Overhead in a Balloon Read Online Free

inherited when his wife died; no children; his mother had left him majority shares in milk chocolate, which he had sold to invest in the first postwar plastics; owned a racing stable in Normandy, a château in Provence, one of the last fine houses of Paris; had taken first-class degrees in law and philosophy; had gone into politics almost as an afterthought.
    What had kept the old man from becoming Prime Minister, even President of the Republic? He had the bearing, the brains, the fortune, and the connections. Too contented, Speck decided, observing his lodge brother by moonlight. But clever, too; he was supposed to have kept copies of files from the time he had been at Justice. He splashed around in the arts, knew the third-generation dealers, the elegant bachelor curators. He went to openings, was not afraid of new movements, but he never bought anything. Speck tried to remember why the wealthy Senator who liked art never bought pictures.
    “She was stunning,” the Senator said. “Any man of my generation will tell you that. She came down Boulevard Saint-Michel on her husband’s arm. He barely reached her shoulder. She had a smile like a fox’s. Straight little animal teeth. Thick red-gold hair. A black hat tilted over one eye. And what a throat. And what hands and arms. A waist no larger than this,” said the Senator, making a circle with his hands. “As I said, in those daysmen wore hats. You tipped a bowler by the brim, the other sort you picked up by the crown. I was so dazzled by being near her, by having the famous Lydia Cruche smile at me, I forgot I was wearing a bowler and tried to pick it up by the crown. You can imagine what a fool I looked, and how she laughed.”
    And of course they laughed, and Speck laughed, too.
    “Her husband,” said the Senator. “Hubert Cruche. A face like a gargoyle. Premature senile dementia. He’d been kicked by Venus at some time or other” – the euphemism for syphilis. “In those days the cure was based on mercury – worse than the disease. He seemed to know me. There was light in his eyes. Oh, not the light of intelligence. It was too late for that, and he’d not had much to begin with. He recognized me for a simple reason. I had already begun to assemble my Cruche collection. I bought everything Hubert Cruche produced for sixteen years – the oils, the gouaches, the pastels, the water-colours, the etchings, the drawings, the woodcuts, the posters, the cartoons, the book illustrations. Everything.”
    That was it, Speck remembered. That was why the Senator who liked art never bought so much as a wash drawing. The house was full of Cruches; there wasn’t an inch to spare on the walls.
    With a monarch’s gesture, the Senator dismissed his audience and stepped firmly towards the chauffeur, who stood holding the door of his Citroën. He said, perhaps to himself, perhaps to Speck, thin and attentive in the moonlight, “I suppose I ought to get rid of my Cruches. Who ever thinks about Cruche now?”
    “No,” said Speck, whom the Grand Architect of the Universe had just rapped over the head. The Senator paused – benevolent, stout. “Don’t get rid of the Cruches,” said Speck.He felt as if he were on a distant shore, calling across deep cultural waters. “Don’t sell! Hang on! Cruche is coming back!”
    C ruche, Cruche, Hubert Cruche, sang Speck’s heart as he drove homeward. Cruche’s hour had just struck, along with Sandor Speck’s. At the core of the May-June retrospective would be his lodge brother’s key collection: “Our thanks, in particular … who not only has loaned his unique and invaluable … but who also … and who …” Recalling the little he knew of Cruche’s obscure career, Speck made a few changes in the imaginary catalogue, substituting with some disappointment “The Power Station at Gagny-sur-Orme” for “Misia Sert on Her Houseboat,” and “Peasant Woman Sorting Turnips” for “Serge Lifar as Petrouchka.” He