No Regrets - Carolyn Burke [9]
Edith was growing up in a time when the calendar of saints’ days shaped the commonly held notion of divine providence at work in daily life. That her miraculous cure had taken place on August 25, Saint Louis’s day, would not have escaped the household’s attention, for it was also Louis Gassion’s saint’s day, and for this reason doubly revered by Edith. Though Saint Thérèse was, in some way, her spiritual benefactor, she seemed to be working in concert with her beloved, though equally absent, father.
Legend has it that on a Gassion family outing to one of the Normandy beaches before Edith regained her sight, Louis appeared, the child heard his voice, and she exclaimed, “Papa!” It is more likely that she saw her father whenever his travels allowed him to visit Falaise, where she often spent weekends with her cousins. According to his sister Zaza, he strolled around Falaise with Edith, treated her to the local specialty, buckwheat crêpes, and showed her William the Conqueror’s castle. Family members also visited Bernay. When Edith’s cousin Marcelle spent Sundays there, the girls tried to get around their grandmother’s objections to their socializing with the boarders: “We wanted to see [them], of course, but she would send us back to the kitchen.”
It is also said that once Edith could see and consequently grasp the nature of the transactions in the household, the curé persuaded her grandmother and father that she must be removed from these evil influences. It is equally possible that Maman Tine told Louis that it was time he took responsibility for his daughter, and that, as an experienced busker, he knew that an endearing seven-year-old passing the hat would inspire generosity in his audiences. Whatever Louis’s motivation, about this time he borrowed funds from his mother to buy an old trailer, signed with the Caroli Circus, and, with Edith in tow, headed for Belgium, where the troupe was booked on a lengthy tour.
Although many details are missing from the third phase of Piaf’s childhood, what is known of her life after Bernay is, to say the least, picaresque. We must rely on the stories that she chose to tell much later, when summing up this period in interviews and her dictated memoirs.
Edith’s playfulness survived in these new circumstances, even though her father proved a hard taskmaster. “Papa was not a tender man,” Piaf said, “and I received my share of blows.” Believing that her father did not love her, she tried to win his heart, and treasured the rare occasions when he kissed her. Piaf spoke of him admiringly, despite the blows: “Gifted athletically, extraordinarily agile and supple, … he meant to be his own master, going wherever he felt like going, taking orders from no one.” Like other wanderers, Louis was temperamentally opposed to a settled existence.
Her recollections of their life together blend aspects of Les Misérables with elements of fairy tales. “I lived in the trailer and did the chores,” Piaf explained. “My days started early, the work was hard, but I liked the constantly changing horizons of our vagabond life. It was a thrill to discover the enchanted world of ‘the travelers,’ the fanfares, the clowns’ spangled costumes, the lion tamers’ gold-braided tunics.”
A snapshot taken on the steps of their trailer shows her father looking dignified in a shirt and tie, a younger girl, three attractive women (presumably performers), and a beaming, fashionably dressed Edith with thick, dark bangs—a reconstituted family of sorts in front of her new home. Aged seven or eight, she looks very much like her father, who presides over his female companions. Piaf’s account of this time omits any mention of her original family—her mother and her little