No Regrets - Carolyn Burke [8]
Piaf liked to tell the story of one of these trips, on a Sunday in August when she was six, she thought, though it is likely that it took place a year or two earlier. In this version of the tale, Maman Tine gave the girls the day off to visit the saint’s grave like other worshippers. Ten days later, after their return to Bernay, the little girl announced that she could see. “Saint Thérèse performed a miracle for you!” she was told—an explanation that would comfort Piaf for the rest of her life. In the language of popular piety, she was a miraculée, someone who has been touched by a miracle.
Raymond Asso, Piaf’s first composer, concluded after talking to her grandmother that this account was a work of fiction: Edith had regained her sight when the doctor removed the bandages; the household went to Lisieux to thank Saint Thérèse some time later. Piaf naturally preferred to believe that she had been singled out by the saint. When asked, much later, about her first happy memory, she replied, “The day I regained my eyesight!” From then on, she could enjoy life like other children. Yet, even after that day, according to Madame Taillère, a neighbor who washed bed linens for Maman Tine’s household, “Edith’s eyes were never wide open like yours or mine.” To make up for this handicap, the prostitutes gave the washerwoman money to buy toys for Edith. “She was engaging, a little love,” Madame Taillère recalled, “and they doted on her.”
The child was also a favorite with this neighbor. Since the volume of washing required Madame Taillère’s presence in the brothel every day, they were often together. Edith ran across the street to visit her easygoing friend and accompanied her to the lavoir, the communal washhouse down the hill, where a covered roof allowed washerwomen to work in all weathers. But although Madame Taillère lavished her affection on Edith, Maman Tine scolded the child for distracting her.
Bernay, built at the confluence of two rivers, abounds in streams running down the hillsides to the lowlands. Once Edith could see well enough to play outside, she would have sailed toy boats, chased the frogs that swim in the rivulets, and run up and down the steep stairways leading to the lowlands, where for a few years she attended elementary school. “She was a good student, she memorized everything she was given right away,” her teacher recalled. Contemporaries remembered her because of her bad eyesight, the local historian said, but also because “the girl whose grandmother ran the town brothel was not likely to be confused with other pupils!”
Piaf said nothing about her brief education in her memoir Au bal de la chance, which omits these years except for the “miraculous” cure. Perhaps it was too painful to recall the taunts of classmates who threw stones at her and called her “the child of the devil’s house.” Perhaps she didn’t recall these stories—which are still told in Bernay. Neighbors remembered stopping what they were doing when Edith began to sing. Some evenings, her grandparents took her to the Café de la Gare, where she was lifted onto a table to shouts of “Sing, little one, sing,” a contemporary recalled: “Her voice was already unique, magical.” Another Bernayan observed, “People knew that she came from a family of artists. You could tell even then that she would become someone.”
It is tempting to think that Piaf’s ability to look within herself for the essence of a song developed from these experiences. “When I wanted to understand, to ‘see’ a song, I would close my eyes,” she reflected, after her eyesight, long since cured, allowed her to read music, compose, and accompany herself on the piano. Her memoirs often link clairvoyance with strong