In 1935, Lucien and Hélène buy old Louis’s café, who sells it to them for a song. They don’t change the name. Figuring there’s no point as that’s what it’s always been called. Changing the name of this café would be like renaming an old man who’s a regular customer. They repaint the walls, and that’s it.
The main room of the café is bright, accessed through a door with red, blue, and green frosted glass. Two large windows look out onto a street, and another onto the square with the Romanesque church. The floorboards are of dark wood. Four columns covered in mirrors reflect a kaleidoscope of customers leaning on the zinc bar.
Behind the bar, a small windowless room is used for storage. To the right, four steps lead to another room that serves as kitchen and washroom, because there’s a sink, a stove, a table, and two chairs.
From this room, a wooden stepladder goes up to a floor where a basic bedroom has been set up.
Hélène memorizes the names of the liquors on offer. Since she can’t read their names, she goes by the pictures on the labels, the colors of the liquids, and the shapes of the bottles.
At first, it’s the customers who tell her in which glass to serve the Byrrh Violet, the St Raphaël, the Amer Cabotin, the Eau d’Arquebuse, the Dubonnet, the gentian, the vermouth, the cherry brandy, the Pastis Olive, and the Malvoisie Saint-André.
No customer cheats with the measures, the price to be paid, or the capacity of the glasses. There are even some new lemon- and orangeade drinkers among the regulars and the barflies, the color of Hélène’s eyes luring the village’s youngsters like absinthe.