The Greatest Jewish-American Lover in Hungarian History. Michael Blumenthal

       www.etruscanpress.org

      Published 2014 by Etruscan Press

      Cover design by Michael Ress

      Interior design and typesetting by Laurie Elizabeth Powers

      The text of this book is set in Times New Roman.

       First Edition

      14 15 16 17 18 5 4 3 2 1

      Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

      Blumenthal, Michael

       [Short stories. Selections]

       The greatest Jewish American lover in Hungarian history / Michael Blumenthal.

      pages cm

       Summary: “Blumenthal draws both a humorous and heartrending portrait of expatriate life in Europe and Central Europe, as well as the hazards and confusions that confront a European sensibility living in contemporary America. In venues as diverse as Israel, Hungary, Paris, Cambridge and, even, Texas, the stories testify to the work of an American in an increasingly connected and globalized world”-- Provided by publisher.

       ISBN 978-0-9886922-6-8 (eBook)

       1. Short stories, Jewish. I. Title.

       PS3552.L849G74 2014

       813’.54--dc23

      Please turn to the back of this book for a list of the sustaining funders of Etruscan Press.

      The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

      This book is printed on recycled, acid-free paper.

       for Isabelle & Noah, this not-so-great Jewish-American lover’s greatest loves

      “I had affairs with a few girls of my own age, and they taught me that no girl, however intelligent and warm-hearted, can possibly know or feel half as much at twenty as she will at thirty-five.”

      — Stephen Vizinczey, In Praise of Older Women: The Amorous Recollections of András Vajda

      Author’s Note

      In my “real” life, I am a law professor, pledged and committed to seeking and finding the truth as best as we mere lawyerly humans can, and helping those who are its possible beneficiaries. In my “other” life, I am a writer, committed to another kind of truth—perhaps deeper, more nuanced, and certainly often more difficult to achieve—and to the pleasure and moral self-scrutiny of my readers.

      What follows are works of fiction, howsoever they may depend for their genesis and some of their details on actual occurrences and actual people in my life, myself included. What they are decidedly not, dear readers, are mere autobiographical vignettes disguised as something else. We fiction writers are not, like Bartleby, copyists—we are, rather, embellishers, inventors, liars, exaggerators, people who, as the poet, Robert Pack, once put it, tell personal lies in order to tell impersonal truths. The fiction writer and the lawyer, blessedly, bow to different gods, and I try, in my happily divided life, to remain devout to those I worship in each domain. So—here’s hoping you will worship with me, and not find yourself expecting to encounter the wrong god in the wrong place, as I hope I haven’t either.

      The Greatest Jewish American Lover in Hungarian History

Three Beds

She and I

The Death of Fekete

The Greatest Jewish American Lover in Hungarian History

       The Whores

       My French Wife

       Tomorrow

       Good Night and Good Luck

       The Translator

       They: An Anti-Romance

       Il n’y a pas d’Amour Heureux

       Netanyahu’s Mistress

       Vajda’s Resurrection

       The Life You Hate May Be Your Own

       He Had Tried

       The Letter

      Acknowledgments

      Several of the stories included in this selection have previously appeared in the following periodicals, to whose editors the author is profoundly grateful.

      I