Catch-22 (7 page)

   Each night after that, Captain Flume forced himself to keep
awake as long as possible. He was aided immeasurably by Hungry Joe’s
nightmares. Listening so intently to Hungry Joe’s maniacal howling night after
night, Captain Flume grew to hate him and began wishing that Chief White
Halfoat would tiptoe up to his cot one night and slit his throat open for him
from ear to ear. Actually, Captain Flume slept like a log most nights and
merely dreamed he was awake. So convincing were these dreams of lying awake
that he woke from them each morning in complete exhaustion and fell right back
to sleep.

   Chief White Halfoat had grown almost fond of Captain Flume
since his amazing metamorphosis. Captain Flume had entered his bed that night a
buoyant extrovert and left it the next morning a brooding introvert, and Chief
White Halfoat proudly regarded the new Captain Flume as his own creation. He
had never intended to slit Captain Flume’s throat open for him from ear to ear.
Threatening to do so was merely his idea of a joke, like dying of pneumonia,
busting Colonel Moodus in the nose or challenging Doc Daneeka to Indian
wrestle. All Chief White Halfoat wanted to do when he staggered in drunk each
night was go right to sleep, and Hungry Joe often made that impossible. Hungry
Joe’s nightmares gave Chief White Halfoat the heebie-jeebies, and he often
wished that someone would tiptoe into Hungry Joe’s tent, lift Huple’s cat off
his face and slit his throat open for him from ear to ear, so that everybody in
the squadron but Captain Flume could get a good night’s sleep.

   Even though Chief White Halfoat kept busting Colonel Moodus
in the nose for General Dreedle’s benefit, he was still outside the pale. Also
outside the pale was Major Major, the squadron commander, who had found that
out the same time he found out that he was squadron commander from Colonel
Cathcart, who came blasting into the squadron in his hopped-up jeep the day
after Major Duluth was killed over Perugia. Colonel Cathcart slammed to a
screeching stop inches short of the railroad ditch separating the nose of his
jeep from the lopsided basketball court on the other side, from which Major
Major was eventually driven by the kicks and shoves and stones and punches of
the men who had almost become his friends.

   ‘You’re the new squadron commander,’ Colonel Cathcart had
bellowed across the ditch at him. ‘But don’t think it means anything, because
it doesn’t. All it means is that you’re the new squadron commander.’ And
Colonel Cathcart had roared away as abruptly as he’d come, whipping the jeep
around with a vicious spinning of wheels that sent a spray of fine grit blowing
into Major Major’s face. Major Major was immobilized by the news. He stood
speechless, lanky and gawking, with a scuffed basketball in his long hands as
the seeds of rancor sown so swiftly by Colonel Cathcart took root in the
soldiers around him who had been playing basketball with him and who had let
him come as close to making friends with them as anyone had ever let him come
before. The whites of his moony eyes grew large and misty as his mouth
struggled yearningly and lost against the familiar, impregnable loneliness drifting
in around him again like suffocating fog.

   Like all the other officers at Group Headquarters except
Major Danby, Colonel Cathcart was infused with the democratic spirit: he
believed that all men were created equal, and he therefore spurned all men outside
Group Headquarters with equal fervor. Nevertheless, he believed in his men. As
he told them frequently in the briefing room, he believed they were at least
ten missions better than any other outfit and felt that any who did not share
this confidence he had placed in them could get the hell out. The only way they
could get the hell out, though, as Yossarian learned when he flew to visit
ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen, was by flying the extra ten missions.

   ‘I still don’t get it,’ Yossarian protested. ‘Is Doc Daneeka
right or isn’t he?’

   ‘How many did he say?’

   ‘Forty.’

   ‘Daneeka was telling the truth,’ ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen
admitted. ‘Forty missions is all you have to fly as far as Twenty-seventh Air
Force Headquarters is concerned.’ Yossarian was jubilant. ‘Then I can go home,
right? I’ve got forty-eight.’

   ‘No, you can’t go home,’ ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen corrected him.
‘Are you crazy or something?’

   ‘Why not?’

   ‘Catch-22.’

   ‘Catch-22?’ Yossarian was stunned. ‘What the hell has
Catch-22 got to do with it?’

   ‘Catch-22,’ Doc Daneeka answered patiently, when Hungry Joe
had flown Yossarian back to Pianosa, ‘says you’ve always got to do what your
commanding officer tells you to.’

   ‘But Twenty-seventh Air Force says I can go home with forty
missions.’

   ‘But they don’t say you have to go home. And regulations do
say you have to obey every order. That’s the catch. Even if the colonel were
disobeying a Twenty-seventh Air Force order by making you fly more missions,
you’d still have to fly them, or you’d be guilty of disobeying an order of his.
And then Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters would really jump on you.’
Yossarian slumped with disappointment. ‘Then I really have to fly the fifty
missions, don’t I?’ he grieved.

   ‘The fifty-five,’ Doc Daneeka corrected him.

   ‘What fifty-five?’

   ‘The fifty-five missions the colonel now wants all of you to
fly.’ Hungry Joe heaved a huge sigh of relief when he heard Doc Daneeka and
broke into a grin. Yossarian grabbed Hungry Joe by the neck and made him fly
them both right back to ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen.

   ‘What would they do to me,’ he asked in confidential tones,
‘if I refused to fly them?’

   ‘We’d probably shoot you,’ ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen replied.

   ‘We?’ Yossarian cried in surprise. ‘What do you mean, we?
Since when are you on their side?’

   ‘If you’re going to be shot, whose side do you expect me to
be on?’ ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen retorted.

   Yossarian winced. Colonel Cathcart had raised him again.

   Ordinarily, Yossarian’s pilot was McWatt,
who, shaving in loud red, clean pajamas outside his tent each morning, was one
of the odd, ironic, incomprehensible things surrounding Yossarian. McWatt was
the craziest combat man of them all probably, because he was perfectly sane and
still did not mind the war. He was a short-legged, wide-shouldered, smiling
young soul who whistled bouncy show tunes continuously and turned over cards
with sharp snaps when he dealt at blackjack or poker until Hungry Joe
disintegrated into quaking despair finally beneath their cumulative impact and
began ranting at him to stop snapping the cards.

   ‘You son of a bitch, you only do it because it hurts me,’
Hungry Joe would yell furiously, as Yossarian held him back soothingly with one
hand. ‘That’s the only reason he does it, because he likes to hear me
scream—you goddam son of a bitch!’ McWatt crinkled his fine, freckled nose
apologetically and vowed not to snap the cards any more, but always forgot.
McWatt wore fleecy bedroom slippers with his red pajamas and slept between
freshly pressed colored bedsheets like the one Milo had retrieved half of for
him from the grinning thief with the sweet tooth in exchange for none of the
pitted dates Milo had borrowed from Yossarian. McWatt was deeply impressed with
Milo, who, to the amusement of Corporal Snark, his mess sergeant, was already
buying eggs for seven cents apiece and selling them for five cents. But McWatt
was never as impressed with Milo as Milo had been with the letter Yossarian had
obtained for his liver from Doc Daneeka.

   ‘What’s this?’ Milo had cried out in alarm, when he came upon
the enormous corrugated carton filled with packages of dried fruit and cans of
fruit juices and desserts that two of the Italian laborers Major—de Coverley
had kidnaped for his kitchen were about to carry off to Yossarian’s tent.

   ‘This is Captain Yossarian, sir,’ said Corporal Snark with a
superior smirk. Corporal Snark was an intellectual snob who felt he was twenty
years ahead of his time and did not enjoy cooking down to the masses. ‘He has a
letter from Doc Daneeka entitling him to all the fruit and fruit juices he
wants.’

   ‘What’s this?’ cried out Yossarian, as Milo went white and
began to sway.

   ‘This is Lieutenant Milo Minderbinder, sir,’ said Corporal
Snark with a derisive wink. ‘One of our new pilots. He became mess officer
while you were in the hospital this last time.’

   ‘What’s this?’ cried out McWatt, late in the afternoon, as
Milo handed him half his bedsheet.

   ‘It’s half of the bedsheet that was stolen from your tent this
morning,’ Milo explained with nervous self-satisfaction, his rusty mustache
twitching rapidly. ‘I’ll bet you didn’t even know it was stolen.’

   ‘Why should anyone want to steal half a bedsheet?’ Yossarian
asked.

   Milo grew flustered. ‘You don’t understand,’ he protested.

   And Yossarian also did not understand why Milo needed so
desperately to invest in the letter from Doc Daneeka, which came right to the
point. ‘Give Yossarian all the dried fruit and fruit juices he wants,’ Doc
Daneeka had written. ‘He says he has a liver condition.’

   ‘A letter like this,’ Milo mumbled despondently, ‘could ruin
any mess officer in the world.’ Milo had come to Yossarian’s tent just to read
the letter again, following his carton of lost provisions across the squadron
like a mourner. ‘I have to give you as much as you ask for. Why, the letter
doesn’t even say you have to eat all of it yourself.’

   ‘And it’s a good thing it doesn’t,’ Yossarian told him,
‘because I never eat any of it. I have a liver condition.’

   ‘Oh, yes, I forgot,’ said Milo, in a voice lowered
deferentially. ‘Is it bad?’

   ‘Just bad enough,’ Yossarian answered cheerfully.

   ‘I see,’ said Milo. ‘What does that mean?’

   ‘It means that it couldn’t be better…’

   ‘I don’t think I understand.’

   ‘…without being worse. Now do you see?’

   ‘Yes, now I see. But I still don’t think I understand.’

   ‘Well, don’t let it trouble you. Let it trouble me. You see,
I don’t really have a liver condition. I’ve just got the symptoms. I have a
Garnett-Fleischaker syndrome.’

   ‘I see,’ said Milo. ‘And what is a Garnett-Fleischaker
syndrome?’

   ‘A liver condition.’

   ‘I see,’ said Milo, and began massaging his black eyebrows
together wearily with an expression of interior pain, as though waiting for
some stinging discomfort he was experiencing to go away. ‘In that case,’ he
continued finally, ‘I suppose you do have to be very careful about what you
eat, don’t you?.

   ‘Very careful indeed,’ Yossarian told him. ‘A good
Garnett-Fleischaker syndrome isn’t easy to come by, and I don’t want to ruin
mine. That’s why I never eat any fruit.’

   ‘Now I do see,’ said Milo. ‘Fruit is bad for your liver?’

   ‘No, fruit is good for my liver. That’s why I never eat any.’

   ‘Then what do you do with it?’ demanded Milo, plodding along
doggedly through his mounting confusion to fling out the question burning on
his lips. ‘Do you sell it?’

   ‘I give it away.’

   ‘To who?’ cried Milo, in a voice cracking with dismay.

   ‘To anyone who wants it,’ Yossarian shouted back.

   Milo let out a long, melancholy wail and staggered back,
beads of perspiration popping out suddenly all over his ashen face. He tugged
on his unfortunate mustache absently, his whole body trembling.

   ‘I give a great deal of it to Dunbar,’ Yossarian went on.

   ‘ Dunbar?’ Milo echoed numbly.

   ‘Yes. Dunbar can eat all the fruit he wants and it won’t do
him a damned bit of good. I just leave the carton right out there in the open
for anyone who wants any to come and help himself. Aarfy comes here to get
prunes because he says he never gets enough prunes in the mess hall. You might
look into that when you’ve got some time because it’s no fun having Aarfy
hanging around here. Whenever the supply runs low I just have Corporal Snark
fill me up again. Nately always takes a whole load of fruit along with him
whenever he goes to Rome. He’s in love with a whore there who hates me and
isn’t at all interested in him. She’s got a kid sister who never leaves them
alone in bed together, and they live in an apartment with an old man and woman
and a bunch of other girls with nice fat thighs who are always kidding around
also. Nately brings them a whole cartonful every time he goes.’

   ‘Does he sell it to them?’

   ‘No, he gives it to them.’ Milo frowned. ‘Well, I suppose
that’s very generous of him,’ he remarked with no enthusiasm.

   ‘Yes, very generous,’ Yossarian agreed.

   ‘And I’m sure it’s perfectly legal,’ said Milo, ‘since the
food is yours once you get it from me. I suppose that with conditions as hard
as they are, these people are very glad to get it.’

   ‘Yes, very glad,’ Yossarian assured him. ‘The two girls sell
it all on the black market and use the money to buy flashy costume jewelry and
cheap perfume.’ Milo perked up. ‘Costume jewelry!’ he exclaimed. ‘I didn’t know
that. How much are they paying for cheap perfume?’

   ‘The old man uses his share to buy raw whiskey and dirty
pictures. He’s a lecher.’

   ‘A lecher?’

   ‘You’d be surprised.’

   ‘Is there much of a market in Rome for dirty pictures?’ Milo
asked.

   ‘You’d be surprised. Take Aarfy, for instance. Knowing him,
you’d never suspect, would you?’

   ‘That he’s a lecher?’

   ‘No, that he’s a navigator. You know Captain Aardvaark, don’t
you? He’s that nice guy who came up to you your first day in the squadron and
said, “Aardvaark’s my name, and navigation is my game.” He wore a
pipe in his face and probably asked you what college you went to. Do you know
him?’ Milo was paying no attention. ‘Let me be your partner,’ he blurted out
imploringly.

   Yossarian turned him down, even though he had no doubt that
the truckloads of fruit would be theirs to dispose of any way they saw fit once
Yossarian had requisitioned them from the mess hall with Doc Daneeka’s letter.
Milo was crestfallen, but from that moment on he trusted Yossarian with every
secret but one, reasoning shrewdly that anyone who would not steal from the
country he loved would not steal from anybody. Milo trusted Yossarian with
every secret but the location of the holes in the hills in which he began
burying his money once he returned from Smyrna with his planeload of figs and
learned from Yossarian that a C.I.D. man had come to the hospital. To Milo, who
had been gullible enough to volunteer for it, the position of mess officer was
a sacred trust.

   ‘I didn’t even realize we weren’t serving enough prunes,’ he
had admitted that first day. ‘I suppose it’s because I’m still so new. I’ll
raise the question with my first chef.’ Yossarian eyed him sharply. ‘What first
chef?’ he demanded. ‘You don’t have a first chef.’

   ‘Corporal Snark,’ Milo explained, looking away a little
guiltily. ‘He’s the only chef I have, so he really is my first chef, although I
hope to move him over to the administrative side. Corporal Snark tends to be a
little too creative, I feel. He thinks being a mess sergeant is some sort of
art form and is always complaining about having to prostitute his talents.
Nobody is asking him to do any such thing! Incidentally, do you happen to know
why he was busted to private and is only a corporal now?’

   ‘Yes,’ said Yossarian. ‘He poisoned the squadron.’ Milo went
pale again. ‘He did what?’

   ‘He mashed hundreds of cakes of GI soap into the sweet
potatoes just to show that people have the taste of Philistines and don’t know
the difference between good and bad. Every man in the squadron was sick.
Missions were canceled.’

   ‘Well!’ Milo exclaimed, with thin-upped disapproval. ‘He
certainly found out how wrong he was, didn’t he?’

   ‘On the contrary,’ Yossarian corrected. ‘He found out how
right he was. We packed it away by the plateful and clamored for more. We all
knew we were sick, but we had no idea we’d been poisoned.’ Milo sniffed in
consternation twice, like a shaggy brown hare. ‘In that case, I certainly do
want to get him over to the administrative side. I don’t want anything like
that happening while I’m in charge. You see,’ he confided earnestly, ‘what I
hope to do is give the men in this squadron the best meals in the whole world.
That’s really something to shoot at, isn’t it? If a mess officer aims at
anything less, it seems to me, he has no right being mess officer. Don’t you
agree?’ Yossarian turned slowly to gaze at Milo with probing distrust. He saw a
simple, sincere face that was incapable of subtlety or guile, an honest, frank
face with disunited large eyes, rusty hair, black eyebrows and an unfortunate
reddish-brown mustache. Milo had a long, thin nose with sniffing, damp nostrils
heading sharply off to the right, always pointing away from where the rest of
him was looking. It was the face of a man of hardened integrity who could no
more consciously violate the moral principles on which his virtue rested than
he could transform himself into a despicable toad. One of these moral
principles was that it was never a sin to charge as much as the traffic would
bear. He was capable of mighty paroxysms of righteous indignation, and he was
indignant as could be when he learned that a C.I.D. man was in the area looking
for him.

   ‘He’s not looking for you,’ Yossarian said, trying to placate
him. ‘He’s looking for someone up in the hospital who’s been signing Washington
Irving’s name to the letters he’s been censoring.’

   ‘I never signed Washington Irving’s name to any letters,’
Milo declared.

   ‘Of course not.’

   ‘But that’s just a trick to get me to confess I’ve been
making money in the black market.’ Milo hauled violently at a disheveled hunk
of his off-colored mustache. ‘I don’t like guys like that. Always snooping
around people like us. Why doesn’t the government get after ex-P.F.C.
Wintergreen, if it wants to do some good? He’s got no respect for rules and
regulations and keeps cutting prices on me.’ Milo ’s mustache was unfortunate
because the separated halves never matched. They were like Milo ’s disunited
eyes, which never looked at the same thing at the same time. Milo could see
more things than most people, but he could see none of them too distinctly. In
contrast to his reaction to news of the C.I.D. man, he learned with calm
courage from Yossarian that Colonel Cathcart had raised the number of missions
to fifty-five.

   ‘We’re at war,’ he said. ‘And there’s no use complaining
about the number of missions we have to fly. If the colonel says we have to fly
fifty-five missions, we have to fly them.’

   ‘Well, I don’t have to fly them,’ Yossarian vowed. ‘I’ll go
see Major Major.’

   ‘How can you? Major Major never sees anybody.’

   ‘Then I’ll go back into the hospital.’

   ‘You just came out of the hospital ten days ago,’ Milo
reminded him reprovingly. ‘You can’t keep running into the hospital every time
something happens you don’t like. No, the best thing to do is fly the missions.
It’s our duty.’ Milo had rigid scruples that would not even allow him to borrow
a package of pitted dates from the mess hall that day of McWatt’s stolen
bedsheet, for the food at the mess hall was all still the property of the
government.

   ‘But I can borrow it from you,’ he explained to Yossarian,
‘since all this fruit is yours once you get it from me with Doctor Daneeka’s
letter. You can do whatever you want to with it, even sell it at a high profit
instead of giving it away free. Wouldn’t you want to do that together?’

   ‘No.’ Milo gave up. ‘Then lend me one package of pitted
dates,’ he requested. ‘I’ll give it back to you. I swear I will, and there’ll
be a little something extra for you.’ Milo proved good as his word and handed
Yossarian a quarter of McWatt’s yellow bedsheet when he returned with the
unopened package of dates and with the grinning thief with the sweet tooth who
had stolen the bedsheet from McWatt’s tent. The piece of bedsheet now belonged
to Yossarian. He had earned it while napping, although he did not understand
how. Neither did McWatt.