Leporello on the Lam

by William Stafford

  ”Are you really going to lie there praying and contemplating?” my master whined as he always did when things were being unreasonable and not going his way, “Or are we going to figure out our next move?”

  ”What do you mean ‘our’?” I raised the pillow and caught his haughty expression.

  Shit. I had engaged with him. He came over and perched at the foot of the bed.

  ”Face it, old thing,” he removed a glove and slapped my leg with it. “You have been quite a rubbish protagonist so far. This is what happens when they allow a servant to be the leading man, I suppose.”

  ”What mean you? Rubbish protagonist! It’s been non-stop. I’m knackered.”

  ”I don’t deny you your exhaustion. Your incarceration under the threat of impending execution must have been especially tiresome, but think about it, Leporello, what have you actually done? All these incidents and accidents have happened to you. You need to take charge of your life, man. You need to make things happen. Bend events and shape them to your will. Don’t just lie there. Make a plan and see it through! Be the flyer not the kite!”

  ”You’re giving me a motivational speech? Consider your own life and how that turned out, I beg you.”

  ”Oho! What a life I had, Leporello!” His eyes brightened as he relived his favourite memories. He swatted my leg again. “That’s exactly what you need to do! Live!”

  ”I shall!” I cried, “But for now, let me have a nap, please!”

  Don Giovanni clicked his tongue and shook his head. He winked out like a snuffed candle and I closed my eyes and surrendered myself to bliss.

  ***

  I slept like an infant – a knackered infant who didn’t keep waking up and screaming the place down for food and fresh nappies – throughout the siesta.

  I awoke, feeling more refreshed than I had in a long time, to find a figure perched beside me on the cot. My first thought that it was my master come back to taunt me yet again but a soft hand on my cheek startled me into sitting up.

  ”Donna Elvira!”

  ”Hello.” She was smiling in that weird, spaced-out way she used to reserve for her husband, my master.

  ”They let you out then.”

  ”Yes.”

  ”Good.”

  There was an awkward silence. I could feel her gaze on me and it made my flesh creep like a mass of tickly insects were racing on my face.

  ”It was quite exciting!” She clapped her hands. “You can imagine that gaoler’s face when he came to fetch you and found me there in your place!”

  I could, actually. I almost felt sorry for the brute. Almost.

  She told me how he had taken her upstairs while he consulted his superiors. The first suggestion was that you, through your witchcraft, had transformed yourself into a woman in a display of occult power and a bid to escape. The story grew as she was led from level to level until finally word reached Cardinal Ignatius who, naturally, wanted to see this dark miracle for himself.

  He, astute and clever fellow, had dismissed all ideas of magic out of hand and called Donna Elvira an accomplice to a proved felon and said she would burn in my place. She explained that she was but a poor nun, doing Our Lord’s work in offering solace to a soul facing perdition. I must have overpowered her and she had only just that second regained her senses when the gaoler came to fetch me.

  Well, the Inquisition, whatever its faults, wasn’t in the business of burning innocent nuns. Ignatius could fit no charges to Donna Elvira and she was released, still in my clothes – or rather, the clothes of that dead old woman. (Honestly, women can be troublesome when they’re alive, but I’d been caused so much grief since I encountered that cadaver, I began to hope there’d be no women in the afterlife... Perhaps that was why my master had come back!)

  ”And so here I am!” She clapped her hands again. “I told you it would work. Now, get your clothes off.”

  ”I beg your pardon!”

  ”I need my habit back, if you don’t mind.”

  ”Ah. So it’s back to the little black number for me.”

  ”Oh, no. We must find you some kind of disguise.”

  ”This habit is a disguise.”

  ”But they’ll be looking for you in that habit.”

  ”Ah.”

  ”Fear not!” She clapped her hands yet again. It was another habit of hers that had swiftly become annoying. She sprang to her feet and dropped to her knees. She reached under the bed and pulled out a leather drawstring bag. “Oof!” she said, heaving it onto the bed. “I sent this on ahead. That Giacomo’s a reliable fellow.”

  ”I’ll never get in there,” I said.

  She sent me a glance that suggested she wasn’t entirely un-amused but was not going to encourage me. She opened the bag and pulled out a gleaming white tunic, braided with silver and gold. There were breeches to match, a frilled shirt, stockings, buckled shoes, a cape and even a wide-brimmed hat with an enormous feather.

  ”We must let them hang for a while so that most of the creases drop out.” She carried the clothes across to the window.

  ”Where did you –”

  ”Where did I get them?” She stroked the clothes tenderly as she draped them over the windowsill. “My husband wore these on our wedding day. He left them behind when he- when he-”

  The smile left her face to be replaced by its smaller, sadder cousin. Don Giovanni appeared beside her.

  ”I ran off wearing nothing but a blanket!” he laughed at the memory. “Pity really. That outfit was expensive.”

  ”How can you be like that?” I snapped at him but Donna Elvira thought the question was intended for her.

  ”Why did I keep them, do you mean? They were all I had left. We were only together for a few days before he deserted me, shamed me, betrayed me!” She was getting upset and she knew it. It cost her some considerable effort to keep herself together and in control. “Yet a greater vengeance was visited upon him than I could muster. My poor husband!” She blinked away her tears. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her, the deluded cow. You would have to be a marble statue to remain unmoved. Although experience has taught me that is not always the case!

  I found myself battling thoughts and emotions of my own, fighting back that memory. My master too, strangely, seemed affected. He watched his widow stroking his wedding suit, smoothing out each garment with the palm of her hand. He came to me.

  ”Tell her,” he whispered, although there was no need; she couldn’t hear him.

  I ignored him. “Donna Elvira, Sister um... I can’t put on these garments.”

  ”Why ever not? Your master wouldn’t mind, I’m certain. Aren’t you accustomed to wearing his cast-offs?”

  ”No, I mean, I can’t put them on. I can’t physically put them on.” I raised the black dress up to my knees, exposing the shackles.

  ”A minor inconvenience,” Donna Elvira dismissed this with a wave of her hand. She swiftly produced a rough-looking file, about a foot long. “Giacomo,” she explained as if the proprietor’s name made everything clear. “Very discreet. I told him I was in need of this tool for the pilgrimage. He didn’t ask questions. I promised him I’d file him off a little of the statue of Santiago’s big toe.”

  ”And he believed you?”

  ”The superstitious are always the most gullible,” my master yawned. Then he nudged me altogether more sharply than an incorporeal entity should have been able. “Tell her!” he insisted.

  ”Tell her what?” I whispered back. I still wasn’t used to communicating with him by thought alone. We kept our eyes on Donna Elvira’s back and I was instantly reminded of our whispered conversations in the classroom while the governess was otherwise occupied.

  ”Everything,” he said. “Put the poor cow out of her misery.”

  ”What more can I say? I show
ed her the book. She thought I’d made it up.”

  ”What became of that book anyway?” my master had a wistful expression. “Quite the achievement, if I say so myself.”

  ”It’s here!” Donna Elvira turned from the window and came back to the bag on the bed. My master and I were taken aback. Had she heard us? “You must stop talking to yourself, Leporello. You’re not all alone in your dungeon any more. “

  And there it was! The catalogue of my master’s conquests all written in my own spidery hand.

  ”She kept it!” my master gasped. “She is both a lunatic and a thief.”

  Donna Elvira was cradling the book in her arms, like a beloved child. I asked her for it and held out my hands. After a while, I had to prise it from her fingers. I patted the bed for her to be seated. I took the chair. My master sat between us like the umpire at a tennis match. He gave me a nod of encouragement. It was time for me to serve.

  I explained about the book for the second time. How I had taken it upon myself to keep a record of all the women my master...encountered. When he had discovered what I was doing he had been delighted and encouraged me in the pursuit. The book became an invaluable aid when it came to lawsuits or challenges to duels proposed by enraged fathers, husbands and brothers. We would consult the book, check the name, date and location, and then I would be sent out to buy alibis to prove my master could not possibly have been there. It was not that he was cowardly but if my master had answered every challenge to a duel he received, he’d have been up at dawn every day, and it is also well documented how much my master hated getting up early.

  Donna Elvira listened attentively, it seemed, nodding and humming at appropriate places. She filed at the chain between my ankles all the while and was making slow progress, but progress all the same. I would have to continue to wear the metal cuffs for the time being but I least I’d be able to put trousers on.

  When I stopped for breath, she reached under her (the old woman’s) frock and withdrew a chain from which hung a wedding ring.

  ”This ring trumps your book,” she smiled. My master’s head sunk to his hands. He peered at me between his fingers.

  ”Tell her!”

  ”You tell her!” I shot back. He swept his hands up and down his form in a sarcastic gesture to remind me of his incorporeal state. Typically, it fell to me to do his dirty work.

  ”Donna Elvira,” I began. “Sister Immaculata... The man you – that is to say, your husband – your late husband – he that is dead and gone and is no longer with us –”

  ”Oh, bloody hell” groaned Don Giovanni. “Out with it, man!”

  ”He killed a man. Donna Anna’s father. The Commendatore. Him. The poor old sod was only defending his daughter’s honour. My master had snuck into the house, you see –”

  Donna Elvira let out a cry. My master chuckled. “I did the same to her, you know. It’s how we met. Climbed in through her window. The good old snuck and fuck.”

  ”He – he – forced himself on the lady,” I pressed on. “She tried to stop him getting away and managed to detain him long enough for her dad to get up. There was a fight, you see. With swords. My master ran the old man through, when he could have run off. He could have got away with it – he was masked, you see. No one knew who he was. But he killed the old man for the fun of it.”

  ”That’s a bit stiff,” my master interjected. “I was fighting for my life.”

  I ignored him and pressed on with the story. I told her how later on, Donna Anna recognised his voice and she and her fiancé swore vengeance and –

  Donna Elvira interrupted me. “This is old news, Leporello. I was there, remember? We went up to the house – which by rights was also my house – and tried to confront him at the party he was throwing for those peasant folk. He got away, of course. He always did.” She seemed proud of him. The crazy bitch.

  ”Tell her!” Don Giovanni kicked my shin. I wondered how he could inflict pain but a second kick brought me away from that thought and back to the story.

  ”That night, Donna Elvira,” I resumed, “when everyone was rallying and ranting and the whole village was out to get him, you came to the house.”

  ”Yes, I remember. I was willing to give him another chance. As befits the duty of a loving wife.”

  ”Be that as it may,” I went on. “Do you recall, when you left, seeing something? Something that made you scream, scream in mortal terror?”

  She went quiet. I waited for her answer.

  ”I – I don’t know,” she spoke softly. “I remember screaming. I was distraught, Leporello. My husband had rejected me yet again. He laughed in my face and carried on with his dinner. There...”

  She broke off. Her mouth hung open. She was reliving the scene.

  ”No!”

  ”Yes! Please, remember!”

  ”The footsteps...” she gasped. “I remember the footsteps. There was a flash of lightning. A man. That face, that staring white face!” Her lips quivered at the memory. Then she recovered herself. “Funny how the mind plays tricks, isn’t it?” she brightened. “I was a little bit deranged, I have to own. Crazy with devotion, you might say. We were all a little overwrought that night.”

  ”Overwrought?” cried Don Giovanni. “Over-bloody-wrought!”

  ”I don’t know what you think I saw that night, Leporello, but it is sweet of you to consider that I might want to talk about it.”

  Oh, Lord! The last thing I wanted was her thinking I was being sweet. I tried to steer the conversation back to the hot topic.

  ”Donna Elvira, what do you think happened to my master? What became of him?”

  ”Well...” she shrugged. “A tragic accident.”

  Don Giovanni was shaking his head. “Unbelievable!”

  ”What kind of accident exactly?”

  She grimaced an “I-don’t-know” grimace. “A tragic one.”

  I was losing my patience. “But what exactly happened?”

  ”You tell me, Leporello. You were there. I think it was some kind of freak occurrence. An earthquake or a landslide or some such event. My poor husband just happened to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. The ground opened up and down he went. Call it divine retribution if you like; say that he deserved what he got but I say he evaded us one last time. We were all denied our vengeance. He gave us the slip.”

  ”Bloody hell,” Don Giovanni was pacing the room now. “For a supposedly religious woman she can’t half rationalise things. But that’s what she always did. Take the facts and bend them to an interpretation she can live with.”

  ”Well, we all do that,” I chimed in.

  Donna Elvira glanced around. “He’s here!” she gasped. “Isn’t he? Oh, tell him – tell him I forgive him.”

  ”How can I ever be rid of this woman?”

  ”What’s he saying? Leporello! What’s he saying?”

  ”He says it’s very nice that you forgive him and he’s very sorry and all but you have to believe me, Leporello, when I say that my master was really visited by the marble statue of the man he murdered, that the floor really did crack apart, that an invisible choir of demons jeered and sang as my master sank into the earth, that the floor closed above him without a mark on it. It all happened. My master went to Hell. He was unrepentant to the last but he went.”

  Donna Elvira was staring at me. She reached out and took my hand.

  ”You poor, poor man,” she said, softly, her face the picture of sympathy and concern.

  My master was standing over this touching scene.

  ”It’s hopeless,” I said, this time remembering to use thought alone. “She’s never going to feel any better.”

  ”Perhaps not,” Don Giovanni let out a sigh. “But my guess is that you do.”

  I gawped at him.

  It was true.r />
  ***

  I put on the white suit. The effect on Donna Elvira was like someone had stuck an electric eel up her cassock. Her entire demeanour changed. She looked at me from all angles, gasping at my transformation.

  ”Uh-oh” my master intoned ominously. Before I could ask him what he meant by that, the meaning became apparent.

  ”My love! You have returned to me!” Donna Elvira’s eyes were wide but not altogether focussed. “I knew that Death would not be strong enough to keep us apart!”

  Oh. Oh bloody hell.

  ”How does she do that with her eyes?” Don Giovanni pointed right at her. Had it been a real finger, he would have half-blinded her. And would it have made any difference? She wasn’t exactly seeing things for what they were.

  She seized my hand and held it to her face, leaning all her weight against it.

  ”I reckon you could take her,” my master marvelled. “Right here and now on this very bed. Or even on the floor. Or the table. It’s your chance to do a nun, Leporello. “He dashed over to the book and riffled through the pages. “Do you know, I don’t think I ever did a nun. You’d be one up on me!”

  I let out a whine of panic. I’ve never been more uncomfortable. Not even when on trial for my life. I peeled my hand from Donna Elvira’s face, took her by the shoulders and shook her. It flashed across my mind that this was inappropriate treatment of a holy sister but it was for her own good.

  ”Snap out of it, woman!” I urged but she seemed ecstatic at the physical contact.

  ”Yes, oh yes! My love! My only! My husband!”

  Well, that did it. I fetched her a resounding slap across the face. She froze, stunned. Then she seemed to come to her senses.

  ”I’m sorry, Leporello. It’s just that in that outfit –”

  ”I quite understand. I’m sorry.”

  ”You must think me mad.”

  ”Oh no, not in the least.” I had to glance away; behind her my master was making circling motions at the sides of his head, his tongue lolling from the corner of his mouth.