Catch-22 (26 page)

   ‘I know I could,’ the colonel responded tartly. ‘But what do
you think you’re here for? I could shop for my own food, too, but that’s Milo’s
job, and that’s why he’s doing it for every group in the area. Your job is to
lead us in prayer, and from now on you’re going to lead us in a prayer for a
tighter bomb pattern before every mission. Is that clear? I think a tighter
bomb pattern is something really worth praying for. It will be a feather in all
our caps with General Peckem. General Peckem feels it makes a much nicer aerial
photograph when the bombs explode close together.’

   ‘General Peckem, sir?’

   ‘That’s right, Chaplain,’ the colonel replied, chuckling
paternally at the chaplain’s look of puzzlement. ‘I wouldn’t want this to get
around, but it looks like General Dreedle is finally on the way out and that
General Peckem is slated to replace him. Frankly, I’m not going to be sorry to
see that happen. General Peckem is a very good man, and I think we’ll all be
much better off under him. On the other hand, it might never take place, and
we’d still remain under General Dreedle. Frankly, I wouldn’t be sorry to see
that happen either, because General Dreedle is another very good man, and I
think we’ll all be much better off under him too. I hope you’re going to keep
all this under your hat, Chaplain. I wouldn’t want either one to get the idea I
was throwing my support on the side of the other.’

   ‘Yes, sir.’

   ‘That’s good,’ the colonel exclaimed, and stood up jovially.
‘But all this gossip isn’t getting us into The Saturday Evening Post, eh,
Chaplain? Let’s see what kind of procedure we can evolve. Incidentally,
Chaplain, not a word about this beforehand to Colonel Korn. Understand?’

   ‘Yes, sir.’ Colonel Cathcart began tramping back and forth
reflectively in the narrow corridors left between his bushels of plum tomatoes
and the desk and wooden chairs in the center of the room. ‘I suppose we’ll have
to keep you waiting outside until the briefing is over, because all that
information is classified. We can slip you in while Major Danby is
synchronizing the watches. I don’t think there’s anything secret about the
right time. We’ll allocate about a minute and a half for you in the schedule.
Will a minute and a half be enough?’

   ‘Yes, sir. If it doesn’t include the time necessary to excuse
the atheists from the room and admit the enlisted men.’ Colonel Cathcart
stopped in his tracks. ‘What atheists?’ he bellowed defensively, his whole
manner changing in a flash to one of virtuous and belligerent denial. ‘There
are no atheists in my outfit! Atheism is against the law, isn’t it?’

   ‘No, sir.’

   ‘It isn’t?’ The colonel was surprised. ‘Then it’s
un-American, isn’t it?’

   ‘I’m not sure, sir,’ answered the chaplain.

   ‘Well, I am!’ the colonel declared. ‘I’m not going to disrupt
our religious services just to accommodate a bunch of lousy atheists. They’re
getting no special privileges fiom me. They can stay right where they are and
pray with the rest of us. And what’s all this about enlisted men? Just how the
hell do they get into this act?’ The chaplain felt his face flush. ‘I’m sorry,
sir. I just assumed you would want the enlisted men to be present, since they
would be going along on the same mission.’

   ‘Well, I don’t. They’ve got a God and a chaplain of their
own, haven’t they?’

   ‘No, sir.’

   ‘What are you talking about? You mean they pray to the same
God we do?’

   ‘Yes, sir.’

   ‘And He listens?’

   ‘I think so, sir.’

   ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ remarked the colonel, and he snorted
to himself in quizzical amusement. His spirits drooped suddenly a moment later,
and he ran his hand nervously over his short, black, graying curls. ‘Do you
really think it’s a good idea to let the enlisted men in?’ he asked with
concern.

   ‘I should think it only proper, sir.’

   ‘I’d like to keep them out,’ confided the colonel, and began
cracking his knuckles savagely as he wandered back and forth. ‘Oh, don’t get me
wrong, Chaplain. It isn’t that I think the enlisted men are dirty, common and
inferior. It’s that we just don’t have enough room. Frankly, though, I’d just
as soon the officers and enlisted men didn’t fraternize in the briefing room.
They see enough of each other during the mission, it seems to me. Some of my
very best friends are enlisted men, you understand, but that’s about as close
as I care to let them come. Honestly now, Chaplain, you wouldn’t want your
sister to marry an enlisted man, would you?’

   ‘My sister is an enlisted man, sir,’ the chaplain replied.

   The colonel stopped in his tracks again and eyed the chaplain
sharply to make certain he was not being ridiculed. ‘Just what do you mean by
that remark, Chaplain? Are you trying to be funny?’

   ‘Oh, no, sir,’ the chaplain hastened to explain with a look
of excruciating discomfort. ‘She’s a master sergeant in the Marines.’ The
colonel had never liked the chaplain and now he loathed and distrusted him. He
experienced a keen premonition of danger and wondered if the chaplain too were
plotting against him, if the chaplain’s reticent, unimpressive manner were
really just a sinister disguise masking a fiery ambition that, way down deep,
was crafty and unscrupulous. There was something funny about the chaplain, and
the colonel soon detected what it was. The chaplain was standing stiffly at
attention, for the colonel had forgotten to put him at ease. Let him stay that
way, the colonel decided vindictively, just to show him who was boss and to
safeguard himself against any loss of dignity that might devolve from his
acknowledging the omission.

   Colonel Cathcart was drawn hypnotically toward the window
with a massive, dull stare of moody introspection. The enlisted men were always
treacherous, he decided. He looked downward in mournful gloom at the
skeet-shooting range he had ordered built for the officers on his headquarters
staff, and he recalled the mortifying afternoon General Dreedle had tongue-lashed
him ruthlessly in front of Colonel Korn and Major Danby and ordered him to
throw open the range to all the enlisted men and officers on combat duty. The
skeet-shooting range had been a real black eye for him, Colonel Cathcart was
forced to conclude. He was positive that General Dreedle had never forgotten
it, even though he was positive that General Dreedle didn’t even remember it,
which was really very unjust, Colonel Cathcart lamented, since the idea of a
skeet-shooting range itself should have been a real feather in his cap, even
though it had been such a real black eye. Colonel Cathcart was helpless to
assess exactly how much ground he had gained or lost with his goddam
skeet-shooting range and wished that Colonel Korn were in his office right then
to evaluate the entire episode for him still one more time and assuage his
fears.

   It was all very perplexing, all very discouraging. Colonel
Cathcart took the cigarette holder out of his mouth, stood it on end inside the
pocket of his shirt, and began gnawing on the fingernails of both hands
grievously. Everybody was against him, and he was sick to his soul that Colonel
Korn was not with him in this moment of crisis to help him decide what to do
about the prayer meetings. He had almost no faith at all in the chaplain, who
was still only a captain. ‘Do you think,’ he asked, ‘that keeping the enlisted
men out might interfere with our chances of getting results?’ The chaplain
hesitated, feeling himself on unfamiliar ground again. ‘Yes, sir,’ he replied
finally. ‘I think it’s conceivable that such an action could interfere with
your chances of having the prayers for a tighter bomb pattern answered.’

   ‘I wasn’t even thinking about that!’ cried the colonel, with
his eyes blinking and splashing like puddles. ‘You mean that God might even
decide to punish me by giving us a looser bomb pattern?’

   ‘Yes, sir,’ said the chaplain. ‘It’s conceivable He might.’

   ‘The hell with it, then,’ the colonel asserted in a huff of
independence. ‘I’m not going to set these damned prayer meetings up just to
make things worse than they are.’ With a scornful snicker, he settled himself
behind his desk, replaced the empty cigarette holder in his mouth and lapsed
into parturient silence for a few moments. ‘Now I think about it,’ he
confessed, as much to himself as to the chaplain, ‘having the men pray to God
probably wasn’t such a hot idea anyway. The editors of The Saturday Evening
Post might not have co-operated.’ The colonel abandoned his project with
remorse, for he had conceived it entirely on his own and had hoped to unveil it
as a striking demonstration to everyone that he had no real need for Colonel
Korn. Once it was gone, he was glad to be rid of it, for he had been troubled
from the start by the danger of instituting the plan without first checking it
out with Colonel Korn. He heaved an immense sigh of contentment. He had a much
higher opinion of himself now that his idea was abandoned, for he had made a
very wise decision, he felt, and, most important, he had made this wise
decision without consulting Colonel Korn.

   ‘Will that be all, sir?’ asked the chaplain.

   ‘Yeah,’ said Colonel Cathcart. ‘Unless you’ve got something
else to suggest.’

   ‘No, sir. Only…’ The colonel lifted his eyes as though
affronted and studied the chaplain with aloof distrust. ‘Only what, Chaplain?’

   ‘Sir,’ said the chaplain, ‘some of the men are very upset
since you raised the number of missions to sixty. They’ve asked me to speak to
you about it.’ The colonel was silent. The chaplain’s face reddened to the
roots of his sandy hair as he waited. The colonel kept him squirming a long
time with a fixed, uninterested look devoid of all emotion.

   ‘Tell them there’s a war going on,’ he advised finally in a
flat voice.

   ‘Thank you, sir, I will,’ the chaplain replied in a flood of
gratitude because the colonel had finally said something. ‘They were wondering
why you couldn’t requisition some of the replacement crews that are waiting in
Africa to take their places and then let them go home.’

   ‘That’s an administrative matter,’ the colonel said. ‘It’s
none of their business.’ He pointed languidly toward the wall. ‘Help yourself
to a plum tomato, Chaplain. Go ahead, it’s on me.’

   ‘Thank you, sir. Sir—’

   ‘Don’t mention it. How do you like living out there in the
woods, Chaplain? Is everything hunky dory?’

   ‘Yes, sir.’

   ‘That’s good. You get in touch with us if you need anything.’

   ‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Sir—’

   ‘Thanks for dropping around, Chaplain. I’ve got some work to
do now. You’ll let me know if you can think of anything for getting our names
into The Saturday Evening Post, won’t you?’

   ‘Yes, sir, I will.’ The chaplain braced himself with a
prodigious effort of the will and plunged ahead brazenly. ‘I’m particularly
concerned about the condition of one of the bombardiers, sir. Yossarian.’ The
colonel glanced up quickly with a start of vague recognition. ‘Who?’ he asked
in alarm.

   ‘Yossarian, sir.’

   ‘Yossarian?’

   ‘Yes, sir. Yossarian. He’s in a very bad way, sir. I’m afraid
he won’t be able to suffer much longer without doing something desperate.’

   ‘Is that a fact, Chaplain?’

   ‘Yes, sir. I’m afraid it is.’ The colonel thought about it in
heavy silence for a few moments. ‘Tell him to trust in God,’ he advised
finally.

   ‘Thank you, sir,’ said the chaplain. ‘I will.’

   The late-August morning sun was hot and
steamy, and there was no breeze on the balcony. The chaplain moved slowly. He
was downcast and burdened with self-reproach when he stepped without noise from
the colonel’s office on his rubber-soled and rubber-heeled brown shoes. He
hated himself for what he construed to be his own cowardice. He had intended to
take a much stronger stand with Colonel Cathcart on the matter of the sixty
missions, to speak out with courage, logic and eloquence on a subject about
which he had begun to feel very deeply. Instead he had failed miserably, had
choked up once again in the face of opposition from a stronger personality. It
was a familiar, ignominious experience, and his opinion of himself was low.

   He choked up even more a second later when he spied Colonel
Korn’s tubby monochrome figure trotting up the curved, wide, yellow stone
staircase toward him in lackadaisical haste from the great dilapidated lobby
below with its lofty walls of cracked dark marble and circular floor of cracked
grimy tile. The chaplain was even more frightened of Colonel Korn than he was
of Colonel Cathcart. The swarthy, middle-aged lieutenant colonel with the
rimless, icy glasses and faceted, bald, domelike pate that he was always
touching sensitively with the tips of his splayed fingers disliked the chaplain
and was impolite to him frequently. He kept the chaplain in a constant state of
terror with his curt, derisive tongue and his knowing, cynical eyes that the
chaplain was never brave enough to meet for more than an accidental second.
Inevitably, the chaplain’s attention, as he cowered meekly before him, focused
on Colonel Korn’s midriff, where the shirttails bunching up from inside his sagging
belt and ballooning down over his waist gave him an appearance of slovenly
girth and made him seem inches shorter than his middle height. Colonel Korn was
an untidy disdainful man with an oily skin and deep, hard lines running almost
straight down from his nose between his crepuscular jowls and his square,
clefted chin. His face was dour, and he glanced at the chaplain without
recognition as the two drew close on the staircase and prepared to pass.

   ‘Hiya, Father,’ he said tonelessly without looking at the
chaplain. ‘How’s it going?’

   ‘Good morning, sir,’ the chaplain replied, discerning wisely
that Colonel Korn expected nothing more in the way of a response.

   Colonel Korn was proceeding up the stairs without slackening
his pace, and the chaplain resisted the temptation to remind him again that he
was not a Catholic but an Anabaptist, and that it was therefore neither
necessary nor correct to address him as Father. He was almost certain now that
Colonel Korn remembered and that calling him Father with a look of such bland
innocence was just another one of Colonel Korn’s methods of taunting him
because he was only an Anabaptist.

   Colonel Korn halted without warning when he was almost by and
came whirling back down upon the chaplain with a glare of infuriated suspicion.
The chaplain was petrified.

   ‘What are you doing with that plum tomato, Chaplain?’ Colonel
Korn demanded roughly.

   The chaplain looked down his arm with surprise at the plum
tomato Colonel Cathcart had invited him to take. ‘I got it in Colonel
Cathcart’s office, sir,’ he managed to reply.

   ‘Does the colonel know you took it?’

   ‘Yes, sir. He gave it to me.’

   ‘Oh, in that case I guess it’s okay,’ Colonel Korn said,
mollified. He smiled without warmth, jabbing the crumpled folds of his shirt
back down inside his trousers with his thumbs. His eyes glinted keenly with a
private and satisfying mischief. ‘What did Colonel Cathcart want to see you
about, Father?’ he asked suddenly.

   The chaplain was tongue-tied with indecision for a moment. ‘I
don’t think I ought—’

   ‘Saying prayers to the editors of The Saturday Evening Post?’
The chaplain almost smiled. ‘Yes, sir.’ Colonel Korn was enchanted with his own
intuition. He laughed disparagingly. ‘You know, I was afraid he’d begin thinking
about something so ridiculous as soon as he saw this week’s Saturday Evening
Post. I hope you succeeded in showing him what an atrocious idea it is.’

   ‘He has decided against it, sir.’

   ‘That’s good. I’m glad you convinced him that the editors of
The Saturday Evening Post were not likely to run that same story twice just to
give some publicity to some obscure colonel. How are things in the wilderness,
Father? Are you able to manage out there?’

   ‘Yes, sir. Everything is working out.’

   ‘That’s good. I’m happy to hear you have nothing to complain
about. Let us know if you need anything to make you comfortable. We all want
you to have a good time out there.’

   ‘Thank you, sir. I will.’ Noise of a growing stir rose from
the lobby below. It was almost lunchtime, and the earliest arrivals were
drifting into the headquarters mess halls, the enlisted men and officers
separating into different dining halls on facing sides of the archaic rotunda.
Colonel Korn stopped smiling.

   ‘You had lunch with us here just a day or so ago, didn’t you,
Father?’ he asked meaningfully.

   ‘Yes, sir. The day before yesterday.’

   ‘That’s what I thought,’ Colonel Korn said, and paused to let
his point sink in. ‘Well, take it easy, Father. I’ll see you around when it’s
time for you to eat here again.’

   ‘Thank you, sir.’ The chaplain was not certain at which of
the five officers’ and five enlisted men’s mess halls he was scheduled to have
lunch that day, for the system of rotation worked out for him by Colonel Korn
was complicated, and he had forgotten his records back in his tent. The
chaplain was the only officer attached to Group Headquarters who did not reside
in the moldering red-stone Group Headquarters building itself or in any of the
smaller satellite structures that rose about the grounds in disjuncted
relationship. The chaplain lived in a clearing in the woods about four miles
away between the officers’ club and the first of the four squadron areas that
stretched away from Group Headquarters in a distant line. The chaplain lived
alone in a spacious, square tent that was also his office. Sounds of revelry
traveled to him at night from the officers’ club and kept him awake often as he
turned and tossed on his cot in passive, half-voluntary exile. He was not able
to gauge the effect of the mild pills he took occasionally to help him sleep
and felt guilty about it for days afterward.

   The only one who lived with the chaplain in his clearing in
the woods was Corporal Whitcomb, his assistant. Corporal Whitcomb, an atheist,
was a disgruntled subordinate who felt he could do the chaplain’s job much
better than the chaplain was doing it and viewed himself, therefore, as an
underprivileged victim of social inequity. He lived in a tent of his own as
spacious and square as the chaplain’s. He was openly rude and contemptuous to
the chaplain once he discovered that the chaplain would let him get away with
it. The borders of the two tents in the clearing stood no more than four or
five feet apart.

   It was Colonel Korn who had mapped out this way of life for
the chaplain. One good reason for making the chaplain live outside the Group
Headquarters building was Colonel Korn’s theory that dwelling in a tent as most
of his parishioners did would bring him into closer communication with them.
Another good reason was the fact that having the chaplain around Headquarters
all the time made the other officers uncomfortable. It was one thing to
maintain liaison with the Lord, and they were all in favor of that; it was
something else, though, to have Him hanging around twenty-four hours a day. All
in all, as Colonel Korn described it to Major Danby, the jittery and
goggle-eyed group operations officer, the chaplain had it pretty soft; he had
little more to do than listen to the troubles of others, bury the dead, visit
the bedridden and conduct religious services. And there were not so many dead
for him to bury any more, Colonel Korn pointed out, since opposition from
German fighter planes had virtually ceased and since close to ninety per cent of
what fatalities there still were, he estimated, perished behind the enemy lines
or disappeared inside the clouds, where the chaplain had nothing to do with
disposing of the remains. The religious services were certainly no great
strain, either, since they were conducted only once a week at the Group
Headquarters building and were attended by very few of the men.

   Actually, the chaplain was learning to love it in his
clearing in the woods. Both he and Corporal Whitcomb had been provided with
every convenience so that neither might ever plead discomfort as a basis for
seeking permission to return to the Headquarters building. The chaplain rotated
his breakfasts, lunches and dinners in separate sets among the eight squadron
mess halls and ate every fifth meal in the enlisted men’s mess at Group
Headquarters and every tenth meal at the officers’ mess there. Back home in
Wisconsin the chaplain had been very fond of gardening, and his heart welled
with a glorious impression of fertility and fruition each time he contemplated
the low, prickly boughs of the stunted trees and the waist-high weeds and
thickets by which he was almost walled in. In the spring he had longed to plant
begonias and zinnias in a narrow bed around his tent but had been deterred by
his fear of Corporal Whitcomb’s rancor. The chaplain relished the privacy and
isolation of his verdant surroundings and the reverie and meditation that
living there fostered. Fewer people came to him with their troubles than
formerly, and he allowed himself a measure of gratitude for that too. The
chaplain did not mix freely and was not comfortable in conversation. He missed
his wife and his three small children, and she missed him.

   What displeased Corporal Whitcomb most about the chaplain,
apart from the fact that the chaplain believed in God, was his lack of
initiative and aggressiveness. Corporal Whitcomb regarded the low attendance at
religious services as a sad reflection of his own status. His mind germinated
feverishly with challenging new ideas for sparking the great spiritual revival
of which he dreamed himself the architect—box lunches, church socials, form
letters to the families of men killed and injured in combat, censorship, Bingo.
But the chaplain blocked him. Corporal Whitcomb bridled with vexation beneath
the chaplain’s restraint, for he spied room for improvement everywhere. It was
people like the chaplain, he concluded, who were responsible for giving
religion such a bad name and making pariahs out of them both. Unlike the
chaplain, Corporal Whitcomb detested the seclusion of the clearing in the
woods. One of the first things he intended to do after he deposed the chaplain
was move back into the Group Headquarters building, where he could be right in
the thick of things.

   When the chaplain drove back into the clearing after leaving
Colonel Korn, Corporal Whitcomb was outside in the muggy haze talking in
conspiratorial tones to a strange chubby man in a maroon corduroy bathrobe and
gray flannel pajamas. The chaplain recognized the bathrobe and pajamas as
official hospital attire. Neither of the two men gave him any sign of
recognition. The stranger’s gums had been painted purple; his corduroy bathrobe
was decorated in back with a picture of a B-25 nosing through orange bursts of
flak and in front with six neat rows of tiny bombs signifying sixty combat
missions flown. The chaplain was so struck by the sight that he stopped to
stare. Both men broke off their conversation and waited in stony silence for
him to go. The chaplain hurried inside his tent. He heard, or imagined he
heard, them tittering.

   Corporal Whitcomb walked in a moment later and demanded,
‘What’s doing?’

   ‘There isn’t anything new,’ the chaplain replied with averted
eyes. ‘Was anyone here to see me?’

   ‘Just that crackpot Yossarian again. He’s a real
troublemaker, isn’t he?’

   ‘I’m not so sure he’s a crackpot,’ the chaplain observed.

   ‘That’s right, take his part,’ said Corporal Whitcomb in an
injured tone, and stamped out.

   The chaplain could not believe that Corporal Whitcomb was
offended again and had really walked out. As soon as he did realize it,
Corporal Whitcomb walked back in.

   ‘You always side with other people,’ Corporal Whitcomb
accused. ‘You don’t back up your men. That’s one of the things that’s wrong
with you.’

   ‘I didn’t intend to side with him,’ the chaplain apologized.
‘I was just making a statement.’

   ‘What did Colonel Cathcart want?’

   ‘It wasn’t anything important. He just wanted to discuss the
possibility of saying prayers in the briefing room before each mission.’

   ‘All right, don’t tell me,’ Corporal Whitcomb snapped and
walked out again.

   The chaplain felt terrible. No matter how considerate he
tried to be, it seemed he always managed to hurt Corporal Whitcomb’s feelings.
He gazed down remorsefully and saw that the orderly forced upon him by Colonel
Korn to keep his tent clean and attend to his belongings had neglected to shine
his shoes again.

   Corporal Whitcomb came back in. ‘You never trust me with
information,’ he whined truculently. ‘You don’t have confidence in your men.
That’s another one of the things that’s wrong with you.’

   ‘Yes, I do,’ the chaplain assured him guiltily. ‘I have lots
of confidence in you.’

   ‘Then how about those letters?’

   ‘No, not now,’ the chaplain pleaded, cringing. ‘Not the
letters. Please don’t bring that up again. I’ll let you know if I have a change
of mind.’ Corporal Whitcomb looked furious. ‘Is that so? Well, it’s all right
for you to just sit there and shake your head while I do all the work. Didn’t
you see the guy outside with all those pictures painted on his bathrobe?’

   ‘Is he here to see me?’