Paris Sparrow

Like everything else in Paris, the Club des Cinq, at the foot of Montmartre, was down at heel. The decor--very modern--was shabby; the champagne--very expensive--was poor. The worn-looking, faded singer who came on half an hour after midnight matched the setting well. She had frizzled brown hair, a little black dress and cork-soled shoes. She was called La Piaf (Parisian argot for sparrow).

The Sparrow's voice, low and husky, was in character too. After she had sung, with a weary little smile, Un monsieur me suit dans la rue ("A gentleman follows me down the street"), there was a long, silent pause, then a storm of applause. The Sparrow accepted the outburst as her rightful due. For had she not been, for ten years, one of Paris' most sought-out chanteuses? Now, with les saies boches gone and postwar visitors in Paris, her songs of sacred and profane love were making her an international favorite.

Victor Hugo or Maupassant might have written the life story of La Piaf. Two policemen assisted at her birth in a Montmartre street 30 years ago. When she was two and a half, she was struck blind--according to her. She was cured, at seven, when she and her grandmother visited the Normandy shrine of Ste. Therese de 1'Enfant Jesus. As a young girl she sang in the Paris streets, a tiny, birdlike creature who clasped her hands behind her and fixed her eyes on the heavens. A friend gathered up the sous which she was too proud to pick up herself.

One day she caught the eye of a cabaret owner, who took her inside, made her sing in her threadbare skirt and sweater. After her first song there was a sepulchral silence. "A thousand thoughts went through my mind," she says. "Did my miserable appearance make them feel ashamed?" Then the hall broke into a long thunder of applause. Maurice Chevalier rose to his feet and cried: "Elle en a plein le ventre, la mome" ("The kid's got plenty of stuff").

Today her most popular song is Bonjour Monsieur Saint-Pierre, about a young Parisian girl who, having died, pleads at the gates of heaven:

I might as well say I loved life well

And the handsome boys a little too much. . . .

And now I'm afraid because I get the advice,

That they'll never permit me in Paradise. . . .

Look at my hands, the hands of the poor--

Look at my sins and my misdeeds

And my poor heart, so weary of cheats

It's not my fault--they all begged me.

At the end of the song, of course, gallant St. Peter opens the gates.

Last week La Piaf left France to tour the cabarets of Belgium, Holland and Switzerland. Next autumn she hopes to come to the U.S.

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