In the attic of the castle where Charles Aznavour's sister resides, the auctioneer of the Piasa house, Thibaud Cardera, has unearthed, between two dusty bronzes and piles of worn clothes, an old travel trunk.
This large fir chest, covered with boiled brown cardboard, clad in planks and armed with brass locks, was not, a priori, a collector's item.
But the coordinates, drawn with a white brush, intrigued the expert: “Aznaourian.
22, rue de Navarin, Paris 9th, France.
"This is the original surname of Charles Aznavour, before he Frenchified his name," says Thibaud Cardera.
The address, in a small street near Pigalle, is that of the family apartment where Mamigon and Knar Aznaourian, a couple of immigrants of Armenian origin, lived from March 26, 1940 with their children, Aïda, the elder, and Charles.
Moved by this testimony to the modest origins of the artist, born May 22, 1924 in Paris, the auctioneer included his find in the catalog for the sale of December 4.
It was sold for 2210 euros, costs included.
Charles Aznavour will often go to the United States, as here in 1963. Roger-Viollet / Claude Poirier
The price of mystery for this box found empty, and yet, certainly, full of memories.
Two years after the death of Charles Aznavour, on October 1, 2018, no one knows the history of this object.
It was therefore necessary to conduct the investigation to guess the secrets.
Starting by going to the prestigious premises of the Piasa house, rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, 100 meters from the Elysée.
Estimated between 50,000 and 80,000 euros, covered with gilding, the star's Steinway grand piano is on display in the window.
In a back room, the cash register, a hundred times cheaper, which interests us awaits, placed on a table.
“It's a basic travel trunk, typical of the 1920s or 1930s,” comments Thibaut Cardera.
No brand, no serial number.
The interior is covered with blue and white striped paper, and topped with a removable tray with two compartments.
Istanbul, Salonika, Marseille ... the paths of exile
Could she have transported the belongings of the singer's parents during their exodus to France in 1923?
This first track plunges us into the tragic odyssey of the Aznaourians.
In a meticulous biography, “Lives and legends of Charles Aznavour”, the ex-journalist of Le Monde Robert Belleret tried to reconstruct their journey, supplementing the imprecise accounts given by Aïda and Charles.
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Almost all of the maternal branch disappeared during the Armenian genocide, which began in 1915 and claimed more than 1.2 million victims.
Exiled in Istanbul, Knar, Charles's future mother, then a teenager, and his grandmother Yaya are the only survivors of their family.
The young woman meets her future husband, Mamigon, singer of operetta.
Charles Aznavour with his parents, Mamigon and Knar, in 1964 in his villa in Grasse (Alpes-Maritimes).
Farabola / Leemage
Just married, the couple, accompanied by Yaya, went to Salonika (now Thessaloniki), in Greece, where Aïda was born in January 1923. The four refugees then boarded an ocean liner for Marseille.
With the trunk?
"Possible", answers the expert from Piasa without going too far.
According to family legend, the Aznaourians dreamed of America at the time, but a visa problem kept them in France.
"I rather think they wanted to go to Paris, where Mamigon's father ran a restaurant in the Latin Quarter, rue Champollion," says Robert Belleret.
The family settled not far from there, rue Monsieur-le-Prince.
The trunk would then have followed them, from one move to another, until 22, rue de Navarin.
In 1950, the trunk crossed the Atlantic
This hypothesis does not seem the most probable, however, because a more scrupulous examination of the object takes us on another journey.
Three stickers have been affixed under the left handle.
The largest, in the colors of the French flag, represents the Statue of Liberty, in a form written in English.
The name Aznaourian seems to have been inscribed there.
Cabin number 44. At the top, the words “Liberté”, in capital letters, and “French Line”, are easy to guess.
No doubt, this is the label of the liner chartered in the 1950s between New York and Le Havre by the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique.
Yellowed by time, the other two stickers indicate the shipment of the package to the home, 22, rue de Navarin, from the port of Le Havre via the Saint-Lazare station.
Pale and almost invisible to the naked eye, a date has been marked with a red marker: December 6, 1950. Finally a solid track!
The labels stuck on the left side show a trip to New York in 1950. Stéphane Loignon
The company's archivist, Florent Crayssac, confirms: the “Liberté”, which left New York on November 29, 1950, landed in Le Havre on December 5, after a stopover in Plymouth, England.
On board, 730 passengers, including some ministers, diplomats, bankers and famous artists, such as Hollywood filmmaker Billy Wilder.
Charles Aznavour's name does not appear on the list of personalities.
No wonder, the singer was at the time just one traveler among many, sleeping in a mid-range cabin.
But are we even sure that this trunk was his?
His sister or his parents could, after all, have made the crossing.
To be clear, we compare the address drawn with a brush to a few postcards signed by Aznavour.
With its long top bar, the F, from France, seems to match.
"Certainly, but I note the differences in the figures", tempers the judicial expert in writing, Sandrine Lefranc-Loisel, who refuses to decide.
“Here, the words are painted, vertical and in capitals, she remarks, it would be necessary to compare with another trunk of the singer.
"
Freed from Ellis Island thanks to Edith Piaf
Fortunately, biographer Robert Belleret provides decisive information.
“The date on the label corresponds precisely to the moment when Charles Aznavour returns from New York by boat, everything matches!
»He enthuses.
This journey ends his second American journey.
The first, which lasts a year and a half, between the end of 1948 and the spring of 1950, begins in a chaotic fashion.
Arrived without a visa with his friend at the time, the pianist Pierre Roche, Aznavour spent his first New York nights at the Ellis Island detention center.
Thanks to Edith Piaf's intervention, the duo was released and performed for several months in a Montreal bar run by the Mafia, before returning to France in May 1950.
When he returned to New York five months later, Charles accompanied Piaf, starring at a city cabaret, and his lover of the moment, singer Eddie Constantine.
Aznavour, who has become the star's handyman, does not take the stage.
However, he uses this period to make two crucial decisions.
In mid-November, he passed the Sacem composer's exam from a distance, which allowed him to receive rights to the 430 songs for which he signed the music.
In the process, he goes to the pool table, on the advice of Piaf, who finances the operation.
“I had an Armenian hooked nose that I liked: it was mine!
For a long time, she harassed me so that I would have it reduced by submitting to cosmetic surgery, ”admitted Charles Aznavour in the preface to a biography devoted to the Kid.
Barely out of the clinic, the artist is sent back to France by the star, after an argument.
“Piaf therefore sent him off, his face covered in bandages, by the first boat.
With, certainly, this famous trunk!
»Exclaims Robert Belleret.
It is quite possible that Aznavour bought this one in New York, before boarding the “Liberty”.
"It is American made, we can recognize it by the central lock and the clasps," said Gabriel Gilbert, an expert who runs the Malle2luxe site.
Rue de Navarin, resistance fighters in the baby's room
Arrived in Le Havre on December 5, Charles Aznavour went to Paris and the family apartment.
The trunk is delivered the next day.
Seventy years later, the decoration of the accommodation has changed, but the layout remains almost identical.
At 22 rue de Navarin, the one where, at the same time and a few numbers above, the filmmaker François Truffaut lived, you have to slip behind workers to cross, without a code, the heavy gate which bars the entrance to this Haussmannian building.
Once past the concierge's lodge, you still have to cross a tree-lined courtyard and climb two floors of a narrow spiral staircase to reach the former Aznaourian accommodation.
The current residents, a young couple, respond with a tinge of suspicion, but the door opens in Aznavour's name.
" It's nice here !
»Confirms Julie with a smile, a sympathetic thirty-something who shows us around this three-room apartment of around sixty square meters, whose waxed brown parquet has not been changed.
To the right of the entrance hall, a small corner kitchen.
In the center, the master bedroom, where Mamigon and Knar slept.
On the left, a double living room formerly divided into a living room and a bedroom, that of Aïda.
The two chimneys are gone.
The Aznaourian family lived in a three-room apartment on the second floor of this building.
LP / Olivier Corsan
At the far right, there is the small room where Charles Aznavour lived at the end of his adolescence, under the Occupation.
Filled with toys and soft toys, it has become a nursery.
“The Aznavour family hid resistance fighters there during the war,” recounts Christophe, Julie's companion.
The information, which was reported to him by an inhabitant of the neighborhood, is correct.
“They accommodated Armenian soldiers deserters, engaged in spite of themselves in the German army, confirms Robert Belleret, and invited their friends Mélinée Manouchian and her husband, Missak, of the partisan Francs-tireurs group.
"
Charles's base camp on his slow road to success, the apartment will long remain in the family's hands.
When he returned to it at the end of 1950, Aznavour, who separated a few months earlier from both his early sidekick, Pierre Roche, and his first wife, Micheline Rugel, devoted himself to his solo career.
Abused by critics, he will have to wait ten years before breaking through.
Without ever getting rid of his old trunk, he will take others, much more luxurious, on his world tours.
One of them, with the Vuitton logo and his initials, CA, was put up for sale on eBay by the nephew of one of his impresarios.
At 24,000 euros.