No Regrets - Carolyn Burke [108]
During this time, Piaf worked with Rivgauche and Léveillée on the libretto of a “comédie-ballet” called La Voix, an homage to her by the choreographer Pierre Lacotte—who would become a specialist in the reconstruction of forgotten ballets. Lacotte imagined a play in which Edith would be heard but not seen while presiding over the action like a benevolent spirit: La Voix featured dances set to the songs she was to sing celebrating the streets of Paris, the newspaper kiosks, the Métro (“a fantastic basilica”), and the city’s opportunities for just strolling around. “There was a pas de deux to be danced by a couple who were watched over by Piaf’s character,” Rivgauche recalled. Piaf had Léveillée play the music again and again while she mimed the pas de deux with her fingers: “It was ridiculous and touching at the same time. Those two poor deformed fingers trying to represent the man and the woman in all their lightness.”
“Non, la vie n’est pas triste: (“No, Life Isn’t Sad”), a song she wrote for La Voix, may have boosted her own morale. To find happiness, she advised, “Il suffirait de tendre la main / Tu trouverais combien de copains.” (“Just hold out your hand / You’ll find so many friends.”) The joy of collaborating on a new art form lifted her spirits. Though the project was shelved (La Voix would be shown on French television after her death), it served the purpose of immersing the star in the ether of artistic creation, her natural habitat.
Another intimate, Claude Figus, also helped Piaf look on the bright side. His position as her new court jester gave him a license to misbehave, an aspect of his character that had first won him notoriety in the homosexual world of Paris nightlife. After penetrating Piaf’s circle through his ties to Cocteau’s lover Jean Marais and the actor Jean-Claude Brialy, another of her admirers, Figus decided that he too wanted to sing. Edith made him her secretary, despite his aversion to discipline, a decision she would regret when his memoir of life at the Boulevard Lannes was published in Ici Paris, a gossip sheet devoted to the lives of the stars.
Although Edith was not yet ready for the Olympia, she recorded several new songs in May. In “Cri du coeur” (lyrics by the poet Jacques Prévert), she is once again a street singer who warbles like a bird: “C’est la voix d’un oiseau craintif / La voix d’un moineau mort de froid / Sur le pavé d’la rue d’la joie / Et toujours, toujours quand je chante / Cet oiseau chante avec moi.” (“It’s the voice of a timid bird / The voice of a sparrow that died of cold / Where the streetwalkers are bold / And whenever I sing / That sparrow sings with me.”)
Despite Piaf’s hoarse tone and unsteadiness when she recorded “Ouragan,” Rivgauche’s torrential hymn to love, the composer told her, “You gave me such joy yesterday.… What a triumph! I’m happy and proud to have written [these words] when I hear you sing them.” In spite of everything, she still believed in love, she told a visitor. It was “the most beautiful, the greatest, the truest of human emotions,” but lovers should be indulgent with each other: “It’s too easy to think you’re always right.”
On June 2, the star woke in the night with acute stomach pain. She was again rushed to the American Hospital, where she went into a coma caused by acute liver damage. “It is hard to say whether Edith Piaf will recover this time,” her doctor declared. “It depends on her liver, which has all but failed.… Her system can