26
I had shipped ahead a box of books to myself, right before I left New York to move to Italy.
The box was guaranteed to arrive at my Roman apartment within four to six days, but I think
the Italian post office must have misread that instruction as “forty-six days,” for two months
have passed now, and I have seen no sign of my box. My Italian friends tell me to put the box
out of my mind completely. They say that the box may arrive or it may not arrive, but such
things are out of our hands.
“Did someone maybe steal it?” I ask Luca Spaghetti. “Did the post office lose it?”
He covers his eyes. “Don’t ask these questions,” he says. “You’ll only make yourself up-
set.”
The mystery of my missing box prompts a long discussion one night between me, my
American friend Maria and her husband, Giulio. Maria thinks that in a civilized society one
should be able to rely on such things as the post office delivering one’s mail in a prompt man-
ner, but Giulio begs to differ. He submits that the post office belongs not to man, but to the
fates, and that delivery of mail is not something anybody can guarantee. Maria, annoyed,
says this is only further evidence of the Protestant-Catholic divide. This divide is best proven,
she says, by the fact that Italians—including her own husband—can never make plans for the
future, not even a week in advance. If you ask a Protestant from the American Midwest to
commit to a dinner date next week, that Protestant, believing that she is the captain of her
own destiny, will say, “Thursday night works fine for me.” But if you ask a Catholic from Ca-
labria to make the same commitment, he will only shrug, turn his eyes to God, and ask, “How
can any of us know whether we will be free for dinner next Thursday night, given that
everything is in God’s hands and none of us can know our fate?”
Still, I go to the post office a few times to try to track down my box, to no avail. The Roman
postal employee is not at all happy to have her phone call to her boyfriend interrupted by my
presence. And my Italian—which has been getting better, honestly—fails me in such stressful
circumstances. As I try to speak logically about my missing box of books, the woman looks at
me like I’m blowing spit bubbles.