No Regrets - Carolyn Burke [109]
By early October, Piaf was well enough to return to Paris but had not yet regained her voice. In the hope that she might sing again, she obeyed Vaimber’s orders: to avoid all drugs, follow her diet, and continue their treatments, though chiropractic was not recognized by the medical establishment. Vaimber, one of a few to practice this technique in France, had to be careful; his patient’s fame meant that he could not make a mistake. He came to treat her every other day. On his recommendation, she took royal jelly—which would become known in France as the remedy that had “saved” Piaf. Despite her suffering, she insisted that she had no regrets: “If I had to live my life over again, I’d do it just the same.”
October 24 marked a turning point in Edith’s revival. That day, the lyricist Michel Vaucaire and the composer Charles Dumont came to the Boulevard Lannes. Having refused their efforts in the past, she claimed to dislike Dumont, who had written for Juliette Gréco. That evening, after a session with Vaimber, she canceled her appointments and went to bed. Changing her mind when she heard that the composers were there, she agreed to hear one of their songs.
Dumont sat down at the piano and spoke the lyrics. “Non, rien de rien,” he began, “Non, je ne regrette rien,” with the accent on the long, repeated “non.” The song’s defiant opening (which seemed to echo Piaf’s aside about having no regrets) caught her attention. After the bold affirmation of the penultimate strophe “Je repars à zero” (“I’m starting all over again”), she asked to hear it once more.
That night, which continued until dawn, Dumont played “Non, je ne regrette rien” more than twenty times for Edith’s intimates—Monnot, Chauvigny, Suzanne Flon, the Bonels, Figus, the household staff, and Bruno Coquatrix, who was summoned to hear it at 4 a.m. Knowing that he was close to financial ruin, Piaf told Coquatrix to reserve the Olympia for her at the end of the year. She would do her best to save the theater now that she had the song she had been waiting for. Dumont could not believe what had taken place. Piaf’s friends called it a miracle, her resuscitation through music.
“My life changed overnight,” Dumont recalled. “It was just as Edith said: my song conquered the world.” She recorded “Non, je ne regrette rien” five days later, and with his help began planning her program for the Olympia. It would be the occasion to highlight her savior’s music. Vaucaire wrote lyrics for one of Dumont’s old melodies: renamed “Mon Dieu,” it joined her new repertoire, as did “Mon Vieux Lucien,” composed in honor of Dr. Vaimber. With Dumont, Edith wrote two new songs, “T’es l’homme qu’il me faut” and “La Belle Histoire d’amour,” the latter in memory of Cerdan. Of the thirteen songs in her program, the majority would be the work of her new favorite. Piaf told Monnot that she would have to omit most of her songs to make room for Dumont’s, which had brought her back to life. Guite was deeply hurt, some said heartbroken, to find herself on the sidelines after nearly twenty-five years of collaboration with Edith.
Piaf spoke again with Pierre Desgraupes, almost a year after their first interview, when all France had thought that she was dying.
Though it had been a mistake to continue her “suicide tour,” she had needed to go right to the end: “I always go right to the end,” she said with a smile. “I thought I would die but I wasn’t afraid. It was almost a relief, because I thought I couldn’t keep singing.