No Regrets - Carolyn Burke [39]
CHAPTER SIX
1939–1942
For the rest of the year, the French pretended that nothing much had happened. Germany was not ready for combat, they insisted; in the event of an invasion, France would be safe behind the reinforced Maginot Line. Parisian nightspots, which had closed for three weeks following the declaration of war, reopened in late September. “We understood that terrible things were happening in Poland and Austria,” Maurice Chevalier recalled, “but Parisians don’t really care about anything but Paris.” He added, “I guess we feel that we are doing our share by giving laughter and gaiety to the nation.”
Piaf’s war years began with engagements at Le Night Club, an American-style cabaret near the Arc de Triomphe, and the Européen, in the Place Clichy, where soldiers on leave called out for their favorite songs. On October 29, before her Night Club gig, she did a benefit with Charles Trenet in aid of the first French prisoners. Though she claimed not to know much about politics, songs like “Le Fanion de la légion” (which glorified the French Foreign Legion, symbolized by their flag) seemed to take on new meaning in the phony war. But, like Chevalier, she was just doing her share. “My job is to sing,” she insisted, “to sing whatever happens!”
As rumors of peace settlements circulated, only to be denied the next day, Edith kept in touch with Asso. Describing her December opening at the Etoile-Palace in a letter, she praised his new composition, “Je n’en connais pas la fin” (“I Don’t Know What the End Will Be,” an ironic title given the political situation). “It’s better than anything you’ve done till now,” she wrote. “It’ll be my big hit.” Above all, she was stunned by her own success: “a full house every night.”
Edith’s letters did not mention the changes in her life since Asso’s mobilization. Unable to tolerate being alone, she got back in touch with Momone, who moved into his room at the Alsina. The two friends began carousing and carrying on all night in Pigalle after Edith’s performances—until she met the man who would take Asso’s place and, as he had done, remove her from Momone’s influence.
Late one evening, the entertainer Paul Meurisse went to Le Night Club, near where he was performing, to have a look at the former Môme Piaf. Knowing her reputation as a réaliste singer with a streetwise accent, he was impressed by the silence: “not a word,” he noted, “not even the clink of bottles, the sound of the maître d’ filling glasses.” All eyes were on the little figure at the end of the room: “Through the magic of her voice, she turned these customers into spectators. They were enchanted.” As was Meurisse. “She was radiant, as if she had stepped out of an El Greco painting,” he continued. When Edith turned up beside him at the bar, they began a flirtation that led to their polishing off a bottle of champagne at his garconnière.
Meurisse was so smitten that he wanted to move in with her, despite the great differences in their backgrounds. “Edith Piaf doesn’t live at Paul Meurisse’s,” she protested. The son of a banker who had broken with his family after winning a singing contest, the dapper twenty-eight-year-old joined her and Momone in Pigalle, then quickly found a solution for himself and Edith—a furnished apartment near the Arc de Triomphe.
The couple moved in together, engaging a cook (it was unthinkable for Edith to prepare meals) and a secretary (whose main job was to open correspondence). From then on, she would forsake the rougher parts of Paris for the beaux quartiers, the fashionable areas near the Champs-Elysées where she had once sung for the spare change she received from well-heeled passersby.
Meurisse was not the only spectator to be enchanted by Edith that season. In November, a Spanish journalist wrote an account of Le Night Club’s beguiling songstress: “She makes her way among the tables and steps onto the stage without a smile or a bow.… Her voice, full of a gravity that becomes profound, raises the curtain on scenes that are highly picturesque, but terribly