Overhead in a Balloon Read Free

see the notices, knew which of the critics would write “At last,” and “It has taken Sandor Speck to remind us.” Left, Right, and Centre would unite on a single theme: how the taste of two full generations had been corrupted by foreign speculation, cosmopolitan decadence, and the cultural imperialism of the Anglo-Saxon hegemony.
    “The calm agnostic face,” Speck wrote happily, “the quiet Cartesian voice are replaced by the snarl of a nation betrayed (1914), as startling for the viewer as a child’s glimpse of a beloved adult in a temper tantrum. The snarl, the grimace vanish (1919) as the serene observer of Universal Will (1929) and of Man’s responsibility to himself return. But we are left shaken. We have stopped trusting our feelings. We have been shown not only the smile but the teeth.”
    Here Speck drew a wavy line and turned to the biography, which was giving him trouble. On a fresh yellow page he tried again:
    1938 – Travels to Nice. Sees Mediterranean.
    1939 – Abandons pacifist principle. Lies about age. Is mobilized.
    1940 – Demobilized.
    1941 –
    It was here that Speck bogged down. Should he say, “Joins Resistance”? “Resistance” today meant either a heroic moment sadly undervalued by the young or a minor movement greatly inflated in order to absolve French guilt. Whatever it is, thought Speck, it is not chic. The youngest survivor must be something like seventy-three. They know nothing about art, and never subscribe to anything except monuments. Some people read “Resistance” in a chronology and feel quite frankly exasperated. On the other hand, what about museums, state-subsidized, Resistance-minded on that account? He chewed a boiled leek and suddenly wrote, “1941 – Conversations with Albert Camus.” I wonder where all this comes from, Speck said to himself. Inspiration was what he meant.
    These notes, typed by Walter, would be turned over to the fashionable historian, the alarming critic, the sound political figure unlikely to be thrown out of office between now and spring, whom Speck would invite to write the catalogue introduction. “Just a few notes,” Speck would say tactfully. “Knowing how busy you are.” Nothing was as inspiriting to him as the thought of his own words in print on a creamy catalogue page, even over someone else’s name.
    Speck took out of his briefcase the Directoire snuffbox Henriette had given him about a fortnight before suddenly calling him “Fascist.” (Unexpected feminine generosity – firstfirm sign of adulterous love affair.) It contained three afterdinner tablets – one to keep him alert until bedtime, another to counter the stimulating effect of the first, and a third to neutralize the germ known as Warsaw flu now ravaging Paris, emptying schools and factories and creating delays in the postal service. He sat quietly, digesting, giving the pills a chance to work.
    He could see the structure of the show, the sketchbooks and letters in glass cases. It might be worthwhile lacquering the walls black, concentrating strong spots on the correspondence, which straddled half a century, from Degas to Cocteau. The scrawl posted by Drieu la Rochelle just before his suicide would be particularly effective on black. Céline was good; all that crowd was back in vogue now. He might use the early photo of Céline in regimental dress uniform with a splendid helmet. Of course, there would be word from the Left, too, with postcards from Jean Jaurès, Léon Blum, and Paul Éluard, and a jaunty get-well message from Louis Aragon and Elsa. In the first room Speck would hang the stiff, youthful landscapes and the portraits of the family, the artist’s first models – his brother wearing a sailor suit, the awkward but touching likeness of his sister (“Germaine-Isabelle at the Window”).
    “Yes, yes,” Speck would hear in the buzz of voices at the opening. “Even from the beginning you can tell there was
something.”
The “something” became bolder,