Catch-22 (5 page)

   Dunbar loved shooting skeet because he hated every minute of
it and the time passed so slowly. He had figured out that a single hour on the
skeet-shooting range with people like Havermeyer and Appleby could be worth as
much as eleven-times-seventeen years.

   ‘I think you’re crazy,’ was the way Clevinger had responded
to Dunbar ’s discovery.

   ‘Who wants to know?’ Dunbar answered.

   ‘I mean it,’ Clevinger insisted.

   ‘Who cares?’ Dunbar answered.

   ‘I really do. I’ll even go so far as to concede that life
seems longer I—’

   ‘—is longer I—’

   ‘—is longer—Is longer? All right, is longer if it’s filled
with periods of boredom and discomfort, b—’

   ‘Guess how fast?’ Dunbar said suddenly.

   ‘Huh?’

   ‘They go,’ Dunbar explained.

   ‘Years.’

   ‘Years.’

   ‘Years,’ said Dunbar. ‘Years, years, years.’

   ‘Clevinger, why don’t you let Dunbar alone?’ Yossarian broke
in. ‘Don’t you realize the toll this is taking?’

   ‘It’s all right,’ said Dunbar magnanimously. ‘I have some
decades to spare. Do you know how long a year takes when it’s going away?’

   ‘And you shut up also,’ Yossarian told Orr, who had begun to
snigger.

   ‘I was just thinking about that girl,’ Orr said. ‘That girl
in Sicily. That girl in Sicily with the bald head.’

   ‘You’d better shut up also,’ Yossarian warned him.

   ‘It’s your fault,’ Dunbar said to Yossarian. ‘Why don’t you
let him snigger if he wants to? It’s better than having him talking.’

   ‘All right. Go ahead and snigger if you want to.’

   ‘Do you know how long a year takes when it’s going away?’
Dunbar repeated to Clevinger. ‘This long.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘A second
ago you were stepping into college with your lungs full of fresh air. Today
you’re an old man.’

   ‘Old?’ asked Clevinger with surprise. ‘What are you talking
about?’

   ‘Old.’

   ‘I’m not old.’

   ‘You’re inches away from death every time you go on a
mission. How much older can you be at your age? A half minute before that you
were stepping into high school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you
ever hoped to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a second before that you were a
small kid with a ten-week summer vacation that lasted a hundred thousand years
and still ended too soon. Zip! They go rocketing by so fast. How the hell else
are you ever going to slow time down?’ Dunbar was almost angry when he
finished.

   ‘Well, maybe it is true,’ Clevinger conceded unwillingly in a
subdued tone. ‘Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant
conditions if it’s to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?’

   ‘I do,’ Dunbar told him.

   ‘Why?’ Clevinger asked.

   ‘What else is there?’

   Doc Daneeka lived in a splotched gray tent
with Chief White Halfoat, whom he feared and despised.

   ‘I can just picture his liver,’ Doc Daneeka grumbled.

   ‘Picture my liver,’ Yossarian advised him.

   ‘There’s nothing wrong with your liver.’

   ‘That shows how much you don’t know,’ Yossarian bluffed, and
told Doc Daneeka about the troublesome pain in his liver that had troubled
Nurse Duckett and Nurse Cramer and all the doctors in the hospital because it
wouldn’t become jaundice and wouldn’t go away.

   Doc Daneeka wasn’t interested. ‘You think you’ve got
troubles?’ he wanted to know. ‘What about me? You should’ve been in my office
the day those newlyweds walked in.’

   ‘What newlyweds?’

   ‘Those newlyweds that walked into my office one day. Didn’t I
ever tell you about them? She was lovely.’ So was Doc Daneeka’s office. He had
decorated his waiting room with goldfish and one of the finest suites of cheap
furniture. Whatever he could he bought on credit, even the goldfish. For the
rest, he obtained money from greedy relatives in exchange for shares of the
profits. His office was in Staten Island in a two-family firetrap just four
blocks away from the ferry stop and only one block south of a supermarket,
three beauty parlors, and two corrupt druggists. It was a corner location, but
nothing helped. Population turnover was small, and people clung through habit
to the same physicians they had been doing business with for years. Bills piled
up rapidly, and he was soon faced with the loss of his most precious medical instruments:
his adding machine was repossessed, and then his typewriter. The goldfish died.
Fortunately, just when things were blackest, the war broke out.

   ‘It was a godsend,’ Doc Daneeka confessed solemnly. ‘Most of
the other doctors were soon in the service, and things picked up overnight. The
corner location really started paying off, and I soon found myself handling
more patients than I could handle competently. I upped my kickback fee with
those two drugstores. The beauty parlors were good for two, three abortions a
week. Things couldn’t have been better, and then look what happened. They had
to send a guy from the draft board around to look me over. I was Four-F. I had
examined myself pretty thoroughly and discovered that I was unfit for military
service. You’d think my word would be enough, wouldn’t you, since I was a
doctor in good standing with my county medical society and with my local Better
Business Bureau. But no, it wasn’t, and they sent this guy around just to make
sure I really did have one leg amputated at the hip and was helplessly
bedridden with incurable rheumatoid arthritis. Yossarian, we live in an age of
distrust and deteriorating spiritual values. It’s a terrible thing,’ Doc
Daneeka protested in a voice quavering with strong emotion. ‘It’s a terrible
thing when even the word of a licensed physician is suspected by the country he
loves.’ Doc Daneeka had been drafted and shipped to Pianosa as a flight
surgeon, even though he was terrified of flying.

   ‘I don’t have to go looking for trouble in an airplane,’ he
noted, blinking his beady, brown, offended eyes myopically. ‘It comes looking
for me. Like that virgin I’m telling you about that couldn’t have a baby.’

   ‘What virgin?’ Yossarian asked. ‘I thought you were telling
me about some newlyweds.’

   ‘That’s the virgin I’m telling you about. They were just a
couple of young kids, and they’d been married, oh, a little over a year when
they came walking into my office without an appointment. You should have seen
her. She was so sweet and young and pretty. She even blushed when I asked about
her periods. I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving that girl. She was built like
a dream and wore a chain around her neck with a medal of Saint Anthony hanging
down inside the most beautiful bosom I never saw. “It must be a terrible
temptation for Saint Anthony,” I joked—just to put her at ease, you know.
“Saint Anthony?” her husband said. “Who’s Saint Anthony?”
“Ask your wife,” I told him. “She can tell you who Saint Anthony
is.” “Who is Saint Anthony?” he asked her. “Who?” she
wanted to know. “Saint Anthony,” he told her. “Saint
Anthony?” she said. “Who’s Saint Anthony?” When I got a good
look at her inside my examination room I found she was still a virgin. I spoke
to her husband alone while she was pulling her girdle back on and hooking it
onto her stockings. “Every night,” he boasted. A real wise guy, you
know. “I never miss a night,” he boasted. He meant it, too. “I
even been puttin’ it to her mornings before the breakfasts she makes me before
we go to work,” he boasted. There was only one explanation. When I had
them both together again I gave them a demonstration of intercourse with the
rubber models I’ve got in my office. I’ve got these rubber models in my office
with all the reproductive organs of both sexes that I keep locked up in
separate cabinets to avoid a scandal. I mean I used to have them. I don’t have
anything any more, not even a practice. The only thing I have now is this low
temperature that I’m really starting to worry about. Those two kids I’ve got
working for me in the medical tent aren’t worth a damn as diagnosticians. All
they know how to do is complain. They think they’ve got troubles? What about
me? They should have been in my office that day with those two newlyweds
looking at me as though I were telling them something nobody’d ever heard of
before. You never saw anybody so interested. “You mean like this?” he
asked me, and worked the models for himself awhile. You know, I can see where a
certain type of person might get a big kick out of doing just that.
“That’s it,” I told him. “Now, you go home and try it my way for
a few months and see what happens. Okay?” “Okay,” they said, and
paid me in cash without any argument. “Have a good time,” I told
them, and they thanked me and walked out together. He had his arm around her
waist as though he couldn’t wait to get her home and put it to her again. A few
days later he came back all by himself and told my nurse he had to see me right
away. As soon as we were alone, he punched me in the nose.’

   ‘He did what?’

   ‘He called me a wise guy and punched me in the nose.
“What are you, a wise guy?” he said, and knocked me flat on my ass.
Pow! Just like that. I’m not kidding.’

   ‘I know you’re not kidding,’ Yossarian said. ‘But why did he
do it?’

   ‘How should I know why he did it?’ Doc Daneeka retorted with
annoyance.

   ‘Maybe it had something to do with Saint Anthony?’ Doc
Daneeka looked at Yossarian blankly. ‘Saint Anthony?’ he asked with
astonishment. ‘Who’s Saint Anthony?’

   ‘How should I know?’ answered Chief White Halfoat, staggering
inside the tent just then with a bottle of whiskey cradled in his arm and
sitting himself down pugnaciously between the two of them.

   Doc Daneeka rose without a word and moved his chair outside
the tent, his back bowed by the compact kit of injustices that was his
perpetual burden. He could not bear the company of his roommate.

   Chief White Halfoat thought he was crazy. ‘I don’t know
what’s the matter with that guy,’ he observed reproachfully. ‘He’s got no brains,
that’s what’s the matter with him. If he had any brains he’d grab a shovel and
start digging. Right here in the tent, he’d start digging, right under my cot.
He’d strike oil in no time. Don’t he know how that enlisted man struck oil with
a shovel back in the States? Didn’t he ever hear what happened to that kid—what
was the name of that rotten rat bastard pimp of a snotnose back in Colorado?’

   ‘Wintergreen.’

   ‘Wintergreen.’

   ‘He’s afraid,’ Yossarian explained.

   ‘Oh, no. Not Wintergreen.’ Chief White Halfoat shook his head
with undisguised admiration. ‘That stinking little punk wise-guy son of a bitch
ain’t afraid of nobody.’

   ‘Doc Daneeka’s afraid. That’s what’s the matter with him.’

   ‘What’s he afraid of?’

   ‘He’s afraid of you,’ Yossarian said. ‘He’s afraid you’re
going to die of pneumonia.’

   ‘He’d better be afraid,’ Chief White Halfoat said. A deep,
low laugh rumbled through his massive chest. ‘I will, too, the first chance I
get. You just wait and see.’ Chief White Halfoat was a handsome, swarthy Indian
from Oklahoma with a heavy, hard-boned face and tousled black hair, a
half-blooded Cree from Enid who, for occult reasons of his own, had made up his
mind to die of pneumonia. He was a glowering, vengeful, disillusioned Indian
who hated foreigners with names like Cathcart, Korn, Black and Havermeyer and
wished they’d all go back to where their lousy ancestors had come from.

   ‘You wouldn’t believe it, Yossarian,’ he ruminated, raising
his voice deliberately to bait Doc Daneeka, ‘but this used to be a pretty good
country to live in before they loused it up with their goddam piety.’ Chief
White Halfoat was out to revenge himself upon the white man. He could barely
read or write and had been assigned to Captain Black as assistant intelligence
officer.

   ‘How could I learn to read or write?’ Chief White Halfoat
demanded with simulated belligerence, raising his voice again so that Doc
Daneeka would hear. ‘Every place we pitched our tent, they sank an oil well.
Every time they sank a well, they hit oil. And every time they hit oil, they
made us pack up our tent and go someplace else. We were human divining rods.
Our whole family had a natural affinity for petroleum deposits, and soon every
oil company in the world had technicians chasing us around. We were always on
the move. It was one hell of a way to bring a child up, I can tell you. I don’t
think I ever spent more than a week in one place.’ His earliest memory was of a
geologist.

   ‘Every time another White Halfoat was born,’ he continued,
‘the stock market turned bullish. Soon whole drilling crews were following us
around with all their equipment just to get the jump on each other. Companies
began to merge just so they could cut down on the number of people they had to
assign to us. But the crowd in back of us kept growing. We never got a good
night’s sleep. When we stopped, they stopped. When we moved, they moved,
chuckwagons, bulldozers, derricks, generators. We were a walking business boom,
and we began to receive invitations from some of the best hotels just for the
amount of business we would drag into town with us. Some of those invitations
were mighty generous, but we couldn’t accept any because we were Indians and
all the best hotels that were inviting us wouldn’t accept Indians as guests.
Racial prejudice is a terrible thing, Yossarian. It really is. It’s a terrible
thing to treat a decent, loyal Indian like a nigger, kike, wop or spic.’ Chief
White Halfoat nodded slowly with conviction.

   ‘Then, Yossarian, it finally happened—the beginning of the
end. They began to follow us around from in front. They would try to guess
where we were going to stop next and would begin drilling before we even got
there, so we couldn’t stop. As soon as we’d begin to unroll our blankets, they
would kick us off. They had confidence in us. They wouldn’t even wait to strike
oil before they kicked us off. We were so tired we almost didn’t care the day
our time ran out. One morning we found ourselves completely surrounded by
oilmen waiting for us to come their way so they could kick us off. Everywhere
you looked there was an oilman on a ridge, waiting there like Indians getting
ready to attack. It was the end. We couldn’t stay where we were because we had
just been kicked off. And there was no place left for us to go. Only the Army
saved me. Luckily, the war broke out just in the nick of time, and a draft
board picked me right up out of the middle and put me down safely in Lowery
Field, Colorado. I was the only survivor.’ Yossarian knew he was lying, but did
not interrupt as Chief White Halfoat went on to claim that he had never heard
from his parents again. That didn’t bother him too much, though, for he had
only their word for it that they were his parents, and since they had lied to
him about so many other things, they could just as well have been lying to him
about that too. He was much better acquainted with the fate of a tribe of first
cousins who had wandered away north in a diversionary movement and pushed
inadvertently into Canada. When they tried to return, they were stopped at the
border by American immigration authorities who would not let them back into the
country. They could not come back in because they were red.

   It was a horrible joke, but Doc Daneeka didn’t laugh until
Yossarian came to him one mission later and pleaded again, without any real
expectation of success, to be grounded. Doc Daneeka snickered once and was soon
immersed in problems of his own, which included Chief White Halfoat, who had
been challenging him all that morning to Indian wrestle, and Yossarian, who
decided right then and there to go crazy.

   ‘You’re wasting your time,’ Doc Daneeka was forced to tell
him.

   ‘Can’t you ground someone who’s crazy?’

   ‘Oh, sure. I have to. There’s a rule saying I have to ground
anyone who’s crazy.’

   ‘Then why don’t you ground me? I’m crazy. Ask Clevinger.’

   ‘Clevinger? Where is Clevinger? You find Clevinger and I’ll
ask him.’

   ‘Then ask any of the others. They’ll tell you how crazy I
am.’

   ‘They’re crazy.’

   ‘Then why don’t you ground them?’

   ‘Why don’t they ask me to ground them?’

   ‘Because they’re crazy, that’s why.’

   ‘Of course they’re crazy,’ Doc Daneeka replied. ‘I just told
you they’re crazy, didn’t I? And you can’t let crazy people decide whether
you’re crazy or not, can you?’ Yossarian looked at him soberly and tried
another approach. ‘Is Orr crazy?’

   ‘He sure is,’ Doc Daneeka said.

   ‘Can you ground him?’

   ‘I sure can. But first he has to ask me to. That’s part of
the rule.’