On Sunday, on our phones and tablets, on the front pages of newspapers around the world, on every radio and TV, we learned of the death of Alan Delon, who died at the age of 88. He was under reinforced guardianship.
On Thursday, August 15, at the end of the day, after spending a few hours at his bedside, my mother and I learned of the death of Yves Léger, my godfather, my mother’s twin, aged 88. He was under ordinary guardianship.
Alain Delon, son of divorced parents, born in Sceaux, rejected by his mother’s new family, rejected by his father’s new family, was sent to boarding school at age 4. He ran away at age 14 for Chicago. He stopped in Bordeaux. Enlisted in the Navy at age 17, he celebrated his 20th birthday in prison in Saigon for stealing a jeep. Indochina War. He was looking for a reason to live. Alain Delon returned to France, rubbed shoulders with the Montmartre underworld and lived with prostitutes in Pigalle.
Yves Léger, beloved son of Noël and Germaine Laberge, born prematurely in Oka at 7 months, a few minutes after my mother. So small. My mother weighs a pound and a quarter; he weighs a pound and a half. Six months in cotton wool, in a shoebox, in the oven, in love. Forced to leave school at 14 to support the family afflicted by the cancer of Monique, the eldest, at a time when universal care did not yet exist, Yves worked on the assembly line, in cotton, at Dominion Textile. Monique died in 1952. Yves Léger never stole an apple or killed a fly. He lived with his parents in Saint-Henri.
“The fiancés of Europe”, Alain Delon and Romy Schneider, lived together from 1958 to 1963. And then, Nico, Dalida, Nathalie, Madly, Mireille Darc, Anne, Rosalie. He will have three children.
Yves and Jeannine married in 1962. She had been the twins’ guardian. She died in 1993. They had no children.
In the mid-1970s, Delon recorded Lyrics, lyrics with Dalida. Mid-1970s, Léger loses his job at the factory. He will do small painting jobs, mowing, he will provide services.
Alain Delon inspired The Cheetah to Luchino Visconti. Yves Léger could have inspired the character of the good guy to Yvon Deschamps.
Alain Delon was an officer of the Legion of Honor, of the National Order of Merit, and Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters. He won 34 Palmes and Grand Prix awards throughout the world.
Yves won a multitude of tennis trophies on the Chez Frank court in Oka and at the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce bowling alley. I don’t know if he ever went to the movies.
Alain Delon died at his home in Loiret.
Yves Léger died at the CHSLD on rue Bellechasse in Montreal.
Two lives, two destinies, paths that are more or less smooth, more or less chaotic, neither worse nor better. Just two lives, with a more or less long credits sequence at the end.
Alain Delon did not know Yves Léger, who did not know Alain Delon. They were 88 years old.