Burke’s life and career give rise to hundreds of unanswered questions, but, so many decades after, perhaps most vexing of all is the matter of those three days on the Danube. His complete silence on the subject has divided the followers of his career into two hostile camps. The first holds that everything is as it appears. Bloch trapped him. The villain’s vanishing had been a ploy, giving him years to plot Burke’s downfall. He planned every detail, foresaw every effect — even how signing his name on the note would only stoke the people’s doubts. The proponents of this theory say it was only a matter of time, that even one of Burke’s intellect must someday stumble. To pretend he couldn’t, they claim, denies him the hallmark of humanity and puts any doubter in line with those who turned against him. He might have recovered from the scandal, they say, were he not a black man.
But others find this account laughable, call the appeal to humanity so much posturing, and counter that in ascribing such foresight to Bloch we rob Burke of any. They grant Bloch his scheme but argue that Burke would have been too clever to play into the fiend’s hands. Noting his erratic behavior in the months leading up to the scandal, they suggest Burke wanted to retire. Knowing there would be constant demands for his return, that only if he were disgraced would he be left alone, he made perhaps the cleverest move of his career: he walked willingly into Bloch’s trap, understanding all that would happen and seeing in it freedom.
There’s no way of knowing what happened during those three days, how Burke came to be tied up in the barge’s hold, and so we’re forced to choose blindly between the two theories, the choice becoming less about the truth and more about the Burke the chooser prefers. But doesn’t an opportunity lie in the absence of fact? That is why, taking elements of the second theory, we propose a third, one we’ve never shared: after Olivia’s poisoning, forced to decide between her and his career, Burke chose as he should have — he chose love. At Olivia’s bedside in Bad Kreuznach he plotted their retreat from the world, crafting the scandal — there was no Bloch on the barge, Burke arranged the theft of the rifles himself — not to aid the Turks but to ensure his fall. Only then would they be left alone to live out their years in peace and contentment, perhaps in the French countryside, perhaps on some Greek isle. There’s no evidence, of course. The decision he made after Bad Kreuznach appears plain, as do its consequences. But as long as we don’t know his end, why not grant him this last happiness? After all, where does history exist, except in our imagination? Does that make it any less true?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The stories in this collection were originally published in the following:
“Byzantium” in Electric Literature; “East Texas Lumber” in Harper’s; “The Don’s Cinnamon” in the Antioch Review and Best American Mystery Stories 2013; “Borden’s Meat Biscuit” in Subtropics; “The Traitor of Zion” in Ecotone; “Eraser” in One Story and New Stories from the South 2010: The Year’s Best; “At Boquillas” in The American Scholar; “Tayopa” and “The Moor” in Boston Review; and “Amy” in the Literary Review.
Thanks to: The University of Michigan Hopwood Prizes, the University of Toledo’s URAF Summer Research Award, the MacDowell Colony, the Corporation of Yaddo, Helen Herzog Zell, my MFA classmates and teachers, Jin Auh, Jacqueline Ko, Steve Woodward, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.
BREAD LOAF AND THE BAKELESS PRIZES
The Katharine Bakeless Nason Literary Publication Prizes were established in 1995 to expand the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference’s commitment to the support of emerging writers. Endowed by the LZ Francis Foundation, the prizes commemorate Middlebury College patron Katharine Bakeless Nason and launch the publication career of a poet, a fiction writer, and a creative nonfiction writer annually. Winning manuscripts are chosen in an open national competition by a distinguished judge in each genre. Winners are published by Graywolf Press.
2012 Judges
Tom Sleigh
Poetry
Randall Kenan
Fiction
ABOT THE AUTHOR
BEN STROUD’s stories have appeared in Harper’s, One Story, Electric Literature, and Boston Review, among other magazines, and have been anthologized in New Stories from the South 2010, and Best American Mystery Stories 2013. A native of Texas, he now lives in Ohio and teaches creative writing at the University of Toledo.