‘How many fingers do you see now?’ asked the doctor, holding up two. ‘Two,’ said Yossarian.
‘And how many now?’ asked the doctor, holding up none. ‘Two,’ said Yossarian.
The doctor’s face wreathed with a smile. ‘By Jove, he’s right,’ he declared jubilantly. ‘He does see everything twice.’
They rolled Yossarian away on a stretcher into the room with the other soldier who saw everything twice and quarantined everyone else in the ward for another fourteen days.
‘I see everything twice!’ the soldier who saw everything twice shouted when they rolled Yossarian in.
‘I see everything twice!’ Yossarian shouted back at him just as loudly, with a secret wink. ‘The walls! The walls!’ the other soldier cried. ‘Move back the walls!’
‘The walls! The walls!’ Yossarian cried. ‘Move back the walls!’
One of the doctors pretended to shove the wall back. ‘Is that far enough?’
The soldier who saw everything twice nodded weakly and sank back on his bed. Yossarian nodded weakly too, eying his talented roommate with great humility and admiration. He knew he was in the presence of a master. His talented roommate was obviously a person to be studied and emulated. During the night, his talented roommate died, and Yossarian decided that he had followed him far enough.
‘I see everything once!’ he cried quickly.
A new group of specialists came pounding up to his bedside with their instruments to find out if it was true.
‘How many fingers do you see?’ asked the leader, holding up one. ‘One.’
The doctor held up two fingers. ‘How many fingers do you see now?’ ‘One.’
The doctor held up ten fingers. ‘And how many now?’ ‘One.’
The doctor turned to the other doctors with amazement. ‘He does see everything once!’ he exclaimed. ‘We made him all better.’
‘And just in time, too,’ announced the doctor with whom Yossarian next found himself alone, a tall, torpedo-shaped congenial man with an unshaven growth of brown beard and a pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket that he chain-smoked insouciantly as he leaned against the wall. ‘There are some relatives here to see you. Oh, don’t worry,’ he added with a laugh. ‘Not your relatives. It’s the mother, father and brother of that chap who died. They’ve traveled all the way from New York to see a dying soldier, and you’re the handiest one we’ve got.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Yossarian asked suspiciously. ‘I’m not dying.’
‘Of course you’re dying. We’re all dying. Where the devil else do you think you’re heading?’ ‘They didn’t come to see me,’ Yossarian objected. ‘They came to see their son.’
‘They’ll have to take what they can get. As far as we’re concerned, one dying boy is just as good as any other, or just as bad. To a scientist, all dying boys are equal. I have a proposition for you. You let them come in and look you over for a few minutes and I won’t tell anyone you’ve been lying about your liver symptoms.’
Yossarian drew back from him farther. ‘You know about that?’
‘Of course I do. Give us some credit.’ The doctor chuckled amiably and lit another cigarette. ‘How do you expect anyone to believe you have a liver condition if you keep squeezing the nurses’ tits
every time you get a chance? You’re going to have to give up sex if you want to convince people you’ve got an ailing liver.’
‘That’s a hell of a price to pay just to keep alive. Why didn’t you turn me in if you knew I was faking?’
‘Why the devil should I?’ asked the doctor with a flicker of surprise. ‘We’re all in this business of illusion together. I’m always willing to lend a helping hand to a fellow conspirator along the road to survival if he’s willing to do the same for me. These people have come a long way, and I’d rather not disappoint them. I’m sentimental about old people.’
‘But they came to see their son.’
‘They came too late. Maybe they won’t even notice the difference.’ ‘Suppose they start crying.’
‘They probably will start crying. That’s one of the reasons they came. I’ll listen outside the door and break it up if it starts getting tacky.’
‘It all sounds a bit crazy,’ Yossarian reflected. ‘What do they want to watch their son die for, anyway?’
‘I’ve never been able to figure that one out,’ the doctor admitted, ‘but they always do. Well, what do you say? All you’ve got to do is lie there a few minutes and die a little. Is that asking so much?’
‘All right,’ Yossarian gave in. ‘If it’s just for a few minutes and you promise to wait right outside.’ He warmed to his role. ‘Say, why don’t you wrap a bandage around me for effect?’
‘That sounds like a splendid idea,’ applauded the doctor.
They wrapped a batch of bandages around Yossarian. A team of medical orderlies installed tan shades on each of the two windows and lowered them to douse the room in depressing shadows. Yossarian suggested flowers and the doctor sent an orderly out to fmd two small bunches of fading ones with a strong and sickening smell. When everything was in place, they made Yossarian get back into bed and lie down. Then they admitted the visitors.
The visitors entered uncertainly as though they felt they were intruding, tiptoeing in with stares of meek apology, first the grieving mother and father, then the brother, a glowering heavy-set sailor with a deep chest. The man and woman stepped into the room stify side by side as though right out of a familiar, though esoteric, anniversary daguerreotype on a wall. They were both short, sere and proud. They seemed made of iron and old, dark clothing. The woman had a long, brooding oval face of burnt umber, with coarse graying black hair parted severely in the middle and combed back austerely behind her neck without curl, wave or ornamentation. Her mouth was sullen and sad, her lined lips compressed. The father stood very rigid and quaint in a double-breasted suit with padded shoulders that were much too tight for him. He was broad and muscular on a small scale and had a magnificently curled silver mustache on his crinkled face. His eyes were creased and rheumy, and he appeared tragically ill at ease as he stood awkwardly with the brim of his black felt fedora held
in his two brawny laborer’s hands out in front of his wide lapels. Poverty and hard work had inflicted iniquitous damage on both. The brother was looking for a fight. His round white cap was cocked at an insolent tilt, his hands were clenched, and he glared at everything in the room with a scowl of injured truculence.
The three creaked forward timidly, holding themselves close to each other in a stealthy, funereal group and inching forward almost in step, until they arrived at the side of the bed and stood staring down at Yossarian. There was a gruesome and excruciating silence that threatened to endure forever. Finally Yossarian was unable to bear it any longer and cleared his throat. The old man spoke at last. ‘He looks terrible,’ he said.
‘He’s sick, Pa.’
‘Giuseppe,’ said the mother, who had seated herself in a chair with her veinous fingers clasped in her lap.
‘My name is Yossarian,’ Yossarian said.
‘His name is Yossarian, Ma. Yossarian, don’t you recognize me? I’m your brother John. Don’t you know who I am?’
‘Sure I do. You’re my brother John.’
‘He does recognize me! Pa, he knows who I am. Yossarian, here’s Papa. Say hello to Papa.’ ‘Hello, Papa,’ said Yossarian.
‘Hello, Giuseppe.’
‘His name is Yossarian, Pa.’
‘I can’t get over how terrible he looks,’ the father said. ‘He’s very sick, Pa. The doctor says he’s going to die.’
‘I didn’t know whether to believe the doctor or not,’ the father said. ‘You know how crooked those guys are.’
‘Giuseppe,’ the mother said again, in a soft, broken chord of muted anguish.
‘His name is Yossarian, Ma. She don’t remember things too good any more. How’re they treating you in here, kid? They treating you pretty good?’
‘Pretty good,’ Yossarian told him.
‘That’s good. Just don’t let anybody in here push you around. You’re just as good as anybody else in here even though you are Italian. You’ve got rights, too.’
Yossarian winced and closed his eyes so that he would not have to look at his brother John. He began to feel sick.
‘Now see how terrible he looks,’ the father observed. ‘Giuseppe,’ the mother said.
‘Ma, his name is Yossarian,’ the brother interrupted her impatiently. ‘Can’t you remember?’ ‘It’s all right,’ Yossarian interrupted him. ‘She can call me Giuseppe if she wants to.’
‘Giuseppe,’ she said to him.
‘Don’t worry, Yossarian,’ the brother said. ‘Everything is going to be all right.’ ‘Don’t worry, Ma,’ Yossarian said. ‘Everything is going to be all right.’
‘Did you have a priest?’ the brother wanted to know. ‘Yes,’ Yossarian lied, wincing again.
‘That’s good,’ the brother decided. ‘Just as long as you’re getting everything you’ve got coming to you. We came all the way from New York. We were afraid we wouldn’t get here in time.’
‘In time for what?’
‘In time to see you before you died.’ ‘What difference would it make?’
‘We didn’t want you to die by yourself.’ ‘What diference would it make?’
‘He must be getting delirious,’ the brother said. ‘He keeps saying the same thing over and over again.’
‘That’s really very funny,’ the old man replied. ‘All the time I thought his name was Giuseppe, and now I find out his name is Yossarian. That’s really very funny.’
‘Ma, make him feel good,’ the brother urged. ‘Say something to cheer him up.’ ‘Giuseppe.’
‘It’s not Giuseppe, Ma. It’s Yossarian.’
‘What difference does it make?’ the mother answered in the same mourning tone, without looking up. ‘He’s dying.’
Her tumid eyes filled with tears and she began to cry, rocking back and forth slowly in her chair with her hands lying in her lap like fallen moths. Yossarian was afraid she would start wailing. The father and brother began crying also. Yossarian remembered suddenly why they were all crying, and he began crying too. A doctor Yossarian had never seen before stepped inside the room and told the visitors courteously that they had to go. The father drew himself up formally to say goodbye. ‘Giuseppe,’ he began.
‘Yossarian,’ corrected the son. ‘Yossarian,’ said the father. ‘Giuseppe,’ corrected Yossarian. ‘Soon you’re going to die.’
Yossarian began to cry again. The doctor threw him a dirty look from the rear of the room, and Yossarian made himself stop.
The father continued solemnly with his head lowered. ‘When you talk to the man upstairs,’ he said, ‘I want you to tell Him something for me. Tell Him it ain’t right for people to die when they’re young. I mean it. Tell Him if they got to die at all, they got to die when they’re old. I want you to
tell Him that. I don’t think He knows it ain’t right, because He’s supposed to be good and it’s been going on for a long, long time. Okay?’
‘And don’t let anybody up there push you around,’ the brother advised. ‘You’ll be just as good as anybody else in heaven, even though you are Italian.’
‘Dress warm,’ said the mother, who seemed to know. 19 COLONEL CATHCART
Colonel Cathcart was a slick, successful, slipshod, unhappy man of thirty-six who lumbered when he walked and wanted to be a general. He was dashing and dejected, poised and chagrined. He was complacent and insecure, daring in the administrative stratagems he employed to bring himself to the attention of his superiors and craven in his concern that his schemes might all backfire. He was handsome and unattractive, a swashbuckling, beefy, conceited man who was putting on fat and was tormented chronically by prolonged seizures of apprehension. Colonel Cathcart was conceited because he was a full colonel with a combat command at the age of only thirty-six; and Colonel Cathcart was dejected because although he was already thirty-six he was still only a full colonel.
Colonel Cathcart was impervious to absolutes. He could measure his own progress only in relationship to others, and his idea of excellence was to do something at least as well as all the men his own age who were doing the same thing even better. The fact that there were thousands of men his own age and older who had not even attained the rank of major enlivened him with foppish delight in his own remarkable worth; on the other hand, the fact that there were men of his own age and younger who were already generals contaminated him with an agonizing sense of failure and made him gnaw at his fingernails with an unappeasable anxiety that was even more intense than Hungry Joe’s.
Colonel Cathcart was a very large, pouting, broadshouldered man with close-cropped curly dark hair that was graying at the tips and an ornate cigarette holder that he purchased the day before he arrived in Pianosa to take command of his group. He displayed the cigarette holder grandly on every occasion and had learned to manipulate it adroitly. Unwittingly, he had discovered deep within himself a fertile aptitude for smoking with a cigarette holder. As far as he could tell, his was the only cigarette holder in the whole Mediterranean theater of operations, and the thought was both flattering and disquieting. He had no doubts at all that someone as debonair and intellectual as General Peckem approved of his smoking with a cigarette holder, even though the two were in each other’s presence rather seldom, which in a way was very lucky, Colonel Cathcart recognized with relief, since General Peckem might not have approved of his cigarette holder at all. When such misgivings assailed Colonel Cathcart, he choked back a sob and wanted to throw the damned thing away, but he was restrained by his unswerving conviction that the cigarette holder never failed to embellish his masculine, martial physique with a high gloss of sophisticated heroism that illuminated him to dazzling advantage among all the other full colonels in the American Army with
whom he was in competition. Although how could he be sure?
Colonel Cathcart was indefatigable that way, an industrious, intense, dedicated military tactician who calculated day and night in the service of himself. He was his own sarcophagus, a bold and infallible diplomat who was always berating himself disgustedly for all the chances he had missed and kicking himself regretfully for all the errors he had made. He was tense, irritable, bitter and smug. He was a valorous opportunist who pounced hoggishly upon every opportunity Colonel Korn discovered for him and trembled in damp despair immediately afterward at the possible consequences he might suffer. He collected rumors greedily and treasured gossip. He believed all the news he heard and had faith in none. He was on the alert constantly for every signal, shrewdly sensitive to relationships and situations that did not exist. He was someone in the know who was always striving pathetically to find out what was going on. He was a blustering, intrepid bully who brooded inconsolably over the terrible ineradicable impressions he knew he kept making on people of prominence who were scarcely aware that he was even alive.
Everybody was persecuting him. Colonel Cathcart lived by his wits in an unstable, arithmetical world of black eyes and feathers in his cap, of overwhelming imaginary triumphs and catastrophic imaginary defeats. He oscillated hourly between anguish and exhilaration, multiplying fantastically the grandeur of his victories and exaggerating tragically the seriousness of his defeats. Nobody ever caught him napping. If word reached him that General Dreedle or General Peckem had been seen smiling, frowning, or doing neither, he could not make himself rest until he had found an acceptable interpretation and grumbled mulishly until Colonel Korn persuaded him to relax and take things easy.
Lieutenant Colonel Korn was a loyal, indispensable ally who got on Colonel Cathcart’s nerves. Colonel Cathcart pledged eternal gratitude to Colonel Korn for the ingenious moves he devised and was furious with him afterward when he realized they might not work. Colonel Cathcart was greatly indebted to Colonel Korn and did not like him at all. The two were very close. Colonel Cathcart was jealous of Colonel Korn’s intelligence and had to remind himself often that Colonel Korn was still only a lieutenant colonel, even though he was almost ten years older than Colonel Cathcart, and that Colonel Korn had obtained his education at a state university. Colonel Cathcart bewailed the miserable fate that had given him for an invaluable assistant someone as common as Colonel Korn. It was degrading to have to depend so thoroughly on a person who had been educated at a state university. If someone did have to become indispensable to him, Colonel Cathcart lamented, it could just as easily have been someone wealthy and well groomed, someone from a better family who was more mature than Colonel Korn and who did not treat Colonel Cathcart’s desire to become a general as frivolously as Colonel Cathcart secretly suspected Colonel Korn secretly did.
Colonel Cathcart wanted to be a general so desperately he was willing to try anything, even religion,
and he summoned the chaplain to his office late one morning the week after he had raised the number of missions to sixty and pointed abruptly down toward his desk to his copy of The Saturday Evening Post. The colonel wore his khaki shirt collar wide open, exposing a shadow of tough black bristles of beard on his egg-white neck, and had a spongy hanging underlip. He was a person who never tanned, and he kept out of the sun as much as possible to avoid burning. The colonel was more than a head taller than the chaplain and over twice as broad, and his swollen, overbearing authority made the chaplain feel frail and sickly by contrast.
‘Take a look, Chaplain,’ Colonel Cathcart directed, screwing a cigarette into his holder and seating himself affluently in the swivel chair behind his desk. ‘Let me know what you think.’
The chaplain looked down at the open magazine compliantly and saw an editorial spread dealing with an American bomber group in England whose chaplain said prayers in the briefing room before each mission. The chaplain almost wept with happiness when he realized the colonel was not going to holler at him. The two had hardly spoken since the tumultuous evening Colonel Cathcart had thrown him out of the officers’ club at General Dreedle’s bidding after Chief White Halfoat had punched Colonel Moodus in the nose. The chaplain’s initial fear had been that the colonel intended reprimanding him for having gone back into the officers’ club without permission the evening before. He had gone there with Yossarian and Dunbar after the two had come unexpectedly to his tent in the clearing in the woods to ask him to join them. Intimidated as he was by Colonel Cathcart, he nevertheless found it easier to brave his displeasure than to decline the thoughtful invitation of his two new friends, whom he had met on one of his hospital visits just a few weeks before and who had worked so effectively to insulate him against the myriad social vicissitudes involved in his official duty to live on closest terms of familiarity with more than nine hundred unfamiliar officers and enlisted men who thought him an odd duck.
The chaplain glued his eyes to the pages of the magazine. He studied each photograph twice and read the captions intently as he organized his response to the colonel’s question into a grammatically complete sentence that he rehearsed and reorganized in his mind a considerable number of times before he was able finally to muster the courage to reply.
‘I think that saying prayers before each mission is a very moral and highly laudatory procedure, sir,’ he offered timidly, and waited.
‘Yeah,’ said the colonel. ‘But I want to know if you think they’ll work here.’
‘Yes, sir,’ answered the chaplain after a few moments. ‘I should think they would.’
‘Then I’d like to give it a try.’ The colonel’s ponderous, farinaceous cheeks were tinted suddenly with glowing patches of enthusiasm. He rose to his feet and began walking around excitedly. ‘Look how much good they’ve done for these people in England. Here’s a picture of a colonel in The Saturday Evening Post whose chaplain conducts prayers before each mission. If the prayers work for him, they should work for us. Maybe if we say prayers, they’ll put my picture in The Saturday
Evening Post.’
The colonel sat down again and smiled distantly in lavish contemplation. The chaplain had no hint of what he was expected to say next. With a pensive expression on his oblong, rather pale face, he allowed his gaze to settle on several of the high bushels filled with red plum tomatoes that stood in rows against each of the walls. He pretended to concentrate on a reply. After a while he realized that he was staring at rows and rows of bushels of red plum tomatoes and grew so intrigued by the question of what bushels brimming with red plum tomatoes were doing in a group commander’s office that he forgot completely about the discussion of prayer meetings until Colonel Cathcart, in a genial digression, inquired:
‘Would you like to buy some, Chaplain? They come right off the farm Colonel Korn and I have up in the hills. I can let you have a bushel wholesale.’
‘Oh, no, sir. I don’t think so.’
‘That’s quite all right,’ the colonel assured him liberally. ‘You don’t have to. Milo is glad to snap up all we can produce. These were picked only yesterday. Notice how firm and ripe they are, like a young girl’s breasts.’
The chaplain blushed, and the colonel understood at once that he had made a mistake. He lowered his head in shame, his cumbersome face burning. His fingers felt gross and unwieldy. He hated the chaplain venomously for being a chaplain and making a coarse blunder out of an observation that in any other circumstances, he knew, would have been considered witty and urbane. He tried miserably to recall some means of extricating them both from their devastating embarrassment. He recalled instead that the chaplain was only a captain, and he straightened at once with a shocked and outraged gasp. His cheeks grew tight with fury at the thought that he had just been duped into humiliation by a man who was almost the same age as he was and still only a captain, and he swung upon the chaplain avengingly with a look of such murderous antagonism that the chaplain began to tremble. The colonel punished him sadistically with a long, glowering, malignant, hateful, silent stare.
‘We were speaking about something else,’ he reminded the chaplain cuttingly at last. ‘We were not speaking about the firm, ripe breasts of beautiful young girls but about something else entirely. We were speaking about conducting religious services in the briefing room before each mission. Is there any reason why we can’t?’
‘No, sir,’ the chaplain mumbled.
‘Then we’ll begin with this afternoon’s mission.’ The colonel’s hostility softened gradually as he applied himself to details. ‘Now, I want you to give a lot of thought to the kind of prayers we’re going to say. I don’t want anything heavy or sad. I’d like you to keep it light and snappy, something that will send the boys out feeling pretty good. Do you know what I mean? I don’t want any of this Kingdom of God or Valley of Death stuff. That’s all too negative. What are you making such a sour
face for?’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the chaplain stammered. ‘I happened to be thinking of the Twenty-third Psalm just as you said that.’
‘How does that one go?’
‘That’s the one you were just referring to, sir. “The Lord is my shepherd; I -” ‘ ‘That’s the one I was just referring to. It’s out. What else have you got?’
‘ “Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto -” ‘
‘No waters,’ the colonel decided, blowing ruggedly into his cigarette holder after flipping the butt down into his combed-brass ash tray. ‘Why don’t we try something musical? How about the harps on the willows?’
‘That has the rivers of Babylon in it, sir,’ the chaplain replied. ‘ “…there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.” ‘
‘Zion? Let’s forget about that one right now. I’d like to know how that one even got in there. Haven’t you got anything humorous that stays away from waters and valleys and God? I’d like to keep away from the subject of religion altogether if we can.’
The chaplain was apologetic. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but just about all the prayers I know are rather somber in tone and make at least some passing reference to God.’
‘Then let’s get some new ones. The men are already doing enough bitching about the missions I send them on without our rubbing it in with any sermons about God or death or Paradise. Why can’t we take a more positive approach? Why can’t we all pray for something good, like a tighter bomb pattern, for example? Couldn’t we pray for a tighter bomb pattern?’
‘Well, yes, sir, I suppose so,’ the chaplain answered hesitantly. ‘You wouldn’t even need me if that’s all you wanted to do. You could do that yourself.’
‘I know I could,’ the colonel responded tartly. ‘But what do you think you’re here for? I could shop for my own food, too, but that’s Milo’s job, and that’s why he’s doing it for every group in the area. Your job is to lead us in prayer, and from now on you’re going to lead us in a prayer for a tighter bomb pattern before every mission. Is that clear? I think a tighter bomb pattern is something really worth praying for. It will be a feather in all our caps with General Peckem. General Peckem feels it makes a much nicer aerial photograph when the bombs explode close together.’
‘General Peckem, sir?’
‘That’s right, Chaplain,’ the colonel replied, chuckling paternally at the chaplain’s look of puzzlement. ‘I wouldn’t want this to get around, but it looks like General Dreedle is finally on the way out and that General Peckem is slated to replace him. Frankly, I’m not going to be sorry to see that happen. General Peckem is a very good man, and I think we’ll all be much better off under him. On the other hand, it might never take place, and we’d still remain under General Dreedle. Frankly, I wouldn’t be sorry to see that happen either, because General Dreedle is another very good man,
and I think we’ll all be much better off under him too. I hope you’re going to keep all this under your hat, Chaplain. I wouldn’t want either one to get the idea I was throwing my support on the side of the other.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘That’s good,’ the colonel exclaimed, and stood up jovially. ‘But all this gossip isn’t getting us into The Saturday Evening Post, eh, Chaplain? Let’s see what kind of procedure we can evolve. Incidentally, Chaplain, not a word about this beforehand to Colonel Korn. Understand?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Colonel Cathcart began tramping back and forth reflectively in the narrow corridors left between his bushels of plum tomatoes and the desk and wooden chairs in the center of the room. ‘I suppose we’ll have to keep you waiting outside until the briefing is over, because all that information is classified. We can slip you in while Major Danby is synchronizing the watches. I don’t think there’s anything secret about the right time. We’ll allocate about a minute and a half for you in the schedule. Will a minute and a half be enough?’
‘Yes, sir. If it doesn’t include the time necessary to excuse the atheists from the room and admit the enlisted men.’
Colonel Cathcart stopped in his tracks. ‘What atheists?’ he bellowed defensively, his whole manner changing in a flash to one of virtuous and belligerent denial. ‘There are no atheists in my outfit! Atheism is against the law, isn’t it?’
‘No, sir.’
‘It isn’t?’ The colonel was surprised. ‘Then it’s un-American, isn’t it?’ ‘I’m not sure, sir,’ answered the chaplain.
‘Well, I am!’ the colonel declared. ‘I’m not going to disrupt our religious services just to accommodate a bunch of lousy atheists. They’re getting no special privileges fiom me. They can stay right where they are and pray with the rest of us. And what’s all this about enlisted men? Just how the hell do they get into this act?’
The chaplain felt his face flush. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I just assumed you would want the enlisted men to be present, since they would be going along on the same mission.’
‘Well, I don’t. They’ve got a God and a chaplain of their own, haven’t they?’ ‘No, sir.’
‘What are you talking about? You mean they pray to the same God we do?’ ‘Yes, sir.’
‘And He listens?’ ‘I think so, sir.’
‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ remarked the colonel, and he snorted to himself in quizzical amusement. His spirits drooped suddenly a moment later, and he ran his hand nervously over his short, black,
graying curls. ‘Do you really think it’s a good idea to let the enlisted men in?’ he asked with concern.
‘I should think it only proper, sir.’
‘I’d like to keep them out,’ confided the colonel, and began cracking his knuckles savagely as he wandered back and forth. ‘Oh, don’t get me wrong, Chaplain. It isn’t that I think the enlisted men are dirty, common and inferior. It’s that we just don’t have enough room. Frankly, though, I’d just as soon the officers and enlisted men didn’t fraternize in the briefing room. They see enough of each other during the mission, it seems to me. Some of my very best friends are enlisted men, you understand, but that’s about as close as I care to let them come. Honestly now, Chaplain, you wouldn’t want your sister to marry an enlisted man, would you?’
‘My sister is an enlisted man, sir,’ the chaplain replied.
The colonel stopped in his tracks again and eyed the chaplain sharply to make certain he was not being ridiculed. ‘Just what do you mean by that remark, Chaplain? Are you trying to be funny?’
‘Oh, no, sir,’ the chaplain hastened to explain with a look of excruciating discomfort. ‘She’s a master sergeant in the Marines.’
The colonel had never liked the chaplain and now he loathed and distrusted him. He experienced a keen premonition of danger and wondered if the chaplain too were plotting against him, if the chaplain’s reticent, unimpressive manner were really just a sinister disguise masking a fiery ambition that, ‘way down deep, was crafty and unscrupulous. There was something funny about the chaplain, and the colonel soon detected what it was. The chaplain was standing stiffly at attention, for the colonel had forgotten to put him at ease. Let him stay that way, the colonel decided vindictively, just to show him who was boss and to safeguard himself against any loss of dignity that might devolve from his acknowledging the omission.
Colonel Cathcart was drawn hypnotically toward the window with a massive, dull stare of moody introspection. The enlisted men were always treacherous, he decided. He looked downward in mournful gloom at the skeet-shooting range he had ordered built for the officers on his headquarters staff, and he recalled the mortifying afternoon General Dreedle had tongue-lashed him ruthlessly in front of Colonel Korn and Major Danby and ordered him to throw open the range to all the enlisted men and officers on combat duty. The skeet-shooting range had been a real black eye for him, Colonel Cathcart was forced to conclude. He was positive that General Dreedle had never forgotten it, even though he was positive that General Dreedle didn’t even remember it, which was really very unjust, Colonel Cathcart lamented, since the idea of a skeet-shooting range itself should have been a real feather in his cap, even though it had been such a real black eye. Colonel Cathcart was helpless to assess exactly how much ground he had gained or lost with his goddam skeet-shooting range and wished that Colonel Korn were in his office right then to evaluate the entire episode for him still one more time and assuage his fears.
It was all very perplexing, all very discouraging. Colonel Cathcart took the cigarette holder out of his mouth, stood it on end inside the pocket of his shirt, and began gnawing on the fingernails of both hands grievously. Everybody was against him, and he was sick to his soul that Colonel Korn was not with him in this moment of crisis to help him decide what to do about the prayer meetings. He had almost no faith at all in the chaplain, who was still only a captain. ‘Do you think,’ he asked, ‘that keeping the enlisted men out might interfere with our chances of getting results?’
The chaplain hesitated, feeling himself on unfamiliar ground again. ‘Yes, sir,’ he replied finally. ‘I think it’s conceivable that such an action could interfere with your chances of having the prayers for a tighter bomb pattern answered.’
‘I wasn’t even thinking about that!’ cried the colonel, with his eyes blinking and splashing like puddles. ‘You mean that God might even decide to punish me by giving us a looser bomb pattern?’ ‘Yes, sir,’ said the chaplain. ‘It’s conceivable He might.’
‘The hell with it, then,’ the colonel asserted in a huff of independence. ‘I’m not going to set these damned prayer meetings up just to make things worse than they are.’ With a scornful snicker, he settled himself behind his desk, replaced the empty cigarette holder in his mouth and lapsed into parturient silence for a few moments. ‘Now I think about it,’ he confessed, as much to himself as to the chaplain, ‘having the men pray to God probably wasn’t such a hot idea anyway. The editors of The Saturday Evening Post might not have co-operated.’
The colonel abandoned his project with remorse, for he had conceived it entirely on his own and had hoped to unveil it as a striking demonstration to everyone that he had no real need for Colonel Korn. Once it was gone, he was glad to be rid of it, for he had been troubled from the start by the danger of instituting the plan without first checking it out with Colonel Korn. He heaved an immense sigh of contentment. He had a much higher opinion of himself now that his idea was abandoned, for he had made a very wise decision, he felt, and, most important, he had made this wise decision without consulting Colonel Korn.
‘Will that be all, sir?’ asked the chaplain.
‘Yeah,’ said Colonel Cathcart. ‘Unless you’ve got something else to suggest.’ ‘No, sir. Only…’
The colonel lifted his eyes as though affronted and studied the chaplain with aloof distrust. ‘Only what, Chaplain?’
‘Sir,’ said the chaplain, ‘some of the men are very upset since you raised the number of missions to sixty. They’ve asked me to speak to you about it.’
The colonel was silent. The chaplain’s face reddened to the roots of his sandy hair as he waited. The colonel kept him squirming a long time with a fixed, uninterested look devoid of all emotion.
‘Tell them there’s a war going on,’ he advised finally in a flat voice.
‘Thank you, sir, I will,’ the chaplain replied in a flood of gratitude because the colonel had finally
said something. ‘They were wondering why you couldn’t requisition some of the replacement crews that are waiting in Africa to take their places and then let them go home.’
‘That’s an administrative matter,’ the colonel said. ‘It’s none of their business.’ He pointed languidly toward the wall. ‘Help yourself to a plum tomato, Chaplain. Go ahead, it’s on me.’
‘Thank you, sir. Sir -‘
‘Don’t mention it. How do you like living out there in the woods, Chaplain? Is everything hunky dory?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘That’s good. You get in touch with us if you need anything.’ ‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Sir -‘
‘Thanks for dropping around, Chaplain. I’ve got some work to do now. You’ll let me know if you can think of anything for getting our names into The Saturday Evening Post, won’t you?’
‘Yes, sir, I will.’ The chaplain braced himself with a prodigious effort of the will and plunged ahead brazenly. ‘I’m particularly concerned about the condition of one of the bombardiers, sir. Yossarian.’ The colonel glanced up quickly with a start of vague recognition. ‘Who?’ he asked in alarm. ‘Yossarian, sir.’
‘Yossarian?’
‘Yes, sir. Yossarian. He’s in a very bad way, sir. I’m afraid he won’t be able to suffer much longer without doing something desperate.’
‘Is that a fact, Chaplain?’ ‘Yes, sir. I’m afraid it is.’
The colonel thought about it in heavy silence for a few moments. ‘Tell him to trust in God,’ he advised finally.
‘Thank you, sir,’ said the chaplain. ‘I will.’ 20 CORPORAL WHITCOMB
The late-August morning sun was hot and steamy, and there was no breeze on the balcony. The chaplain moved slowly. He was downcast and burdened with self-reproach when he stepped without noise from the colonel’s office on his rubber-soled and rubber-heeled brown shoes. He hated himself for what he construed to be his own cowardice. He had intended to take a much stronger stand with Colonel Cathcart on the matter of the sixty missions, to speak out with courage, logic and eloquence on a subject about which he had begun to feel very deeply. Instead he had failed miserably, had choked up once again in the face of opposition from a stronger personality. It was a familiar, ignominious experience, and his opinion of himself was low.
He choked up even more a second later when he spied Colonel Korn’s tubby monochrome figure trotting up the curved, wide, yellow stone staircase toward him in lackadaisical haste from the great dilapidated lobby below with its lofty walls of cracked dark marble and circular floor of cracked
grimy tile. The chaplain was even more frightened of Colonel Korn than he was of Colonel Cathcart. The swarthy, middle-aged lieutenant colonel with the rimless, icy glasses and faceted, bald, domelike pate that he was always touching sensitively with the tips of his splayed fingers disliked the chaplain and was impolite to him frequently. He kept the chaplain in a constant state of terror with his curt, derisive tongue and his knowing, cynical eyes that the chaplain was never brave enough to meet for more than an accidental second. Inevitably, the chaplain’s attention, as he cowered meekly before him, focused on Colonel Korn’s midriff, where the shirttails bunching up from inside his sagging belt and ballooning down over his waist gave him an appearance of slovenly girth and made him seem inches shorter than his middle height. Colonel Korn was an untidy disdainful man with an oily skin and deep, hard lines running almost straight down from his nose between his crepuscular jowls and his square, clefted chin. His face was dour, and he glanced at the chaplain without recognition as the two drew close on the staircase and prepared to pass. ‘Hiya, Father,’ he said tonelessly without looking at the chaplain. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Good morning, sir,’ the chaplain replied, discerning wisely that Colonel Korn expected nothing more in the way of a response.
Colonel Korn was proceeding up the stairs without slackening his pace, and the chaplain resisted the temptation to remind him again that he was not a Catholic but an Anabaptist, and that it was therefore neither necessary nor correct to address him as Father. He was almost certain now that Colonel Korn remembered and that calling him Father with a look of such bland innocence was just another one of Colonel Korn’s methods of taunting him because he was only an Anabaptist.
Colonel Korn halted without warning when he was almost by and came whirling back down upon the chaplain with a glare of infuriated suspicion. The chaplain was petrified.
‘What are you doing with that plum tomato, Chaplain?’ Colonel Korn demanded roughly.
The chaplain looked down his arm with surprise at the plum tomato Colonel Cathcart had invited him to take. ‘I got it in Colonel Cathcart’s office, sir,’ he managed to reply.
‘Does the colonel know you took it?’ ‘Yes, sir. He gave it to me.’
‘Oh, in that case I guess it’s okay,’ Colonel Korn said, mollified. He smiled without warmth, jabbing the crumpled folds of his shirt back down inside his trousers with his thumbs. His eyes glinted keenly with a private and satisfying mischief. ‘What did Colonel Cathcart want to see you about, Father?’ he asked suddenly.
The chaplain was tongue-tied with indecision for a moment. ‘I don’t think I ought -‘ ‘Saying prayers to the editors of The Saturday Evening Post?’
The chaplain almost smiled. ‘Yes, sir.’
Colonel Korn was enchanted with his own intuition. He laughed disparagingly. ‘You know, I was afraid he’d begin thinking about something so ridiculous as soon as he saw this week’s Saturday
Evening Post. I hope you succeeded in showing him what an atrocious idea it is.’ ‘He has decided against it, sir.’
‘That’s good. I’m glad you convinced him that the editors of The Saturday Evening Post were not likely to run that same story twice just to give some publicity to some obscure colonel. How are things in the wilderness, Father? Are you able to manage out there?’
‘Yes, sir. Everything is working out.’
‘That’s good. I’m happy to hear you have nothing to complain about. Let us know if you need anything to make you comfortable. We all want you to have a good time out there.’
‘Thank you, sir. I will.’
Noise of a growing stir rose from the lobby below. It was almost lunchtime, and the earliest arrivals were drifting into the headquarters mess halls, the enlisted men and officers separating into different dining halls on facing sides of the archaic rotunda. Colonel Korn stopped smiling.
‘You had lunch with us here just a day or so ago, didn’t you, Father?’ he asked meaningfully. ‘Yes, sir. The day before yesterday.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ Colonel Korn said, and paused to let his point sink in. ‘Well, take it easy, Father. I’ll see you around when it’s time for you to eat here again.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
The chaplain was not certain at which of the five officers’ and five enlisted men’s mess halls he was scheduled to have lunch that day, for the system of rotation worked out for him by Colonel Korn was complicated, and he had forgotten his records back in his tent. The chaplain was the only officer attached to Group Headquarters who did not reside in the moldering red-stone Group Headquarters building itself or in any of the smaller satellite structures that rose about the grounds in disjuncted relationship. The chaplain lived in a clearing in the woods about four miles away between the officers’ club and the first of the four squadron areas that stretched away from Group Headquarters in a distant line. The chaplain lived alone in a spacious, square tent that was also his office. Sounds of revelry traveled to him at night from the officers’ club and kept him awake often as he turned and tossed on his cot in passive, half-voluntary exile. He was not able to gauge the effect of the mild pills he took occasionally to help him sleep and felt guilty about it for days afterward.
The only one who lived with the chaplain in his clearing in the woods was Corporal Whitcomb, his assistant. Corporal Whitcomb, an atheist, was a disgruntled subordinate who felt he could do the chaplain’s job much better than the chaplain was doing it and viewed himself, therefore, as an underprivileged victim of social inequity. He lived in a tent of his own as spacious and square as the chaplain’s. He was openly rude and contemptuous to the chaplain once he discovered that the chaplain would let him get away with it. The borders of the two tents in the clearing stood no more than four or five feet apart.
It was Colonel Korn who had mapped out this way of life for the chaplain. One good reason for making the chaplain live outside the Group Headquarters building was Colonel Korn’s theory that dwelling in a tent as most of his parishioners did would bring him into closer communication with them. Another good reason was the fact that having the chaplain around Headquarters all the time made the other officers uncomfortable. It was one thing to maintain liaison with the Lord, and they were all in favor of that; it was something else, though, to have Him hanging around twenty-four hours a day. All in all, as Colonel Korn described it to Major Danby, the jittery and goggle-eyed group operations officer, the chaplain had it pretty soft; he had little more to do than listen to the troubles of others, bury the dead, visit the bedridden and conduct religious services. And there were not so many dead for him to bury any more, Colonel Korn pointed out, since opposition from German fighter planes had virtually ceased and since close to ninety per cent of what fatalities there still were, he estimated, perished behind the enemy lines or disappeared inside the clouds, where the chaplain had nothing to do with disposing of the remains. The religious services were certainly no great strain, either, since they were conducted only once a week at the Group Headquarters building and were attended by very few of the men.
Actually, the chaplain was learning to love it in his clearing in the woods. Both he and Corporal Whitcomb had been provided with every convenience so that neither might ever plead discomfort as a basis for seeking permission to return to the Headquarters building. The chaplain rotated his breakfasts, lunches and dinners in separate sets among the eight squadron mess halls and ate every fifth meal in the enlisted men’s mess at Group Headquarters and every tenth meal at the officers’ mess there. Back home in Wisconsin the chaplain had been very fond of gardening, and his heart welled with a glorious impression of fertility and fruition each time he contemplated the low, prickly boughs of the stunted trees and the waist-high weeds and thickets by which he was almost walled in. In the spring he had longed to plant begonias and zinnias in a narrow bed around his tent but had been deterred by his fear of Corporal Whitcomb’s rancor. The chaplain relished the privacy and isolation of his verdant surroundings and the reverie and meditation that living there fostered. Fewer people came to him with their troubles than formerly, and he allowed himself a measure of gratitude for that too. The chaplain did not mix freely and was not comfortable in conversation. He missed his wife and his three small children, and she missed him.
What displeased Corporal Whitcomb most about the chaplain, apart from the fact that the chaplain believed in God, was his lack of initiative and aggressiveness. Corporal Whitcomb regarded the low attendance at religious services as a sad reflection of his own status. His mind germinated feverishly with challenging new ideas for sparking the great spiritual revival of which he dreamed himself the architect – box lunches, church socials, form letters to the families of men killed and injured in combat, censorship, Bingo. But the chaplain blocked him. Corporal Whitcomb bridled with vexation beneath the chaplain’s restraint, for he spied room for improvement everywhere. It
was people like the chaplain, he concluded, who were responsible for giving religion such a bad name and making pariahs out of them both. Unlike the chaplain, Corporal Whitcomb detested the seclusion of the clearing in the woods. One of the first things he intended to do after he deposed the chaplain was move back into the Group Headquarters building, where he could be right in the thick of things.
When the chaplain drove back into the clearing after leaving Colonel Korn, Corporal Whitcomb was outside in the muggy haze talking in conspiratorial tones to a strange chubby man in a maroon corduroy bathrobe and gray flannel pajamas. The chaplain recognized the bathrobe and pajamas as official hospital attire. Neither of the two men gave him any sign of recognition. The stranger’s gums had been painted purple; his corduroy bathrobe was decorated in back with a picture of a B-25 nosing through orange bursts of flak and in front with six neat rows of tiny bombs signifying sixty combat missions flown. The chaplain was so struck by the sight that he stopped to stare. Both men broke off their conversation and waited in stony silence for him to go. The chaplain hurried inside his tent. He heard, or imagined he heard, them tittering.
Corporal Whitcomb walked in a moment later and demanded, ‘What’s doing?’
‘There isn’t anything new,’ the chaplain replied with averted eyes. ‘Was anyone here to see me?’ ‘Just that crackpot Yossarian again. He’s a real troublemaker, isn’t he?’
‘I’m not so sure he’s a crackpot,’ the chaplain observed.
‘That’s right, take his part,’ said Corporal Whitcomb in an injured tone, and stamped out.
The chaplain could not believe that Corporal Whitcomb was offended again and had really walked out. As soon as he did realize it, Corporal Whitcomb walked back in.
‘You always side with other people,’ Corporal Whitcomb accused. ‘You don’t back up your men. That’s one of the things that’s wrong with you.’
‘I didn’t intend to side with him,’ the chaplain apologized. ‘I was just making a statement.’ ‘What did Colonel Cathcart want?’
‘It wasn’t anything important. He just wanted to discuss the possibility of saying prayers in the briefing room before each mission.’
‘All right, don’t tell me,’ Corporal Whitcomb snapped and walked out again.
The chaplain felt terrible. No matter how considerate he tried to be, it seemed he always managed to hurt Corporal Whitcomb’s feelings. He gazed down remorsefully and saw that the orderly forced upon him by Colonel Korn to keep his tent clean and attend to his belongings had neglected to shine his shoes again.
Corporal Whitcomb came back in. ‘You never trust me with information,’ he whined truculently. ‘You don’t have confidence in your men. That’s another one of the things that’s wrong with you.’ ‘Yes, I do,’ the chaplain assured him guiltily. ‘I have lots of confidence in you.’
‘Then how about those letters?’
‘No, not now,’ the chaplain pleaded, cringing. ‘Not the letters. Please don’t bring that up again. I’ll let you know if I have a change of mind.’
Corporal Whitcomb looked furious. ‘Is that so? Well, it’s all right for you to just sit there and shake your head while I do all the work. Didn’t you see the guy outside with all those pictures painted on his bathrobe?’
‘Is he here to see me?’
‘No,’ Corporal Whitcomb said, and walked out.
It was hot and humid inside the tent, and the chaplain felt himself turning damp. He listened like an unwilling eavesdropper to the muffled, indistinguishable drone of the lowered voices outside. As he sat inertly at the rickety bridge table that served as a desk, his lips were closed, his eyes were blank, and his face, with its pale ochre hue and ancient, confined clusters of minute acne pits, had the color and texture of an uncracked almond shell. He racked his memory for some clue to the origin of Corporal Whitcomb’s bitterness toward him. In some way he was unable to fathom, he was convinced he had done him some unforgivable wrong. It seemed incredible that such lasting ire as Corporal Whitcomb’s could have stemmed from his rejection of Bingo or the form letters home to the families of the men killed in combat. The chaplain was despondent with an acceptance of his own ineptitude. He had intended for some weeks to have a heart-to-heart talk with Corporal Whitcomb in order to find out what was bothering him, but was already ashamed of what he might find out.
Outside the tent, Corporal Whitcomb snickered. The other man chuckled. For a few precarious seconds, the chaplain tingled with a weird, occult sensation of having experienced the identical situation before in some prior time or existence. He endeavored to trap and nourish the impression in order to predict, and perhaps even control, what incident would occur next, but the afatus melted away unproductively, as he had known beforehand it would. D‚j… vu. The subtle, recurring confusion between illusion and reality that was characteristic of paramnesia fascinated the chaplain, and he knew a number of things about it. He knew, for example, that it was called paramnesia, and he was interested as well in such corollary optical phenomena as jamais vu, never seen, and presque vu, almost seen. There were terrifying, sudden moments when objects, concepts and even people that the chaplain had lived with almost all his life inexplicably took on an unfamiliar and irregular aspect that he had never seen before and which made them totally strange: jamais vu. And there were other moments when he almost saw absolute truth in brilliant flashes of clarity that almost came to him: presque vu. The episode of the naked man in the tree at Snowden’s funeral mystified him thoroughly. It was not d‚j… vu, for at the time he had experienced no sensation of ever having seen a naked man in a tree at Snowden’s funeral before. It was not jamais vu, since the apparition was not of someone, or something, familiar appearing to him in an unfamiliar guise. And it was certainly not presque vu, for the chaplain did see him.
A jeep started up with a backfire directly outside and roared away. Had the naked man in the tree at Snowden’s funeral been merely a hallucination? Or had it been a true revelation? The chaplain trembled at the mere idea. He wanted desperately to confide in Yossarian, but each time he thought about the occurrence he decided not to think about it any further, although now that he did think about it he could not be sure that he ever really had thought about it.
Corporal Whitcomb sauntered back in wearing a shiny new smirk and leaned his elbow impertinently against the center pole of the chaplain’s tent.
‘Do you know who that guy in the red bathrobe was?’ he asked boastfully. ‘That was a C.I.D. man with a fractured nose. He came down here from the hospital on official business. He’s conducting an investigation.’
The chaplain raised his eyes quickly in obsequious commiseration. ‘I hope you’re not in any trouble. Is there anything I can do?’
‘No, I’m not in any trouble,’ Corporal Whitcomb replied with a grin. ‘You are. They’re going to crack down on you for signing Washington Irving’s name to all those letters you’ve been signing Washington Irving’s name to. How do you like that?’
‘I haven’t been signing Washington Irving’s name to any letters,’ said the chaplain.
‘You don’t have to lie to me,’ Corporal Whitcomb answered. ‘I’m not the one you have to convince.’ ‘But I’m not lying.’
‘I don’t care whether you’re lying or not. They’re going to get you for intercepting Major Major’s correspondence, too. A lot of that stuff is classified information.’
‘What correspondence?’ asked the chaplain plaintively in rising exasperation. ‘I’ve never even seen any of Major Major’s correspondence.’
‘You don’t have to lie to me,’ Corporal Whitcomb replied. ‘I’m not the one you have to convince.’ ‘But I’m not lying!’ protested the chaplain.
‘I don’t see why you have to shout at me,’ Corporal Whitcomb retorted with an injured look. He came away from the center pole and shook his finger at the chaplain for emphasis. ‘I just did you the biggest favor anybody ever did you in your whole life, and you don’t even realize it. Every time he tries to report you to his superiors, somebody up at the hospital censors out the details. He’s been going batty for weeks trying to turn you in. I just put a censor’s okay on his letter without even reading it. That will make a very good impression for you up at C.I.D. headquarters. It will let them know that we’re not the least bit afiaid to have the whole truth about you come out.’
The chaplain was reeling with confusion. ‘But you aren’t authorized to censor letters, are you?’
‘Of course not,’ Corporal Whitcomb answered. ‘Only officers are ever authorized to do that. I censored it in your name.’
‘But I’m not authorized to censor letters either. Am I?’
‘I took care of that for you, too,’ Corporal Whitcomb assured him. ‘I signed somebody else’s name
for you.’
‘Isn’t that forgery?’
‘Oh, don’t worry about that either. The only one who might complain in a case of forgery is the person whose name you forged, and I looked out for your interests by picking a dead man. I used Washington Irving’s name.’ Corporal Whitcomb scrutinized the chaplain’s face closely for some sign of rebellion and then breezed ahead confidently with concealed irony. ‘That was pretty quick thinking on my part, wasn’t it?’
‘I don’t know,’ the chaplain wailed softly in a quavering voice, squinting with grotesque contortions of anguish and incomprehension. ‘I don’t think I understand all you’ve been telling me. How will it make a good impression for me if you signed Washington Irving’s name instead of my own?’ ‘Because they’re convinced that you are Washington Irving. Don’t you see? They’ll know it was you.’
‘But isn’t that the very belief we want to dispel? Won’t this help them prove it?’
‘If I thought you were going to be so stuffy about it, I wouldn’t even have tried to help,’ Corporal Whitcomb declared indignantly, and walked out. A second later he walked back in. ‘I just did you the biggest favor anybody ever did you in your whole life and you don’t even know it. You don’t know how to show your appreciation. That’s another one of the things that’s wrong with you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ the chaplain apologized contritely. ‘I really am sorry. It’s just that I’m so completely stunned by all you’re telling me that I don’t even realize what I’m saying. I’m really very grateful to you.’
‘Then how about letting me send out those form letters?’ Corporal Whitcomb demanded immediately. ‘Can I begin working on the first drafts?’
The chaplain’s jaw dropped in astonishment. ‘No, no,’ he groaned. ‘Not now.’
Corporal Whitcomb was incensed. ‘I’m the best friend you’ve got and you don’t even know it,’ he asserted belligerently, and walked out of the chaplain’s tent. He walked back in. ‘I’m on your side and you don’t even realize it. Don’t you know what serious trouble you’re in? That C.I.D. man has gone rushing back to the hospital to write a brand-new report on you about that tomato.’
‘What tomato?’ the chaplain asked, blinking.
‘The plum tomato you were hiding in your hand when you first showed up here. There it is. The tomato you’re still holding in your hand right this very minute!’
The captain unclenched his fingers with surprise and saw that he was still holding the plum tomato he had obtained in Colonel Cathcart’s office. He set it down quickly on the bridge table. ‘I got this tomato from Colonel Cathcart,’ he said, and was struck by how ludicrous his explanation sounded. ‘He insisted I take it.’
‘You don’t have to lie to me,’ Corporal Whitcomb answered. ‘I don’t care whether you stole it from him or not.’
‘Stole it?’ the chaplain exclaimed with amazement. ‘Why should I want to steal a plum tomato?’ ‘That’s exactly what had us both stumped,’ said Corporal Whitcomb. ‘And then the C.I.D. man figured out you might have some important secret papers hidden away inside it.’
The chaplain sagged limply beneath the mountainous weight of his despair. ‘I don’t have any important secret papers hidden away inside it,’ he stated simply. ‘I didn’t even want it to begin with. Here, you can have it and see for yourself.’
‘I don’t want it.’
‘Please take it away,’ the chaplain pleaded in a voice that was barely audible. ‘I want to be rid of it.’ ‘I don’t want it,’ Corporal Whitcomb snapped again, and stalked out with an angry face, suppressing a smile of great jubilation at having forged a powerful new alliance with the C.I.D. man and at having succeeded again in convincing the chaplain that he was really displeased.
Poor Whitcomb, sighed the chaplain, and blamed himself for his assistant’s malaise. He sat mutely in a ponderous, stultifying melancholy, waiting expectantly for Corporal Whitcomb to walk back in. He was disappointed as he heard the peremptory crunch of Corporal Whitcomb’s footsteps recede into silence. There was nothing he wanted to do next. He decided to pass up lunch for a Milky Way and a Baby Ruth from his foot locker and a few swallows of luke-warm water from his canteen. He felt himself surrounded by dense, overwhelming fogs of possibilities in which he could perceive no glimmer of light. He dreaded what Colonel Cathcart would think when the news that he was suspected of being Washington Irving was brought to him, then fell to fretting over what Colonel Cathcart was already thinking about him for even having broached the subject of sixty missions. There was so much unhappiness in the world, he reflected, bowing his head dismally beneath the tragic thought, and there was nothing he could do about anybody’s, least of all his own.
GENERAL DREEDLE
Colonel Cathcart was not thinking anything at all about the chaplain, but was tangled up in a brand-new, menacing problem of his own: Yossarian!
Yossarian! The mere sound of that execrable, ugly name made his blood run cold and his breath come in labored gasps. The chaplain’s first mention of the name Yossarian! had tolled deep in his memory like a portentous gong. As soon as the latch of the door had clicked shut, the whole humiliating recollection of the naked man in formation came cascading down upon him in a mortifying, choking flood of stinging details. He began to perspire and tremble. There was a sinister and unlikely coincidence exposed that was too diabolical in implication to be anything less than the most hideous of omens. The name of the man who had stood naked in ranks that day to receive his Distinguished Flying Cross from General Dreedle had also been – Yossarian! And now it was a man named Yossarian who was threatening to make trouble over the sixty missions he had just ordered the men in his group to fly. Colonel Cathcart wondered gloomily if it was the same Yossarian.
He climbed to his feet with an air of intolerable woe and began moving about his office. He felt himself in the presence of the mysterious. The naked man in formation, he conceded cheerlessly, had been a real black eye for him. So had the tampering with the bomb line before the mission to Bologna and the seven-day delay in destroying the bridge at Ferrara, even though destroying the bridge at Ferrara finally, he remembered with glee, had been a real feather in his cap, although losing a plane there the second time around, he recalled in dejection, had been another black eye, even though he had won another real feather in his cap by getting a medal approved for the bombardier who had gotten him the real black eye in the first place by going around over the target twice. That bombardier’s name, he remembered suddenly with another stupefying shock, had also been Yossarian! Now there were three! His viscous eyes bulged with astonishment and he whipped himself around in alarm to see what was taking place behind him. A moment ago there had been no Yossarians in his life; now they were multiplying like hobgoblins. He tried to make himself grow calm. Yossarian was not a common name; perhaps there were not really three Yossarians but only two Yossarians, or maybe even only one Yossarian – but that really made no difference! The colonel was still in grave peril. Intuition warned him that he was drawing close to some immense and inscrutable cosmic climax, and his broad, meaty, towering frame tingled from head to toe at the thought that Yossarian, whoever he would eventually turn out to be, was destined to serve as his nemesis.
Colonel Cathcart was not superstitious, but he did believe in omens, and he sat right back down behind his desk and made a cryptic notation on his memorandum pad to look into the whole suspicious business of the Yossarians right away. He wrote his reminder to himself in a heavy and decisive hand, amplifying it sharply with a series of coded punctuation marks and underlining the whole message twice, so that it read:
Yossarian! ! ! (?)!
The colonel sat back when he had finished and was extremely pleased with himself for the prompt action he had just taken to meet this sinister crisis. Yossarian – the very sight of the name made him shudder. There were so many esses in it. It just had to be subversive. It was like the word subversive itself. It was like seditious and insidious too, and like socialist, suspicious, fascist and Communist. It was an odious, alien, distasteful name, that just did not inspire confidence. It was not at all like such clean, crisp, honest, American names as Cathcart, Peckem and Dreedle.
Colonel Cathcart rose slowly and began drifting about his office again. Almost unconsciously, he picked up a plum tomato from the top of one of the bushels and took a voracious bite. He made a wry face at once and threw the rest of the plum tomato into his waste-basket. The colonel did not like plum tomatoes, not even when they were his own, and these were not even his own. These had
been purchased in different market places all over Pianosa by Colonel Korn under various identities, moved up to the colonel’s farmhouse in the hills in the dead of night, and transported down to Group Headquarters the next morning for sale to Milo, who paid Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn premium prices for them. Colonel Cathcart often wondered if what they were doing with the plum tomatoes was legal, but Colonel Korn said it was, and he tried not to brood about it too often. He had no way of knowing whether or not the house in the hills was legal, either, since Colonel Korn had made all the arrangements. Colonel Cathcart did not know if he owned the house or rented it, from whom he had acquired it or how much, if anything, it was costing. Colonel Korn was the lawyer, and if Colonel Korn assured him that fraud, extortion, currency manipulation, embezzlement, income tax evasion and black-market speculations were legal, Colonel Cathcart was in no position to disagree with him.
All Colonel Cathcart knew about his house in the hills was that he had such a house and hated it. He was never so bored as when spending there the two or three days every other week necessary to sustain the illusion that his damp and drafty stone farmhouse in the hills was a golden palace of carnal delights. Officers’ clubs everywhere pulsated with blurred but knowing accounts of lavish, hushed-up drinking and sex orgies there and of secret, intimate nights of ecstasy with the most beautiful, the most tantalizing, the most readily aroused and most easily satisfied Italian courtesans, film actresses, models and countesses. No such private nights of ecstasy or hushed-up drinking and sex orgies ever occurred. They might have occurred if either General Dreedle or General Peckem had once evinced an interest in taking part in orgies with him, but neither ever did, and the colonel was certainly not going to waste his time and energy making love to beautiful women unless there was something in it for him.
The colonel dreaded his dank lonely nights at his farmhouse and the dull, uneventful days. He had much more fun back at Group, browbeating everyone he wasn’t afraid of. However, as Colonel Korn kept reminding him, there was not much glamour in having a farmhouse in the hills if he never used it. He drove off to his farmhouse each time in a mood of self-pity. He carried a shotgun in his jeep and spent the monotonous hours there shooting it at birds and at the plum tomatoes that did grow there in untended rows and were too much trouble to harvest.
Among those officers of inferior rank toward whom Colonel Cathcart still deemed it prudent to show respect, he included Major – de Coverley, even though he did not want to and was not sure he even had to. Major – de Coverley was as great a mystery to him as he was to Major Major and to everyone else who ever took notice of him. Colonel Cathcart had no idea whether to look up or look down in his attitude toward Major – de Coverley. Major – de Coverley was only a major, even though he was ages older than Colonel Cathcart; at the same time, so many other people treated Major – de Coverley with such profound and fearful veneration that Colonel Cathcart had a hunch they might know something. Major – de Coverley was an ominous, incomprehensible presence who
kept him constantly on edge and of whom even Colonel Korn tended to be wary. Everyone was afraid of him, and no one knew why. No one even knew Major – de Coverley’s first name, because no one had ever had the temerity to ask him. Colonel Cathcart knew that Major – de Coverley was away and he rejoiced in his absence until it occurred to him that Major – de Coverley might be away somewhere conspiring against him, and then he wished that Major – de Coverley were back in his squadron where he belonged so that he could be watched.
In a little while Colonel Cathcart’s arches began to ache from pacing back and forth so much. He sat down behind his desk again and resolved to embark upon a mature and systematic evaluation of the entire military situation. With the businesslike air of a man who knows how to get things done, he found a large white pad, drew a straight line down the middle and crossed it near the top, dividing the page into two blank columns of equal width. He rested a moment in critical rumination. Then he huddled over his desk, and at the head of the left column, in a cramped and finicky hand, he wrote, ‘Black Eyes!!!’ At the top of the right column he wrote, ‘Feathers in My Cap!!! !!’ He leaned back once more to inspect his chart admiringly from an objective perspective. After a few seconds of solemn deliberation, he licked the tip of his pencil carefully and wrote under ‘Black Eyes!!!,’ after intent intervals:
Ferrara
Bologna (bomb line moved on map during) Skeet range
Naked man information (after Avignon) Then he added:
Food poisoning (during Bologna) and
Moaning (epidemic of during Avignon briefing) Then he added:
Chaplain (hanging around officers’ club every night)
He decided to be charitable about the chaplain, even though he did not like him, and under ‘Feathers in My Cap!!! !!’ he wrote:
Chaplain (hanging around officers’ club every night)
The two chaplain entries, therefore, neutralized each other. Alongside ‘Ferrara’ and ‘Naked man in formation (after Avignon)’ he then wrote:
Yossarian!
Alongside ‘Bologna (bomb line moved on map during)’ ‘Food poisoning (during Bologna)’ and ‘Moaning (epidemic of during Avignon briefing)’ he wrote in a bold, decisive hand:
?
Those entries labeled ‘?’ were the ones he wanted to investigate immediately to determine if Yossarian had played any part in them.
Suddenly his arm began to shake, and he was unable to write any more. He rose to his feet in terror, feeling sticky and fat, and rushed to the open window to gulp in fresh air. His gaze fell on the skeet-range, and he reeled away with a sharp cry of distress, his wild and feverish eyes scanning the walls of his office frantically as though they were swarming with Yossarians.
Nobody loved him. General Dreedle hated him, although General Peckem liked him, although he couldn’t be sure, since Colonel Cargill, General Peckem’s aide, undoubtedly had ambitions of his own and was probably sabotaging him with General Peckem at every opportunity. The only good colonel, he decided, was a dead colonel, except for himself. The only colonel he trusted was Colonel Moodus, and even he had an in with his father-in-law. Milo, of course, had been the big feather in his cap, although having his group bombed by Milo’s planes had probably been a terrible black eye for him, even though Milo had ultimately stilled all protest by disclosing the huge net profit the syndicate had realized on the deal with the enemy and convincing everyone that bombing his own men and planes had therefore really been a commendable and very lucrative blow on the side of private enterprise. The colonel was insecure about Milo because other colonels were trying to lure him away, and Colonel Cathcart still had that lousy Big Chief White Halfoat in his group who that lousy, lazy Captain Black claimed was the one really responsible for the bomb line’s being moved during the Big Siege of Bologna. Colonel Cathcart liked Big Chief White Halfoat because Big Chief White Halfoat kept punching that lousy Colonel Moodus in the nose every time he got
drunk and Colonel Moodus was around. He wished that Big Chief White Halfoat would begin punching Colonel Korn in his fat face, too. Colonel Korn was a lousy smart aleck. Someone at Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters had it in for him and sent back every report he wrote with a blistering rebuke, and Colonel Korn had bribed a clever mail clerk there named Wintergreen to try to find out who it was. Losing the plane over Ferrara the second time around had not done him any good, he had to admit, and neither had having that other plane disappear inside that cloud – that was one he hadn’t even written down! He tried to recall, longingly, if Yossarian had been lost in that plane in the cloud and realized that Yossarian could not possibly have been lost in that plane in the cloud if he was still around now raising such a big stink about having to fly a lousy five missions more.
Maybe sixty missions were too many for the men to fly, Colonel Cathcart reasoned, if Yossarian objected to flying them, but he then remembered that forcing his men to fly more missions than everyone else was the most tangible achievement he had going for him. As Colonel Korn often remarked, the war was crawling with group commanders who were merely doing their duty, and it required just some sort of dramatic gesture like making his group fly more combat missions than any other bomber group to spotlight his unique qualities of leadership. Certainly none of the generals seemed to object to what he was doing, although as far as he could detect they weren’t particularly impressed either, which made him suspect that perhaps sixty combat missions were not nearly enough and that he ought to increase the number at once to seventy, eighty, a hundred, or even two hundred, three hundred, or six thousand!
Certainly he would be much better off under somebody suave like General Peckem than he was under somebody boorish and insensitive like General Dreedle, because General Peckem had the discernment, the intelligence and the Ivy League background to appreciate and enjoy him at his full value, although General Peckem had never given the slightest indication that he appreciated or enjoyed him at all. Colonel Cathcart felt perceptive enough to realize that visible signals of recognition were never necessary between sophisticated, self-assured people like himself and General Peckem who could warm to each other from a distance with innate mutual understanding. It was enough that they were of like kind, and he knew it was only a matter of waiting discreetly for preferment until the right time, although it rotted Colonel Cathcart’s self-esteem to observe that General Peckem never deliberately sought him out and that he labored no harder to impress Colonel Cathcart with his epigrams and erudition than he did to impress anyone else in earshot, even enlisted men. Either Colonel Cathcart wasn’t getting through to General Peckem or General Peckem was not the scintillating, discriminating, intellectual, forward-looking personality he pretended to be and it was really General Dreedle who was sensitive, charming, brilliant and sophisticated and under whom he would certainly be much better off, and suddenly Colonel Cathcart had absolutely no conception of how strongly he stood with anyone and began banging on
his buzzer with his fist for Colonel Korn to come running into his office and assure him that everybody loved him, that Yossarian was a figment of his imagination, and that he was making wonderful progress in the splendid and valiant campaign he was waging to become a general.
Actually, Colonel Cathcart did not have a chance in hell of becoming a general. For one thing, there was ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen, who also wanted to be a general and who always distorted, destroyed, rejected or misdirected any correspondence by, for or about Colonel Cathcart that might do him credit. For another, there already was a general, General Dreedle who knew that General Peckem was after his job but did not know how to stop him.
General Dreedle, the wing commander, was a blunt, chunky, barrel-chested man in his early fifties. His nose was squat and red, and he had lumpy white, bunched-up eyelids circling his small gray eyes like haloes of bacon fat. He had a nurse and a son-in law, and he was prone to long, ponderous silences when he had not been drinking too much. General Dreedle had wasted too much of his time in the Army doing his job well, and now it was too late. New power alignments had coalesced without him and he was at a loss to cope with them. At unguarded moments his hard and sullen face slipped into a somber, preoccupied look of defeat and frustration. General Dreedle drank a great deal. His moods were arbitrary and unpredictable. ‘War is hell,’ he declared frequently, drunk or sober, and he really meant it, although that did not prevent him from making a good living out of it or from taking his son-in-law into the business with him, even though the two bickered constantly. ‘That bastard,’ General Dreedle would complain about his son-in-law with a contemptuous grunt to anyone who happened to be standing beside him at the curve of the bar of the officers’ club. ‘Everything he’s got he owes to me. I made him, that lousy son of a bitch! He hasn’t got brains enough to get ahead on his own.’
‘He thinks he knows everything,’ Colonel Moodus would retort in a sulking tone to his own audience at the other end of the bar. ‘He can’t take criticism and he won’t listen to advice.’
‘All he can do is give advice,’ General Dreedle would observe with a rasping snort. ‘If it wasn’t for me, he’d still be a corporal.’
General Dreedle was always accompanied by both Colonel Moodus and his nurse, who was as delectable a piece of ass as anyone who saw her had ever laid eyes on. General Dreedle’s nurse was chubby, short and blonde. She had plump dimpled cheeks, happy blue eyes, and neat curly turned-up hair. She smiled at everyone and never spoke at all unless she was spoken to. Her bosom was lush and her complexion clear. She was irresistible, and men edged away from her carefully. She was succulent, sweet, docile and dumb, and she drove everyone crazy but General Dreedle. ‘You should see her naked,’ General Dreedle chortled with croupy relish, while his nurse stood smiling proudly right at his shoulder. ‘Back at Wing she’s got a uniform in my room made of purple silk that’s so tight her nipples stand out like bing cherries. Milo got me the fabric. There isn’t even room enough for panties or a brassiŠre underneath. I make her wear it some nights when Moodus is
around just to drive him crazy.’ General Dreedle laughed hoarsely. ‘You should see what goes on inside that blouse of hers every time she shifts her weight. She drives him out of his mind. The first time I catch him putting a hand on her or any other woman I’ll bust the horny bastard right down to private and put him on K.P. for a year.’
‘He keeps her around just to drive me crazy,’ Colonel Moodus accused aggrievedly at the other end of the bar. ‘Back at Wing she’s got a uniform made out of purple silk that’s so tight her nipples stand out like bing cherries. There isn’t even room for panties or a brassiŠre underneath. You should hear that rustle every time she shifts her weight. The first time I make a pass at her or any other girl he’ll bust me right down to private and put me on K.P. for a year. She drives me out of my mind.’
‘He hasn’t gotten laid since we shipped overseas,’ confided General Dreedle, and his square grizzled head bobbed with sadistic laughter at the fiendish idea. ‘That’s one of the reasons I never let him out of my sight, just so he can’t get to a woman. Can you imagine what that poor son of a bitch is going through?’
‘I haven’t been to bed with a woman since we shipped overseas,’ Colonel Moodus whimpered tearfully. ‘Can you imagine what I’m going through?’
General Dreedle could be as intransigent with anyone else when displeased as he was with Colonel Moodus. He had no taste for sham, tact or pretension, and his credo as a professional soldier was unified and concise: he believed that the young men who took orders from him should be willing to give up their lives for the ideals, aspirations and idiosyncrasies of the old men he took orders from. The officers and enlisted men in his command had identity for him only as military quantities. All he asked was that they do their work; beyond that, they were free to do whatever they pleased. They were free, as Colonel Cathcart was free, to force their men to fly sixty missions if they chose, and they were free, as Yossarian had been free, to stand in formation naked if they wanted to, although General Dreedle’s granite jaw swung open at the sight and he went striding dictatorially right down the line to make certain that there really was a man wearing nothing but moccasins waiting at attention in ranks to receive a medal from him. General Dreedle was speechless. Colonel Cathcart began to faint when he spied Yossarian, and Colonel Korn stepped up behind him and squeezed his arm in a strong grip. The silence was grotesque. A steady warm wind flowed in from the beach, and an old cart filled with dirty straw rumbled into view on the main road, drawn by a black donkey and driven by a farmer in a flopping hat and faded brown work clothes who paid no attention to the formal military ceremony taking place in the small field on his right.
At last General Dreedle spoke. ‘Get back in the car,’ he snapped over his shoulder to his nurse, who had followed him down the line. The nurse toddled away with a smile toward his brown staff car, parked about twenty yards away at the edge of the rectangular clearing. General Dreedle waited in austere silence until the car door slammed and then demanded, ‘Which one is this?’
Colonel Moodus checked his roster. ‘This one is Yossarian, Dad. He gets a Distinguished Flying
