It had been an easy winter.
Leporello had heard it put down to many things by many people. Donna Anna and Don Ottavio both suspected that it was a favourable wind off the Atlantic to the west, while Masetto thought it was a more favourable wind from Continental Europe to the north. On the one occasion when she had written to him from the nunnery, Elvira had posited that it was down to a favourable easterly wind off the Mediterranean.
Leporello had his own suspicions, of course. He thought – in fact, he knew – that it was down to Don Giovanni being unceremoniously dragged down to Hell the previous year. It wasn't the only change that The Event (as Leporello referred to it, unable as he was to explain it, even to himself) had brought about, but it was the only one that didn't keep Leporello up all night.
The change in the weather had brought about a corresponding change in fortunes of the area. It was almost entirely farming land surrounding the late Don Pedro's estate, which now, since Don Giovanni had died without known issue (although Leporello was sure there must have been a child running around somewhere, probably in Spain or Italy), had devolved, along with Don Giovanni's former estate, to Don Ottavio and Donna Anna. Other than the change in ownership, however, this had brought about very little actual change. There were still fields to be tilled, animals to be tended, and children to be cared for, and very little in the Spanish countryside itself had changed.
Other than the fact that he was now no longer Don Giovanni's manservant, given that Don Giovanni was not around to have a manservant, and instead performed many of the same duties (with the exception of the Catalogue, much to his relief) for Don Ottavio and sometimes for Donna Anna, the biggest change in Leporello's life (even though the change was hardly to his life) was the fact that Zerlina and Masetto had had a son. He was around three months old now, and his name was Pedro, after Donna Anna's father. However, there was work to be done for both Zerlina and Masetto, and therefore the baby occasionally needed to be taken care of by somebody other than one of his parents.
Sometimes, Pedro could be farmed out to other villagers, but on this particular day it appeared that he couldn't have been, so Leporello had been carrying a very excitable three-month-old baby around all day, while supervising events in Don Giovanni's old house. He had been here from time to time, of course, but usually he couldn't bring himself to go any further than the hallway. But he had had to put Pedro on the floor to explain to a maid exactly where a particular room was, and by the time he had finished his explanation, Pedro had crawled away.
The maid had immediately dropped everything to go and search the gardens and grounds, because an out-of-place baby would be especially vulnerable there, while Leporello, being more familiar with the house, was left to look for baby Pedro there. Of course, every door in the place was open, and of course, this included the doors to every cupboard, so half an hour later, an extremely dusty and annoyed Leporello and the maid reconvened in the entrance hall.
"I couldn't find him at all outside." The maid was holding out the tails of Leporello's coat in an attempt to brush the worst of the cobwebs and assorted fluff from a house which had stood empty for a year, while Leporello trie to shake out and generally dust off his cuffs and sleeves. "Are you…are you sure he could be here?"
"Am I–" Leporello just about held back from immediately ordering her out. "Was I or was I not holding him when you came and started talking at me?" He didn't, however, hold back from snapping at her.
"Yes, but–" The maid unwisely attempted to get a word in.
"And did I or did I not put him on the ground–" He stomped over to where he had been standing, wrenching his coat out of her hands as he did so and nearly sending the poor girl flying "–exactly here?" he demanded, and then buried his face in his hands. "God, he's only just crawling," he said, to himself. "How fast can a crawling infant be?" The maid didn't know what to say or do in this situation, so she remained silent and slipped out of the still-open door.
Leporello stood, in the middle of the hallway, with his head in his hands for a good couple of minutes, until he finally managed to collect himself enough to start looking for Pedro again. If he had even noticed that the maid was there to begin with in his plight, he certainly didn't find himself missing her presence. He had only checked half the rooms in the house, and he had been going around meticulously closing all of the doors after equally meticulously checking each room.
This left him with the right side of the house left to check. Four rooms, compared to the seven or eight on the left side. And if he couldn't find Pedro there, then he could just go and throw himself off the roof.
Leporello's old rooms, of which there were two, were on the right side of the house along with the kitchen, and, of course, they were incredibly cluttered. Leporello had habitually collected any old things that he was able to accumulate, and these had built up in the two small rooms that he had occupied for years. He had left in a hurry, taking only a change of clothes and some possessions that he couldn't bear to be without, and the rooms had the look of somewhere that a man in a frenzied panic had whirled through in a hurry, but they also had the look of a place that did not contain any babies.
He slammed the door as he left and stormed through to the kitchen. Fortunately for him, the kitchen was fastidiously tidy, and it was immediately obvious that Pedro wasn't in there. Leporello was able to run through to the door leading through to the final room that he hadn't searched, but he stopped dead when he remembered what was behind that door.
Behind the final door, which was half open and that Leporello was positioned behind in such a way that he couldn't see through into the room, was the dining hall in which Don Giovanni had been dragged down to Hell. Leporello could still remember the precise series of events that had lead up to Don Pedro, or rather an apparition that looked like Don Pedro, coming into the room wailing about repentance. The rest of that evening, and the rest of that year, was an image in his mind that still made the bile rise in the back of Leporello's throat.
But if Pedro was through there, which Leporello very much hoped that he was, he was probably scared, and as much as he could be an unrepentant bastard, Leporello couldn't stand to see a child or an infant upset. Swallowing the rising horror that was building in his stomach, he pushed open the door.
Much to Leporello's relief, Pedro was sat in the middle of the floor, playing with a scorched book that was clamped in his chubby fist, that Leporello vividly remembered dropping on the door when he had run to hide under the table. He swooped in and grabbed the baby, afraid of something that he couldn't quite identify, and wrenched the book out of Pedro's hand. Upset to both have been grabbed so unexpectedly and to have been robbed of what he thought was a brilliant toy, Pedro immediately started wailing.
Leporello took a faltering step towards the table and hopped up onto it. He settled Pedro on his lap and bounced the baby up and down on his knee until he stopped wailing and started looking around his again. "There, now," he said, and then started digging around in his bag for something to entertain Pedro with once he stopped crying. He finally managed to find something that wasn't either of immense sentimental value or highly inappropriate (or both) – a small gilt-silver hand-mirror stolen from God-knows-which of Don Giovanni's "conquests" – and held it out to baby Pedro, who immediately grabbed at it and shoved it into his mouth.
"Lovely," Leporello teased, tickling the baby until he stopped sniffling and started giggling, and also relinquished the mirror again. Leporello wiped it clean on his waistcoat, and then put it back into his bag, now alongside the book he had retrieved.
In the middle of the table, just behind Leporello now that he bothered to look around, was Don Giovanni's old pistol. Leporello hadn't seen it in a year and he hadn't even thought about it, but for some reason he suddenly found himself aching to retrieve it; it felt wrong just to leave it here. So, putting Pedro on his hip and holding onto him around than simply setting him on the table where he could just crawl off, he pivoted around, grabbed it, and shoved it into his bag before Pedro could take note of its interesting design, because a baby with a gun was the last thing he wanted to have in his life.
There were probably more of Don Giovanni's old possessions hanging around in the old palace, and suddenly Leporello wanted to go and collect them. He looked down at Pedro, who still seemed to be awake and alert, and then out of the window to try to gauge the time. The sun was starting to set, but it wasn't yet dark enough that Masetto would be home, or that Zerlina would be starting to worry. In other words, he had enough time to explore.
Holding Pedro on his hip so that the baby could look around and he still had access to at least one arm, Leporello got back up off the table and pushed open the door that lead through from the dining hall to the hallway where he had put Pedro down in the first place. The maid hadn't returned, so he headed up the stairs instead, slightly unsteady as he was holding baby Pedro with both arms. Pedro, inclined to start grabbing at anything that was at his eye level, immediately took hold of Leporello's cravat, and, because he was a baby, he also immediately put it in his mouth. Leporello sighed tolerantly, and gently eased his clothing out of the baby's grasp, but otherwise he did nothing else.
Despite the stress that Pedro had caused him, he was enjoying looking after him: Pedro was a happy, curious, and healthy baby, who rarely cried (unless he was particularly startled, such as by being grabbed by his stressed babysitter), taking after both his mother and his father in different ways. Leporello never wanted children, and although he had toyed with the idea he had never even married and hadn't had any romantic interaction with a woman since before Don Giovanni's death, nor had he wanted to, but he was usually happy to look after Pedro. Mostly, this was because he could give him back at the end of the day.
Leporello didn't know what to expect when he went upstairs. Although he had lived with Don Giovanni for years and had therefore at one point known the whole house to the point that he had been able to navigate it with his eyes closed, there was something eerie about it being completely empty and full of cobwebs, with every surface covered with thick dust. He swiped his hand over a sideboard, and Pedro watched, entranced, as the dust played through a sunbeam coming in through the window. He laughed and clapped, and Leporello did it again.
"Simple pleasures, eh?" He turned Pedro to look at him and stuck his tongue out. Pedro laughed, and Leporello laughed too. "Shall we get on?" he suggested.
The first door was through directly to what had been Don Giovanni's chambers. As soon as Leporello opened the door, a startled cat ran through and down the stairs. Pedro made a happy noise, and Leporello just stared after the animal before shaking his head and going through the door.
The cat had made its bed on what had been Don Giovanni's bed, having ripped up the pillows and the old quilt into a nest. His Lordship won't be impressed, some part of Leporello that still considered itself to be Leporello's manservant said, before immediately silencing itself again. Leporello set Pedro down on the bed, because his arm was starting to fall asleep, and also because there were some things which he thought Don Giovanni would not want to be on display in the room.
He took the mirror back out of his bag again and gave it to Pedro to play with. Pedro laid on his back and thumped the mirror against the mattress, holding onto it tightly by the handle. Leporello supposed that this must have been adequate entertainment for a three-month-old baby. It also didn't escape his mind that watching a three-month-old baby hitting a mirror against a bed was also strangely amusing to a twenty-six-year-old man.
The first things that Leporello thought he probably ought to rescue from the house were Don Giovanni's swords and daggers. The sword that Don Giovanni had usually carried around itself was quite simple to look at, clearly an implement made for stabbing and occasional slashing if need be rather than for aesthetics, and the older one which Leporello had usually wielded looked even less aesthetically pleasing.
The daggers, on the other hand, were clearly much more designed with appearance in mind, although Leporello knew from experience that they were as sharp as they were handsome. He still had a scar from the one currently in his right hand, going across his chest from accidentally startling his master a few years ago.
There were various other weapons in the house, but these four had been Giovanni's favourites and Leporello's favourites, so Leporello felt that he had to take them. The two daggers were stashed away in his bag, but he wasn't sure of what to do with the swords. One of them was still attached to its leather baldric, which Leporello strapped to his left hip, but the other one he would have to carry, along with a baby, and his bag.
Rather than thinking more about the logistics of removing it, Leporello picked Pedro up again, and immediately got beaten over the head with the mirror for taking the trouble. Leporello carefully took it from the baby and turned the reflective side to face Pedro in the hopes of distracting him from further bludgeoning.
Much to Leporello's delight, Pedro was immediately fascinated by his own reflection, moving and watching this new, foreign baby move too, and laughing gleefully. Leporello laughed and danced from foot to foot with the baby, making him giggle more. Leporello took the baby over to the door, leaving the unattributed sword on the bed and pushing open the door that lead through to Don Giovanni's dressing room.
Fortunately for Leporello's already fragile nerves, no feral animals sped out of the door, but he still looked around the room in the twilight for a moment before carrying the baby in. Pedro was immediately delighted by the sight of his reflection in the mirror of the dressing table and pointed excitedly at what he saw as a new playmate.
"Who's that?" Leporello gasped with mock surprise. "Shall we wave?" he asked, although he wasn't entirely certain that Pedro understood the concepts of either "who", "that", or "waving". Still, he gently picked up Pedro's hand to show him how to wave to his reflection.
"That's you!" Leporello said, now equally as delighted as the infant. Pedro, not keen to be left out of whatever they were celebrating, made a joyful sound as Leporello looked around for any things that his Master might not want to be left lying around.
There were a couple of keepsakes from his former lovers, but there was nothing incriminating. However, some of Don Giovanni's old jewellery had been passed down through generations, and Leporello would have felt immensely guilty if any of it had been stolen, although he knew how poor his former master's relationship with his family (or what remained of it when they met) had been. He put what he knew had been Giovanni's mother's wedding ring into his pocket, because he would never have been able to forgive himself if he had lost it and put the rest of the jewellery that would have been of sentimental value into his bag.
This was as far as Leporello could bear to explore, even though Pedro was overjoyed to be able to explore what was to him an exciting new playground. His eyes were beginning to mist up looking at all of these things which had belonged to a man who, although he knew how to make Leporello's life a misery, also knew how to bring him immense joy.
He quickly turned before he was able to start crying, the sword now attached to his hip knocking against his thigh, and hurried back through, picking up the sword as he passed back through the bedroom. Pedro didn't seem to know that anything was amiss, even as Leporello rushed back down the stairs.
He was surprised, when he opened the door, to find Don Ottavio and Donna Anna waiting outside for him. He didn't quite know what to say, either about the fact that he had clearly been snooping around in his former master's home with a three-month-old infant or about the fact that he was visibly nearly crying, but luckily neither Ottavio nor Anna questioned him.
"Hello, darling!" Anna, like Leporello (but unlike Ottavio) didn't want to have children. However, she, also like Leporello, adored Pedro. Even though there was a considerable disparity in their ranks, she had bonded especially with Zerlina during the time that they had known each-other, and she and Don Ottavio had even been present at Zerlina and Masetto's wedding, along with Leporello, and Pedro was named after Donna Anna's father even though neither Zerlina nor Masetto had ever knowingly met the Commendatore during his life.
"May I take him?" Anna asked.
Leporello nodded, not trusting his voice not to crack, and once Pedro had been safely transferred into Donna Anna's arms he hung back with Don Ottavio. Leporello had sometimes found Ottavio's inability to hold a conversation frustrating, especially going from a master with whom conversation could be so natural to being in Don Ottavio's service. However, when Leporello was upset he couldn't help but be relieved by the companionable silence as they began the walk back to the village to return Pedro to his parents.
Unfortunately for Leporello, the walk back to the village took them past the graveyard with the statue of the Commendatore. Anna, walking a little way ahead of Ottavio and Leporello, pointed the statue out to baby Pedro, who probably didn't understand the phrase "you're named after him", but was happy to "wave" at the statue when directed how to by Anna. Leporello still couldn't look at it, even though its face had softened since last year and it didn't seem to glare at him. Even being in its general vicinity sped his heartbeat up and made his limbs shake slightly.
In the sunset, though, was where he looked the least threatening. His marble brow seemed softer than by either daylight or by the moon, and he didn't seem to glare straight through Leporello, although he still seemed to fix his gaze dead into his face. But for some reason, Leporello felt the inclination to go and speak to the statue.
He made his excuses to Don Ottavio and asked him to apologise to Donna Anna for leaving so suddenly, waited until the couple were out of sight, and slipped into the graveyard. His hands were shaking, and his chest felt tight, but he still somehow found himself standing in front of the statue of the Commendatore.
The inscription on the front of the statue had worn away somewhat through a year of being constantly buffeted by whatever the Spanish weather deigned to throw at it, but Leporello could still read it; could still remember reading it for the first time as if it had just been five minutes ago. "Dell'empio che mi trasse al passo estremo qui attendo la vendetta1".
Leporello forced himself to ignore the inscription which felt like it was mocking him even after so much time, and his eyes instead lighted on the dates just below it, showing the span of the Commendatore's life. The date of his birth was just over fifty-five years ago, but Leporello's attention was drawn more to the date of his death. A year ago, that day.
Leporello felt like he had been punched in the face.
"I don't know what to do." For a moment, Leporello wasn't sure who, or what, he was talking to, but after a second, he realised that he was addressing the statue of the Commendatore. It was a sad state of affairs when the only person or thing that he could confide in was a ten-foot statue that he could barely look at without wanting to scream.
The statue was unrelentingly terrifying, but Leporello had never been able to talk to anybody about this. Even when Masetto and Zerlina had offered, he hadn't known how to even begin to explain what he was feeling, let alone have a full conversation about it. Now that he was standing in front of the statue of the Commendatore, though, he found the words came to him easily.
"I don't sleep," he started, aware that anybody passing would think that he was a madman, pacing up and down and talking to a statue, "not anymore; not for a year." He ran his hand over his forehead, as though he was trying to physically push the thoughts out of his head.
The statue stared at him, but it didn't do so judgementally. If anything, in fact, Leporello would have classified his expression as one of curiosity.
"Every time…" He was on the verge of tears. "Every time I try to sleep, I see it, and I hear it, and…" He rested his hands on the pedestal, now staring at the inscription. "I know it was his fault." The statue was staring at him again now. "And I know I shouldn't, but I miss him," he said, in a very small voice.
If statues could raise their eyebrows, which this one undoubtedly could, Leporello was certain that this one would have done so. But it remained still, glowering down at Leporello as though simultaneously judging and pitying him.
"I despised him for years," he went on. "I wished him dead on the worst days and I wanted to leave so many times, but I never did and I–" But he was crying now, barely able to keep himself upright with his head buried in his hands and every inch of his body shaking. For a year he had been so desperately unhappy, and unable to fully conceptualise or even begin to put into words the reason, but he was now able to think straight again, and it felt like his entire mind and the careful walls that he had built around the source of his problems to keep himself from breaking down were unravelling around him.
"And you!" He levelled the sword accusingly at the statue, and it almost seemed to jump back, although that might just have been that Leporello was crying so much that he could barely see. "He…" He tried to get what he was saying straight. "You replied to him immediately, the second he talked to you. But I've been here for God knows how long and you won't even…" He couldn't say anything now, just sobbing and falling down onto his knees in front of the statue.
"Please!" he sobbed, but there was no reply; the statue said nothing, and Leporello was left with the knowledge that he was just a man, crying on his knees in front on a stone monument that terrified him.