Catch-22 (24 page)

   ‘There’s nothing wrong with my appendix,’ Yossarian informed
them. ‘The doctor yesterday said it was my liver.’

   ‘Maybe it is his liver,’ replied the white-haired officer in
charge. ‘What does his blood count show?’

   ‘He hasn’t had a blood count.’

   ‘Have one taken right away. We can’t afford to take chances
with a patient in his condition. We’ve got to keep ourselves covered in case he
dies.’ He made a notation on his clipboard and spoke to Yossarian. ‘In the
meantime, keep that ice bag on. It’s very important.’

   ‘I don’t have an ice bag on.’

   ‘Well, get one. There must be an ice bag around here
somewhere. And let someone know if the pain becomes unendurable.’ At the end of
ten days, a new group of doctors came to Yossarian with bad news; he was in
perfect health and had to get out. He was rescued in the nick of time by a
patient across the aisle who began to see everything twice. Without warning,
the patient sat up in bed and shouted.

   ‘I see everything twice!’ A nurse screamed and an orderly
fainted. Doctors came running up from every direction with needles, lights,
tubes, rubber mallets and oscillating metal tines. They rolled up complicated
instruments on wheels. There was not enough of the patient to go around, and
specialists pushed forward in line with raw tempers and snapped at their
colleagues in front to hurry up and give somebody else a chance. A colonel with
a large forehead and horn-rimmed glasses soon arrived at a diagnosis.

   ‘It’s meningitis,’ he called out emphatically, waving the
others back. ‘Although Lord knows there’s not the slightest reason for thinking
so.’

   ‘Then why pick meningitis?’ inquired a major with a suave
chuckle. ‘Why not, let’s say, acute nephritis?’

   ‘Because I’m a meningitis man, that’s why, and not an
acute-nephritis man,’ retorted the colonel. ‘And I’m not going to give him up
to any of you kidney birds without a struggle. I was here first.’ In the end,
the doctors were all in accord. They agreed they had no idea what was wrong
with the soldier who saw everything twice, and they rolled him away into a room
in the corridor and quarantined everyone else in the ward for fourteen days.

   Thanksgiving Day came and went without any fuss while
Yossarian was still in the hospital. The only bad thing about it was the turkey
for dinner, and even that was pretty good. It was the most rational
Thanksgiving he had ever spent, and he took a sacred oath to spend every future
Thanksgiving Day in the cloistered shelter of a hospital. He broke his sacred
oath the very next year, when he spent the holiday in a hotel room instead in
intellectual conversation with Lieutenant Scheisskopf’s wife, who had Dori Duz’s
dog tags on for the occasion and who henpecked Yossarian sententiously for
being cynical and callous about Thanksgiving, even though she didn’t believe in
God just as much as he didn’t.

   ‘I’m probably just as good an atheist as you are,’ she
speculated boastfully. ‘But even I feel that we all have a great deal to be
thankful for and that we shouldn’t be ashamed to show it.’

   ‘Name one thing I’ve got to be thankful for,’ Yossarian
challenged her without interest.

   ‘Well…’ Lieutenant Scheisskopf’s wife mused and paused a
moment to ponder dubiously. ‘Me.’

   ‘Oh, come on,’ he scoffed.

   She arched her eyebrows in surprise. ‘Aren’t you thankful for
me?’ she asked. She frowned peevishly, her pride wounded. ‘I don’t have to
shack up with you, you know,’ she told him with cold dignity. ‘My husband has a
whole squadron full of aviation cadets who would be only too happy to shack up
with their commanding officer’s wife just for the added fillip it would give
them.’ Yossarian decided to change the subject. ‘Now you’re changing the
subject,’ he pointed out diplomatically. ‘I’ll bet I can name two things to be
miserable about for every one you can name to be thankful for.’

   ‘Be thankful you’ve got me,’ she insisted.

   ‘I am, honey. But I’m also goddam good and miserable that I
can’t have Dori Duz again, too. Or the hundreds of other girls and women I’ll
see and want in my short lifetime and won’t be able to go to bed with even
once.’

   ‘Be thankful you’re healthy.’

   ‘Be bitter you’re not going to stay that way.’

   ‘Be glad you’re even alive.’

   ‘Be furious you’re going to die.’

   ‘Things could be much worse,’ she cried.

   ‘They could be one hell of a lot better,’ he answered
heatedly.

   ‘You’re naming only one thing,’ she protested. ‘You said you
could name two.’

   ‘And don’t tell me God works in mysterious ways,’ Yossarian
continued, hurtling on over her objection. ‘There’s nothing so mysterious about
it. He’s not working at all. He’s playing. Or else He’s forgotten all about us.
That’s the kind of God you people talk about—a country bumpkin, a clumsy,
bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence
can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such
phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of creation? What in
the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when
He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the
world did He ever create pain?’

   ‘Pain?’ Lieutenant Scheisskopf’s wife pounced upon the word
victoriously. ‘Pain is a useful symptom. Pain is a warning to us of bodily
dangers.’

   ‘And who created the dangers?’ Yossarian demanded. He laughed
caustically. ‘Oh, He was really being charitable to us when He gave us pain!
Why couldn’t He have used a doorbell instead to notify us, or one of His
celestial choirs? Or a system of blue-and-red neon tubes right in the middle of
each person’s forehead. Any jukebox manufacturer worth his salt could have done
that. Why couldn’t He?’

   ‘People would certainly look silly walking around with red
neon tubes in the middle of their foreheads.’

   ‘They certainly look beautiful now writhing in agony or
stupefied with morphine, don’t they? What a colossal, immortal blunderer! When
you consider the opportunity and power He had to really do a job, and then look
at the stupid, ugly little mess He made of it instead, His sheer incompetence
is almost staggering. It’s obvious He never met a payroll. Why, no
self-respecting businessman would hire a bungler like Him as even a shipping
clerk!’ Lieutenant Scheisskopf’s wife had turned ashen in disbelief and was
ogling him with alarm. ‘You’d better not talk that way about Him, honey,’ she
warned him reprovingly in a low and hostile voice. ‘He might punish you.’

   ‘Isn’t He punishing me enough?’ Yossarian snorted
resentfully. ‘You know, we mustn’t let Him get away with it. Oh, no, we
certainly mustn’t let Him get away scot free for all the sorrow He’s caused us.
Someday I’m going to make Him pay. I know when. On the Judgment Day. Yes,
That’s the day I’ll be close enough to reach out and grab that little yokel by
His neck and—’

   ‘Stop it! Stop it!’ Lieutenant Scheisskopf’s wife screamed
suddenly, and began beating him ineffectually about the head with both fists. ‘Stop
it!’ Yossarian ducked behind his arm for protection while she slammed away at
him in feminine fury for a few seconds, and then he caught her determinedly by
the wrists and forced her gently back down on the bed. ‘What the hell are you
getting so upset about?’ he asked her bewilderedly in a tone of contrite
amusement. ‘I thought you didn’t believe in God.’

   ‘I don’t,’ she sobbed, bursting violently into tears. ‘But
the God I don’t believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He’s not
the mean and stupid God you make Him out to be.’ Yossarian laughed and turned
her arms loose. ‘Let’s have a little more religious freedom between us,’ he
proposed obligingly. ‘You don’t believe in the God you want to, and I won’t
believe in the God I want to. Is that a deal?’ That was the most illogical
Thanksgiving he could ever remember spending, and his thoughts returned
wishfully to his halcyon fourteen-day quarantine in the hospital the year
before; but even that idyll had ended on a tragic note; he was still in good
health when the quarantine period was over, and they told him again that he had
to get out and go to war. Yossarian sat up in bed when he heard the bad news
and shouted.

   ‘I see everything twice!’ Pandemonium broke loose in the ward
again. The specialists came running up from all directions and ringed him in a
circle of scrutiny so confining that he could feel the humid breath from their
various noses blowing uncomfortably upon the different sectors of his body.
They went snooping into his eyes and ears with tiny beams of light, assaulted
his legs and feet with rubber hammers and vibrating forks, drew blood from his
veins, held anything handy up for him to see on the periphery of his vision.

   The leader of this team of doctors was a dignified, solicitous
gentleman who held one finger up directly in front ofYossarian and demanded,
‘How many fingers do you see?’

   ‘Two,’ said Yossarian.

   ‘How many fingers do you see now?’ asked the doctor, holding
up two.

   ‘Two,’ said Yossarian.

   ‘And how many now?’ asked the doctor, holding up none.

   ‘Two,’ said Yossarian.

   The doctor’s face wreathed with a smile. ‘By Jove, he’s
right,’ he declared jubilantly. ‘He does see everything twice.’ They rolled
Yossarian away on a stretcher into the room with the other soldier who saw
everything twice and quarantined everyone else in the ward for another fourteen
days.

   ‘I see everything twice!’ the soldier who saw everything
twice shouted when they rolled Yossarian in.

   ‘I see everything twice!’ Yossarian shouted back at him just
as loudly, with a secret wink.

   ‘The walls! The walls!’ the other soldier cried. ‘Move back
the walls!’

   ‘The walls! The walls!’ Yossarian cried. ‘Move back the
walls!’ One of the doctors pretended to shove the wall back. ‘Is that far
enough?’ The soldier who saw everything twice nodded weakly and sank back on
his bed. Yossarian nodded weakly too, eying his talented roommate with great
humility and admiration. He knew he was in the presence of a master. His
talented roommate was obviously a person to be studied and emulated. During the
night, his talented roommate died, and Yossarian decided that he had followed
him far enough.

   ‘I see everything once!’ he cried quickly.

   A new group of specialists came pounding up to his bedside
with their instruments to find out if it was true.

   ‘How many fingers do you see?’ asked the leader, holding up
one.

   ‘One.’ The doctor held up two fingers. ‘How many fingers do
you see now?’

   ‘One.’ The doctor held up ten fingers. ‘And how many now?’

   ‘One.’ The doctor turned to the other doctors with amazement.
‘He does see everything once!’ he exclaimed. ‘We made him all better.’

   ‘And just in time, too,’ announced the doctor with whom
Yossarian next found himself alone, a tall, torpedo-shaped congenial man with
an unshaven growth of brown beard and a pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket
that he chain-smoked insouciantly as he leaned against the wall. ‘There are
some relatives here to see you. Oh, don’t worry,’ he added with a laugh. ‘Not your
relatives. It’s the mother, father and brother of that chap who died. They’ve
traveled all the way from New York to see a dying soldier, and you’re the
handiest one we’ve got.’

   ‘What are you talking about?’ Yossarian asked suspiciously.
‘I’m not dying.’

   ‘Of course you’re dying. We’re all dying. Where the devil
else do you think you’re heading?’

   ‘They didn’t come to see me,’ Yossarian objected. ‘They came
to see their son.’

   ‘They’ll have to take what they can get. As far as we’re
concerned, one dying boy is just as good as any other, or just as bad. To a
scientist, all dying boys are equal. I have a proposition for you. You let them
come in and look you over for a few minutes and I won’t tell anyone you’ve been
lying about your liver symptoms.’ Yossarian drew back from him farther. ‘You
know about that?’

   ‘Of course I do. Give us some credit.’ The doctor chuckled
amiably and lit another cigarette. ‘How do you expect anyone to believe you
have a liver condition if you keep squeezing the nurses’ tits every time you
get a chance? You’re going to have to give up sex if you want to convince
people you’ve got an ailing liver.’

   ‘That’s a hell of a price to pay just to keep alive. Why
didn’t you turn me in if you knew I was faking?’

   ‘Why the devil should I?’ asked the doctor with a flicker of
surprise. ‘We’re all in this business of illusion together. I’m always willing
to lend a helping hand to a fellow conspirator along the road to survival if
he’s willing to do the same for me. These people have come a long way, and I’d
rather not disappoint them. I’m sentimental about old people.’

   ‘But they came to see their son.’

   ‘They came too late. Maybe they won’t even notice the
difference.’

   ‘Suppose they start crying.’

   ‘They probably will start crying. That’s one of the reasons
they came. I’ll listen outside the door and break it up if it starts getting
tacky.’

   ‘It all sounds a bit crazy,’ Yossarian reflected. ‘What do
they want to watch their son die for, anyway?’

   ‘I’ve never been able to figure that one out,’ the doctor
admitted, ‘but they always do. Well, what do you say? All you’ve got to do is
lie there a few minutes and die a little. Is that asking so much?’

   ‘All right,’ Yossarian gave in. ‘If it’s just for a few
minutes and you promise to wait right outside.’ He warmed to his role. ‘Say,
why don’t you wrap a bandage around me for effect?’

   ‘That sounds like a splendid idea,’ applauded the doctor.

   They wrapped a batch of bandages around Yossarian. A team of
medical orderlies installed tan shades on each of the two windows and lowered
them to douse the room in depressing shadows. Yossarian suggested flowers and
the doctor sent an orderly out to find two small bunches of fading ones with a
strong and sickening smell. When everything was in place, they made Yossarian
get back into bed and lie down. Then they admitted the visitors.