THE EDUCATION OF A QUEEN
681
I said, "Where did you get the hair, Joshua?" I think
1
was
actually jealous again for the breath of an instant.
He laughed. "What did you think? That I'd kept only one
of your curls?"
But there were no more good boxes. Whatever it was that
had made them good was gone. Vanished. Blitzed. I think he
realized this-lam sure he did from a remark he made to me
sometime later about failure. But slowly he continued to turn them
out. Frequently he went back to see his psychiatrist, and they held
long discussions together. Perhaps they talked about his boxes. I
don't know. Joshua was a very patient man, but he was no longer
either talented or mad. I think his talent blew out at the same
time as that lovely wildness in his eyes. This was hardly the
psychiatrist's fault . Please understand that I am not repeating
"artists are madmen" or "psychoanalysis removes the desire to
create"-those glib catch-phrases of our blind times. Joshua was
not The Artist. He was a particular human being in a special set
of circumstances. I think the light in Joshua's eyes was a conviction
of immortality-mistaken, maybe, but necessary to
his
continuance
as an artist. That light was quenched when he realized that the
striking of a match had-not
could,
but
had--destroyed
his fanta-
, sies. Killed his boxes. That his dreams had proved to be as casuall;'
ephemeral as his mere life.
At about the time I went off to college he got a much better
job and moved to another city, but we corresponded with some
regularity. It was 1943 and he was glad, he wrote, to be ruled 4-F
(shirker! draft-evader! people said) because of those weeks in the
state hospital. He had a small lath-and-plaster bungalow with a
garden, and he would much prefer, he remarked in a letter to me,
killing weeds than people.
I was having a rousing good time at college. There were
almost no male civilians left on campus, but the air force, in its
infinite wisdom, had seen fit to set up a base in the next town–
eight minutes by bus, every hour on the hour. I liked the air force
uniforms, and the sense of dash and urgency 'their lives imparted
to the "boys" excited me, too.
Why was it that there was nothing so sexy as frolicsome Mr.
Bones, jauntily tap dancing around the corner? Flyers were killed
