Catch-22 (31 page)

   ‘Really?’ he exclaimed when the captain of waiters had
finished his explanation. ‘And how much is Egyptian cotton selling for?’ The
captain of waiters told him, and Milo bought the whole crop.

   But Yossarian was not nearly so frightened by the Egyptian
cotton Milo bought as he was by the bunches of green red bananas Milo had
spotted in the native market place as they drove into the city, and his fears
proved justified, for Milo shook him awake out of a deep sleep just after
twelve and shoved a partly peeled banana toward him. Yossarian choked back a
sob.

   ‘Taste it,’ Milo urged, following Yossarian’s writhing face
around with the banana insistently.

   ‘ Milo, you bastard,’ moaned Yossarian, ‘I’ve got to get some
sleep.’

   ‘Eat it and tell me if it’s good,’ Milo persevered. ‘Don’t
tell Orr I gave it to you. I charged him two piasters for his.’ Yossarian ate
the banana submissively and closed his eyes after telling Milo it was good, but
Milo shook him awake again and instructed him to get dressed as quickly as he
could, because they were leaving at once for Pianosa.

   ‘You and Orr have to load the bananas into the plane right
away,’ he explained. ‘The man said to watch out for spiders while you’re
handling the bunches.’

   ‘ Milo, can’t we wait until morning?’ Yossarian pleaded.
‘I’ve got to get some sleep.’

   ‘They’re ripening very quickly,’ answered Milo, ‘and we don’t
have a minute to lose. Just think how happy the men back at the squadron will
be when they get these bananas.’ But the men back at the squadron never even
saw any of the bananas, for it was a seller’s market for bananas in Istanbul
and a buyer’s market in Beirut for the caraway seeds Milo rushed with to
Bengasi after selling the bananas, and when they raced back into Pianosa
breathlessly six days later at the conclusion of Orr’s rest leave, it was with
a load of best white eggs from Sicily that Milo said were from Egypt and sold
to his mess halls for only four cents apiece so that all the commanding
officers in his syndicate would implore him to speed right back to Cairo for
more bunches of green red bananas to sell in Turkey for the caraway seeds in
demand in Bengasi. And everybody had a share.

   The only one back in the squadron who did
see any of Milo’s red bananas was Aarfy, who picked up two from an influential
fraternity brother of his in the Quartermaster Corps when the bananas ripened
and began streaming into Italy through normal black-market channels and who was
in the officer’s apartment with Yossarian the evening Nately finally found his
whore again after so many fruitless weeks of mournful searching and lured her
back to the apartment with two girl friends by promising them thirty dollars
each.

   ‘Thirty dollars each?’ remarked Aarfy slowly, poking and
patting each of the three strapping girls skeptically with the air of a
grudging connoisseur. ‘Thirty dollars is a lot of money for pieces like these.
Besides, I never paid for it in my life.’

   ‘I’m not asking you to pay for it,’ Nately assured him
quickly. ‘I’ll pay for them all. I just want you guys to take the other two.
Won’t you help me out?’ Aarfy smirked complacently and shook his soft round
head. ‘Nobody has to pay for it for good old Aarfy. I can get all I want any
time I want it. I’m just not in the mood right now.’

   ‘Why don’t you just pay all three and send the other two
away?’ Yossarian suggested.

   ‘Because then mine will be angry with me for making her work
for her money,’ Nately replied with an anxious look at his girl, who was
glowering at him restlessly and starting to mutter. ‘She says that if I really
like her I’d send her away and go to bed with one of the others.’

   ‘I have a better idea,’ boasted Aarfy. ‘Why don’t we keep the
three of them here until after the curfew and then threaten to push them out
into the street to be arrested unless they give us all their money? We can even
threaten to push them out the window.’

   ‘Aarfy!’ Nately was aghast.

   ‘I was only trying to help,’ said Aarfy sheepishly. Aarfy was
always trying to help Nately because Nately’s father was rich and prominent and
in an excellent position to help Aarfy after the war. ‘Gee whiz,’ he defended
himself querulously. ‘Back in school we were always doing things like that. I
remember one day we tricked these two dumb high-school girls from town into the
fraternity house and made them put out for all the fellows there who wanted
them by threatening to call up their parents and say they were putting out for
us. We kept them trapped in bed there for more than ten hours. We even smacked
their faces a little when they started to complain. Then we took away their
nickels and dimes and chewing gum and threw them out. Boy, we used to have fun
in that fraternity house,’ he recalled peacefully, his corpulent cheeks aglow
with the jovial, rubicund warmth of nostalgic recollection. ‘We used to
ostracize everyone, even each other.’ But Aarfy was no help to Nately now as
the girl Nately had fallen so deeply in love with began swearing at him
sullenly with rising, menacing resentment. Luckily, Hungry Joe burst in just
then, and everything was all right again, except that Dunbar staggered in drunk
a minute later and began embracing one of the other giggling girls at once. Now
there were four men and three girls, and the seven of them left Aarfy in the
apartment and climbed into a horse-drawn cab, which remained at the curb at a
dead halt while the girls demanded their money in advance. Nately gave them
ninety dollars with a gallant flourish, after borrowing twenty dollars from
Yossarian, thirty-five dollars from Dunbar and seventeen dollars from Hungry
Joe. The girls grew friendlier then and called an address to the driver, who
drove them at a clopping pace halfway across the city into a section they had
never visited before and stopped in front of an old, tall building on a dark
street. The girls led them up four steep, very long flights of creaking wooden
stairs and guided them through a doorway into their own wonderful and
resplendent tenement apartment, which burgeoned miraculously with an infinite
and proliferating flow of supple young naked girls and contained the evil and
debauched ugly old man who irritated Nately constantly with his caustic
laughter and the clucking, proper old woman in the ash-gray woolen sweater who
disapproved of everything immoral that occurred there and tried her best to
tidy up.

   The amazing place was a fertile, seething cornucopia of
female nipples and navels. At first, there were just their own three girls, in
the dimly-lit, drab brown sitting room that stood at the juncture of three
murky hallways leading in separate directions to the distant recesses of the
strange and marvelous bordello. The girls disrobed at once, pausing in
different stages to point proudly to their garish underthings and bantering all
the while with the gaunt and dissipated old man with the shabby long white hair
and slovenly white unbuttoned shirt who sat cackling lasciviously in a musty
blue armchair almost in the exact center of the room and bade Nately and his
companions welcome with a mirthful and sardonic formality. Then the old woman
trudged out to get a girl for Hungry Joe, dipping her captious head sadly, and
returned with two big-bosomed beauties, one already undressed and the other in
only a transparent pink half slip that she wiggled out of while sitting down.
Three more naked girls sauntered in from a different direction and remained to
chat, then two others. Four more girls passed through the room in an indolent
group, engrossed in conversation; three were barefoot and one wobbled
perilously on a pair of unbuckled silver dancing shoes that did not seem to be
her own. One more girl appeared wearing only panties and sat down, bringing the
total congregating there in just a few minutes to eleven, all but one of them
completely unclothed.

   There was bare flesh lounging everywhere, most of it plump,
and Hungry Joe began to die. He stood stock still in rigid, cataleptic astonishment
while the girls ambled in and made themselves comfortable. Then he let out a
piercing shriek suddenly and bolted toward the door in a headlong dash back
toward the enlisted men’s apartment for his camera, only to be halted in his
tracks with another frantic shriek by the dreadful, freezing premonition that
this whole lovely, lurid, rich and colorful pagan paradise would be snatched
away from him irredeemably if he were to let it out of his sight for even an
instant. He stopped in the doorway and sputtered, the wiry veins and tendons in
his face and neck pulsating violently. The old man watched him with victorious
merriment, sitting in his musty blue armchair like some satanic and hedonistic
deity on a throne, a stolen U.S. Army blanket wrapped around his spindly legs
to ward off a chill. He laughed quietly, his sunken, shrewd eyes sparkling
perceptively with a cynical and wanton enjoyment. He had been drinking. Nately
reacted on sight with bristling enmity to this wicked, depraved and unpatriotic
old man who was old enough to remind him of his father and who made disparaging
jokes about America.

   ‘ America,’ he said, ‘will lose the war. And Italy will win
it.’

   ‘ America is the strongest and most prosperous nation on
earth,’ Nately informed him with lofty fervor and dignity. ‘And the American
fighting man is second to none.’

   ‘Exactly,’ agreed the old man pleasantly, with a hint of
taunting amusement. ‘ Italy, on the other hand, is one of the least prosperous
nations on earth. And the Italian fighting man is probably second to all. And
that’s exactly why my country is doing so well in this war while your country
is doing so poorly.’ Nately guffawed with surprise, then blushed apologetically
for his impoliteness. ‘I’m sorry I laughed at you,’ he said sincerely, and he
continued in a tone of respectful condescension. ‘But Italy was occupied by the
Germans and is now being occupied by us. You don’t call that doing very well,
do you?’

   ‘But of course I do,’ exclaimed the old man cheerfully. ‘The
Germans are being driven out, and we are still here. In a few years you will be
gone, too, and we will still be here. You see, Italy is really a very poor and
weak country, and that’s what makes us so strong. Italian soldiers are not
dying any more. But American and German soldiers are. I call that doing
extremely well. Yes, I am quite certain that Italy will survive this war and
still be in existence long after your own country has been destroyed.’ Nately
could scarcely believe his ears. He had never heard such shocking blasphemies
before, and he wondered with instinctive logic why G-men did not appear to lock
the traitorous old man up. ‘ America is not going to be destroyed!’ he shouted
passionately.

   ‘Never?’ prodded the old man softly.

   ‘Well…’ Nately faltered.

   The old man laughed indulgently, holding in check a deeper,
more explosive delight. His goading remained gentle. ‘ Rome was destroyed,
Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed. All great
countries are destroyed. Why not yours? How much longer do you really think
your own country will last? Forever? Keep in mind that the earth itself is
destined to be destroyed by the sun in twenty-five million years or so.’ Nately
squirmed uncomfortably. ‘Well, forever is a long time, I guess.’

   ‘A million years?’ persisted the jeering old man with keen,
sadistic zest. ‘A half million? The frog is almost five hundred million years
old. Could you really say with much certainty that America, with all its
strength and prosperity, with its fighting man that is second to none, and with
its standard of living that is the highest in the world, will last as long as…
the frog?’ Nately wanted to smash his leering face. He looked about imploringly
for help in defending his country’s future against the obnoxious calumnies of
this sly and sinful assailant. He was disappointed. Yossarian and Dunbar were
busy in a far corner pawing orgiastically at four or five frolicsome girls and
six bottles of red wine, and Hungry Joe had long since tramped away down one of
the mystic hallways, propelling before him like a ravening despot as many of
the broadest-hipped young prostitutes as he could contain in his frail
wind-milling arms and cram into one double bed.

   Nately felt himself at an embarrassing loss. His own girl sat
sprawled out gracelessly on an overstuffed sofa with an expression of otiose
boredom. Nately was unnerved by her torpid indifference to him, by the same
sleepy and inert poise that he remembered so vivdly, so sweetly, and so
miserably from the first time she had seen him and ignored him at the packed
penny-ante blackjack game in the living room of the enlisted men’s apartment.
Her lax mouth hung open in a perfect O, and God alone knew at what her glazed
and smoky eyes were staring in such brute apathy. The old man waited
tranquilly, watching him with a discerning smile that was both scornful and
sympathetic. A lissome, blond, sinuous girl with lovely legs and honey-colored
skin laid herself out contentedly on the arm of the old man’s chair and began molesting
his angular, pale, dissolute face languidly and coquettishly. Nately stiffened
with resentment and hostility at the sight of such lechery in a man so old. He
turned away with a sinking heart and wondered why he simply did not take his
own girl and go to bed.

   This sordid, vulturous, diabolical old man reminded Nately of
his father because the two were nothing at all alike. Nately’s father was a
courtly white-haired gentleman who dressed impeccably; this old man was an
uncouth bum. Nately’s father was a sober, philosophical and responsible man;
this old man was fickle and licentious. Nately’s father was discreet and
cultured; this old man was a boor. Nately’s father believed in honor and knew
the answer to everything; this old man believed in nothing and had only
questions. Nately’s father had a distinguished white mustache; this old man had
no mustache at all. Nately’s father—and everyone else’s father Nately had ever
met—was dignified, wise and venerable; this old man was utterly repellent, and Nately
plunged back into debate with him, determined to repudiate his vile logic and
insinuations with an ambitious vengeance that would capture the attention of
the bored, phlegmatic girl he had fallen so intensely in love with and win her
admiration forever.

   ‘Well, frankly, I don’t know how long America is going to
last,’ he proceeded dauntlessly. ‘I suppose we can’t last forever if the world
itself is going to be destroyed someday. But I do know that we’re going to
survive and triumph for a long, long time.’

   ‘For how long?’ mocked the profane old man with a gleam of
malicious elation. ‘Not even as long as the frog?’

   ‘Much longer than you or me,’ Nately blurted out lamely.

   ‘Oh, is that all! That won’t be very much longer then,
considering that you’re so gullible and brave and that I am already such an
old, old man.’

   ‘How old are you?’ Nately asked, growing intrigued and
charmed with the old man in spite of himself.

   ‘A hundred and seven.’ The old man chuckled heartily at
Nately’s look of chagrin. ‘I see you don’t believe that either.’

   ‘I don’t believe anything you tell me,’ Nately replied, with
a bashful mitigating smile. ‘The only thing I do believe is that America is
going to win the war.’

   ‘You put so much stock in winning wars,’ the grubby
iniquitous old man scoffed. ‘The real trick lies in losing wars, in knowing
which wars can be lost. Italy has been losing wars for centuries, and just see
how splendidly we’ve done nonetheless. France wins wars and is in a continual
state of crisis. Germany loses and prospers. Look at our own recent history.
Italy won a war in Ethiopia and promptly stumbled into serious trouble. Victory
gave us such insane delusions of grandeur that we helped start a world war we
hadn’t a chance of winning. But now that we are losing again, everything has
taken a turn for the better, and we will certainly come out on top again if we
succeed in being defeated.’ Nately gaped at him in undisguised befuddlement.
‘Now I really don’t understand what you’re saying. You talk like a madman.’