No Regrets - Carolyn Burke [15]
The Belleville spirit, a blend of plucky defiance and fatalism, came out in force in the week before Bastille Day, when garlands festooned the streets and dance floors appeared in front of the cafés. Each evening, couples holding each other tight swayed to the java while leaning sideways to compensate for the slope of the street. It is easy to imagine Edith and her friends singing lyrics made popular by Fréhel and Berthe Sylva, tales of young women like themselves who had been seduced by swaggering charmers but saw the error of their ways.
On the nights leading up to the Quatorze (July 14), fireworks went off every few minutes; building façades turned blue, white, and red in the reflected light. The festivities continued long after midnight, as restaurants served late suppers of mussels marinière with fries. The sky grew bright again when the fire brigade marched up the hill bearing their torches. “Everyone kissed, everyone sang, no one, young or old, thought of sleeping,” one of Edith’s friends observed: “We weren’t rich or educated … but how we laughed!”
By the winter of 1931–32, when she had turned sixteen, the Great Depression was making itself felt in France. Unemployment was higher than usual, with no safety net for the impoverished, and little hope for those who lacked either an education or middle-class manners. Edith managed to find a job in the posh sixteenth arrondissement, on the other side of Paris, at a creamery. After six days of waking at 4 a.m. to make morning deliveries, and, one imagines, engaging in some insubordinate behavior, she was fired. She lasted only three days at her next workplace, another creamery, on the Left Bank, then made one more unsuccessful attempt at employment, in another of these establishments. Before leaving this job, she met an employee named Raymond, who also hoped to become an artiste. He taught her to play the banjo; they worked on songs to perform together with his girlfriend, Rosalie.
Their trio, “Zizi, Zézette, and Zouzou,” featured Raymond on banjo and Rosalie crooning in the background, behind Edith’s powerful voice. Piaf often retold the improbable tale of their first outing. The three Z’s were to appear at an army barracks in Versailles, where Edith (Zouzou?) had once performed with Louis. They booked a hotel room, ate dinner, and toasted the owner with a post-prandial rum—all on credit. When no one showed up at the barracks, the trio decided to forget the hotel. Hoping to find shelter, they went to the police station, only to run into the hotel-keeper and his wife. After much wrangling, the police chief talked the angry couple out of filing charges against the young performers, who promised to pay their debt after singing at a nearby base the following night. The appreciative audience there allowed them to keep their word. They again toasted the hotel-keeper, but Edith stuck out her tongue as they went out the door.
There is no record of the trio’s performing again. They broke up after Raymond initiated Edith into sexual love. In their time together, Edith saw that she could summon her powers of invention when she found herself in a tight spot. With the confidence of a cocky sixteen-year-old, one whose radiance drew crowds even before her voice stopped them in their tracks, she decided to sing not just for Belleville, but for all of Paris. She would go it alone until she found company. Meanwhile, she was learning the bluesy songs popularized by Fréhel, Berthe Sylva, and her new model, Damia, known as “the tragedienne of song.”
Whereas Fréhel was notorious for her confrontational manner (she regularly told audiences, “Shut your traps; I’m opening mine”), Damia had a more subtle performance style. Following Damia