No Regrets - Carolyn Burke [63]
“She thought of herself as the tenth compagnon,” Jean-Louis Jaubert said. “With us she was a big kid misbehaving with her pals,” who were not above pinching her bottom as she went onstage. Though Jaubert was her favorite, she played tricks on him as well. But once they began rehearsing, “she gave herself completely,” he added, “even though she was a star.” Edith made Les Compagnons work as hard as she did, rehearsing harmonies and intonations until they were perfect.
In Paris, they often performed at the Club des Cinq—by 1946, the place to hear le swing. One walked through a courtyard and down a few steps to the large basement room where Michel Emer’s orchestra might be playing “In the Mood” or the latest tune by Benny Goodman. Patrons returned to their tables by ten, when the deep-burgundy curtains parted and Piaf came onstage. One evening, Montand showed up to watch her sing with Les Compagnons. Another night Marcel Cerdan came with his friend Jo Longman, who asked Edith to join them after the show. Cerdan, dazzled by her presence, said how much he liked her voice. When she ordered tomato juice, he followed suit—as if his table had become hers. Some months later, the day before he impressed New York boxing fans by defeating Georgie Abrams at Madison Square Garden, Edith cabled, “Know that all of Paris is with you. And that little Piaf sends you a piece of her heart.”
Piaf’s feelings for Jaubert had already begun to waver, but not because of Cerdan. She flew to Athens on August 31 for a three-week solo stint at the oddly named Miami Club. “It began very badly,” she recalled. “I arrived in time for the elections. People were quite nervous, and when the Greeks get nervous, they do it in a big way.” The country’s focus on the plebiscite, which would end the recent civil war by bringing back the monarchy, made it hard for audiences to respond until a journalist dubbed Piaf “la chanteuse de poche.” Though the French-speaking Athenians warmed to the “pocket-sized singer” once the election was over, Edith told Bourgeat that she disliked “the heat, the climate, how people think, their greasy cuisine and dirty corridors. I have neither your wisdom nor that of Plato or Socrates.” She would feel better with Jacquot there, though he too might be dismayed by the contrast between ancient Greece and the modern state.
Edith found that Athens did have something to offer when she met a handsome actor named Dimitris (“Takis”) Horn, who showed her the Acropolis by moonlight and taught her to say “I love you” in Greek—a phrase she remembered as “sarapo.” She became enamored of Takis on the spot. His proposal of marriage moved her, despite the fact that he already had a wife, whom he promised to divorce. Just before boarding the plane to Paris, Edith gave him the Saint Thérèse medal she had worn since childhood as a keepsake. The writer Edmonde Charles-Roux, her seatmate on the plane, did her best to comfort Edith—who sobbed all the way home, certain that she had lost the love of her life.
“I love you as I have never loved anyone, Takis,” she wrote Horn on September 20. “I think that I could really make you happy and that I understand you very well. I know I could give up everything for you.” Takis was to reply care of Dédée Bigard, who would give Edith his letters. Soon she was besieging him with telegrams. It is not known whether they met again. Within a few years, Horn was enjoying a successful career in the movies, including some in which he sang the sort of love songs that delighted Edith.
Despite her emotional distress, Edith joined Les Compagnons as planned on a tour of the provinces that autumn. (One wonders what she told Jaubert about Athens.) The singers polished