No Regrets - Carolyn Burke [74]
The next night, it was Edith’s time in the spotlight. Her opening at the Versailles had been sold out for weeks. Marcel, awkward in the tuxedo she insisted he wear, kept her company in her dressing room before taking his place in reserved seats with Charles Trenet, Sonja Henie, and the former French boxing champion Georges Carpentier. Edith opened with “C’était une histoire d’amour,” a bittersweet Contet song about romances that begin joyously but come to a sad end. Then she surprised the audience by singing five songs in English. Her command of the language had improved so much in a year that she was able to summarize her French repertoire—including “L’Accordéoniste” and “Le Fanion de la légion,” which electrified the crowd. When she obliged those who called out for old favorites like “Elle fréquentait la rue Pigalle,” some enthusiastic young women climbed on the tables. “Marcel had never felt so close to her,” his biographers write. “Yesterday it was his turn, today it was hers.”
The only impediment to their happiness was Roupp’s insistence that the boxer return to Paris for the celebrations that awaited him. He put off his departure for another week to be with Edith. Their mutual absorption was obvious. She beamed when New Yorkers called out, “Hello champ!” but preferred to stroll around Manhattan with him without being recognized. “Like Marcel she wore her heart on her sleeve,” a friend observed. “They would stop to talk to the bums: Marcel gave them change but Edith went overboard, handing out twenty-dollar bills.… What was touching about their rapport was their shared admiration.”
One night they drove to Coney Island after Edith’s gig at the Versailles—“the happiest moment of my life,” she recalled. He lifted her onto the merry-go-round before buying tickets for the kids who recognized him as “the champ.” Holding hands, they rode the roller coaster “like a couple of children.… He shouted with delight. I screamed with terror.” People gathered round them, shouting, “It’s Cerdan! It’s Piaf!” The crowd called out for “La Vie en rose.” Edith started to sing; the merry-go-round went silent. “When the people applauded for me,” she continued, “Marcel seemed stunned. He said, ‘What you do, Edith, is better than what I do. You bring them happiness and love.’ … It was the finest compliment a man could pay me, one I did not think I deserved.”
When Marcel flew back to Paris, Edith turned to Bourgeat. “I love him so much that when he isn’t near me I don’t want to go on living,” she wrote. “Never in my life have I loved like this.” Marcel cabled on arrival in Casablanca, but she feared that he was forgetting her. Though her engagement at the Versailles was a great success, “there are times when I feel like giving it all up.… Could you tell me where one can find happiness?” After getting a letter from the boxer, Edith wrote that she was “literally obsessed.” Even if she was unable to sleep, people seemed friendlier, and Momone became “the nicest girl in the world” when seen with the eyes of love. “I don’t know anyone kinder … than [Marcel],” she continued. “God set him on my path to make him happy. He gave me this mission and you can be sure that I will accomplish it.”
In November, she kept busy with piano lessons, English lessons, and two performances a day. Now that Marcel had promised to return to New York, she was no longer having “dark thoughts.” Trying to be optimistic even though the political situation looked unstable (because of the communist takeover in Eastern Europe?), she told Bourgeat, “This century is exciting; you know, it must not have been so easy in the days of the Romans or of Napoleon!” The Americans were about to elect a president. “Their kindness to me keeps growing and I realize that each day is a great step forward!” Shortly before Marcel was to arrive, she already