Leporello on the Lam

by William Stafford

  This awkward scene was curtailed by a sudden knocking at the door that caused Donna Elvira, now restored to Sister Immaculata’s appearance, to flap her voluminous sleeves at me. The frequency of the flapping increased to produce quite a refreshing breeze but then a voice came through from the other side. Of the door, I mean! No spectral utterances on this occasion, Our Lord be thanked.

  ”Sister Immaculata? Is all well?” It was the other nun, Sister Whatserface.

  ”Quick! Hide!” Donna Elvira hissed. Don Giovanni held up a finger and then peered from behind it. He was highly amused and had been in similar situations countless times. I, in my fine white suit, dropped to the floor and rolled under the bed, grateful that Giacomo kept such a clean if Spartan house. Donna Elvira opened the door but not by much.

  ”Hello!” she beamed with a little too much pleasantness in her voice.

  ”Am I interrupting something?” Sister Nosey-parker tried to peer beyond Donna Elvira’s shoulder.

  ”Um, no...” Even from under the bed I could tell Donna Elvira was smiling too broadly. I could almost hear her facial muscles straining from the effort.

  ”I thought I heard voices,” Sister Sticky-beak was relentless! Such nosiness! There ought to be a vow against it.

  ”You should get that looked at,” Donna Elvira took the offensive. “First sign of madness, so they say.” She was a fine one to be talking about signs of madness!

  ”Voices talking to you!” Sister Dog-with-a-bone spoke deliberately to make her meaning clear. “A voice. A man’s voice.”

  ”I was praying,” Donna Elvira shrugged. I heard Sister Foot-in-the-door gasp.

  ”And – and – you got an answer?”

  ”Um...” Donna Elvira was stuck for an answer. I toyed with the idea of booming something out from under the bed, in my best Our Lord voice, something about leaving us in peace for fuck’s sake, but I decided against this. Such a pronouncement could only lead to more unwarranted attention and undue fuss.

  My master was under the bed with me, lying on his back and looking up at the underside of the slats that supported the mattress.

  ”This takes me back,” he said. I issued a sharp “Ssh!” forgetting that no other soul could hear him. I held my breath.

  ”What was that?” Sister Ears-of-a – (what has sharp hearing? A hawk? No... Oh well, never mind). She had heard the “Ssh!” that’s the point I’m trying to make.

  ”Um...” Donna Elvira was foundering. “It was a – um - a pigeon! Got in through the window.”

  ”A pigeon going Ssh!?”

  ”It’s trying to rest. They fly a long way, you know. Probably come all the way from Capistrano.”

  ”That’s the swallow” Sister Know-it-all pushed her way into room. I could see the hem of her habit, soiled with the detritus of the street.

  ”My favourite bird!” my master laughed. I held my breath. Sister Without-a-by-your-leave stalked around the room.

  ”I should very much like to see this mythical bird,” she said, suspicion dripping from her words.

  ”It must have flown off,” Donna Elvira offered.

  ”Closing the window behind it.”

  ”Well –”

  ”Ahem.” A male voice from the doorway. I recognised Giacomo from his shoes.

  ”Yes?” said Donna Elvira. I could tell the situation was causing her no small amount of stress.

  ”Will you sisters be requiring refreshment before you leave?” Giacomo intoned in his reedy voice, like someone playing the oboe at the bottom of a well.

  ”How long has he been there?”

  ”Oh, him!” said Donna Elvira, her relief audible. “That must have been the voice you heard!” She was steering Sister Interruptus out of the room. “Two platters of bread and cheese, Giacomo. We’ll be right down.”

  The three of them left, closing the door behind them but not before I heard Giacomo pipe up, “And for the gentleman under the bed?”

  He then emitted a sharp cry of pain. Perhaps he had received a swift kick to the shin.

  Beside me, my master threw back his head and laughed as heartily as he ever had when living.

  ***

  We – that is to say, I – left a note for Donna Elvira, on a page torn from my master’s bumper book of conquests. He was keen for me to carry the book with me. I said it felt like stealing. He pointed out that she had pilfered it from his house and I couldn’t argue with that. I felt rotten for ducking out on her when she had been so helpful – she had saved my life, or at least delayed its termination - but my master said I needed to get equipped with a brace of testicles. He had left many, many women and very few of them had been lucky enough to receive a written explanation of his departure, pack of lies though it may have been. He reminded me of the way Donna Elvira had looked at me as though I were him and said it was no point risking a repetition of that scene, especially if I wasn’t going to take advantage of it.

  I told her I was heading off to seek a way to clear my name. I couldn’t go on forever as a fugitive, swapping disguises and always looking over my shoulder.

  ”Don’t mention in which direction you’re going!” my master advised me. “If the note falls into the wrong hands, the authorities would be down on you like – well, like me on a teenage virgin. And then you would be fucked.”

  There was no danger of that; I had no clue where I was going. Away from the city – there was no doubt a bounty on my head by now – and away from the Inquisition (if that’s even possible. They have spies and agents everywhere, or as my master would put it, they have fingered a lot of pies.)

  I stole out of Giacomo’s hostel – or rather I was in the process of sneaking out, when my master dislodged my hat with a slap to the back of my head.

  ”You must walk as though you own the place, no matter where you go,” he instructed me, lifting my chin and slapping the backs of my legs until I straightened up. “Do you remember nothing of our lessons in deportment?”

  ”Not a sausage,” I had to admit. Truth be told, those were the lessons I was most likely to be despatched to the corridor while my master and the governess conducted lessons in another department.

  ”You must remember how to hold yourself at all times,” he took on a didactic tone that was too patronising for my liking. I wasn’t sure he still counted as my patron. He poked me with a finger at the smirk that flickered on my face. “Not hold yourself in that manner, you oik. You must keep your hands out of your pockets.”

  And so it was I emerged from the hostel and into the bustling thoroughfare, gleaming in the late afternoon sunshine, twitching and starting like a cavalier troubled by a wasp.

  Provisions were being loaded onto a row of wagons, no doubt for the pilgrimage to the North. These excursions are all the rage in Ispagna, where you can show your religious devotion and have a nice little holiday at the same time. Not for me, this kind of trip. I had travelled with my master extensively, through Italia, Turchia, Almagna, Francia... I have stood outside the finest palaces in Europe, beneath the ornate windows of the most desirable women. Holding the ladder.

  People got out of my way. They perceived the quality of the clothes without looking at me directly. I was able to proceed along the street without hindrance. I couldn’t meet anyone’s gaze if I tried. This was the power of the nobility at work: the deference by the lower orders that seemed instinctive. It became easier for me to see how my master had got away with his atrocious behaviour for as long as he did. It tickled me somewhat to consider I was a fugitive, a wanted, condemned man, brazenly striding among them without impediment or interference.

  I still had no idea where I was going, except I was heading out of town. I asked my master for suggestions but he offered nothing more than an insistence that I should make my own decisions and be my own man. “You look the part,” he said, “an
d now you must act it.”

  I had to clear my name - that was certain. Life as an outlaw did not appeal. I did not share my master’s criminal tendencies, or rather his lack of respect for the law and the rules of society. Oh, I’m no angel, I freely admit it, but I crave stability and order in my life. If that makes me a boring sod, at least I’d be a living, boring sod.

  To clear my name, I had to find the real culprit behind the house fire and attempted murder of Donna Flavia, the elusive Martello. But how I would track the bastard down, I had no bloody idea.

  ***

  ”You’ve been here a month now, Don Alfonso,” the innkeeper observed. There was nothing amiss with his calendar; you had to grant him that. “And it’s high time you settle your bill – if it’s not inconvenient, of course.”

  ”Of course.” Smiling thinly, I turned away from the bar, and yanked another gold button from my tunic. I slapped it onto the counter. The innkeeper snatched it away. “I take it that is sufficient?”

  ”Oh yes, Signore. More than.” At last he poured my wine. Then he shrugged and handed me the bottle. I took it and the goblet across to my customary seat by the window to resume my watching.

  They call me Don Alfonso now, a name befitting my attire. Using the gold braid and buttons as currency, I had bought my passage back to the inn at which I’d been arrested. No one had recognised me. Why would they? The first time I had been here I had been dressed as a dead old woman with a beard and no doubt stank a lot worse than I have done of late. My attire gave me an air of high status. I could afford a room, three meals a day and luxuries such as hot water and fresh bedding weekly. It had even been hinted that other luxuries, in the form of female (or even male!) companionship could be bought but I had yet to avail myself of that particular service. My master, predictably, urged me to indulge, claiming it would do me good. I didn’t like the idea of him watching me in the act. That I had seen his backside going up and down on countless occasions was immaterial.

  Why this inn? Why the disguise? I was on the run, remember. The new identity meant I could hide in plain sight, which was necessary if I was ever to find that bastard Martello. My reasoning was this: this was the last resting-place for miles before the city. I knew that he did the rounds in this area. It could only be a matter of time before he ventured across this threshold, couldn’t it? It made perfect sense to me.

  But as my watching entered its fifth week, I began to lose heart. Perhaps I should be moving on and be more active in my search. The more I got out and about, though, the more I exposed myself to risk of discovery. Arrest and execution would only hinder my plans.

  Before I knew it, the bottle was empty. I signalled to the innkeeper to bring another.

  Sitting across from me, idly gazing through the windowpane, my master heaved his shoulders in an exaggerated sigh.

  ”I’m bored, Leporello,” he complained, as he had done ever since our arrival. “You escape one prison and incarcerate yourself in another. Granted the food is better here and the availability of mediocre wine is vastly improved but for how much longer must we stay? There’s a world outside. Go out and be worldly.”

  ”I keep telling you, you’re free to leave any time you like,” I lowered my voice, as the innkeeper approached with the fresh bottle. Don Giovanni gave me the look I could never decipher. Partially that look was saying “Don’t be ridiculous” and partially it was saying something else. I could never tell.

  ”Begging pardon, signore,” the innkeeper was lingering. Every time he called me that I had to check he was addressing me and not my invisible master. “There’s a nobleman wishes to speak with you.”

  ”With me? Fancy!” I affected to fan at my face with a lace handkerchief but Don Giovanni slapped my hand until I stopped. I stood and looked across the room to where the innkeeper was pointing. Over in the corner, ill-at-ease and uncomfortable if his posture was anything to go by, stood a man in fine clothes – not quite the equal of my white suit but not far off – turning his three-cornered hat in his hand as though he was trying to wring its neck, could he but find it. In the back of my mind, a distant bell rang. It was my master who recognised him first.

  ”It’s that oaf Ottavio!” he cried. “At last! Some entertainment!” He strode across the bar and looked Don Ottavio up and down, making faces at the Don’s fashion choices. I followed. Don Ottavio smiled nervously at my approach. The innkeeper smiled broadly and withdrew, like the world’s smuggest matchmaker. I looked the Don in the eye. If anyone was going to recognise me, it would be he. I waited for the inevitable.

  It didn’t come.

  ”Forgive me the intrusion,” he stammered, “but these places – you know? – one doesn’t like to – on one’s own – dining and such – bad form and all that.”

  ”Quite.” With a magnanimous gesture, I invited him to join me at a table away from where the lower orders guzzled and quaffed. He introduced himself. I pretended not to catch his name first time so he had to repeat it. Sitting with us, Don Giovanni approved of my teasing.

  ”Insufferable prig!” my master sneered. “Far too much frippery on that frock coat. Man looks like a banqueting table.”

  I introduced myself and Don Ottavio declared he had never been more delighted to make anyone’s acquaintance. He was stranded, he said, until the next coach could take him home. He’d been to the city to purchase jewels for his beloved but searches of all the coaches leaving the city – there was some palaver about an escaped criminal, if you can credit it - meant he had missed his connecting coach and was therefore stuck at the inn overnight. How relieved he was to find a fellow of equal standing with whom to pass the time – if it wasn’t too much of an imposition, of course.

  ”His beloved?” my master curled his lip. “He’s still with that harpy, then?”

  I decided to find out. To tell you the truth, I was glad of the break in routine. It was a welcome diversion to have Don Ottavio’s company. My master and I hadn’t poked fun at anyone for ages.

  ”You mention a beloved, sir. You are married then?” I even arched an eyebrow. Oh, I could do haughty very well.

  ”Betrothed,” he nodded and didn’t seem too happy about it. “Eternally so, it feels like. Almost a year now.”

  ”Aha!” my master pointed in Don Ottavio’s face. “I knew it. She wouldn’t want him after she had a piece of me. Hence the prolonged delay and he, poor fool, cannot take the hint.”

  ”She’s in mourning, you see,” Don Ottavio continued, unaware of my master’s finger. “Her father – murdered by an unspeakable villain.”

  ”I’ll give him unspeakable!” Don Giovanni leapt to his feet. He tried to grab Don Ottavio’s goblet of wine, no doubt to throw it in his face, but of course his fingers could not grasp it. With a strangled roar of frustration, my master sat down again and crossed his arms in a sulk.

  ”That must have been traumatic,” I nodded, oozing sympathy.

  ”So I came to the city to acquire some trinkets – a diadem – some necklaces – that kind of thing – all to adorn her wedding dress – hoping to gee her along, you see? – When she sees these little beauties, she won’t be able to wait to wear them.”

  ”Oh yes, that’ll do it,” Don Giovanni muttered. “What a complete arse!”

  ”You do think – speaking as one gentleman to another – they will work? The jewels? I’m at my wits’ end, you see – I don’t know what else to do.”

  He was looking at me so imploringly, seeking my counsel as one nobleman to another, I have to admit I felt a little honoured. And a little bit terrible, too. This man, complete arse though he may be, was confiding in me in the way that one does sometimes with strangers, and I was deceiving him.

  The wine and the conversation continued to flow. My master, thoroughly bored, rested his elbow on the table and his chin on his hand. Eventually, he gave up kicking me under the ta
ble and giving melodramatic performances of his new one-man show, “The Yawn”. Don Ottavio’s tongue was loose and getting looser. He spoke of his frustration at the indefinite postponement of his nuptials, of his needs as a man – here my master made retching sounds and pulled comical faces of disgust; I had to ram my lace handkerchief into my mouth to quell my laughter – and, Don Ottavio leaned closer, he was ever more grateful for my presence because I had prevented him from committing a dreadful act.

  ”Me? How?”

  ”You sound like a bloody cat,” Don Giovanni grumbled. I waved at him to be quiet. This must have looked odd to my drinking companion but if it did, he gave no sign.

  ”You have saved me from sin, my good sir. I have not been entirely honest with you.” I winced at the H word. My master had perked up at the S word.

  ”I wonder what he had in mind.” He peered at Don Ottavio as though trying to find it written on his face. Don Ottavio scratched his nose as if troubled by a fly, but that could have been coincidence. Don Ottavio’s eyes darted from side to side and he leaned in ever closer. He beckoned me so I leaned in towards him.

  ”I came here deliberately – oh, it’s true about the jewellery and all that – I didn’t miss the coach – I hear that they offer...extra services here – and dash it all! I’m only flesh and blood! What’s a man to do? – I’ve been more than patient and it’s not like I’m saying I only want to marry for the – you know- the- the flesh – I worship that woman in every respect – but, well, you must understand...”

  His words tailed off and he sat back in his chair. The wine was taking effect on his face and body and pulling them down. He struggled to lift his heavy eyelids. Within minutes he was snoring.

  ”Who would have guessed?” Don Giovanni gave the unconscious Don Ottavio a poke in the ribs. “The prissy Don Ottavio, out to dip his wick! The dirty bastard!”