She was slowly gaining confidence. Her writing had become more fluid, more agile. It was like a muscle that stretched and gained speed. Dared she admit, even to herself, that a book like this could have a voice? And that she was actually beginning to find it? Now and again she threw in a funny line, a little humorous spark. She was getting bolder. One day, as she was having coffee with her colleagues before class, she mentioned that she was writing something. It felt good to come out and say it, as it would make her work real and stop her from treating it like a hobby, a secret pastime. There were words of approval along with a few patronizing smiles. When one of her colleagues asked whether she had a publisher, she laughed. It’s an experiment, I’m just having fun with it, she said breezily. Later, on the train back home, one of the teachers—Clelia, a sad woman from Pisa who had married an Iranian in New Jersey and then had had a tragic divorce—asked her what her book was about. She answered vaguely, afraid that Clelia, with her thick glasses and old-fashioned clothes, might think she was making fun of her, that she might be making caricatures out of all of them—a bunch of Italians who still spoke English with thick accents, small people who lived in small apartments, who didn’t have the glamour of the fashion designers, the visual artists or the famous architects who’d made their country such a salable commodity.
She went home that night and decided it was time to do something about the huge pile of laundry that had amassed over the kitchen table. Laundry was something she had always tended to postpone, as she found the whole procedure boring and unpleasant. She took the elevator down to the basement, and started loading the washing machine. Under the tremulous fluorescent light in that dark space she realized why doing the laundry in the city could be such a depressing chore.
The dryer.
We, as a people, are against it: no Italian possesses one. Dryers are the only bit of American culture that we still firmly and unanimously resist. We dry our sheets, towels, shirts, T-shirts, etc., on a clothesline, letting wind and sun take care of them. We still believe in the power of natural heat and we love the smell of bedsheets dried on a sunny, windy day. In any Italian city, you’ll see our garments hanging on a line outside our windows, balconies, roofs or strung across an alley. We don’t mind, we actually love the sight of our underwear flapping in the wind. Our eyes have gotten used to it, it’s part of the landscape; tourists love to take pictures of it, they think hanging laundry is quintessentially Italian, the way it dots the landscape in bright colors. Sometimes their photos appear on Instagram or on Flickr, or as a lovely postcard, and we think that’s quite sweet—our underwear, socks and panties have become a work of art!
There’s another advantage that comes with hanging laundry on a line. Not only do we save energy, but our clothes don’t get floppy and slack like they do in America because of that killer dryer spin that—it is common knowledge—destroys the weave of any fiber. Can’t you see how dead and stale your socks and T-shirts, blouses and pants, feel on your skin after just a couple of spins? That floppiness soon translates into slovenliness, and before you know it you’ll look like a slob if you don’t run out and buy something new.
Part of what is internationally known as “Italian style” is simply a sense of crispness, which derives from the wind and sun that rejuvenates the very fabrics we wear. What I’m talking about is something deep and archaic, linked with a ritual that has been performed for millennia. To hang your clothes out to dry in the sun as opposed to throwing them inside the belly of a metal monster in the depths of your dark basement is a drastically different choice. If you agree that the world is made up of billions of particles aggregating in different shapes and forms, then you’ll see what I mean when I say that dryers not only kill clothes but tamper with your energy and charisma.
A student of hers, a young corporate lawyer in love with Tuscany and its cypresses, asked her for private tutoring. They met twice a week in a coffee shop in Midtown near his office and had conversations over his lunch break. They always ordered a scoop of tuna and potato salad on a bed of lettuce and he insisted on paying the bill. It was awkward at first (having these dates with a complete stranger and being paid twenty dollars an hour in order to make small talk?) and she worried she might have nothing to say. Because the man was mildly attractive she felt shy around him and for both reasons early in the week she’d start making a list of possible subjects, in order to arrive prepared. The conversation languished at first, they struggled, pretending to be interested in the bland topics she’d picked—the weather, summer holidays, and, of course, favorite foods—then they became more comfortable with each other as the weeks went by and they began to talk about films they’d seen, music they loved, TV series they watched. One day he told her about a show in an art gallery in Chelsea he’d read about and asked her if she’d like to go with him on the weekend. They could do their lesson in motion and speak about art. She said yes, that would be a really good idea. Then he said he liked her style. What style? she asked, feeling her cheeks redden. I don’t know. The things you wear.
Let me tell you about my mother.
Her number one rule is “meglio morta che in pigiama” (better dead than in pj’s). That means that even if she has nowhere to go and no one to see, half an hour after waking up, she’ll be coiffed, dressed, lipsticked, in sheer stockings and patent leather shoes, a dot of perfume dabbed on each wrist. In my entire life I’ve never seen my mother in slippers, or what some people call a housedress or a nightie, past 8 a.m. I am not talking about a grand dame, but an ordinary housewife in her late sixties living off her dead husband’s meager pension. What she wears are tweed skirts and low pumps bought twenty or thirty years ago that—according to her—never went out of fashion. And although they certainly did, if your average Americans were to see my mother walking with her shopping bag out for groceries on a side street of the centro storico wearing her old-fashioned dark glasses and cultured pearls, they would ask each other, “How do Italians manage to always be so chic? Just take a look at that old lady across the street.” The recipient of this compliment would be wearing an ensemble worth no more than twenty-five euros max in a vintage store, one that any American would have thrown out fifteen years earlier. Italian style is not a matter of designers or labels or fashion, it’s a question of details—of a certain formality. It’s not so much about what we wear as what we don’t. You’ll never see an adult Italian walking around in shorts other than at the beach, or wearing a baseball cap. Sneakers made a brief appearance in the eighties, flip-flops are a no-no footwear other than at the beach or the spa. For Italians, comfort is not a value and has never been aspiration. Good construction comes with constriction, and we are perfectly used to being uncomfortable in our ingeniously tailored clothes. In Rome the only people in shorts, baggy T-shirts and baseball hats are the flocks of tourists wandering between the Forum and the Colosseum. They seem to be completely unaware of the fact that they look like slobs, especially when they are over sixty years old, dressed like fat teenagers. My grandfather wore hats and jackets till the day he died. To think of him, even as a young man, in shorts and a baseball cap is not only inconceivable: it would be grotesque. I am convinced that having the image of your ancestors in hats and jackets embedded in your memory will translate into a bonus—i.e., it must and will affect your behavior and ultimately your self-confidence.
After the art show the corporate lawyer—his name was Matt—took her to dinner at an expensive Italian restaurant and after the first glass of wine they switched to English. They both relaxed and became their true selves now that they didn’t have to speak like five-year-olds in simplified Italian. Back in full control of the language, he made witty remarks about the artist and the people at the opening. He wasn’t wearing a suit like the ones she always saw him in, but jeans and an untucked checked flannel shirt. They both ordered linguine with shrimp and asparagus, and he said it was a relief to eat with someone who wasn’t just going to have a salad with dressing on the side, and that he liked the way Italian women seemed to worry less about eating, drinking and smoking than their American counterparts. She took the cue and they both went outside for a cigarette after dessert. She told him she was writing a book called The Italian System. He momentarily switched back to Italian and asked, “Cosa parla il libro?” She corrected him: “Di cosa parla il libro?” Of what does the book talk about? They both agreed that it was funny the way, in Italian, a book “talked” about itself. Matt walked her home and as he said goodbye he told her his firm had done legal work for a publishing company some time ago and he could talk to some people about her idea if she wished.
Matt the lawyer never came back to her with news from the publishing company. Actually, after their date at the art show, he disappeared and there were no more lunches at the coffee shop. She didn’t care. She didn’t even bother to spend any time worrying about what might have gone wrong, whether he had found her dull or, worse, delusional. She had more important things to think about now than flirting with a corporate lawyer. These days on the train to work she listened to audiobooks. She liked the isolation that shielded her from the rest of the commuters. She avidly listened to the writers’ prose with a different, more intimate attention, no longer merely as a reader, more like someone intent on stealing technique. She singled out adjectives and phrases and rushed to scribble them down in her notebook; random words ended up in her net like tiny prey that she meant to free at home, once in front of the computer. She was busy, she had a mission to complete.
Did you know that in Italian there is no word for wilderness? The only possible way to translate it is “natura,” even though nature can be peaceful, tamed, a pastoral dream. From time immemorial—due to its shape and history—very little of the territory of Italy has remained unpopulated, uncultivated, undomesticated. During Augustus’s reign, Rome already had a population of one million people, the whole country was a maze of paved roads that connected north to south, east to west, that went over mountains and rivers. Everyone was connected; ours has always been an unthreatening, user-friendly landscape. A small country, as lovely in its details as a miniature. We had no tundra, no black forest, no savanna, no desert, no endless plains or prairies to cross or wade through. We had palaces, libraries, theaters, spas, aqueducts, silks and jewels, people bought food at the market during the same era that—in most parts of the planet—men still had to go hunting in the woods with bows and arrows to get their dinner.
How has this lack of wilderness affected us? It has given us an innate friendliness, an open heart, and maybe a lesser talent for extreme adventures. The Italian System is a mix of civilized demeanor, and domesticity, coupled with the spontaneity deriving from our connection to the natural (we are not the hunters of the world, we are the happy foragers!) with its secret ingredient: lightness. Yes, we are a deeply superficial people. And by deeply I mean that our lightness has complexity and layers. La leggerezza, as we call it, is the necessary quality to execute the flawless dive, the effortless pirouette. The nature of anything truly enchanting has to be as light as a whiff of air.
During the summer holidays she flew to Rome to visit her mother. As soon as she got off the plane the first thing that greeted her on the A91 were gigantic billboards of naked women advertising all kinds of things that didn’t require nudity—a luxury handbag, a hardware store, a double-dark-chocolate ice cream. From the taxi, once in the city, she noticed cracks in the asphalt, where wild grass had sprouted and bloomed, potholes and cigarette butts strewn on the pavement. At the traffic lights she spotted several men in shorts and baseball hats, riding their mopeds. Some were middle-aged and wore slackened tank tops, which showed drooping shoulders and flabby underarms. Most of the women on the streets had a flat, opaque, orangey tan, the kind that can be acquired only in a salon. Their slutty tops and boa constrictor jeans had nothing of the elegance and formality she had conjured up in her notes. The taxi driver kept the radio full blast on a local station where a rowdy and drunken group of males were having an argument about a football match. The sulking driver pretended not to hear when she asked if he could please lower the volume because she needed to use her cell phone. He swore without restraint for two solid minutes when a driver swerved unexpectedly in front of him. He overcharged her.
When her mother heard she was on her way home from the airport she was caught by surprise.
“You are here already? Oh my God, I’m still in my nightgown!” she said.
“It’s almost noon, Mamma! How come you’re not ready yet? I’ll be over in twenty minutes.”
“I know, I know, but it’s Sunday, and I’ve been taking things slowly on a Sunday.”
She heard her mother rummaging somewhere, the sound of drawers opening and closing.
“Santo Cielo!” her mother said, in a frantic tone. “I have only frozen peas in the fridge. I totally forgot to shop for food last night. I could put together a pea omelette for lunch, though. Would you be happy with that?”
Lately her mother had become forgetful, and the smallest change of plan confused her.
“A pea omelette? I never heard of it,” she said. “I think we should go out to eat and celebrate instead. I have so much to tell you.”
The corner restaurant had changed owners and now was serving only fixed-price meals for tourists. Since they were sitting outside in the sun her mother had insisted on wearing a straw hat and a strange pair of polyester workout pants with a stripe down the legs, an article of clothing she’d never seen her mother in before. The waiter, after taking a look at the old lady’s outfit, had addressed them in English.
“We are Italian! We are from around the corner!” she said, glaring at him with reproach.
She had a soggy plate of microwaved lasagne but decided to contain her resentment. When they were finished eating she raised her glass of Pinot Grigio.
“Mamma, we need to make a toast. I have something very important to tell you.”
Her mother raised her Diet Coke. Apparently she was no longer drinking any wine.
“Did you find somebody, over there?” her mother asked, hopeful.
“No. It’s much better than that. I’ve got a publisher. A big one.”
“A publisher?”
“Yes, for the book I told you about, the one that I’ve been writing all year? They love the idea. They’ve given me a pretty nice advance.”
Her mother’s eyes lost their focus for a moment. Then she came back and smiled.
“That’s wonderful, tesoro. I am so happy for you.”
They touched glasses and each took a small sip.
“It’s like a manual. How to become an Italian sort of thing. My editor says it has a lot of commercial potential. She loves the title.”
Her mother seemed lost in thought again. She said, “I feel like having something sweet. How about you?”
She nodded distractedly. “The book is called The Italian System, Mamma. What do you think?”
“The Italian System?” the mother asked while engrossed in the dessert menu. She closed it and stared at her with the blank expression she wore when she wasn’t really listening.
“Yes. Il Sistema Italiano. Don’t you think it would work?”
“Do we have a system? I never knew we had one, actually.”
Before she could say anything her mother raised her hand toward the waiter.
“The ginger-basil-walnut ice cream sounds very tempting.”
It didn’t matter that everything looked different. Maybe it had always been this way, a sort of uglier version of what she had recalled. But this is exactly what matters, she thought: it’s the imprint that makes us who we are, no matter the land we’re born to, or on what soil we walk.
“I’ll have the same,” she said.