ReportageIn roadsteads 1 | 6. Since 2019, photographer Guillaume Blot has been scouring the bistros of France. When the cafes reopened, “Le Monde” accompanied him to six of them. This week: La Chapelle, in Lélex in the Ain.
On the phone, Liliane Grosgurin laughs when asked if her son is going to take over the family bistro. ” You think ! Jean-Pierre, he is of retirement age! “ The question lacked a bit of savvy, indeed: the boss of La Chapelle is 99 years old. She has just celebrated them with the family, on June 26, when we arrive in Lélex, a village of 230 inhabitants and a ski resort in the Monts-Jura, nestled in the Valserine valley.
It is 12:10, the time of passage of the only bus that climbs here, along a mountain road from Bellegarde. We will have to leave at 1:52 p.m., and not a minute more, because “Dominique is always on time”. An hour and a half to sum up a hundred years, that hardly seems to panic those present, whose peaceful phrasing, characteristic of the region, has the gift of softening the weather. The presents, seated in the closed bistro: Liliane, her son Jean-Pierre, 68, a doctor friend and, of course, Marcel, her husband. Marcel has “100 years and 6 months”, says Liliane, and we think that there comes an age when we count the months, as we do for newborns. He hears badly and hardly sees any more, but sits down happily at the table, talks a little, lets himself be tempted by a grapefruit rosé, while Liliane drinks an Orangina.
To the rhythm of the “mustaches”
She is no longer behind the counter. Just before the arrival of the Covid-19, she broke her femoral neck, spent two months in the hospital. From containment to re-containment, the bar at La Chapelle has remained closed until now. It won’t reopen. “I miss it, but you have to be reasonable”, said the boss. What will become of him? “As long as I’m here, nothing changes. Afterwards, my daughter will decide, with Jean-Pierre. ”
In more than a hundred years of existence, this Chapel has not hosted baptisms, but births, yes. That of Jean-Pierre, in 1952. “The midwife came upstairs, where we lived, says Liliane. I asked her what I should do, she replied: “Boil some water!” Jean-Pierre was born there, quite naturally. “ Her sister, Martine, born seventeen months later, should have been born at the clinic. “We had to stop on the way, 12 kilometers from here, at a midwife’s, in the middle of the night. She got up and gave me room in her warm bed. ”
Liliane was also born ” at home “, in 1922. His father had just returned from Greece, where he had fought in the Great War. In this chalet-like building, built by the family in 1856, he opened a bakery and “A drugstore”, she says. “We sold everything: groceries, livestock products, even death wreaths. ” Then he bought the other half of the building and opened a cafe. “As a child, I was envied by my comrades: I was the daughter of traders, and only daughter. I had a very happy childhood. I didn’t want to leave my parents, and I didn’t leave them! “
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