Catch-22 (54 page)

   ‘Then we’ll forget the speeches. The important thing is what
you say to people here.’ Colonel Korn leaned forward earnestly, no longer
smiling. ‘We don’t want any of the men in the group to know that we’re sending
you home as a result of your refusal to fly more missions. And we don’t want
General Peckem or General Scheisskopf to get wind of any friction between us,
either. That’s why we’re going to become such good pals.’

   ‘What will I say to the men who asked me why I refused to fly
more missions?’

   ‘Tell them you had been informed in confidence that you were
being returned to the States and that you were unwilling to risk your life for
another mission or two. Just a minor disagreement between pals, that’s all.’

   ‘Will they believe it?’

   ‘Of course they’ll believe it, once they see what great
friends we’ve become and when they see the press releases and read the
flattering things you have to say about me and Colonel Cathcart. Don’t worry
about the men. They’ll be easy enough to discipline and control when you’ve
gone. It’s only while you’re still here that they may prove troublesome. You
know, one good apple can spoil the rest,’ Colonel Korn concluded with conscious
irony. ‘You know—this would really be wonderful—you might even serve as an
inspiration to them to fly more missions.’

   ‘Suppose I denounce you when I get back to the States?’

   ‘After you’ve accepted our medal and promotion and all the
fanfare? No one would believe you, the Army wouldn’t let you, and why in the
world should you want to? You’re going to be one of the boys, remember? You’ll
enjoy a rich, rewarding, luxurious, privileged existence. You’d have to be a
fool to throw it all away just for a moral principle, and you’re not a fool. Is
it a deal?’

   ‘I don’t know.’

   ‘It’s that or a court-martial.’

   ‘That’s a pretty scummy trick I’d be playing on the men in
the squadron, isn’t it?’

   ‘Odious,’ Colonel Korn agreed amiably, and waited, watching
Yossarian patiently with a glimmer of private delight.

   ‘But what the hell!’ Yossarian exclaimed. ‘If they don’t want
to fly more missions, let them stand up and do something about it the way I
did. Right?’

   ‘Of course,’ said Colonel Korn.

   ‘There’s no reason I have to risk my life for them, is
there?’

   ‘Of course not.’ Yossarian arrived at his decision with a
swift grin. ‘It’s a deal!’ he announced jubilantly.

   ‘Great,’ said Colonel Korn with somewhat less cordiality than
Yossarian had expected, and he slid himself off Colonel Cathcart’s desk to
stand on the floor. He tugged the folds of cloth of his pants and undershorts
free from his crotch and gave Yossarian a limp hand to shake. ‘Welcome aboard.’

   ‘Thanks, Colonel. I—’

   ‘Call me Blackie, John. We’re pals now.’

   ‘Sure, Blackie. My friends call me Yo-Yo. Blackie, I—’

   ‘His friends call him Yo-Yo,’ Colonel Korn sang out to
Colonel Cathcart. ‘Why don’t you congratulate Yo-Yo on what a sensible move
he’s making?’

   ‘That’s a real sensible move you’re making, Yo-Yo,’ Colonel
Cathcart said, pumping Yossarian’s hand with clumsy zeal.

   ‘Thank you, Colonel, I—’

   ‘Call him Chuck,’ said Colonel Korn.

   ‘Sure, call me Chuck,’ said Colonel Cathcart with a laugh
that was hearty and awkward. ‘We’re all pals now.’

   ‘Sure, Chuck.’

   ‘Exit smiling,’ said Colonel Korn, his hands on both their
shoulders as the three of them moved to the door.

   ‘Come on over for dinner with us some night, Yo-Yo,’ Colonel
Cathcart invited hospitably. ‘How about tonight? In the group dining room.’

   ‘I’d love to, sir.’

   ‘Chuck,’ Colonel Korn corrected reprovingly.

   ‘I’m sorry, Blackie. Chuck. I can’t get used to it.’

   ‘That’s all right, pal.’

   ‘Sure, pal.’

   ‘Thanks, pal.’

   ‘Don’t mention it, pal.’

   ‘So long, pal.’ Yossarian waved goodbye fondly to his new
pals and sauntered out onto the balcony corridor, almost bursting into song the
instant he was alone. He was home free: he had pulled it off; his act of
rebellion had succeeded; he was safe, and he had nothing to be ashamed of to
anyone. He started toward the staircase with a jaunty and exhilarated air. A
private in green fatigues saluted him. Yossarian returned the salute happily,
staring at the private with curiosity. He looked strangely familiar. When
Yossarian returned the salute, the private in green fatigues turned suddenly
into Nately’s whore and lunged at him murderously with a bone-handled kitchen
knife that caught him in the side below his upraised arm. Yossarian sank to the
floor with a shriek, shutting his eyes in overwhelming terror as he saw the
girl lift the knife to strike at him again. He was already unconscious when
Colonel Korn and Colonel Cathcart dashed out of the office and saved his life
by frightening her away.

   ‘Cut,’ said a doctor.

   ‘You cut,’ said another.

   ‘No cuts,’ said Yossarian with a thick, unwieldy tongue.

   ‘Now look who’s butting in,’ complained one of the doctors.
‘Another county heard from. Are we going to operate or aren’t we?’

   ‘He doesn’t need an operation,’ complained the other. ‘It’s a
small wound. All we have to do is stop the bleeding, clean it out and put a few
stitches in.’

   ‘But I’ve never had a chance to operate before. Which one is
the scalpel? Is this one the scalpel?’

   ‘No, the other one is the scalpel. Well, go ahead and cut
already if you’re going to. Make the incision.’

   ‘Like this?’

   ‘Not there, you dope!’

   ‘No incisions,’ Yossarian said, perceiving through the
lifting fog of insensibility that the two strangers were ready to begin cutting
him.

   ‘Another county heard from,’ complained the first doctor
sarcastically. ‘Is he going to keep talking that way while I operate on him?’

   ‘You can’t operate on him until I admit him,’ said a clerk.

   ‘You can’t admit him until I clear him,’ said a fat, gruff
colonel with a mustache and an enormous pink face that pressed down very close
to Yossarian and radiated scorching heat like the bottom of a huge frying pan.
‘Where were you born?’ The fat, gruff colonel reminded Yossarian of the fat,
gruff colonel who had interrogated the chaplain and found him guilty. Yossarian
stared up at him through a glassy film. The cloying scents of formaldehyde and
alcohol sweetened the air.

   ‘On a battlefield,’ he answered.

   ‘No, no. In what state were you born?’

   ‘In a state of innocence.’

   ‘No, no, you don’t understand.’

   ‘Let me handle him,’ urged a hatchet-faced man with sunken
acrimonious eyes and a thin, malevolent mouth. ‘Are you a smart aleck or
something?’ he asked Yossarian.

   ‘He’s delirious,’ one of the doctors said. ‘Why don’t you let
us take him back inside and treat him?’

   ‘Leave him right here if he’s delirious. He might say
something incriminating.’

   ‘But he’s still bleeding profusely. Can’t you see? He might
even die.’

   ‘Good for him!’

   ‘It would serve the finky bastard right,’ said the fat, gruff
colonel. ‘All right, John, let’s speak out. We want to get to the truth.’

   ‘Everyone calls me Yo-Yo.’

   ‘We want you to co-operate with us, Yo-Yo. We’re your friends
and we want you to trust us. We’re here to help you. We’re not going to hurt
you.’

   ‘Let’s jab our thumbs down inside his wound and gouge it,’
suggested the hatchet-faced man.

   Yossarian let his eyes fall closed and hoped they would think
he was unconscious.

   ‘He’s fainted,’ he heard a doctor say. ‘Can’t we treat him
now before it’s too late? He really might die.’

   ‘All right, take him. I hope the bastard does die.’

   ‘You can’t treat him until I admit him,’ the clerk said.

   Yossarian played dead with his eyes shut while the clerk
admitted him by shuffling some papers, and then he was rolled away slowly into
a stuffy, dark room with searing spotlights overhead in which the cloying smell
of formaldehyde and sweet alcohol was even stronger. The pleasant, permeating
stink was intoxicating. He smelled ether too and heard glass tinkling. He
listened with secret, egotistical mirth to the husky breathing of the two
doctors. It delighted him that they thought he was unconscious and did not know
he was listening. It all seemed very silly to him until one of the doctors
said, ‘Well, do you think we should save his life? They might be sore at us if
we do.’

   ‘Let’s operate,’ said the other doctor. ‘Let’s cut him open
and get to the inside of things once and for all. He keeps complaining about
his liver. His liver looks pretty small on this X ray.’

   ‘That’s his pancreas, you dope. This is his liver.’

   ‘No it isn’t. That’s his heart. I’ll bet you a nickel this is
his liver. I’m going to operate and find out. Should I wash my hands first?’

   ‘No operations,’ Yossarian said, opening his eyes and trying
to sit up.

   ‘Another county heard from,’ scoffed one of the doctors
indignantly. ‘Can’t we make him shut up?’

   ‘We could give him a total. The ether’s right here.’

   ‘No totals,’ said Yossarian.

   ‘Another county heard from,’ said a doctor.

   ‘Let’s give him a total and knock him out. Then we can do
what we want with him.’ They gave Yossarian total anesthesia and knocked him
out. He woke up thirsty in a private room, drowning in ether fumes. Colonel
Korn was there at his bedside, waiting calmly in a chair in his baggy, wool,
olive-drab shirt and trousers. A bland, phlegmatic smile hung on his brown face
with its heavy-bearded cheeks, and he was buffing the facets of his bald head
gently with the palms of both hands. He bent forward chuckling when Yossarian
awoke, and assured him in the friendliest tones that the deal they had made was
still on if Yossarian didn’t die. Yossarian vomited, and Colonel Korn shot to
his feet at the first cough and fled in disgust, so it seemed indeed that there
was a silver lining to every cloud, Yossarian reflected, as he drifted back
into a suffocating daze. A hand with sharp fingers shook him awake roughly. He
turned and opened his eyes and saw a strange man with a mean face who curled
his lip at him in a spiteful scowl and bragged, ‘We’ve got your pal, buddy.
We’ve got your pal.’ Yossarian turned cold and faint and broke into a sweat.

   ‘Who’s my pal?’ he asked when he saw the chaplain sitting
where Colonel Korn had been sitting.

   ‘Maybe I’m your pal,’ the chaplain answered.

   But Yossarian couldn’t hear him and closed his eyes. Someone
gave him water to sip and tiptoed away. He slept and woke up feeling great
until he turned his head to smile at the chaplain and saw Aarfy there instead.
Yossarian moaned instinctively and screwed his face up with excruciating
irritability when Aarfy chortled and asked how he was feeling. Aarfy looked
puzzled when Yossarian inquired why he was not in jail. Yossarian shut his eyes
to make him go away. When he opened them, Aarfy was gone and the chaplain was
there. Yossarian broke into laughter when he spied the chaplain’s cheerful grin
and asked him what in the hell he was so happy about.

   ‘I’m happy about you,’ the chaplain replied with excited
candor and joy. ‘I heard at Group that you were very seriously injured and that
you would have to be sent home if you lived. Colonel Korn said your condition
was critical. But I’ve just learned from one of the doctors that your wound is
really a very slight one and that you’ll probably be able to leave in a day or
two. You’re in no danger. It isn’t bad at all.’ Yossarian listened to the chaplain’s
news with enormous relief. ‘That’s good.’

   ‘Yes,’ said the chaplain, a pink flush of impish pleasure
creeping into his cheeks. ‘Yes, that is good.’ Yossarian laughed, recalling his
first conversation with the chaplain. ‘You know, the first time I met you was
in the hospital. And now I’m in the hospital again. Just about the only time I
see you lately is in the hospital. Where’ve you been keeping yourself?’ The
chaplain shrugged. ‘I’ve been praying a lot,’ he confessed. ‘I try to stay in
my tent as much as I can, and I pray every time Sergeant Whitcomb leaves the
area, so that he won’t catch me.’

   ‘Does it do any good?’

   ‘It takes my mind off my troubles,’ the chaplain answered
with another shrug. ‘And it gives me something to do.’

   ‘Well that’s good, then, isn’t it?’

   ‘Yes,’ agreed the chaplain enthusiastically, as though the
idea had not occurred to him before. ‘Yes, I guess that is good.’ He bent
forward impulsively with awkward solicitude. ‘Yossarian, is there anything I
can do for you while you’re here, anything I can get you?’ Yossarian teased him
jovially. ‘Like toys, or candy, or chewing gum?’ The chaplain blushed again,
grinning self-consciously, and then turned very respectful. ‘Like books,
perhaps, or anything at all. I wish there was something I could do to make you
happy. You know, Yossarian, we’re all very proud of you.’

   ‘Proud?’

   ‘Yes, of course. For risking your life to stop that Nazi
assassin. It was a very noble thing to do.’

   ‘What Nazi assassin?’

   ‘The one that came here to murder Colonel Cathcart and
Colonel Korn. And you saved them. He might have stabbed you to death as you
grappled with him on the balcony. It’s a lucky thing you’re alive!’ Yossarian
snickered sardonically when he understood. ‘That was no Nazi assassin.’

   ‘Certainly it was. Colonel Korn said it was.’

   ‘That was Nately’s girl friend. And she was after me, not
Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn. She’s been trying to kill me ever since I
broke the news to her that Nately was dead.’

   ‘But how could that be?’ the chaplain protested in livid and
resentful confusion. ‘Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn both saw him as he ran
away. The official report says you stopped a Nazi assassin from killing them.’

   ‘Don’t believe the official report,’ Yossarian advised dryly.
‘It’s part of the deal.’

   ‘What deal?’

   ‘The deal I made with Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn.
They’ll let me go home a big hero if I say nice things about them to everybody
and never criticize them to anyone for making the rest of the men fly more
missions.’ The chaplain was appalled and rose halfway out of his chair. He
bristled with bellicose dismay. ‘But that’s terrible! That’s a shameful,
scandalous deal, isn’t it?’

   ‘Odious,’ Yossarian answered, staring up woodenly at the
ceiling with just the back of his head resting on the pillow. ‘I think
“odious” is the word we decided on.’

   ‘Then how could you agree to it?’

   ‘It’s that or a court-martial, Chaplain.’

   ‘Oh,’ the chaplain exclaimed with a look of stark remorse,
the back of his hand covering his mouth. He lowered himself into his chair
uneasily. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything.’

   ‘They’d lock me in prison with a bunch of criminals.’

   ‘Of course. You must do whatever you think is right, then.’
The chaplain nodded to himself as though deciding the argument and lapsed into
embarrassed silence.

   ‘Don’t worry,’ Yossarian said with a sorrowful laugh after
several moments had passed. ‘I’m not going to do it.’

   ‘But you must do it,’ the chaplain insisted, bending forward
with concern. ‘Really, you must. I had no right to influence you. I really had
no right to say anything.’

   ‘You didn’t influence me.’ Yossarian hauled himself over onto
his side and shook his head in solemn mockery. ‘Christ, Chaplain! Can you
imagine that for a sin? Saving Colonel Cathcart’s life! That’s one crime I
don’t want on my record.’ The chaplain returned to the subject with caution.
‘What will you do instead? You can’t let them put you in prison.’

   ‘I’ll fly more missions. Or maybe I really will desert and
let them catch me. They probably would.’

   ‘And they’d put you in prison. You don’t want to go to
prison.’

   ‘Then I’ll just keep flying missions until the war ends, I
guess. Some of us have to survive.’

   ‘But you might get killed.’

   ‘Then I guess I won’t fly any more missions.’

   ‘What will you do?’

   ‘I don’t know.’

   ‘Will you let them send you home?’

   ‘I don’t know. Is it hot out? It’s very warm in here.’

   ‘It’s very cold out,’ the chaplain said.

   ‘You know,’ Yossarian remembered, ‘a very funny thing
happened—maybe I dreamed it. I think a strange man came in here before and told
me he’s got my pal. I wonder if I imagined it.’

   ‘I don’t think you did,’ the chaplain informed him. ‘You
started to tell me about him when I dropped in earlier.’

   ‘Then he really did say it. “We’ve got your pal,
buddy,” he said. “We’ve got your pal.” He had the most malignant
manner I ever saw. I wonder who my pal is.’

   ‘I like to think that I’m your pal, Yossarian,’ the chaplain
said with humble sincerity. ‘And they certainly have got me. They’ve got my
number and they’ve got me under surveillance, and they’ve got me right where
they want me. That’s what they told me at my interrogation.’

   ‘No, I don’t think it’s you he meant,’ Yossarian decided. ‘I
think it must be someone like Nately or Dunbar. You know, someone who was
killed in the war, like Clevinger, Orr, Dobbs, Kid Sampson or McWatt.’
Yossarian emitted a startled gasp and shook his head. ‘I just realized it,’ he
exclaimed. ‘They’ve got all my pals, haven’t they? The only ones left are me
and Hungry Joe.’ He tingled with dread as he saw the chaplain’s face go pale.
‘Chaplain, what is it?’

   ‘Hungry Joe was killed.’

   ‘God, no! On a mission?’

   ‘He died in his sleep while having a dream. They found a cat
on his face.’

   ‘Poor bastard,’ Yossarian said, and began to cry, hiding his
tears in the crook of his shoulder. The chaplain left without saying goodbye.
Yossarian ate something and went to sleep. A hand shook him awake in the middle
of the night. He opened his eyes and saw a thin, mean man in a patient’s
bathrobe and pajamas who looked at him with a nasty smirk and jeered.

   ‘We’ve got your pal, buddy. We’ve got your pal.’ Yossarian
was unnerved. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ he pleaded in incipient
panic.

   ‘You’ll find out, buddy. You’ll find out.’ Yossarian lunged
for his tormentor’s throat with one hand, but the man glided out of reach
effortlessly and vanished into the corridor with a malicious laugh. Yossarian
lay there trembling with a pounding pulse. He was bathed in icy sweat. He
wondered who his pal was. It was dark in the hospital and perfectly quiet. He
had no watch to tell him the time. He was wide-awake, and he knew he was a
prisoner in one of those sleepless, bedridden nights that would take an
eternity to dissolve into dawn. A throbbing chill oozed up his legs. He was
cold, and he thought of Snowden, who had never been his pal but was a vaguely
familiar kid who was badly wounded and freezing to death in the puddle of harsh
yellow sunlight splashing into his face through the side gunport when Yossarian
crawled into the rear section of the plane over the bomb bay after Dobbs had
beseeched him on the intercom to help the gunner, please help the gunner.
Yossarian’s stomach turned over when his eyes first beheld the macabre scene;
he was absolutely revolted, and he paused in fright a few moments before
descending, crouched on his hands and knees in the narrow tunnel over the bomb
bay beside the sealed corrugated carton containing the first-aid kit. Snowden
was lying on his back on the floor with his legs stretched out, still burdened
cumbersomely by his flak suit, his flak helmet, his parachute harness and his
Mae West. Not far away on the floor lay the small tail-gunner in a dead faint.
The wound Yossarian saw was in the outside of Snowden’s thigh, as large and
deep as a football, it seemed. It was impossible to tell where the shreds of
his saturated coveralls ended and the ragged flesh began.