Whipping Boy (37 page)

My son might not possess the archival predisposition of his older relatives, but he, too, has helped me greatly, serving as my in-house editor on matters of popular culture that might otherwise elude a guy in his fifties.

A few dozen friends also offered editorial counsel. Thanks go out to Paul Hechinger, Dan Dubno and Lisa Bernstein, Jay Kernis, Andrew Kerr and Cyndi Doyle, the Joukowskys (every last one of them), the aptly labeled “geniuses” and “creatives” at the Providence Place Apple Store, Steve O’Shea, Rosemary Mahoney, Becky and Dan Okrent (the latter a master of pacing, punctuation, and bone-dry gin martinis), David Nishimura (who deepened indelibly my knowledge of fountain pens), Bill Powers and Martha Sherrill, Malcolm Pollack and Nina Phillips, Harvey Sachs, Jonathan Barzilay, Arthur Riss (for his steady supply of Melville quotations and anagrammatical aliases), Kirstin and Michael Allio, Al Venditto and Rachel Atlas, Heather and Ronald Florence, Linda Carter, Carrie Cook, Alec and Liz Stansell, Ashley Dubois, Dan Miller, Grace Shohet and David Brownstein, Michael Spalter, and Michael Boyer.

Students and teachers at dozens of schools offered unfiltered insights into the nature of bullying. I received especially nuanced assistance from fourth, fifth, and sixth graders at the following schools: the Ten Acre Country Day School, the John D. Runkle School, the Hunnewell School, the Dalton School, the Wheeler School, the Moses Brown School, the J. F. Deering Middle School, the Fenn School, the Field School, the Meadowbrook School, the Paideia School, the Weston Public Schools, and the Bates, Shutesbury, Wenham, Bonner,
Brooklyn, Buker, Hanaford, Gardiners Avenue, Merrill, Garvin, and James H. Eldredge elementary schools.

I’ve been racking up editorial debt ever since a crude iteration of this book reached the in-box of my editors at Harper, David Hirshey and Barry Harbaugh, and their indefatigable assistant, Sydney Pierce. The structural and stylistic improvements they made to the manuscript were reinforced later on by copyeditor Mary Beth Constant and by the intermittent counsel of Beth Silfin and Jonathan Burnham. In inventorying the assistance I received from Team Harper, I’d be remiss if I failed to insert a special callout to Fritz Metsch, the book’s designer. For those readers who share Fritz’s (and my) love of colophons, I’d also like to give a nod to William Martin (1757–1830), the type designer responsible for Bulmer, the transitional typeface in which this book is set. Bulmer, like the Harper staff, is distinguished by precision, balance, and a seraphic pizzazz that’s just a little bit edgy. Two other editors beyond the publishing house helped remove countless blemishes: Susan Morrison, of
The New Yorker,
and my dear friend Karyn Marcus.

Finally, I would like thank the three most patient women associated with the search for Cesar: my assistant, Alex Dunwoodie (for all things administrative); my literary agent, Liz Darhansoff (for all things transactional); and my wife, Françoise Dussart (for all things full stop). The very first day I met Françoise near the widow’s quarters at Yuendumu she rescued me from trouble. She has been rescuing me ever since. As her Warlpiri aunties would say,
Yati!

And finally—yes, that’s right, the last
finally
was premature—there’s one more individual who needs to be recognized. I do so without irony.

Thank you, Cesar. You have taught me that the lies we tell others always begin with the lies we tell ourselves.

{Courtesy of Aiglon College, Switzerland}

The boys of Belvedere, 1972. I’m seated on the ground, far left. Cesar looms directly above me, fourth row from the bottom.

{© Laurent Brodier}

The Dents du Midi, as seen from Aiglon. I spent every winter of my early childhood in this Alpine wonderland, then returned, as a ten-year-old, for a fateful year at the unconventional boarding school that introduced me to Cesar.

{Courtesy of Edith Kurzweil}

Robert Kurzweil, my father, hiked the Alps in good weather and in bad. He was twenty-three when these photos were taken.

{Courtesy of Edith Kurzweil}

Robert Kurzweil, thirty years later, in Villars with his youngest child—me, age three. My father died two years after this photo was taken, at the age of fifty-five.

{Courtesy of Edith Kurzweil}

Another picture of us in Villars. At least, I’d like to think I’m standing with my father. (The hiking boots on the unidentified polar bear appear to match Dad’s.)

{© Ronald Schmidt (left) © Patrick Jantet (right)}

Gravestones make me queasy. The clinical term for this aversion,
taphephobia
, is commonly tied to a fear of being buried alive. My anxiety, however, has never focused on internment. On the contrary, I avoid cemeteries because of the loss they resurrect. For the longest time, I was incapable of approaching my father’s headstone, seen on left, or the marker in the Villars cemetery honoring my Belvedere buddy Woody Anderson (1959–1972). While I have subdued my dread of cemeteries, these images will always fill me with sorrow. I find my father’s epitaph, a lamentation pulled from the Psalms, especially grim.

John Corlette (“JC”), the founder of Aiglon (second from left), often took his charges on “expeditions.” This photo was taken along the Côte d’Azur during one such trip.