I asked Giulio, “What’s the word in Naples?” He knows the south of Italy well.
“FIGHT,” he decides. “What was the word in your family when you were growing up?”
That one was difficult. I was trying to think of a single word that somehow combines both
FRUGAL and IRREVERENT. But Giulio was already on to the next and most obvious ques-
tion: “What’s your word?”
Now that, I definitely could not answer.
And still, after a few weeks of thinking about it, I can’t answer it any better now. I know
some words that it definitely isn’t. It’s not MARRIAGE, that’s evident. It’s not FAMILY (though
this was the word of the town I’d lived in for a few years with my husband, and since I did not
fit with that word, this was a big cause of my suffering). It’s not DEPRESSION anymore, thank
heavens. I’m not concerned that I share Stockholm’s word of CONFORM. But I don’t feel that
I’m entirely inhabiting New York City’s ACHIEVE anymore, either, though that had indeed
been my word all throughout my twenties. My word might be SEEK. (Then again, let’s be hon-
est—it might just as easily be HIDE.) Over the last months in Italy, my word has largely been
PLEASURE, but that word doesn’t match every single part of me, or I wouldn’t be so eager to
get myself to India. My word might be DEVOTION, though this makes me sound like more of
a goody-goody than I am and doesn’t take into account how much wine I’ve been drinking.
I don’t know the answer, and I suppose that’s what this year of journeying is about. Find-
ing my word. But one thing I can say with all assurance—it ain’t SEX.
Or so I claim, anyhow. You tell me, then, why today my feet led me almost of their own ac-
cord to a discreet boutique off the Via Condotti, where—under the expert tutelage of the silky
young Italian shop girl—I spent a few dreamy hours (and a transcontinental airline ticket’s
worth of money) buying enough lingerie to keep a sultan’s consort outfitted for 1,001 nights. I
bought bras of every shape and formation. I bought filmy, flimsy camisoles and sassy bits of
panty in every color of the Easter basket, and slips that came in creamy satins and hush-now-
baby silks, and handmade little bits of string and things and basically just one velvety, lacy,
crazy valentine after another.
I have never owned things like this in my life. So why now? As I was walking out of the
store, hauling my cache of tissue-wrapped naughties under my arm, I suddenly thought of the
anguished demand I’d heard a Roman soccer fan yell the other night at the Lazio game, when
Lazio’s star player Albertini at a critical moment had passed the ball right into the middle of
nowhere, for no reason whatsoever, totally blowing the play.
“Per chi???” the fan had shouted in near-madness. “Per chi???”
For WHOM??? For whom are you passing this ball, Albertini? Nobody’s there!