THE EDUCATION OF A QUEEN
573
bought with taste. The volume for my mother was a stroke of
genius: the
complete
poems of Browning. Enormous. Later I
learned that she had paid a special visit to her old English
teacher in high school simply to ask her what one gave an
American lady who had been to college and liked to read. Of
course her teacher said Browning (amazing that it wasn't
"Bobby" Burns); even so, Vasiliki had the fine good sense not
to buy a "collected verse." A delicate point maybe, but she
went up fast in my mother's estimation after that.
Really, though, that was so Greek of her-the desire to
impress by amassing
all
the riches. While of course my mother
mistakenly concluded that Vasiliki had read and liked Brown–
ing and had the true poetry lover's distrust of an anthology,
"which-Daphne--depends on some
other
reader's taste."
Not much later I became Vasiliki's confidante, and I never
betrayed her, till now when all the marbled batter of venom and
love pushes up in me like something rising too fast in the oven.
I despised her sly maneuvers, but I loved her. Because Joshua
wanted her, because she was beautiful, because I longed to
be
het, because with all my mother's brains and education she had
never developed such a skill in stratagem to teach to me so I
could become a woman like other women.
At their fourth meeting, in spite of all mother's and my
delaying tactics, Joshua took Vasiliki down into the dank base–
ment to see his boxes. Mother was a romantic and wanted their
idyll to continue a little longer. I was afraid of what might
happen to Joshua. Nervously, we traipsed downstairs together
after them, peering ahead to see what was going on under the
electric light bulb.
"How-do-you-like-them-aren't-they-marvelously-clever?" .
Mother cried all in one breath.
"Oh yes, they're so cute," said Vasiliki in her pretty, very
very faintly accented syllables. "I like
that
one," pointing at
niridom.
(Continued on Pa.ge 669)
