YD6-93(ARMH) Aetheria Weaseling Through the Cracks of the Zodiac, Pricking the Needle to Thread Her Cradle
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Epigraph / Reader Tease: Turbulence breaks across the Sahara sky, silver wings stitching their path back to Brussels. From the crystal maze of Zaventem to Uccle’s bay windows, the journey bends toward a house half-hidden, half-promised. Aetheria presses slyly through the cracks—her rhythm needling, her cradle forming—while the weight of banks, faxes, and family orbit like constellations awaiting their turn.
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.
YD6-93(ARMH) Aetheria Weaseling Through the Cracks of the Zodiac, Pricking the Needle to Thread Her Cradle
The wings flip-flop as dust clouds rise to the edge, a rough flight through air pockets. Helios wrestles with the horizon, straining to see through the sandstorm blur the Sahara beneath, glimpses through the jumbo jet's porthole. Fascinated by the silver-wing engineering, my fears yield, mesmerized by its subtle appeasement—the turbulence dissipates. Then I sense the floating in my seat, feather-light, after crossing the blues of the Mediterranean, a shoal of surf’ stippling striates—Montpellier, perhaps, a sun-bleached gateway—yet a course inland—a highway bifurcation off the Papal city of Avignon—a childhood theater, frenzy with glee—“[Sur Le Pont D’Avignon On Y Dance…]—On The Bridge Of Avignon We Dance…”—before duty recalls me as a land surveyor. Behind a total station theodolite, I gauge the long glide across France's hexagon, toward its “brain,” as the French kid themselves—the outlines feeding the Belgians. Fog clears—touchdown. We taxi across the field. Impatient to stretch my legs, Zaventem’s terminus rotates out of the distance, the apron extending toward the nearing curtain wall until the aircraft halts.
Passengers rise. Victoria and I scuffle along the aisle, funnel through corridors, the crowd thins until we squeeze, accordion-bottlenecked. Staring at the plate-glass reflections, lingering before a crystal maze of the international barrier. At the policed cubicles, we hand over our passports, flip them, and return them. We bypass the officer into the opening hallway, follow the side exit, and face the carousel. Among the crowd we snatch our luggage, load the trolley, pressing into the trickle of fewer passengers. Customs officers’ eyes skim past us, spearing behind us. Then the cul-de-sac seam cracks—milky doors slide open—to the greeting crowd, our chauffeur emerging from their midst.
As intuitive, I sponge Victoria’s extravagant jumps, her wing-flaps of a hug as she launches herself at the veteran-classified, unraveling her gratifying crossover arms, the ghost of a father she loses at the tender age of seven—she slips back sagging to her heels, and with a haughty lift in her voice says: “Ho Tonton! [Dutch—De reis was geweldig, het onthaal…]—The trip was fantastic, the reception…” She leads on, tugging Jean-Francois Smeets, who scuffles and turns. Behind the greeting crowd, we head among a few stragglers trickling off with us toward the slit of light peeking across the concourse. With a backhand he passes Audi’s keys into my hand. I press the trolley with our luggage, my mind abandoning a windmill of words in the orbit as their chat leads us out onto the driveway. A detour around waiting around taxis and a few people, then across the zebra crossing to the elevator cabin. Emerging into the garage, a swarm of slickstream gleams among a forest of concrete columns, we reach the Audi.
A key tweak lifts the trunk lid, unlocks the door, inviting Victoria and Smeets to board. I catch up, unloading the trolley, packing the trunk. Smack—trunk, my door—the engine purrs. I shift gears, back up, and drive off. As Victoria repeats, “Tonton…” and Smeets, “Viky’je…” in a windmill of chatting, the lane leads to the open deck, swirling down a corkscrew past parking decks to spin out, exit the garage into daylight, and veer from the reflective slicks that checker the terminal curtain wall. The driveway feeds a leading roadway past a tuft of hotel towers, merging with the oncoming trickle of traffic—echoing our arrival at the terminal two weeks earlier—and soon we cross the City Ring. The outskirts loose with new commercial buildings in open land, we cruise the thoroughfare, weave across the Grand Boulevard, and enter a tightening community, a peaceful man here, a woman there, walking their dogs on a Sunday.
On a wedge course traversing hedgerows and the odd glass front breaking the fenestrated brick facades, we cut short of the heart of the old city. We borrow the Little Beltway, riding the asphalt waves, trough underpass gates from distant towns, until we crest Halle Gate, zip into surface traffic, and turn across the overpass to enter the community. Across the shallow valley, tires patter on St. Giles’ cobblestone, circling the Bohemian girl—tip-toe, stepping-stones, her shoulder jug spilling a cascade into fountain dishes—then across a seismic shift of the street stretch into Forest, patter veering through Rochefort Square.
We climb the sweeping avenue, our gaze reaching out from the glass bubble, a sunbeam on the facade tagged—Aetheria pointing a finger at the luminescent red For Sale sign. Fixated, Smeets and Victoria spin out of their windmill: “[Dutch—“We moeten iets doen…]—We must do something…” eager to stir the owner and the realtor behind the etiquette facade from their lassitude.
In the corner of our eyes, the green flowing lawns, until atop Altitude Hundred we crest and weave into Uccle, veering down the alley-like Dr. Decroly. The chat falls silent to a hush, returning after our honeymoon-like voyage before the bay window of the house. We step out, and I lag behind Victoria and Smeets easing through the plumb brick pillars and the path to the front door. I bump our luggage from the trunk, indoors, through the jamb and across the hallway. Smeets stays in retreat a few paces into the apartment, as Victoria poses her hand luggage, and I cross behind the diamond-obscure glass of the portal. Behind me, Smeets says. “[Kom, laten we iets gaan eten—je kunt me daar alles vertellen.]—Come, let’s get something to eat—you can tell me all there.” I turn up by the bay window, placing our suitcases in the light on the carpet.
Victoria leads the way outside. I catch up with them on the sidewalk, slip behind the wheel as they follow suit from the passenger’s side, closing doors. We pull off. I map my way across arteries through Renaissance-radial streets, hedgerows of fenestrated bluestone brick facades tempting me aside from the northeastern communities. But catching on the weaseling streets, we crossed the Grand Boulevards, and edge further; I begin to search the chain of curb cars for an open bay.
When I park the Audi diagonally, facing a brick wall, Victoria leads the pace, and I trail, somewhat reluctant of Smeets’ invitation. We cross the wide street toward the row of townhouses, generations held in their brick-and-mortar superstructure, but beneath the box-gutter cornices a young lively plinth crowds the sidewalk with bright awnings and umbrellas. A storefront window displays blue denim jeans, and an open gate to a driveway reveals tombstones with blank polished faces—leaving me out of place. Victoria, in her twitchy gait, darts for the distant sliced street corner. Before passing, her eyes scanned the women’s outfits and patrons, casting looks across the outdoor terrace tables as if to say, ‘Here I come!’
Victoria stops at the familiar dark-green glass-and-wood framed door, angled with the charm of grandfathers who once entertained themselves in the corner brasserie. As Smeets catches up, she presses through the backswing of the airlock doors, fixing polite gazes on young and old men while the rusty squeaks fall to a hush. She gives a quick sweeping glance at us—‘Are you following?’—and around the interior. Smeets nods, “After you.” But I shake off the gesture, urging him instead to trail Victoria’s lead inside.
Victoria's gaze passes over two women seated at a near table, as my eyes fix on the familiar stripped-down brick wall—an apprentice long silenced, conversing with the breathing clay, header bonds woven with stretcher courses, the rhythm of bones corrying weight, Herculean, yet not cracked.
At the distant flank service counter, her eyes catch a slender waiter in a fitted uniform, fluttering Victoria’s feathers. He drifts from the far end of the barrier to the kitchen. Reaches beneath the counter for a stack of menus, and vanishes—ghosting through the brick party wall. We then catch the youthful senior waiter—preempting our small, indecisive group in the adjoining dining room.
The street glow streams through the window as we turn our backs and head into the depths of an adjoining worker's townhouse. Trailing down the aisle between two rows of tables, Victoria asks back, eyeing Smeets: “[Dutch: Waar wilt u zitten?]” then turns to me: “[French: Où veux-tu t’asseoir ?]—Where would you like to sit?” At the far end the waiter mirrors us—his expression one of utter boredom, giving Victoria a slow, exaggerated look from head to toe, airing his restlessness under a breath: ‘Take all the time you need.’ Under his gaze she turns fluid, flowing around the table, sliding through backrests and pulling a chair against the wall. The waiter then butters up Smeets: “May I serve you something in the meantime?”
A student waiter soon takes the spot, returning in an efficient blur with our drinks: a house aperitif for Victoria, a beer for Smeets, and a glass of red wine for me. Smeets raises his glass and toasts, “Get the realtor moving!”—an alarm echoing back to that Thursday site visit weeks ago. The words land strangely, striking an unsettling note in the midst of our dinner.
After a short wait, our food arrives with two waiters. Victoria is served a leather-tough, well-done steak, which she cuts into small pieces. Smeets’ steak is rare and bloody, sliced into neat cubes. I’m given an overwhelming Macedonian dish of assorted vegetables. Yet something gnaws at us through the long, drawn-out meal—not the tedious routine of eating out, but the realtor who was supposed to call us back, and didn’t, a man indifferent to his client. That unease niggles me in the hush around the table. When the waiter returns with coffee, Smeets catches his eye and, with a broad plastic smile, asks for the bill.
The last waiter disappears too, replaced by another who brings the bill. Smeets reaches into his back pocket, pulls out a wad of cash, and with a smile flicks off a few notes. As the waiter turns away, we stand and I untether from the table and chairs, tracking back toward the wall across the street—stretching before us, vanishing left into the blur of distance, and to the right cut short, as if by a zodiacal portal, blind to the interior. Before us, Winter’s branches bend over the warped thick wall, leaves unfurled wide toward the sky, imagination rooting in convent walls and monastery grounds of the cemetery—until my thoughts switch to my silver-gray Audi, our route back.
We pull up before the bay window of the brick house, alight, and return indoors. Smeets and Victoria chat until the Aries in him repeats to Victoria: “[Dutch: Ik moet een pendelbus nemen]” tutoring himself, then repeating to me: “[French: Je dois prendre une navette]--I have to catch a shuttle.” The words trail after him, and my mind slips back—
After following up a classified advertisement over the phone, the man at the other end of the line hears out a ritual of my Tarzan character emancipating. He hires me—pending the final interview on the day of starting the job. Flickering in my mind: ‘only an employer secure in his own mastery could dare such confidence!’ I feel the Libra’s reins of control, tighten, pulling at my restless wild mind.
I’ve grown familiar, with this dynamite of my mind—my downfall after starting on a new, clean-slate cycle—the thread frays under intensive concentration; my mind craze, crack, fragment, withdrawing into controversy. Burnout morphing my character—I ought to watch, holding the pieces together, I’ve weaseled my way through Forum before the entire ensemble brockle to rubble, refreshed, starting a new job.
***
Awakened to an exchange of bird chirps in a sidewalk tree canopy, I opened my eyes to a sliver of light filtering through the slats of roller blinds, casting across the wasted niche by the bay window. I glanced at my wristwatch, then climbed over Victoria, gripped the rail, and rolled into a foot sling. Blind, my toe groped for the rung, onward to stepping down the ladder. I edged toward the doorless wardrobe niched alongside the fireplace, brushed the chair’s backrest, picked pants, threaded my foot, slipped in a shirt, pulled on socks, and stepped into one shoe—pacing off into the other, leaving mother and son to their rhythm of welcoming the day.
I crossed the living room, stepped around the kitchen table. With fluid hands, coffee percolated and toast popped up; I dished a plate for myself, keeping standby for Victoria and Alexandre. I placed cups into saucers, laid butter knives by the plates. Materne Strawberry jam and Nutella centered, I settled into my consciousness, seated. I slapped a slice of cheese on toast—across the living room, through the interleading doorways, in the shadowed spurs of life, Victoria quavered: “Pipo! Pipo… [Vooruit, je bent te laat]—Come on, you’ll be late!”
Victoria approaches the gaping doorway. As I rose, poured coffee, sipped. She gripped the entry door, urging Alexandre. I slipped past mother and boy. She closed the door behind the Cancer in Alexandre, plodding half-asleep down the hallway behind us, then through the entrance’s gape, pulling it close after him as she sashayed—punctuated—eyes tugging in frustration at her seven-year-old across the front yard path into the street. I watched from behind the steering wheel, the finale into the car playing out.
Beyond the engine’s purr, Victoria, upheld her strides, stretched, and spun. She shook her mind. ‘Look at you…’ The stout boy, sloppy in clothes, shoulders blending, floppily dragged a student's swelled handbag. She stood by the car door as he clobbered through the gateway, then squeezed in through the gaping car door, bold, scootching his school bag down the rear bench, squeezing himself along. Victoria - Smack - the door. She whipped herself into the passenger seat - smack - twisted in place, looked behind—’Where are you coming from?’ Her eyes snarled as I checked back the doors, pulled off.
Turning the corner north, out the hush of our right-of-way, I drove straight into the chaotic traffic, taking my chances in the disarray through the narrow, light-stifled hedgerows of brick facades. Perspectives shifted—dramatic, flaring angles, forming my set bird’s-eye view northeast. Victoria sat upright, myopic spooling us, she alternated between my calls on milestones and calling out passing street names, checking the blue enameled signs. As often, I have no clue, I plead again: “Why can’t you take your car?”
“Daddy! [C'est plus vite quand tu nous déposes]—It’s quicker when you drop us off.”
Passing Forum’s intersection—a doorway into the street—I rode to catch the next traffic light that policed us across a choking boulevard. We succeeded, and went down a block around the yellow-brick prow of apartments, and into the one-way street, fallen quiet to after a latecomer before us. We pulled up before a breaching, refreshing checkered grid of windows in sleek modern brick. Victoria threw a glance over her shoulder: “Pipo! [Kom, schiet een beetje op. De deur is nog niet dicht]—Come on Pipo, hurry a little. The door isn’t closed yet.”
Sleepy eyelids stirred Alexandre’s slump from his seat. Victoria called back: “Pipo! [Vooruit, haast je.]—Come on, hurry. . .” He rushed a slack hand to the door latch, his schoolbag following as he backed out - Smack. Thick, large-framed spectacles hurried ahead, but his arms and legs lagged, passing his mother, her profile anxious in the window frame. He hobbled and shuffled his schoolbag, slogged along the sidewalk. In the distance, he disappeared through the crack of a door beneath an unfolded glass-box feature of warped townhouses across the street. Victoria, with relief, sighed. “[Il a réussi] He made it.”
I drove off past the door that closed on Pipo. Up the street, we crossed the boulevard by the traffic light’s lens toggle, threading through the inbound bottleneck traffic. Victoria's umpteenth instance stoking me onto the outbound boulevard lanes, breathing peace, we veered off through the median, by the pivot of the cathedral-like university architecture, cutting the stream of cars and landing on the campus. I pulled up across the grassy median alongside a classroom block. Victoria stepped out - Smack - evaporized. I sagged into the cradle of my seat, gazing at Victoria distancing across the street, up the wing spread stairs for the glazed portal, “Block K” scored on the transom.
I snail-crawled through the opposite exit, weaseling a roundabout back tracking my way, ending the pair of triangulated courses. I stalled my car, dreading the horrendous concrete bone of a glazed parking-garage architecture, alighted, heading toward the calling fluorescent cold marble lobby. I pressed past the door, trod the fire escape, and emerged in Forum’s offices—my path behind the Rottweiler sitting in a suit, nearing widens the island of worktables. The Pitbull’s eyes devour me. I lower myself to my chair in front of the Doberman, with daylight streaming through the windows. For the umpteenth lift of the laptop screen—re-formulating the spreadsheet before engaging in data input.
Later in the morning, Laurence Meysseman entered the room with the realm of a month-end project report at hand. She hovered at Mr. Rottweiler’s shoulders wedged between us placing his Bill of Quantities on his table. I asked: “[Est-ce que je peux te parler… Ce n'est rien en rapport avec le travail]—Can I have a word with you… Nothing to do with work?” She proceeds under Mr. Rottweiler’s gaze, flipping tabs, correcting entries, until riffling the back wad over the front and carrying the ream collect herself. She returned an hour later, rounding my shoulders to stand in the window light.
Laurence answered. “Sure.” After I asked, “Can you fax a letter for me?” I pointed to the letterhead: “This is the telephone number.” I handed her the letter, fluttering off at my flank. In the corner of my eye, across the passage, off right to Favi’s office, she disappeared to her desk, leaving me only the sillage of an efficient secretary, her reassuring echo. “Give me time, and I’ll get it done.”
I lifted the phone to Laurence’s voice. “Victoria, [est en ligne…]—is online.”
Victoria said. “[On doit se rendre à l'agence immobilière]—We’ve got to go to the real estate agent's office.” It left me hanging in doubt, reminded of pulling the plug, the laptop screen blacking out with its memory—my morning work gone—to a brief desperation, until I stepped into the street to fetch the Audi.
Smeets stood with Victoria on the curb as I pulled up. Victoria stepped in, saying. “Jette.” - Smack - as Smeets squeezes into the rear. I refrained from arguing with the autochthons—while “Jette” echoes a childhood return to Grandmother-Meyer’s brother. Through off-peak traffic, I wedged in a few words in their chat. “Tonton! [On ne peut pas simplement entrer … comme ça] You can’t just barge in like that?”
From the rear seat, Smeets said. “[C'est comme ça qu'on fait les affaires ici…]—That’s how business is done here!” …in Belgium.
I rode with professionals in the glass bubble, as Victoria had already had explained herself as the girl, fresh out of college, an assistant telephonist at the front desk of the law firm.
The Little Beltway spent itself in the North, cluttered with skyscrapers, where we scissored across lanes from the tunnels and zipped into surface traffic beneath glass and marble towers pawed along the old city. I needed to reach into the western communities by a map that had faded in my mind since a Zaventem International Airport Taxi once dropped me off by Ilse and Gerard’s Bakery in Molenbeek. Across the railway line, I unfolded a bank account skirting local stores at the Agency of the General de Banque, whose manager—like a fairy story out of the jungle book of our lives—had once attended nursery school with my little sister in nascent Goma.
Self-knotted, the string of life to circumstances churned in my mind through the median’s leafy boulevard, diagonal across the opposite hedgerow of fenestrated brick facades, within the mansion walls of our great uncle where we were received to reassemble as siblings of a fragmented family in flight, within the repatriation realm of the Belgians Congo independence.
We drove further westward, by the slivers of a faded map, I pulled up to the repeat of the real estate agency’s modernity, along a purple smoked-glass commercial facade that breached offside at an intersection with the hedgerow’s fenestrated brick facades, risen on plinths in a kaleidoscope of brands and advertisements, where pedestrians rummage through retailers’ storefronts.
We stepped out of our glass bubble, I swung my hips by Audi’s rear fender taillights, our gaze infiltrating the plate-glass of the bright lobby interior, its preemptive display leading our way to a single elevator. We pressed through the hush of the doors, and the petite Victoria squeezed in by the flabby Smeets into a cabin ill-shallow, to stand in tandem. I reflected—hesitating to lose them—but in need to breath my eyesight leaped for the wall crack.
I stormed the blind stairs curling around the elevator shaft, egressed, and encountered the door swing, Smeets scuffled in clown shoes from behind, Victoria a pace upfront—in Aetheria’s heavenly efflorescent realm—onto a fluorescent office floor tunneling forward. A counter crept forward at an upright edge, cracked open to a niche, the reception counter in the tunnel’s alignment, vacant behind its stretch, but the back wall was splashed with the Real Estate Agency’s crest.
By the first of a beam of four bright red visitors’ chairs, Victoria paused. While I gazed, a leap into the squared cul-de-sac, to a wall sharing twin doors. Smeets paced like a yo-yo-ing back and forth on the floor. I advanced toward the ajar door, a male voice emanating in monologue, I crept up. Stood watching the back of a man in a dark suit jacket, shoulders leaning back, outlines lost in a high swivel chair’s backrest, talking to the far bright white corner. Respectful, and before lingering too long, I withdrew.
On returning, I said, “Tonton! [Il est occupé en ligne.]—the man is busy on the phone.”
I lowered myself to the edge of a chair, awaiting my imminent return. Curbing impatience, I pricked an ear toward the doorway murmur, while the Cat in Smeets pawed his way to the spot I had vacated. His blind flank livened, a palm gripped the flush door’s lever, hinging back before planting the sidewall, hesitated. After a prolonged stance, I rose, and in Smeets’ tracks.
Smeets paces in, and up to the man seated at his desk with an air of 'I am busy!' The Aries in him butts his head, interrupts, saying, “We are here to make an offer for the house on Queen Marie Henriette Avenue.” While lifting his jacket’s hem, dipping a hand in wide trouser’s back pocket. Extend an arm in slow motion, his palm flowering the edges from a wad of banknotes. He counted out, in a ritual, of flicking a five thousand Belgian franc bills. Steps unashamed forward a magic lay out of reach at the point of the desk, saying, “In good faith!”
The realtor hung up the phone, brushing off Smeets’ theater. “The offer of three and a half is ridiculous,” he snapped—it snarled right at me. I recollected Laurence had sent the fax from Forum’s firm of charter quantity surveyors weeks earlier—I was glueless—entering this complex novelty—yet monthly estimating Axa Tower’s progressed from a Bill of Quantities, while Dollars from my previous life—or before that, rands—still swirled in my head, utterly disconnected from this desperate negotiation in Belgian francs.
The realtor swiveled in his chair squared up to his desk. By magic the bills vanish into Smeets’ palm close to his pocket, none the wiser.
After a breath, he opened a gateway to the “why?”—the For Sale poster on the townhouse's facade had faded, over seasons, dulled in echo of the passing traffic up the avenue, in symphony with the centenary of soot clinging to the brick. He snapped: “Make a decent offer that I can present…” The weight of a client on the other end hung in balance when he added. “I'll see what I can do for four million,” sliding a form from the drawer of his desk. After Smeets’ nod, it passed behind—onto me.
I stepped out from behind Smeets, to the vacant secretarial desk. Victoria, from the visitor’s chair, approached, and joined me. As I laid the form on the counter, over the pen she read to me the clause the realtor had explained—his legal obligation, in the sillage of seasoned buyers the fright—but was foreign to me—when he said that the onus is on the owner to bear the dry rot treatment.
I filled out the Offer to Purchase, and, taking leave from Victoria, returned to his office. The form passed hands, slipped across the desk to him; his eyes scrolled my scribbled lines to my signature before he ordered, “[Attendez-moi.]—Wait for me.”
Smeets and I left the man behind his desk, pulling the door, leaving a spying crack for eavesdropping. I returned toward Victoria, seated on the far row of the steel-legged beam chairs, to take my place for an immediate return. Waiting for a verdict, while Smeets, all ears, edged away, from the single wrangling voice. He edged up to us, circling in front of Victoria cramped up.
The plastic dug into my flesh, pressing my pelvic bones, as Smeets regrouped and the distant voice rose and fell with incessant intonations, escaping the office to fall into a hush. Then the man stepped into the doorway light and said, “OK. It's accepted.” Smeets stepped up to the realtor, asking. “[Que faut-il pour bloquer l'accord le temps d'obtenir les fonds ?]—What do you need to block the agreement while waiting to secure the funds?”
The realtor said. “[Dix pour cent—un mois.] Ten percent—one month.”…lee time.
Smeets turned away from the realtor, his voice echoing. “[M'sieur l'agent, le virement… 'de fonds.' C'est pour ainsi dire fait.]—Mr. Realtor, the transfer ‘. . .of the funds.’ As good as done.”
Chameleon’s face, flab hanging from his jaw as he approached. Ploof - I’m invisible under a killer soldier’s cold stare emerging from a WWII battlefield. A winner’s smirk marched off with him, laser-beamed eyes cutting the heavenly tunnel past Victoria. They burned the burgundy steel elevator door, but as Victoria rose from the corner of the chair, he shook his blinkers off—a war zone faltering in vertigo, his youthful bloated chest melting small inside his fluttering business suit. He swung off course, faced Victoria, bleating, “We can leave now.”
My eyesight trailed Smeets; Victoria catching up with her peppish Irish dancer’s legs heading off—chilled, clinical, as the atmosphere we had walked into. In the sillage of Mariette Somers, the Taurus in her, had rummaged through my luggage while I lodged under her thatched-roof house—as minds rumored my wealthy bank account, without questioning: could an alcoholic be trusted, herself, confusing strings and columns of digits without a decimal point.
While I ruminated, unfolded to doubt, Smeets and Victoria entered the elevator cabin, as I felt myself walking a blade’s edge, searching for the fire escape. I stepped down the shoulder-squeezing stairwell, corner to corner, spiraling down, my mind squeezed by numbers—fifty thousand in my account, only an eighth of the four hundred thousand. Jean-Francois Smeets’ recklessness flustering under my skin, my thoughts bathed in white pit balls. Long ago I left behind the ease of gauging inches and feet, yards, figures tangible to the trade—yet I must still measure the miles to a trail of the four million that looms a month before losing the sale.
We’re meeting downstairs. Outside the cabin’s closing door—Victoria, efflorescent, while Smeets enticed her, teasing out her estranged husband, saying: “Vicky-que! [Je hoeft André niet langer te vrezen…]--You will no longer have to fear André!”
I sighed as she sashayed and Smeets strolled off. Across the gleaming floor, the lobby’s glazed threshold frames the street as a stage of bright and busy local retailers, carefree. A chauffeur-driven Audi at the curb, welcoming the professional team. After them, I catch the plate-glass door—aboard, driving off—me at the wheel.
***
With De P'pa objecting in the forefront of my mind, he carried with himself my elementary class teacher’s words—the loser of a son—competing against my sister Ilona, the apple of his eye, she who excelled. I carried the weight of a classroom of boys’ darting eyes, while girls softer patience lingered, as I struggled to chain letter to syllables, syllable to word I did not understand. What stunned me: De P’pa didn’t defend me then—he tugged De M’ma along. I wasn't going to let him intimidate me.
The next day I’m back, passing Favi's glazed office—the chartered quantity surveyor, a hurt Leo left to a wheelchair, dwarfed behind a littered desktop. I’m left feeling the shadow of myself and walk across the passage, through his dog pen, tethered to the island of worktables. I’m scheming passing behind Mr. Rottweiler in a sportive suit, slipping to my seat. Mr. Pitbull eyes, on my Warthog’ passage to the window light into Mr. Doberman’s face.
My mind churns a delicate intimacy, a continent away, with De P’pa and M’ma in Hazyview. I couldn’t steal a long-distance phone call, blocked outside Belgium.
With a letter scribbled overnight, I asked Ilse at the Spar: “Can you relay to De M’ma whether De P'pa will lend me the deposit to purchase a townhouse?”—and wondered, ‘Can I fax this letter in all discretion?’
I reflected, until Laurence appeared around Mr. Rottweiler—Libra's patience at the threshold of the present. “Laurence!” I asked if she could fax the letter.
As blusters sweep up and swirl carpets of autumn leaves, at the waning length of days, Smeets’ counsel loiters, shadowing me as a seasoned adviser, yet turning stale with growing concern—until Friday extends a boost of relief. I descend into the street, across, to the grocery window, its wainscot flourishing fruits and vegetables. I pick an endive, turn inside, pay the storekeeper, then continue along the sidewalk toward the boulevard running parallel, a block behind Forum’s offices. Ignoring my curb-parked Audi among chains of cars, I munch the crispy bitter leaves—my lunch-break delight.
At the fear of edging to the brink of means if I go ahead, I keep my pace. Nevertheless, I turn corners, catching the boulevard stretching into sight, vanishing into the blurry old city, I trust I’ll cross a General de Banque agency. After pressing the hedgerow of fenestrated ashlar facades and clearing a circle, Avenue Louise spills out a doorway—I press my way inside, to a standing desk. From a stand-up tray, I pull a squarish red bank transfer form, drag down the dangling pen, and enter my details, then the banker’s, naming the Real Estate Agency as the beneficiary with the amount of fifty thousand francs. I step up in line for the woman cashier. Slip the form under the wicket window. After processing the transfer, she hands back a receipt. I turn away, tracking back at the pace of my thoughts—my gamble lurking short behind—stepping back into the office.
Days wear away toward the expiring date of the Sales Agreement’s validity. Before my eyes a holographic stage rises, distant figures gesturing in a gentle dispute behind the glazed threshold. I left my dilemma in De M’ma’s capable wits—Electra and Oedipus complexes circling. De P’pa had only one daughter, Ilona; his other children were seemingly on loan: the Somers, Tante Carla, childless and the other grandmothers. I feel the atmosphere swell, as the two Capricorns lock horns—yet against the shrewd Monkey in De M’ma, the Warthog in De P’pa stands no chance.
After the weekend, I couldn’t imagine hovering: De M’ma at sunrise arriving at Soeni Spar for a day’s work. In the midst of Ilse stressing, sourcing from the safe and placing staff with fresh cash drawers at tills lined in a row. Inside the little office, De M’ma stands with a pleading, witty eye—irresistible before Ilse, preoccupied. She slips a sheet of paper in her daughter’s hand. Ilse hesitates, but to ride her mother, obliges—turns and feeds the sheet into the facsimile machine—only for the scene to fade—as her willpower exhaust a fait accompli, a sixth-sense dissolving like a distant dream, not calling me to dwell on De M’ma, but leaving a heartful warmth, a feather stroke through my being—instilling hope in my mind.
By mid-morning, Laurence hands me a fax sheet. I thank her, surprised by the unconventional handwriting. I turn to the facsimile’s printed header-line—South Africa’s international dialing code, Ilse’s Hazyview Supermarket’s telephone number. Reading the Flemish greeting, I hear De M’ma’s voice echo in my head.
I understood the context of my reply, from the scene I caused a few days earlier—ballooning in my head, yet left hanging for days without nurture to draft. I unveiled Aetheria’s cradle—Versailles—enveloping the floor plan at “+/-0” for the Belle Époque’s ground floor and “-1 Floor” for the basement opening onto the rear garden, a place for them to retire should they decide.
Gnawing into the validity of the Sales Agreement, comes the day Laurence approaches with her usual first-name greetings: “Broes; [C'est pour toi.]—It’s for you.” She hands me a sheet of thermal paper, printed with the Générale de Banque’s blunt “G” logo and heading. The fax exchanges had shifted venue. De P’pa had conceded into their savings, yet my current account at the Jette agency hadn’t upped. I dialed: Mr. Ferdinand Godeau came online, saying: “[Interroger l'expéditeur]—Query the sender.” Days pass with the discrepancies, estranged like rival agencies. Leaving Forum in the evening, I pass words for Favi: “Laurence! [J'ai un rendez-vous à la Banque]—I have a meeting at the bank tomorrow. I’ll be late.”
I counted how the trip away from work will affect my month-end earnings, as an independent contractor. I left Victoria to untangle her own commute—dropping off Pipo at school, then finding parking for her Fiat Panda at the ULB campus—while I drove off, crawling the curb from Dr. Decroly Avenue and weaving south through the community of Forest.
Curling through the subway, I merged with highway lanes along a trickle of traffic. “Paris—Parijs” flashed atop the gantry’s signboard, cutting through the marches with a thought of Halles—the commercial heart of the wealthy Flemish cities during the Middle Ages. The road signs dropped their “Lille” in France, alongside “Rijssel” which I couldn’t wrap my head around—the Dutch confusion lifted as I cruised through Wallonia, before shunting onto the offramp and threading through the underpass inland.
“Nivelles” flashed on the roadside pointers. And with it comes a sense of landing home to the “Chateau du Bois”—vertiginous as a decade earlier, when I accompanied De P’pa, VW logo before him, steering his Polo into the bank's driveway to a halt.
The field road slipped into an outpost, clustered, and spitting asphalt prongs. I discarded the impression of a fueling station with its canopy of a white translucent fascia and a red G-logo. I knew better—lingering before the crotch where glass glimmered the General de Banque’s agency. I caught my reflection: ‘Who would have thought of planting an agency here? … farmers, idiot, I answered myself.’
Before me the Audi’s linked rings logo yawed, veering right beside a baby hedge into the gateway to the parking lot, toward an offside scatter of stalled staff cars. I pulled up amidst a row of bare bays, halting in the middle one and raising my eyes to the evanescent, stippled white line leading back into the countryside from which I arrived. I stepped out and tracked back toward the glass skirt wrapping the roof-edges.
I press the plate-glass entrance. Clear my way through the airlock and spare a bank-robber thought as I cross onto the hall’s gleaming floor—a faint shadow from all angles, except for a woman teller’s niche behind the counter, where I announced myself. The stern-faced woman, with a polite gesture, turns her back to vanish into an offside maze of reflections. She returns out of the shadows, trailing a man, then splits away from his approach. His words carry the tenant’s intonation of financial diplomacy, careful not to rumple a customer’s feelings.
He leads me offside to a secluded office desk, sits, and motions for me to do the same. There, staring back from a thermal fax paper, was the spiky scrawl of De P’pa’s initial, a propriety mark, The “P” plunged with a theatrical “±” in one pen stroke, mountain peak pride, catching the twin curls of the “B,” the letters merging an indecipherable beam. The signature ended with a defiant underscore that welds the family name—a commanding script—while the banker reached into a desk-side drawer and laid a form beside De P’pa’s fax sheet.
Exposed to the fear of fraud, I glance at the scribble, but my mind doesn’t absorb, the banker spins off the fax, and push of a single-paragraph document across the desk—without saying as much—he explains: “We'll need a signed transfer authorization to proceed with the faxed request.” I yielded to the glimmer of light and glass transparency—the receptionist attired in business dress, the man before me in an impeccable suit and tie. I signed the document and handed the pen and paper back to the man. I rose, with a salutation, strolling out in the belief I had accelerated the transfer of funds.
I step outside toward the Audi, my mind relaxed—fait accompli. I envisaged the imminent transfer of funds to my account. I slipped behind the wheel, reversed, and drove out the gateway to the street, tracking back to Brussels in relief.
The mornings were peaceful, a blanket of clouds over the sidewalk trees, filtering light through the brushwood to the ground as I set off toward the office to take my place behind Axa’s ream of the Bill of Quantities, feeding formulas into the laptop’s screen in mounting frustration. I received Laurence’s greetings: “[Il y a un appel pour toi]—There’s a call for you.” After the man’s directions to the Generale de Banque agency downtown Nivelles, I hung up—reminded of bankers’ irony spinning in my mind. Laughing it off: ‘Bankers never call—unless your house line is a customer’s red line to one’s office.' Basil Teanna, the assistant bank manager, had once made a discreet call to my wife, Jean—I picked up.
Niggling in my mind, impatience swarms through me, fresh, not yet stale. ‘What’s the purpose of the meeting?’ The beast of my ego refrains from asking the caller, while I remain aware of the realtor’s shaming tick of the Sales Agreement’s expiring clock—losing the townhouse.
As we leave the office for the night, stepping into the evening street, I said: “Laurence. [La banque m’attend demain.]—The bank is waiting for me tomorrow.”
I skip the office, tricking my way against the inbound traffic. I’m in my therapeutic element driving, sifting away frustration until the next hurdle. The banker waits for me. I drive into the heart of Nivelles, in the shallows of the morning, converging onto a looming church. Stalling the car beneath the cathedral’s shade, the windows framed, I step out, sweeping my eyes from the Audi up the towering ashlar abutments.
I cast a glance at the fluted murals of stained-glass, then turn away to duty. Across the street, storefronts splash brands of beers, flash coiffure heads, magazine covers on easels—door numbers blur. In the hedgerow of fenestrated brick facades, a translucent red G perched on a white transom: the bank branch's entrance. I stride in.
With a sense of absurdity I walked up to the counter, announcing myself. These bank managers greeted me, seeming to sneeze at the sight of a fax. The facsimile machine from Ilse and Gerard’s Spar had leapt here, still tight-fisted, resisting the release of funds. De P’pa’s signature stared blatantly at me—the bank querying the fax’s authenticity rather than my identity. My own signature volatilized past the banker, risking a security breach, as he rotated a sheet of paper with a clause, I didn’t grasp the terms, yet I signed. I left the bank without cash, only a promise, believing the hierarchy satisfied. Back in Brussels, needing to salvage what remained of the day at Forum.
Two days later my bank manager, Ferdinant Godeau called, “We received the funds,” he said, after Laurence switched the call over to my workplace. On the day of the meeting, I followed up, asking Laurence to stand in for me—feeling tugged like an employee rather than a freelance contractor—”Tell Favi I’m taking a few hours off to meet my banker.”
I left Forum’s office. Climbing into the Audi, I was excited that the first stage of the marathon was over, though the Everest still to climb loomed toward the skies—ill-tempered. Leaves in the streets, a blustering storm, swept up and swirled dancing before me, stirred, as I set my course on Jette.
Coasting along Charles Woeste Avenue, I steered onto the apron, halting before the blanked-out windows. Beneath the red “G” insignia, I stepped into the airlock. The security door buzzed, and a cashier welcomed me into the glazed hall of vacant teller windows, where I waited for Ferdinand Godeau.
In the claustrophobic cubicle, we sat across a bare desk. I was applying for the loan for my Audi—the first step in building a credit record in Belgium. Now, he requested a financial report. I shook my head, exclaiming to myself: ‘Oh! No?’
Driving back that evening, after stalling the car in Dr. Decroly Avenue, to an atmosphere of home, with Victoria, Alexandre. Somehow my upstairs department of consciousness kept charting its course.
Behind my Toshiba Laptop, my fingers pianoed the keyboard. After a spreadsheet layout, I summed up the micro-rent from tenants—a generation settled in the comfort of the house—each line a negative mark against my credibility. My raw income stacked against the Audi’s loan repayment.
I returned to face Ferdinand Godeau in the suffocating cubicles, across a bare desk—shamed, I handed him a sheet of paper. A bead of sweat slid down my temple. The man’s eyes, reading like a photograph, over which I had broken my head late into the night.
Then he filled out my application for the three million francs—ninety percent of the remaining purchase price for the townhouse. He rose, and, as if that weren’t enough, delivered a single, crushing breath of farewell: “[Votre femme doit approuver le prêt.]—Your wife has to approve the loan.”
‘What?’ burst in my head.
I felt betrayed. The bitter irony, regurgitating a decade-old trial in the Johannesburg Supreme Court—that period looped back now, as I handed the Johannesburg Supreme Court divorce decree, to the Belgian Consulate. Challenging him: ‘Let me see how the bank will treat this document?’ The memory leeched me dry.
I was ushered out through the security door. We split ways in the hallway: he ascended the flight of stairs into the gaping ceiling, while I stepped outside to fetch my Audi.
In my innocence, I repeated the flagrant news to Victoria. “[French] My Little One! …”
Victoria—her tone an affirmation—said: “[Tu es toujours marié, hein ?]—You’re still married, aren’t you?”
I frowned. “[Non] No.”
Smeets, with Victoria’s snowflake mindset, had contrived a far-fetched trip to Johannesburg—its sillage nothing but a sniff at my married status—that twisted into a honeymoon.
It was in the midst of this cold winter’s brushwood—having lost my job and facing the loan—that I slipped through a crack with the prerequisite six months’ proof of employment.
I returned with Victoria after fetching her at the ULB. Mail was so rare to receive; in my mind it echoed: ‘We don’t receive mail.’ When Victoria opens the letterbox, but then, before stepping through the gateway, she turned around and said, “Daddy. [Il y a une lettre pour toi !]—there’s a letter for you.” She handed me the white envelope with the red ‘G.’
With Victoria, I stepped to the kitchen. Taking a steak knife, I slit open the envelope, moved out, and sitting down, facing the backyard window, onto the single tree in the courtyard, I pulled out the letter, then, handing it over to Victoria, I asked: “Am I right to read this as a confirmation of the loan?”
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