No Regrets - Carolyn Burke [46]
Paul Meurisse, tipped off by a mutual acquaintance, was sufficiently upset by the news of their affair to come to Monte Carlo, where Edith was performing in March 1942. When he knocked on the door of her hotel room, it was “Ciel! Mon mari!” with the roles reversed. The next day, Meurisse assumed an outraged air without quite pulling it off, because his wife-to-be was waiting for him in Paris. Had he and Edith loved each other? “We were opposites,” he wrote. “I could easily believe that each of us wanted to astonish the other.” (About this time, Piaf astonished a local journalist named Léo Ferré: the singer was “without any question a tragedienne,” he wrote, “whose profoundly human art comes from the depths of her heart.” In 1945, when Piaf encouraged Ferré to become a songwriter, he moved to Paris. Within a few years, he had become known for his settings of French poetry, and by the 1950s, he was a noted composer and performer.)
Over the next two years, Norbert Glanzberg’s career improved dramatically. His association with Piaf led to other engagements, with singers like Charles Trenet and the Corsican crooner Tino Rossi, but at the same time, the zone nono became more dangerous. Once the Vichy government excluded Jews from most professions, Glanzberg’s name could no longer appear on programs. He became Pierre Minet, relying on a fake French passport obtained through Rossi’s network, though his German accent was likely to betray him at any moment.
Edith’s concern for her clandestine lover is evident in the nickname she gave him—“Nono chéri” or “darling Nono”—and in her correspondence. “I’m worried about you,” she wrote him during a separation. “I drink only water and tea, go to bed at midnight, and sleep all night long. Everyone says I look well. It must be love!” Moreover, she was improving as a singer thanks to his high standards. Aware of the increased risk for Jews in Marseille, where the Germans conducted daily searches, she arranged for Glanzberg to take shelter nearby, on a farm that belonged to her secretary, Andrée Bigard, known as Dédée—whose family did their utmost to help Edith’s Jewish friends (at her request, they would also shelter the young film director Marcel Blistène).
When Glanzberg’s hiding place became too dangerous, Piaf prevailed on a new friend, the Countess Pastré, to hide him at Montredon, her château near the lonely calanques (coves) on the coast near Marseille. Lily Pastré was a music lover who maintained good relations with the authorities, some of whom attended concerts at her château. What they did not know was that, at various times, the countess sheltered some forty Jewish composers and musicians as part of a secret artistic network. Delighted to learn that Glanzberg was classically trained, she took him under her wing, along with the superb classical pianist Clara Haskil, whose failing vision she saved by organizing a clandestine operation in the château’s basement. Piaf came when she could; visitors heard her rehearsing upstairs in one of the Pastré children’s bedrooms.
But even at Montredon, one had to be careful. Every morning Glanzberg left to hide in the cove where the countess left provisions, unaware that Edith was paying for his protection (Lily had to obtain ration cards and supplies for each new boarder). In November, when the Germans invaded the south, he fled to Nice under the protection of Rossi’s Corsicans. Edith continued to pay for his support, often sending Dédée to look into his welfare while also helping other Jewish friends.
That year Edith wrote a song whose title, “Le Vagabond,” hints at thoughts of escape from the grimness of life under the occupation. “J’ai l’air comm’ ça d’un’ fille de rien / Mais je suis un’ personn’ très bien,” it began. “Je suis princesse d’un château / Où tout est clair, où tout est beau.” (“I may look like a poor girl / But I’m really someone / A princess in her château / Where all is clear,