My Beautiful Bus. Jacques Jouet

      

      MY

       BEAUTIFUL

       BUS

      By Jacques Jouet

       Translated by Eric Lamb

       Dedication

       The mother won’t tell her daughter the end.

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

      Dedication

       Deer crossings and dumping.

       Pascal.

       What’s missing on the novel’s cover.

       Basile and my beautiful bus.

       Perrault, the wolf, and Puss in Boots.

       “Here you are, sire, a cottontail rabbit.”

       Pascal and the carriages.

       Basile.

       Who’s speaking?

       The organized trip.

       Hollow I.

       Basile is quiet.

       A woman.

       I talk with Odile.

       Pussy in Boots.

       Paris and the fake tooth.

       Easter in Paris and Paris at midnight.

       Hours go by.

       Meal.

       My beautiful bus, a private place.

       Story about the young German and his cadaver.

       Story about Hans Martin’s parents.

       Character rhyme.

       The accident.

       Trip and trip.

       Hans Martin disappears.

       Odile hides.

       Vacation.

       Landscapes, the immense world.

       A film.

       Other boots.

       The immense world.

       Craonne.

       Odile writes to her daughter.

       “Basile, talk to me!”

       A city toad.

       “Odile, forgive me!”

       The fate of the bag.

       The Juvisy hillside.

       Pascal and the cycloid.

       The battle of the vehicles.

       The return to Paris.

       Basile goes off to sleep.

       Trip far from my bedroom.

       My wife.

       Cagliuso.

       Love and literature.

       My beautiful bus.

       Copyright

       Other Works by Jacques Jouet in English Translation

If it so happened that I had to decide, among the legible world’s variety of propositions, or more specifically among those candidates under the category of road signs, which legible suggestion deserves to be called the most counter-logical and disarming, then it turns out I wouldn’t have much trouble.

      It isn’t unusual to discover, along roads of all sorts, this odd triangular image that the authorities have erected in plain view—

      —signaling a crossing for aroused deer running at full speed, which drivers must avoid hitting, even though everyone knows that at such locations the average driver will hardly ever see the slightest trace of one.

      On the other hand, I’ve never come across a sign like this one—

NO

      DUMPING