‘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.
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.’
YOSSARIAN
‘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.’
‘Would you rather go to jail?’
‘Would you let them send you home?’
‘Of course I would!’ Major Danby declared with conviction. ‘Certainly I would,’ he added a few moments later, in a less positive manner. ‘Yes, I suppose I would let them send me home if I were in your place,’ he decided uncomfortably, after lapsing into troubled contemplation. Then he threw his face sideways disgustedly in a gesture of violent distress and blurted out, ‘Oh, yes, of course I’d let them send me home! But I’m such a terrible coward I couldn’t really be in your place.’
‘But suppose you weren’t a coward?’ Yossarian demanded, studying him closely. ‘Suppose you did have the courage to defy somebody?’
‘Then I wouldn’t let them send me home,’ Major Danby vowed emphatically with vigorous joy and enthusiasm. ‘But I certainly wouldn’t let them court-martial me.’
‘Would you fly more missions?’
‘No, of course not. That would be total capitulation. And I might be killed.’ ‘Then you’d run away?’
Major Danby started to retort with proud spirit and came to an abrupt stop, his half-opened jaw swinging closed dumbly. He pursed his lips in a tired pout. ‘I guess there just wouldn’t be any hope for me, then, would there?’
His forehead and protuberant white eyeballs were soon glistening nervously again. He crossed his limp wrists in his lap and hardly seemed to be breathing as he sat with his gaze drooping toward the floor in acquiescent defeat. Dark, steep shadows slanted in from the window. Yossarian watched him solemnly, and neither of the two men stirred at the rattling noise of a speeding vehicle skidding to a stop outside and the sound of racing footsteps pounding toward the building in haste.
‘Yes, there’s hope for you,’ Yossarian remembered with a sluggish flow of inspiration. ‘Milo might help you. He’s bigger than Colonel Cathcart, and he owes me a few favors.’
Major Danby shook his head and answered tonelessly. ‘Milo and Colonel Cathcart are pals now. He made Colonel Cathcart a vice-president and promised him an important job after the war.’
‘Then ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen will help us,’ Yossarian exclaimed. ‘He hates them both, and this will infuriate him.’
Major Danby shook his head bleakly again. ‘Milo and ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen merged last week. They’re all partners now in M & M Enterprises.’
‘Then there is no hope for us, is there?’ ‘No hope.’
‘No hope at all, is there?’
‘No, no hope at all,’ Major Danby conceded. He looked up after a while with a half-formed notion. ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if they could disappear us the way they disappeared the others and relieve us of all these crushing burdens?’
Yossarian said no. Major Danby agreed with a melancholy nod, lowering his eyes again, and there was no hope at all for either of them until footsteps exploded in the corridor suddenly and the chaplain, shouting at the top of his voice, came bursting into the room with the electrifying news about Orr, so overcome with hilarious excitement that he was almost incoherent for a minute or two. Tears of great elation were sparkling in his eyes, and Yossarian leaped out of bed with an incredulous yelp when he finally understood.
‘Sweden?’ he cried.
‘Orr!’ cried the chaplain. ‘Orr?’ cried Yossarian.
‘Sweden!’ cried the chaplain, shaking his head up and down with gleeful rapture and prancing about uncontrollably from spot to spot in a grinning, delicious frenzy. ‘It’s a miracle, I tell you! A miracle! I believe in God again. I really do. Washed ashore in Sweden after so many weeks at sea! It’s a miracle.’
‘Washed ashore, hell!’ Yossarian declared, jumping all about also and roaring in laughing exultation at the walls, the ceiling, the chaplain and Major Danby. ‘He didn’t wash ashore in Sweden. He rowed there! He rowed there, Chaplain, he rowed there.’
Rowed there?’
‘He planned it that way! He went to Sweden deliberately.’
‘Well, I don’t care!’ the chaplain flung back with undiminished zeal. ‘It’s still a miracle, a miracle of human intelligence and human endurance. Look how much he accomplished!’ The chaplain clutched his head with both hands and doubled over in laughter. ‘Can’t you just picture him?’ he exclaimed with amazement. ‘Can’t you just picture him in that yellow raft, paddling through the Straits of Gibraltar at night with that tiny little blue oar -‘
‘With that fishing line trailing out behind him, eating raw codfish all the way to Sweden, and serving himself tea every afternoon -‘
‘I can just see him!’ cried the chaplain, pausing a moment in his celebration to catch his breath. ‘It’s a miracle of human perseverance, I tell you. And that’s just what I’m going to do from now on! I’m going to persevere. Yes, I’m going to persevere.’
‘He knew what he was doing every step of the way!’ Yossarian rejoiced, holding both fists aloft triumphantly as though hoping to squeeze revelations from them. He spun to a stop facing Major Danby. ‘Danby, you dope! There is hope, after all. Can’t you see? Even Clevinger might be alive somewhere in that cloud of his, hiding inside until it’s safe to come out.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Major Danby asked in confusion. ‘What are you both talking about?’ ‘Bring me apples, Danby, and chestnuts too. Run, Danby, run. Bring me crab apples and horse chestnuts before it’s too late, and get some for yourself.’
‘Horse chestnuts? Crab apples? What in the world for?’
‘To pop into our cheeks, of course.’ Yossarian threw his arms up into the air in a gesture of mighty and despairing selfrecrimination. ‘Oh, why didn’t I listen to him? Why wouldn’t I have some faith?’ ‘Have you gone crazy?’ Major Danby demanded with alarm and bewilderment. ‘Yossarian, will you please tell me what you are talking about?’
‘Danby, Orr planned it that way. Don’t you understand – he planned it that way from the beginning. He even practiced getting shot down. He rehearsed for it on every mission he flew. And I wouldn’t go with him! Oh, why wouldn’t I listen? He invited me along, and I wouldn’t go with him! Danby,
bring me buck teeth too, and a valve to fix and a look of stupid innocence that nobody would ever suspect of any cleverness. I’ll need them all. Oh, why wouldn’t I listen to him. Now I understand what he was trying to tell me. I even understand why that girl was hitting him on the head with her shoe.’
‘Why?’ inquired the chaplain sharply.
Yossarian whirled and seized the chaplain by the shirt front in an importuning grip. ‘Chaplain, help me! Please help me. Get my clothes. And hurry, will you? I need them right away.’
The chaplain started away alertly. ‘Yes, Yossarian, I will. But where are they? How will I get them?’ ‘By bullying and browbeating anybody who tries to stop you. Chaplain, get me my uniform! It’s around this hospital somewhere. For once in your life, succeed at something.’
The chaplain straightened his shoulders with determination and tightened his jaw. ‘Don’t worry, Yossarian. I’ll get your uniform. But why was that girl hitting Orr over the head with her shoe? Please tell me.’
‘Because he was paying her to, that’s why! But she wouldn’t hit him hard enough, so he had to row to Sweden. Chaplain, find me my uniform so I can get out of here. Ask Nurse Duckett for it. She’ll help you. She’ll do anything she can to be rid of me.’
‘Where are you going?’ Major Danby asked apprehensively when the chaplain had shot from the room. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to run away,’ Yossarian announced in an exuberant, clear voice, already tearing open the buttons of his pajama tops.
‘Oh, no,’ Major Danby groaned, and began patting his perspiring face rapidly with the bare palms of both hands. ‘You can’t run away. Where can you run to? Where can you go?’
‘To Sweden.’
‘To Sweden?’ Major Danby exclaimed in astonishment. ‘You’re going to run to Sweden? Are you crazy?’
‘Orr did it.’
‘Oh, no, no, no, no, no,’ Major Danby pleaded. ‘No, Yossarian, you’ll never get there. You can’t run away to Sweden. You can’t even row.’
‘But I can get to Rome if you’ll keep your mouth shut when you leave here and give me a chance to catch a ride. Will you do it?’
‘But they’ll find you,’ Major Danby argued desperately, ‘and bring you back and punish you even more severely.’
‘They’ll have to try like hell to catch me this time.’
‘They will try like hell. And even if they don’t find you, what kind of way is that to live? You’ll always be alone. No one will ever be on your side, and you’ll always live in danger of betrayal.’
‘I live that way now.’
‘But you can’t just turn your back on all your responsibilities and run away from them,’ Major Danby insisted. ‘It’s such a negative move. It’s escapist.’
Yossarian laughed with buoyant scorn and shook his head. ‘I’m not running away from my responsibilities. I’m running to them. There’s nothing negative about running away to save my life. You know who the escapists are, don’t you, Danby? Not me and Orr.’
‘Chaplain, please talk to him, will you? He’s deserting. He wants to run away to Sweden.’ ‘Wonderful!’ cheered the chaplain, proudly throwing on the bed a pillowcase full of Yossarian’s clothing. ‘Run away to Sweden, Yossarian. And I’ll stay here and persevere. Yes. I’ll persevere. I’ll nag and badger Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn every time I see them. I’m not afraid. I’ll even pick on General Dreedle.’
‘General Dreedle’s out,’ Yossarian reminded, pulling on his trousers and hastily stuffing the tails of his shirt inside. ‘It’s General Peckem now.’
The chaplain’s babbling confidence did not falter for an instant. ‘Then I’ll pick on General Peckem, and even on General Scheisskopf. And do you know what else I’m going to do? I’m going to punch Captain Black in the nose the very next time I see him. Yes, I’m going to punch him in the nose. I’ll do it when lots of people are around so that he may not have a chance to hit me back.’
‘Have you both gone crazy?’ Major Danby protested, his bulging eyes straining in their sockets with tortured awe and exasperation. ‘Have you both taken leave of your senses? Yossarian, listen -‘
‘It’s a miracle, I tell you,’ the chaplain proclaimed, seizing Major Danby about the waist and dancing him around with his elbows extended for a waltz. ‘A real miracle. If Orr could row to Sweden, then I can triumph over Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn, if only I persevere.’ ‘Chaplain, will you please shut up?’ Major Danby entreated politely, pulling free and patting his
perspiring brow with a fluttering motion. He bent toward Yossarian, who was reaching for his shoes. ‘What about Colonel -‘
‘I couldn’t care less.’ ‘But this may actua-‘
‘To hell with them both!’
‘This may actually help them,’ Major Danby persisted stubbornly. ‘Have you thought of that?’
‘Let the bastards thrive, for all I care, since I can’t do a thing to stop them but embarrass them by running away. I’ve got responsibilities of my own now, Danby. I’ve got to get to Sweden.’
‘You’ll never make it. It’s impossible. It’s almost a geographical impossibility to get there from here.’
‘Hell, Danby, I know that. But at least I’ll be trying. There’s a young kid in Rome whose life I’d like to save if I can find her. I’ll take her to Sweden with me if I can find her, so it isn’t all selfish, is it?’ ‘It’s absolutely insane. Your conscience will never let you rest.’
‘God bless it.’ Yossarian laughed. ‘I wouldn’t want to live without strong misgivings. Right,
Chaplain?’
‘I’m going to punch Captain Black right in the nose the next time I see him,’ gloried the chaplain, throwing two left jabs in the air and then a clumsy haymaker. ‘Just like that.’
‘What about the disgrace?’ demanded Major Danby.
‘What disgrace? I’m more in disgrace now.’ Yossarian tied a hard knot in the second shoelace and sprang to his feet. ‘Well, Danby, I’m ready. What do you say? Will you keep your mouth shut and let me catch a ride?’
Major Danby regarded Yossarian in silence, with a strange, sad smile. He had stopped sweating and seemed absolutely calm. ‘What would you do if I did try to stop you?’ he asked with rueful mockery. ‘Beat me up?’
Yossarian reacted to the question with hurt surprise. ‘No, of course not. Why do you say that?’
‘I will beat you up,’ boasted the chaplain, dancing up very close to Major Danby and shadowboxing. ‘You and Captain Black, and maybe even Corporal Whitcomb. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I found I didn’t have to be afraid of Corporal Whitcomb any more?’
‘Are you going to stop me?’ Yossarian asked Major Danby, and gazed at him steadily.
Major Danby skipped away from the chaplain and hesitated a moment longer. ‘No, of course not!’ he blurted out, and suddenly was waving both arms toward the door in a gesture of exuberant urgency. ‘Of course I won’t stop you. Go, for God sakes, and hurry! Do you need any money?’
‘I have some money.’
‘Well, here’s some more.’ With fervent, excited enthusiasm, Major Danby pressed a thick wad of Italian currency upon Yossarian and clasped his hand in both his own, as much to still his own trembling fingers as to give encouragement to Yossarian. ‘It must be nice to be in Sweden now,’ he observed yearningly. ‘The girls are so sweet. And the people are so advanced.’
‘Goodbye, Yossarian,’ the chaplain called. ‘And good luck. I’ll stay here and persevere, and we’ll meet again when the fighting stops.’
‘So long, Chaplain. Thanks, Danby.’ ‘How do you feel, Yossarian?’
‘Fine. No, I’m very frightened.’
‘That’s good,’ said Major Danby. ‘It proves you’re still alive. It won’t be fun.’ Yossarian started out. ‘Yes it will.’
‘I mean it, Yossarian. You’ll have to keep on your toes every minute of every day. They’ll bend heaven and earth to catch you.’
‘I’ll keep on my toes every minute.’ ‘You’ll have to jump.’
‘I’ll jump.’
‘Jump!’ Major Danby cried.
Yossarian jumped. Nately’s whore was hiding just outside the door. The knife came down, missing him by inches, and he took off.
THE END APPENDIX
Joseph Heller’s Preface to the 1994 Edition of Catch-22
In 1961, The New York Times was a newspaper with eight columns. And on November 11 of that year, one day after the official publication date of Catch-22, the page with the book review carried an unusual advertisement that ran from top to bottom and was five columns wide. To the eye the effect was stupendous. The book review that day, of a work by somebody else, was squeezed aside to the fold of the page, as were the crossword puzzle and all else. The ad had this caption: WHAT’S THE CATCH? And displayed at the top in silhouette was the comic cartoon of a uniformed figure in flight, glancing off to the side at some unspecified danger with an expression of panic.
It was an announcement ad for Catch-22. Interwoven with the text were mentions of praise from twenty-one individuals and groups of some public standing, most connected to literature and the publishing world, who had received the novel before publication and had already reviewed it or commented about it favorably.
Within days after publication, there was a review in The Nation by Nelson Algren (a client of my own literary agent, who had urged him to read it), who wrote of Catch-22 that it ‘was the best novel to come out of anywhere in years’. And there was a review by Studs Terkel in a Chicago daily newspaper that recommended it about as highly.
So much attention to the work at publication was in large part the result of the industrious zeal and appreciation of my literary agent, Candida Donadio, and my editor, Robert Gottlieb, and I embrace the opportunity afforded now to dedicate this new edition to both of them, as colleagues and allies with talents that were of immeasurable value.
The work was not reviewed in the Times on publication. However, it was reviewed in the Herald Tribune by Maurice Dolbier, and Mr. Dolbier said of it: ‘A wild, moving, shocking, hilarious, raging, exhilarating, giant roller-coaster of a book.’
That the reviewer for the Herald Tribune came to review at all this war novel by someone unknown was almost entirely the product of coincidence. S. J. Perelman, much better known and the subject of an interview by Mr. Dolbier, was publishing his own book at just about that time. His publisher was Simon & Schuster, mine too, and the editor in charge of his work there was also the same, Bob Gottlieb. In answer to a question put to him by Dolbier about his own reading, Mr. Perelman replied that he was very much engrossed in a novel pressed upon him by his editor, a novel called Catch-22. Returning to his office, Mr. Dolbier later confessed to me, he found the book already in a
pile with others he had decided he would not have time to study as prospects to write about. Had it not been for Gottlieb, there would have been no Perelman, and had it not been for Perelman, there would have been no review by Dolbier.
And had it not been for Dolbier, there might not have been the Times. Two weeks afterward, and probably only because of Mr. Dolbier, the book was described with approbation in the daily Times by the reviewer Orville Prescott, who predicted it would not be forgotten by those who could take it and called it: ‘A dazzling performance that will outrage nearly as many readers as it delights.’
The rest, one might say is history, but it is a history easily misconstrued. The novel won no prizes and was not on any bestseller list.
And, as Mr. Prescott foresaw, for just about every good report, there seemed to appear one that was negative. Looking back at this novel after twenty-five years, John Aldridge, to my mind the most perceptive and persistent commentator of American literature over the decades, lauded Robert Brustein for his superbly intelligent review in The New Republic, which contained ‘essential arguments that much of the later criticism has done little to improve on’, and Mr. Aldridge recognised that many in the early audience of Catch-22 ‘liked the book for just the reasons that caused others to hate it’.
The disparagements were frequently venomous. In the Sunday Times, in a notice in back so slender that the only people seeing it were those awaiting it, the reviewer (a novelist who also by chance was a client of my own agent, Candida) decided that the ‘novel gasps for want of craft and sensibility’, ‘is repetitious and monotonous’, ‘fails’, ‘is an emotional hodgepodge’, and was no novel; and in the esteemed The New Yorker, the reviewer, a staff writer who normally writes about jazz, compared the book unfavorably with a novel of similar setting by Mitchell Goodman and decided that Catch-22 ‘doesn’t even seem to have been written; instead, it gives the impression of having been shouted onto paper’, ‘what remains is a debris of sour jokes’, and that in the end Heller ‘wallows in his own laughter and finally drowns in it’. (I am tempted now to drown in laughter as I jot this down.)
I do not recall that the novel was included in the several hundred books in the Christmas roundup of recommended reading of the Times that year or in the several hundred others picked out in the spring for summer reading.
But in late summer of 1962, Raymond Walters, on the bestseller page of the Sunday Times, which then carried regularly the column ‘In and Out of Books’, reported that the underground book New Yorkers seemed to be talking about most was Catch-22. (The novel probably was more heavily advertised than any other that year, but it was still underground.) Not that much later, Newsweek carried a story to the same effect in a space more than a page wide. And late that same summer, I was invited to my first television interview. The program was the Today show, then a variety show as much as anything else. The interim host was John Chancellor. Mr. Chancellor had recently
returned from his newsman’s post in the Kremlin, and he had agreed to accept the position on condition that he interview only those people he himself chose to.
After the show, in a bar close by the studio in which I found myself drinking martinis at an earlier hour than ever in my life, he handed me a packet of stickers he’d had printed privately. They read: YOSSARIAN LIVES. And he confided he’d been pasting these stickers secretly on the walls of the corridors and in the executive rest rooms of the NBC building.
Then came September and the paperback edition and with it, finally, an expansion in popular appeal that seemed to take the publishers, Dell, by surprise, despite elaborate promotion and distribution strategies. It seemed for a while that the people there could not fully bring themselves to believe the sales figures and that they would never catch up.
Paperback publishers print in the hundreds of thousands. For this, after an initial release of 300,000 copies, they went back to press five more times between September and the end of the year, twice each in October and December, and by the end of 1963, there were eleven printings. In England, under the auspices of the enterprising young editor, there Tom Maschler, it was that way from the start. Bestseller lists were new and rudimentary then, but Catch-22 was quickly at the head of them. For me the history of Catch-22 begins back in 1953, when I started writing it. In 1953, 1 was employed as a copywriter at a small advertising agency in New York, after two years as an instructor in English composition at Pennsylvania State University, which was then a college. Early on, in anxious need of an approving opinion, I sent the opening chapter off to the literary agents I had managed to obtain after publishing a few short stories in magazines, in Esquire and The Atlantic. The agents were not impressed, but a young assistant there, Ms. Candida Donadio, was, and she secured permission to submit that chapter to a few publications that regularly published excerpts from ‘novels in progress’.
In 1955 the chapter appeared in a paperback quarterly, New World Writing (an anthology that also contained, under a pseudonym, an extract from another novel in progress – Jack Kerouac’s On the Road). There came complimentary letters of interest from a few editors at established book publishers, and I was encouraged to continue with a work I now saw realistically was going to take me a good many years longer than I at first had guessed.
In 1957, when I had about 270 pages in typescript, I was employed at Time magazine, writing advertising-sales presentations by day when not furtively putting thoughts down on paper for my work on the novel at home that evening. And Candida Donadio was establishing herself as a pre-eminent agent in her own right, with a list of American authors as clients as impressive as any. We agreed it made sense to submit the partial manuscript to some publishers, mainly to obtain a practical idea of the potential for publication of the novel we both thought so much of. She was drawn toward a new young editor she knew of at Simon & Schuster, one she thought might prove more receptive to innovation than most. His name was Robert Gottlieb, and she was right.
While Gottlieb busied himself with those pages, I, with a four-week summer vacation from bountiful Time magazine, began rewriting them. Gottlieb and I met for lunch, mainly for him to gauge my temperament and ascertain how amenable I would be as an author to work with. After I listened to him allude with tact to certain broad suggestions he thought he eventually might be compelled to make, I handed him my new pages with the boastful response that I had already taken care of nearly all of them.
He surprised me with concern that I might take exception to working with someone so young – he was twenty-six, I think, and I was thirty-four. I was more greatly surprised to learn from him later that both he and his closest colleague at Simon & Schuster, Nina Bourne, were intimidated at first by an air of suspicion I projected that I did not know I even possessed. I have not been suspicious of him since, and I doubt very much that Gottlieb, who went on to become the head of Alfred A. Knopf and then the editor of The New Yorker magazine, has ever again been intimidated by anybody.
And what I still remember most agreeably about him is that he did not ask for an outline or once seek for even a hint of where this one-third of a novel he’d seen was going to go. The contract I received called for an advance of fifteen hundred dollars, half on signing, which I did not need, and the remainder on completion and acceptance.
Probably, I was his first novelist, but not his first to be published; other authors with completed manuscripts came to him in the three more years I needed to finish mine. Probably, I was Candida’s earliest client too. Both were as delighted as I was with the eventual success of Catch-22, and the three of us have been reveling in our recollections of the experience ever since.
On February 28, 1962, the journalist Richard Starnes published a column of unrestrained praise in his newspaper, The New York World-Telegram, that opened with these words: ‘Yossarian will, I think, live a very long time.’
His tribute was unexpected, because Mr. Starnes was a newspaperman in the hard-boiled mode whose customary beat was local politics, and the World-Telegram was widely regarded as generally conservative.
To this day I am grateful to Mr. Starnes for his unqualified and unsolicited approval and bless him for the accuracy of his prediction. Yossarian has indeed lived a long time. Mr. Starnes has passed on. Many people mentioned in that first advertisement have died, and most of the rest of us are on the way.
But Yossarian is alive when the novel ends. Because of the motion picture, even close readers of the novel have a final, lasting image of him at sea, paddling toward freedom in a yellow inflated lifeboat. In the book he doesn’t get that far; but he is not captured and he isn’t dead. At the end of the successor volume I’ve just completed, Closing Time (that fleeing cartoon figure is again on the book jacket of the American edition, but wearing a businessman’s chapeau and moving with a cane),
he is again still alive, more than forty years older but definitely still there. ‘Everyone has got to go,’ his physician friend in that novel reminds him with emphasis. ‘Everyone!’ But should I ever write another sequel, he would still be around at the end.
Sooner or later, I must concede, Yossarian, now seventy, will have to pass away too. But it won’t be by my hand.
JOSEPH HELLER, 1994
East Hampton, New York
