Catch-22 (42 page)

   There was no word about Orr the next day,
and Sergeant Whitcomb, with commendable dispatch and considerable hope, dropped
a reminder in his tickler file to send a form letter over Colonel Cathcart’s
signature to Orr’s next of kin when nine more days had elapsed. There was word
from General Peckem’s headquarters, though, and Yossarian was drawn to the
crowd of officers and enlisted men in shorts and bathing trunks buzzing in
grumpy confusion around the bulletin board just outside the orderly room.

   ‘What’s so different about this Sunday, I want to know?’
Hungry Joe was demanding vociferously of Chief White Halfoat. ‘Why won’t we
have a parade this Sunday when we don’t have a parade every Sunday? Huh?’
Yossarian worked his way through to the front and let out a long, agonized
groan when he read the terse announcement there: Due to circumstances beyond my
control, there will be no big parade this Sunday afternoon.

   Colonel Scheisskopf Dobbs was right. They were indeed sending
everyone overseas, even Lieutenant Scheisskopf, who had resisted the move with
all the vigor and wisdom at his command and who reported for duty at General
Peckem’s office in a mood of grave discontent.

   General Peckem welcomed Colonel Scheisskopf with effusive
charm and said he was delighted to have him. An additional colonel on his staff
meant that he could now begin agitating for two additional majors, four
additional captains, sixteen additional lieutenants and untold quantities of
additional enlisted men, typewriters, desks, filing cabinets, automobiles and
other substantial equipment and supplies that would contribute to the prestige
of his position and increase his striking power in the war he had declared
against General Dreedle. He now had two full colonels; General Dreedle had only
five, and four of those were combat commanders. With almost no intriguing at
all, General Peckem had executed a maneuver that would eventually double his
strength. And General Dreedle was getting drunk more often. The future looked
wonderful, and General Peckem contemplated his bright new colonel enchantedly
with an effulgent smile.

   In all matters of consequence, General P. P. Peckem was, as
he always remarked when he was about to criticize the work of some close
associate publicly, a realist. He was a handsome, pink-skinned man of
fifty-three. His manner was

   always casual and relaxed, and his uniforms were custom-made.
He had silver-gray hair, slightly myopic eyes and thin, overhanging, sensual
lips. He was a perceptive, graceful, sophisticated man who was sensitive to
everyone’s weaknesses but his own and found everyone absurd but himself.
General Peckem laid great, fastidious stress on small matters of taste and
style. He was always augmenting things. Approaching events were never coming,
but always upcoming. It was not true that he wrote memorandums praising himself
and recommending that his authority be enhanced to include all combat
operations; he wrote memoranda. And the prose in the memoranda of other
officers was always turgid, stilted, or ambiguous. The errors of others were
inevitably deplorable. Regulations were stringent, and his data never was
obtained from a reliable source, but always were obtained. General Peckem was
frequently constrained. Things were often incumbent upon him, and he frequently
acted with greatest reluctance. It never escaped his memory that neither black
nor white was a color, and he never used verbal when he meant oral. He could
quote glibly from Plato, Nietzsche, Montaigne, Theodore Roosevelt, the Marquis
de Sade and Warren G. Harding. A virgin audience like Colonel Scheisskopf was
grist for General Peckem’s mill, a stimulating opportunity to throw open his
whole dazzling erudite treasure house of puns, wisecracks, slanders, homilies,
anecdotes, proverbs, epigrams, apophthegms, bon mots and other pungent sayings.
He beamed urbanely as he began orienting Colonel Scheisskopf to his new
surroundings.

   ‘My only fault,’ he observed with practiced good humor,
watching for the effect of his words, ‘is that I have no faults.’ Colonel
Scheisskopf didn’t laugh, and General Peckem was stunned. A heavy doubt crushed
his enthusiasm. He had just opened with one of his most trusted paradoxes, and
he was positively alarmed that not the slightest flicker of acknowledgment had
moved across that impervious face, which began to remind him suddenly, in hue
and texture, of an unused soap eraser. Perhaps Colonel Scheisskopf was tired,
General Peckem granted to himself charitably; he had come a long way, and
everything was unfamiliar. General Peckem’s attitude toward all the personnel
in his command, officers and enlisted men, was marked by the same easy spirit
of tolerance and permissiveness. He mentioned often that if the people who
worked for him met him halfway, he would meet them more than halfway, with the
result, as he always added with an astute chuckle, that there was never any
meeting of the minds at all. General Peckem thought of himself as aesthetic and
intellectual. When people disagreed with him, he urged them to be objective.

   And it was indeed an objective Peckem who gazed at Colonel
Scheisskopf encouragingly and resumed his indoctrination with an attitude of
magnanimous forgiveness. ‘You’ve come to us just in time, Scheisskopf. The
summer offensive has petered out, thanks to the incompetent leadership with
which we supply our troops, and I have a crying need for a tough, experienced,
competent officer like you to help produce the memoranda upon which we rely so
heavily to let people know how good we are and how much work we’re turning out.
I hope you are a prolific writer.’

   ‘I don’t know anything about writing,’ Colonel Scheisskopf
retorted sullenly.

   ‘Well, don’t let that trouble you,’ General Peckem continued
with a careless flick of his wrist. ‘Just pass the work I assign you along to
somebody else and trust to luck. We call that delegation of responsibility.
Somewhere down near the lowest level of this co-ordinated organization I run
are people who do get the work done when it reaches them, and everything
manages to run along smoothly without too much effort on my part. I suppose
that’s because I am a good executive. Nothing we do in this large department of
ours is really very important, and there’s never any rush. On the other hand,
it is important that we let people know we do a great deal of it. Let me know
if you find yourself shorthanded. I’ve already put in a requisition for two
majors, four captains and sixteen lieutenants to give you a hand. While none of
the work we do is very important, it is important that we do a great deal of
it. Don’t you agree?’

   ‘What about the parades?’ Colonel Scheisskopf broke in.

   ‘What parades?’ inquired General Peckem with a feeling that
his polish just wasn’t getting across.

   ‘Won’t I be able to conduct parades every Sunday afternoon?’
Colonel Scheisskopf demanded petulantly.

   ‘No. Of course not. What ever gave you that idea?’

   ‘But they said I could.’

   ‘Who said you could?’

   ‘The officers who sent me overseas. They told me I’d be able
to march the men around in parades all I wanted to.’

   ‘They lied to you.’

   ‘That wasn’t fair, sir.’

   ‘I’m sorry, Scheisskopf. I’m willing to do everything I can
to make you happy here, but parades are out of the question. We don’t have
enough men in our own organization to make up much of a parade, and the combat
units would rise up in open rebellion if we tried to make them march. I’m
afraid you’ll just have to hold back awhile until we get control. Then you can
do what you want with the men.’

   ‘What about my wife?’ Colonel Scheisskopf demanded with
disgruntled suspicion. ‘I’ll still be able to send for her, won’t I?’

   ‘Your wife? Why in the world should you want to?’

   ‘A husband and wife should be together.’

   ‘That’s out of the question also.’

   ‘But they said I could send for her!’

   ‘They lied to you again.’

   ‘They had no right to lie to me!’ Colonel Scheisskopf
protested, his eyes wetting with indignation.

   ‘Of course they had a right,’ General Peckem snapped with
cold and calculated severity, resolving right then and there to test the mettle
of his new colonel under fire. ‘Don’t be such an ass, Scheisskopf. People have
a right to do anything that’s not forbidden by law, and there’s no law against
lying to you. Now, don’t ever waste my time with such sentimental platitudes
again. Do you hear?’

   ‘Yes, sir,’ murmured Colonel Scheisskopf Colonel Scheisskopf
wilted pathetically, and General Peckem blessed the fates that had sent him a
weakling for a subordinate. A man of spunk would have been unthinkable. Having
won, General Peckem relented. He did not enjoy humiliating his men. ‘If your
wife were a Wac, I could probably have her transferred here. But that’s the
most I can do.’

   ‘She has a friend who’s a Wac,’ Colonel Scheisskopf offered
hopefully.

   ‘I’m afraid that isn’t good enough. Have Mrs. Scheisskopf
join the Wacs if she wants to, and I’ll bring her over here. But in the
meantime, my dear Colonel, let’s get back to our little war, if we may. Here,
briefly, is the military situation that confronts us.’ General Peckem rose and
moved toward a rotary rack of enormous colored maps.

   Colonel Scheisskopf blanched. ‘We’re not going into combat,
are we?’ he blurted out in horror.

   ‘Oh, no, of course not,’ General Peckem assured him
indulgently, with a companionable laugh. ‘Please give me some credit, won’t
you? That’s why we’re still down here in Rome. Certainly, I’d like to be up in
Florence, too, where I could keep in closer touch with ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen.
But Florence is still a bit too near the actual fighting to suit me.’ General
Peckem lifted a wooden pointer and swept the rubber tip cheerfully across Italy
from one coast to the other. ‘These, Scheisskopf, are the Germans. They’re dug
into these mountains very solidly in the Gothic Line and won’t be pushed out
till late next spring, although that isn’t going to stop those clods we have in
charge from trying. That gives us in Special Services almost nine months to
achieve our objective. And that objective is to capture every bomber group in
the U.S. Air Force. After all,’ said General Peckem with his low,
well-modulated chuckle, ‘if dropping bombs on the enemy isn’t a special
service, I wonder what in the world is. Don’t you agree?’ Colonel Scheisskopf
gave no indication that he did agree, but General Peckem was already too
entranced with his own loquacity to notice. ‘Our position right now is
excellent. Reinforcements like yourself keep arriving, and we have more than
enough time to plan our entire strategy carefully. Our immediate goal,’ he
said, ‘is right here.’ And General Peckem swung his pointer south to the island
of Pianosa and tapped it significantly upon a large word that had been lettered
on there with black grease pencil. The word was DREEDLE.

   Colonel Scheisskopf, squinting, moved very close to the map,
and for the first time since he entered the room a light of comprehension shed
a dim glow over his stolid face. ‘I think I understand,’ he exclaimed. ‘Yes, I
know I understand. Our first job is to capture Dreedle away from the enemy.
Right?’ General Peckem laughed benignly. ‘No, Scheisskopf. Dreedle’s on our
side, and Dreedle is the enemy. General Dreedle commands four bomb groups that
we simply must capture in order to continue our offensive. Conquering General
Dreedle will give us the aircraft and vital bases we need to carry our
operations into other areas. And that battle, by the way, is just about won.’
General Peckem drifted toward the window, laughing quietly again, and settled
back against the sill with his arms folded, greatly satisfied by his own wit
and by his knowledgeable, blase impudence. The skilled choice of words he was
exercising was exquisitely titillating. General Peckem liked listening to
himself talk, like most of all listening to himself talk about himself.
‘General Dreedle simply doesn’t know how to cope with me,’ he gloated. ‘I keep
invading his jurisdiction with comments and criticisms that are really none of
my business, and he doesn’t know what to do about it. When he accuses me of
seeking to undermine him, I merely answer that my only purpose in calling
attention to his errors is to strengthen our war effort by eliminating
inefficiency. Then I ask him innocently if he’s opposed to improving our war
effort. Oh, he grumbles and he bristles and he bellows, but he’s really quite
helpless. He’s simply out of style. He’s turning into quite a souse, you know.
The poor blockhead shouldn’t even be a general. He has no tone, no tone at all.
Thank God he isn’t going to last.’ General Peckem chuckled with jaunty relish
and sailed smoothly along toward a favorite learned allusion. ‘I sometimes
think of myself as Fortinbras—ha, ha—in the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare,
who just keeps circling and circling around the action until everything else
falls apart, and then strolls in at the end to pick up all the pieces for
himself. Shakespeare is—’

   ‘I don’t know anything about plays,’ Colonel Scheisskopf
broke in bluntly.

   General Peckem looked at him with amazement. Never before had
a reference of his to Shakespeare’s hallowed Hamlet been ignored and trampled
upon with such rude indifference. He began to wonder with genuine concern just
what sort of shithead the Pentagon had foisted on him. ‘What do you know
about?’ he asked acidly.

   ‘Parades,’ answered Colonel Scheisskopf eagerly. ‘Will I be
able to send out memos about parades?’

   ‘As long as you don’t schedule any.’ General Peckem returned
to his chair still wearing a frown. ‘And as long as they don’t interfere with
your main assignment of recommending that the authority of Special Services be
expanded to include combat activities.’

   ‘Can I schedule parades and then call them off?’ General
Peckem brightened instantly. ‘Why, that’s a wonderful idea! But just send out
weekly announcements postponing the parades. Don’t even bother to schedule
them. That would be infinitely more disconcerting.’ General Peckem was
blossoming spryly with cordiality again. ‘Yes, Scheisskopf,’ he said, ‘I think
you’ve really hit on something. After all, what combat commander could possibly
quarrel with us for notifying his men that there won’t be a parade that coming
Sunday? We’d be merely stating a widely known fact. But the implication is
beautiful. Yes, positively beautiful. We’re implying that we could schedule a
parade if we chose to. I’m going to like you, Scheisskopf. Stop in and
introduce yourself to Colonel Cargill and tell him what you’re up to. I know
you two will like each other.’ Colonel Cargill came storming into General
Peckem’s office a minute later in a furor of timid resentment. ‘I’ve been here
longer than Scheisskopf,’ he complained. ‘Why can’t I be the one to call off
the parades?’