Whipping Boy (40 page)
Authors: Allen Kurzweil
Photo by Ferrante Ferranti
ALLEN KURZWEIL
was educated at Yale and the University of Rome. He is a novelist, journalist, teacher, and inventor. He has written for numerous publications, including the
New York Times,
the
Wall Street Journal,
and
Vanity Fair,
and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Fulbright Commission, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. He lives in Rhode Island. To learn more, visit allenkurzweil.com.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at
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A Case of Curiosities
The Grand Complication
Potato Chip Science
(with Max Kurzweil)
Cover design by Jarrod Taylor
Cover photograph courtesy of Aiglon College, Switzerland
WHIPPING BOY
. Copyright © 2015 by Allen Kurzweil. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
“Trial Before Pilate” from
Jesus Christ Superstar
. Words by Tim Rice. Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Copyright © 1969, 1970 UNIVERSAL/MCA MUSIC LTD. Copyright Renewed. All Rights for the U.S. and Canada. Controlled and Administered by UNIVERSAL MUSIC CORP. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.
“Smooth Operator.” Written by: Helen Adu & Ray St. John. Copyright © 1984 Sony/ATV Music Publishing UK Ltd., Angel Music Ltd., Peer Music Ltd. All rights on behalf of Sony/ATV Music Publishing UK Ltd. and Angel Music Ltd. administered by Sony/ATV Songs LLC (BMI), 8 Music Square West, Nashville, TN 37203. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
“Knights of Malta Anthem.” Words and music by Sir Jay Chernis. Copyright © 1974 Denton & Haskins Corp. Used by permission.
“Pretty Boy Floyd.” Words and music by Woody Guthrie. Copyright © 1963 Woody Guthrie Publications (BMI). Copyright renewed. All rights administered by BMG Rights Management (US) LLC. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN: 978-0-06-226948-5
EPub Edition January 2015 ISBN 9780062269508
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*
Cesar was born Cesar Augusto Viana III, but had his middle name Anglicized while at Aiglon.
*
To appreciate the material properties of the bread served at Aiglon, consider this observation, made by a student reflecting on an ill-fated hiking expedition: “The weather turned and we were trapped there for two days and food had to be dropped from a ski plane. I still remember the net baskets of school bread breaking on impact.” The payload itself was undamaged.
*
Before embracing vegetarianism, Lady Forbes was an accomplished chef with a special fondness for organ meats. Her bilingual cookery book,
Dinner Is Served
(Lima, Peru, 1941), contains recipes for haggis, tongue with almonds, veal kidney a la Liégeoise, and (her signature dish) thin-sliced calf-brain cocktail sandwiches.
*
A technical clarification: Before advances in synthetics, the “skins” fitted to the bottoms of skis to enhance traction were generally fashioned from the pelts of baby seals. (A pup’s angled hair glides over snow when pushed forward and grips snow when pulled back.)
*
My memory is faulty. Subsequent interviews with housemates reveal that wedgies were, on occasion, dispensed during my time at Aiglon.
*
My son and I later settled our confectionary dispute by purchasing a large tin of Sugus from an eBay vendor in Thailand. After a series of blind taste tests, Max grudgingly acknowledged the incontrovertible: Sugus is
vastly
superior to Starburst.
*
Years later, I asked Goodman why he had been so forthcoming. After noting that he’d removed all privileged material from the files and had checked with his client the baron before granting me with access, he added, “It’s simple, Allen. We’ve all had bullies. Helping you seemed the right thing to do.”
*
The term
wheatie
is derived from the sheaves of grain on the reverse side of Lincoln pennies minted between 1909 and 1958.
*
Princess Audrey died in late February 2000. A world authority on the history of miniature doll costumes—an expertise that informed her unique sense of fashion and, in particular, a lifelong passion for exotic feathers and lace—she was also a pioneer in the field of “psychic dentistry,” a branch of oral medicine specializing in the telepathic transformation of base-metal dental fillings into gold. (Her motto: “Gold-mine yourself!”) Later in life, Audrey extended her medical practice to include chromotherapy. Working out of an office above Carnegie Hall, “Dr. Audrey Kargere, PhD, of Stockholm, Sweden” treated all manner of illness—congestion, ulcers, anemia, chronic flatulence, etc.—by the application of colored lenses and lights. In 1949, she documented her breakthroughs as a “color healer” in
Color and Personality
. The monograph is still in print.
*
Cesar is not alone in misattributing the saying to Emerson. Three successful self-help gurus he admires (Dr. Phil, Stephen R. Covey, and Tony Robbins), a T-shirt manufacturer, and a company that prints pithy wisdom on laminated refrigerator magnets have all made the same mistake. Nor is Ralph Waldo Emerson the only nineteenth-century trinomial Harvard man to receive undeserving credit. Oliver Wendell Holmes and Henry David Thoreau are also wrongly cited as the authors of the Haskins motto, which was first published, anonymously, in a 1940 book titled
Meditations in Wall Street
.
†
Besides brandishing a number of princely titles (e.g., Prince von Badische, Prince of Montezuma, Prince Khimchiachvili, Prince of Thrace) Robert also identified himself as the Duke of Mogolov, the Marquis de Hermosilla, the Count of Cabo St. Eugenio, the Archbishop Metropolitan of the Holy Church of Saint John of Jerusalem, and, most frequently, the Seventy-Fourth Grand Master of the Knights of Malta (Ecumenical).
*
By way of example: When I asked Ruth about Barclay’s relocated headquarters, she shot back an email noting it was “a studio apartment in a two-unit wood-frame house built in 1940 and held in trust that a source in Tax Assessor’s office suggested had ‘an extremely low’ valuation of $275,885.”
*
Rejected pseudonyms included an Armenian alias (A. Carvasian), an adjectival alias (A. Vain Cesar), a topical alias (Avian Scare), a tough-guy alias (Vic A. Arenas), and a porn-star alias (Asia Craven).
*
The crime-fraud exception, as characterized by the Supreme Court in
Clark v. United States,
states: “A client who consults an attorney for advice that will serve him in the commission of a fraud will have no help from the law. He must let the truth be told.”
*
There’s some ambiguity regarding the disease that led to Cesar’s extended isolation. At different times during our talks he mentions German measles, a mild virus that clears up quickly, and measles, which can be much trickier to treat. A letter submitted by a relative prior to sentencing compounds the confusion by citing smallpox as the cause for his hospitalization.
*
“Sir” Cesar was in good company. Robert also dubbed (and duped) Oscar-winner Ernest Borgnine, action stars Steven Seagal and Chuck Norris, and the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky.
*
Colonia was probably Robert’s biggest coup, geographically if not criminally. In 1978, under one of his many royal appellations, Robert quietly claimed possession of an uninhabited patch of the South China Sea previously abandoned by a crackpot adventurer named Tomás Cloma. The territory, a collection of guano-rich outcroppings on the western fringe of the Spratly Islands, had little commercial value until Robert, partnering with another ersatz royal doing business as the Prince de Mariveles, began selling diplomatic passports (unit price: $20,000) to individuals wishing to bypass customs inspection. Four Corsican drug runners arrested in Israel were among those who attempted to benefit from the diplomatic protection of the nonexistent nation-state.