#theloft

Epigraph: They arrive as shadows shifting furniture, but each motion redraws the house’s soul. Under the peacock fan of stained glass, light breaks through the marble hush, and a stranger’s voice at the door names the coming of work, of dust, of destiny. Thus begins the rebirth—Aetheria’s light entering through the cracks of the old world.

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.

Doodlers before a three-dimension canvass, the mover—like erasing rubbers—brush against a yellow Chesterfield, the sofa leaving the courtyard backdrop intact. Table and chairs bare the kitchen floor. Across the portal, where the bay window frames the street—blotched by a box-truck—uncouth men walk through the gate, past the tree trunk on the sidewalk, cross-crossing with bright plastic crates, before returning empty-handed. 

I’m dismantling the mezzanine that had formed a through-floor sleeping quarter—for us upstairs, for Alexandre below. Her seven-year-old’s toys spill across the carpet, and Victoria’s wardrobe, striated in bright colors, open beside the fire mantel and chimney, fluttering out. The mezzanine unfolds like a Meccano of planks, walking itself into the street, vanishing around the blind corner of the truck's tailgate.  

When the apartment returns, whipped clean for handover, I trail Jean-Francois Smeets in Victoria’s shadow—nine months erased, the clutter gone. The truck pulls toward the Uccle Town Hall at the bottom of the next block—the mansion, a sentry, policing to drive away from Dr. Decroly Avenue, switching through fenestrated hedgerows of suburban brick facades to the next. 

Windows stuffed with bedding, Victoria follows in her blue Fiat Panda, and I, tools rattling in my glass bubbles, weave toward the woods—bridging the river of lawns streaming through the park and short of the pool before Saturday’s phantom tramway, overseen by the sky-mirrored apartments, their prows tethered in a circle of architectural generations around the square, leaning with a quiet curiosity toward what unfolds along the sweeping Avenue Reine Marie-Henriette.

By mid-morning, I’m on the wide sidewalk, offside the lopsided, paint-peeling roller blind behind the faux balcony of the French doors—the haunted house. Solid in its wood and dark in its green, the paired panel doors stand before me. Startled, my eyes spin around, as if to catch headlight beams and thwart a leopard’s leap from the night to my shoulder—only to spot, across the broad asphalt, Victoria—bucket in hand—hesitating before crossing, ghosting from the tailgate of her blue Panda. After the whoosh of a passing car, she steps onward, tracing a diagonal across the asphalt field to the curb behind me. 

She pauses—bucket at hand, heavy with rugs, gloves, scrubbing brushes, and cleaner flasks. She spares herself a gaze at the White-Stone transom, like a ship waiting to sail—its sculpted figurehead’s hair caught in the wind, reflecting her long-held wish. 

My reflex strays past Victoria, further uphill from her stalled blue Panda, a few cars along the chain to a small white one—shadows blustering against the park’s thicketed hedge. Then, the shadows charged with energy, figures stirring over the undulated rooftop. As the blur dissipates and reason returns to my mind, I see young men alight and circle two figures from the far blind flank, slipping through the bumper interstices to join two others near closing doors. They gather to a restless stance, eyes rolling—heads turning uphill and sweeping downhill—before, to my surprise, they step into the avenue. The little group settles into a leisurely gait, crossing the asphalt, advancing, bound to sweat it out, closing in behind Victoria's tracks—cut off when the box truck grinds uphill and pulls to a halt along the curb. 

From the truck’s cabin steps the man known from the thatched-roof house—he used to slip into the kitchen for a chat with Mariette Somers, the farmhand from a family dealing in black money under the table, working behind at the mushroom farm and out front at the flower greenhouses across the street. 

The uncouth, thirtyish man, striding toward the rear, meets Smeets emerging from the blind-flank swirl to face the tailgate. Abreast, a pace behind, the young men trickle in—peeking among others while Smeets unlatches the doors. He steps back with the leaf swinging toward the blind flank; the farmhand steps up, planting the other door against the full-fledged cargo box.

Mr. and Mrs. Van Goethem-Polfliet—in the past. The heel of my thumb through my keyring - tingle - a key, handed in the notary’s office by Mr. Van Goethem, dangles to my nimble fingers; I slot it into the lock, tweak the latch - click - and press left the dirty, green-flaking entrance door, lending daylight to sprawl past my legs and lay a gleaming hush in reverence to Victoria. 

As I reach a finger up to the dormant door rebate, hook the flush bolt, and pull the lever down, unlatching the bolt from the scrolled transom rail. Victoria passes the doorstep behind me. I bend, lift the floor bolt, and straighten—freeing the ceased leaf from the dirt-gummed seams in the frame—then push the door right as more light rushes in, impressing upon the vestibule apron. 

Ousting darkness into the depth—the white marble awakens through its veins. Victoria climbs the half-dozen wide treads toward Erebus’ fledged stance behind the dark-green, full-screened crystal-cottage portal. She swings the door wider—Helios’ spill thinning to moonlight along the marble landing evanescing into the depth beside the sketchy staircase.

When I arrived on the spot, I unlatch the top and floor flush bolt and think, ‘I mean—who would have thought…’ as I push the slender half-door back toward the shouldered, dark-green panel door of the derelict Belle Epoque apartment—our goal, Aetheria’s cradle.

Outside the entrance frame, in bright daylight, the hands of men line up. The farmhand leads the youngster under Smeets’ supervising gaze, as they emerge from the blind truck’s tailgate—hefting a linked chain of bright crates and turning to approach. 

I head up the stairs, away into the lingering somberness trailing - Shuffle, shuffle. . . - after her eager climbing steps, before she flits from the wooden flight onto the mezzanine landing. As I reach beneath the meager, dangling bulb, I catch a flit of her shadow at the switchback above, by the +1 floor sentinel shading the flank wall’s embossed panels door. 

Downstairs, behind me, men’s whisper boots advance—breaching the entrance, crossing the marble vestibule’s walk-up and landing, edging around the airlock-portal’s fixed cottage panel. An army of footsteps raids the stairs, creeping echoes up the stairwell—to fetch me. But I swivel my hips by the returning rack rail on the landing; the +1 sentinel belongs to the Spanish woman—home to the trio: the woman, her nineteen-ish daughter, and the boyfriend. Together, the walls recede and hang in darkness. Then—just in time—a glow-fly flickers on the wall. I slam the pilot switch - click - its feeble light raises the stairwell walls once again. 

In the midst of Victoria’s footsteps maintained above me, an army of boots below. I reach the landing—counting the floor plan ‘+2 floor’ beneath the studious bulb, tracing a sentinel’s architrave before the trucker’s disability-insurance fauteuil and his wife’s, behind the panel door. 

Mirrored, a flip over to a catwalk—my gaze pauses on the handrail of a barn flight of stairs. On the landing, her ghost flits from a perch of a niche’s door. I’m doodling in my mind—the catwalk unfolding toward heavenly roof windows, rising into a cathedral apartment in the making. 

Along the shaft-walls to the perch, I reach the door and enter after Victoria. Mrs. Polfliet’s words still echo: “A woman tenant has just moved out—for the visit.” It hadn’t struck me how desperate a tenant might have been—to leave the ramshackle, skeletal moving into the dormer apartment under its lean-to ceiling stretching from the ridge beam to the window. 

I step through the gaping doorway into the darkness of a corridor. I shut my mind to what I glimpse behind the door ajar—the water closet's pipe rising to a cistern fixed high against number 13’s north party wall—engulfed in winter light, a forest of autumn leaves, warped  linoleum flooring, and a shouldering wall blotched with humidity-stained rings.

My mind screams: ‘This must be ripped out!’ I pace onward, scouting the cleft—a corridor rising to the ridge beam, wasteful cathedral height, ending against number 17’s southern party wall. A door stands ajar, ghosting the previous tenant's rush—an emptied built-in-cupboard with stacked shelving. My thoughts drop from the scene into auto-dismantling one of the walls. 

I glance across the corridor toward the remaining wall, pause by the gaping doorway where Victoria stands, bucket poised beneath the open Velux. Bright, red-gloved, she’s cornered by the L-shaped worktop, spraying and wiping the top-hung cabinet shelves, readying for the forthcoming plastic crate’s groceries. The detergent cuts sharp in the air, while beneath the mansard ceiling, the shabby lower cabinets face her with weary doors, pots and pans about to cling-clang out of their bright crates and be stacked away. 

I shake my head at the work awaiting her, while behind me echoes rise—an army stomping fast, approaching. I turn a curious glance toward the blind dark corner, where the kitchen hides around the door jamb, striking me with a heart-thump—miserable yet laughable—the previous woman tenant freaking out to flee. On par with a poltergeist’s muttering decay through the toilet wall water supply pipes and the shower cubicle’s exposed drainpipes whispering across the floor—an afterthought of a cubicle, crutched and barely standing upright.

I step on, entering the next-door mansard room, and set Smeets’ trays of tools onto the linoleum floor. Caught by the stomping of boots, over my crouched shoulders the uncouth men free their hands and stack the panels upright against number 17’s party wall. Then they turn away empty-handed, trailing once again—boots storming, receding through gaping doorways and sinking down the stairwell, to a hush—only to resurge in their own echo. I’m left behind, assembling Ikea’s panels and hangrail, hooking hangers to suspend Victoria’s desperate, coming wardrobe. 

Taking a breath, I lift the light-hatch’s pivoting sash and slip my head through the pillory—it doesn’t dawn on me what I’ve let myself in for—Aetheria playing her games with me. The eastern sky opens down to a community of shard roofs wiggling in their shades that rings the park: a peaked-cap row of peeking facades, glimmering windows—townhouses all eyes of curiosity upon an enclave of green, flocculent canopies trailing downstream.  

My gaze draws back to the box-gutter’s plummeting blind void above the avenue; retreating along the terracotta-tiled roof slope, I’m eager to take flight, its weight pressing on my shoulders—yet reason murmurs, ‘It will suffice—a spacious pair of Velux,’ a terrace in thought for the confined room, light and air dropping within. 

Peeling back tiles, I feel the power of an electric circular saw—yesteryears in my hands again, its load whirring, tungsten teeth grinding through the fibers of old rafters. Reverse engineering the frame to support the wasted view, I set a top and bottom crossbeam, opening the roof. The powerful screwdriver bites next, driving screws tight along the periphery, fixing a yard-wide, top-hung roof window, its skirt just short of the gutter. I withdraw my head, holding the twin panes in my mind, addressing the somber room: ‘Light is coming—to flood your walls, floors, and beds, and spill down the stairwell!’ 

I step out of the mansard room. Snub—spurn André.  

The space lends itself to Alexandre, during his biweekly stays with his mother—a personal room once shuttered by André's screams and threats, where Victoria would crash in tears—now reclaimed. 

On the flip side of the ridge beam in a cathedral-like, wasteful corridor—in the glitch of a living room—an instinctive glimpse of the 1922, rubber-stamped blueprint of approval, handed by Mr. Van Goethem, together with the house keys. I’m digging deeper than the sweeping glance the day of our first visit. 

From the stairway, the washing machines and dryer flit across the room, vanishing through the corridor doorways to a shadowy corner behind Victoria. She unpacks bright crates—utensils, glasses, cups, and ceramics to the top shelves—unwraps groceries and stacks the fridge. She emerges as the uncouth men loop through the sunbeam shaft of the window, stacking against number 17’s gable wall—the box-mattress pieces to assemble a king-size bed. Beddings puff into corners when Smeets appears, turning around: “Vicky-tje! [Klaar, gedaan?]—It’s finished?” He turns away, trailing the stomps to a hush, perpetuating the dead silence—until my mind accepts the notion they’re gone. 

Victoria tucks in bedsheets, the duvet, and scatters pillows against the barn-stair’s wall as behind her the liquid panes of the window paint a last glow—Helios’s blinding like Rooster, abandoning the horizon. We move through the corridor—Victoria preparing a snack and a drink, setting a dining corner amidst the desktop IBM computer with a few yard chairs. 

The terracotta shard, ridged rooftops, gables, chimney, recede, wiggling long shadows to blur away a sprawl across the valley of Forest, a crescent wrapping the horn tip into hiding, drawn along by the slip of an incoming train beyond Victoria—at peace with herself—brings home to mind Andre Daniel.   

Since I arrived in the country, Andre Daniel’s Wagon-Lit offices, are in my orbit. He's preoccupied with staff efficiency and train business, keeping his days and mind filled—but off the clock, Victoria’s estranged husband loses his grip, his threads loosened to the whim of leisure time, caught in the wind of her shifting life—from an ill-fit apartment for raising a boy to the derelict promise of salvation: the new townhouse.   

Behind the number 13’s gable and beyond the Rochefort square, our avenue descends into Park Avenue’s trickling lawn median—straight as hell—A variant tramway runs through, diverging at the midway tram shelter; those on track and duty run past the workshop, turning away before the underpass. The line continues along the elevated railway toward the South Station. Beneath the passenger platforms, amidst the yellow-brick facade, an arched window shadows the realm of André’s upper-floor office. 

I had stood by the highlight-framed window. Beneath it, in an advanced stage of decay, plaster pulverized beneath layered paint—deep through the stretcher-bond where the dusty mortar joints give way and mischievous fingers might pinch a brick’s drawer, sliding it out of course. I concede my imagination, gazing at the air-space beyond the terrace-roof. 

I stand again by the crumbling wall—sand grains running out can only mean the lime mortar had dehydrated from the very days it was cured’ Rotating the sash’s knob, my gaze traces the seams, unwilling to let go. I tug harder—a jerk, a pull—fearing that a brisk yank might dismember the mitered wood beneath its blistered paint. Before I regret scuffling with the sash shuttering its primitive glass, I sidestep past the middle fixed pane and grapple with the right one—only to imagine brisker yanks shaking the sash loose, swinging up and refusing to close again. I’m left to remedy my folly—flinging a foot over the rotten sill and bottom rail, clambering in one quick, awkward thrust through the glaze threshold onto the flat roof. 

Breaking-through—much to my regret—compromising a museum’s waterfall-fluid panes of glass for a fleeting leisure, to find myself at the threshold of a contemporary double patio door opening onto a wooden deck, where a raked guardrail emboldens the vertiginous edge. I’m called back from the drop’s living framed painting—its shard shades dissolving into the grid that severs through terracotta roofs sprawling away across the distant valley.

I click off the feeble dangling bulb; with a glance over the city’s possessive defiance—its chaos fluttering with constellations—Scorpio mirrored through the night’s flickering starry light. The grip of possessiveness in André settles, hopeless in its orbit, as Victoria tucks herself under the bedsheets. I reach out from the other side, our heads sinking into the pillows. At the fall of a thought, I whisper, “Where, in this city, do I find labor?” Her baffled breath—‘What a thing to think about?’—and her eyes drift toward sleep. 

At the wink of Helios, Lampetia reigns over a full-scale dollhouse, her artificial glow filling the bright white vaulted ceiling—rubble cleared from the corridor wall that shields the bedroom quarters. I brew percolated coffee, lay out breakfast, and scatter through the rooms. Victoria settles in for Sunday, hanging up her wardrobe, while I foresee, in the far corner, instead of balks, three-quarter-inch plywood boards, sharing the ceiling of the kitchenette—pressing up against a boxed-in bathtub and bathroom floor stacked above. 

We wake, and with a wink of Helios through the Velux—from the somber kitchen and Alexander’s waiting room. Yet I lie, my mind searching for a simile of those days—yesteryears, driving up in my Volkswagen pickup, pulling beneath the “Alexandra Bridge” north of Johannesburg’s PUTCO bus terminal, Black men lined up to leap onto the cargo bed, sit down—while I’d drive them off to my construction site. And now I'm once again in quest of such a labor pool. 

I grip the duvet, flip it back toward Victoria, and kick free my feet—the linoleum chills. Blinking from the sight of the derelict around the doorway, I lift the toilet’s lid and seat, and pee. Circling through to the kitchen, I’m drawn toward the hatch light, yearning for the park’s morning glow. I slump in the somberness, grope forward—turn the hot faucet to a hiss, reach for the cold until it bears heat. Dropping my briefs, I step into the shower cubicle, poised in the shower spray—my body cleansing, evanescing into spiritual steam, stepping out wrapped in air, whole again. 

I grab a towel, dry myself, as Victoria whispers through the air—leaps to her feet, whisks off, vanishing yet lingering in the adjacent Alexandre’s mansard room. I reach the draped backrest, grab my shirt, slip into my pants, and clear the slatted garden chair unfolded by the table. Victoria, dressed in bright colors—a coquette in a short skirt, blouse, jacket, and a headband in her hair—crosses back in a sprightly gait, pausing in the gaping doorway on the perch landing, eyes in quest. ‘Are you coming?’ 

The stairwell resonated up the shaft - Buzz. . . - as I bend to step into shoes. She flies off. I step onto the +3_niche’s perch, catching her descending below—Nyx still residing in the steep cascade of treads. Pulling the door behind me, I turn the long-shafted key - latch. Her hand trails the rail releases short of her swirl, vanishes at the bottom. When I’m clear of the barn stair’s tumbling risk, at the truck driver and wife’s +2_Landing, I pocket my keyring. 

I catch her flitting under the dangling bulb - knock, knock… - my fingertips brush the handrail. She flits through the swingback and after I leave the Spanish woman’s +1_landing bulb behind, the rhythm breaks beneath the mezzanine’s bulb—Victoria’s knocking heels fading to a whisper over the +/-0_Belle Epoque marble, to a mousy squeak from the airlock portal door.  

My leather undersoles slip over the nosing of a glider dancing down the stairs, until Aetheria’s blizzards of light crack through. I catch sight through a living mosaic—the cottage sidelight’s beveled small panes—fragmenting what unfolds ahead: a fluted mirage engulfing her, a sylphlike silhouette washing the white marble vestibule apron, ousting the glum. Victoria’s voice rings: “Can I help you?” and I, in question, ask, ‘What’s going on?’