YD6-117 (1994) Homecoming Through Tempest and Memory — Driving from the Maternity Ward to the Threshold of Home

 

What if the moment a newborn opens its eyes is not a beginning—but an arrival into a structure already waiting?

Aetheria does not build with walls, but with perception—light threading matter, memory settling into form, consciousness slipping into the fragile architecture of a body.

In that instant, before language, before identity, something vast recognizes itself—then contracts, quiet, almost forgotten.

Are we growing into ourselves… or slowly remembering the design that shaped us?

Step inside—where birth is not an event, but an entry into Aetheria’s living architecture.

YD6-117 (1994) Homecoming Through Tempest and Memory — Driving from the Maternity Ward to the Threshold of Home

Uccle, off Waterloo Road. The sidestreet draws my familiarity. I pull up along the hedgerows of seventies-fenestrated brick facades—the street is blocked off. I step out of the car, casting a glimpse across the street, checking for the shadow of one of my sister Ingrid’s in-laws. I pass along the flanks of idle cars, through the concrete barricade, a sheet of paper in hand warm from my ankle-shelved Okidata laser printer, lifted from my laptop bureau. 

At the pedestrian gate, security cameras sprawl across the town mansion, watching me in their quiet neighborhood. I press the call button. A voice comes through the speaker. I lean to the intercom. “J'ai appelé plus tôt…—[I’ve called earlier over the phone…]” 

The gate - clang - unlatches with a spring recoil. I inch forward, a hand brushing, scanning across the courtyard of the stronghold toward the entrance door opening into a residential interior. The hallway’s elaborate stairs lead me upward, transmuting into a corporate reception staffed by a young woman behind a desk. I hear myself repeat, handing over the sheet with the printed paragraph. 

Received with that Jewish demeanor—in the hush of counting words, her eyes rolling across the sheet, swift and elegant—the receptionist rises from her chair, my words still echoing. “J'ai appelé plus tôt pour une traduction en hébreu—[I’ve called earlier for a Hebrew translation.]” She disappears through a rear door, leaving me poised like a boy called to the director’s office after a teacher’s reprimand. 

As I stand there, pushing through my sarcasm, she reappears and steps up—accommodating, sparing words, diplomatically handing me a Hebraic paragraph. I thanked her, whisking off my ego, shielding my nervous tick, without even offering to pay. As I turn away, and she returns to her desk, my imagination spin off—but I glance with due respect, reading letter by letter, finding none of the biblical words my brain expects. Exhausting the alphabet, I abandoned the effort and pass through the doors back to the sidewalk. 

The beast of my stupidity—Lia. Goma during our childhood: our parents—best friends—offset across the street, boisterous in the black nights at the flicker of bulbs, playing Canasta. Then independence in the Belgian Congo returned the country to the Africans, and the families scattered—with my siblings expatriated to Belgium. A cousin of Father, a citizen of Lier, invited me; the city rang like a village bell with Lia—the families kept in contact. I called—the phantom of my sweetheart that lived on—the Siamese long separated, yet the bond lingering.

I step into the Audi, spin the steering wheel into a Y-turn, and head to catch Waterloo Road—turning away from the battlefield. I weave south, drawn like a bow, the mind shooting a spearhead toward the Grand Place of the old city—only to ricochet. But I’m driving, I meet the shadow of the moat, engage the Little Beltway through the trough of the Gates overpass, riding the wave of business-day traffic to a northern crest before spinning off into the outer eastern communities. A horseshoe course over the deep-ditched railway—and I pull up in the shallow valley behind the Baron Lambert maternity hospital.

The glass doors hiss open to the hallway. I verge toward the gaping arch, striding through the cloistral atrium to the maternity ward. Shy of the square open door, I greet Victoria, talking baby. She monitors the milliliters from the tiny bottle, rolling in her hand, a tuft of hair resting on her shoulder, rubbing and patting—burp-anxious. 

A simple thought lingers—the men who ended the weekend. Yesterday afternoon Jean-François Smeets—the man in Victoria’s shadow—he appeared from the sketchy crystal mosaic daylight of the atrium. He approached in the gaping doorway, struggling with his tamed Aries, yet he turns out grandfatherly, groomed in a light beige long overcoat. Entering the room, he took over chatting with Victoria across the bed. “Victoriake. Goedemorgen. Hoe gaat het met je—[Good morning. How are you?]” 

He doffs his Brixton Hooligan cap to the foot of the bed, stepping into the aisle, his popping eyes settling on Victoria beside Loulou’s crib, where she lies, silky eyelids sealed. He bent and kissed Victoria’s forehead. They milled words, discussing nothing, as he retreated from the squeezed aisle to pause beside the sentinel of a projecting stile, the leaf partially screening Victoria in bed. 

Yves Van Langendonck, the Taurus at the top of the park, jogs his circuit past the house on the opposite side. His strides keep the pretense of routine—but his eyes do not. They call Victoria—his princess—to the French doors, only to find me there instead. Even so, he cannot help those sly returning glances as he passes—he flips a through-expression, failing to trickle by. 

The Leo in Bob Ward, gathers courage, figuring the English gentleman in the doorway’s light. Losing his English accent, he greets me as he enters the room. As he clears the door, Victoria exults. “Pa-poo! Tu y es là—[you made it!]” 

He circles the bed through the window’s light and drops a wrapped gift on the side table. Victoria, finished with feeding, insists. He lifts Loulou and cradles her in his arms, stepping back with the unease of holding a crystal doll—a bachelor’s first. He sits on the chair in the window’s light, chatting with Victoria. 

As visiting hours lead me through the crystal barrel-vault into an atrium filtering a moody sky—dark cloistral windows rising a few floors, each holding the other’s shadow, ghosting the medieval—a modern passage opens to the street. No longer burdening the mind, I step out. 

There, the settled terracotta wall runs—a bricklayer’s hand held in its courses—wrapping the hospital at the crotch of streets, a flashback to courtyard lineage. Across the asphalt, a hedgerow of fenestrated brick facades looks on—mere curiosity for the new souls waiting to emerge from the maternity ward—as I reach for the Audi. I slip into the seat and pull off once more into the waiting labyrinth, urged to map toward an artery skirting the city. 

Returning along the 51 tramway down the shopping street, I pull up short of the side street where Uccle’s classic Town Hall sits in the depth, among the retailers. I stride into the photo shop and fetch the last roll of developed film. 

Out again, I tread through the nose and tail of bumpers. One eye marks—like a pinpoint on my wall of things-to-do—the printer diagonally across the tram tracks, toward the sidewalk apron, the fire-engine red clearing to the flank storefront door blurring in the distance. As if the hourglass is running empty, my mind leaps—while the other eye rifle through the stack in my fingers: Victoria, her Loulou. I slip into the Audi, lay them on the passenger seat, tweaking the ignition, and pulling away.

I pull up beneath the French doors of home and alight - cluck — fizz... - opening the street door in its welcoming language - fizz... kwock - shutting behind me. I cross toward the split level vestibule, cascade light washing the wainscot white marble. I catch my flitting in the flank mine-tunnel mirrors, the motion carrying into the grand crystal wafer portal to the landing - clunk, whoosh... - the flank door opening onto the breath of a soulless derelict’s chill. 

I click the series of switches—blind spotlights—beams exchanging, pooling along the library’s column of book spines. Whoosh... thwock, clung - the door closes behind me. I step around the interleading portal to the V-stance of the bi-fold doors, a mosaic opening my laptop bureau. I glance through the French doors at autumn settling in the park. My instinct says: ‘Dump it!’ But my volition holds—a message to go out there.

WordPerfect to screen, I place Lionel’s face on the CanonScan LiDe 30 glass—click, scan. Then Gavin’s pictures. After my boys, Victoria’s Alexandre—and from the developed images, Loulou in her crib. ‘Victoria does not fit the image of siblings.’ 

On the menu—Edit—I click “Save to file,” the collage laid out. I rise from my slatted chair, diskette in hand, and head to Mr. Printer. 

Sentient, Lia lamented—three months mourning her mother, Mrs. Geyser, the woman with the most beautiful lips of my childhood, from the family living across the street in Goma. Lia—the ash-blond girl, the envy of every boy at elementary school—I had married in South Africa, passing through Lier on my honeymoon with Jean. Lia, absent from her family. After my divorce resettled—Lier opened a Mini Cooper drive to her pragmatism: the mathematics teacher, childless, a cheated wife—we parted to a desertic silence, craving the living voices we once had.

I jump from bed, the chirping of a bird in the sapling by the window saturating me. I cross the nighthall into the bathroom, lift the faucet spray lever—steam rising—and step into the corner tub. My hand jazzes the rose, sprinkling my body until skin and flesh are cleansed—returned to a spirit. I dry—returning my skin—dress—returning my body—step into shoes, swing my hips, tip a shoulder around the doorway—and out again into the nighthall. 

I map the landmarks, contrary to yesterday’s homecoming from Baron Lambert Hospital. I cross the twilight rooms in the enfilade, out to the landing, descend through the cascade muted gleam of the vestibule, and pause for a daylight glance over the park’s wild hedge.

I pull the street door - fizz… - step out. it shuts behind me - kwock. 

I cross the asphalt, amid the pebbled line of cars along the curb. Between their bumpers, the gritty yellow sidewalks peek through. Short of the curb, I reach the Audi, slip into the seat, tweak the ignition key, and spin into the deserted avenue downhill. The bows of apartment blocks—staggered generations—anchor Rochefort Square like a quay before the gaping park.

I crawl the corner - patter… - then silence, behind the shelter to the tram platform, drawing workmen before hedgerows of fenestrated brick facades. Doorsteps stand sentinel, quiet—no mothers, no white-collar workers; their interstices guide me to the Little Beltway, where panel vans meet the flow. Northward, I ricochet into an artery of the eastern community, weaseling a horseshoe through to the shallow valley, offside where the street forks, until I find a bay open to the curb. I step out onto the asphalt and around the trunk to the curb. 

Nothing can go wrong, in my morning stride, brushing the monastic enclave’s weathered and settled brick wall, my eyes tracking the running sidewalk around the corners, until, the straight edge of modernization widens the bluestone slabs toward a set-back four-plate-glass entrance, glazing the hallway’s far depth. 

The phantom of automated doors wheezes open like a breeze onto the wings. I step onward through a night semblance, taking in the woman behind the reception counter, fresh as a change of shift. Opposite her, I veer toward the arc in the wall, into the light of the atrium, pursuing the crystal panes shaping the fenestrated brick façades. 

The glass barrel-vault draws toward the egress, livened with music. I land in a maternity corridor, athwart—but the wings lie in a vacuum hush. Yet beyond the doorway, an opera auditorium seems to stage itself. Stupefied, I pace into the room. ‘Who else can liven up a maternity ward?’ 

Not Victoria’s masters of classical music. 

At my entry, behind the door leaf, she holds Loulou upright against her chest, the newborn’s head nestled in the hollow of her neck, her own head folded toward the little crown, eyelids shut. Victoria stands, feet planted, as tears spill onto Loulou’s shoulder as she sways—rhythming to Enya: “A thousand dreams you gave to me - You held me high…”  

In vain. ‘Victoria ought to fuss with joy with her Loulou?’ Nothing I say, or do will break her dopey, melancholic rhythm. 

I step outside into the banal white corridor and accost a figure in a white uniform. “Je ne sais pas ce qui lui arrive—[I don’t know what is going on with her?]” 

The nurse, pensive, drawn out of her duty, hesitates—’I must have shaken her?’—as she turns around, signaling: ’Which one—Lead me.’ I turn back. She follows. From a distance, she peers; then, in stride, scrutinizes Victoria—tears falling onto the baby’s head. 

Short of entering the room, she pauses. Victoria sways her pace in the doorway’s light. The nurse’s gaze hardens. Without a word—unyielding, almost cruel—she turns away, her eyes closing off, trailing a swirl, vanishing into the corridor’s whiteness. 

I'm left with her expression. ‘You’re overreacting. The mother’s behavior is normal?’

I stand by the bolero dance circles behind the bed, caught in a misty Celtic dreamscape, until a nurse emerges from the opposing corridor’s blind wing, picking up on signs. ‘We're getting ready, attending to mother and baby—visitor's time is up.’ 

Victoria’s morbid stir, her sinking rhythm, prevents me from wedging in an appropriate word. In the care of nurses, I pace away from the maternity ward. With long strides, I emerge into the street, fetching the Audi around the block, mapping my route to drive.

I step out - smack - the Audi’s door shuts behind me. The glint of paired tram tracks draws my gaze down the street, then up again, gauging my stunt through scattered cars. I jaywalk into traffic, past curb-parked cars and the busy, bright amalgam of colors and lures before retailers’ storefronts. I weave in targeted strides through the thin scatter of lingering shoppers. Veering for the fire-engine red chevron, I slip into the porte cochère—and, before the courtyard’s filtered sky, press open the door of the flank storefront. 

Inside, a salient Mr. Printer stands behind the counter. My sudden appearance in his light seems to wake him. Without much greeting, he reaches behind the counter and brings forth a stack of postcards alongside a plastic sleeve. I shy away from the amateur collage—pay the man—for nothing. I thank him and sweep myself nervously out the door, walking back with a driving curiosity. 

I examine the plastic sleeve—discovering the lithographic plate and the negative—holding a trophy for reprints. I grip the Audi's handle, slip into my seat, tweak the ignition key, pull onto the tram tracks, and veer into the first side street, a U-course behind the Uccle Town Hall toward home.  

When I pull up and step out, rounding the Audi’s taillight, I surrender my sarcasm to fate. 

The white marble vestibule receives me, lonely, deserted. I turn the key - cluck - crank the Rococo lever: the glazed leaf springs crack the collocate rebate - fizz… - and the door swings open. I leave it fussing shut behind me, my mind already leaping ahead—up the split-level—to the Belle Époque landing’s grand crystal portal.

Nyx waits in the stairwell. My sight schemes along the flank wall’s flight of bulbous balusters upstairs, glinting like eyes, casting across the shadowed apartment entrance. I hook a hand, unlock, and press the door, holding the stained-glass leaf in line with the interleading grand portal’s beveled panes—the screen—there, around the corner—my laptop bureau.

I slip around the V-poised doors, lift the screen of my TravelMate, pianoing the keyboard—calling up my contact listing. The postcards—driven to waste by an erroneous fixation on the four siblings—yet four encouraging languages on the flip side. I scramble for my Parker ballpoint pen and print names and addresses. 

I rise from my slatted chair, flip down the screen; by the exit, a finger runs the switches—in turn, the beams of spotlights dim, conceding to Nyx. I track back through the grand portals, the crystal dying to transparency, slip through the offside door, and zigzag through the nighthall’s doorways to the master bedroom—strip, dive into bed—drifting to sleep while scheduling my next day. 

My dream dawns to haunt me: ‘I need to find a post office… Where?’ A closed corner—Mint Hotel Street—rises to mind: a wedge of museum brick, its double-panel fortress door set at the point, like an abandoned post office awaiting restoration. Barred fenestrated walls widen along the back street’s opening angle, loosening into the hedgerows of townhouses. 

At first light, the night leaves me with a task—I gauge the opening at nine. I step out of bed, dress, and in the kitchen set the percolator. With a cup of coffee, I cross the enfilade to my Texas Instrument, behind the screen as time sips past. 

On my way out, I pick up the stack of postcards—too thin. I grab Cupid and pull - clunk, whoosh... - the stained-glass door opens. I cast a hesitant glance back to my laptop bureau. I step into the landing - whoosh... thwock, clung - the apartment shuts behind me. 

Clearing the grand crystal portal, I descend the split-level. Through the glazed threshold, the unrest quickens the park across the avenue. I pull the door - cluck - the latch gives - fizz… - the bristly weather bar sweeping the marble apron, the eager outdoors oxygenates the doorstep.

- fizz… kwock - shutting behind me, I cross the sidewalk. I slip past the Audi’s trunk into the seat, tweak the ignition, spin the steering wheel into a U-turn across the avenue—facing Rochefort Square—tires patter, then a silent stroke through the parkway. The blur clears as I approach the traversing bushy embankment, the wired gantry etched against the mean sky—the elevated railways into the South Station.

I pull up alongside the remaining hedgerow of fenestrated, derelict brick facades—the ground floors punctuated by a red-lantern strip—giving way, shouldered aside by glass commercial blocks. I alight, cross the asphalt and the delineated tram tracks in their ballast, before the phantom platforms of an endless yellow-brick façade with a high arched window—almost seeing Andre Daniel on the mezzanine floor, in the shadows among his staff behind their desks. 

I walk on, then veer into the gaping shadows—a portal opening, triggering the memory of a tunneling hallway, numbered escalators to the upper platforms—yet before the traffic-consumed wide row of doors, I come to stand beside the “post office.” 

Among a crowd waiting for the opening, before the offside, singled-out sentinel, we herd ourselves forward—press—flip-flopping on its hinges—through to stand for the wicket’s call of numbers. Mine is called; at the counter I purchase the stamps and turn away. I step to a hall stand-up desk, lick ten stamps—relief in sight, this is ending. I gather the postcards, break from the crowd, and press my way out. I deflect from the free coasting of street traffic—seeking a mailbox. Out of the way I drop the stack into a wall slot—cast a gaze across the traffic, reach my Audi at the curb, and set course toward the maternity hospital. 

Before the hedgerow of fenestrated mystery—the jowly façade—contrary to the pebbled gleams of chains of parked cars, the change of season announces itself. I had not seen it coming, my routine narrowed to finding a bay to halt my glass bubble, spin and counterturn the steering wheel, and back into the stall. I step onto the asphalt of the passive, slumbering lane and, in long strides, swing my hips around the Audi’s rear fender light, through the interstice between bumpers, to a strange car muzzle, where I mount the curb. 

No longer preoccupied with the blatant, cloistered brick wall, I lengthen my stride, inadvertently outpacing the chilly, miserable weather—without so much as an artistic dab of sun, only the endless lead of brick courses. I hunch my shoulders, my eyes skirting the peripheral doorsteps creeping into the side street—the offside handle, forking into two prongs: one left behind, the other waiting for me around the corner. 

I keep to the uninterrupted cloistral wall, to the shy crotch of the maternity hospital; after turning one corner, then the other, the wall’s long run breaks off. Overcast, without a shadow in sight—yet the phantom of the wall lingers: a jagged edge, stepping back to a roof-saddled, fenestrated facade, airing the sidewalk into a front-yard strip; and in the distant clearing, gathering out of the blur, a driveway boom. 

I could kick myself—blind to the hospital parking lot tucked behind the building, having deprived myself of that ease. I ask myself: ‘Why didn’t you notice that before?’ But too late to brood over the simplicity of slipping into a parking place, I turn by the Renaissance masonry and step along the gleaming bluestone path, meeting the glaze that no longer reflects the street’s dimness behind me, but opens as a threshold to the interior hallway, waking the hiss of the plate-glass doors. 

Drawn toward the arch, almost by coincidence—transparent, and was not yesterday’s crystal barrel-vault still imprinted in my mind?—I glimpse the atrium, stepping toward the egress. Across the maternity corridor, like a bellboy awaiting my imminent arrival, Victoria stands in the light of the one-and-half doorway, cradling Loulou in a blanket. I yield to the sudden discharge of mother and infant. Passing her, I twist and swirl, whisk her bag off the floor, and catch up with her eager, lumbering, post-birth gait as she egresses toward the crystal archway.

I pace, poised abreast of Victoria’s slow advance—the glint of a sword cutting diagonally through the atrium, breaking one world at meeting of another. I glance at Loulou, cradled, her delicate silky eyelids shut. 

Unnoticed before, the bright greens open to blossoming parterres, a precinct almost Roman. We emerge into a deserted hallway with the perspective of a luxurious hotel. We pass by the reception desk, a tableau of skies infiltrating down amid the peaceful street: fenestrated facades in a row, unhindered, doorsteps marked by gleaming cars—until the plate-glass hiss parts, and the wind rushes in, wrapping a cold embrace. 

Victoria winces against the tempest spilling into the entrance niche. She gathers herself and presses forward across the doorstep, cringing, her waddling shy and careful. Along the gleaming bluestone path, in twins’ reflection, Gemini in his element—we  press on—‘only short… ’—to the car. 

She steps out of alignment with the old wall; the entitled sidewalk spills the envious sky’s blustery descent into the narrow street. Icy gusts lick our faces. To my regret—I reckon by the routing of my strides—’But—the car is only around the corner!’ Victoria yields to my judgment, resisting a retreat indoors to the hallway, pensive as I break to fetch the car, an underdeveloped mental map stirring—‘the one-way street leading outbound?’ 

All the while, an eye fixed on Victoria as she wraps Loulou’s face in the blanket, the wind steals our warmth from our clothes, chilling the body bare.

Victoria and her bundle tackles head-on the blustery winds and swirls, lumbering on. The street’s corner stands afar—it does not approach. In the snail-pace, I keep weighing each step against the strides of the past week, huddling close to mother and her child, repeating in my head: ’we’re a leap to the back street.’ Reinforcing Victoria to bear out her silent struggle. At her pace, the corner remains an infinitely long stretch ahead. I tell myself: ‘Run, fetch the car!’ Yet the narrow streets surge in mind, interlacing into a deceptive maze. ‘I can’t leave Victoria with Loulou in the cold. What if—’ I stop the thought there, the mounting fear of losing them unbearable. 

Together, we advance toward the corner opening into the blind athwart street—the wall’s protection falls as another gap opens, an ice-biting squall that blasts. The wind lashes her blanket. Loulou does not awaken from her cocoon, as Victoria’s fingers peck the blanket’s seam back into overlap. I feel deprived, as courage demands of Victoria to press on, while schizophrenic winds butt and recoil around us, funneling through the forked street-handle to exhaust themselves. We prolong along the relentless cloistral wall as I pray for relief. I lurch to break away, around the crotch of the hospital—the next corner afar, yet relentlessly nearing. Until the edge returns, a shield against the icy bluster, shouldering the cloistral back wall’s unforgiving run. 

The next surge of volition—a channeled head draft through the street-prong—as I tether to Victoria’s pace. The tempest softly pilfers the warmth from our clothes. I lag,  my restlessness spilling into a fumbling at my hip pocket for keys. I count—like strewn pebbles—the half-dozen cars along the curb. The approach is frustratingly slow: the silver-gray Audi in sight. I fix on the fender’s taillight—my mark. 

At a stranger’s car length, I breach my patience—leap ahead, slip between bumpers, key poised, slot the trunk lock, tweak, lift the lid. I drop Victoria’s bag - slam - shut, one stride up the curb, another, and before Victoria can reach the passenger door I tweak the key and pull it open, standing by—yet my gallantry is dismissed: to my dismay, Victoria checks her pace, plants her feet with her baby, and turns to the rear door. 

Victoria is too fragile for words. I thread my hands through the interior toward the rear window sill, pulling the knob. My voice fails—‘My Little One…?’ My hand snakes blindly behind the backrest, fingers brushing the door panel; a crooked pinky hooks the latch and pulls, my backhand forcing the reluctant door. I’m bogged down, incriminating myself—untangling my arm, uncoiling my body—rising to meet Victoria’s blatant, erroneous belief. 

I say to myself: ‘The onus is on you now.’ I vouch for the main arteries while Victoria works the footwell—squeezing, cornering, Loulou in her embrace, wedging by the door hinged to the chassis. She lowers a hip to the edge of the bench, wiggles—waggles—draws her right foot inside. As she scotches in with Loulou tight to her chest, slipping behind the front passenger seat into the rear - flash, flash, flash - my mind fires. 

Gavin, six, crashes forward from the rear seat of my Audi Coupé S, crumpling over the flattened backrest beside me. Lionel, three years older, is thrown against my seat, while I’m held fast by my seatbelt. The boys rebound to the back bench—but the impact before my eyes shatters like a windshield. 

As I regain my senses, out of a fog, a shape resolves: ice cream—the cones strewn about—recalling the boys at the roadhouse on the Pretoria road, at the edge of Alexandra township. 

An offside angle—she scrambles out of her crashed car, we are too close—our headlight driven into the other,  the fenders pleated inward, the engines in a kiss at heart —a last cough. I wake to an angelic girl at the window—terrified, dressed in light—checking on my screaming boys. 

I had seen the signs, doubted the driver—yet she jumped the stop street from the Pretoria-Johannesburg underpass onto the Marlboro junction. That day, my Audi Coupé S was towed away—never to return to me. 

Now I bear the course home. Victoria, in her erroneous certainty, finds comfort in her seat. I dare not voice it: ‘If we crash, your body will crush our baby.’

  - Smack - I shut the door, my third-eye strobing, sentient to the tempest beast mirrored breathing out of the zodiacal forest. In the blustery swirls, my stride slackens; with an awk’s eye I round the Audi A4 trunk, emerging to the narrow lane, scanning the parked cars for a driver’s shadow—ready to storm into the lane. 

I unlock. Slip into my seat. A prolonged glance through the pair of headrests—reminding her, without voice: ‘You shouldn’t sit cradling Loulou’—as I tweak the ignition key. 

I feather the throttle and steer the car into the deserted one-way lane, coasting through a maze of right-of-way backstreets, checking depth into every blind, sightless approach at each intersections—mind-wrecking, the treacherous crisscross—recalling my recklessness on an empty Waterloo Road, cheating past drivers too cautious, emerging from side streets to ride past the main open artery. 

I emerge onto the main artery—safer on the bus route I walked days earlier when registering my Sunshine—now driving outbound from the shallow valley, gauging the wilderness of a few distant cars, keeping well clear behind the lane stacking up to turn off at the traffic lights. 

Yet a vision strikes—vivid—the rearview mirror fills: a concrete truck, its drum tumbling, lurching from the sidewalk, unwinding, plowing into my Volkswagen pickup trapped at a light. 

Now bound for a right turn, avoiding being boxed in, my rearview mirrors on alert—a car approaches, slips by, only to follow through the crossing lane. Clear. We turn through the hook of tri-color glowing lenses, engaged in the artery across the entrenched railway—nerve breaking, reckoning again with the stop-and-go. We trace a horseshoe course in thin midmorning traffic, straight through hedgerows of commercial buildings. 

On course, through changing lenses, the city Gate's overpass—my eyes shift beyond the trickles and pauses of traffic, alert with Victoria’s silent presence cradling her newborn. With glances at drivers, traffic turning with us, a ride for the service road while I scissored lanes, zipping in the midst of cars flowing the Little Beltway. We dip toward the trough of the next city-gate but underpass—shadowing the city moat, surfing the wave clearing to the gray sky. 

In a thin, synchronized flow, we ride the next crest to the boulevard margined by bustling retailers—brands flashing, pedestrians scarce—save for the lady strolling her poodle and a restaurant waiter taking a smoke break against a doorway. Helios’ sunlight does not break through the blanket of clouds, casting no shadows in our wake. 

Madam Victoria’s chauffeur—my head’s subliminal beacon strobing, the gelatinous etherial blobs clearing the air in the rounds—as we ride the asphalt, the medieval drawbridge tower peeking over the wave and raise the underground South Station  tunnel portal beneath. I shunt from traffic onto the service road, catch the toggling lenses, and steer—coasting along Halle Gate’s overpass, skimming past the stone medieval tower. Ill-timed toggling lenses clear; our glass-bubble slips through the narrow interstice of bluestone classic apartment blocks—the entry to the dense outer community, I sigh: ‘We’ve made it this far.’

Across the valley, razed to a potsherd field—sprawling terracotta chimneys, gable walls, rooftops—a sword’s cut through the lofty artery out of the valley—before the spectators: rows of brick façades, windows and cragged balconies applaud Victoria’s parade. Loulou is carried on her first tour into the fusion of her world, as drops of traffic descend along ‘Mint Hotel Street,’ opening onto Gate of Saint-Gillis, a classic circus of apartment blocks. 

We follow the contour—I shake off the drift: the Bohemian girl shouldering her jug, water spilling as she steps across the stones of a stream. The patter of tires over the cobblestones draws cars into the roundabout, bewildering drivers to its tempo. I hold the line amidst traffic entering from every ray of streets, before a breath spins us off outward along the glinting tramway through the asphalt, threading into a rising, distant flocculent parkway alleyway.

A seismic shift in the townhouses—not exactly a frontier into Forest—where the hedgerows of fenestrated brick façades fall back a margin, letting the median’s flocculent barrel-vault loosen the park’s century-old woods from behind the last townhouse and raise the tramway platforms to face deserted glass shelters. I take a deep breath, but hold my gasp - patter, patter, patter - as I steer our way across the tracks curving through Square Rochefort, past the park gaping at the corner, a river-backwash of lawns.

The tires fall silent on the asphalt avenue—teased by a hedgerow of punctuated garage doors and the gleam of lobbies between, leaving the apartment blocks behind. I pull up a house away, a sigh slipping over my shoulder. “You’re home.” The sentinel waits at the French doors—empty darkness poised at a balconette. 

With a chauffeur’s ease, I alight from the car, hips brushing the rear fender. I lift the trunk, heave Victoria’s suitcase - slam - shut, and step on the curb as the rear door swings open. 

Victoria, in a dark outfit, wiggles-waggles to the edge of the seat, her feet dragging out to meet the sidewalk. She heaves herself upright, cradling Loulou supine in a rumpled light-beige bundle, big dark eyes wide to the clouded sky—the hush of a settled tempest. 

Victoria steps—then pauses. A poised, subliminal qualm. Her gaze fixes on the white-stone transom’s figurehead: a girl leaning into the wind, hair flowing. As if asking: ‘Will I lose out on you?’ 

I hasten past her, tweak the key - cluck - the door springs; my hand falls back - fizz… 

Victoria drops her heavy eyes, while Loulou’s wide gaze wanders the Art Nouveau oak head of the doorframe, fixing on a profile through the vestibule’s ceiling well, brushing the bulbs burning amid the chandelier’s dangling crystals. 

I shut the door - fizz... Kwock -. 

Victoria crosses the coffee-stained vis-à-vis mirrors, appearing again in an infinite miner’s tunnel as she stomps the walk-up. In a phantasmagoric motion-mosaic, we rise before the crystal-waffle grand portal into her homecoming.

With a hook and a crook, I reach past Victoria for the stained-glass door, turn the key—hinge it inward—and I step back as it opens into the gloomy room. She freezes. 

My hand rushes - flick, flick, flick - spotlight awaken: Victoria’s dormant library pooling into light, the apple-green walls stir from sleep beneath the ceiling’s gaze, over the dressed table amidst huddled chairs. 

Victoria steps across the threshold. Floorboards whisper beneath her. She pauses within the grand enfilade of crystal portals. Breaking the silence, in a musical tone: “Loulou-kee! Alsjeblieft. Mag ik je presenteren: Dit is je huis—hier ga je wonen—Here you are… May I present you—this is your home. Here is where you’ll be living!” 

- whoosh… thwock, clung - 

I shut the door.