“Hello bar: two pastis and a glass of red!” At the bar-tabac-restaurant-PMU le Paoli, a stone’s throw from rue de Tivoli and the site of the disaster of the building collapses in Marseille, the day goes by to the rhythm of the orders declaimed by the two waitresses who s take care of the room and the terrace. Behind the counter, Adrien and his colleague prepare the required beverages and chat with customers leaning on the bar, for certain daily newspapers, as evidenced by this “see you tomorrow, my spoiled”, launched by the boss to Mathieu.
In the room, on the television, the hits of the 1990s from NRJ12 replaced this Thursday the too anxiety-provoking news of recent days. “We stopped with BFMTV yesterday at the end of the afternoon. It was too much the nervous breakdown. It calmed down there”, explains Adrien, the owner of this authentic bar “HQ of the district”, indicates a customer of about fifty years, neighbor of the street of Tivoli however spared by the evacuations. At the end of the morning, the conversations have regained a semblance of normality. Between two glasses of all colors, white, yellow or red, we gladly talk about the Champions League match the day before, the failure of João Félix, the Chelsea striker against Real Madrid. The discussions also turn on the daily life of the craftsmen: “So, is this placo installed? And the eternal subject of the weather, embellished today by the return of the Mistral which freezes the bottom of the air. “People have to move forward,” blows a coffee regular affected by this tragedy.
“In two days no one will talk about it”
The two copies of the local daily Provence made available to customers pass from hand to hand. We dwell less on the opening pages which return to the disaster that took place at 17, rue de Tivoli, than on the sports pages or those announcing the horse races of the day.
From now on, everything happens as if the consequences of the drama were now part of the decorum. Like this poster which reports the search for a ginger cat lost since the evening of the explosion. Or when Jacques, an evacuee from the security perimeter, asks the boss: “For the reasons you know, can I leave my things behind? And Adrien replies: “As usual, make yourself at home. »
Firefighters are rarer at the bar
At lunchtime, on the calm of the benches, the hypotheses to determine the precise causes of the explosion nevertheless continue to fuel some discussions: “Accidents happen quickly. All it takes is for the lady to forget to turn off the gas after cooking at 8 p.m., go to bed, get up to pee in the night, turn on the light and it goes boom, ”says a customer to his neighbor. But if the bar served, again this morning, free of charge thanks to donations from customers, 45 coffees to the sailors-firefighters, these are starting to become increasingly rare. Only four passed the doorstep between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.
Gradually, the bar returns to its usual rhythm, made up of greetings between friends and random orders. “In two days no one will talk about it,” predicts the boss. “Oh, there’s a strike, it’s a mess,” grumbles to the tobacco seller a young man in a thick white cotton shirt who has obviously taken a little longer than expected to get to his neighborhood. At the bar as elsewhere, one topic chases another among immutable phrases: “You put me a Ricard? »