Catch-22 (53 page)

   The surface of the collar and shoulders of Yossarian’s coat
was soaked. His socks were wet and cold. The light on the next lamppost was
out, too, the glass globe broken. Buildings and featureless shapes flowed by
him noiselessly as though borne past immutably on the surface of some rank and
timeless tide. A tall monk passed, his face buried entirely inside a coarse
gray cowl, even the eyes hidden. Footsteps sloshed toward him steadily through
a puddle, and he feared it would be another barefoot child. He brushed by a
gaunt, cadaverous, tristful man in a black raincoat with a star-shaped scar in
his cheek and a glossy mutilated depression the size of an egg in one temple.
On squishing straw sandals, a young woman materialized with her whole face
disfigured by a God-awful pink and piebald burn that started on her neck and
stretched in a raw, corrugated mass up both cheeks past her eyes! Yossarian
could not bear to look, and shuddered. No one would ever love her. His spirit
was sick; he longed to lie down with some girl he could love who would soothe
and excite him and put him to sleep. A mob with a club was waiting for him in
Pianosa. The girls were all gone. The countess and her daughter-in-law were no
longer good enough; he had grown too old for fun, he no longer had the time.
Luciana was gone, dead, probably; if not yet, then soon enough. Aarfy’s buxom
trollop had vanished with her smutty cameo ring, and Nurse Duckett was ashamed
of him because he had refused to fly more combat missions and would cause a
scandal. The only girl he knew nearby was the plain maid in the officers’
apartment, whom none of the men had ever slept with. Her name was Michaela, but
the men called her filthy things in dulcet, ingratiating voices, and she
giggled with childish joy because she understood no English and thought they
were flattering her and making harmless jokes. Everything wild she watched them
do filled her with enchanted delight. She was a happy, simple-minded,
hard-working girl who could not read and was barely able to write her name. Her
straight hair was the color of rotting straw. She had sallow skin and myopic
eyes, and none of the men had ever slept with her because none of the men had
ever wanted to, none but Aarfy, who had raped her once that same evening and
had then held her prisoner in a clothes closet for almost two hours with his
hand over her mouth until the civilian curfew sirens sounded and it was
unlawful for her to be outside.

   Then he threw her out the window. Her dead body was still
lying on the pavement when Yossarian arrived and pushed his way politely
through the circle of solemn neighbors with dim lanterns, who glared with venom
as they shrank away from him and pointed up bitterly toward the second-floor
windows in their private, grim, accusing conversations. Yossarian’s heart
pounded with fright and horror at the pitiful, ominous, gory spectacle of the
broken corpse. He ducked into the hallway and bolted up the stairs into the
apartment, where he found Aarfy pacing about uneasily with a pompous, slightly
uncomfortable smile. Aarfy seemed a bit unsettled as he fidgeted with his pipe
and assured Yossarian that everything was going to be all right. There was
nothing to worry about.

   ‘I only raped her once,’ he explained.

   Yossarian was aghast. ‘But you killed her, Aarfy! You killed
her!’

   ‘Oh, I had to do that after I raped her,’ Aarfy replied in
his most condescending manner. ‘I couldn’t very well let her go around saying
bad things about us, could I?’

   ‘But why did you have to touch her at all, you dumb bastard?’
Yossarian shouted. ‘Why couldn’t you get yourself a girl off the street if you
wanted one? The city is full of prostitutes.’

   ‘Oh, no, not me,’ Aarfy bragged. ‘I never paid for it in my
life.’

   ‘Aarfy, are you insane?’ Yossarian was almost speechless.
‘You killed a girl. They’re going to put you in jail!’

   ‘Oh, no,’ Aarfy answered with a forced smile. ‘Not me. They
aren’t going to put good old Aarfy in jail. Not for killing her.’

   ‘But you threw her out the window. She’s lying dead in the
street.’

   ‘She has no right to be there,’ Aarfy answered. ‘It’s after
curfew.’

   ‘Stupid! Don’t you realize what you’ve done?’ Yossarian
wanted to grab Aarfy by his well-fed, caterpillar-soft shoulders and shake some
sense into him. ‘You’ve murdered a human being. They are going to put you in
jail. They might even hang you!’

   ‘Oh, I hardly think they’ll do that,’ Aarfy replied with a
jovial chuckle, although his symptoms of nervousness increased. He spilled
tobacco crumbs unconsciously as his short fingers fumbled with the bowl of his
pipe. ‘No, sirree. Not to good old Aarfy.’ He chortled again. ‘She was only a
servant girl. I hardly think they’re going to make too much of a fuss over one
poor Italian servant girl when so many thousands of lives are being lost every
day. Do you?’

   ‘Listen!’ Yossarian cried, almost in joy. He pricked up his
ears and watched the blood drain from Aarfy’s face as sirens mourned far away,
police sirens, and then ascended almost instantaneously to a howling, strident,
onrushing cacophony of overwhelming sound that seemed to crash into the room
around them from every side. ‘Aarfy, they’re coming for you,’ he said in a
flood of compassion, shouting to be heard above the noise. ‘They’re coming to
arrest you. Aarfy, don’t you understand? You can’t take the life of another
human being and get away with it, even if she is just a poor servant girl.
Don’t you see? Can’t you understand?’

   ‘Oh, no,’ Aarfy insisted with a lame laugh and a weak smile.
‘They’re not coming to arrest me. Not good old Aarfy.’ All at once he looked
sick. He sank down on a chair in a trembling stupor, his stumpy, lax hands quaking
in his lap. Cars skidded to a stop outside. Spotlights hit the windows
immediately. Car doors slammed and police whistles screeched. Voices rose
harshly. Aarfy was green. He kept shaking his head mechanically with a queer,
numb smile and repeating in a weak, hollow monotone that they were not coming
for him, not for good old Aarfy, no sirree, striving to convince himself that
this was so even as heavy footsteps raced up the stairs and pounded across the
landing, even as fists beat on the door four times with a deafening, inexorable
force. Then the door to the apartment flew open, and two large, tough, brawny
M.P.s with icy eyes and firm, sinewy, unsmiling jaws entered quickly, strode
across the room, and arrested Yossarian.

   They arrested Yossarian for being in Rome without a pass.

   They apologized to Aarfy for intruding and led Yossarian away
between them, gripping him under each arm with fingers as hard as steel
manacles. They said nothing at all to him on the way down. Two more tall M.P.s
with clubs and hard white helmets were waiting outside at a closed car. They
marched Yossarian into the back seat, and the car roared away and weaved
through the rain and muddy fog to a police station. The M.P.s locked him up for
the night in a cell with four stone walls. At dawn they gave him a pail for a
latrine and drove him to the airport, where two more giant M.P.s with clubs and
white helmets were waiting at a transport plane whose engines were already
warming up when they arrived, the cylindrical green cowlings oozing quivering
beads of condensation. None of the M.P.s said anything to each other either.
They did not even nod. Yossarian had never seen such granite faces. The plane
flew to Pianosa. Two more silent M.P.s were waiting at the landing strip. There
were now eight, and they filed with precise, wordless discipline into two cars
and sped on humming tires past the four squadron areas to the Group
Headquarters building, where still two more M.P.s were waiting at the parking
area. All ten tall, strong, purposeful, silent men towered around him as they
turned toward the entrance. Their footsteps crunched in loud unison on the
cindered ground. He had an impression of accelerating haste. He was terrified.
Every one of the ten M.P.s seemed powerful enough to bash him to death with a
single blow. They had only to press their massive, toughened, boulderous
shoulders against him to crush all life from his body. There was nothing he
could do to save himself. He could not even see which two were gripping him under
the arms as they marched him rapidly between the two tight single-file columns
they had formed. Their pace quickened, and he felt as though he were flying
along with his feet off the ground as they trotted in resolute cadence up the
wide marble staircase to the upper landing, where still two more inscrutable
military policemen with hard faces were waiting to lead them all at an even
faster pace down the long, cantilevered balcony overhanging the immense lobby.
Their marching footsteps on the dull tile floor thundered like an awesome,
quickening drum roll through the vacant center of the building as they moved
with even greater speed and precision toward Colonel Cathcart’s office, and
violent winds of panic began blowing in Yossarian’s ears when they turned him
toward his doom inside the office, where Colonel Korn, his rump spreading
comfortably on a corner of Colonel Cathcart’s desk, sat waiting to greet him
with a genial smile and said, ‘We’re sending you home.’

   There was, of course, a catch.

   ‘Catch-22?’ inquired Yossarian.

   ‘Of course,’ Colonel Korn answered pleasantly, after he had
chased the mighty guard of massive M.P.s out with an insouciant flick of his
hand and a slightly contemptuous nod—most relaxed, as always, when he could be
most cynical. His rimless square eyeglasses glinted with sly amusement as he
gazed at Yossarian. ‘After all, we can’t simply send you home for refusing to
fly more missions and keep the rest of the men here, can we? That would hardly
be fair to them.’

   ‘You’re goddam right!’ Colonel Cathcart blurted out,
lumbering back and forth gracelessly like a winded bull, puffing and pouting
angrily. ‘I’d like to tie him up hand and foot and throw him aboard a plane on
every mission. That’s what I’d like to do.’ Colonel Korn motioned Colonel
Cathcart to be silent and smiled at Yossarian. ‘You know, you really have been
making things terribly difficult for Colonel Cathcart,’ he observed with flip
good humor, as though the fact did not displease him at all. ‘The men are unhappy
and morale is beginning to deteriorate. And it’s all your fault.’

   ‘It’s your fault,’ Yossarian argued, ‘for raising the number
of missions.’

   ‘No, it’s your fault for refusing to fly them,’ Colonel Korn
retorted. ‘The men were perfectly content to fly as many missions as we asked
as long as they thought they had no alternative. Now you’ve given them hope,
and they’re unhappy. So the blame is all yours.’

   ‘Doesn’t he know there’s a war going on?’ Colonel Cathcart,
still stamping back and forth, demanded morosely without looking at Yossarian.

   ‘I’m quite sure he does,’ Colonel Korn answered. ‘That’s
probably why he refuses to fly them.’

   ‘Doesn’t it make any difference to him?’

   ‘Will the knowledge that there’s a war going on weaken your
decision to refuse to participate in it?’ Colonel Korn inquired with sarcastic
seriousness, mocking Colonel Cathcart.

   ‘No, sir,’ Yossarian replied, almost returning Colonel Korn’s
smile.

   ‘I was afraid of that,’ Colonel Korn remarked with an
elaborate sigh, locking his fingers together comfortably on top of his smooth,
bald, broad, shiny brown head. ‘You know, in all fairness, we really haven’t
treated you too badly, have we? We’ve fed you and paid you on time. We gave you
a medal and even made you a captain.’

   ‘I never should have made him a captain,’ Colonel Cathcart
exclaimed bitterly. ‘I should have given him a court-martial after he loused up
that Ferrara mission and went around twice.’

   ‘I told you not to promote him,’ said Colonel Korn, ‘but you
wouldn’t listen to me.’

   ‘No you didn’t. You told me to promote him, didn’t you?’

   ‘I told you not to promote him. But you just wouldn’t
listen.’

   ‘I should have listened.’

   ‘You never listen to me,’ Colonel Korn persisted with relish.
‘That’s the reason we’re in this spot.’

   ‘All right, gee whiz. Stop rubbing it in, will you?’ Colonel
Cathcart burrowed his fists down deep inside his pockets and turned away in a
slouch. ‘Instead of picking on me, why don’t you figure out what we’re going to
do about him?’

   ‘We’re going to send him home, I’m afraid.’ Colonel Korn was
chuckling triumphantly when he turned away from Colonel Cathcart to face
Yossarian. ‘Yossarian, the war is over for you. We’re going to send you home.
You really don’t deserve it, you know, which is one of the reasons I don’t mind
doing it. Since there’s nothing else we can risk doing to you at this time,
we’ve decided to return you to the States. We’ve worked out this little deal
to—’

   ‘What kind of deal?’ Yossarian demanded with defiant
mistrust.

   Colonel Korn tossed his head back and laughed. ‘Oh, a
thoroughly despicable deal, make no mistake about that. It’s absolutely
revolting. But you’ll accept it quickly enough.’

   ‘Don’t be too sure.’

   ‘I haven’t the slightest doubt you will, even though it
stinks to high heaven. Oh, by the way. You haven’t told any of the men you’ve
refused to fly more missions, have you?’

   ‘No, sir,’ Yossarian answered promptly.

   Colonel Korn nodded approvingly. ‘That’s good. I like the way
you lie. You’ll go far in this world if you ever acquire some decent ambition.’

   ‘Doesn’t he know there’s a war going on?’ Colonel Cathcart
yelled out suddenly, and blew with vigorous disbelief into the open end of his
cigarette holder.

   ‘I’m quite sure he does,’ Colonel Korn replied acidly, ‘since
you brought that identical point to his attention just a moment ago.’ Colonel
Korn frowned wearily for Yossarian’s benefit, his eyes twinkling swarthily with
sly and daring scorn. Gripping the edge of Colonel Cathcart’s desk with both
hands, he lifted his flaccid haunches far back on the corner to sit with both
short legs dangling freely. His shoes kicked lightly against the yellow oak
wood, his sludge-brown socks, garterless, collapsed in sagging circles below ankles
that were surprisingly small and white. ‘You know, Yossarian,’ he mused affably
in a manner of casual reflection that seemed both derisive and sincere, ‘I
really do admire you a bit. You’re an intelligent person of great moral
character who has taken a very courageous stand. I’m an intelligent person with
no moral character at all, so I’m in an ideal position to appreciate it.’

   ‘These are very critical times,’ Colonel Cathcart asserted
petulantly from a far corner of the office, paying no attention to Colonel
Korn.

   ‘Very critical times indeed,’ Colonel Korn agreed with a
placid nod. ‘We’ve just had a change of command above, and we can’t afford a
situation that might put us in a bad light with either General Scheisskopf or
General Peckem. Isn’t that what you mean, Colonel?’

   ‘Hasn’t he got any patriotism?’

   ‘Won’t you fight for your country?’ Colonel Korn demanded,
emulating Colonel Cathcart’s harsh, self-righteous tone. ‘Won’t you give up
your life for Colonel Cathcart and me?’ Yossarian tensed with alert
astonishment when he heard Colonel Korn’s concluding words. ‘What’s that?’ he
exclaimed. ‘What have you and Colonel Cathcart got to do with my country?
You’re not the same.’

   ‘How can you separate us?’ Colonel Korn inquired with
ironical tranquillity.

   ‘That’s right,’ Colonel Cathcart cried emphatically. ‘You’re
either for us or against us. There’s no two ways about it.’

   ‘I’m afraid he’s got you,’ added Colonel Korn. ‘You’re either
for us or against your country. It’s as simple as that.’

   ‘Oh, no, Colonel. I don’t buy that.’ Colonel Korn was
unrufed. ‘Neither do I, frankly, but everyone else will. So there you are.’

   ‘You’re a disgrace to your uniform!’ Colonel Cathcart
declared with blustering

   wrath, whirling to confront Yossarian for the first time.
‘I’d like to know how you ever got to be a captain, anyway.’

   ‘You promoted him,’ Colonel Korn reminded sweetly, stifling a
snicker. ‘Don’t you remember?’

   ‘Well, I never should have done it.’

   ‘I told you not to do it,’ Colonel Korn said. ‘But you just
wouldn’t listen to me.’

   ‘Gee whiz, will you stop rubbing it in?’ Colonel Cathcart
cried. He furrowed his brow and glowered at Colonel Korn through eyes narrow
with suspicion, his fists clenched on his hips. ‘Say, whose side are you on,
anyway?’

   ‘Your side, Colonel. What other side could I be on?’

   ‘Then stop picking on me, will you? Get off my back, will
you?’

   ‘I’m on your side, Colonel. I’m just loaded with patriotism.’

   ‘Well, just make sure you don’t forget that.’ Colonel
Cathcart turned away grudgingly after another moment, incompletely reassured,
and began striding the floor, his hands kneading his long cigarette holder. He
jerked a thumb toward Yossarian. ‘Let’s settle with him. I know what I’d like
to do with him. I’d like to take him outside and shoot him. That’s what I’d
like to do with him. That’s what General Dreedle would do with him.’

   ‘But General Dreedle isn’t with us any more,’ said Colonel
Korn, ‘so we can’t take him outside and shoot him.’ Now that his moment of
tension with Colonel Cathcart had passed, Colonel Korn relaxed again and
resumed kicking softly against Colonel Cathcart’s desk. He returned to
Yossarian. ‘So we’re going to send you home instead. It took a bit of thinking,
but we finally worked out this horrible little plan for sending you home
without causing too much dissatisfaction among the friends you’ll leave behind.
Doesn’t that make you happy?’

   ‘What kind of plan? I’m not sure I’m going to like it.’

   ‘I know you’re not going to like it.’ Colonel Korn laughed,
locking his hands contentedly on top of his head again. ‘You’re going to loathe
it. It really is odious and certainly will offend your conscience. But you’ll
agree to it quickly enough. You’ll agree to it because it will send you home
safe and sound in two weeks, and because you have no choice. It’s that or a
court-martial. Take it or leave it.’ Yossarian snorted. ‘Stop bluffing,
Colonel. You can’t court-martial me for desertion in the face of the enemy. It
would make you look bad and you probably couldn’t get a conviction.’

   ‘But we can court-martial you now for desertion from duty,
since you went to Rome without a pass. And we could make it stick. If you think
about it a minute, you’ll see that you’d leave us no alternative. We can’t
simply let you keep walking around in open insubordination without punishing
you. All the other men would stop flying missions, too. No, you have my word
for it. We will court-martial you if you turn our deal down, even though it
would raise a lot of questions and be a terrible black eye for Colonel
Cathcart.’ Colonel Cathcart winced at the words ‘black eye’ and, without any
apparent premeditation, hurled his slender onyx-and-ivory cigarette holder down
viciously on the wooden surface on his desk. ‘Jesus Christ!’ he shouted
unexpectedly. ‘I hate this goddam cigarette holder!’ The cigarette holder
bounced off the desk to the wall, ricocheted across the window sill to the
floor and came to a stop almost where he was standing. Colonel Cathcart stared down
at it with an irascible scowl. ‘I wonder if it’s really doing me any good.’

   ‘It’s a feather in your cap with General Peckem, but a black
eye for you with General Scheisskopf,’ Colonel Korn informed him with a
mischievous look of innocence.

   ‘Well, which one am I supposed to please?’

   ‘Both.’

   ‘How can I please them both? They hate each other. How am I
ever going to get a feather in my cap from General Scheisskopf without getting
a black eye from General Peckem?’

   ‘March.’

   ‘Yeah, march. That’s the only way to please him. March.
March.’ Colonel Cathcart grimaced sullenly. ‘Some generals! They’re a disgrace
to their uniforms. If people like those two can make general, I don’t see how I
can miss.’

   ‘You’re going to go far.’ Colonel Korn assured him with a
flat lack of conviction, and turned back chuckling to Yossarian, his disdainful
merriment increasing at the sight of Yossarian’s unyielding expression of
antagonism and distrust. ‘And there you have the crux of the situation. Colonel
Cathcart wants to be a general and I want to be a colonel, and that’s why we
have to send you home.’

   ‘Why does he want to be a general?’

   ‘Why? For the same reason that I want to be a colonel. What
else have we got to do? Everyone teaches us to aspire to higher things. A
general is higher than a colonel, and a colonel is higher than a lieutenant
colonel. So we’re both aspiring. And you know, Yossarian, it’s a lucky thing
for you that we are. Your timing on this is absolutely perfect, but I suppose
you took that factor into account in your calculations.’

   ‘I haven’t been doing any calculating,’ Yossarian retorted.

   ‘Yes, I really do enjoy the way you lie,’ Colonel Korn
answered. ‘Won’t it make you proud to have your commanding officer promoted to
general—to know you served in an outfit that averaged more combat missions per
person than any other? Don’t you want to earn more unit citations and more oak
leaf clusters for your Air Medal? Where’s your esprit de corps? Don’t you want
to contribute further to this great record by flying more combat missions? It’s
your last chance to answer yes.’

   ‘No.’

   ‘In that case, you have us over a barrel—’ said Colonel Korn
without rancor.

   ‘He ought to be ashamed of himself!’

   ‘—and we have to send you home. Just do a few little things
for us, and—’

   ‘What sort of things?’ Yossarian interrupted with belligerent
misgiving.

   ‘Oh, tiny, insignificant things. Really, this is a very
generous deal we’re making with you. We will issue orders returning you to the
States—really, we will—and all you have to do in return is…’

   ‘What? What must I do?’ Colonel Korn laughed curtly. ‘Like
us.’ Yossarian blinked. ‘Like you?’

   ‘Like us.’

   ‘Like you?’

   ‘That’s right,’ said Colonel Korn, nodding, gratified
immeasurably by Yossarian’s guileless surprise and bewilderment. ‘Like us. Join
us. Be our pal. Say nice things about us here and back in the States. Become
one of the boys. Now, that isn’t asking too much, is it?’

   ‘You just want me to like you? Is that all?’

   ‘That’s all.’

   ‘That’s all?’

   ‘Just find it in your heart to like us.’ Yossarian wanted to
laugh confidently when he saw with amazement that Colonel Korn was telling the
truth. ‘That isn’t going to be too easy,’ he sneered.

   ‘Oh, it will be a lot easier than you think,’ Colonel Korn
taunted in return, undismayed by Yossarian’s barb. ‘You’ll be surprised at how
easy you’ll find it to like us once you begin.’ Colonel Korn hitched up the
waist of his loose, voluminous trousers. The deep black grooves isolating his square
chin from his jowls were bent again in a kind of jeering and reprehensible
mirth. ‘You see, Yossarian, we’re going to put you on easy street. We’re going
to promote you to major and even give you another medal. Captain Flume is
already working on glowing press releases describing your valor over Ferrara,
your deep and abiding loyalty to your outfit and your consummate dedication to
duty. Those phrases are all actual quotations, by the way. We’re going to
glorify you and send you home a hero, recalled by the Pentagon for morale and
public-relations purposes. You’ll live like a millionaire. Everyone will
lionize you. You’ll have parades in your honor and make speeches to raise money
for war bonds. A whole new world of luxury awaits you once you become our pal.
Isn’t it lovely?’ Yossarian found himself listening intently to the fascinating
elucidation of details. ‘I’m not sure I want to make speeches.’