A Slow Train To Budapest

By Ann Abelson

What will happen when Miriam, a 16-year-old Jewish girl from a tiny village in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, has been impregnated by a young Pole? Her parents send her off to join her brothers in America. Along the way, however, Miriam boards the wrong train … Ann Abelson thus begins a family saga based on actual events, including an unexpected pregnancy and a bizarre coincidence. 

 

As the narrative continues, we learn about Miriam's sojourn in Gotlein, the plans made for her child, the problems that arise, the difficult pregnancy, and the ultimate birth. What choices does Miriam have? Will she give up her child to the odious "Herr Doktor Professor"? This second part has been painstakingly recovered, edited, and (minimally) revised from an incomplete manuscript with handwritten notes, yet it truly captures the author's voice and presents a wonderful continuation of the original narrative. Now, for the first time, the two sections have been combined in a single volume. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lenny Cavallaro
• Release date: Dec 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223827351

Book preview

Dedication

To my daughter, Maya, and son, Jacob, with the hope that they will develop a greater appreciation for the literary talent of their paternal grandmother. — Lenny Cavallaro

FOREWORD

A Slow Train To Budapest was presumably Part One of a projected full-length novel. My mother, the late Ann Abelson, began several works late in life that she was unable to complete. Indeed, this was also the case with Paganini’s Agitato, which I have extensively revised, and which is now slated for release in 2023.

Notwithstanding the pro forma disclaimer, I should append that the author actually did draw material based on actual people and events. The family of my maternal grandmother—i. e., my mother’s mother—lived in Dinov, at the time a tiny shtetl (Jewish community) in Galicia. As the narrative begins, the Flaks family has begun emigration to the United States, and the oldest brother, Michl, has already established himself as a writer for a Yiddish newspaper in Newyork.

One of my grandmother’s brothers was Jacob Adler, a poet/playwright often confused with the famous actor. My great-uncle was in fact the dramatist whose character, Yenta Telebenta, brought the expression, "yenta," into our lexicography.

My grandmother—here very loosely modeled on Anneliese—was presumably scheduled to become the next member of the family to make the journey. However, a complication arose; her younger sister—Miriam, in our narrative—was pregnant.

Amazingly enough, this family scandal was never revealed to anyone. The younger sister was put on a train bound for the ocean liner that would carry her to Ellis Island. Somehow, an agent put her on the wrong connecting train, and she found herself headed toward Budapest, deep within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In a bizarre twist of fate, my great-aunt got off and made her way to the nearest Jewish household, which just happened to be the home of the mother of Jacob’s new bride! Her hostess graciously let her stay for the duration of the pregnancy, arranged for the adoption, and dutifully kept the secret until very late in life (after Miriam’s death), when she shared it with her daughter.

Notwithstanding these complications and disruptions, those who emigrated were indeed the lucky ones. During World War II, the Nazis destroyed the shtetl and murdered most of the inhabitants, including my great-grandparents, who were still alive at the time. My mother probably intended to work this tragic part of the family saga into her narrative, but her text concludes at least thirty years prior to those unfortunate events.

Meanwhile, we are left with a truly remarkable coincidence. Art sometimes imitates life; life sometimes imitates art. In a work of pure fiction, one might opine that this coincidence leaves us with a contrived plot, yet in life, that is exactly what occurred.

My mother changed the names of all the characters and even the town. However, she retained one telling detail—the photograph in Przemysl. I have seen a number of family pictures taken in Przemsyl (today in southeastern Poland; then part of the Empire), and possess one picture of my grandmother, taken just before her departure for Ellis Island!—Lenny Cavallaro, 16 August 2012

About Ann Abelson and Lenny Cavallaro

Ann Abelson (1916-92) was the author of Angel’s Metal (Harcourt), The Little Conquerors (Random House), and the award-winning young adult novel, Blimp (Dutton). She left behind unfinished manuscripts, including A Slow Train to Budapest, Interlude in Eden, and the forthcoming Paganini Agitato. All were edited by her son, Lenny Cavallaro.

Cavallaro is the author of The Passion of Elena Bianchi (If Music Be the Food of Love, Paradise Regained and Lost Again, Love and Pain in Four Voices, and Passion’s Curse), along with an earlier novel, Trojan Dialogues: The Memoirs of Diomedes. He has also written Sherlock Holmes and the Mysteries of the Chess World, released by Russell Enterprises in 2022. His most recent venture draws on material from A Slow Train to Budapest as well as paranormal Eastern European Jewish lore: The Ibbur’s Tale. For further information, please turn to his website, https://www.lennycavallaro.com/literature

CHAPTER 1

As fall meshed with winter, Miriam's anxiety took on a froth of desperation. There was no longer room for doubt.

Barely sixteen and the acknowledged beauty of Breitendorf, she was about to plunge those she loved, those who loved her, into the deepest slime of shame. Her still slim waist and girlish belly harbored a mamzer, seed of a Pole whose last name she could not remember. Stasha ... Stasha, the boy-man: dark eyelashes fringing grey-green eyes, long, tapering fingers, an uncrystallized tenor voice that liquefied knees and bowels, particularly when he sang in august Latin, as in church. (Miriam had once sneaked in, on a feast day, to listen.)

And oh, first and last, her very own passion for books!

What would happen next? She could die. She could throw herself into the well, go to the apothecary for a poison to kill rats, starve, jump under a train like Anna Karenina, although she'd have to find a train to accomplish that—in Przemysl, no doubt, that was the nearest.

No one, as yet, had noticed. Could it be that there was nothing to notice? One could be mistaken about these matters, she'd heard the