No Regrets - Carolyn Burke [71]
Cerdan rose early to run in the Bois de Boulogne, then trained all day with his sparring partners. Barely managing to stay awake at night while Piaf rehearsed with Monnot, he lost himself in his favorite reading matter, children’s books and comics about heroes like Buffalo Bill, Joe Palooka, and Tom Mix. When they went out for the evening, the boxer lay down on the backseat of Edith’s car to avoid being seen, an obligation that vexed him but made Edith laugh. Meanwhile, she performed throughout the spring with Les Compagnons, who were still her official partners: as a group, they were much in demand following the successful run of their film, Neuf Garçons et un coeur.
One day Edith invited Bourgeat to meet Marcel, in the hope that her mentor would introduce him to the classics as he had done for her. Whereas her engagement with Plato had given her a taste for readings on the spiritual life, Marcel preferred lighter things, like A. J. Cronin’s best-seller The Keys of the Kingdom—the story of a priest who lives in imitation of Jesus, his hero. The book became a talisman for the boxer; he carried it everywhere. Yet, though it opened his eyes to higher things, he let Edith go alone to the nearby church when she wanted to pray. In time Bourgeat would be able to educate Cerdan, she thought, but it was better to start “with things that aren’t too complicated,” and to acquaint him with what Jacquot called her own “evolution.”
Edith had already come a long way. Inspired by having found the love that she craved, she entered into a period of creativity that resulted in new songs for herself and her singing partners. “Les Yeux de ma mère” (“My Mother’s Eyes”), in the voice of a man who travels the world asking himself why he must fight “guys with thick skins,” became her gift to Les Compagnons. With Monnot she co-wrote several songs that alluded to her happiness—“Un Homme comme un autre,” about the ordinary man who “resembles” her songs, and “Tu n’as pas besoin de mes rêves,” an address to the man (surely the same one) whom she loves just as he is, without recourse to her dreams.
During Piaf’s spring engagement at the A.B.C., she took part in two events that, given her origins, would have seemed unlikely. Since 1947, De Gaulle’s partisans had been organizing a force capable of combating what they saw as the red menace. The RPF (Rassemblement du Peuple Français) was not a political party, De Gaulle said, but a movement that would prevent a takeover by the French communists, who claimed that they, not the Gaullists, were the heirs of the resistance. While the left held its traditional May Day parade in Paris, Piaf performed at a massive RPF festival in the suburbs. Whether she too saw De Gaulle as the one figure capable of uniting France is not known.
Two weeks later, the future Queen Elizabeth of England asked to hear Piaf sing on a state visit to France. Deeply moved to find herself in the royal presence, Edith could only stammer that she was exhausted from having just done two matinees. The princess told her that she had been marvelous just the same and that her father, King George VI, wanted copies of her new records. But Piaf kept on babbling about her matinees: “When I went outside, I told myself, dear Edith, you must have struck her as the queen of dummies.”
The next week, she followed Cerdan’s defense of his middleweight crown against the challenger, Cyrille Delannoit, in Brussels. What should have been an easy victory became a disaster when the referee proclaimed Delannoit the winner, and Cerdan collapsed on the canvas, his dream of retiring undefeated in shreds. When he told Edith that his career was finished, she said that he must not disappoint all those who loved him and saw him as their hero—advice that she gave herself when feeling low.
Soon after Cerdan agreed to a rematch, the scandal sheet France Dimanche ran a front-page article with the headline in extra bold: PIAF A PORTÉ MALHEUR À CERDAN (“Piaf brought Cerdan bad