No Regrets - Carolyn Burke [125]
Once in Paris, Danielle and Loulou dealt with practical matters. Embalmers were summoned; Edith was robed in one of the black dresses she had worn onstage. A rose in one hand and an orchid in the other, she was placed in her bed in the library, the makeshift chapel where friends came to say adieu. Robert Chauvigny, who had been too ill to keep working with her, paid his respects; Dédée Bigard came, holding on to her son’s arm; André Schoeller lamented her spirit’s passing; Tino Rossi, Yves Montand, and Charles Aznavour each sat for some time with their old friend. Other well-known figures filed past her—the Boyer family with Jacques Pills, Suzanne Flon, Paul Meurisse, Félix Marten, Marcel Cerdan, Jr. The French national radio canceled regular broadcasts to present programs dedicated to the star.
Devastated by grief, Théo could not rouse himself to receive visitors, though he did manage to do Edith’s hair one last time. “This tragedy was too much for him,” Danielle said. “He was still so young and had never gone through anything so cruel.” That weekend, Théo opened the apartment to the hordes of admirers who filled the street outside, a decision he came to regret when objects that had belonged to Edith disappeared in the confusion, even as security guards tried to control the throngs. If some made off with what they saw as holy relics, others pocketed what were at best souvenirs or, more cynically, items that would acquire commercial value given the magnitude of her reputation.
The Archbishop of Paris showed no ambivalence when Danielle requested a mass for Piaf, who, she explained, had always been pious despite her divorce and remarriage. Her notoriety made this impossible, he replied. L’Osservatore Romano, the organ of the Vatican, had declared that she lived “a public life in a state of sin,” that she was, moreover, “an icon of false happiness.” The Archbishop offered a compromise. The chaplain appointed to minister to artists would officiate at the funeral on October 14. The night before, a priest who said that in the past Edith had restored his faith defied the Vatican and blessed her body.
Piaf’s funeral procession, the only occasion since World War II to bring Paris traffic to a halt, began in the morning. More than forty thousand mourners accompanied the black limousines from the plush sixteenth arrondissement to the modest streets of Belleville and, finally, Père-Lachaise. The throngs, made up of ordinary Parisians, poured out their love for the star who, they felt, had given voice to their lives. Thousands crossed themselves and stood in silence as the procession passed.
Once at the cemetery, things got out of hand. Women wept and fell to the ground; spectators climbed onto tombs for a better view; people threw themselves at the celebrities in attendance, for autographs. The police were barely able to keep order as the official mourners—Théo and the Lamboukas and Gassion families, Barrier, Coquatrix, Margantin, the Bonels, and Piaf’s friends, including Aznavour, Pills, Dumont, and Dietrich—threaded their way along the cobblestones. At the graveside the chaplain made up for the lack of a mass with ritual blessings and absolution. When Edith was laid to rest, the president of the SACEM, the organization that had once refused to admit her to its ranks, pronounced an oration that concluded simply, “A type of French song comes to an end with Edith Piaf.”
“She had a burial fit for a queen,” Noli’s taxi driver observed as he and Vassal rode through the city that day. Though it seemed fitting that she had been buried with her statue of Saint Thérèse and holy images along with her stuffed animals, Noli was shocked by the chaotic circumstances surrounding the event. “You know,” Vassal replied, “I’m sure that Edith would have loved to be present. It was another triumph!” The crowd’s fervor had turned the occasion into a state funeral.
“The final curtain has come down,” Paris Match began the first of two special issues devoted to the star. Reviving the legend of Piaf as suffering artist, the article