Paris after the Liberation 1944-1949

told her to visit the composer Joseph Kosma, who lived in the rue de l’Université. Kosma wrote the music for the Queneau poem (renamed ‘
Si tu t’imagines
’), for ‘
L’éternel féminin
’ and for Sartre’s poem ‘
La rue des blancs manteaux
’. These were to be among the songs for which Juliette Gréco is still remembered – along with her rendering of Prévert’s ‘
Les Feuilles mortes
’, also set to music by Kosma.
    At about the same time, Marc Doelnitz had been asked to resuscitate the most famous Parisian cabaret from between the wars, Le Boeuf sur le Toit. The Occupation, the rise of Saint-Germain and the death of its creator, Louis Moyses, had left it almost defunct.
    Doelnitz hired a dancer, a singer and a trombone player, but what he needed was a star. There were no funds to hire Edith Piaf, Yves Montand or Charles Trenet, so he decided to risk all on creating one: Juliette Gréco. Gréco had many recommendations apart from a good voice. She had so often featured in the popular press that people stopped her in the street and asked for her autograph, and – perhaps what Doelnitz relied on most – she had an unconscious magnetism.
    The irony is that when Gréco found success as a singer, it was not in Saint-Germain-des-Prés but on the right bank in the rue du Colisée, off the Champs-Élysées. She had only a few days’ rehearsal and her first-night nerves were immeasurably intensified by the fact that
le tout Saint-Germain
had crossed the river to applaud her début. The next night was the real test, because the audience was exclusively
rive droite
. Juliette Gréco had made no concessions to the conventional idea of how a female entertainer should dress: she wore black trousers, her bare feet slipped into golden sandals. The ladies of the audience in their little feathered hats were affronted: ‘Is it done to show oneself in public dressed like that?’ Yet even they were seduced and walked out into the night humming ‘
Si tu t’imagines
’.
    To some, Gréco’s move to the right bank seemed like a defection. She did not in fact stay there long. Within a few weeks she was in theSouth of France with Claude Luter’s band. By the end of 1949 the great days of Saint-Germain-des-Prés were over; nevertheless, the party had been memorable. ‘In Paris, perhaps one needs a war to launch a
quartier,
’ remarked Jacques Prévert.

28
    The Curious Triangle
    The year 1948 was the most dramatically dangerous of the Cold War. Today, after the sudden collapse of Soviet power, it is increasingly hard to imagine the fear people felt of a new world war and another occupation, this time by the Red Army. Events had accelerated in such a way that, for many, the Marxist-Leninist claim of historical inevitability began to appear invincible.
    Nancy Mitford might have laughed at the Windsors in 1946 for advising people to put their jewels in a safe place and get out of France, but in March 1948 she wrote to Evelyn Waugh in a very different mood. She was convinced that the Russians would invade at any moment. ‘Unable to be angry with them, I am quite simply frightened. I wake up in the night sometimes in a cold sweat. Thank goodness for having no children, I can take a pill and say goodbye.’
    After the collapse of the strikes, the French Communist Party prepared to go underground again. Auguste Lecoeur, the miners’ young leader who had directed Communist security with such effective ruthlessness during the Resistance, had not wasted time since receiving his instructions after the Cominform meeting at Sklarska Poreba in Poland.
    Communist dockers in major ports were delegated to block work on ships bringing military supplies to the US forces in Europe. Intelligence was the key to clandestine warfare on both sides, so networks of informers were re-established, many from wartime groups. Party members in the postal workers’ unions organized the interception of mail to important figures. The most useful moles were unidentified party members in thesecurity services, especially the Renseignements Généraux, and junior officials in the Ministry of the Interior.
    The Prague coup on 20 February acted as the clearest signal in the West that the Cold War had really started. The diplomat Hervé Alphand saw the Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia as similar to that of Hitler in March 1939, only rather less crude. The democrats in the Czech government played what was probably an impossible hand very badly.