YD6-96(ARMH): The Red G Envelope — Aetheria’s Seal, Her Fate Notarized, the Strip For Sale
Notice: AI-generated to evoke the symbolic signing of Aetheria’s fate at the notary’s hand.
Epigraph: A red G envelope. A sealed fate. In the hush of Reine Marie Heriette Avenue, the notary’s pen transcribes Aetheria’s whisper into law. Between two watching façades, No. 15 awakens—its blind window lifted from dereliction to promise. Victoria’s hand tears the “For Sale” strip, and the house breathes again, becoming more than property: the living shell of a vow notarized between dream and debt.
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.
#Aetheria, #RedGEnvelope, #Notary, #LoanGranted, #PropertyOwnership, #Brussels, #notarydeed
YD6-96(ARMH): The Red G Envelope — Aetheria’s Seal, Her Fate Notarized, the Strip For Sale
A plume of smoke drifts into the air after Victoria presses out her cigarette butt in the ashtray. I imagine the scent—the smoke’s language—leaving me laughing at how Victoria’s snowflake mindset could have instigated Smeets into organizing that trip to Johannesburg, lingering in the sillage. A far-fetched surprise, as if she had sniffed through my Belgian passport and South African Permanent Residence identity booklet, flashing Jean’s recurrence as a spouse.
I met Ferdinand Godeau a few weeks earlier; he said. “[French: Votre femme doit approuver le prêt…]—Your wife has to approve the loan—it’s the law.”
‘What?’ I thought, irony clouding my mind, tracking back a document to the Johannesburg Supreme Court advocate then to the Belgian Consulate secretary warning: “Don’t tell her she has Belgian citizenship?”
With the dilemma echoing in my mind—‘How am I going to get that document, the exigencies at the signing for the bank loan? And get her rubbed out once and for all from my travel documents?’ When I repatriated a copy of my divorce decree, the bank wasn’t concerned about an English document, but the administration was—’You must get it translated?’
“What?” I exclaimed.
The woman at the wicket blinked, then released, “... by a recognized translator!”
“What—” and I left her. ‘Forget it!’ and I walked away, thoughtless, until now. I don’t even recall whether I did mention to Victoria the ridiculous entanglements. I just remember Victoria, in a wild accusative tone of voice, asking. “["Tu es toujours marié à Jean.]—You’re still married to Jean!”
“[Non]—No.” I yepped, nonchalant; frown, brushing off the ridicule—and forget about the incident till now.
And a waiter brings the bill. Our consumption settled, he carries away Victoria’s empty cocktail and glass my bowl of wine, turns his back—drawing us to rise from the terrace table. We diverge across the street toward the silver-gray Audi parked beneath the fenestration, a peering reflection of the evening sky from the brick-faced townhouses hedged in line. I unlock and step in, lean over the console to unlatch the door; Victoria slips inside, I tweak the ignition, and pull into the narrow Renaissance lane, weaving through to veer into the artery.
We turn the roundabout at the corner of the parking lot before the GB supermarket—shadows of an evening crowd bustling amid traffic through the forecourt—we slip through brushwood of sidewalk trunks the lane as autumn’s leaves flutter in the wind with our arrival and stall the car.
I step into the street through the gap of taillights and headlights converge, as Aetheria tickles Victoria’s conscience to pause her pepish gait at the gate. She flicks me a thought—‘What do you think of finding… we never receive mail?’—to the absurd.
Victoria flicks open the mailbox door and brushes off the envelope with a simple red G logo handing it behind raises my concern. At my pace, in Victoria’s wake, the yellow terrazzo path across the front yard, through the entrance—grope the darkness of the hall until the apartment’s doorway gapes a faint glow. In a systematic step, thoughtless, not trying to predict why the General de Banque would send me mail, I sidestep Victoria in the living room for the kitchen.
I pull the drawer, select from the cutlery tray the peeling knife—my mind at an impasse, bracing to confront disappointing news. ‘Otherwise, why would the bank send me a letter?’ The knife’s point slips into the paper fold, slicing clean, stretching through, and out the other end. I pull the letter free, unfold it—logo up, heading rolled—drop the tail fold. In the middle panel my eyes search for keywords, until I read: “[...accepter]--...accepted.” I start again from the beginning; to my surprise, I can’t find a single polite double negative flipping the meaning.
I step up to Victoria and ask, “Will you just read this letter for me?” After a hush, Victoria gasps—exalts, choking on her breath: “[Le prêt a été accordé !]—The loan has been granted!”
She steps off behind her camel back yellow sofa and along the courtyard window. On the far sill, Victoria lifts the handset, dials the cradle’s keypad from memory, and holds a fist-full to her cheek, a cup to her ear: "Victoria!" she announces into the blind cup. Her brief conversation ends with: “[Je vous rappellerai]—I’ll call you back.”
She turns to me, saying. “[L’agent immobilier veut savoir qui est notre notaire…]—The realtor wants to know who your notary is.” A debutant receptionist at a law firm, to spur a sixth sense for the office and outer traffic choreography, adding. “... It can reduce the fees, using a common notary.” Already she dials.
My sun in Warthog’s skepticism—she had promoted herself to secretary—and I’m still baffled with an archaic saying: “[Ici en Blegique…]—Here in Belgium… contract must be handwritten.” Holographic contract, I couldn’t dispute, while sitting next to my laser printer—however ridiculous—and, in doubt, I froze. Faint in the back of my mind, as the notary spurred to the front—believing French for a lawyer, and procedures drifting in my thoughts for the transfer of property ownership—i could only think to myself: ‘What can go wrong?’
Victoria’s nimble fingers already on the telephone, following through with fluency, I just hear her say, “OK.”
When the phone rings, Victoria breaks in with her voice and passes me the handset. The notary’s tone—soft, the lie of a cat in the sun without a care, he schedules the meeting—growls in contrast with a harsh honesty:
“Bring a bank-certified check along.”
Shaken, I hang up, trailing a thought to call Ferdinant Godeau at the agency. The notary’s request—I mean, ‘Why not a transfer of funds? I also have to collect the check…’—flirts through my mind.
By Wednesday, Victoria slips into the passenger seat as I tweak the ignition, and pull away, In the hush of a wedging courses toward the old city, beneath the Grand Place’s gilded Archangel Michael atop the Town Hall tower, her words drop—Bob [Ward’s] ghosted relationship—saying: “Bob, [Le connai bien]—knows him well.”
Cut short, we borrow the Little Beltway, riding the troughs underpass the gates and the waves until the crest unzips from traffic, carrying us outbound into the heart of the bustling community, I pull into a train of cars, from where we walk alongside a thoroughfare of bus traffic and soot darkened street facades.
We entered a bourgeois ashlar-fronted town mansion, where a pageboy ushers us to a bench in the hallway.
Abreast, a middle-aged, potato-flabby man in a suit descends the eloquent staircase from the gapping high-ceilinged hallway—blind to our presence. He crosses the marble floor, slips through the door facing us across the hallway, and vanishes behind an office desk.
The pageboy-clerk emerges, pauses, and invites me in—triggers Victoria to rise from the bench. He turns away, and before the threshold to the office, asks, “[Avez-vous le chèque?]—Have you got the check?”
I hand him a bank check, earlier I had never held with the million of zeros in enfilade, but I felt only the messenger with a slip of paper collected earlier to discard. His hand rolls, flipping the check—I imagine scrutinizing its authenticity before inviting me into the office. His eyes lunge toward Victoria—daren’t say his mind. ‘Wait outside...’
In the office, he introduces the man seated in the far visitor’s chair: “Mr. Van Goethem.” The pageboy circles the hefty, classic wooden desk, handing the check to the notary—himself cast from the same mold as the thick, flabby leathered chair and the enveloping architecture. The slip of paper, poised between both men’s hands, sustains a quiet strain of authenticity until its the notary’s eyes carbon-check the value cited on the title deeds lying before him. With a firm breath, he exhales a soft voice: “[Bon. Commençons.]—OK. Let’s start.”
‘Let’s start what?’ I question in my mind as I settle in the nearby visitor’s chair. While Victoria, left standing, paces back to the sidewall, allowing the door’s draft a free passage. Our eyes follow the notary's heavy palms slipping forward from the armrests, rolling his swollen suit jacket forward to lean over the title deeds. Victoria’s gaze hovers—as surprised as I am—‘Handing over the check wasn’t the expected end… but a beginning?’
"[Pour abréger la partie historique]—To expedite the historical details," the notary says. ‘What ever, that means,’ crosses my mind, though he rests from droning through the property's chain of title.
But the phrase conjures the raw digging of trenches, brick walls rise in me. My father, De P’pa’s. My own. I see myself, his little boy climbing a ladder pressed to the wall, the family watching below, sweet talking me down.
On the school's two-hour lunch break, a heavenly ladder awaited. I reached the eave, where the rafters breathed daylight—their striated battens opened to the void below, gaping over the upper concrete slab. I cropped up toward a roof tile packer and his assistant’s silhouetted along the far ridge against the sky.
I dare not look back, afraid of being caught in the drag of vertigo, as i crawl a tiled path over the void—these roman tiles framing the roof slope’s template: the gutter and base tile laid on battens, their upturned edges seaming with the next in row, covered by an inverted tile laid atop, the collars are overlapped by the skirt ends, each held in place by their weights. I trailed my knees and shoes through the deep galleries of packed roofing tiles in awe, the volcanic-sand suburban street disappearing toward downtown Goma, emerging in the distance. I’m reliving a toddler journey through Marseilles’ flurry of intermingling terracotta roofs—I’ll model my house as the cradle for my boys.
Going back to antiquity by such a procedure. Besides Victoria, the pageboy re-enters, breaking the draft, and returns with another of his kind, crowding, shying the draft in the corner. The notary slides the document forward. I rise, hover over the desk, and lean in, signing at the bottom of the page. Mr. Van Goethem follows. The two witnesses observing our signatures—then they, too, lean in to sign—and depart, withdrawing from the scene.
And now, stunned, I sign—an autograph on paper, a switch of ownership, no longer a derelict, but a shell waiting to breathe with new life. I follow Victoria outside. In the hush of routine, I’m left stupefied—yet I feel I carry a weight. I step empty-handed behind her into the street, walk the sidewalk; we cross between buses and a few cars towards the Audi. I slip behind the wheel, Victoria joins me, and we drive off alone, as if from a funeral.
Driving, we egress the traffic-infested streets into a smoke screen of countryside—delta of asphalt drifting around the wooded Square Frick—a park now prisoner of modernization. I’m challenged and brush anti-clockwise over the buried tunnel, crossing into the bend of the service boulevard that shadows the old city’s moat. Then, launched into the median, onto the emerging Little Beltway, we ride through troughs, underpasses, gates, and waves—until Halle Gate’s drawbridge tower.
Outbound, severing through the shallow valley - tire patter - brush around the Bohemian aquarius girl, her jug spilling water. Trams launch along silver tracks through the seismic shift - patter - our Z-course veers through Rochefort Square, around the pooling lawns at the park’s corner. The nameplate on the bow of the apartment block rhymes with Aetheria’s celestial cocoon—her rock cradle in soft resonance: ‘Queen Marie Henriette Avenue.’ It echoes to mind De M’ma, mother’s cousin—Mariette.
My eyes jump beyond the hideous architecture—punctuated by garage doors and mingled with fluorescent lobbies—to catch the striated, craggy brick facades curving up the hill. The asphalt dissolves to its substrate of dirt; horses pull a flatbed cart stacked with bricks and floor balks, halting before a group of workers. Bare hands and leather shoes emerge from the shadows of masonry—basement window and from the dark gaping entrance waxing to daylight—a schoolteacher’s townhouse, on the verge of completion in De P’pa’s birth year.
Victoria hails, “Stop!” Profiled against the passenger window, I release the throttle, coasting our glass bubble past Number 13’s barn doors—toward the derelict’s soot darkened facade, a miserable sentinel of paired doors, a lopsided roller blind, the sad loggia glaze absorbing the light, and, further up the cornice vanishing over the windshield. From the hush of Victoria’s pondering ride, a subtle wiggle runs through her as we coast to a halt.
She jumps to the street, contours around the adjacent car—the last in the chain. She reappears with an Irish dancer’s gait, her short skirt flicking as she crosses the wide sidewalk, pausing before her mirror—the figurehead, hair in the wind, sculpted in the white stone of France. Her hawks' eyes flash; Aetheria still stirs, but now Victoria flits across the deep green entrance doors. A jute-sack painted 15 on the brick pillar beside the roller blind, lamenting: ‘Look at my neglected attire!’
She poses as if for a magazine’s front cover, then proceeds to pick at the luminous red For Sale poster, its color weather-faded. She tears a strip—like a dead bird, it flutters to the pavement; three more follow before the bricks stand cleared. In a lagging step, she returns, eyes sparkling, and slips into her seat - smack - the door closes. Her gaze ahead signals the next stage—but she is clueless.
Reminiscent of the day Victoria stood before the For Sale sign pasted on the face, tiptoeing to memorizing the phone number. She called back to the dull, weathered paint—flaking, fine deep curvatures—the carved door beadings and moldings, shallow and effaced beneath umpteen coats of peeling dark-green paint. From the hollowed stone boot scraper upward, across the ashlar jamb, under the cast iron swivel arm of a chain-pull bell—suscitate - whir, click - the door cracks along its rebate.
Victoria’s palm withdrew; her eyes widened, entering, in the street’s spill of light, the haunted townhouse. I closed the door behind her; she was taken aback by the dark, the bleach walk-up. Brave, she weaves through doorways, caught up with Mrs. Van Goethem-Polfliet in the gloom of the derelict, by the croaking voice we proceeded upstairs into the loft apartment, where the tenant vacated the derelict—a sign of fate.
Driving up the sweeping avenue, I calculate and say; “Ma Petite! Now we’re obliged to cut one rent…” I sigh a thought to us: ‘Living rough through the wear and tear of past generations.’
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