No Regrets - Carolyn Burke [73]
After a week of this regimen, which excluded wine as well as sex, Piaf joined Les Compagnons on tour in Canada. She would return with enough money to buy a farm where Bourgeat could spend the rest of his days, she told him. Meanwhile, she had found happiness. “The only thing that troubles me is that Marcel isn’t free,” she continued. “One must be content with what one has, and you know very well that I would never try to destroy a part of my life. I came into his too late, so I’m the one who has to make sacrifices.” She wondered how much longer they could hide their love. “Perhaps as God sees that my goal is simply to make [Marcel] happy, He will help me as He has done till now? Dear Jacquot, sometimes I want to cry out in joy, other times my heart aches.… When I see him everything will be fine again and I’ll steal a little more happiness.”
Piaf felt that she had stolen more than her share in September, when she and Cerdan were acclaimed by the “Ricains” while managing to live undisturbed at her Park Avenue apartment. Their excitement mounted in the days before his match. The New York Times announced, “Voici M’sieur Cerdan, seeking a K-nock-oot”—a sympathetic piece mentioning his popularity with the thousands of GIs who had seen him defeat their compatriots during the war “with such finesse that at the end they cheered him.” Just the same, though boxing fans were curious about the “Frenchie,” the odds were eight to five on the Man of Steel.
On September 21, following a pre-fight steak dinner, Cerdan lit a candle to ask for the Virgin Mary’s protection, and Edith prayed to Saint Thérèse to look after “le petit.” While the boxer and his manager drove to the huge Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, Ginou implemented the plan that she and Edith had concocted. In anticipation of Cerdan’s victory, Ginou was to scatter the petals of seven dozen roses from the elevator door to Edith’s bed; if he lost, she would get rid of them.
Edith’s group claimed their seats just before the start of the fight. That night the photographers were more interested in the skating star turned actress Sonja Henie than in the singer or her companions—Loulou Barrier, Ginou, Momone, Marc Bonel, and, nearby, the French comedian Fernandel. Edith stood up when the band played “La Marseillaise.” The boxers touched gloves; Cerdan crossed himself, and the match began.
Zale, who had recently wrested his crown from Rocky Graziano, came on strong, and Cerdan fought back vigorously. Keeping to the strategy he had devised with Roupp, the Frenchman battered the American with right and left hooks. He performed with a stunning blend of precision and grace, but Zale never stopped punching back. The spectators yelled, “Come on, Tony, kill the frog!” With each blow, Edith groaned as if she felt it herself, wringing Ginou’s arm as Marcel’s stamina seemed to desert him, then pounding the hat of the man in front of her. Cerdan erupted into a vicious two-fisted attack that baffled his opponent until the twelfth round, when Cerdan finished him off with a right uppercut. The crowd roared their approval of his artistry, and Edith burst into tears. “You won, Marcel!” she shouted. “You’re the world champion!”
The spectators were streaming into the ring to congratulate the Frenchman when Ginou raced to Manhattan, to put up Marc Bonel