto chatting.
I head off for a walk toward the supermarket, mind ruminating, Mariette’s guest, among growing nearer a job appointment—through which the pace of my return. A snip of the fenestrated white shaded facades, as Helios triumphant saddled, gilding the thatched-roof house, and the jutting pea-caped gazebo. I reach the gritty yellow driveway, noose the fir silent green. A coral on the golden strung on golden air: My beautiful pine, king of the forests. . . your greenness. . . you keep your decoration.
I step onward from the locked entrance-door sentinel—not sparing a scent of Mariette—sniffing into my luggage. The eavesdrops, shy in the shade, are spared from gilding the flagstone that girdles the house, edging along a bed of bright-blooming flowers. I pass the plume-lace sash curtains, peeking into the deserted kitchen—a hush held still
during my absence.
I glance now and then, the depth of her backyard: past the row of poplar hedge, their cigar-thin leaves screening, but fails as I watch Mariette’s neighboring woman, in white figure stepping out her back door, and round the fenestrated facade, evanescing down their driveway.
I step to the peripheral corner—a terrace of crazy paving. I pause, laying a set of fingers on the kitchen back door lever. in the edge of my eye, a figure crouches—pulling my glance, I fix in wonder the hunched gardener, half-sunken in a flower bed of ruffled green leaves of stalky rhubarb.
Glade for Mariette—her longed-for gardener had turned up. I push the door and find her settled in her corner behind the table. Approaching, I decided not to begin with yesterday's words—’I found the supermarket’s field enclave. She tells me now farmers sell their street-edging land to level their shortfall. But she refrains from any mention of the thirtish-man groping in her side-yard.
Jephte van der Ackeren. . .
He shadows outside—passing the café curtain of the kitchen, around the blind corner, until his figure fragments behind the staggered panes of the rear door. He enters as though entitled—without a glance from Mariette, without a word exchanged. Two estranged people, passing in silence. With a cat’s gait—rolling shoulders, swaying hips—he prowls toward the fridge, while Mariette and I continue chatting. Then, opening the fridge door—its gapping interior lit in sterile brightness—he reveals, one to the next, effeminate dancing hands picking blemished cheese in wrappers, bloated milk cartons. To my disgust, the gardener picks through everything off the shelves—a paramedic to food—without a pinch of disgust, inspecting in the shadow apart obvious spilling green mold, emptying the fridge, its spoiled content vanishing into the trash bag.
As slink as he appeared, the gardener backtracks his steps—distancing from the closing backyard door with the trash bag—like a workmen leaving at day’s end. Then, adjacent to the buffet-vaisselier cabinet, he reappears in the gap of the door swing. He heads for the fridge. From a shopping bag remplishes the shelves, then back steps toward the exit. Pulls the door, to a theatrical single stride, he turns—unlike Tonton before him—but with open palms. He empties his pockets, coins jingling on the spot where he earlier found a five-thousand-frank banknote. He retains his day’s pay, and poses a cash register receipt on the serving shelf. His shoulders roll. His hips roll. A turnaround, before sealing the door to the jambs. Mariette’s visitor is unnamed, only to say. “Il a besoin d'argent—He's in need of money.” With grimaces at the sound of the latching door, a wrist hinging a hand up and down along her cheek, she adds—”C’est un character. . . il est homo—He’s another character. . . he’s gay.”
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