No Regrets - Carolyn Burke [113]
Unable to admit that she was seriously ill, the star made plans to conquer an unfamiliar country, the Soviet Union, to the extent of ordering a new black dress at Lanvin. She recorded nineteen new songs, including five by Dumont, and English versions of “Non, je ne regrette rien” (“No Regrets”) and “Mon Dieu” (“My God”) in advance of her U.S. engagements. In the meantime, after a week’s rest at Barrier’s country house, she insisted on making her spring tour of Brussels and provincial towns in France, accompanied by her exhausted entourage. “If you want to die slowly, go ahead, but at least try to sleep,” her doctor told her the night before their departure. “I’m afraid of sleep,” she replied. “It’s almost like death. I hate it.”
On tour, the star was no better. Each night, Dumont carried her from the hotel to her Mercedes (purchased the year before), then from the car to her dressing room, where an injection gave her the strength to go on. In Brussels, she performed even though she had lost her voice, whispering some songs and reciting others until she could sing part of “Non, je ne regrette rien.” After each show, her entourage stayed up with her until the effect of the stimulants wore off. The rest of the time, she slept or sat unmoving in her chair.
In May, after recording “Les Amants,” Piaf again fell ill. She was taken to the American Hospital for the removal of intestinal adhesions—a routine operation, the press was told—but one that had to be repeated two weeks later, because of complications. Still convalescing from recent surgeries (she had undergone eight in the last two and a half years), Piaf announced that she was preparing several new songs with Dumont for her autumn season. What she did not say was that the composer, who was close to a nervous breakdown, had taken a stand. Unless Edith returned to the clinic where she had been treated for drug dependency, he would no longer work with her. After three weeks there during the summer, she spent the rest of the year convalescing at home and at Barrier’s country house. Her run of bad health had begun the year before, she believed, when someone took the cross that Dietrich had given her—which she kissed each night before going onstage.
It may have surprised Piaf to learn that Warner Bros. had bought the rights to her life. The star was not asked to play herself—a role intended for Leslie Caron—and, since the film was never made, may not have profited from the sale. About this time, she agreed to tell Jean Noli the story of her life, to be published in France Dimanche at ten thousand francs (about two thousand 1960s dollars) an installment. Blending Zola and True Confessions, she stressed her impoverished youth, then gave a sensational account of her travails with drink, drugs, and men. While relating her cures as if they had happened to someone else, she became agitated when recalling the most recent one: “While I was racked with pain on my bed, a face suddenly appeared to me: that of my mother, who had abandoned me when I was two months old, whom I found again fifteen years later in a tawdry room in Pigalle, gasping, ‘My fix, I want my fix!’ … It was her face, the memory of her, that saved me.”
Piaf had ample time to draw up the balance sheet of her life during her convalescence. It might have been comforting to hear from Takis Horn a decade after their romance, when—in hopes of speeding her recovery—the actor sent her the Saint Thérèse medal she had given him before leaving Athens. But she was plunged into despair on October 12, when she learned of Monnot’s death, from a ruptured appendix for which the composer refused treatment. Blaming herself for their estrangement after so many years of close collaboration, Edith agreed to speak about the composer