Whipping Boy

by Allen Kurzweil

  Without warning or anesthesia, Matron reached for a scalpel and hacked away at the mosaic of plantar warts that had colonized my feet. Because surgery failed to address the underlying cause of the infection—namely, the toxic slurry of boy bilge into which I waded most afternoons—a fresh batch of warts sprouted soon thereafter. Matron attacked that second bloom by daubing my feet with pepper paste.

  {© Erik Friedl from the film Aiglon College}

  A 1971 film commissioned by the school highlighted a daily routine I hated: cold showers.

  I didn’t mind. In fact, I was grateful. My chronic outbreaks of verruca plantaris exempted me from PT and cold showers. So while my roommates submitted to jog trots and icy hose-downs, I was permitted to get dressed at a leisurely pace in a dorm room entirely free of menace.

  FOOSBALL

  And menace, after all, lurked everywhere. Despite our differing class schedules, Cesar and I often crossed paths. During daily meditation. At meals. In the alcove that housed the foosball table. That’s where our mismatched rivalry found public expression most often.

  Like most things at Aiglon, the Belvedere foosball table took a great deal of abuse. Its legs were scuffed, its bumpers shot, its rods misaligned. No amount of ski wax could silence the squeaky bearings, and the battered coin slot required a safecracker’s touch (plus ten centimes) to release the pitted balls. Yet despite those blemishes, the table was a revered object. In pairs, and in pairs of pairs, the boys of Belvedere would bend over its scarred surface much the way the faithful bow before an altar. Unless one of the boys was Cesar.

  Cesar approached foosball, as he did so many things, from a perspective all his own. When on defense, he would sometimes squat down behind his goalie and grip the backfield rods like the handlebars of the Harley in the Easy Rider poster taped to our dorm-room wall, an unorthodox crouch that provided an unobstructed sight line and which facilitated ramming the distal end of a metal rod into the groin of an inattentive foe.

  In all fairness, Cesar rarely resorted to such dirty tricks. He didn’t have to. He had near-total control over the actions of his men, whether formed from flesh and bone or from injection-molded plastic. His bank shots were especially lethal—they ricocheted off the walls with Euclidean precision—and his brush strokes imparted enough English to curve a ball around a player. And when he tired of finesse, or if the adversary appeared prepared for it, he could, in a pinch, fire off a torpedo. Or begin to fire, pause to ramp up the tension, and then gently pass the ball to a player better positioned to score. Beyond his extensive repertoire of throttles, feints, and pivots, Cesar possessed an unnerving ability to read his enemy, pinpoint weakness, and, whether by force or by sly misdirection, exploit that weakness to advantage. By the age of twelve, he was already a supremely gifted fake-out artist.

  One last observation regarding Cesar’s foosball technique requires mention. Whenever an especially difficult maneuver enabled him to score a goal, his mouth would curl in a grimace of pleasure. I recall that facial expression vividly because I associate it with his most deviant assault against me, an act of humiliation that, by Lady Forbes’s logic, brought me face-to-face with God.

  “THE THIRTY-NINE LASHES”

  As we were approaching the Christmas recess, Cesar decided to play a prank on me by paying homage to Jesus Christ Superstar, a wildly popular Andrew Lloyd Webber rock opera that our roommate Timothy, the lover of show tunes, played nonstop on his cassette recorder, a “compact” Philips the size of a shoe box.

  One song, “Trial Before Pilate,” caught Cesar’s fancy more than all the rest. His devotion to it may have been partly narcissistic—the lyrics invoke Caesar by name—but I’m convinced he was also drawn in by the song’s infamous interlude, “The Thirty-Nine Lashes.” Whatever the reason, he decided to stage a dorm-room performance of the song during “close time,” a late-afternoon recess reserved for indoor recreation.

  This is what I remember. Cesar cast himself as Pilate and he gave Paul the part of the centurion, a part Paul was born to play, a part he had been playing since the start of school. Joseph, the kid from Kentucky, was cast as the rabble and Timothy handled sound.

  That left only one major casting decision: Who should play Jesus Christ?

  “Tie up his hands,” Cesar declared.

  {Courtesy of John Vornle}

  Cesar, age eleven or twelve.

  Paul gleefully obeyed, securing my wrists to the metal crossbars of a bunk with a couple of towels. Timothy was then ordered to cue up the interlude, which comes halfway through “Trial Before Pilate.” While that was taking place, I said and did nothing. Resistance, I knew, would only prolong the performance.

  When everything was set, Timothy hit PLAY, and Cesar began lip-syncing:

  PILATE:

  I see no reason. I find no evil.

  This man is harmless, so why does he upset you?

  He’s just misguided, thinks he’s important,

  But to keep you vultures happy I shall flog him.

  Pilate’s proposal—to whip the prisoner—fails to calm the bloodlust of the rabble, which demands nothing short of crucifixion:

  THE MOB:

  Remember Caesar.

  You have a duty

  To keep the peace, so crucify him!

  Remember Caesar.

  You’ll be demoted.

  You’ll be deported. Crucify him!

  In the Broadway version of the scene, Pilate stands firm, if only temporarily, and has Jesus whipped with clockwork precision thirty-nine times. But in the Belvedere staging, Cesar, doubling as judge and whipmaster and brandishing a belt, took liberties.

  One!—THWACK! . . . Two!—THWACK! . . .

  Three! . . . Four! . . . Five!—THWACK! . . .

  Six! . . . Seven!—THWACK! . . .

  Not every syncopated blow heard in the song yielded a correlative crack of the whip. Cesar often lifted his arm, advanced toward me as if to strike, and then stopped. Fake-outs were as much a part of the performance as those moments when the belt made contact. Introducing randomness into the rhythm of abuse appeared to delight Cesar as much as the abuse itself.

  Once the interlude was over and I was released, I fled the room and, taking the stairs two at a time, found refuge in a dank corner of the basement filled with potatoes and mice. I stayed there until dinner, doing my best to stop crying by staring at the glowing face of my father’s wristwatch.

  THE FOUNTAIN PEN WARS

  Although the origins of the Fountain Pen Wars remain murky, I am certain of this much: for a few months between late 1971 and early 1972, dozens of Belvedere boys turned writing instruments into semiautomatic weapons, in direct contravention of the Rules, which prohibited pupils below the rank of standard-bearer candidate from storing ink in the dorm. During a brief but exhilarating period of rebellion, the house was polka-dotted by fountain-pen-wielding lower-schoolers who could, with a simple flick, strafe a target fifteen feet away.

  Group Captain Watts tried his best to quell our insurrection—tried his best and failed. Sure, Groupie had shot down Luftwaffe pilots during World War II, but those skills were useless when confronting a band of insurrectionists concealing improvised explosive devices in their pockets. Tally-board black marks and pensums, though well suited to the nature and color of our misbehavior, failed to stop the wars. Ink sales at the smoke shop soared.

  Firing a fountain pen demands supple wrists and keen hand-eye coordination, the same skills required in foosball. So it should come as no surprise that Cesar was an accomplished sharpshooter, or that I was one of his regular targets. Of all our inky showdowns, only one leaves an indelible mark. Forty years on, I can still conjure up the scene in cinematic detail.

  The setting is a Belvedere hallway. In the presence of half a dozen boys, a scrawny ten-year-old finds himself squaring off against a beefy enemy two years his senior. In my mind’s eye, the camera travels over the face of the older kid—thick dark hair, beady black eyes, sly smile—before moving acros
s the snow-white expanse of a freshly laundered No. 1 Dress shirt, the pocket of which holsters an ebony-black Montblanc of German manufacture.

  {© Norman Perryman}

  Group Captain Watts.

  The twelve-year-old draws his weapon, unscrews the cap, and slips it over the barrel. He cocks his arm so that the gold nib of the pen hovers a few inches above his shoulder and then leans forward, poised to fire, while his rival bobs from side to side.

  The twelve-year-old squints as he takes aim and, after a few feints, empties the Montblanc with a quick flick of the wrist.

  Moments later, I look down to discover black spatter marks dotting the legs of my pants. A couple of bystanders, allies of Cesar, let out a round of cheers.

  Okay, so you got me. But now it’s Nosey’s turn. I unholster my weapon, an American-made Parker 45. The Parker might lack the elegance of the Montblanc, but like the Colt .45 revolver after which it is named, it’s sturdy and reliable.

  As I take aim, anticipating the satisfaction of transforming my white-shirted adversary into a spotted dairy cow, Cesar serpentines with unexpected agility.

  The tension mounts until I empty my chamber.

  Flick!

  A brief silence follows, during which I survey my target, my target surveys himself, and the onlookers survey us both.

  “Blew it, Kikewheel!” Winn shouts when it becomes obvious that Cesar’s shirt is as white as it was before I discharged my pen.

  Cesar smiles and takes a bow.

  How could I have missed? I was standing barely ten feet away.

  “No, he didn’t!” Woody suddenly yells.

  All eyes turn toward Cesar, whose grimace of pleasure abruptly disappears. Confused, he again inspects himself and finds no black marks anywhere on his clothes. “What? Where?”

  Woody points.

  A wave of satisfaction flows through me once I realize that my shot has, in fact, hit its mark. A single blob of ink has smacked Cesar right in the kisser.

  “What? Where?” Cesar says a second time.

  His questions rupture the black globule. It spreads over his lips and teeth, then travels down his chin, where a subsidiary droplet begins to pool. Then, for what seems like an eternity, the secondary bead grows until it, too, bursts, and the ink, once more airborne, continues its descent until it strikes the breast pocket of Cesar’s No. 1 Dress shirt.

  My triumph was fleeting. But in that moment of intense joy, I felt as if I’d channeled the determination and achievement of a Swiss underdog marksman from an earlier time, William Tell.

  “I SUPOSE MY INFERIORITY WILL LAST”

  My reputation as an inkslinger might have been secure after the showdown with Cesar, but I was hopeless when it came to using pens as they were intended to be used. The Rules required me to write a letter home once a week. My mother, true to her archival tendencies, retained seven of those dispatches: six originals addressed to her plus a photocopy of an aerogram she forwarded on to my father’s aunt, a Viennese émigré who ran a boardinghouse in South London.

  None of the seven letters mentions Cesar. I only told my mother about him four or five years after I’d left the school. But the surviving correspondence does capture my loneliness, as well as some pretty shaky spelling:

  Dear Mom,

  How are you? I am fine. I have recieved only one letter from you!

  Dear Tante Martha,

  I am feeling hungry at the moment . . . I have found out that people are aloud to have some of chocolate so you can send me a bar or two.

  Dear Mom,

  I am a little homesick . . . I haven’t been hearing from you resently.

  Dear Mom,

  Mark reading is soon. (Gulp!)

  Mark reading was yet another source of stress. Every two weeks the Belvedere housemaster assembled his boys in the dining hall and, while consulting color-coded report cards that distinguished “effort” from “achievement,” he would, with the tenderness of a drill sergeant, issue public appraisals of our intellectual and moral worth. One of his early assessments of my scholarship began with a single word.

  “CARSWHEEL!” he bellowed.

  Sniggers spread through the hall.

  “CARSWHEEL!”

  After a lengthy scolding for grades that put me at the very bottom of the first form, the British equivalent of sixth grade, the housemaster informed me (and everyone else) that my report card—he held the damning evidence high in the air—compelled him to compose a lengthy indictment, which he planned to send to “any school stupid enough to consider taking on Carswheel once we give him the boot!”

  The longest of the seven letters my mother preserved is easier for me to quote than to analyze:

  Dear Mom,

  How are you? I am fine. When I look at the size of your letter and compare them with mine I feel very inferior, so today I plan to write a long letter. Last night I did not sleep well. I bet if I didn’t have my Aiglon blankets (little that I get) I am sure my toes would have gotten frost-bitten and would have fallen off! Everything is O.K. on the Aiglon Campus (except for a little student unrest). Some one ran away from school and was found with his father in London! I went on my second expedition with my warm sleeping bag. I went to Solalaix and farther. I am sorry I didn’t write earlier. I supose my inferiority will last . . .

  Love, Allen xxxxxxxxxxxx . . .

  “Found with his father in London!” I underlined the name of the city, but the word I should have highlighted is father. That was the source of my awe, and behind the awe, the source of my unacknowledged longing.

  TEMPUS FUGIT

  When I was seven or eight, I found a box of Dad’s stuff in the back of a dresser drawer. The keepsakes included a slipcased slide rule, a leather billfold, two pairs of silver cuff links, an ivory-handled shaving brush, and a wristwatch. The wristwatch. The one my father was wearing when he was wheeled out of my life. Except for the watch, none of the uncovered personal effects had much personal effect on me. But, man oh man, how I loved the watch! Whenever Mom let me wind it up—it was an “automatic,” so all one had to do was give the thing a few shakes—the ticking set in motion memories of Villars.

  {Courtesy of Edith Kurzweil}

  The long-lost Omega on the wrist of its original owner—my father.

  As soon as I learned I’d be attending Aiglon, I began pestering my mother to allow me to take the watch to school. She said absolutely not. It was way too precious. A huge fight ensued. In the end, my mother caved, and a good thing, too, I thought. Dad’s watch, a stainless steel Omega Seamaster, became my talisman, my pacifier, my shield. Staring at its luminescent dial tempered homesickness, deferred bad dreams, and offset humiliation.

  You’d think a watch bearing the name Seamaster would be waterproof. It wasn’t. Steam had a way of fogging up the crystal. So to play it safe, when taking a shower, I would unstrap the watch from my wrist and hide it under my pillow.

  A few months into the school year, I returned one day from the shower room, lifted my pillow, and discovered that Dad’s watch was gone. My first reaction was disbelief. I put the pillow back down and counted to five with my eyes shut tight. I was breathing heavily when I removed the pillow and opened my eyes. The watch was still missing.

  I searched under the bed. Nothing. I tore the sheets and blanket off my mattress. Nothing. I looked around the room, hoping some prankster had moved the watch from its usual resting place. It was nowhere to be found.

  Even now I find it difficult to describe the queasiness that came over me as the consequences of the theft began to sink in. I begged my roommates to return the watch or at least help me identify the thief. Each one disavowed any role in or knowledge of the crime. That seemed extremely unlikely. I had no evidence of a conspiracy, but the more upset I became, the more Paul giggled and looked at Cesar.

  The pair knew something. I was sure of it. I pleaded and pleaded until Cesar smiled and traced the curve of his nose with index finger and thumb. “Don’t be so nosy, Nosey.”


  A few days later, Paul admitted that he had hurled Dad’s watch from a balcony. When asked why, he explained he had been dared—duped is probably a better word—after being told this grade-school riddle:

  Question: Why did the man throw his watch out the window?

  Answer: He wanted to see time fly.

  The identity of the riddler never surfaced. But rightly or wrongly, I felt in my bones Cesar had had a hand in the crime.

  Knee-deep snow covered the ground, but that didn’t stop me from combing the area where the watch might have fallen. I lasted outside about an hour before the cold forced me to suspend the search.

  Two weeks after the crime, Mom drove up for a visit. “Where’s Dad’s watch?” she asked as we were sitting down for lunch at a local café. I tried changing the subject. She persisted. I told her that I’d forgotten the watch in my room. She knew I was lying and pressed further. “I dropped it out the window,” I improvised. My powers of deception were no better than Paul’s, and by the time dessert arrived, I had spilled the beans.

  Over my protests, Mom did the unthinkable. She told. Group Captain Watts immediately commanded the Belvedere housemaster to undertake a search. The housemaster passed the order along to the house captain. The house captain responded by telling a prefect, and he in turn ordered a couple of subalterns to poke about in the snow with ski poles.

  The watch never resurfaced. The loss left me bereft—more than bereft. I felt annihilated. I would have done anything—gulped down an entire bottle of Cesar’s hot sauce or submitted to “The Thirty-Nine Lashes” thirty-nine times—if I’d thought it would return the watch to my wrist. (I still would.)

  Yet oddly enough—there’s no other way to put this—time began to fly soon after the Omega was launched from the tower. There were two reasons for this. First, Paul left the school. The watch incident, plus lapses in judgment that didn’t implicate me, compelled Groupie to inform Paul’s parents, the heiress and the huntsman, that their child required a degree of oversight Aiglon could not provide. (Paul eventually found his way to a Connecticut boarding school with a one-to-one student/teacher ratio.)