Josephine Baker (52 page)

For the gala, Josephine loaned Colette a white ermine cape, a diamond necklace and earrings, and a dress by Jean Dessès. “She told me, ‘I want you to be beautiful for France.' ”

A party raged—that's the right word—in the stately rooms of the former palace, before, during, and after the show. France had sent champagne and cognac, and the Russians got drunk.

It was, says Donald Wyatt, “the most exclusive party I had ever attended, and the most boisterous, especially on the part of the Soviet generals who set the pace. They were big men, they guzzled tumblers of vodka, and during the dancing, they cut in whenever they saw an attractive woman. Some of them, inebriated, played a game of sliding down the long and curving balustrades of marble to the floor below.

“The party ended in a spirit of fraternity; everyone—even the great Russian generals, Marshal Zhukov among them, who were sitting in the first row—joined Josephine in singing the ‘Marseillaise.' ”

The rest of the week, Josephine and her troupe worked in the quartier Napoléon, the sector of Berlin that housed the French army. “She had us perform without stopping from 10
A.M
. to 5
P.M
.,” says Colette. “When I wanted to eat ice cream, she took it away from me. ‘You have a fragile voice, and it is very bad for your throat.' But I never saw anyone eat ice cream like Josephine.”

Things change, things stay the same. I think of Josephine in Mr. Dad's shop, making a trade. Her child's body for ice cream.

More resonance from the past: The quartier Napoléon had been Hitler's Olympic Village. In 1936, when the American track and field star Jesse Owens won four gold medals, Adolf Hitler refused to recognize this stupendous achievement by a black athlete. Now in the same place, young French soldiers were enjoying the songs of a black American-born artist.

And helping her to bathe. “We traveled with a zinc tub,” Colette says, “and when she was fatigued, she would just put herself naked in that tub and the soldiers would bring warm water and pour it over her head. After that, she could start again. Soldiers asked for autographs, God only knows how many she signed. She always pushed me to the front, but nobody was asking me for autographs.”

After Berlin, the company headed for Brussels, where they found Noble Sissle and Flournoy Miller staging a wartime version of
Shuffle Along
for restless American troops awaiting transport home. Sissle and Josephine had a friendly reunion. She had been fifteen years old when he rejected her, sent her weeping from the theater in Philadelphia. Now she was forty. No one had seen her cry in a long time.

They played Brussels, Copenhagen, and by late June, Josephine was again on the road to Morocco to entertain air force troops. And again, she landed in the hospital. Odette Merlin came from Paris on an army plane dispatched by General Bouscat to bring the patient home.

“When I arrived,” Odette says, “the rumor was that Josephine had received the
bouillon d'onze heures
, a poisoned soup fed her by the Glaoui's women.” Was it possible? Had the Glaoui's women—or the women of some other Moroccan nobleman whom Josephine had dazzled—thought, with the war over, they were finally rid of her, the veil-less one? And here she was back again, so they had tried to kill her with eleventh-hour soup?

Four days later, she was delivered to the Clinique Ambroise Pare in Paris. “She was cold and gray,” Odette says. “A doctor opened her up, then did nothing. He was afraid. Jacques and I were desperate, we did not sleep for three days.”

By now, Jacques was engaged to Jacqueline Ceiller de la Barre, a girl from Sarlat, who joined him and Odette in their vigil. “I knew he and Josephine had been lovers,” Jacqueline says. “She could barely speak, but she dissected me with her eyes.”

At two o'clock one morning, Jacques found Josephine covered with sweat “like a dead body. There was a doctor in Paris who was famous for blood transfusions, and we called him.”

An hour later, accompanied by a donor (a burly young policeman), the transfusion expert showed up. Isn't it odd that, in 1931, in
Mon Sang dans Tes Veines
, Josephine wrote about a black American girl giving her blood to save the white boy she loved, and in 1946, a white French policeman came out of the night and gave his blood to save Josephine, yet she never spoke of him to anyone?

A few weeks later, the recuperating invalid wrote to Donald Wyatt (home at last in Nashville, Tennessee, and teaching at Fisk University) that she was engaged to Claude Menier. “He is in Switzerland, also quite sick. As soon as I am in good health, and he as well, we are going to be married.”

Claude wrote to Donald too. “Josephine is now much better, thank God. She was decorated with the Medal of the Resistance and had a reception at her nursing home.”

It happened on October 8, and made the papers.
SECRET AGENT OF FREE FRANCE DECORATED
! At Josephine's bedside were Blanche Bouscat, Colette Mars, Colonel Guy de Boissoudy, and General de Gaulle's daughter, Madame de Boissieu. De Gaulle himself had written to congratulate her. “I knew of and much valued the great services you rendered not long ago . . . the enthusiasm with which you put your magnificent talent at the disposal of our cause . . . My wife and I send ardent wishes for your quick and complete recovery.”

“Josephine was weak, but she looked radiant,” Colette says. “She asked me to help her pull on long white satin gloves, and to put some pillows behind her. ‘I would like to be upright, to receive a medal from France.'

“During the speech of Colonel de Boissoudy, I cried all the tears in my body. You could see the emotion Josephine felt as the colonel pinned the medal to her hospital gown.”

From Claude to Donald on October 12: “I have not seen her for five months now, but I write her very often. I hope to have some news, and that it will be very good.”

From Josephine to Donald on October 29: “I do not think I will marry Claude, for he is much too jealous and wishes me to leave the theater. It is a lot to ask, for there is no woman in Paris who can star in a large theater. Mistinguett is too old, so that leaves me alone. I cannot stop now, Donald, and I am sorry for Claude and myself, but alas, there is nothing that can be done about it.”

That same month, Josephine emerged from the hospital and insisted on giving Jacques and Jacqueline Abtey their wedding party. Ninety-three people attended the reception at Beau Chêne, though many were surprised by the arrangement. (Josephine's liaison with Jacques was widely known.) Artists, the wedding guests told each other, are different.

“Josephine came down the grand staircase supported by Jacques and me,” Jacqueline says. “She was wearing a long gown from Balenciaga, one side white, the other ruby red. I hadn't been able to find anything but a plain gray dress—Josephine's closet was full of beautiful outfits, but she never offered me one—and Jacques was in uniform.

“For about ten minutes, Josephine stayed downstairs and was charming with our guests. Then she asked to go back to her room. The maid and I undressed her and put her to bed, and she told me, ‘The only man in my life I should have married is Jacques.' Then she crossed herself. It's unbelievable, but true.”

On New Year's Eve, Josephine checked into the Clinique Bizet for more surgery. This time, the operation—which should have been performed earlier—was a success, maybe because Josephine had asked the priest of Le Vésinet to celebrate a Mass for her prior to the operation. She said heaven had sent Dr. Thiroloix and Dr. Funck-Brentano “to whom I owe my life.”

She asked Odette and Jacqueline to go and prepare for her homecoming. “She wanted her bed made up with Swiss linen,” Jacqueline says, “embroidered with forget-me-nots.”

By now Jo Bouillon was staying at Beau Chêne off and on, and Odette, who had been delegated to supervise the help there, stumbled into his private life. “There was an Alsatian war orphan, blond, very good-looking, helping the gardeners, and I was surprised to see him wearing expensive leather shoes—we had no leather after the war—and an English jacket. I asked the servants where the boy got his clothes, and they told me they were gifts from Jo Bouillon. ‘And you don't know the
worst,' they said. ‘He made that boy wear Mademoiselle Josephine's gowns.' ”

Jacqueline, who knew nothing of this, was startled when she entered the master bedroom. “The bed was unmade, sheets stained with blood, men's underwear on the floor. I had to tell Josephine. It was very unpleasant, and the next time Jo Bouillon arrived, she yelled at him, ‘Go away, faggot!' ”

Six months later, to the consternation of her friends, she announced that she and Jo were going to be married. Then she told the Guignerys that she was going to have to sell Beau Chêne. Georges tried to dissuade her—“Such a superb property so close to Paris will be very valuable in a few years”—but the owner of Les Milandes was pressing, threatening that if she didn't buy the château, he would sell it to someone else. Afraid of losing Les Milandes, she sacrificed Beau Chêne, though she could not bear to supervise its dismantling, or, for that matter, its sale.

The Guignerys also tried to dissuade her from marrying Jo Bouillon.

Madame Guignery: “When Georges went to her and asked, ‘Josephine, why? You know what he is,' she answered, ‘I need an orchestra and I'm going to cure him of his habits.' ”

I believe she
was
in love, or at least infatuated, with Jo Bouillon, and for a while, at least, they were certainly lovers. In French, we have a saying,
tout feu, tout flamme
. All fire, all flame. Too hot not to cool down.

Jacqueline Abtey remembers receiving the wedding invitation in Morocco. “We were very surprised. We got to Les Milandes a few days early—Jacques and I stayed in a room under the roof, to have peace, and Josephine gave Mohamed Menebhi the Louis XVI room on the second floor. Most of the guests hadn't arrived yet.”

The afternoon before her wedding, Josephine decided to exercise the female equivalent of
droit de seigneur
. “I was walking in the park,” says Georges Malaury, “when suddenly I see Josephine having sex with Jacques Abtey. I had been an altar boy, I was twelve years old, at first it gives you ideas. At the same time, it seemed shocking. But Josephine was very amorous, she had such a temperament.”

At four the following morning, her temperament exploded. “In a nightgown, she erupted into our room like a tigress,” Jacqueline says. “She was brandishing a knife and calling me names, blaming me because she was going to marry a queer. It was frightful.

“I said to Jacques, ‘I'm leaving,' and Mohamed, hearing voices raised in anger, came into the room as Josephine was chasing me with the knife, and he stopped her. He said, ‘Josephine, I will never forgive you that as a host you betrayed your duty. Never as a guest of mine did you witness such a scene. I'm sorry, but since Jacqueline is leaving, I'm going with her.'

“Jacques, Mohamed, and I went to the hotel in Beynac. We could not believe what had happened, we wanted to think she was delirious, or walking in her sleep.”

Early on her wedding day, Josephine was out haranguing the German workmen who were weeding and cutting the grass. “The war was over,” Georges Malaury says, “but we still called them prisoners of war. About ten of them had stayed behind after Germany was defeated; they rented themselves out to the surrounding farms, and Josephine sometimes employed them.

“She was very harsh with them. I think she was trying, a little bit, to show them the other side of the coin, that things had changed. She was paying them back. But she was harsh with everyone. Guy Hutin was French, and acted as gardener, barman, chauffeur, whatever Madame needed, and still Josephine put him in his place. She instructed him that she wanted everything very clean for her wedding, and he said he knew it. “ ‘Madame,' I told her, ‘Monsieur Bouillon told me that already.' She answered me, ‘Guy, after God, I'm the only master here!' ”

When one of the protagonists is extremely ill, French law permits a marriage to be performed away from city hall. In the case of Josephine, the mayor of Castelnaud-Fayrac thought he would be officiating at ceremonies for a dying woman, until Josephine appeared, all smiles. She was dressed in blue, with a plunging neckline, a feathered hat, a corsage of white orchids, and a gold belt, a present from Mohamed. (Bachir Ben Bachir had sent seven gold bracelets encrusted with diamonds. )

At the civil ceremony, held in a salon of the château, she again claimed—for the record—to be the daughter of Arthur Baker.

In the chapel for the religious ceremony (and not wanting to look like an orphan), she had Pepito's sister and brother-in-law, Christina and Philippe Scotto, act as her family. During the Mass, they sat on her left. Many Bouillons were also in attendance; Jo's parents had come, and his two brothers with their wives and children, including Jo's favorite niece, the then seventeen-year-old Maryse. (What none of them knew was that,
under French law, this marriage was no more legal than the one to Jean Lion had been. The bride was still Mrs. William Baker.) It was Josephine's forty-first birthday.