Whipping Boy by Allen Kurzweil Read Free Book Online Page A

fine.
    But the boy is not fine. He slumps against the wall of the phone booth. His chin begins to quiver. He rubs his eyes with a knuckle and wipes his nose on a sleeve. Only after hanging up does he allow himself to cry. I consider approaching but sense it’s best to leave the boy alone.
    I register at a tiny hotel kept in business by visiting parents, and receive a key from a woman with a giant chin mole further embellished by a single black hair the length of an inchworm. That night I fall asleep thinking about the sobbing boy, wondering if I’d done the right thing keeping my distance.
    The following morning, while walking to the school, I pass three Aiglon students loitering outside the smoke shop where Woody and I bought candy and ogled knives.
    “Who has money?” one of them says.
    “Ali, we all have money,” his schoolmate replies. “It’s just that none of us has any right now.”
    “Hold on. I have three francs,” the third boy says.
    “Right then, hand ’em over,” Ali commands.
    When the boy with the three francs balks, he is reprimanded. “Oh, don’t be such a bloody Jew.”
    I arrive early for my ten a.m. appointment at a newly erected alumni center named after Lady Forbes, and take a seat below a portrait of my irrepressible elocution teacher. The painter, a former Aiglon art teacher, has draped a rope of pearls the size of grapes over his subject’s daunting bosom and has blended her hair into the snowcapped mountains that frame her craggy face. It’s a wonderful likeness. Still, the painting doesn’t capture the retired opera diva as I remember her. Had I received the commission, she’d be wearing cat’s-eye glasses and hiking boots, and nibbling on a centipede (a delicacy she had sampled during her travels through Mexico) while reading a chapbook of Sufi poetry.
    A bit after ten, the school’s director of alumni relations, a solicitouschain-smoking American woman, escorts me across campus to morning tea, where I meet a longtime housemaster named Teddy Senn.
    “Caesar Augustus, you say the boy was called? How extraordinary. Awfully sorry, the name draws a total blank. You might consider talking to Mrs. Senn,” Mr. Senn advises. “Mrs. Senn’s memory is not nearly so shabby as mine.”
    The head of the school joins our conversation. “Did you distinguish yourself during your stay with us?” he asks.
    “I was on the track team briefly, but was sidelined by an accident.”
    “What was your rank when you departed?”
    “Red badge star.”
    “Oh, I see,” he says coolly.
    I ignore his imperious disappointment and stick to the subject at hand. “I’m hoping to locate one of my old roommates. Does the school keep up-to-date contact information about alums?”

    {Linda Color, Geneva, Switzerland}
    I sent this postcard to my mother in 1991. On it I wrote, “Dear Mom, I’ve put a big circle (marked A) around the room where I was tortured. The smoke shop (marked B) is where I bought a switchblade after Dad’s watch was stolen. Love, Allen.”
    “It should do,” the headmaster sniffs. “Unfortunately, our databaseis woefully inadequate. But if you wish, have a look in the archives. Such as they are.”
    The alumni director walks me back to Forbes House, where I spend a few hours sifting through photographs, pamphlets, and back issues of the Aiglon Association News . When I’m done, she kindly offers to photocopy the material I have set aside while I revisit my old dorm room.
    As we’re saying good-bye, I notice a flock of black birds with beaks the color of Swiss cheese circling overhead. “Crows?”
    “No, mountain choughs. Disgusting little creatures. They raid the nests of songsters and eat their young.”
    Belvedere, the converted hotel that lodged me for a year, has undergone a face-lift. The scratchy sisal floor coverings are gone. The battered foosball table has been retired. The shower room has been renovated, so it’s safe to assume the drains no longer clog with wads