Whipping Boy by Allen Kurzweil Read Free Book Online Page B

of pubic hair and human grease. Webs of nylon rope crisscross the stairwell. I suppose it’s to prevent books and things from falling on the heads of passersby. Either that or to stop students from surfing the banister.
    As I head up to the top of the tower, my breathing becomes erratic and I begin to sweat. It’s as if I’m scaling the Matterhorn rather than a few sets of stairs. The symptoms intensify when I enter my dorm room and they blossom into a full-fledged panic attack while I’m standing at the balcony, taking in the view. I retreat to a bunk bed and, after a few minutes with my head between my knees, the anxiety subsides.
M RS . S ENN R EMEMBERS
    The visit to Villars hasn’t yielded much. No one recalls Cesar. I haven’t even obtained a mailing address. I settle my bill with the mole lady and head off for one last rendezvous before calling it quits.
    “Your husband thought you might recall a bit about the time I spentat the school,” I tell Elizabeth Senn over a pot of tea at the café next to the smoke shop.
    “Mr. Senn is quite the optimist. I fear I’m a bit dotty. I tend to remember only certain things and only certain years. Nineteen sixty-seven, for instance. I remember 1967 very clearly, like it was yesterday, in fact. And 1984. That year sticks with me, too. But the rest of the eighties?” Mrs. Senn shakes her head despairingly.

    {Courtesy of Aiglon College, Switzerland}
    Elizabeth Senn, circa 1971.
    “What about the early seventies? I was at Aiglon for just one school year, starting in September 1971.”
    “Oh, you’re in luck, Allen.” Mrs. Senn takes a moment to gather her thoughts. “Nineteen seventy-one. Nineteen seventy-one. Well, for starters, that was when students were wearing those frayed bell-bottoms and ratty sweaters. One boy, son of the king of Somaliland, insisted on sporting overalls like the local petrol station attendant. Can you imagine? And all the while his father is under house arrest, translating Shakespeare into, well, whatever language it is that they speak in Somaliland.”
    For the next ten minutes, Mrs. Senn details the fashion anomalies that marked my time at the school, then follows up with a similarly thorough catalog of student misfortune, circa 1971. I learn of the classmate whose brother died of a brain tumor; of the boy who lost his girlfriend in a raffle; of a youthful suicide; of the two students who burned down a shepherd’s hut (“It was a relief when we saw both sets of footprints leaving the shelter”); of the governor’s son expelled for possession of unauthorized funds (“Ten francs, I believe it was”).
    Her inventory continues: “There were quite a few injuries the year you attended the school. There was that fellow who put the gunpowder in the ski pole. The damage to his fingers was, if I recall correctly, permanent. And then there was that poor girl who raced for the school.”
    “What happened?”
    “She took a pole too tightly during the slalom. This was when we had bamboo gates on the course. Her parents hired the very best surgeons, but the poor girl’s nose? Well, it was never quite the same after that.”
    “That’s horrible!”
    “Not so horrible as what happened to young Scurlock. Suffered frostbite during a long ex and lost two of his toes straight up to the first joint. I believe it was the first joint. It may have been up to the second. Anyway, Docteur Méan took care of it as best he could and Scurlock was back at school by the end of the year. And then of course there was poor Woody Anderson. Poor, poor Woody.”
    “What happened to Woody? He was a very close friend.”
    “You don’t know?”
    “Know what?”
    “It must have happened just after you left.”
    “ What? ”
    “Did you notice the net stretched across the Belvedere stairwell? Why do you think it’s there?”
    “To stop boys from sliding down the handrail?”
    Mrs. Senn shakes her head. “It’s because of what happened to poor Woody. He was sitting