What Caroline, in her protracted clandestine negotiations with the parties involved kept from them all, was the nature of the private agreement she had made with the boy’s father. For the duration of the experiment, Enrique and his mother, a hairdresser from Peruta, were to live with Gutierrez in his apartment overlooking the autopista, or failing that, in an apartment nearby with the rent to be paid by Enrique’s father.
‘But I only lived with Esmeralda for three, no, four months, ten years ago,’ he protested.
‘And yet you wanted to live with me for the rest of your life after having met me twice.’
‘Yes, but–’
‘You told me Enrique’s mother is a good woman. You said you wanted stability and direction for your son. You told me you wanted him to see beyond the barrio.’
‘I did, but-’
‘I have not been blessed with a child, but if I had been, I would want the best for him. Now you and I and Esmeralda are going to give it to him. No more nonsense. Accept this, or the deal is off.’
Gutierrez accepted.
The day before the admissions committee was to meet Enrique for the first time, Caroline had a dream, out of which she awoke in a fevered sweat. Enrique, small, dark, and feral, sat at the end of her bed flicking ash off a puro he was smoking, while his parents, tied back-to-back on bedroom chairs, cursed him for ruining their hopes. Thus, her first sight of him was a revelation.
‘Good morning, Miss Judge.’ The speaker, in the regulation white shirt and blue shorts, was short for his age, and anything but feral. His English was fluent, the result, apparently, of his having hung about the American Jockey Club in Carioco when he should have been in school. His manners were impeccable, in part the unlikely result of obsessively watching re-runs of British costume dramas like Upstairs, Downstairs, and Brideshead Revisited and The Forsyte Saga on satellite television, by way of signals pirated by an enterprising untrained electrician in the barrio. Caroline smiled at the irony of a slum child being thus introduced to the class system of another country.
Enrique excelled at math, and was very fond of drawing. He wanted to be an architect. So pleased was he to be in the company of friendly and supportive schoolmates far from the extortionate bullying of his former acquaintances that his successful integration into Mrs. Ebbs’ Level 6 class was a foregone conclusion. At the annual prize-giving ceremony, he was awarded the Art Prize for a startling futuristic city scape he had planned for his make-believe city of Manana.
‘I told you he was smart,’ Gutierrez told Caroline, as he stood with Enrique in the foyer queuing for refreshments, with a beaming Esmeralda shyly beside him.
‘You did. And you were right.’ To Enrique she said, ‘Your uncle is proud of you.’
Enrique nodded, pleased, and his mother took him off for helados.
‘I saw Craig Anderson’s father yesterday. He is back from Europe under some sort of amnesty. He wants us to re-admit his son to the school.’
‘I think you should let him do that,’ said Gutierrez, unperturbed.
‘But he was a wanted man not so long ago, was he not? Didn’t you denounce him as a class enemy at one point? Why do you want him back?’
