Paris After the Liberation_ 1944 - 1949 - Antony Beevor [167]
Since cooking in the rooms was strictly forbidden in most establishments, the bistros were important in the life of Saint-Germain: the Cheramy, the Catalan, the Petit Saint-Benoît, Les Assassins, L’Esculape. Everyone knew everyone – if not well, then enough to exchange a ‘Bonjour, ça va?’ in the street, or swap quotations from Raymond Queneau’s Exercises de style. This little masterpiece was both a brilliant demonstration of the versatility of language and one of his funniest and most accessible works.
Despite the cold and lack of money, the tiny theatres of Saint-Germain, like the Théâtre de la Poche, the Vieux-Colombier, the Huchette and the Noctambules, all flourished. This was the anti-théâtre, le théâtre de l’absurde, le théâtre révolutionnaire, le théâtre des idées – ‘more ideas than theatre,’ grumbled the critic Jean-Jacques Gautier. One of the most original and inventive playwrights of the post-war theatre was Jacques Audiberti. His plays were noted for the fertility of his language, which managed to be both musical and rooted in the everyday.
These little productions worked as cooperatives: the actors were also scene-shifters and costume-makers, they swept out the theatre and painted the scenery. The odd-job man round the corner could sometimes be persuaded to knock up a flimsy set or rig up another spotlight. As for the audience, they were people who lived the same bohemian lives as the actors. They somehow found a few francs to applaud a friend, or see the latest production that everyone was talking about.
The youth of Saint-Germain lived off coffee, sandwiches, cigarettes, cheap wine and small loans from friends. The men were recognizable by their American-style plaid shirts, crew-cuts and gymshoes. Tartan featured prominently in the mid-1940 s; and in the cold winters that followed the Liberation, the canadienne – a felt jacket designed for lumberjacks – had the dual advantage of being warm and looking proletarian. Girls no longer had their hair built up above the forehead; fringes were in fashion, and the rest was left long and droopy. High-necked, tight-fitting tops and sweaters, short black skirts and ballet shoes completed the costume. After 1946, black became increasingly fashionable for both sexes.
The face and voice which came to epitomize the youth of the late 1940 s were those of an inexperienced actress called Juliette Gréco. Her father was a commissaire de police from Montpellier and her mother had almost lost her life in Ravensbrück concentration camp. Juliette had come to Saint-Germain in 1943. For a time she was a member of the Communist youth organization and sold its newspaper, but then she became sickened by it. In four years her acting career had not advanced, and later she was to become notorious as the figurehead of corrupt Parisian youth; yet she always retained an innocent, unworldly quality which was part of her appeal. Christian Bérard designed for her a pair of tartan slacks, trimmed with mink around the ankles. Gréco asked what mink was.
Her introduction to the famille Sartre came through Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a quiet man of great charm whom Boris Vian described as ‘the only one of the philosophers who asked women to dance’. Gréco was amused by the way the waiters in his favourite haunt were used to receiving his silver cigarette lighter until he could pay the bill. One night, at the Bal Nègre in the rue Blomet, he introduced her to Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Sartre she found