Catch-22 (38 page)

   ‘It’s my self,’ he reminded her.

   ‘I suppose you just don’t care if you lose your leg, do you?’

   ‘It’s my leg.’

   ‘It certainly is not your leg!’ Nurse Cramer retorted. ‘That
leg belongs to the U. S. government. It’s no different than a gear or a bedpan.
The Army has invested a lot of money to make you an airplane pilot, and you’ve
no right to disobey the doctor’s orders.’ Yossarian was not sure he liked being
invested in. Nurse Cramer was still standing directly in front of him so that
he could not pass. His head was aching. Nurse Cramer shouted at him some
question he could not understand. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder and
said, ‘Screw.’ Nurse Cramer cracked him in the face so hard she almost knocked
him down. Yossarian drew back his fist to punch her in the jaw just as his leg
buckled and he began to fall. Nurse Duckett strode up in time to catch him. She
addressed them both firmly.

   ‘Just what’s going on here?’

   ‘He won’t get back into his bed,’ Nurse Cramer reported
zealously in an injured tone. ‘Sue Ann, he said something absolutely horrible
to me. Oh, I can’t even make myself repeat it!’

   ‘She called me a gear,’ Yossarian muttered.

   Nurse Duckett was not sympathetic. ‘Will you get back into
bed,’ she said, ‘or must I take you by your ear and put you there?’

   ‘Take me by my ear and put me there,’ Yossarian dared her.

   Nurse Duckett took him by his ear and put him back in bed.

   Nurse Sue Ann Duckett was a tall, spare,
mature, straight-backed woman with a prominent, well-rounded ass, small breasts
and angular ascetic New England features that came equally close to being very
lovely and very plain. Her skin was white and pink, her eyes small, her nose
and chin slender and sharp. She was able, prompt, strict and intelligent. She
welcomed responsibility and kept her head in every crisis. She was adult and
self-reliant, and there was nothing she needed from anyone. Yossarian took pity
and decided to help her.

   Next morning while she was standing bent over smoothing the
sheets at the foot of his bed, he slipped his hand stealthily into the narrow
space between her knees and, all at once, brought it up swiftly under her dress
as far as it would go. Nurse Duckett shrieked and jumped into the air a mile,
but it wasn’t high enough, and she squirmed and vaulted and seesawed back and
forth on her divine fulcrum for almost a full fifteen seconds before she
wiggled free finally and retreated frantically into the aisle with an ashen,
trembling face. She backed away too far, and Dunbar, who had watched from the
beginning, sprang forward on his bed without warning and flung both arms around
her bosom from behind. Nurse Duckett let out another scream and twisted away,
fleeing far enough from Dunbar for Yossarian to lunge forward and grab her by
the snatch again. Nurse Duckett bounced out across the aisle once more like a
ping-pong ball with legs. Dunbar was waiting vigilantly, ready to pounce. She
remembered him just in time and leaped aside. Dunbar missed completely and
sailed by her over the bed to the floor, landing on his skull with a soggy,
crunching thud that knocked him cold.

   He woke up on the floor with a bleeding nose and exactly the
same distressful head symptoms he had been feigning all along. The ward was in
a chaotic uproar. Nurse Duckett was in tears, and Yossarian was consoling her
apologetically as he sat beside her on the edge of a bed. The commanding
colonel was wroth and shouting at Yossarian that he would not permit his
patients to take indecent liberties with his nurses.

   ‘What do you want from him?’ Dunbar asked plaintively from
the floor, wincing at the vibrating pains in his temples that his voice set up.
‘He didn’t do anything.’

   ‘I’m talking about you!’ the thin, dignified colonel bellowed
as loudly as he could. ‘You’re going to be punished for what you did.’

   ‘What do you want from him?’ Yossarian called out. ‘All he
did was fall on his head.’

   ‘And I’m talking about you too!’ the colonel declared,
whirling to rage at Yossarian. ‘You’re going to be good and sorry you grabbed
Nurse Duckett by the bosom.’

   ‘I didn’t grab Nurse Duckett by the bosom,’ said Yossarian.

   ‘I grabbed her by the bosom,’ said Dunbar.

   ‘Are you both crazy?’ the doctor cried shrilly, backing away
in paling confusion.

   ‘Yes, he really is crazy, Doc,’ Dunbar assured him. ‘Every
night he dreams he’s holding a live fish in his hands.’ The doctor stopped in
his tracks with a look of elegant amazement and distaste, and the ward grew
still. ‘He does what?’ he demanded.

   ‘He dreams he’s holding a live fish in his hand.’

   ‘What kind of fish?’ the doctor inquired sternly of
Yossarian.

   ‘I don’t know,’ Yossarian answered. ‘I can’t tell one kind of
fish from another.’

   ‘In which hand do you hold them?’

   ‘It varies,’ answered Yossarian.

   ‘It varies with the fish,’ Dunbar added helpfully.

   The colonel turned and stared down at Dunbar suspiciously
with a narrow squint. ‘Yes? And how come you seem to know so much about it?’

   ‘I’m in the dream,’ Dunbar answered without cracking a smile.

   The colonel’s face flushed with embarrassment. He glared at
them both with cold, unforgiving resentment. ‘Get up off the floor and into
your bed,’ he directed Dunbar through thin lips. ‘And I don’t want to hear
another word about this dream from either one of you. I’ve got a man on my
staff to listen to disgusting bilge like this.’

   ‘Just why do you think,’ carefully inquired Major Sanderson,
the soft and thickset smiling staff psychiatrist to whom the colonel had ordered
Yossarian sent, ‘that Colonel Ferredge finds your dream disgusting?’ Yossarian
replied respectfully. ‘I suppose it’s either some quality in the dream or some
quality in Colonel Ferredge.’

   ‘That’s very well put,’ applauded Major Sanderson, who wore
squeaking GI shoes and had charcoal-black hair that stood up almost straight.
‘For some reason,’ he confided, ‘Colonel Ferredge has always reminded me of a
sea gull. He doesn’t put much faith in psychiatry, you know.’

   ‘You don’t like sea gulls, do you?’ inquired Yossarian.

   ‘No, not very much,’ admitted Major Sanderson with a sharp,
nervous laugh and pulled at his pendulous second chin lovingly as though it
were a long goatee. ‘I think your dream is charming, and I hope it recurs
frequently so that we can continue discussing it. Would you like a cigarette?’
He smiled when Yossarian declined. ‘Just why do you think,’ he asked knowingly,
‘that you have such a strong aversion to accepting a cigarette from me?’

   ‘I put one out a second ago. It’s still smoldering in your
ash tray.’ Major Sanderson chuckled. ‘That’s a very ingenious explanation. But
I suppose we’ll soon discover the true reason.’ He tied a sloppy double bow in
his opened shoelace and then transferred a lined yellow pad from his desk to
his lap. ‘This fish you dream about. Let’s talk about that. It’s always the
same fish, isn’t it?’

   ‘I don’t know,’ Yossarian replied. ‘I have trouble
recognizing fish.’

   ‘What does the fish remind you of?’

   ‘Other fish.’

   ‘And what do other fish remind you of?’

   ‘Other fish.’ Major Sanderson sat back disappointedly. ‘Do
you like fish?’

   ‘Not especially.’

   ‘Just why do you think you have such a morbid aversion to
fish?’ asked Major Sanderson triumphantly.

   ‘They’re too bland,’ Yossarian answered. ‘And too bony.’
Major Sanderson nodded understandingly, with a smile that was agreeable and
insincere. ‘That’s a very interesting explanation. But we’ll soon discover the
true reason, I suppose. Do you like this particular fish? The one you’re
holding in your hand?’

   ‘I have no feelings about it either way.’

   ‘Do you dislike the fish? Do you have any hostile or
aggressive emotions toward it?’

   ‘No, not at all. In fact, I rather like the fish.’

   ‘Then you do like the fish.’

   ‘Oh, no. I have no feelings toward it either way.’

   ‘But you just said you liked it. And now you say you have no
feelings toward it either way. I’ve just caught you in a contradiction. Don’t
you see?’

   ‘Yes, sir. I suppose you have caught me in a contradiction.’
Major Sanderson proudly lettered ‘Contradiction’ on his pad with his thick
black pencil. ‘Just why do you think,’ he resumed when he had finished, looking
up, ‘that you made those two statements expressing contradictory emotional
responses to the fish?’

   ‘I suppose I have an ambivalent attitude toward it.’ Major
Sanderson sprang up with joy when he heard the words ‘ambivalent attitude’.
‘You do understand!’ he exclaimed, wringing his hands together ecstatically.
‘Oh, you can’t imagine how lonely it’s been for me, talking day after day to
patients who haven’t the slightest knowledge of psychiatry, trying to cure
people who have no real interest in me or my work! It’s given me such a
terrible feeling of inadequacy.’ A shadow of anxiety crossed his face. ‘I can’t
seem to shake it.’

   ‘Really?’ asked Yossarian, wondering what else to say. ‘Why
do you blame yourself for gaps in the education of others?’

   ‘It’s silly, I know,’ Major Sanderson replied uneasily with a
giddy, involuntary laugh. ‘But I’ve always depended very heavily on the good
opinion of others. I reached puberty a bit later than all the other boys my
age, you see, and it’s given me sort of—well, all sorts of problems. I just
know I’m going to enjoy discussing them with you. I’m so eager to begin that
I’m almost reluctant to digress now to your problem, but I’m afraid I must.
Colonel Ferredge would be cross if he knew we were spending all our time on me.
I’d like to show you some ink blots now to find out what certain shapes and
colors remind you of.’

   ‘You can save yourself the trouble, Doctor. Everything
reminds me of sex.’

   ‘Does it?’ cried Major Sanderson with delight, as though
unable to believe his ears. ‘Now we’re really getting somewhere! Do you ever
have any good sex dreams?’

   ‘My fish dream is a sex dream.’

   ‘No, I mean real sex dreams—the kind where you grab some
naked bitch by the neck and pinch her and punch her in the face until she’s all
bloody and then throw yourself down to ravish her and burst into tears because
you love her and hate her so much you don’t know what else to do. That’s the
kind of sex dreams I like to talk about. Don’t you ever have sex dreams like
that?’ Yossarian reflected a moment with a wise look. ‘That’s a fish dream,’ he
decided.

   Major Sanderson recoiled as though he had been slapped. ‘Yes,
of course,’ he conceded frigidly, his manner changing to one of edgy and
defensive antagonism. ‘But I’d like you to dream one like that anyway just to
see how you react. That will be all for today. In the meantime, I’d also like you
to dream up the answers to some of those questions I asked you. These sessions
are no more pleasant for me than they are for you, you know.’

   ‘I’ll mention it to Dunbar,’ Yossarian replied.

   ‘ Dunbar?’

   ‘He’s the one who started it all. It’s his dream.’

   ‘Oh, Dunbar.’ Major Sanderson sneered, his confidence
returning. ‘I’ll bet Dunbar is that evil fellow who really does all those nasty
things you’re always being blamed for, isn’t he?’

   ‘He’s not so evil.’ And yet you’ll defend him to the very death,
won’t you?’

   ‘Not that far.’ Major Sanderson smiled tauntingly and wrote
‘Dunbar’ on his pad. ‘Why are you limping?’ he asked sharply, as Yossarian
moved to the door. ‘And what the devil is that bandage doing on your leg? Are
you mad or something?’

   ‘I was wounded in the leg. That’s what I’m in the hospital
for.’

   ‘Oh, no, you’re not,’ gloated Major Sanderson maliciously.
‘You’re in the hospital for a stone in your salivary gland. So you’re not so
smart after all, are you? You don’t even know what you’re in the hospital for.’

   ‘I’m in the hospital for a wounded leg,’ Yossarian insisted.

   Major Sanderson ignored his argument with a sarcastic laugh.
‘Well, give my regards to your friend Dunbar. And you will tell him to dream
that dream for me, won’t you?’ But Dunbar had nausea and dizziness with his
constant headache and was not inclined to co-operate with Major Sanderson.
Hungry Joe had nightmares because he had finished sixty missions and was
waiting again to go home, but he was unwilling to share any when he came to the
hospital to visit.

   ‘Hasn’t anyone got any dreams for Major Sanderson?’ Yossarian
asked. ‘I hate to disappoint him. He feels so rejected already.’

   ‘I’ve been having a very peculiar dream ever since I learned
you were wounded,’ confessed the chaplain. ‘I used to dream every night that my
wife was dying or being murdered or that my children were choking to death on
morsels of nutritious food. Now I dream that I’m out swimming in water over my
head and a shark is eating my left leg in exactly the same place where you have
your bandage.’

   ‘That’s a wonderful dream,’ Dunbar declared. ‘I bet Major
Sanderson will love it.’

   ‘That’s a horrible dream!’ Major Sanderson cried. ‘It’s
filled with pain and mutilation and death. I’m sure you had it just to spite
me. You know, I’m not even sure you belong in the Army, with a disgusting dream
like that.’ Yossarian thought he spied a ray of hope. ‘Perhaps you’re right,
sir,’ he suggested slyly. ‘Perhaps I ought to be grounded and returned to the
States.’

   ‘Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that in your promiscuous
pursuit of women you are merely trying to assuage your subconscious fears of
sexual impotence?’

   ‘Yes, sir, it has.’

   ‘Then why do you do it?’

   ‘To assuage my fears of sexual impotence.’

   ‘Why don’t you get yourself a good hobby instead?’ Major
Sanderson inquired with friendly interest. ‘Like fishing. Do you really find
Nurse Duckett so attractive? I should think she was rather bony. Rather bland
and bony, you know. Like a fish.’

   ‘I hardly know Nurse Duckett.’

   ‘Then why did you grab her by the bosom? Merely because she
has one?’

   ‘ Dunbar did that.’

   ‘Oh, don’t start that again,’ Major Sanderson exclaimed with
vitriolic scorn, and hurled down his pencil disgustedly. ‘Do you really think
that you can absolve yourself of guilt by pretending to be someone else? I
don’t like you, Fortiori. Do you know that? I don’t like you at all.’ Yossarian
felt a cold, damp wind of apprehension blow over him. ‘I’m not Fortiori, sir,’ he
said timidly. ‘I’m Yossarian.’

   ‘You’re who?’

   ‘My name is Yossarian, sir. And I’m in the hospital with a
wounded leg.’

   ‘Your name is Fortiori,’ Major Sanderson contradicted him
belligerently. ‘And you’re in the hospital for a stone in your salivary gland.’

   ‘Oh, come on, Major!’ Yossarian exploded. ‘I ought to know
who I am.’

   ‘And I’ve got an official Army record here to prove it,’
Major Sanderson retorted. ‘You’d better get a grip on yourself before it’s too
late. First you’re Dunbar. Now you’re Yossarian. The next thing you know you’ll
be claiming you’re Washington Irving. Do you know what’s wrong with you? You’ve
got a split personality, that’s what’s wrong with you.’