Catch-22 (28 page)

   Actually, Colonel Cathcart did not have a chance in hell of
becoming a general. For one thing, there was ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen, who also
wanted to be a general and who always distorted, destroyed, rejected or
misdirected any correspondence by, for or about Colonel Cathcart that might do
him credit. For another, there already was a general, General Dreedle who knew
that General Peckem was after his job but did not know how to stop him.

   General Dreedle, the wing commander, was a blunt, chunky,
barrel-chested man in his early fifties. His nose was squat and red, and he had
lumpy white, bunched-up eyelids circling his small gray eyes like haloes of
bacon fat. He had a nurse and a son-in-law, and he was prone to long, ponderous
silences when he had not been drinking too much. General Dreedle had wasted too
much of his time in the Army doing his job well, and now it was too late. New
power alignments had coalesced without him and he was at a loss to cope with
them. At unguarded moments his hard and sullen face slipped into a somber,
preoccupied look of defeat and frustration. General Dreedle drank a great deal.
His moods were arbitrary and unpredictable. ‘War is hell,’ he declared
frequently, drunk or sober, and he really meant it, although that did not
prevent him from making a good living out of it or from taking his son-in-law
into the business with him, even though the two bickered constantly.

   ‘That bastard,’ General Dreedle would complain about his
son-in-law with a contemptuous grunt to anyone who happened to be standing
beside him at the curve of the bar of the officers’ club. ‘Everything he’s got
he owes to me. I made him, that lousy son of a bitch! He hasn’t got brains
enough to get ahead on his own.’

   ‘He thinks he knows everything,’ Colonel Moodus would retort
in a sulking tone to his own audience at the other end of the bar. ‘He can’t
take criticism and he won’t listen to advice.’

   ‘All he can do is give advice,’ General Dreedle would observe
with a rasping snort. ‘If it wasn’t for me, he’d still be a corporal.’ General
Dreedle was always accompanied by both Colonel Moodus and his nurse, who was as
delectable a piece of ass as anyone who saw her had ever laid eyes on. General
Dreedle’s nurse was chubby, short and blonde. She had plump dimpled cheeks,
happy blue eyes, and neat curly turned-up hair. She smiled at everyone and
never spoke at all unless she was spoken to. Her bosom was lush and her
complexion clear. She was irresistible, and men edged away from her carefully.
She was succulent, sweet, docile and dumb, and she drove everyone crazy but
General Dreedle.

   ‘You should see her naked,’ General Dreedle chortled with
croupy relish, while his nurse stood smiling proudly right at his shoulder.
‘Back at Wing she’s got a uniform in my room made of purple silk that’s so
tight her nipples stand out like bing cherries. Milo got me the fabric. There isn’t
even room enough for panties or a brassière underneath. I make her
wear it some nights when Moodus is around just to drive him crazy.’ General
Dreedle laughed hoarsely. ‘You should see what goes on inside that blouse of
hers every time she shifts her weight. She drives him out of his mind. The
first time I catch him putting a hand on her or any other woman I’ll bust the
horny bastard right down to private and put him on K.P. for a year.’

   ‘He keeps her around just to drive me crazy,’ Colonel Moodus
accused aggrievedly at the other end of the bar. ‘Back at Wing she’s got a
uniform made out of purple silk that’s so tight her nipples stand out like bing
cherries. There isn’t even room for panties or a brassière
underneath. You should hear that rustle every time she shifts her weight. The
first time I make a pass at her or any other girl he’ll bust me right down to
private and put me on K.P. for a year. She drives me out of my mind.’

   ‘He hasn’t gotten laid since we shipped overseas,’ confided
General Dreedle, and his square grizzled head bobbed with sadistic laughter at
the fiendish idea. ‘That’s one of the reasons I never let him out of my sight,
just so he can’t get to a woman. Can you imagine what that poor son of a bitch
is going through?’

   ‘I haven’t been to bed with a woman since we shipped
overseas,’ Colonel Moodus whimpered tearfully. ‘Can you imagine what I’m going
through?’ General Dreedle could be as intransigent with anyone else when
displeased as he was with Colonel Moodus. He had no taste for sham, tact or
pretension, and his credo as a professional soldier was unified and concise: he
believed that the young men who took orders from him should be willing to give
up their lives for the ideals, aspirations and idiosyncrasies of the old men he
took orders from. The officers and enlisted men in his command had identity for
him only as military quantities. All he asked was that they do their work;
beyond that, they were free to do whatever they pleased. They were free, as
Colonel Cathcart was free, to force their men to fly sixty missions if they
chose, and they were free, as Yossarian had been free, to stand in formation
naked if they wanted to, although General Dreedle’s granite jaw swung open at
the sight and he went striding dictatorially right down the line to make
certain that there really was a man wearing nothing but moccasins waiting at
attention in ranks to receive a medal from him. General Dreedle was speechless.
Colonel Cathcart began to faint when he spied Yossarian, and Colonel Korn
stepped up behind him and squeezed his arm in a strong grip. The silence was
grotesque. A steady warm wind flowed in from the beach, and an old cart filled
with dirty straw rumbled into view on the main road, drawn by a black donkey
and driven by a farmer in a flopping hat and faded brown work clothes who paid
no attention to the formal military ceremony taking place in the small field on
his right.

   At last General Dreedle spoke. ‘Get back in the car,’ he
snapped over his shoulder to his nurse, who had followed him down the line. The
nurse toddled away with a smile toward his brown staff car, parked about twenty
yards away at the edge of the rectangular clearing. General Dreedle waited in
austere silence until the car door slammed and then demanded, ‘Which one is
this?’ Colonel Moodus checked his roster. ‘This one is Yossarian, Dad. He gets
a Distinguished Flying Cross.’

   ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ mumbled General Dreedle, and his
ruddy monolithic face softened with amusement. ‘Why aren’t you wearing clothes,
Yossarian?’

   ‘I don’t want to.’

   ‘What do you mean you don’t want to? Why the hell don’t you
want to?’

   ‘I just don’t want to, sir.’

   ‘Why isn’t he wearing clothes?’ General Dreedle demanded over
his shoulder of Colonel Cathcart.

   ‘He’s talking to you,’ Colonel Korn whispered over Colonel
Cathcart’s shoulder from behind, jabbing his elbow sharply into Colonel
Cathcart’s back.

   ‘Why isn’t he wearing clothes?’ Colonel Cathcart demanded of
Colonel Korn with a look of acute pain, tenderly nursing the spot where Colonel
Korn had just jabbed him.

   ‘Why isn’t he wearing clothes?’ Colonel Korn demanded of
Captain Piltchard and Captain Wren.

   ‘A man was killed in his plane over Avignon last week and
bled all over him,’ Captain Wren replied. ‘He swears he’s never going to wear a
uniform again.’

   ‘A man was killed in his plane over Avignon last week and
bled all over him,’ Colonel Korn reported directly to General Dreedle. ‘His
uniform hasn’t come back from the laundry yet.’

   ‘Where are his other uniforms?’

   ‘They’re in the laundry, too.’

   ‘What about his underwear?’ General Dreedle demanded.

   ‘All his underwear’s in the laundry, too,’ answered Colonel
Korn.

   ‘That sounds like a lot of crap to me,’ General Dreedle
declared.

   ‘It is a lot of crap, sir,’ Yossarian said.

   ‘Don’t you worry, sir,’ Colonel Cathcart promised General
Dreedle with a threatening look at Yossarian. ‘You have my personal word for it
that this man will be severely punished.’

   ‘What the hell do I care if he’s punished or not?’ General
Dreedle replied with surprise and irritation. ‘He’s just won a medal. If he
wants to receive it without any clothes on, what the hell business is it of
yours?’

   ‘Those are my sentiments exactly, sir!’ Colonel Cathcart echoed
with resounding enthusiasm and mopped his brow with a damp white handkerchief.
‘But would you say that, sir, even in the light of General Peckem’s recent
memorandum on the subject of appropriate military attire in combat areas?’

   ‘Peckem?’ General Dreedle’s face clouded.

   ‘Yes, sir, sir,’ said Colonel Cathcart obsequiously. ‘General
Peckem even recommends that we send our men into combat in full-dress uniform
so they’ll make a good impression on the enemy when they’re shot down.’

   ‘Peckem?’ repeated General Dreedle, still squinting with
bewilderment. ‘Just what the hell does Peckem have to do with it?’ Colonel Korn
jabbed Colonel Cathcart sharply again in the back with his elbow.

   ‘Absolutely nothing, sir!’ Colonel Cathcart responded
sprucely, wincing in extreme pain and gingerly rubbing the spot where Colonel
Korn had just jabbed him again. ‘And that’s exactly why I decided to take
absolutely no action at all until I first had an opportunity to discuss it with
you. Shall we ignore it completely, sir?’ General Dreedle ignored him
completely, turning away from him in baleful scorn to hand Yossarian his medal
in its case.

   ‘Get my girl back from the car,’ he commanded Colonel Moodus
crabbily, and waited in one spot with his scowling face down until his nurse
had rejoined him.

   ‘Get word to the office right away to kill that directive I
just issued ordering the men to wear neckties on the combat missions,’ Colonel
Cathcart whispered to Colonel Korn urgently out of the corner of his mouth.

   ‘I told you not to do it,’ Colonel Korn snickered. ‘But you
just wouldn’t listen to me.’

   ‘Shhhh!’ Colonel Cathcart cautioned. ‘Goddammit, Korn, what
did you do to my back?’ Colonel Korn snickered again.

   General Dreedle’s nurse always followed General Dreedle
everywhere he went, even into the briefing room just before the mission to
Avignon, where she stood with her asinine smile at the side of the platform and
bloomed like a fertile oasis at General Dreedle’s shoulder in her
pink-and-green uniform. Yossarian looked at her and fell in love, desperately.
His spirits sank, leaving him empty inside and numb. He sat gazing in clammy
want at her full red lips and dimpled cheeks as he listened to Major Danby
describe in a monotonous, didactic male drone the heavy concentrations of flak
awaiting them at Avignon, and he moaned in deep despair suddenly at the thought
that he might never see again this lovely woman to whom he had never spoken a
word and whom he now loved so pathetically. He throbbed and ached with sorrow,
fear and desire as he stared at her; she was so beautiful. He worshiped the
ground she stood on. He licked his parched, thirsting lips with a sticky tongue
and moaned in misery again, loudly enough this time to attract the startled,
searching glances of the men sitting around him on the rows of crude wooden
benches in their chocolate-colored coveralls and stitched white parachute
harnesses.

   Nately turned to him quickly with alarm. ‘What is it?’ he
whispered. ‘What’s the matter?’ Yossarian did not hear him. He was sick with
lust and mesmerized with regret. General Dreedle’s nurse was only a little
chubby, and his senses were stuffed to congestion with the yellow radiance of
her hair and the unfelt pressure of her soft short fingers, with the rounded, untasted
wealth of her nubile breasts in her Army-pink shirt that was opened wide at the
throat and with the rolling, ripened, triangular confluences of her belly and
thighs in her tight, slick forest-green gabardine officer’s pants. He drank her
in insatiably from head to painted toenail. He never wanted to lose her.
‘Oooooooooooooh,’ he moaned again, and this time the whole room rippled at his
quavering, drawn-out cry. A wave of startled uneasiness broke over the officers
on the dais, and even Major Danby, who had begun synchronizing the watches, was
distracted momentarily as he counted out the seconds and almost had to begin
again. Nately followed Yossarian’s transfixed gaze down the long frame
auditorium until he came to General Dreedle’s nurse. He blanched with
trepidation when he guessed what was troubling Yossarian.

   ‘Cut it out, will you?’ Nately warned in a fierce whisper.

   ‘Ooooooooooooooooooooh,’ Yossarian moaned a fourth time, this
time loudly enough for everyone to hear him distinctly.

   ‘Are you crazy?’ Nately hissed vehemently. ‘You’ll get into
trouble.’

   ‘Ooooooooooooooooooooh,’ Dunbar answered Yossarian from the
opposite end of the room.

   Nately recognized Dunbar’s voice. The situation was now out
of control, and he turned away with a small moan. ‘Ooh.’

   ‘Ooooooooooooooooooooh,’ Dunbar moaned back at him.

   ‘Ooooooooooooooooooooh,’ Nately moaned out loud in
exasperation when he realized that he had just moaned.

   ‘Ooooooooooooooooooooh,’ Dunbar moaned back at him again.

   ‘Ooooooooooooooooooooh,’ someone entirely new chimed in from
another section of the room, and Nately’s hair stood on end.

   Yossarian and Dunbar both replied while Nately cringed and
hunted about futilely for some hole in which to hide and take Yossarian with
him. A sprinkling of people were smothering laughter. An elfin impulse
possessed Nately and he moaned intentionally the next time there was a lull.
Another new voice answered. The flavor of disobedience was titillating, and
Nately moaned deliberately again, the next time he could squeeze one in
edgewise. Still another new voice echoed him. The room was boiling
irrepressibly into bedlam. An eerie hubbub of voices was rising. Feet were
scuffled, and things began to drop from people’s fingers—pencils, computers, map
cases, clattering steel flak helmets. A number of men who were not moaning were
now giggling openly, and there was no telling how far the unorganized
insurrection of moaning might have gone if General Dreedle himself had not come
forward to quell it, stepping out determinedly in the center of the platform
directly in front of Major Danby, who, with his earnest, persevering head down,
was still concentrating on his wrist watch and saying, ‘…twenty-five seconds…
twenty… fifteen…’ General Dreedle’s great, red domineering face was gnarled
with perplexity and oaken with awesome resolution.