YD6-89 (ZA) 1992—Brussels in Ruins: A Trophy of the Mind into the Prophecy of Flight
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Epigraph: Beneath Brussels, the city lies in ruins—embers smoldering, a trophy of the mind, a holographic gift only the inner eye can hold. With a blink, the rooftops knit whole again, life bustling above. Yet prophecy hovers: Rose Delbruyere’s cards, a flight suspended in déjà vu, and a crowd that looks past, searching for someone else.
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.
YD6-89 (ZA) 1992—Brussels in Ruins: A Trophy of the Mind into the Prophecy of Flight
Behind me lies the fallen city, the earth's crust broken to ruins, its mouth gaping where ramparts have crumbled. I am body no longer, but ghost. Descending a ramp through rubble—raw, sandy, deep-colored stones of flanking walls inching toward a Roman brick arch. Cloister or kiln, a portal, stubbornly intact, leading into the underworld. I drift down through the collapse, eyes fixed on the scattered gravel—skeptic strides, yet drawn by an evolutive sentience, a force toward a blind rendezvous. At the bottom, the finer gravel stones spread an apron to the archway, where the shadowed hollow lurks.
Deemed it safe to tread, I lift my eyes: the lips of antiquity—scarred, worn smooth against the rough rocks. Yet the masonry of a civilization lures me onward, drawing me to the cave’s threshold. Proceeding, the antechamber unveiled itself through my gaze—the rays of sight refract, converging until the darkness concedes to a soft clarity summoned by my eyes, the latent monster stirring from hibernation.
Skeptic, I drift weightless—my feet stirring no puffs of dust from a blanket of eons, brick and ceramic long cooking. Yet some evolutive draw pulls me on—within the sphere of time itself—into the raw shaft, a clairvoyant channel, its clarity branching, gaping, punctuated by cloistering cross-vaults, guiding me arch by arch, a colonnade deeper toward a rendezvous.
From the gallery’s cadence, behind the rising right quoin, a wing-arch opens onto a barrel vault—mere mine-shaft, the beacon of sight and hearing strobing ahead, radar-brushing its blurry depth. A chill exhales from its hollow—an absent hearth, a guardian Doberman lying back, stone-cold, reposing like a sphinx. Of no concern, the thought flickers: 'No—You'll find nothing. Not there!'
Fearless within the gallery, I sway left into the blind barrel-vault. A latent exhaust evolves, its breath drawn from a projected kiln; the cold cowers—hibernating, the seat of the Libra’s shyness, Laurence’s absence. I’m drawn further ahead. The Warthog in me launches a skeptic, preemptive regard—hunting the blind corner ahead, around the quoin of large hewn ashlar where vaults branch. The darkness awakens a shiver. In the depths, a sleeper stirs—hidden, but arousing. The Rottweiler’s soul stokes a furnace to a faint red glow, spewing a dragon’s fire up the tunnel, but short of breath midway, never reaching me in the gallery.
My sight slings amid the sturdy shouldering walls, drawn into the evanescent dark of the barrel-vault, sniffing the secretive, punitive stone cold. A hearth awakens, the Pitbull self-stocking soul, to a red glow—meager petal flames rolling from the blind corner, escape, killing the gallery’s chill. Until, the inoffensive tongues stretch long flames from the clasp of a fistful fireball—I discard the vile anger, but the flamethrower lashes far up the tunnel, its heart’s wrath threatening the gallery to engulf me. Yet, the malicious soul falls prey to his own short breath. The fire trail collapses, vacuumed of oxygen, to die at the hearth, echoing his thoughts: 'This isn't a good idea—being identified!'
The embers I cradle—trophy of the mind, holographic gift—burn on beneath. With a blink, the rooftops knit themselves whole again, jagged across the city. Brussels bustles, breathes through the framed landscape windows beside which I had spent a few seasons, never imagining I would be lifted from my chair—until that day I land back from South Africa—walking away from Favi’s office.
I didn't see anything other than plunge into finding another job, when I crossed Laurence waiting on my way out. She says, “Mr. Favi had a meeting in your absence”—They said, “You didn't fit into the team.” Although cropped up in his wheelchair, the Lion in him stands uprighteous, and the pack of dogs that bark fear in her—but she meandered through them, rifling their Bill of Quantities, catching their mistakes. The embers of her words trail me down the stairwell.
Outside, the back street in its habitual hush, the floral display of the greengrocer, I leave only a cold concrete ghetto bone behind me, in search of a newspaper. To shift my eyesight across column titles and trail down construction field adverts, the small classifieds. With that locked in my mind, I follow a course aware Leo needs to feel King of the Jungle, and a second employer in a row—my independence doesn’t lend itself to them—very much like a marriage—with the right character. Seated with a coffee and a newspaper, I launch my mind on a course, branching through employment offers—until I picked up Victoria from work, and face another dilemma under the current. The twins of the Gemini, on par, reveal their inconveniences in tandem, so I drive home, pull up in Dr. Decroly Avenue. We walk through the gateway, across the yard, into the dark hallway, and into the apartment. I'm on hold, carrying a glow written for me, waiting for the next day, for the ten o’clock call—when corporate men have settled into their office, the phone call to dial.
Saturday evening comes, and Victoria returns from an outing. She is alight, pepish on her feet, her hands rolling as she says: “I crossed Hilda today.” No—I have to wait, don’t ask questions; I’ve learned with her that little by little the story will emerge. And when it does, it is her brother, Paul’s girlfriend.
I hold a bird’s-eye view, hovering off-angle, half-shy under an umbrella at a terrace table before the close bend—two vacant chairs—when Hilda surges across the way, verging into the sprawling woods along a cobblestone farm road, her ghostly trail spearheads back toward the restaurant terrace flair where the women spend their afternoon.
The seasons changed behind us, until, pepish she says, “[J’ai un rendez-vous, un client s’est désisté—tu viens avec moi…]—I've got a rendezvous, from a client cancellation—will you come with me?” She regurgitates, connects, Hilda carrying the aspirations and the load of her brother's burden—hence a baby sister left in all ignorance. “She's always been like a sister to me.”
We step out of the apartment, cross the front yard, and slip into the Audi’s seat. I tweak the ignition, pulling away, turning the corner, through the rear hedgerows of fenestrated brick facades—post modern 70s through the southern community, until in the valley of Forest’s downtown. Meeting the parking lot before the far-tucked railway, shying behind the industrial beige gleaming shed of the extended Volkswagen factory, before reappearing through neglected thicket of foliage. In Victoria’s doubtful hush we break the cast shade through the highway’s undercarriage on stilts, then burst in the glow of midmorning sun, onto a close curve straightens, blending us into the trickle of traffic cruising the inner peripheral lanes, the double-band carriageway stretching through the sprawling city outskirts—until Victoria blurts her thoughts.
She resuscitates that holographic vision that hasn’t left me since—soaring to a bird's-eye view, a country road beneath profiling itself like a landing strip, swooping around a tuft of dense wood to the left. I hover in pause. A red car breaks free from the blind bend’s green foliage, flashing in flight for the open fields. I stay fixated reading the unimaginable scene of a hallmark boxy model of my 1981 Audi 100. With every flash, I strain, until I catch in slow motion the car plowing straight across, catching the shadowing figures in the front passenger window.
Reading the figures’ expression—the woman seated upright, twisted, shoulders angled, her long mane puffed toward her window. She faces a robust man, braced back, a firm grip square on the steering wheel. Both are caught in a spasm, his mind resonating: ’Alright! Is that what you want?—gazing at the woman.
The red car crossed my line of sight, plowing through the stretch of fields, crashing into the far-left corner of a farmhouse, collapsing against the brick wall beneath a large bedroom window. Victoria piped herself into the era, breaking the drift, saying curtly. “His girlfriend died!”
She sits beside me, draped in the seat of our glass bubble, as we slip along the inner periphery, rising among the city’s crouched-up conglomeration—a triplet of staggering apartment-blocks against the sky. We’re fast closing in, footing the flocculent greenery, orbiting a static landmark that stings the sight. On the sly, Victoria evokes Hilda, skirting around the notion, tossing with the idea of breaking through the threshold to clairvoyance.
Rising anxiety catches me in a blur of road signs, any exit placing our glass bubble in the wake of a white Peugeot. I shift into a coasting driving mode—reading the driver's intent, shunting the white stippled lines slipping across underneath the hood. I locked in with the car ahead, shadowing the red Citroën that eases by the splitting concrete curb for the off-ramp. The three of us in row descend along the lateral concrete wall, a rising wedge. Where, gleaming headlights and radiator grills prowl like wild animals in a night jungle—cars halted before the scattered glowing traffic lenses.
Confident, I liaise past the prolonging face of the upfront apartment towers. Orbiting, I crawl on the sly away from the leading cars, warping the curb, teasing the policing red traffic lights—a hint short of the thoroughfare—releasing the traffic from the underpass, as I lead into a suspect side road. It spins me off a cuneiform wayside grass island into a one-way street. To the stance of a tall brick gable, gateway to a podunk, with hedgerows of crude fenestrated brick facades—phantom cobblestones pressed beneath metallic asphalt, remnants of an era when milkmen and the coal merchants rattled their horse-drawn carts along the narrow street.
I sweep a peering eye aside: the terracotta wall of townhouses shows its missing, the old workers' ghostly dwellings gaps, expropriated teeth. Upkept grass spread from the sidewalk through the backyard, butting against a concrete pedestal—towering heirs, artifacts of another age, their staggering balconies watchful over their ancestors.
Despite the occasional veil of shade sweeping across our glass bubble—vague, like Linda’s gift of recommending the set path—the doubtful street bears into leafy properties. A shy pitch-roofed enclave of homes breaks away in a seismic shift, and behind the pondok an ill-fit apron opens—explained as the border of municipalities bound by different by-laws. We crawl, rocking over rough crossings of confused paving and ill-fitting sidewalks, conjugating a gateway toward sudden assurance. The driveway coils our route past ghostly heavy earth-moving equipment—gone—leaving green-carpeted lawns at the footing of towers edging the asphalt.
I thumb the steering wheel’s spoke, spinning, rotating back across the cul-de-sac screen of cigar-shaped poplar, and slip under the open sky into the parking bay among far-scattered cars. I halt just short of the concrete parapet, its face impressed with panes of formwork. I tweak the engine to a last sigh. Victoria sinks into doubt, as we’re perch—the pondok’s terracotta rooftops warped and juxtaposed against the Westland Shopping before us.
She is skeptic in her hush, yet her craving has led us here. She pulls the door latch, and we meet again on the flanks with a glance over the Audi’s rooftop, pausing before we head in unison, dwarfing into the shadow of the slender north facade. Crossing the driveway—off left, the far block stretches along rich, watered lawns, the median bleeding onto that perch beneath the southern azure—leaving us with a mirage suspended between the towers.
We venture along the sunlight-grouted path, skimming the shaded facade of mirrored windows and balconies, approaching—jutting into the median—a threesome sentinels: poplars cloaked in a myriad of silvery slivers with their dark shade, guiding us aside to a fluorescent aquarium, Victoria finds her Sun in Tiger. In a few bounds she slips through the glazed aluminum frame into the airlock. She veers, and pounces up to the large wall of the labeled grid directory. Her eyes dart as if at random—yet, catching up with her, I see she has already found and pressed a calling button. She dithers, exuding impatience through the pause. At the crackle of a voice, she announces: “Victoria!”
Pepish, she sprints toward the magic threshold, glass reflecting our entry behind, folded with the shaded lobby ahead. A buzz—the latch releases its clutch, the glazed reflection swings clear. She vanishes around the blind corner. I catch up as she withdraws her finger from the glowing button, retreating into an anticipatory wait—blind to the offset pull of the wall-blending elevator door. She seems to step through the wall, where I find her confined in the bright cabin.
The door shuts us in. A brief, thoughtful pause—claustrophobic—held in the soft whining trawl upward along blind rail tracks. Then Victoria pushes the door and slips out. Her hesitation stirs a mine-shaft sensation. As she walks off into eons of withered hallway, I launch a reassuring Hydra of my mind beyond the walls, anchoring our presence to the heavens. We pursue along the demarcated third floor; the bleached fluorescent tubes guide our way—across a bulkhead doorway, until a distant end door cracks open.
Rose Delbruyere's mother is there, waiting—poised to receive Victoria. She waves us left, veering in the hallway through a gaping greeting doorway light, into a blinding transient lounge. Around the right jamb, a hollowed black visitor’s corner opens, where red florals greet our discomfort. Their scattered blossoms and fading green leaves sink into the black, as a gleam of light mirrors across the square coffee table ingrained with matching flowers. In our hesitation, Victoria sidesteps along the black upholstered couch; she settles. I follow.
As the mirage perches on a sketchy balcony railing, a black wood duco display cabinet slants into the room beside the single-leaf French door breaking the corner’s fold—eager to flaunt, in the midst of delicate Gypsy confusion, its Judaic relics and kitschy clutter, the shelves behind paired doors crowding the visitors. Midway up the flank wall, Rose Delbruyere emerges with the swing of a blind flush-panel door. Victoria jumps to her feet, slipping away from the wall décor, its framed photographs hinting at a family-orientation. By a glance, Rose relieves her mother from duty’s curiosity. Rose lingers on the door lever, her shoulder planted against the leaf in a slight reverence. Victoria breaks Rose’s nod, asking: “[French: Peut-il entrer avec moi…]—May he come in with me?”
“[Bien sûr]—Sure,” Rose answers, her tone insinuative, “[Il n’y a rien de secret dans mes pronostics—si tu es d’accord avec ce que les cartes révèlent.]—There is nothing secretive in my prognostics—if you're OK with what the cards reveal.”
Shielded by her attained integrity, Victoria sidesteps through the gaping doorway, leaving me to greet the petite, plumpish woman, Pepish. She whirls in counter-swirls into the clinical austerity of a bare kitchen, where a distant window slips a gleam across the unencumbered worktop. I am curling after Victoria—yet nowhere for my eyes to grip, not a single flower in the field for distraction—until they return to the doorway’s wall, where three wooden backrests clasp a small mahogany café table, meant for a pair on the Champs-Élysées, wedged beneath the steady watch of Rose’s eyes.
Rose Delbruyere breaks the chill, saying, “[Prenez une chaise.]—Take a chair!”—She holds a stoic stance, aligned with the backrest in the doorway’s light. Victoria wrestles with her hesitation over the choice, while I oversee the game playing out. Rose’s eyes, drifting in trance, sweep across the table and backrest, through the long room, and out the distant window—her ironic smile releasing the words: “[Je laisse la fenêtre ouverte pour laisser sortir les esprits.]—I leave the sash open to let the spirits out."—as if still ridding herself of what lingered before our arrival.
As if searching for my Audi, earlier parked below the balcony in the tower’s shadow, I catch Rose’s retrieving regard and move past Victoria's shoulders toward the backrest, pinning myself—enticing her to sit. She lowers to the chair before her. Rose Delbruyere, releasing her clinch on the shutting door, remains chatting with Victoria. “Hilda—she recommended I come and see you!” Hostlike, she lingers in a slow pause—signal for me to lower myself into the seat before her—and only then does she follow suit to sit. As her hand reaches toward the pack of cards, I cut across the chatter, pleading for writing matter. She slides a sheet of paper, guttered by a ball-point pen pressed beneath her thumb, over a shy blue band of six-inch ceramic tiles along the wall—the backsplash’s gleaming eyes overseeing a triple deck of tarot cards worn in their stages of use.
Victoria's fluttering words alight on Rose Delbruyere, whose hand slips—dissimulating emotions—across the tabletop. She draws the first deck forward, centering it to meet a croupier’s nimble fingers, and lifts the pack from its collusion with the wood grain. After a few shuffles, her hand presses outward, then draws back, fanning a long arc of cards before Victoria. She leans in, murmuring: “Pick twenty-one—with your left hand!"
Victoria, straight as a corkscrew in the coordination of the present, lets her sinister fingers—left hand, clumsy in reach—pluck dorsal cards at random, landing wild, counting as they fall. Then Rose Delbruyere takes over, her spider fingers drawing the last card, rolling it to unveil the face. “[Un petit garçon. . .]—A little boy!” she says, beginning the conversation. The card tumbles between her fingers, face upward. “[Seul entre trois hommes. . .]—Alone amidst three men!” Then it lands before her. “[Il est seul parmi un couple âgé. . .]—He is alone amid an old couple!” I script in shorthand, unskilled and mostly illegible, while Rose and Victoria unfeather their way toward a conclusion: her boy in the midst of André, his father. Tonton—the man without a past—and me now, cradled by Andre’s parents.
As Rose sets down a court: I note unresolved—landing a row of four, wrapping to the next line, until the fourth line completes. Over the grid she layers a three-by-three spread, shaping a Pyramid: a sublime gnawing in Victoria’s existence, a scenario unnamed—who, what, or where—leaping bounds as Rose frowns. Cards curl up under her fingers, one, or more, pairs, coiling back to the under-layer, deeper into the mystery. “[Une femme mariée?]—A married woman,” Rose intones, then more thoughtful: “[Tu connais une Balance. . .]—Do you know a Libra woman?” And that came home to me.
The exhausted pack is retired; Rose draws out the next, shuffles, and Victoria counts, questioning Victoria: “[Il y a un voyage qui reveint. . .]—There is a journey that is coming back in the cards?” The card tire, and Rose sprawls a brief, short court that ends with her saying: “[Tu vas faire un voyage.]—You're going to make a journey.” As the conversation wanes, I offer to settle, pulling a banknote from the purse of my Seven Star Diary, which I slip back into my back pocket—Fort Knox sealed. Almost in sync with Victoria, I rise from our seats, Rose Delbruyere lagging behind. I fold my notes and tuck them into the opposite cheek pocket for a quick reach.
We carry a misty reality—shared in the ‘flou,’ like a dream not meant to be remembered.
We trail our way out of the apartment, past the Old Lady. The endless corridor has lost its eerily-awesome milieu, yielding to the elevator. From the lobby, crashing sunlight carries us through the glaze, Victoria, deep in thought, zombies toward the Audi; I tweak the ignition, reverse, and drive away into the street—her craving suscitating, a finger guiding us—until we pull up and cross to a terrace.
We settle at a table. She lights a cigarette, orders a cocktail; the waiter returns with her drink and my bowl of red wine. We regurgitate what Rose Delbruyere said, share a coffee, then rise—her eyes holding that prophecy's afterglow. She blurts: “[T’es encore marié. . .]—You’re still married?” I laugh at the absurdity of not being trusted as we stride to the Audi: “[Non! Je ne suis pas marié.]—No! I’m not married!”—was I to know English on a document would not ooze through to the legal French or Dutch. My words were put to doubt, simmering in her hush of our drive home, and beyond.
I tweak the ignition, glancing at Jean-Francois settling into the rear seat behind Victoria as the door shuts. Their profile holds against the glass, the pronounced bay window amid townhouses bidding an innocent farewell. We turn the corner, spooling northbound through short stretches of the hedgerows of fenestrated brick facades, their reflective windows holding strangers’ gaze wondering how long we’ll be gone. We traverse the labyrinth of the enclaves wedged between arteries crossing the eastern communities, breathing along the Grand Boulevard until skimmed off onto the spur of a downgraded highway—cruising stretches, crossings, the city’s outskirts till the edge, overpassing the City Ring, following “Zaventem” on the gantry signboards. Sidestepping the town, we are drawn short of the International Airport’s closing loop, veering instead into the shade beneath the garage’s concrete deck.
A few decks up the spiraled ramp, near the elevator shaft, I pull in a bay and tug our bags from the trunk, Victoria and Smeets trailing close. The elevator door gleams like a caller against the bare concrete. We step into the cabin and emerge into the cloistered passage; in our strides, its shaded frame spins Aetheria’s mirage, unveiling her presence—the distant curtain wall rotating around our sightline. Helios anchors the mirage in the driveway—traffic pausing—our horseshoe course prolonging the International Departure terminal’s curtain wall. We carry the glow over our shoulders as we stumble through the airlock, the concourse gleam-washing ahead, spilling toward the scattered crowd.
Victoria and I check in our luggage. Out of the crowd, Christiane, her friend, appears and greets us. With time to spare, we turn our backs on the check-in desks and soar up the escalator to the upper deck, ending in the panoramic restaurant. From the self-service display counters, past the teller, Smeets dips a hand in his back pocket to pay. Ahead, the airfield lies in view behind the curtain wall, Smeets sets his beer on a vacant table while we bring our red wine to the round. He sweeps a hand to the facing chair-back, pulling and settling, chatting with nothing to say—until in a sudden burst, motivating Christiane, raising his glass. Tinkling plastic glasses, bringing Christiane a toast for her thirty-third birthday.
Cheering catches up with our flight blaring. We stand, trawled along by the announcement over the loudspeakers, pulled away on a slight tilt of the floor, dithering back onto the departure concourse. We rush farewells, scattering—“Tonton, here—the car keys.” I head off with Victoria, vertigo carrying me in a muted stumble, weaving to face the row of plate-glass cubicles, reflections layering into the maze of a barrier. An official controls our passports; we stroll through the kaleidoscopic Tax-Free mall, following the corridor running out of sight. Then, with a breath shown to the flight crew, we board the aircraft, ushered to our seat number.
The passengers settle. Taxiing away from the terminal, night lights recede—airlift, escaping the city glow, leveling beneath starry skies. A ritual unfolds: a steward, a hostess adrift in distant aisles, bearing without thought toward Rose Delbruyere’s prophesied flight. The lights dim. Victoria sits abreast, calm, embraced in a honeymoon pod—away from her beloved country, toward the lair of my family’s realm beyond the blackness. I’m pressed into my seat, my hands and feet feel free as our chats drift, while my muscles stiffen hard against the mold. I search through the porthole into the dark, as if for a cue of our approach, shortening an interminable flight.
The sun has risen over the horizon. I turn to Victoria, stretching my imagination: “[Je me demande qui sera là pour nous accueillir. . .]—I wonder who’ll be there to pick us up?” Our slow-motion flight quickens, the ground slipping behind, the earth spreading like wings—then touchdown—sudden breaking the air, slowing our approach to the terminal. Taxiing lingers, Jan Smuts International rotating in the sky’s reflection—our pivotal approach pulls to a halt. Among the passengers, we rise, stream down the stairs, trailing into the crowds, bussed toward the terminal.
In the stream of passengers, I welcomed the endless corridors, emerging behind the queues. Victoria slips beneath the “Foreign Passport” banner, while I dream of cheating my way past under the sign “Residents” with my identity book. Instead, I flow alongside her, pausing before the control officer. Leaving the booth, we fetch our luggage from the carousel, then onto the dreaded customs—feeling their eyes, able to stop me for no rhyme or reason. Yet we move through their corridor to a blind cul-de-sac, a pair of wing doors clearing—gaping onto a greeting crowd, pressing against the guardrail, their eyes wiping us away, gazing past, reaching behind.
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