seville — one night — it is always this night
You arrived late. The father is already dead.
The duel was over before you found the door. An old man face-down on the flagstones, a sword put up wet, and the victor already calling for wine in the next room. He wiped the blade on a wedding handkerchief. It wasn't his handkerchief, and it wasn't his wedding.
Death? — you can hear the glass in his hand — Death keeps generous books. Tan largo me lo fiáis: what long credit you give me. Wine first. The arithmetic later.
(that's the commendatore on the stones. that's my master with the wine. two elegant feats in one evening — charm the daughter, skewer the father. bravo. i said that out loud. god help me, i meant it.)
(i'm leporello. i keep the list. someone has to, and i've gotten good at it, which is the part i confess to no one.)
(you'll be in it before sunrise. no, don't ask how i know. yours is no. 1,004.)
the night goes down, not on ↓
i. a wedding below
There is always a wedding below.
Zerlina's, this time — a bride in her own garland, a groom already learning what his hands are for: clenching. He moved through the dancing the way weather moves through a valley, and the music followed him, because music knows who is paying.
Women. More necessary to me than bread, than air. — The list, by morning, should be ten names longer; we are behind. No. Not her. You. Give me your hand. Là ci darem la mano. The bride keeps. You won't.
ii. a balcony, and her voice over it
She warns the whole street, and the street leans in to him.
Do not trust him! I am the proof of him — he swore, he married me, he was smoke by morning! Whoever you are in the dark there: run!
Hear it? The tambourine in her voice. Elvira. She caught me once; what she caught was the leaving. They never warn you about the warner — she still loves me. It ruins the testimony.
Leporello. The mandolin. And then, up at a window that is suddenly, unmistakably yours: Come to the glass. Not for me. For the view of me.
(he is serenading your window now. i'd warn you off, but i warned the last three hundred and it never once helped — it isn't about you. it has never been about any of them. that's the whole aria.)
iii. the graveyard — marble keeps the temperature of its grudges
The statue is new. The grudge is newer.
ah. ah. ah —
YOU WILL FINISH LAUGHING BEFORE DAWN.
AQUÍ AGUARDA DEL SEÑOR EL MÁS LEAL CABALLERO LA VENGANZA DE UN TRAIDOR
here the most loyal of gentlemen awaits, from the Lord, vengeance upon a traitor
Vengeance. From the Lord. By furniture. — he reads it the way other men read menus — Old man, you stood better when you stood. Dinner. Tonight. My table. Bring your appetite, if death left you one.
(o most noble statue— señor commendat— i can't. my hands won't. he is watching me fail at it. sir. madam. it has to be you. i'm sorry. that was my job, and he is giving you my job, and i'm sorry.)
iv. the dinner — two places, one of them grey
The wine breathes. So does something on the stairs.
The table is laid for two. He had the second place set in marble grey, as a joke, and the joke has been sitting there all evening getting heavier. The knocking has been getting closer all night — you've felt it in the floor.
Here is the thing about him nobody will tell you, so the ledger will: he heard every knock, and ranked them below the wine. Whatever else is rotten in him, the nerve is real. Courage spent on the one war nobody wins — that is the whole tragedy, and he would order it again.
(don't be here for the third one. — you're going to be here for the third one, aren't you. of course. you're in the list, and the list stays for endings. so do i. that's my other job.)