Catch-22 (55 page)

   There was no morphine in the first-aid kit, no protection for
Snowden against pain but the numbing shock of the gaping wound itself. The
twelve syrettes of morphine had been stolen from their case and replaced by a
cleanly lettered note that said: ‘What’s good for M & M Enterprises is good
for the country. Milo Minderbinder.’ Yossarian swore at Milo and held two
aspirins out to ashen lips unable to receive them. But first he hastily drew a
tourniquet around Snowden’s thigh because he could not think what else to do in
those first tumultuous moments when his senses were in turmoil, when he knew he
must act competently at once and feared he might go to pieces completely.
Snowden watched him steadily, saying nothing. No artery was spurting, but
Yossarian pretended to absorb himself entirely into the fashioning of a
tourniquet, because applying a tourniquet was something he did know how to do.
He worked with simulated skill and composure, feeling Snowden’s lack-luster
gaze resting upon him. He recovered possession of himself before the tourniquet
was finished and loosened it immediately to lessen the danger of gangrene. His
mind was clear now, and he knew how to proceed. He rummaged through the
first-aid kit for scissors.

   ‘I’m cold,’ Snowden said softly. ‘I’m cold.’

   ‘You’re going to be all right, kid,’ Yossarian reassured him
with a grin. ‘You’re going to be all right.’

   ‘I’m cold,’ Snowden said again in a frail, childlike voice.
‘I’m cold.’

   ‘There, there,’ Yossarian said, because he did not know what
else to say. ‘There, there.’

   ‘I’m cold,’ Snowden whimpered. ‘I’m cold.’

   ‘There, there. There, there.’ Yossarian was frightened and
moved more swiftly. He found a pair of scissors at last and began cutting
carefully through Snowden’s coveralls high up above the wound, just below the groin.
He cut through the heavy gabardine cloth all the way around the thigh in a
straight line. The tiny tailgunner woke up while Yossarian was cutting with the
scissors, saw him, and fainted again. Snowden rolled his head to the other side
of his neck in order to stare at Yossarian more directly. A dim, sunken light
glowed in his weak and listless eyes. Yossarian, puzzled, tried not to look at
him. He began cutting downward through the coveralls along the inside seam. The
yawning wound—was that a tube of slimy bone he saw running deep inside the gory
scarlet flow behind the twitching, startling fibers of weird muscle?—was
dripping blood in several trickles, like snow melting on eaves, but viscous and
red, already thickening as it dropped. Yossarian kept cutting through the
coveralls to the bottom and peeled open the severed leg of the garment. It fell
to the floor with a plop, exposing the hem of khaki undershorts that were
soaking up blotches of blood on one side as though in thirst. Yossarian was
stunned at how waxen and ghastly Snowden’s bare leg looked, how loathsome, how
lifeless and esoteric the downy, fine, curled blond hairs on his odd white shin
and calf. The wound, he saw now, was not nearly as large as a football, but as
long and wide as his hand and too raw and deep to see into clearly. The raw
muscles inside twitched like live hamburger meat. A long sigh of relief escaped
slowly through Yossarian’s mouth when he saw that Snowden was not in danger of
dying. The blood was already coagulating inside the wound, and it was simply a
matter of bandaging him up and keeping him calm until the plane landed. He
removed some packets of sulfanilamide from the first-aid kit. Snowden quivered
when Yossarian pressed against him gently to turn him up slightly on his side.

   ‘Did I hurt you?’

   ‘I’m cold,’ Snowden whimpered. ‘I’m cold.’

   ‘There, there,’ Yossarian said. ‘There, there.’

   ‘I’m cold. I’m cold.’

   ‘There, there. There, there.’

   ‘It’s starting to hurt me,’ Snowden cried out suddenly with a
plaintive, urgent wince.

   Yossarian scrambled frantically through the first-aid kit in
search of morphine again and found only Milo’s note and a bottle of aspirin. He
cursed Milo and held two aspirin tablets out to Snowden. He had no water to
offer. Snowden rejected the aspirin with an almost imperceptible shake of his
head. His face was pale and pasty. Yossarian removed Snowden’s flak helmet and
lowered his head to the floor.

   ‘I’m cold,’ Snowden moaned with half-closed eyes. ‘I’m cold.’
The edges of his mouth were turning blue. Yossarian was petrified. He wondered
whether to pull the rip cord of Snowden’s parachute and cover him with the
nylon folds. It was very warm in the plane. Glancing up unexpectedly, Snowden
gave him a wan, co-operative smile and shifted the position of his hips a bit
so that Yossarian could begin salting the wound with sulfanilamide. Yossarian
worked with renewed confidence and optimism. The plane bounced hard inside an
air pocket, and he remembered with a start that he had left his own parachute
up front in the nose. There was nothing to be done about that. He poured
envelope after envelope of the white crystalline powder into the bloody oval
wound until nothing red could be seen and then drew a deep, apprehensive
breath, steeling himself with gritted teeth as he touched his bare hand to the
dangling shreds of drying flesh to tuck them up inside the wound. Quickly he
covered the whole wound with a large cotton compress and jerked his hand away.
He smiled nervously when his brief ordeal had ended. The actual contact with
the dead flesh had not been nearly as repulsive as he had anticipated, and he
found an excuse to caress the wound with his fingers again and again to
convince himself of his own courage.

   Next he began binding the compress in place with a roll of
gauze. The second time around Snowden’s thigh with the bandage, he spotted the
small hole on the inside through which the piece of flak had entered, a round,
crinkled wound the size of a quarter with blue edges and a black core inside
where the blood had crusted. Yossarian sprinkled this one with sulfanilamide
too and continued unwinding the gauze around Snowden’s leg until the compress
was secure. Then he snipped off the roll with the scissors and slit the end
down the center. He made the whole thing fast with a tidy square knot. It was a
good bandage, he knew, and he sat back on his heels with pride, wiping the
perspiration from his brow, and grinned at Snowden with spontaneous
friendliness.

   ‘I’m cold,’ Snowden moaned. ‘I’m cold.’

   ‘You’re going to be all right, kid,’ Yossarian assured him,
patting his arm comfortingly. ‘Everything’s under control.’ Snowden shook his
head feebly. ‘I’m cold,’ he repeated, with eyes as dull and blind as stone.
‘I’m cold.’

   ‘There, there,’ said Yossarian, with growing doubt and
trepidation. ‘There, there. In a little while we’ll be back on the ground and
Doc Daneeka will take care of you.’ But Snowden kept shaking his head and
pointed at last, with just the barest movement of his chin, down toward his
armpit. Yossarian bent forward to peer and saw a strangely colored stain
seeping through the coveralls just above the armhole of Snowden’s flak suit.
Yossarian felt his heart stop, then pound so violently he found it difficult to
breathe. Snowden was wounded inside his flak suit. Yossarian ripped open the
snaps of Snowden’s flak suit and heard himself scream wildly as Snowden’s
insides slithered down to the floor in a soggy pile and just kept dripping out.
A chunk of flak more than three inches big had shot into his other side just
underneath the arm and blasted all the way through, drawing whole mottled
quarts of Snowden along with it through the gigantic hole in his ribs it made
as it blasted out. Yossarian screamed a second time and squeezed both hands
over his eyes. His teeth were chattering in horror. He forced himself to look
again. Here was God’s plenty, all right, he thought bitterly as he
stared—liver, lungs, kidneys, ribs, stomach and bits of the stewed tomatoes
Snowden had eaten that day for lunch. Yossarian hated stewed tomatoes and
turned away dizzily and began to vomit, clutching his burning throat. The tail
gunner woke up while Yossarian was vomiting, saw him, and fainted again.
Yossarian was limp with exhaustion, pain and despair when he finished. He
turned back weakly to Snowden, whose breath had grown softer and more rapid,
and whose face had grown paler. He wondered how in the world to begin to save
him.

   ‘I’m cold,’ Snowden whimpered. ‘I’m cold.’

   ‘There, there,’ Yossarian mumbled mechanically in a voice too
low to be heard. ‘There, there.’ Yossarian was cold, too, and shivering
uncontrollably. He felt goose pimples clacking all over him as he gazed down
despondently at the grim secret Snowden had spilled all over the messy floor.
It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was
Snowden’s secret. Drop him out a window and he’ll fall. Set fire to him and
he’ll burn. Bury him and he’ll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit
gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden’s secret. Ripeness was all.

   ‘I’m cold,’ Snowden said. ‘I’m cold.’

   ‘There, there,’ said Yossarian. ‘There, there.’ He pulled the
rip cord of Snowden’s parachute and covered his body with the white nylon
sheets.

   ‘I’m cold.’

   ‘There, there.’

   ‘Colonel Korn says,’ said Major Danby to
Yossarian with a prissy, gratified smile, ‘that the deal is still on.
Everything is working out fine.’

   ‘No it isn’t.’

   ‘Oh, yes, indeed,’ Major Danby insisted benevolently. ‘In
fact, everything is much better. It was really a stroke of luck that you were
almost murdered by that girl. Now the deal can go through perfectly.’

   ‘I’m not making any deals with Colonel Korn.’ Major Danby’s
effervescent optimism vanished instantly, and he broke out all at once into a
bubbling sweat. ‘But you do have a deal with him, don’t you?’ he asked in
anguished puzzlement. ‘Don’t you have an agreement?’

   ‘I’m breaking the agreement.’

   ‘But you shook hands on it, didn’t you? You gave him your
word as a gentleman.’

   ‘I’m breaking my word.’

   ‘Oh, dear,’ sighed Major Danby, and began dabbing
ineffectually at his careworn brow with a folded white handkerchief. ‘But why,
Yossarian? It’s a very good deal they’re offering you.’

   ‘It’s a lousy deal, Danby. It’s an odious deal.’

   ‘Oh, dear,’ Major Danby fretted, running his bare hand over
his dark, wiry hair, which was already soaked with perspiration to the tops of
the thick, close-cropped waves. ‘Oh dear.’

   ‘Danby, don’t you think it’s odious?’ Major Danby pondered a
moment. ‘Yes, I suppose it is odious,’ he conceded with reluctance. His
globular, exophthalmic eyes were quite distraught. ‘But why did you make such a
deal if you didn’t like it?’

   ‘I did it in a moment of weakness,’ Yossarian wisecracked
with glum irony. ‘I was trying to save my life.’

   ‘Don’t you want to save your life now?’

   ‘That’s why I won’t let them make me fly more missions.’

   ‘Then let them send you home and you’ll be in no more
danger.’

   ‘Let them send me home because I flew more than fifty
missions,’ Yossarian said, ‘and not because I was stabbed by that girl, or
because I’ve turned into such a stubborn son of a bitch.’ Major Danby shook his
head emphatically in sincere and bespectacled vexation. ‘They’d have to send
nearly every man home if they did that. Most of the men have more than fifty
missions. Colonel Cathcart couldn’t possibly requisition so many inexperienced
replacement crews at one time without causing an investigation. He’s caught in
his own trap.’

   ‘That’s his problem.’

   ‘No, no, no, Yossarian,’ Major Danby disagreed solicitously.
‘It’s your problem. Because if you don’t go through with the deal, they’re
going to institute court-martial proceedings as soon as you sign out of the
hospital.’ Yossarian thumbed his nose at Major Danby and laughed with smug
elation. ‘The hell they will! Don’t lie to me, Danby. They wouldn’t even try.’

   ‘But why wouldn’t they?’ inquired Major Danby, blinking with
astonishment.

   ‘Because I’ve really got them over a barrel now. There’s an
official report that says I was stabbed by a Nazi assassin trying to kill them.
They’d certainly look silly trying to court-martial me after that.’

   ‘But, Yossarian!’ Major Danby exclaimed. ‘There’s another
official report that says you were stabbed by an innocent girl in the course of
extensive black-market operations involving acts of sabotage and the sale of
military secrets to the enemy.’ Yossarian was taken back severely with surprise
and disappointment. ‘Another official report?’

   ‘Yossarian, they can prepare as many official reports as they
want and choose whichever ones they need on any given occasion. Didn’t you know
that?’

   ‘Oh, dear,’ Yossarian murmured in heavy dejection, the blood
draining from his face. ‘Oh, dear.’ Major Danby pressed forward avidly with a
look of vulturous well-meaning. ‘Yossarian, do what they want and let them send
you home. It’s best for everyone that way.’

   ‘It’s best for Cathcart, Korn and me, not for everyone.’

   ‘For everyone,’ Major Danby insisted. ‘It will solve the
whole problem.’

   ‘Is it best for the men in the group who will have to keep
flying more missions?’ Major Danby flinched and turned his face away
uncomfortably for a second. ‘Yossarian,’ he replied, ‘it will help nobody if
you force Colonel Cathcart to court-martial you and prove you guilty of all the
crimes with which you’ll be charged. You will go to prison for a long time, and
your whole life will be ruined.’ Yossarian listened to him with a growing
feeling of concern. ‘What crimes will they charge me with?’

   ‘Incompetence over Ferrara, insubordination, refusal to
engage the enemy in combat when ordered to do so, and desertion.’ Yossarian
sucked his cheeks in soberly. ‘They could charge me with all that, could they?
They gave me a medal for Ferrara. How could they charge me with incompetence
now?’

   ‘Aarfy will swear that you and McWatt lied in your official
report.’

   ‘I’ll bet the bastard would!’

   ‘They will also find you guilty,’ Major Danby recited, ‘of
rape, extensive black-market operations, acts of sabotage and the sale of
military secrets to the enemy.’

   ‘How will they prove any of that? I never did a single one of
those things.’

   ‘But they have witnesses who will swear you did. They can get
all the witnesses they need simply by persuading them that destroying you is
for the good of the country. And in a way, it would be for the good of the
country.’

   ‘In what way?’ Yossarian demanded, rising up slowly on one
elbow with bridling hostility.

   Major Danby drew back a bit and began mopping his forehead
again. ‘Well, Yossarian,’ he began with an apologetic stammer, ‘it would not
help the war effort to bring Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn into disrepute
now. Let’s face it, Yossarian—in spite of everything, the group does have a
very good record. If you were court-martialed and found innocent, other men
would probably refuse to fly missions, too. Colonel Cathcart would be in
disgrace, and the military efficiency of the unit might be destroyed. So in
that way it would be for the good of the country to have you found guilty and
put in prison, even though you are innocent.’

   ‘What a sweet way you have of putting things!’ Yossarian
snapped with caustic resentment.

   Major Danby turned red and squirmed and squinted uneasily.
‘Please don’t blame me,’ he pleaded with a look of anxious integrity. ‘You know
it’s not my fault. All I’m doing is trying to look at things objectively and
arrive at a solution to a very difficult situation.’

   ‘I didn’t create the situation.’

   ‘But you can resolve it. And what else can you do? You don’t
want to fly more missions.’

   ‘I can run away.’ Run away?’

   ‘Desert. Take off I can turn my back on the whole damned mess
and start running.’ Major Danby was shocked. ‘Where to? Where could you go?’

   ‘I could get to Rome easily enough. And I could hide myself
there.’

   ‘And live in danger every minute of your life that they would
find you? No, no, no, no, Yossarian. That would be a disastrous and ignoble
thing to do. Running away from problems never solved them. Please believe me. I
am only trying to help you.’

   ‘That’s what that kind detective said before he decided to
jab his thumb into my wound,’ Yossarian retorted sarcastically.

   ‘I am not a detective,’ Major Danby replied with indignation,
his cheeks flushing again. ‘I’m a university professor with a highly developed
sense of right and wrong, and I wouldn’t try to deceive you. I wouldn’t lie to
anyone.’

   ‘What would you do if one of the men in the group asked you
about this conversation?’

   ‘I would lie to him.’ Yossarian laughed mockingly, and Major
Danby, despite his blushing discomfort, leaned back with relief, as though
welcoming the respite Yossarian’s changing mood promised. Yossarian gazed at
him with a mixture of reserved pity and contempt. He sat up in bed with his
back resting against the headboard, lit a cigarette, smiled slightly with wry
amusement, and stared with whimsical sympathy at the vivid, pop-eyed horror
that had implanted itself permanently on Major Danby’s face the day of the
mission to Avignon, when General Dreedle had ordered him taken outside and
shot. The startled wrinkles would always remain, like deep black scars, and
Yossarian felt sorry for the gentle, moral, middle-aged idealist, as he felt
sorry for so many people whose shortcomings were not large and whose troubles
were light.

   With deliberate amiability he said, ‘Danby, how can you work
along with people like Cathcart and Korn? Doesn’t it turn your stomach?’ Major
Danby seemed surprised by Yossarian’s question. ‘I do it to help my country,’
he replied, as though the answer should have been obvious. ‘Colonel Cathcart
and Colonel Korn are my superiors, and obeying their orders is the only
contribution I can make to the war effort. I work along with them because it’s
my duty. And also,’ he added in a much lower voice, dropping his eyes, ‘because
I am not a very aggressive person.’

   ‘Your country doesn’t need your help any more,’ Yossarian
reasoned with antagonism. ‘So all you’re doing is helping them.’

   ‘I try not to think of that,’ Major Danby admitted frankly.
‘But I try to concentrate on only the big result and to forget that they are
succeeding, too. I try to pretend that they are not significant.’

   ‘That’s my trouble, you know,’ Yossarian mused sympathetically,
folding his arms. ‘Between me and every ideal I always find Scheisskopfs,
Peckems, Korns and Cathcarts. And that sort of changes the ideal.’

   ‘You must try not to think of them,’ Major Danby advised
affirmatively. ‘And you must never let them change your values. Ideals are
good, but people are sometimes not so good. You must try to look up at the big
picture.’ Yossarian rejected the advice with a skeptical shake of his head.
‘When I look up, I see people cashing in. I don’t see heaven or saints or angels.
I see people cashing in on every decent impulse and every human tragedy.’

   ‘But you must try not to think of that, too,’ Major Danby
insisted. ‘And you must try not to let it upset you.’

   ‘Oh, it doesn’t really upset me. What does upset me, though,
is that they think I’m a sucker. They think that they’re smart, and that the
rest of us are dumb. And, you know, Danby, the thought occurs to me right now,
for the first time, that maybe they’re right.’

   ‘But you must try not to think of that too,’ argued Major
Danby. ‘You must think only of the welfare of your country and the dignity of
man.’

   ‘Yeah,’ said Yossarian.

   ‘I mean it, Yossarian. This is not World War One. You must
never forget that we’re at war with aggressors who would not let either one of
us live if they won.’

   ‘I know that,’ Yossarian replied tersely, with a sudden surge
of scowling annoyance. ‘Christ, Danby, I earned that medal I got, no matter
what their reasons were for giving it to me. I’ve flown seventy goddam combat
missions. Don’t talk to me about fighting to save my country. I’ve been
fighting all along to save my country. Now I’m going to fight a little to save
myself. The country’s not in danger any more, but I am.’

   ‘The war’s not over yet. The Germans are driving toward
Antwerp.’

   ‘The Germans will be beaten in a few months. And Japan will
be beaten a few months after that. If I were to give up my life now, it
wouldn’t be for my country. It would be for Cathcart and Korn. So I’m turning
my bombsight in for the duration. From now on I’m thinking only of me.’ Major
Danby replied indulgently with a superior smile, ‘But, Yossarian, suppose
everyone felt that way.’

   ‘Then I’d certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way,
wouldn’t I?’ Yossarian sat up straighter with a quizzical expression. ‘You
know, I have a queer feeling that I’ve been through this exact conversation
before with someone. It’s just like the chaplain’s sensation of having
experienced everything twice.’

   ‘The chaplain wants you to let them send you home,’ Major
Danby remarked.

   ‘The chaplain can jump in the lake.’

   ‘Oh, dear.’ Major Danby sighed, shaking his head in regretful
disappointment. ‘He’s afraid he might have influenced you.’

   ‘He didn’t influence me. You know what I might do? I might
stay right here in this hospital bed and vegetate. I could vegetate very
comfortably right here and let other people make the decisions.’

   ‘You must make decisions,’ Major Danby disagreed. ‘A person
can’t live like a vegetable.’

   ‘Why not?’ A distant warm look entered Major Danby’s eyes.
‘It must be nice to live like a vegetable,’ he conceded wistfully.

   ‘It’s lousy,’ answered Yossarian.

   ‘No, it must be very pleasant to be free from all this doubt
and pressure,’ insisted Major Danby. ‘I think I’d like to live like a vegetable
and make no important decisions.’

   ‘What kind of vegetable, Danby?’

   ‘A cucumber or a carrot.’

   ‘What kind of cucumber? A good one or a bad one?’

   ‘Oh, a good one, of course.’

   ‘They’d cut you off in your prime and slice you up for a
salad.’ Major Danby’s face fell. ‘A poor one, then.’

   ‘They’d let you rot and use you for fertilizer to help the
good ones grow.’

   ‘I guess I don’t want to live like a vegetable, then,’ said
Major Danby with a smile of sad resignation.

   ‘Danby, must I really let them send me home?’ Yossarian
inquired of him seriously.

   Major Danby shrugged. ‘It’s a way to save yourself.’

   ‘It’s a way to lose myself, Danby. You ought to know that.’

   ‘You could have lots of things you want.’

   ‘I don’t want lots of things I want,’ Yossarian replied, and
then beat his fist down against the mattress in an outburst of rage and
frustration. ‘Goddammit, Danby! I’ve got friends who were killed in this war. I
can’t make a deal now. Getting stabbed by that bitch was the best thing that
ever happened to me.’