YD6-81(Dr.) Aetheria Rolls Out Her Changes, the Gingerbread Cottage Yields to Destiny’s Design
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BOOK SYNOPSIS: Aetheria, in the zodiacal forest—where birds sing and leaves flutter like wings bathing in light. The symphony of the forest comes to mind. This is the cosmos’ whisper through our creatures, and in these pages, she leads me. These chapters unfold as a clarifying companion to my earlier book, The Code: Horizon of Infinity—a philosophical memoir exploring how the universe sculpted our minds. Through Aetheria, the lens of consciousness who begins to reveal herself, her presence lives in the rhythm. She seeks form—moving toward the name she will one day claim: Sunshine.
CHAPTER PREFACE: Step inside a shifting architecture of memory and design, where cosmic whispers flicker through bay windows and the ghost of a signature seals a future unseen. Aetheria stirs through forum corridors and gingerbread shadows, altering the rules of home, power, and belonging. Amid paperwork, endives, and velvet glances, this chapter invites you to watch the blueprint yield—transformed by desire, delay, and the unspoken codes of fate.
HASHTAG: #BrusselsMemoir, #ArchitectOfFate, #GingerbreadCottage, #DestinyUnfolds, #CosmicDesign,
YD6-81(Dr.) Aetheria Rolls Out Her Changes, the Gingerbread Cottage Yields to Destiny’s Design
With a realm to rifle through, at a first glance—no blueprint—it appears as a walk in the dark. A voice whispers: “This is a construction site,” I ghost through the shadows of my mind. Hadn’t I seen the skeleton rising against the sky—just off Halle Gate—lift amid townhouses, its smoked-glass skirt unfurling upward from the terracotta-tiled saddled roofs.
Although nothing seems to change day to day driving home—a cosmic voice dawns in my mind and breaks my focus from the bill of quantities. The rhythm draws me, reminiscing about ballroom floors—my youth drawn into those graceful steps.
I was dancin' with my darlin' to the Tennessee Waltz
When an old friend I happened to see. . .
Stir to glance over my shoulder, as I sit by the landscape window—an afternoon mirage in the slanted sunlight across the saddled pitched terracotta-tiled rooftops. She rhymes Tennessee with jealousy, the cosmic harp on the strings—my gaze drops off the hedgerow of eaves into the shade below. ‘Look who’s coasting up? — You’re too busy — I’ve shifted emphasis…_’
The driver’s glance falls from his side window—searching me—to the central console. He halts—double parked, blending along the shaded curb. He lingers, proud, framed in the driver’s window. Ionic presence-slick royal blue Mercedes-Benz station wagon—knowing, engineered to attract attention.
The scent precedes him—of a man without a past, Jean-François Smeets. Tonton, Moon in Aries, stifling the oxygen from the air—an ostentation anchored in the myth of liberation, WWII still smoking in his wake. No passport, yet he opens gates into the Belgian secret service of the army. After driving Victoria’s Panda, up to the driveway gate of the Thatched roof house, visiting Mariette.
Reappearing from the shadows in a 1982 blue station wagon Mercedes 300 TD—on extended loan turned permanence. It trails a tale from a service station perched on the edge, down to an even deeper shadow: the entrenched railway line. Vertiginous minds, alike in rhythm—he and the owner-mechanic.
At a glance, I orchestrate the engine’s purr—a classic dance, driving the automatic transmission. Until my restless kick down - vroom - rock ‘n’ roll—to roar the beast. Contrary to the Aries in symbiosis with Sun in Cat sleeks out the ripples—gliding smooth. Lounging in leather brings back: the drive, the cool breath of air-conditioning, the glide across the Transvaal road. Dating Jacqueline.
To my surprise, Victoria jumps to the street—distancing herself from the station wagon. She weaves through bumpers to step the far sidewalk, roaming her Tiger’s bewildered mind along the line of curb-parked cars toward the greengrocer’s blooming crates.
Earlier—and every midday—by the wainscoted, floral storefront, the fruit and vegetables stay tucked in the awning’s shade. My greedy gaze finds the elegant white: the cigar-shaped endives packed in rows. I pick one, sidestep inside, pay the Asian storekeeper behind the counter, turning away, I begin to peel a leaf. I track back—the hideous skeletal slap in my face: aluminum-glazed concrete, notched out of the classic street, its wings widening across my field of sight. Oblivious to what beauty needs to survive. Reluctant to enter, I divert my attention to the sunlight at my feet. Then veer to avoid faltering before my colleagues—their glance half-curious, half-empty.
I munch, hearing my teeth crunch before returning to Axa’s bill of quantities and proceed as Helios creeps forward, claiming its sunlight from the street.
Her wait breaks. She steps down the curb, emerging from a train of parked cars. A quick glance—no oncoming cars from behind the Mercedes muzzle. She scuttles across the asphalt and disappears beneath my window’s sill.
Then, I flip over to check if the laptop had powered off, alongside Axa’s Bill of Quantities. The item on the page demands to be decorticated—item number, description—but I face a dilemma. I’ve snatched up the Toshiba laptop, no one wanted, or could utilize—its hard disk missing, functioning only through volatile read/write memory. A glorified calculator. I’d snap the lid close. Restart tomorrow.
Frustrating—but it's Favi’s rule: ‘Begin afresh.’ Each time, sum up the work-in-progress from the original Bill of Quantities. Never carry it forward. From last month’s inventory, a reassurance: a mistake buried in the past will surface in the present submission.
As I’m still decorticating, trying to store spreadsheet formulas into cells—wrestling the machine to frustration—I glance up, toward Forum brass plaque, at the corner edge of the wall near the blind elevator shaft. Victoria beams down. Buffeted and bundled, her frivolous, wild eye flickers into the wings of the corridor. From the shadows of an offside office, Laurence emerges, in her wake, to welcome the woman upstairs.
Victoria breaks away—slips from Laurence’s cast net. Laurence breathes the question, but doesn’t catch: “Can I help you?” Her eyes follow, saying: ‘What a strange woman?’
Victoria approaches in half-swirls, her gaze sweeping the corridor wings, tearing forward—leaving Laurence baffled in her shadow. She nailed her eyesight on me—yet still digs around the leafless gaping double doorway, into the corners of the former living room. Her eyes resonate: ‘Only men?’
Laurence blinks. ‘Strange woman?’ She turns away, toward Favi's office behind the elevator shaft wall.
I’m rushing another data input, before I have to pull my thoughts away from the Toshiba laptop—always the fear it’ll run out of memory and collapse on me. hard to resume from blanks under frustration. Cell formulas calculate the units of work completed during the month, multiply by the price, then deduct the previous payment to determine the amount due.
Victoria disturbs the Doberman and Bulldog—the two facing each other, out of the three evaluators. Each breaks from his own bill of quantities, their calculations on hold—what paycheck will be issued to the contractors?
In her pepish gait, she ushers herself along the flank wall. She disappears behind me—then reappears over my shoulder, flickering in the sidelight of the window. “Are you coming?” sighing, ‘It’s Friday?’
“Ma Petite? Je serai là plus tard—I’ll be there later.” Swift as she appeared, she whisks herself off—volatilizing at the elevator door behind her.
Aetheria’s mirage at the window—see to it that she doesn’t get to cross Laurence—what freaking emotion made her break from Tonton, jump to the curb earlier, storm the office—while Laurence, unaware, carries last month-end reports and drops them on Favi’s desk for signature.
My vigilant Warthog’s inadvertent alienation. The office drains—through the stairway or the elevator to gather again in the chilly architecture of the 1970s. We cross the fluorescent-lit gray marble lobby, press past the aluminum-framed glass door, veer and step the stretch of glass-filled concrete to regain the streets: intersection of fenestrated hedgerows, brick facades to saddle-tiled terracotta rooftops. Drift on the diagonal toward the bow of the corner brasserie—in Indian file, enter, take a seat, and order a drink among the men, their drive out of town in bottlenecks, to the ridiculous traffic to bother. Better to wait for the roadway to open—traffic trickling thin.
I sidestep their invitation and head home. After a long day at Forum—bearing the Doberman and the Bulldog barking at each other over a bill of quantities, cornering the only woman in the office, Laurence—I avoid them. Blind to her calm perseverance as she points out errors in their submissions, they press on.
I sit in the lounge beside the window, listening to the occasional tapping echo of a woman—or a man—passing through the alley, while I doodle my fragments of my workday to Jephte. The bitterness of a Pisces hovers—juggling that quiet dance between dependence and independence—as I drift in the atmospheric blanket woven by two soulmates: him and his sister.
When Jephte exudes his homecomings, he sinks into his little sister’s wild embrace—which I can bear, from a woman. But Jephte lets it linger in the air, stirring turmoil deep inside him. His warped mind carries such expectations. The scent of resentment thickens; he sulks—a ménage à trois that cannot tango, souring the atmosphere of the gingerbread cottage.
For the umpteenth time, my eyes drift across my laptop screen, into their usual circuit—glancing over the flea market relics scattered across the square glass coffee table at my ankles. Though arranged with care by Jephte, they pose quietly: on the edges, in the center, spilling onto the server cabinet shelves. But nothing holds my gaze. It's the painting on the wall that won’t let go. A Maltese, its fur lit like silk; a Yorkshire Terrier, a Bulldog—all dressed in formal suits, staring back at me from their oversized frames, alive in the eyes of a painter now gone.
I break away. Snap the laptop shut. Careful not to disturb the sacred little ornaments arranged on the glass top—balanced over stacks of books on the lower shelf. As time rambles in broken pockets, I step across the entrance hall, past a draped grandmother dining table huddled with padded chairs, into the kitchen. I percolate coffee. Sit down with a bite to eat, my mind cluttered—drawn by the particular wall to the kitchen, tiled with framed black-and-white photographs of old heritage facades.
Yet the cold tiled floor chills the atmosphere, reigning over lonesome evenings that stretch out endlessly—until I justified myself toward the hallway. An acrobatic tread up the stairwell, void of railing, leads to the mansarded loft. I shy from a glimpse of the ajar doorway—gaping, looming toward the double bed—loathing the thought of soiling my mind with men wrestling through messy covers. I rush my gaze onto the sentinel of a mirror, my hand slides it aside to step into the bathroom. Closing the door, I grab my brush and toothpaste, beginning to brush my teeth—anticipating Jephte’s sporadic homecomings. . . or not. Coming out, I slip out of my clothes, by the window duck under covers, and lose myself to Nyx.
Chaos dawns on me; I can’t identify the rolling voices—the drunks stumbling through the yard gate, arising from the hush of the night. But there’s no doubt: Jephte is with an older woman. The voice rises, her voice louder, across the front yard to the cottage—until the screech of forced vocal cords under my window. The woman singing:
My Sarie Marais is so ver van my hart,
maar ’k hoop om haar weer te sien.
Sy het in die wyk van die Mooirivier gewoon,
nog voor die oorlog het begin...
My Sarie Marais is so far from my heart,
But I hope to see her again.
She lived in the Mooi River neighborhood,
Before the war had begun.
Oh, bring me back to the old Transvaal...
‘They’re after waking me up—eliminating the benefit of surprise.’ I called on my Warthog: ‘Don’t let them influence me—hold head!’
They burst through the front door, clinging to each other. Though Jephte—the insinuator, noise-maker, beating his voice forward—the sixtyish Marie Myriam screeches aloud. They crawl up the staircase, stumbling on all fours. But the song brought back memories. My mind falls into its rhythm—rhyme with it. As they clear the loft, head straight across the floor—for me, stretched under covers tucked to my ears:
Down in the corn, by the green thorn tree,
There lives my Sarie Marais.
Down in the corn at the green thorn tree,
There lives my Sarie Marais.
I was so scared that the Khakis would catch me,
And send me far across the sea;
Then I fled to the side of the Upington sand,
Down along the Great River.
I ignore the drunks, even as their chorus clangs in my ears—the old epic Jephte fell for. He turns away. She trails after him. Then he returns to my side, a passing current—I was no mirror of their entanglement. My mind blanks, dozing off, after they retreat into the hush of the room across the bathroom. But the intrusion lingers—despicable, clinging. The weekend stretches to bear out, into the week. And still it returns, though Jephte is absent—his sulking hangs in the air, an atmosphere to bear out—intolerable.
I daren’t say all out loud. ‘My Little One, the other night, Jephte returned in the early hours—banging doors, stomping stairs…’ Because Victoria praised friendships, especially Marie Myriam—Jephte’s best female friend—like an older sister, laughing at her baby brother behind the nursery door.
With long strides, I left the gingerbread cottage behind—catching up time through Fox Hole Path, onto the cobblestone avenue extending its name with scattered flocculent canopies cast their shades. Through the hush of the suburb, I round the block, I jaywalk across Dr. Decroly Avenue, as rows of stylish townhouses flare their differences. I slow my pace to a stroll, turning from one facade to the other around the corner. The leafy canopies thicken, flocculent branches dashing forward vanishing into deeper shade.
I lurk, edging up to half-dozen scattered figures by the sidewalk Linden trunk—half in the shade, half in sunlight—as my gaze trails the familiar path toward the distant corner GB supermarket. Dithering in my wait, orbiting the loose group rambling along the sidewalk.
Victoria’s voice rings back to me: “Tonton!” she exclaimed. “I saw a poster on a beautiful house near Jephte. An apartment for rent!”
“Vicki'que… My girl,” Jean Francois Smeets answered, his tone laced with uneasy thrill. “Think of the comfortable life you have with Andre.”
Victoria pinched her eyes, retorting. ‘You should talk?’ Her voice pitched with strain. “You live in a butler attic in Andre’s house, taking advantage of him!”
The Avenue’s heart unfurls its leafy canopies, clearing just enough to skirt their cast shadows. A row of sun-dabbled porches peer out—doors coupled with dark-glazed windows, punctuating the jagged brick facades that retreat from the sidewalk.
From the shade, a brisk gait emerges—Victoria flickers through patches of sunlight, crossing the hushed, cozy street. Smeets in her shadow. She weaves through the bumpers of parked cars, and steps up onto the curb, blending into the small cluster of people—unpeturbed, right on cue for the scheduled apartment visit. All the folks gazing over a calf-high primrose brick wall, trimmed with a soldier course and topped by a metallic hip-height grill, isolating a patch of lawn where a shrub anchors the front yard before the facade’s pronounced bay window.
Awakening the hush of the next door's blind-corner house—back in my earlier track—a mature woman, accompanied by a young trainee. Both dressed in dark clothes, they turned the corner with determined strides. Without sparing a glance, they enter the waiting cluster of people, the leader veers straight for the metallic pedestrian gate. With a dry hinge-screech, she presses through—swung still—a trickle of followers trailing their steps along the yellow terrazzo-tiled path. At a halt, atop a few shiny risers. The dark wooden entry door cracks open. Victoria’s Sun in Tiger, ahead of the little crowd she vanishes into the doorway hollow, behind the two women before her into a somber interior.
I trail Smeets through the gaping hollow, the somberness raising claustrophobic walls, shaping the hallway, catching up with the little group gathered by the flank wall. From a crack of light, mischief's glow spills through the skirts and pants of a tomboy at play—etching brown wainscoting in a blurry gold. Gleaming the outlines of climbing stairs, awakening the hallway’s walls behind a balustrade, claiming the eyes toward a hovering sight: the sentinel door on the upper floor.
Silhouetted tall in the gaping doorway, the woman with her assistant vanishes into the light. The visitors trickle in. I step through Aetheria's mirage—dissipating—delivering the agent in the midst of awaking walls. She turns away from the marble mantelpiece framing the open hearth—indicating the party wall—as if to say: ‘here, the limit.’ She holds a few sheets of paper, facing the bare light-gray carpet. The crowd fans out, in a hush stepping, drifting into the wings—toward the light—toward the backyard window and the bay window facing the street.
Victoria, among the eye-jostling visitors, turns away—seizing the courtyard brick walls shafting open to the sky. While the first couple of visitors slip behind the square open door—after no more than a passing glance—Victoria steps through, and it tickles me: ‘what did she see?’ I head in, crossing her tracks, through the mirage clinging to the panes of the paired window and door. Around the corner beside me, the brightening dark gray tiled kitchen reveal a doorway to a tucked-away scullery. And farther in, in the windowless depth—a laundry nook oddly paired with a bathroom. I, too, return while a visitor trickles out the central room, but for Tonton.
I cross Smeets' dawdle as he egresses the bright street front room, flat-footed shuffling up to the realtors. In a respectful voice, he says. “L’appartement nous plaît—We like the apartment.”
Jean-Francoir Smeets slips a hand in his back pocket, drawing attention with the weight of his gesture. The surprised agent’s gaze. ‘What’s he doing?’ For a beat, both women’s eyes briefly lock—it dawns on the younger one: a wad of rifling five-thousand francs notes unfurl in Smeets’ palm. But Victoria turns away, her glance retreating, but from a grandfather-shaped habit.
The older realtor says, her gaze fanning across the sheets in her hand. “You may fill out the form.”
Smeets flinches, turns to me. He grabs my arm, and smirks, frogmarches me—half-grabbing, half-dragging—backtracking his steps past the glazed colonial portal with flanking sidelights. Just short of the bay window picturing the street, he sways in front of me, whispers. “C’est comme ça qu’on fait des affaires ici—That’s the way one does business here. . .”—’in Belgium.’
‘OK, who am I to argue with a seasoned Fleming?’
Victoria steps away from the bay window, approaches, and says. “Je l’aime tres bien—I like it very much.” She walks off.
Smeets spares the realtor woman a seducing smile. Beneath the flicker of their questing gazes, I slip behind him as Victoria turns to the women. “Thank you,” she says, and heads toward the somber hallway. Outdoors, Victoria and Smeets, halfway to the gate—turn back to sprinkle a glance over the brick facade, extending their conversation—their equation with Andre to imagine. They continue through the pillars of the gateway, turn to the sidewalk, cross the street talking, and disappear in the shade of the canopies.
I backtrack, circling the street block of peering villas through the foliage, stroll the alley, to the gate, and step into the gingerbread cottage, at facing the upcoming week.
The days pass. Then into the week, nagging me in spurs while hunched over a Bill of Quantities in the offices of Forum. I’m not getting a key to the apartment, the notion disappearing into the background. My hopes are set on an escape from Jephte’s toxic atmosphere—yet setting in motion lags, it drags on—unbearable. Yet I dare not ruffle Victoria’s mind.
Deep inside me cowers that little beast—frustrated, gnawing, as words weave vague mention of a key. A truth in camouflage falters. It trembles at the edges of my perception. I just want to move. But my pressure might trigger her explosive nest—and she holds all the cards.
André has volatilized from the equation—he hasn’t been mentioned since I left the thatched-roof house, with Tonton gossiping to Mariette about Victoria’s husband. . . or her boy, tangled in the mix.
Time loops, to one evening, I call her, keeping to a few words: “My Little One, what’s going on with the apartment?”
Victoria remains distant—until, she asks. “Daddy, a tu paye l’acompte—Have you paid the deposit?”
“Ma Petite, a qui—to whom?”
Subdued, Victoria says. “I don’t have her phone number.”
Some tangible seems to emerge week later, as she says. “The owner is gone on vacation.”
The week is a long stretch, living in Jephte’s gingerbread cottage. Although he avoids me altogether—I feel restrained in my free time. passing by Victoria week’s for reflection. By the weekend, she returns with. “When the owner is back, I’ll call.”
By a sudden urge, Sunday morning, Victoria wraps at Jephte’s gate. “Daddy, Daddy, ouver—open, open up!” She storms past into the gingerbread cottage—disappears—and re-emerges as if from busting a ghost.
She lures me along without revelation, scuttles out the gate, and slips down the alleyway to the below-street. Ahead, along the sidewalk, through the hedgerows’ fenestrated brick facades from which the Town Hall alights its parvis. That little beast inside of me, lift the veil—into a concubine’s silent silage. But the upcoming corner interrupts. Across it, she threads into a village street carved through the neighborhood retailers’ signage cracked into closed storefronts. A straight run to butt the far blur of a blotchy heritage church.
Half-way down the vista, Victoria swerves—graceful, unreadable—leaving a trickle of pedestrians to their bakers and café easels scattered along the sidewalk.
A few doorsteps into the street, Victoria says: “Pour une signature!—For a signature!” She swerves, presses the calling button. Waits.
Victoria waits by the door for her Tiger’s leap inside.
The stillness of the wooden door seems to sooth her, facing away from the hinge, she shifts her weight, as the panel yields open, waxing a woman. Victoria says: “Je suis Victoria—I’m Victoria.”
The sturdy woman standing tall steps back, heel over toe, with a gentle gesture to follow. At the end of the corridor, Victoria prances into the doorway light, to a skylight pool the dining room—the patio door drawing the garden in. The woman stands by the round table, waves us to a chair, sitting herself off beat. briefly explains the formalities. She hands me the lease. A pen. I sign. She rises, hands each of us a pair of keys.
I glance at Victoria, but she’s already moving—caught by the pivoting rhythm of the agent’s wave, wearied by too many strangers. Her eyes linger briefly, scanning Victoria as though she’s already drifting toward the corridor. The sighs of footsteps on tile catches up, until she stands poised in the sentinel space of the door, gaping the hedgerow of fenestrated brick facades.
Victoria and I descend the doorstep. A sparse exchange of greetings—then the door shuts behind us. A dozen strides into the hush of the upcoming junction, Victoria blurts: “Tu es bien chez Jephte—You’re fine by Jephte.”
I feel like screaming, ‘No! That brother of yours. . .’ But I turn the corner, tracking back along the cobblestone street, the odd car pattering past. Afar, the Town Hall sits like a royal chair—classic. The thought settles: ‘My Little One, you had things all figured out?’
Keys in my pocket. Flirting with the notion of a globetrotter: calf-bloated suitcase, saucisse toiletry bag, laptop strap digging into my shoulder. I whisk myself away, already departing—from under the shadow of the gingerbread cottage. My mind outruns Jephte’s lingering snub. Already settling—’elsewhere?’
Victoria in her stride licks the boutique window before she steps into a brasserie—for a cocktail, a coffee, and a glass of water. I join, sharing a bowl of red Porto. Afterward, the evening settles, we walk around the Town Hall to the rear, up the Fox Hole alleyway, to fetch her blue Fiat Panda. I see her off.
I return down the Fox Hole to the gingerbread cottage. Sit behind the screen of my laptop, trapped between Microsoft’s endless updates and my obsessive need for the latest functions—into frustration. Yet I push onward, expanding what I know. Then ease myself into calm, updating journal notes.
I head upstairs to bed, sparing a thought for the stubborn course of my life, edging just beyond my will—straining. As if playing in a mud bath, slippery without a grip. The keys rest now in Victoria’s determination.
I carry my unsettlingness with me, eviscerating as I drive that Monday morning to work. The promotion still unsettled, evincing itself in Forum’s volatility—Doberman and the Bulldog clashing over numbers, crude and careless. Hushed beside these seasoned men, I feel a wave of pity for Laurence, ironing out their errors, gracefully dodging their stray hostilities.
The days flit by—one into the next. Until Friday afternoon. Ringing. I pause. The sound buzzes through the empty plane of the table. I lift the handset. Laurence’s voice—Libra's calm: “There is a call for you.”
Victoria swoops in. “Daddy, come to the apartment tomorrow…” The line dies—but the echo lingers. I frown, dawdling. ‘What does she have in store for me?’
I remind myself: ‘Tomorrow is the weekend.’ Her pride for her country, her fantasy—it’s all bound to lead me driving to the most unexpected: cháteau, an abbey. . . a park and a drink.
By evening, I’m leaving with the staff, my Bill of Quantity left on the table. We walk out, then split in the street, I head toward my Audi. Driving off, I search for a rare gas station still operational within the suburbs, other than on the highways. I pull up by the pump, the attendant fills her up—the tank—trailing a habit of asking for a receipt. I can’t help but smile at myself, flashing the code: KNU778—still blind to the ménage á trois that is not yet visible. Slipping into my seat to drive on, weaving through the community streets, until the tires patter and the Audi coasts to a hush near Fox Hole, where I step out to dig myself in for the night.
Early Saturday, I stride out from Jephte’s gingerbread cottage into the Fox Hole alleyway and plod along the extending cobblestone avenue before looping onto the asphalt. Jaywalk across, circling the brick modern little blocks to a few apartments into Dr. Decroly Avenue. I veer to a screech, pressing through the iron gate between the primrose brick pillars. Across the yellow-tiled path, I turn the key—the front door swings back, gaping the somber hallway. I grope offside to no switch—the door crack light—not to Aetheria's go-happy mirage, but a bestial onslaught of glow.
I sneak through the portal, and pause by the bay window, my mind meriting through the glaze, dwelling out across the front yard into the deserted street. Standing there, dazed—regurgitating what Victoria had implied. I couldn’t conjure a comedian’s trail—not to be unkind to her listening mind, but I let the words roll from mine. ‘I’m not keeping any woman.’
Muzzled in the shade, a white truck crawls a cargo box across the bay window and comes to a halt. Uncouth boots step out of the cabin onto the sidewalk. I recognize the farmhand visitor who once visited Mariette, to sit by in her kitchen, but the other man—also uncouth, slamming the passenger door—remains a stranger.
They stroll past the box of the truck toward the rear, where Smeets’ paunch, stuffed in a business suit jacket, emerges from the blind side of the truck. Marched out, asphalt-dark suit pants turn around to pause. He marches up, but midway veers to hold in sight the tailgate. Until the uncouth men step down the curb, pace up to him. With a barn-door swing, hinging over to the flanks of the cargo box. They retread themselves. Smeets vacated the spot. reaching in, ducking heads and shoulders in the cargo box. One after the other, they roll out—inter-stacked classic padded dining chairs, armrests strutting. Carried off down the sidewalk, vanishing around the corner. To reappear by the gaping doorway into the room.
I mused over Victoria ’s expectations—throwing a glance after the stroke of a breath, wafting a scarf over my shoulder—only to catch surprise in Victoria’s eyes. Her hand brushes down the hollow of my waist, crosses my buttocks—just as, in the background, the uncouth farmhands stump through the doorway loaded and return empty-handed. In the nook besides the mantelpiece, tall wooden back panels are staked against the wall, then the black Duco side panels and door. The men vanish through the blind corners and reappear in sunlight going through the gateway, vanishing in the cast shade to silhouettes crossing the white truck, ducking again into the cargo box.
Victoria directs her antique black marble atop the sturdy chest of drawers, tucked into the right niche flanking the mantelpiece. And left, the men pose in the light of the backyard window, a dainty black bureau—and chairs that ghost a petite princess writing journal entries.
Smeets’ resumes his silage dwell—’I’m moving in,’ arms stacked with plastic trays, an assortment of tools. He circles the scullery’s doorframe like a ghost reclaiming old territory. Later, curiosity draws me after his trail. The trays—shelved in the gaping door light and subsistence canned food in the shadows. In a glitch of disbelief, he reappears standing over the shoulders of the uncouth man crouched up to a washing machine—popping eyeballs, passing down tools to the hands fumbling with the cold water supply and the pipe meant to evacuate wastewater.
After Smeets’ popping eyeballs, search beyond the roundabout feet of a yellow upholstered sofa and a pair of Bergeres; he marches a passage through scattered carton boxes—boxes from which Victoria was rummaging for her linen. They exchange a few words, while the windows pictured a graying background radiance. I discover a handful of bed-bolt screws besides the armoire’s disassembled pieces—a quiet challenge to put it all together again.
Smeets walks up to Victoria, who kneels, dressing a box mattress on the floor. He turns away, crosses the portal, his feet whispering away through the hallway, with men’s stomping boots falling silent. Beyond the bay window, Smeets eclipsed behind the cargo box, the farmhands heaved themselves onto the cabin seat. The white box truck pulled off, clearing a swell of grayed foliage—save for a vis-à-vis skirting here and there behind soft light and white roller-blinded windows.
My cowering monster rises—into a minefield of imminent retributions and shame, as the lantern light grows brighter, creeping through the naked glaze of the bay window. Shadow: ’I’m not retreating to Jephte's place.’
The sash shadows stretch across the floor—until I see myself, cramping under a moon glow on the carpet. Then, just in time, Victoria whines. “I’m scared to stay here by myself.”
Her words hover—a gesture I need not contradict, spelling out what stirs in my mind. I nod without words, surrendering, dissolving into pride. Then, before her made-up camp for the night—a mattress on the floor—Victoria insists, “Veux-tu rester avec moi—Will you stay with me?”
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