Free 30 Pieces of a Novel by Stephen Dixon

for three months, learned to speak German, had known lots of women, taken to wearing turtleneck jerseys and a beret after he saw a book cover with Thomas Mann in them, was a predentistry student, got interested in literature and painting and religious history on the trip, and carried two to three books with him everywhere, always one in German or French, though he wasn’t good in reading either and now wanted to be a novelist or playwright.
    Meets an Austrian woman on the ship who’s fifteen years older than he. She saw him on the deck, softly reading Heine to himself, and said she finds it strange seeing a grown man doing that with this poet, as he, Schiller, and Goethe were the three she was forced to read that way in early school. Tall, long black hair, very blue eyes, very white skin, full figure, small waist (or seemed so because of her tight wide belt), embroidered headband, huge hoop earrings, clanky silver bracelets on both arms, peasant skirt that swept the floor, lots of dark lipstick. Her husband’s an army officer in Montreal and she was returning from Vienna where she’d visited her family. “I’m not Austrian anymore but full Canadian, with all your North American rights, though always, I insist, Viennese, so please don’t call me anything different.” He commented on her bracelets and she said she was once a bellydancer, still belly dances at very expensive restaurants and weddings in Canada if her family’s short of money that month: “For something like this I am still great in demand.” They drank a little in the saloon that night; when he tried touching her fingers, she said, “Don’t get so close; people will begin thinking and some can know my husband or his general.” Later she took him to the ship’s stern to show him silver dollars in the water. He knew what they were, a college girl had shown him on the ship going over, but pretended he was seeing them for the first time so he could be alone with her there. “Fantastic, never saw anything like it, I can see why they’re called that.” She let him kiss her lightly, said, “That was friendly and sweet, you’re a nice boy,” then grabbed his face and kissed him hard and made growling sounds and pulled his hair back till he screamed, and she said, “Excuse me, I can get that way, my own very human failing of which I apologize.” When he tried to go further, hand on her breast through her sweater, she said, “Behave yourself like that nice boy I said; with someone your age I always must instruct,” and he asked what she meant and she said, “What I said; don’t be childlike too in not understanding when you’re nearly a man. Tonight let us just shake hands, and perhaps that’s for all nights and no more little kisses, but that’s what we have to do to stay away from trouble.”
    They walk around the deck the next night; she takes his hand and says, “I like you, you’re a nice boy again, so if you’re willing I want to show you a very special box in my cabin.” “What’s in it?” and she says, “Mysteries, beauties, tantalizing priceless objects, nothing shabby or cheap, or perhaps these things only to me and to connoisseurs who know their worth. I don’t open it to anyone but my husband, whenever he’s in a very dark mood and wants to be released, and to exceptionally special and generous friends, and then for them only rare times.” “What time’s that?” and she says, “Maybe you’ll see, and it could also be you won’t. From now to then it’s all up to you and what you do and say. But at the last moment, if it strikes me and even if it’s from nothing you have done, I can keep it locked or only open it a peek and then, without your seeing anything but dark inside, snap it shut for good. Do you know what I’m saying now?” and he says, “Sure, and