Catch-22 (39 page)

   ‘Perhaps you’re right, sir.’ Yossarian agreed diplomatically.

   ‘I know I’m right. You’ve got a bad persecution complex. You
think people are trying to harm you.’

   ‘People are trying to harm me.’

   ‘You see? You have no respect for excessive authority or
obsolete traditions. You’re dangerous and depraved, and you ought to be taken
outside and shot!’

   ‘Are you serious?’

   ‘You’re an enemy of the people!’

   ‘Are you nuts?’ Yossarian shouted.

   ‘No, I’m not nuts,’ Dobbs roared furiously back in the ward,
in what he imagined was a furtive whisper. ‘Hungry Joe saw them, I tell you. He
saw them yesterday when he flew to Naples to pick up some black-market air
conditioners for Colonel Cathcart’s farm. They’ve got a big replacement center
there and it’s filled with hundreds of pilots, bombardiers and gunners on the
way home. They’ve got forty-five missions, that’s all. A few with Purple Hearts
have even less. Replacement crews are pouring in from the States into the other
bomber groups. They want everyone to serve overseas at least once, even
administrative personnel. Don’t you read the papers? We’ve got to kill him
now!’

   ‘You’ve got only two more missions to fly,’ Yossarian
reasoned with him in a low voice. ‘Why take a chance?’

   ‘I can get killed flying them, too,’ Dobbs answered
pugnaciously in his rough, quavering, overwrought voice. ‘We can kill him the
first thing tomorrow morning when he drives back from his farm. I’ve got the
gun right here.’ Yossarian goggled with amazement as Dobbs pulled a gun out of
his pocket and displayed it high in the air. ‘Are you crazy?’ he hissed
frantically. ‘Put it away. And keep your idiot voice down.’

   ‘What are you worried about?’ Dobbs asked with offended
innocence. ‘No one can hear us.’

   ‘Hey, knock it off down there,’ a voice rang out from the far
end of the ward. ‘Can’t you see we’re trying to nap?’

   ‘What the hell are you, a wise guy?’ Dobbs yelled back and
spun around with clenched fists, ready to fight. He whirled back to Yossarian
and, before he could speak, sneezed thunderously six times, staggering sideways
on rubbery legs in the intervals and raising his elbows ineffectively to fend
each seizure off. The lids of his watery eyes were puffy and inflamed.

   ‘Who does he think,’ he demanded, sniffing spasmodically and
wiping his nose with the back of his sturdy wrist, ‘he is, a cop or something?’

   ‘He’s a C.I.D. man,’ Yossarian notified him tranquilly.
‘We’ve got three here now and more on the way. Oh, don’t be scared. They’re
after a forger named Washington Irving. They’re not interested in murderers.’

   ‘Murderers?’ Dobbs was affronted. ‘Why do you call us
murderers? Just because we’re going to murder Colonel Cathcart?’

   ‘Be quiet, damn you!’ directed Yossarian. ‘Can’t you
whisper?’

   ‘I am whispering. I—’

   ‘You’re still shouting.’

   ‘No, I’m not. I—’

   ‘Hey, shut up down there, will you?’ patients all over the
ward began hollering at Dobbs.

   ‘I’ll fight you all!’ Dobbs screamed back at them, and stood
up on a rickety wooden chair, waving the gun wildly. Yossarian caught his arm
and yanked him down. Dobbs began sneezing again. ‘I have an allergy,’ he
apologized when he had finished, his nostrils running and his eyes streaming
with tears.

   ‘That’s too bad. You’d make a great leader of men without
it.’

   ‘Colonel Cathcart’s the murderer,’ Dobbs complained hoarsely
when he had shoved away a soiled, crumpled khaki handkerchief. ‘Colonel
Cathcart’s the one who’s going to murder us all if we don’t do something to
stop him.’

   ‘Maybe he won’t raise the missions any more. Maybe sixty is
as high as he’ll go.’

   ‘He always raises the missions. You know that better than I
do.’ Dobbs swallowed and bent his intense face very close to Yossarian’s, the
muscles in his bronze, rocklike jaw bunching up into quivering knots. ‘Just say
it’s okay and I’ll do the whole thing tomorrow morning. Do you understand what
I’m telling you? I’m whispering now, ain’t I?’ Yossarian tore his eyes away
from the gaze of burning entreaty Dobbs had fastened on him. ‘Why the goddam
hell don’t you just go out and do it?’ he protested. ‘Why don’t you stop
talking to me about it and do it alone?’

   ‘I’m afraid to do it alone. I’m afraid to do anything alone.’

   ‘Then leave me out of it. I’d have to be crazy to get mixed
up in something like this now. I’ve got a million-dollar leg wound here.
They’re going to send me home.’

   ‘Are you crazy?’ Dobbs exclaimed in disbelief. ‘All you’ve
got there is a scratch. He’ll have you back flying combat missions the day you
come out, Purple Heart and all.’

   ‘Then I really will kill him,’ Yossarian vowed. ‘I’ll come
looking for you and we’ll do it together.’

   ‘Then let’s do it tomorrow while we’ve still got the chance,’
Dobbs pleaded. ‘The chaplain says he’s volunteered the group for Avignon again.
I may be killed before you get out. Look how these hands of mine shake. I can’t
fly a plane. I’m not good enough.’ Yossarian was afraid to say yes. ‘I want to
wait and see what happens first.’

   ‘The trouble with you is that you just won’t do anything,’
Dobbs complained in a thick infuriated voice.

   ‘I’m doing everything I possibly can,’ the chaplain explained
softly to Yossarian after Dobbs had departed. ‘I even went to the medical tent
to speak to Doc Daneeka about helping you.’

   ‘Yes, I can see.’ Yossarian suppressed a smile. ‘What
happened?’

   ‘They painted my gums purple,’ the chaplain replied
sheepishly.

   ‘They painted his toes purple, too,’ Nately added in outrage.
‘And then they gave him a laxative.’

   ‘But I went back again this morning to see him.’

   ‘And they painted his gums purple again,’ said Nately.

   ‘But I did get to speak to him,’ the chaplain argued in a
plaintive tone of self-justification. ‘Doctor Daneeka seems like such an
unhappy man. He suspects that someone is plotting to transfer him to the
Pacific Ocean. All this time he’s been thinking of coming to me for help. When
I told him I needed his help, he wondered if there wasn’t a chaplain I couldn’t
go see.’ The chaplain waited in patient dejection when Yossarian and Dunbar
both broke into laughter. ‘I used to think it was immoral to be unhappy,’ he
continued, as though keening aloud in solitude. ‘Now I don’t know what to think
any more. I’d like to make the subject of immorality the basis of my sermon
this Sunday, but I’m not sure I ought to give any sermon at all with these
purple gums. Colonel Korn was very displeased with them.’

   ‘Chaplain, why don’t you come into the hospital with us for a
while and take it easy?’ Yossarian invited. ‘You could be very comfortable
here.’ The brash iniquity of the proposal tempted and amused the chaplain for a
second or two. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ he decided reluctantly. ‘I want to
arrange for a trip to the mainland to see a mail clerk named Wintergreen.
Doctor Daneeka told me he could help.’

   ‘Wintergreen is probably the most influential man in the whole
theater of operations. He’s not only a mail clerk, but he has access to a
mimeograph machine. But he won’t help anybody. That’s one of the reasons he’ll
go far.’

   ‘I’d like to speak to him anyway. There must be somebody who
will help you.’

   ‘Do it for Dunbar, Chaplain,’ Yossarian corrected with a
superior air. ‘I’ve got this million-dollar leg wound that will take me out of
combat. If that doesn’t do it, there’s a psychiatrist who thinks I’m not good
enough to be in the Army.’

   ‘I’m the one who isn’t good enough to be in the Army,’ Dunbar
whined jealously. ‘It was my dream.’

   ‘It’s not the dream, Dunbar,’ Yossarian explained. ‘He likes
your dream. It’s my personality. He thinks it’s split.’

   ‘It’s split right down the middle,’ said Major Sanderson, who
had laced his lumpy GI shoes for the occasion and had slicked his charcoal-dull
hair down with some stiffening and redolent tonic. He smiled ostentatiously to
show himself reasonable and nice. ‘I’m not saying that to be cruel and
insulting,’ he continued with cruel and insulting delight. ‘I’m not saying it
because I hate you and want revenge. I’m not saying it because you rejected me
and hurt my feelings terribly. No, I’m a man of medicine and I’m being coldly
objective. I have very bad news for you. Are you man enough to take it?’

   ‘God, no!’ screamed Yossarian. ‘I’ll go right to pieces.’
Major Sanderson flew instantly into a rage. ‘Can’t you even do one thing
right?’ he pleaded, turning beet-red with vexation and crashing the sides of
both fists down upon his desk together. ‘The trouble with you is that you think
you’re too good for all the conventions of society. You probably think you’re
too good for me too, just because I arrived at puberty late. Well, do you know
what you are? You’re a frustrated, unhappy, disillusioned, undisciplined,
maladjusted young man!’ Major Sanderson’s disposition seemed to mellow as he
reeled off the uncomplimentary adjectives.

   ‘Yes, sir,’ Yossarian agreed carefully. ‘I guess you’re
right.’

   ‘Of course I’m right. You’re immature. You’ve been unable to
adjust to the idea of war.’

   ‘Yes, sir.’

   ‘You have a morbid aversion to dying. You probably resent the
fact that you’re at war and might get your head blown off any second.’

   ‘I more than resent it, sir. I’m absolutely incensed.’

   ‘You have deep-seated survival anxieties. And you don’t like
bigots, bullies, snobs or hypocrites. Subconsciously there are many people you
hate.’

   ‘Consciously, sir, consciously,’ Yossarian corrected in an
effort to help. ‘I hate them consciously.’

   ‘You’re antagonistic to the idea of being robbed, exploited,
degraded, humiliated or deceived. Misery depresses you. Ignorance depresses
you. Persecution depresses you. Violence depresses you. Slums depress you.
Greed depresses you. Crime depresses you. Corruption depresses you. You know,
it wouldn’t surprise me if you’re a manic-depressive!’

   ‘Yes, sir. Perhaps I am.’

   ‘Don’t try to deny it.’

   ‘I’m not denying it, sir,’ said Yossarian, pleased with the
miraculous rapport that finally existed between them. ‘I agree with all you’ve
said.’

   ‘Then you admit you’re crazy, do you?’

   ‘Crazy?’ Yossarian was shocked. ‘What are you talking about?
Why am I crazy? You’re the one who’s crazy!’ Major Sanderson turned red with
indignation again and crashed both fists down upon his thighs. ‘Calling me
crazy,’ he shouted in a sputtering rage, ‘is a typically sadistic and
vindictive paranoiac reaction! You really are crazy!’

   ‘Then why don’t you send me home?’

   ‘And I’m going to send you home!’

   ‘They’re going to send me home!’ Yossarian announced
jubilantly, as he hobbled back into the ward.

   ‘Me too!’ A. Fortiori rejoiced. ‘They just came to my ward
and told me.’

   ‘What about me?’ Dunbar demanded petulantly of the doctors.

   ‘You?’ they replied with asperity. ‘You’re going with
Yossarian. Right back into combat!’ And back into combat they both went.
Yossarian was enraged when the ambulance returned him to the squadron, and he
went limping for justice to Doc Daneeka, who glared at him glumly with misery
and disdain.

   ‘You!’ Doc Daneeka exclaimed mournfully with accusing
disgust, the egg-shaped pouches under both eyes firm and censorious. ‘All you
ever think of is yourself. Go take a look at the bomb line if you want to see
what’s been happening since you went to the hospital.’ Yossarian was startled.
‘Are we losing?’

   ‘Losing?’ Doc Daneeka cried. ‘The whole military situation
has been going to hell ever since we captured Paris. I knew it would happen.’
He paused, his sulking ire turning to melancholy, and frowned irritably as
though it were all Yossarian’s fault. ‘American troops are pushing into German
soil. The Russians have captured back all of Romania. Only yesterday the Greeks
in the Eighth Army captured Rimini. The Germans are on the defensive
everywhere!’ Doc Daneeka paused again and fortified himself with a huge breath
for a piercing ejaculation of grief. ‘There’s no more Luftwaffe left!’ he
wailed. He seemed ready to burst into tears. ‘The whole Gothic line is in
danger of collapsing!’

   ‘So?’ asked Yossarian. ‘What’s wrong?’

   ‘What’s wrong?’ Doc Daneeka cried. ‘If something doesn’t
happen soon, Germany may surrender. And then we’ll all be sent to the Pacific!’
Yossarian gawked at Doc Daneeka in grotesque dismay. ‘Are you crazy? Do you
know what you’re saying?’

   ‘Yeah, it’s easy for you to laugh,’ Doc Daneeka sneered.

   ‘Who the hell is laughing?’

   ‘At least you’ve got a chance. You’re in combat and might get
killed. But what about me? I’ve got nothing to hope for.’

   ‘You’re out of your goddam head!’ Yossarian shouted at him
emphatically, seizing him by the shirt front. ‘Do you know that? Now keep your
stupid mouth shut and listen to me.’ Doc Daneeka wrenched himself away. ‘Don’t
you dare talk to me like that. I’m a licensed physician.’

   ‘Then keep your stupid licensed physician’s mouth shut and
listen to what they told me up at the hospital. I’m crazy. Did you know that?’

   ‘So?’

   ‘Really crazy.’

   ‘So?’

   ‘I’m nuts. Cuckoo. Don’t you understand? I’m off my rocker.
They sent someone else home in my place by mistake. They’ve got a licensed
psychiatrist up at the hospital who examined me, and that was his verdict. I’m
really insane.’

   ‘So?’

   ‘So?’ Yossarian was puzzled by Doc Daneeka’s inability to
comprehend. ‘Don’t you see what that means? Now you can take me off combat duty
and send me home. They’re not going to send a crazy man out to be killed, are
they?’