The spring of 1994 The spring of 1994

Incidences to the mind, like the surge of an images paging through an album. Interactive, surprising the mind by the blow, however mild a shocking experience. Vivid and ready available memory recalls themoving picture in the spring of nineteen-ninety three. Seated at my wooden desk in a skylight filtering daylight through the lead glass ceiling, Martine standing by my side. Over my shoulder distractive, and needy. From an office paraphernalia without a shadow that surrounded the condition, which I read to submit an offer to purchase. While supportive, my eyes shifting back and forth from the floor-through interior of the renovated belle epoque, anxious weighing my achievement. Incessant in doubt, discussing for a decisive break over the asking price for a derelict classic mansion for which I dreamt to see the bygone era.

The next day, I brought up the offer again, after the 'Man without a past,' named 'Uncle,' around midday had stepped in. He seated around the dining table with Martine. I interrupted a routine sight, they who chatted, over a drink and a meal, repeating what had been said in other words at length of time. I broke in, to stand up no sooner reassured, confirmed that twenty-seven million Belgian Franks is a good deal.

In view of an upcoming idle period after the renovation of the present townhouse, with the moral support of a partnership. In an indecisive break, I moved over to the rear study. Seated at my desk. In view of my laptop, I filled in the last part of the Offer to Purchase, upped my bid nine-thousand Franks lower than the asking price.

Anxious, I listened to the winding up mechanism of the laser printer heating up. Rising from my chair,and through sweeping movements, I kept my emotion on dithers. Facing the wall, standing by the cabinet, and picked the sheet of paper off the printer tray. Flipped the page upside down, and introduce the completed form headers down into the adjacent fax machine. On the key pad, nimble fingers composed the number. A baud reassuring screeching surged, a virtual digital ant rampage reconfiguring the ink letters, emanating a dithering expediting process. Ejecting the page from a slot beneath, to a finalcutter wheel dropping off the reception report.

Our offer in a nerve wrecking silence for days on end, through the month I exerted my uttermost patience. Five minutes to twelve o'clock, the fax machine evoked by remote control alongside my right shoulder. On the curling emerging thermal-paper, I sought the source, to my surprise reading upside-down the corporate stamp of the AG 1928 Insurance Group, as owners of the building.

SummerSummer

Martine on her way out of the apartment in a breeze and by convenience said, “I'll take your car.”

Hey wait, I thought, and jumped up from my chair saying, “Drop me off for my meeting with a prospect buyer.”

Martine leads the way through the doorway out onto the landing. Stepping down and through the vestibule out into the street. We fetched the Audi amidst lined up cars along the curb. Pulled off. I drovetoward the adjacent suburbs, and across the indistinct boundary a community claiming a concentration ofembassies. The flocculent in leaf Winston Churchill Avenue from one end to the other, where we pull up across traffic light, to a forest invasive of the leading lanes. I stepped out, leaving the steering wheel over to Martine. As the Audi pulled off, I crossed the pair of lanes to the cast shadow of a flocculent barrel vault over the rows of tree trunks. My feet nearing the silver tram ways embedded in the greens. From the shaded median I had vision of another period in a broad harsh sunlight. Checking for oncomingtraffic, against the forest greens, ghostly and approaching up the lane, a horse drawn carriage figured a surgeon riding in the shadow of the calash that swerved short off side of my actual presence. Invisible behind a virtual two way mirror effect glass shield of a different era. transparent in the present, and focused on the weathered 208 affixed to a contemporary blue brick gateway pillar. Across a short front yard, I imagined my hands refurbishing to the former period a picturesque classic architecture.

At the clutter of hooves up the driveway, the housekeeper waxed up from the dark deep Porte Cochere, without sizing up gluing his figure behind the grand wrought iron grill. With hefty efforts he

hinges one after the other the gate leaves inside. The surgeon pulls the harness. The carriage proceeded to vanished into the darkness. Midway up, eyesight adjusting to the lack of light. The carriage halts by afew long drawn white marble steps to a four-leaf arched glass portal, which the surgeon stepped. There, he exchanges of a few words with the groom and vanishes. The groom leads the pair of horses to vanishat the end in a waking blinding sunlight. The figures reappear evanescent moving in diagonal across the back yard. The area deserted mark in the far corner the token of the stables and the keepers' rooms.

Where, the ghostly surgeon vanished, I stepped up entering the hall, to a hazy lead glass mural filtering sunlight. The molded railing gleamed, majestic out of a musical film, a stairway descend from the private apartments. I waited, in the cold of deserted spirit, though in the midst of admirable shines exuding a warm red wood grains out off the decorative paneling, blending the replicated entry portal across the hall. Misleading mirrored, a doorway into the surgery, betrayed by the only door lever. Surprised by the overhead school chime, which ongoing echoes dissipated throughout every empty room of the mansion. I tracked back, sighted a pair of figures outside the glazed gates. Approached, unlatched,and pulled the heavy gate leaf, with an inviting back step, saying “[French] Good morning.” Instantaneous, the woman with a head nod, introduced themselves saying, “[French] Mrs and I'm Mr. Hack, we have a ten thirty appointment.”

“Will you follow,” I said, leading the couple through into the surgery. A meek light dying on the red wooden parquet floor. The pair of tall street windows, thought reaching out for the high ceilings, proved a dilemma of insufficient light. The broad deep room spread through the casing of an inter-leading doorway. In the rear room, the ghostly surgeon seated behind a corner desk. Alongside, and across his study, the bookshelves left to imagine stacked book spines with renown medical titles.

There, invested in a structural engineering flair with an architectural design, to sum up a priced out bill of quantities presentation for a concept. The wife swirls through dithering steps, rushed a beam of sight sizing up the space. Her husband a few strides behind, studious grasped a blueprint refashioned rooms, for the imagination, a luxurious apartment. As we moved out by the back door, and went by a majestic stairway in style upstairs . The wife entered the room a view on the boulevard, swiped off by sight the walls, ceiling and floor, fell on a particularity of the door, for which I had no answer. Accelerated her step, through the adjacent rooms. And at the rear room, didn't flinch for the ballroom, where I imagined dancing all night the Strauss waltz. We moved around the corner, leading ongoing narrow flight of stairs, by the landing to the ablution block of the surgeon's living quarters. Eyes shifting the alternative deals I presented, condominiums drafted in an alternating red, green, or blue configuration, from prints which I handed at the entrance. The woman arouse in me the museum guide, discovering the maids mansard rooms questioning me on those people's living conditions for which I didn't have a clue. Then, moving in retrieve, the husband said, “This wouldn't suit us.” I led them downa servants' secrete spiraling tunneling stairway to emerge downstairs at the rear end of the Porte Cochere.

Stepping back for warmth inside, I caught a glimpse of the dark Golf reversing out, then paused and faced the cleared driveway. I watched from behind the gate as a moist chill rose through my feet, ice knitting needles pierced up my ankles and reaching my calves. I glanced at the needles skipping across the five minute notches on the dial of my wrist watch. Waiting for the familiar Audi to appear on the scene. The quarter of the hour came and passed, the half a hours alike thinking about my route home.

Walking the driveway up to the street. After a while along the leading sidewalk. Less often than I started off, glanced over my shoulder growing skeptic to the trickled of cars. I dwindled into an indifference to the decorative architectural vista. Approached a break in the row of classic mansions. Across the corner wrapping curb, along my way, fenestrations advertised alcoholic beverages at both angles. I wasn't myself floating in trance crossing over for a brasserie doorway recessed in the angle of the building. It suffices to catch the blue enameled nameplate flash, brought by a momentary daylight ricochet. To stare toward the extreme brick facade, white letters spelling a pointer to the “Edith Cavell Clinic.” Intuitive to the moment like the personage in duo with the side street name, which in the courseof time manifest the phenomenon of a premonitory attachment to the sing.

By hand I pushed my way indoors, and given the great selection of seating. Indecisive I move along the aisle. The far distant wall approaching to fewer choices. by the vacant window table to a last reveal along the wooden bench, I seat. Disparaging there, anticipating the Audi slowing down by the clearing ofthe advertised motives. Spectral, Martine entering by the swing of the door, aware of her unimaginable find, bar a milieu that she frequents. Up moves distinctive the waitress, with the platter of an earlier

order, and placed a hot chocolate on the table. As I sipped and mapped my way forth. At quarter to twelve, I stood up, paid at the counter without sparing a though calling a taxi. I stepped out and no more than wild beast in a zoo cage, I paid particular attention sighting the familiar passage of people in a series of tram windows. Feeling abandoned, at the task to score for an ongoing business. along the way, left to reason, She's probably decided to go home – She's forgot me altogether. I stepped on and offcurbs, changing directions to an evanescent, disbelieve against a moment by car, lengths of tapering off sidewalks to a distant blur.

Arriving at an apparent bridging blacktop over a wide flow of lawns out of the distant residential agglomerative heights. On second thought, given the opportunity, I swerved short for the emersed trees. Walking down the gentle hillside. Loosing myself along the sinuous white grit path. Edging the flocculentseasonal green with random gaps. By sight I followed the avenue black trace, and kept sight on the looming wall of townhouses in a row.

At the bottom in a pool of lawn, short of Rochefort Square animated by a flurry of intersecting traffic, there I won my way back to the sidewalk. In diagonal crossed through an interrupted traffic the wide avenue eyeing the distant vestibule in a tired afternoon light the deep cascade of white marble. in a rushtoward the angelic face her hair in the wind shy on the sculptured stone transom. I stepped up the curb,keys jingling at hand, at finding out why I was let down. In my approach, retrieved out my field of sight, porous bricks affixing 15 in bright polished brass connotative; You're home.

Inserting the master key to the sound of profiling fine tuning pins withing the cylinder lock, to a sudden unlatching deadbolt and springs loose the door leaf. I pressed my way inside the vestibule. In a few strides, before escalating the wide treads. On the rise with an adverse growing feeling. At sight my reflective shadow danced in a glazed mosaic. Swings back the portal door clearing the landing alongside the narrowed down rising flight of stairs to the upper floors. I stepped through turning away to face the gloomy stained glass of the entrance portal to the apartment.

Reluctant, by a sense that the spirit flame died, the wick cold and the smoke dispersed. Attentive to anunusual waking interior, with a slow hand twist, the deadbolt moved and the door hinged back. Before an atmospheric chill gripped my being, heel over toe, I stepped inside with a swirl after my leading hand. At the flick of wall switches, alongside a withered tapestry livened the entrance portal in its brighttranslucent colors. Uncoiling myself, over the dining table, a dusting beams of light swept across the bookshelves.

The floor-through settled in a bright light. Silent from the rear bedrooms, a tunneling void met up with me. I turned away toward the front room to skulk behind the partial folded inter-leading doors. Seated facing the blank corner behind my laptop table. Watching on the lifted screen the operating system in a process of booting up. To my surprise, I hearing a restless key and jumped at the instantaneous fling of the door.

In a breeze Martine crosses in crystal mosaics by the Z-fold up to the door wide casing of the shy loadbearing wall. In an ill considered joyful musical voice, hailing me in her passage, saying, “Come and seeyour Loulou.”

Hard at controlling my emotive dragon the void of words flaring fire. Watered down, I asked, “Why didn't you turn up...” leaving in suspense a key thought from mentioning; at Winy? By her ignorant oversight, arouse a livid turmoil. Swearing in silence; Shit! Shit! Shit, containing a volcanic eruption bursting my chest.

Martine in a nonchalant sprightly wide sweep moves behind me, repeated herself in an exhilarating voice. Unrelenting, she drags me to attention. Twisting in my seat, watching her leap toward the mantelpiece a leading cassette in her hand. She bends for the Video Home System devise alongside the television screen that fitted in the condemned hearth. She crouped down and without a pause, deaf to my calls. My words unable to break her runaway thoughts, as she persistent said, “Come and see your Loulou!” A clumsy dull plastic casing bashing, lacking an emanating precision gearing up mechanic, thatleft to think, She's bound to fail. In a girlish appeasing insistent voice she said, “Come and see. This is fantastic.”

For a moment her calls fell quiet, other than a fiddling with the controls. Excited for a brief moment as the screen filled with snow and then turned to a static sky-blue, and burst out in an ecstatic tone of

voice, saying, “It's not working – Do something – What is wrong, that this machine, that it doesn't work?”

Shit, shit, shit, I swore inside my head. Pleading, let me finish this thought, and said, “Can it wait a little – I'll be with you right now.” In the same line of thought, by some magic instinct, I verbalized, “...Maybe it needs rewinding.”

In the air movements behind me, I pursued Martine's flitting motions, to fast resounding hollow pressedplastic buttons. Engaged, the machine prolonged a rewind whiz to a mechanical clicking end of the tape with a smooth restart. I caught a glimpse of the screen coming to light scratching track lines, which left a brief flirting thought; A bad recording. Then, adding the image of a moving radar search, rapid glancing at the interchanging sketching. No sooner saying, “OK, I'm available! I'm there with you.”

Standing by Martine, who girlish squatted close up and peering myopic at the screen. She drew my attention to her pointing finger jumping at the black and white apparent satellite image, saying “There!”Insistent, she brought me to focus on a moving weather pattern, to a distinctive throb. Highlighting a head in the womb. A little arm coming to light. Foot kicks striving a monkey climb. She moved herself for comfort. Taken an Indian position, insisted with a hand tapping the floorboard to sit besides her, as for the umpteenth instance she viewed the tape. Exhausted, she stood up. Exhilarated, faced me. Her sparkling eyes fell, to the lifting of the maternity dress. Exposing hazy white panties apparent through green stockings, said poking an insistent finger, “Martine! The little baby is here. You see here. There she is.” Her index finger traced across her pubic hairs, saying, “He is fourteen centimeters.” She took my hand, palm rubbing the ball of her belly, in a questioning tone of voice, saying, “Feel?” What I couldn't feel, nodded in agreement with her words, “Here it is – 'At three months,' she is long the doctor said – ” forsaken, by the tide of time to recollect how her surprised gynecological visit had dissipated my inner rage.