Catch-22 (30 page)

   ‘I just don’t trust him,’ Milo brooded in the plane, with a
backward nod toward Orr, who was curled up like a tangled rope on the low
bushels of chick-peas, trying torturedly to sleep. ‘And I’d just as soon buy my
eggs when he’s not around to learn my business secrets. What else don’t you
understand?’ Yossarian was riding beside him in the co-pilot’s seat. ‘I don’t
understand why you buy eggs for seven cents apiece in Malta and sell them for
five cents.’

   ‘I do it to make a profit.’

   ‘But how can you make a profit? You lose two cents an egg.’

   ‘But I make a profit of three and a quarter cents an egg by
selling them for four and a quarter cents an egg to the people in Malta I buy them
from for seven cents an egg. Of course, I don’t make the profit. The syndicate
makes the profit. And everybody has a share.’ Yossarian felt he was beginning
to understand. ‘And the people you sell the eggs to at four and a quarter cents
apiece make a profit of two and three quarter cents apiece when they sell them
back to you at seven cents apiece. Is that right? Why don’t you sell the eggs
directly to you and eliminate the people you buy them from?’

   ‘Because I’m the people I buy them from,’ Milo explained. ‘I
make a profit of three and a quarter cents apiece when I sell them to me and a
profit of two and three quarter cents apiece when I buy them back from me.
That’s a total profit of six cents an egg. I lose only two cents an egg when I
sell them to the mess halls at five cents apiece, and that’s how I can make a
profit buying eggs for seven cents apiece and selling them for five cents
apiece. I pay only one cent apiece at the hen when I buy them in Sicily.’

   ‘In Malta,’ Yossarian corrected. ‘You buy your eggs in Malta,
not Sicily.’

   Milo chortled proudly. ‘I don’t buy eggs in Malta,’ he
confessed, with an air of slight and clandestine amusement that was the only
departure from industrious sobriety Yossarian had ever seen him make. ‘I buy
them in Sicily for one cent apiece and transfer them to Malta secretly at four
and a half cents apiece in order to get the price of eggs up to seven cents
apiece when people come to Malta looking for them.’

   ‘Why do people come to Malta for eggs when they’re so expensive
there?’

   ‘Because they’ve always done it that way.’

   ‘Why don’t they look for eggs in Sicily?’

   ‘Because they’ve never done it that way.’

   ‘Now I really don’t understand. Why don’t you sell your mess
halls the eggs for seven cents apiece instead offor five cents apiece?’

   ‘Because my mess halls would have no need for me then. Anyone
can buy seven-cents-apiece eggs for seven cents apiece.’

   ‘Why don’t they bypass you and buy the eggs directly from you
in Malta at four and a quarter cents apiece?’

   ‘Because I wouldn’t sell it to them.’

   ‘Why wouldn’t you sell it to them?’

   ‘Because then there wouldn’t be as much room for profit. At
least this way I can make a bit for myself as a middleman.’

   ‘Then you do make a profit for yourself,’ Yossarian declared.

   ‘Of course I do. But it all goes to the syndicate. And
everybody has a share. Don’t you understand? It’s exactly what happens with
those plum tomatoes I sell to Colonel Cathcart.’

   ‘Buy,’ Yossarian corrected him. ‘You don’t sell plum tomatoes
to Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn. You buy plum tomatoes from them.’

   ‘No, sell,’ Milo corrected Yossarian. ‘I distribute my plum
tomatoes in markets all over Pianosa under an assumed name so that Colonel
Cathcart and Colonel Korn can buy them up from me under their assumed names at
four cents apiece and sell them back to me the next day for the syndicate at
five cents apiece. They make a profit of one cent apiece. I make a profit of
three and a half cents apiece, and everybody comes out ahead.’

   ‘Everybody but the syndicate,’ said Yossarian with a snort.
‘The syndicate is paying five cents apiece for plum tomatoes that cost you only
half a cent apiece. How does the syndicate benefit?’

   ‘The syndicate benefits when I benefit,’ Milo explained,
‘because everybody has a share. And the syndicate gets Colonel Cathcart’s and
Colonel Korn’s support so that they’ll let me go out on trips like this one.
You’ll see how much profit that can mean in about fifteen minutes when we land
in Palermo.’

   ‘ Malta,’ Yossarian corrected him. ‘We’re flying to Malta
now, not Palermo.’

   ‘No, we’re flying to Palermo,’ Milo answered. ‘There’s an
endive exporter in Palermo I have to see for a minute about a shipment of
mushrooms to Bern that were damaged by mold.’

   ‘ Milo, how do you do it?’ Yossarian inquired with laughing
amazement and admiration. ‘You fill out a flight plan for one place and then
you go to another. Don’t the people in the control towers ever raise hell?’

   ‘They all belong to the syndicate,’ Milo said. ‘And they know
that what’s good for the syndicate is good for the country, because that’s what
makes Sammy run. The men in the control towers have a share, too, and that’s
why they always have to do whatever they can to help the syndicate.’

   ‘Do I have a share?’

   ‘Everybody has a share.’

   ‘Does Orr have a share?’

   ‘Everybody has a share.’

   ‘And Hungry Joe? He has a share, too?’

   ‘Everybody has a share.’

   ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ mused Yossarian, deeply impressed
with the idea of a share for the very first time.

   Milo turned toward him with a faint glimmer of mischief. ‘I
have a sure-fire plan for cheating the federal government out of six thousand
dollars. We can make three thousand dollars apiece without any risk to either
of us. Are you interested?’

   ‘No.’ Milo looked at Yossarian with profound emotion. ‘That’s
what I like about you,’ he exclaimed. ‘You’re honest! You’re the only one I
know that I can really trust. That’s why I wish you’d try to be of more help to
me. I really was disappointed when you ran off with those two tramps in Catania
yesterday.’ Yossarian stared at Milo in quizzical disbelief. ‘ Milo, you told
me to go with them. Don’t you remember?’

   ‘That wasn’t my fault,’ Milo answered with dignity. ‘I had to
get rid of Orr some way once we reached town. It will be a lot different in
Palermo. When we land in Palermo, I want you and Orr to leave with the girls
right from the airport.’

   ‘With what girls?’

   ‘I radioed ahead and made arrangements with a four-year-old
pimp to supply you and Orr with two eight-year-old virgins who are half
Spanish. He’ll be waiting at the airport in a limousine. Go right in as soon as
you step out of the plane.’

   ‘Nothing doing,’ said Yossarian, shaking his head. ‘The only
place I’m going is to sleep.’ Milo turned livid with indignation, his slim long
nose flickering spasmodically between his black eyebrows and his unbalanced
orange-brown mustache like the pale, thin flame of a single candle. ‘Yossarian,
remember your mission,’ he reminded reverently.

   ‘To hell with my mission,’ Yossarian responded indifferently.
‘And to hell with the syndicate too, even though I do have a share. I don’t
want any eight-year-old virgins, even if they are half Spanish.’

   ‘I don’t blame you. But these eight-year-old virgins are
really only thirty-two. And they’re not really half Spanish but only one-third
Estonian.’

   ‘I don’t care for any virgins.’

   ‘And they’re not even virgins,’ Milo continued persuasively.
‘The one I picked out for you was married for a short time to an elderly
schoolteacher who slept with her only on Sundays, so she’s really almost as
good as new.’ But Orr was sleepy, too, and Yossarian and Orr were both at
Milo’s side when they rode into the city of Palermo from the airport and
discovered that there was no room for the two of them at the hotel there
either, and, more important, that Milo was mayor.

   The weird, implausible reception for Milo began at the
airfield, where civilian laborers who recognized him halted in their duties
respectfully to gaze at him with full expressions of controlled exuberance and
adulation. News of his arrival preceded him into the city, and the outskirts
were already crowded with cheering citizens as they sped by in their small
uncovered truck. Yossarian and Orr were mystified and mute and pressed close
against Milo for security.

   Inside the city, the welcome for Milo grew louder as the
truck slowed and eased deeper toward the middle of town. Small boys and girls
had been released from school and were lining the sidewalks in new clothes,
waving tiny flags. Yossarian and Orr were absolutely speechless now. The
streets were jammed with joyous throngs, and strung overhead were huge banners
bearing Milo’s picture. Milo had posed for these pictures in a drab peasant’s
blouse with a high collar, and his scrupulous, paternal countenance was
tolerant, wise, critical and strong as he stared out at the populace
omnisciently with his undisciplined mustache and disunited eyes. Sinking
invalids blew kisses to him from windows. Aproned shopkeepers cheered
ecstatically from the narrow doorways of their shops. Tubas crumped. Here and
there a person fell and was trampled to death. Sobbing old women swarmed
through each other frantically around the slow-moving truck to touch Milo’s
shoulder or press his hand. Milo bore the tumultuous celebrations with
benevolent grace. He waved back to everyone in elegant reciprocation and
showered generous handfuls of foilcovered Hershey kisses to the rejoicing
multitudes. Lines of lusty young boys and girls skipped along behind him with
their arms linked, chanting in hoarse and glassy-eyed adoration, ‘ Milo! Mi-lo!
Mi-lo!’ Now that his secret was out, Milo relaxed with Yossarian and Orr and
inflated opulently with a vast, shy pride. His cheeks turned flesh-colored.
Milo had been elected mayor of Palermo —and of nearby Carini, Monreale,
Bagheria, Termini Imerese, Cefalu, Mistretta and Nicosia as well—because he had
brought Scotch to Sicily.

   Yossarian was amazed. ‘The people here like to drink Scotch
that much?’

   ‘They don’t drink any of the Scotch,’ Milo explained. ‘Scotch
is very expensive, and these people here are very poor.’

   ‘Then why do you import it to Sicily if nobody drinks any?’

   ‘To build up a price. I move the Scotch here from Malta to
make more room for profit when I sell it back to me for somebody else. I
created a whole new industry here. Today Sicily is the third largest exporter
of Scotch in the world, and that’s why they elected me mayor.’

   ‘How about getting us a hotel room if you’re such a hotshot?’
Orr grumbled impertinently in a voice slurred with fatigue.

   Milo responded contritely. ‘That’s just what I’m going to
do,’ he promised. ‘I’m really sorry about forgetting to radio ahead for hotel
rooms for you two. Come along to my office and I’ll speak to my deputy mayor
about it right now.’ Milo’s office was a barbershop, and his deputy mayor was a
pudgy barber from whose obsequious lips cordial greetings foamed as effusively
as the lather he began whipping up in Milo’s shaving cup.

   ‘Well, Vittorio,’ said Milo, settling back lazily in one of
Vittorio’s barber chairs, ‘how were things in my absence this time?’

   ‘Very sad, Signor Milo, very sad. But now that you are back,
the people are all happy again.’

   ‘I was wondering about the size of the crowds. How come all
the hotels are full?’

   ‘Because so many people from other cities are here to see
you, Signor Milo. And because we have all the buyers who have come into town
for the artichoke auction.’ Milo’s hand soared up perpendicularly like an eagle
and arrested Vittorio’s shaving brush. ‘What’s artichoke?’ he inquired.

   ‘Artichoke, Signor Milo? An artichoke is a very tasty
vegetable that is popular everywhere. You must try some artichokes while you
are here, Signor Milo. We grow the best in the world.’

   ‘Really?’ said Milo. ‘How much are artichokes selling for
this year?’

   ‘It looks like a very good year for artichokes. The crops
were very bad.’

   ‘Is that a fact?’ mused Milo, and was gone, sliding from his
chair so swiftly that his striped barber’s apron retained his shape for a
second or two after he had gone before it collapsed. Milo had vanished from
sight by the time Yossarian and Orr rushed after him to the doorway.

   ‘Next?’ barked Milo’s deputy mayor officiously. ‘Who’s next?’
Yossarian and Orr walked from the barbershop in dejection. Deserted by Milo,
they trudged homelessly through the reveling masses in futile search of a place
to sleep. Yossarian was exhausted. His head throbbed with a dull, debilitating
pain, and he was irritable with Orr, who had found two crab apples somewhere
and walked with them in his cheeks until Yossarian spied them there and made
him take them out. Then Orr found two horse chestnuts somewhere and slipped
those in until Yossarian detected them and snapped at him again to take the
crab apples out of his mouth. Orr grinned and replied that they were not crab
apples but horse chestnuts and that they were not in his mouth but in his
hands, but Yossarian was not able to understand a single word he said because
of the horse chestnuts in his mouth and made him take them out anyway. A sly
light twinkled in Orr’s eyes. He rubbed his forehead harshly with his knuckles,
like a man in an alcoholic stupor, and snickered lewdly.

   ‘Do you remember that girl—’ He broke off to snicker lewdly
again. ‘Do you remember that girl who was hitting me over the head with that
shoe in that apartment in Rome, when we were both naked?’ he asked with a look
of cunning expectation. He waited until Yossarian nodded cautiously. ‘If you
let me put the chestnuts back in my mouth I’ll tell you why she was hitting me.
Is that a deal?’ Yossarian nodded, and Orr told him the whole fantastic story
of why the naked girl in Nately’s whore’s apartment was hitting him over the
head with her shoe, but Yossarian was not able to understand a single word
because the horse chestnuts were back in his mouth. Yossarian roared with
exasperated laughter at the trick, but in the end there was nothing for them to
do when night fell but eat a damp dinner in a dirty restaurant and hitch a ride
back to the airfield, where they slept on the chill metal floor of the plane
and turned and tossed in groaning torment until the truck drivers blasted up
less than two hours later with their crates of artichokes and chased them out
onto the ground while they filled up the plane. A heavy rain began falling.
Yossarian and Orr were dripping wet by the time the trucks drove away and had
no choice but to squeeze themselves back into the plane and roll themselves up
like shivering anchovies between the jolting corners of the crates of
artichokes that Milo flew up to Naples at dawn and exchanged for the cinnamon
sticks, cloves, vanilla beans and pepper pods that he rushed right back down
south with that same day to Malta, where, it turned out, he was Assistant
Governor-General. There was no room for Yossarian and Orr in Malta either. Milo
was Major Sir Milo Minderbinder in Malta and had a gigantic office in the
governor-general’s building. His mahogany desk was immense. In a panel of the
oak wall, between crossed British flags, hung a dramatic arresting photograph
of Major Sir Milo Minderbinder in the dress uniform of the Royal Welsh
Fusiliers. His mustache in the photograph was clipped and narrow, his chin was
chiseled, and his eyes were sharp as thorns. Milo had been knighted,
commissioned a major in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and named Assistant
Governor-General of Malta because he had brought the egg trade there. He gave
Yossarian and Orr generous permission to spend the night on the thick carpet in
his office, but shortly after he left a sentry in battle dress appeared and
drove them from the building at the tip of his bayonet, and they rode out
exhaustedly to the airport with a surly cab driver, who overcharged them, and
went to sleep inside the plane again, which was filled now with leaking gunny
sacks of cocoa and freshly ground coffee and reeking with an odor so rich that
they were both outside retching violently against the landing gear when Milo
was chauffeured up the first thing the next morning, looking fit as a fiddle,
and took right off for Oran, where there was again no room at the hotel for
Yossarian and Orr, and where Milo was Vice-Shah. Milo had at his disposal
sumptuous quarters inside a salmon-pink palace, but Yossarian and Orr were not
allowed to accompany him inside because they were Christian infidels. They were
stopped at the gates by gargantuan Berber guards with scimitars and chased
away. Orr was snuffling and sneezing with a crippling head cold. Yossarian’s
broad back was bent and aching. He was ready to break Milo’s neck, but Milo was
Vice-Shah of Oran and his person was sacred. Milo was not only the Vice-Shah of
Oran, as it turned out, but also the Caliph of Baghdad, the Imam of Damascus,
and the Sheik of Araby. Milo was the corn god, the rain god and the rice god in
backward regions where such crude gods were still worshiped by ignorant and
superstitious people, and deep inside the jungles of Africa, he intimated with
becoming modesty, large graven images of his mustached face could be found
overlooking primitive stone altars red with human blood. Everywhere they
touched he was acclaimed with honor, and it was one triumphal ovation after
another for him in city after city until they finally doubled back through the
Middle East and reached Cairo, where Milo cornered the market on cotton that no
one else in the world wanted and brought himself promptly to the brink of ruin.
In Cairo there was at last room at the hotel for Yossarian and Orr. There were
soft beds for them with fat fluffed-up pillows and clean, crisp sheets. There
were closets with hangers for their clothes. There was water to wash with.
Yossarian and Orr soaked their rancid, unfriendly bodies pink in a steaming-hot
tub and then went from the hotel with Milo to eat shrimp cocktails and filet
mignon in a very fine restaurant with a stock ticker in the lobby that happened
to be clicking out the latest quotation for Egyptian cotton when Milo inquired
of the captain of waiters what kind of machine it was. Milo had never imagined
a machine so beautiful as a stock ticker before.