One of the most poignant songs on the program, in that its lyrics had Piaf look back at her life, was “J’en ai tant vu,” by Emer and Rouzaud. To a brisk accordion accompaniment, she began softly, “Quand je colle le nez à la portière / Je vois passer ma vie entière / Au fil de mes peines, de mes joies / Et j’en vois beaucoup, croyez-moi / Mais pour toujours recommencer.” (“When I glue my nose to the window / I see my whole life pass by / To the tune of my joys and sorrows / There are lots, believe me / But I always start again.”) In a nod at the miraculous effect of “Non, je ne regrette rien,” the lyrics emphasized both Piaf’s gift for self-renewal and her sense that she had often walked the tightrope without a net.
That night, the New York Times found Piaf “in stronger and better voice than she has been for a long time.” Le Monde agreed. The star was “in full bloom, radiant, savoring to the full measure the cheers, as if brought to life again by the well-earned enthusiasm of the public” and their love tokens, the small, inexpensive bouquets that covered the stage. (A sailor threw his hat when she sang of a mariner “as handsome as a god in uniform.”) Only Le Figaro reverted to the gossipy tone of previous months when it came to Théo and Christie: “Like Napoleon, our empress of song practices a kind of family politics, which … seems to work well for her.”
Buoyed by her nightly communion with “her” public, Piaf looked to the future. To aid the UN High Commission for Refugees, she agreed to participate gratis in a group recording meant to raise money worldwide, along with Maurice Chevalier, Louis Armstrong, Nat “King” Cole, Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, and Mahalia Jackson. The Mark Hellinger Theatre was planning a Broadway show for her in the fall: to be called Piaf!, it included a role for Théo. And even though impresarios from Germany, Canada, and Japan also hoped to book her, it was the United States that mattered. “You know,” she told Noli proudly, “the only French stars who are a success there are Chevalier and myself.” In the meantime, she performed without incident through the end of her Bobino engagement in March, when the audience applauded for twenty minutes and admirers congratulated her with the sense that they might be saying farewell.
Though in excellent spirits, Edith seemed even smaller—“as if she had shrunk back into her illness,” Noli wrote. Only close friends knew that each night Lucien Vaimber waited backstage to manipulate her spine between numbers, Danielle Bonel brewed the teas that kept her in voice, and Simone Margantin, the private nurse who lived at the Boulevard Lannes, stood by. To control her digestive disorder, Edith ate only dishes made at home or the unvarying menu prepared at the theater by Danielle (noodles, chopped steak, and canned apricots). Margantin, Noli’s source for news, told him that, in addition to arthritis and acute liver damage, Piaf was suffering from insomnia, for which she took sleeping pills that had to be counteracted by injections the next day. “Edith is using herself up,” Margantin believed. “She still has enough nervous energy, but one day, … she’ll find that she is totally empty.”
Still running on nervous energy, Piaf gave an impromptu concert with Théo at Chez Patachou, in Montmartre, on March 24, which no doubt recalled her stints in the local dives thirty years earlier. The couple performed together at cinemas in Paris and Amiens while Edith suffered a bout of bronchitis. Still coughing, she went with her entourage to Lille, the capital of northern France, where she had lived like a Gypsy with her father. Four decades later, she was to sing at the Opera House, but because of a transport strike it was half empty for her recitals at the end of March. “Lille is a horrible memory,” Danielle recalled. “Very few people in the theater, Edith exhausted. We didn’t know that she would never appear onstage again. Lit by the projectors, she stood there like a brave little soldier to receive the last applause from the public that she loved so much and served so well.”
Piaf recovered in time to record what would be her last song, “L’Homme de Berlin.” Michèle Vendôme, the lyricist, recalled that the original title, “The Man From Bilbao,” was changed at Piaf’s insistence, because, she told Vendôme, “Nothing happens in Bilbao but there’s a lot going on in Berlin.” The young woman continued: “When I was writing for her, I felt I understood her. I felt as if I were speaking through her.… Being close to this woman who was very funny, sometimes very cruel, inspired me. At the same time it was nightmarish, a terrible worry to see her at the end.” “L’Homme de Berlin” ended on a defiant note tinged with sadness: to her unfaithful lover Piaf sang over and over, “Il n’y a pas que lui” (“He’s not the only one”), until these brave words faded to the poignant final “que lui” (“the only one”).
In April, Piaf was rushed to a clinic in Neuilly for a blood transfusion when it was learned that her red-blood-cell count was dangerously low. Only semi-conscious, she sang her entire repertoire over her first few days there, before lapsing into delirium and another hepatic coma. Théo donated his blood, type A positive, like Edith’s; Barrier canceled all engagements; her entourage tried to hide her illness from the press by claiming that it was Théo who needed medical attention. By May 1, when the Bonels brought her the traditional bouquet of lilies of the valley, she weighed only thirty kilos (sixty-six pounds), yet had regained her spirit. They were to spend the summer on the Riviera, where she would start rehearsing again once she had made a full recovery.
Before leaving for La Serena, the seaside villa that Edith had rented for June and July, she received a note from Cocteau, who had himself just recovered from a serious illness. It read: “My Edith, Released from death I don’t know quite how (that’s what we do, you and I) I embrace you because you are one of the seven or eight people to whom I send tender thoughts daily.”
On May 3, Edith, Théo, and her entourage—Simone Margantin, the Bonels, Francis Lai, Noël Commaret, Suzanne, Christiane, and the chauffeur—flew to Nice, then drove to Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, a sheltered site on a peninsula jutting into the Mediterranean that had, since the start of the century, attracted the rich and famous. Cocteau had wintered there for a decade, at the home of a wealthy patron. Though this magnificent residence was in sight of La Serena, Piaf was content to be where she was, she told a visitor: “Vacations are great! This is the first time I’ve ever had one. You can imagine how happy I am.… Of course it isn’t ours. But I hope that if we work hard, my Théo and I, next year we can have one like that.”
Though less grand than Cocteau’s villa, La Serena was not lacking in distinction. The twenty-room house, which had gardens, a swimming pool, and a view of the sea, also came with a staff. Théo’s family came for an extended visit; Suzanne made sure that meals were available at all hours. Soon many of Edith’s acquaintances also showed up to enjoy her hospitality and sample the luxurious local lifestyle chronicled in Paris Match.
By mid-June, she had recovered sufficiently to start rehearsing, her voice having regained its strength and timbre. Piaf’s spirits were high when Vassal and Noli visited, even though she was restricted to a diet of noodles and boiled fish for the sake of her foie. (Edith’s liver barely functioned, Margantin explained: her doctors warned that the slightest excess would send her back into a coma.) Still, she posed for Vassal, picking flowers in the garden, watching Théo in the pool, and pretending to play Ping-Pong.
When a new inmate of La Serena urged Edith to enjoy herself as he was doing, she indulged in rich dishes that had exactly the effect Margantin was trying to prevent. On June 20, she went into a coma that lasted eight days, enough time for the hangers-on to decamp. On Piaf’s return from the hospital, she asked to see her friends. Those who rushed to her side—Bourgeat, Emer, Contet, Dumont, and Asso, whom she helped financially—all feared that their visits might be the last. Cocteau telephoned regularly from his château outside Paris. Denise Gassion appeared unexpectedly but was sent away after she too asked for money. Aznavour visited often, on one occasion performing Russian dance steps to amuse Piaf and offering her financial help, since Barrier had canceled her engagements, including the Broadway musical. To boost Edith’s morale
, the household put on a show for Bastille Day. Marching into her bedroom with saucepans on their heads, they clanged the lids and sang “La Marseillaise.” She roused herself to sing an old favorite, the nose-thumbing Montmartre tune “Nini peau de chien.”
Their euphoria did not last long. Margantin told Noli that the next time he came they would be in a smaller house with no room for hangers-on: “The doctors … said quite clearly that if she made it through the next six months without going into a coma, she might survive. But if she relapsed, it was hopeless.” Projecting her fears onto Théo, Edith watched over him with maternal solicitude. He must not swim in the sea (to keep from drowning); he must avoid the local temptations—drink, drugs, fast cars, gambling—indulged in by the younger generation of stars. To this end, she rented film after film to show at home while he sat by her side.
In August, Edith, Théo, and their inner circle moved to La Gatounière, a rental property near Mougins. There she kept to her diet, strolled in the garden on Théo’s arm, sipped iced tea under a parasol, and talked of the future. She would have liked to perform in The Threepenny Opera, she told the Bonels, but when she sang for them, they saw that her memory was failing. During an impromptu call by Noli and Vassal (in the area for an article on Hallyday), she spoke only a few words at a time. “I had the impression that she had ceased to think about new projects,” Noli noted. Only Théo’s plans were of interest. Since he would soon go to Paris to act in a remake of the silent film classic Judex, Piaf asked Noli to write about his role: “People don’t like him,” she said. “They think unpleasant things about him.… Please be kind and help him.”
Two weeks later, her condition worsened when a local doctor, unaware of her medical history, prescribed a diuretic that sent her into another coma. The star was rushed to a nearby clinic, where she remained for ten days, gradually regaining consciousness on a regimen of liver extracts, vital serums, and rest. For the next month, she was taken there twice a week to receive the implant treatments that kept her alive. At this point, the distrust between the two camps of her entourage—the Bonels, who had cared for her at home and abroad for many years, and Margantin, Vassal, and Noli, who saw themselves as better qualified to understand her—became open hostility after Vassal photographed her in a comatose state, a scoop for France Dimanche. Though no longer welcome at La Gatounière, the journalists kept in touch with Simone Margantin, who told them of the household’s next move, to a village near Grasse where Edith would be in peace.
Piaf’s entourage moved to Plascassier, in the wooded hills high above the Riviera, on September 1. The house, which mingled different architectural styles—Baroque, Provençal, and Norman—would have been enjoyable under happier circumstances. It had a neglected garden full of leaves, an unkempt swimming pool, and the quiet that came from being set back from the road. Edith said that its gentle atmosphere suited her. Strolling in the garden, she seemed absent, as if in a dream. To a journalist who called one day she said that Théo was now the family breadwinner. “It doesn’t keep him from phoning three times a day and spending weekends with me,” she continued, putting his absence in the best light, though in private she said that she was tired of him.
During the week, Edith spent mornings in bed and afternoons in the garden, knitting and chatting with Simone, who became her confidante as well as her nurse. Together they read a weighty tome on French history. Soon the star began supervising the education of her new protégée, Clarine, a teenager from the village who helped in the household. The girl, she insisted, must make something of herself. Her parents, the village grocers, may have sensed that their famous client saw Clarine as a substitute daughter—or a version of her young self. “I suffered too much from the lack of an education,” Edith said. “We must help her.” Once Simone, who wrote poetry, began to impart her feeling for literature to the girl, and Edith made her practice English for hours each day, Clarine rarely picked up a broom.
Few people came to Plascassier. One day Dumont phoned from a bar in Marseille; he and Jacques Brel had just written a song for Edith, “Je m’en remets à toi” (“I Defer to You”) and wanted to show it to her. They could not see her in her current state, she said: Dumont should sing their composition over the phone. He did so. She approved of Brel’s lyric—“Pour ce qui est d’aimer / Pour une part de chance / Pour ce qui est d’espérer / Ou de désespérance, / Je m’en remets à toi.” (“When it comes to love / When it comes to luck / When it comes to hope / Or to despair / I defer to you.”) She asked Dumont to bring her the song when she returned to Paris. “I was happy to be in touch with her,” he said years later, “but I wish I had gone up there anyway.”
Despite their bad behavior in August, Vassal and Noli were welcomed when they drove to Plascassier on October 5. Edith received them in the garden. Did Noli know the Rosicrucians’ philosophy? she asked. One could be both a Christian and a member of their order, she explained. “They believe in reincarnation, and I do too. For a long time I’ve wondered what becomes of us. It can’t be true that once we’re dead we’re nothing but dust.” As for herself, she would have liked to spend more time on earth while awaiting the Last Judgment. When Edith fell asleep in her chair, Noli asked Margantin for a prognosis. “She goes from exaggerated gaiety to dark despair,” the nurse replied. “When she’s depressed, she keeps saying, ‘I paid a great price for my stupidity.’ I fear she’s lost her will for the first time in her life.”
After Théo and Loulou Barrier left for Paris at the end of the weekend, more impromptu visitors arrived—Simone Berteaut and her daughter Edith. When Momone had telephoned earlier that day to ask if she might come to Plascassier, Piaf told Danielle to say that she was too tired. Her old friend came anyway, hoping for a reconciliation that did not take place. Edith was too weak to see her and her namesake for more than a few minutes. (In her 1969 life of the star, Berteaut would invent a touching reunion scene to exonerate her misdeeds.)
On October 9 (the anniversary of her wedding to Théo), chills and dizzy spells kept Edith in bed. Sure that she would never sing again, she listened to all of her recordings. Cocteau phoned to say that he would come to see her very soon. Later, as her voice began to fail, she told Danielle, “My dear, we’ll go on more splendid trips together.”
In Simone Margantin’s account, Edith asked the nurse to lie next to her on the bed while she napped. After she went down to eat dinner, she heard Edith calling her and rushed upstairs. Barely able to speak, Edith said she was afraid. With Simone’s help, she knelt on the floor to whisper her prayers. During the night, when the nurse went to Edith’s room to check on her, she was shocked to find her face the color of straw. She called the local doctor, who came early the next morning and said that it was a matter of time. Unaware that Edith was hemorrhaging internally, Simone tried to make her comfortable, wiping her forehead and lips, holding her hand. Danielle took turns at Edith’s bedside and called in vain for a priest to administer the last rites. That afternoon, Edith sat up, her brilliant blue eyes fixed on something in the distance. Then she fell back down, death having claimed her.
Just as the legends surrounding Piaf’s birth make it difficult to establish the truth, rival accounts of her death by those close to her give the biographer pause. One can see that life at close quarters with a luminary whose last days were under relentless surveillance by the press would set the household on edge, and that differences in background and temperament would be exacerbated under pressure. Decades later, Danielle Bonel contradicted Simone Margantin’s account of Piaf’s final hours: it was she, Danielle, the devoted long-term companion rather than the recent arrival, who had been with the star at the end.
With hindsight, we can see disagreements over Piaf’s death as competing stories about the passing of her spirit—the transmission to her intimates of her blessings. On October 10, the day she died, the two clans worked together to honor her wish to be buried beside her father and her daughter at Père-Lachaise. Danielle rushed to the clinic where Edit
h had last been treated and, with the mother superior’s help, found an ambulance to take her body to Paris—a move that was, strictly speaking, illegal, but one that allowed them to elude the reporters gathered outside the villa. Théo and Loulou arrived that afternoon from Paris. The ambulance left a few hours later, with Simone and Théo on either side of Edith, as if she were asleep. Danielle and Loulou closed up the house and flew to Orly the next day as headlines in extra-bold type announced Piaf’s death at seven that morning, her doctor having agreed to sign a certificate giving the date of her demise as October 11, and the place as Boulevard Lannes.
Alerted to the news, Cocteau delivered an impromptu eulogy on the state radio. “Edith Piaf burned herself up in the flames of her glory,” he began. “I never knew anyone who was less protective of her spirit. She didn’t dole it out, she gave everything away.… Like all those who live on courage, she didn’t think about death; she defied it. Only her voice remains, that splendid voice like black velvet that enhanced whatever she sang. But if I still have her voice, I have, alas, lost a great friend.” An hour later, the poet died—giving rise to the myth that France had lost two of its brightest stars on the same day.
Once in Paris, Danielle and Loulou dealt with practical matters. Embalmers were summoned; Edith was robed in one of the black dresses she had worn onstage. A rose in one hand and an orchid in the other, she was placed in her bed in the library, the makeshift chapel where friends came to say adieu. Robert Chauvigny, who had been too ill to keep working with her, paid his respects; Dédée Bigard came, holding on to her son’s arm; André Schoeller lamented her spirit’s passing; Tino Rossi, Yves Montand, and Charles Aznavour each sat for some time with their old friend. Other well-known figures filed past her—the Boyer family with Jacques Pills, Suzanne Flon, Paul Meurisse, Félix Marten, Marcel Cerdan, Jr. The French national radio canceled regular broadcasts to present programs dedicated to the star.
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