The Lizard’s Don Giovanni

Contributor: Samantha Memi

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I was lying in bed wondering if the hotel would remember to wake me in the morning when a gecko came in through the window and walked along the wall.
I was too tired to shoo it away.
“You won't hurt me will you, Mr Gecko.”
“I'm looking for roaches, big fat juicy roaches. What would I want with the likes of you.” and he continued his journey on the wall.
Just as I was drifting into sleep he started whistling. There's nothing worse than a whistling gecko when you're trying to sleep.
“Do you mind not whistling?” I asked.
“What's with all the complaining?” he replied, “you get on with your life and I'll get on with mine.”
“Yes, but your whistling bothers me.”
“You're breathing bothers me. Do I complain about it? No. Why not? Because I believe in letting others live their lives the way they want to. But not you. You want to dictate to others how they should live.”
He stopped whistling. I drifted. I needed to get to the train station early to ensure I got a ticket.
He started singing. It was a song about a cockroach who fell in love with a grasshopper and wooed her with many gifts and just as they were about to marry both were eaten by a gecko. I asked him not to sing.
“What? you wanna run my life for me? I can't do anything because big fat Miss Human thinks she can tell me what I can and can't do.”
“I want to get some sleep.”
“I'm not stopping you.”
“You’re singing.”
“I like to sing. You don't like singing and that gives you the right to stop me.”
“I do like singing, but...”
“You like Mozart?”
“That wasn't Mozart.”
“I didn't say it was, I asked if you liked him.”
“Yes.”
“You like Don Giovanni?”
“I have to get up in the morning. I just want to sleep. This is my room.”
“Your room? So I'm not allowed in? Is that what you're saying? Do I tell you not to climb my tree? No. And you know why? Because I don't have a tree. Did you ever see a gecko struggling along with a backpack? No. You know why? Because we’re free. We're not enslaved by possessions and all your stupid this is my room, this is my bed, this is my space. You should learn how to live.”

This was too much. I had to see Janine tomorrow. I got out of bed.
“Hey hey hey,” screamed the gecko, “I know you're bigger than me. But there's no need to resort to violence. Why don't we settle this matter amicably.”
I picked up a newspaper and shooed him out of the room. I closed the shutters and the window, and lay down. Without the cool breeze it was too sticky hot to sleep. The hotel sign squeezed intermittent orange and green through gaps in the shutters. I listened to the crickets. Then from the window I heard a squeaky song:

The grasshopper and the cockroach they wanted to wed.
But sly Mr Gecko, he ate them instead.
And selfish Miss Human, she lay on her bed.
Thinking and dreaming that he would be dead.
But a gecko so lively, it has to be said,
Could outwit a human without any dread.

Sleep was out of the question. I went down to the bar.
“There's a gecko in my room.”
“All the rooms have geckos.”
“It's singing.”
“Opera?”
“It's keeping me awake and I have to get up early to buy a train ticket.”
“I can sell you a ticket. Where are you going?”

Ticket in hand and no thought of queues in the morning, I went back to my room and opened the window.
The gecko stood on the window ledge.
“Oh, it's you,” he said.
“Do you know the duet of Don Giovanni and Zerlina?”
The gecko coughed and cleared his throat, he stood on his hind legs and looked at me. In perfect Italian he sang:
Lá ci darem la mano, lá mi dirai di sì
I stood by the open window bewitched by the sunrise gradating into the purpling sky and sang:
Vorrei e non vorrei, mi trema un poco il cor
The gecko stood on the ledge, his slit eyes gazing at me, and our hearts came together in Mozart, and I forgot about queues and train stations and lived for the moment, not for tomorrow.


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Samantha Memi lives in London. Her fictional life can be found at http://samanthamemi.weebly.com/

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Author: Samantha Memi