Catch-22

The island of Pianosa lies in the Mediterranean Sea eight miles south of Elba. It is very small and
obviously could not accommodate all of the actions described. Like the setting of this novel, the characters,
too, are fictitious.
TO MY MOTHER
AND TO SHIRLEY,
AND MY CHILDREN,
ERICA AND TED
1 THE TEXAN
It was love at first sight.
The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.
Yossarian was in the hospital with a pain in his liver that fell just short of being jaundice. The doctors were
puzzled by the fact that it wasn't quite jaundice. If it became jaundice they could treat it. If it didn't become
jaundice and went away they could discharge him. But this just being short of jaundice all the time confused
them.
Each morning they came around, three brisk and serious men with efficient mouths and inefficient eyes,
accompanied by brisk and serious Nurse Duckett, one of the ward nurses who didn't like Yossarian. They read
the chart at the foot of the bed and asked impatiently about the pain. They seemed irritated when he told them
it was exactly the same.
"Still no movement?" the full colonel demanded.
The doctors exchanged a look when he shook his head.
"Give him another pill."
Nurse Duckett made a note to give Yossarian another pill, and the four of them moved along to the next
bed. None of the nurses liked Yossarian. Actually, the pain in his liver had gone away, but Yossarian didn't
say anything and the doctors never suspected. They just suspected that he had been moving his bowels and not
telling anyone.
Yossarian had everything he wanted in the hospital. The food wasn't too bad, and his meals were brought to
him in bed. There were extra rations of fresh meat, and during the hot part of the afternoon he and the others
were served chilled fruit juice or chilled chocolate milk. Apart from the doctors and the nurses, no one ever
disturbed him. For a little while in the morning he had to censor letters, but he was free after that to spend the
rest of each day lying around idly with a clear conscience. He was comfortable in the hospital, and it was easy
to stay on because he always ran a temperature of 101. He was even more comfortable than Dunbar, who had
to keep falling down on his face in order to get his meals brought to him in bed.
After he had made up his mind to spend the rest of the war in the hospital, Yossarian wrote letters to
everyone he knew saying that he was in the hospital but never mentioning why. One day he had a better idea.
To everyone he knew he wrote that he was going on a very dangerous mission. "They asked for volunteers. It's
very dangerous, but someone has to do it. I'll write you the instant I get back." And he had not written anyone
since.
All the officer patients in the ward were forced to censor letters written by all the enlisted-men patients,
who were kept in residence in wards of their own. It was a monotonous job, and Yossarian was disappointed
to learn that the lives of enlisted men were only slightly more interesting than the lives of officers. After the
Page 1
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
first day he had no curiosity at all. To break the monotony he invented games. Death to all modifiers, he
declared one day, and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every adjective.
The next day he made war on articles. He reached a much higher plane of creativity the following day when he
blacked out everything in the letters but a, an and the. That erected more dynamic intralinear tensions, he felt,
and in just about every case left a message far more universal. Soon he was proscribing parts of salutations
and signatures and leaving the text untouched. One time he blacked out all but the salutation "Dear Mary"
from a letter, and at the bottom he wrote, "I yearn for you tragically. R. O. Shipman, Chaplain, U.S. Army." R.
O. Shipman was the group chaplain's name.
When he had exhausted all possibilities in the letters, he began attacking the names and addresses on the
envelopes, obliterating whole homes and streets, annihilating entire metropolises with careless flicks of his
wrist as though he were God. Catch-22 required that each censored letter bear the censoring officer's name.
Most letters he didn't read at all. On those he didn't read at all he wrote his own name. On those he did read he
wrote, "Washington Irving." When that grew monotonous he wrote, "Irving Washington." Censoring the
envelopes had serious repercussions, produced a ripple of anxiety on some ethereal military echelon that
floated a C.I.D. man back into the ward posing as a patient. They all knew he was a C.I.D. man because he
kept inquiring about an officer named Irving or Washington and because after his first day there he wouldn't
censor letters. He found them too monotonous.
It was a good ward this time, one of the best he and Dunbar had ever enjoyed. With them this time was the
twenty-four-year-old fighter-pilot captain with the sparse golden mustache who had been shot into the Adriatic
Sea in midwinter and not even caught cold. Now the summer was upon them, the captain had not been shot
down, and he said he had the grippe. In the bed on Yossarian's right, still lying amorously on his belly, was the
startled captain with malaria in his blood and a mosquito bite on his ass. Across the aisle from Yossarian was
Dunbar, and next to Dunbar was the artillery captain with whom Yossarian had stopped playing chess. The
captain was a good chess player, and the games were always interesting. Yossarian had stopped playing chess
with him because the games were so interesting they were foolish. Then there was the educated Texan from
Texas who looked like someone in Technicolor and felt, patriotically, that people of means-decent folk-should
be given more votes than drifters, whores, criminals, degenerates, atheists and indecent folk-people without
means.
Yossarian was unspringing rhythms in the letters the day they brought the Texan in. It was another quiet,
hot, untroubled day. The heat pressed heavily on the roof, stifling sound. Dunbar was lying motionless on his
back again with his eyes staring up at the ceiling like a doll's. He was working hard at increasing his life span.
He did it by cultivating boredom. Dunbar was working so hard at increasing his life span that Yossarian
thought he was dead. They put the Texan in a bed in the middle of the ward, and it wasn't long before he
donated his views.
Dunbar sat up like a shot. "That's it," he cried excitedly. "There was something missing-all the time I knew
there was something missing-and now I know what it is." He banged his fist down into his palm. "No
patriotism," he declared.
"You're right," Yossarian shouted back. "You're right, you're right, you're right. The hot dog, the Brooklyn
Dodgers. Mom's apple pie. That's what everyone's fighting for. But who's fighting for the decent folk? Who's
fighting for more votes for the decent folk? There's no patriotism, that's what it is. And no matriotism, either."
The warrant officer on Yossarian's left was unimpressed. "Who gives a shit?" he asked tiredly, and turned
over on his side to go to sleep.
The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likable. In three days no one could stand him.
He sent shudders of annoyance scampering up ticklish spines, and everybody fled from him-everybody but
the soldier in white, who had no choice. The soldier in white was encased from head to toe in plaster and
gauze. He had two useless legs and two useless arms. He had been smuggled into the ward during the night,
and the men had no idea he was among them until they awoke in the morning and saw the two strange legs
hoisted from the hips, the two strange arms anchored up perpendicularly, all four limbs pinioned strangely in
air by lead weights suspended darkly above him that never moved. Sewn into the bandages over the insides of
both elbows were zippered lips through which he was fed clear fluid from a clear jar. A silent zinc pipe rose
from the cement on his groin and was coupled to a slim rubber hose that carried waste from his kidneys and
Page 2
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
dripped it efficiently into a clear, stoppered jar on the floor. When the jar on the floor was full, the jar feeding
his elbow was empty, and the two were simply switched quickly so that the stuff could drip back into him. All
they ever really saw of the soldier in white was a frayed black hole over his mouth.
The soldier in white had been filed next to the Texan, and the Texan sat sideways on his own bed and
talked to him throughout the morning, afternoon and evening in a pleasant, sympathetic drawl. The Texan
never minded that he got no reply.
Temperatures were taken twice a day in the ward. Early each morning and late each afternoon Nurse
Cramer entered with a jar full of thermometers and worked her way up one side of the ward and down the
other, distributing a thermometer to each patient. She managed the soldier in white by inserting a thermometer
into the hole over his mouth and leaving it balanced there on the lower rim. When she returned to the man in
the first bed, she took his thermometer and recorded his temperature, and then moved on to the next bed and
continued around the ward again. One afternoon when she had completed her first circuit of the ward and
came a second time to the soldier in white, she read his thermometer and discovered that he was dead.
"Murderer," Dunbar said quietly.
The Texan looked up at him with an uncertain grin.
"Killer," Yossarian said.
What are you fellas talkin" about?" the Texan asked nervously.
"You murdered him," said Dunbar.
"You killed him," said Yossarian.
The Texan shrank back. "You fellas are crazy. I didn't even touch him."
"You murdered him," said Dunbar.
"I heard you kill him," said Yossarian.
"You killed him because he was a nigger," Dunbar said.
"You fellas are crazy," the Texan cried. "They don't allow niggers in here. They got a special place for
niggers."
"The sergeant smuggled him in," Dunbar said.
"The Communist sergeant," said Yossarian.
"And you knew it."
The warrant officer on Yossarian's left was unimpressed by the entire incident of the soldier in white. The
warrant officer was unimpressed by everything and never spoke at all unless it was to show irritation.
The day before Yossarian met the chaplain, a stove exploded in the mess hall and set fire to one side of the
kitchen. An intense heat flashed through the area. Even in Yossarian's ward, almost three hundred feet away,
they could hear the roar of the blaze and the sharp cracks of flaming timber. Smoke sped past the orange-tinted
windows. In about fifteen minutes the crash trucks from the airfield arrived to fight the fire. For a frantic half
hour it was touch and go. Then the firemen began to get the upper hand. Suddenly there was the monotonous
old drone of bombers returning from a mission, and the firemen had to roll up their hoses and speed back to
the field in case one of the planes crashed and caught fire. The planes landed safely. As soon as the last one
was down, the firemen wheeled their trucks around and raced back up the hill to resume their fight with the
fire at the hospital. When they got there, the blaze was out. It had died of its own accord, expired completely
without even an ember to be watered down, and there was nothing for the disappointed firemen to do but drink
tepid coffee and hang around trying to screw the nurses.
The chaplain arrived the day after the fire. Yossarian was busy expurgating all but romance words from the
letters when the chaplain sat down in a chair between the beds and asked him how he was feeling. He had
placed himself a bit to one side, and the captain's bars on the tab of his shirt collar were all the insignia
Yossarian could see. Yossarian had no idea who he was and just took it for granted that he was either another
doctor or another madman.
"Oh, pretty good," he answered. "I've got a slight pain in my liver and I haven't been the most regular of
fellows, I guess, but all in all I must admit that I feel pretty good."
"That's good," said the chaplain.
"Yes," Yossarian said. "Yes, that is good."
"I meant to come around sooner," the chaplain said, "but I really haven't been well."
Page 3
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
"That's too bad," Yossarian said.
"Just a head cold," the chaplain added quickly.
"I've got a fever of a hundred and one," Yossarian added just as quickly.
"That's too bad," said the chaplain.
"Yes," Yossarian agreed. "Yes, that is too bad."
The chaplain fidgeted. "Is there anything I can do for you?" he asked after a while.
"No, no." Yossarian sighed. "The doctors are doing all that's humanly possible, I suppose."
"No, no." The chaplain colored faintly. "I didn't mean anything like that. I meant cigarettes... or books...
or... toys."
"No, no," Yossarian said. "Thank you. I have everything I need, I suppose-everything but good health."
"That's too bad."
"Yes," Yossarian said. "Yes, that is too bad."
The chaplain stirred again. He looked from side to side a few times, then gazed up at the ceiling, then down
at the floor. He drew a deep breath.
"Lieutenant Nately sends his regards," he said.
Yossarian was sorry to hear they had a mutual friend. It seemed there was a basis to their conversation after
all. "You know Lieutenant Nately?" he asked regretfully.
"Yes, I know Lieutenant Nately quite well."
"He's a bit loony, isn't he?"
The chaplain's smile was embarrassed. "I'm afraid I couldn't say. I don't think I know him that well."
"You can take my word for it," Yossarian said. "He's as goofy as they come."
The chaplain weighed the next silence heavily and then shattered it with an abrupt question. "You are
Captain Yossarian, aren't you?"
"Nately had a bad start. He came from a good family."
"Please excuse me," the chaplain persisted timorously. "I may be committing a very grave error. Are you
Captain Yossarian?"
"Yes," Captain Yossarian confessed. "I am Captain Yossarian."
"Of the 256th Squadron?"
"Of the fighting 256th Squadron," Yossarian replied. "I didn't know there were any other Captain
Yossarians. As far as I know, I'm the only Captain Yossarian I know, but that's only as far as I know."
"I see," the chaplain said unhappily.
"That's two to the fighting eighth power," Yossarian pointed out, "if you're thinking of writing a symbolic
poem about our squadron."
"No," mumbled the chaplain. "I'm not thinking of writing a symbolic poem about your squadron."
Yossarian straightened sharply when he spied the tiny silver cross on the other side of the chaplain's collar.
He was thoroughly astonished, for he had never really talked with a chaplain before.
"You're a chaplain," he exclaimed ecstatically. "I didn't know you were a chaplain."
"Why, yes," the chaplain answered. "Didn't you know I was a chaplain?"
"Why, no. I didn't know you were a chaplain." Yossarian stared at him with a big, fascinated grin. "I've
never really seen a chaplain before."
The chaplain flushed again and gazed down at his hands. He was a slight man of about thirty-two with tan
hair and brown diffident eyes. His face was narrow and rather pale. An innocent nest of ancient pimple pricks
lay in the basin of each cheek. Yossarian wanted to help him.
"Can I do anything at all to help you?" the chaplain asked.
Yossarian shook his head, still grinning. "No, I'm sorry. I have everything I need and I'm quite comfortable.
In fact, I'm not even sick."
"That's good." As soon as the chaplain said the words, he was sorry and shoved his knuckles into his mouth
with a giggle of alarm, but Yossarian remained silent and disappointed him. "There are other men in the group
I must visit," he apologized finally. "I'll come to see you again, probably tomorrow."
"Please do that," Yossarian said.
"I'll come only if you want me to," the chaplain said, lowering his head shyly. "I've noticed that I make
Page 4
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
many of the men uncomfortable."
Yossarian glowed with affection. "I want you to," he said. "You won't make me uncomfortable."
The chaplain beamed gratefully and then peered down at a slip of paper he had been concealing in his hand
all the while. He counted along the beds in the ward, moving his lips, and then centered his attention dubiously
on Dunbar.
"May I inquire," he whispered softly, "if that is Lieutenant Dunbar?"
"Yes," Yossarian answered loudly, "that is Lieutenant Dunbar."
"Thank you," the chaplain whispered. "Thank you very much. I must visit with him. I must visit with every
member of the group who is in the hospital."
"Even those in other wards?" Yossarian asked.
"Even those in other wards."
"Be careful in those other wards, Father," Yossarian warned. "That's where they keep the mental cases.
They're filled with lunatics."
"It isn't necessary to call me Father," the chaplain explained. "I'm an Anabaptist."
"I'm dead serious about those other wards," Yossarian continued grimly. "M.P.s won't protect you, because
they're craziest of all. I'd go with you myself, but I'm scared stiff: Insanity is contagious. This is the only sane
ward in the whole hospital. Everybody is crazy but us. This is probably the only sane ward in the whole world,
for that matter."
The chaplain rose quickly and edged away from Yossarian's bed, and then nodded with a conciliating smile
and promised to conduct himself with appropriate caution. "And now I must visit with Lieutenant Dunbar," he
said. Still he lingered, remorsefully. "How is Lieutenant Dunbar?" he asked at last.
"As good as they go," Yossarian assured him. "A true prince. One of the finest, least dedicated men in the
whole world."
"I didn't mean that," the chaplain answered, whispering again. "Is he very sick?"
"No, he isn't very sick. In fact, he isn't sick at all."
"That's good." The chaplain sighed with relief.
"Yes," Yossarian said. "Yes, that is good."
"A chaplain," Dunbar said when the chaplain had visited him and gone. "Did you see that? A chaplain."
"Wasn't he sweet?" said Yossarian. "Maybe they should give him three votes."
"Who's they?" Dunbar demanded suspiciously.
In a bed in the small private section at the end of the ward, always working ceaselessly behind the green
plyboard partition, was the solemn middle-aged colonel who was visited every day by a gentle, sweet-faced
woman with curly ash-blond hair who was not a nurse and not a Wac and not a Red Cross girl but who
nevertheless appeared faithfully at the hospital in Pianosa each afternoon wearing pretty pastel summer
dresses that were very smart and white leather pumps with heels half high at the base of nylon seams that were
inevitably straight. The colonel was in Communications, and he was kept busy day and night transmitting
glutinous messages from the interior into square pads of gauze which he sealed meticulously and delivered to
a covered white pail that stood on the night table beside his bed. The colonel was gorgeous. He had a
cavernous mouth, cavernous cheeks, cavernous, sad, mildewed eyes. His face was the color of clouded silver.
He coughed quietly, gingerly, and dabbed the pads slowly at his lips with a distaste that had become
automatic.
The colonel dwelt in a vortex of specialists who were still specializing in trying to determine what was
troubling him. They hurled lights in his eyes to see if he could see, rammed needles into nerves to hear if he
could feel. There was a urologist for his urine, a lymphologist for his lymph, an endocrinologist for his
endocrines, a psychologist for his psyche, a dermatologist for his derma; there was a pathologist for his pathos,
a cystologist for his cysts, and a bald and pedantic cetologist from the zoology department at Harvard who had
been shanghaied ruthlessly into the Medical Corps by a faulty anode in an I.B.M. machine and spent his
sessions with the dying colonel trying to discuss Moby Dick with him.
The colonel had really been investigated. There was not an organ of his body that had not been drugged and
derogated, dusted and dredged, fingered and photographed, removed, plundered and replaced. Neat, slender
and erect, the woman touched him often as she sat by his bedside and was the epitome of stately sorrow each
Page 5
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
time she smiled. The colonel was tall, thin and stooped. When he rose to walk, he bent forward even more,
making a deep cavity of his body, and placed his feet down very carefully, moving ahead by inches from the
knees down. There were violet pools under his eyes. The woman spoke softly, softer than the colonel coughed,
and none of the men in the ward ever heard her voice.
In less than ten days the Texan cleared the ward. The artillery captain broke first, and after that the exodus
started. Dunbar, Yossarian and the fighter captain all bolted the same morning. Dunbar stopped having dizzy
spells, and the fighter captain blew his nose. Yossarian told the doctors that the pain in his liver had gone
away. It was as easy as that. Even the warrant officer fled. In less than ten days, the Texan drove everybody in
the ward back to duty-everybody but the C.I.D. man, who had caught cold from the fighter captain and come
down with pneumonia.
2 CLEVINGER
In a way the C.I.D. man was pretty lucky, because outside the hospital the war was still going on. Men
went mad and were rewarded with medals. All over the world, boys on every side of the bomb line were
laying down their lives for what they had been told was their country, and no one seemed to mind, least of all
the boys who were laying down their young lives. There was no end in sight. The only end in sight was
Yossarian's own, and he might have remained in the hospital until doomsday had it not been for that patriotic
Texan with his infundibuliform jowls and his lumpy, rumpleheaded, indestructible smile cracked forever
across the front of his face like the brim of a black ten-gallon hat. The Texan wanted everybody in the ward to
be happy but Yossarian and Dunbar. He was really very sick.
But Yossarian couldn't be happy, even though the Texan didn't want him to be, because outside the hospital
there was still nothing funny going on. The only thing going on was a war, and no one seemed to notice but
Yossarian and Dunbar. And when Yossarian tried to remind people, they drew away from him and thought he
was crazy. Even Clevinger, who should have known better but didn't, had told him he was crazy the last time
they had seen each other, which was just before Yossarian had fled into the hospital.
Clevinger had stared at him with apoplectic rage and indignation and, clawing the table with both hands,
had shouted, "You're crazy!"
"Clevinger, what do you want from people?" Dunbar had replied wearily above the noises of the officers'
club.
"I'm not joking," Clevinger persisted.
"They're trying to kill me," Yossarian told him calmly.
"No one's trying to kill you," Clevinger cried.
"Then why are they shooting at me?" Yossarian asked.
"They're shooting at everyone," Clevinger answered. "They're trying to kill everyone."
"And what difference does that make?"
Clevinger was already on the way, half out of his chair with emotion, his eyes moist and his lips quivering
and pale. As always occurred when he quarreled over principles in which he believed passionately, he would
end up gasping furiously for air and blinking back bitter tears of conviction. There were many principles in
which Clevinger believed passionately. He was crazy.
"Who's they?" he wanted to know. "Who, specifically, do you think is trying to murder you?"
"Every one of them," Yossarian told him.
"Every one of whom?"
"Every one of whom do you think?"
"I haven't any idea."
"Then how do you know they aren't?"
"Because..." Clevinger sputtered, and turned speechless with frustration.
Clevinger really thought he was right, but Yossarian had proof, because strangers he didn't know shot at
him with cannons every time he flew up into the air to drop bombs on them, and it wasn't funny at all. And if
that wasn't funny, there were lots of things that weren't even funnier. There was nothing funny about living
like a bum in a tent in Pianosa between fat mountains behind him and a placid blue sea in front that could gulp
down a person with a cramp in the twinkling of an eye and ship him back to shore three days later, all charges
Page 6
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
paid, bloated, blue and putrescent, water draining out through both cold nostrils.
The tent he lived in stood right smack up against the wall of the shallow, dull-colored forest separating his
own squadron from Dunbar's. Immediately alongside was the abandoned railroad ditch that carried the pipe
that carried the aviation gasoline down to the fuel trucks at the airfield. Thanks to Orr, his roommate, it was
the most luxurious tent in the squadron. Each time Yossarian returned from one of his holidays in the hospital
or rest leaves in Rome, he was surprised by some new comfort Orr had installed in his absence-running water,
wood-burning fireplace, cement floor. Yossarian had chosen the site, and he and Orr had raised the tent
together. Orr, who was a grinning pygmy with pilot's wings and thick, wavy brown hair parted in the middle,
furnished all the knowledge, while Yossarian, who was taller, stronger, broader and faster, did most of the
work. Just the two of them lived there, although the tent was big enough for six. When summer came, Orr
rolled up the side flaps to allow a breeze that never blew to flush away the air baking inside.
Immediately next door to Yossarian was Havermeyer, who liked peanut brittle and lived all by himself in
the two-man tent in which he shot tiny field mice every night with huge bullets from the .45 he had stolen
from the dead man in Yossarian's tent. On the other side of Havermeyer stood the tent McWatt no longer
shared with Clevinger, who had still not returned when Yossarian came out of the hospital. McWatt shared his
tent now with Nately, who was away in Rome courting the sleepy whore he had fallen so deeply in love with
there who was bored with her work and bored with him too. McWatt was crazy. He was a pilot and flew his
plane as low as he dared over Yossarian's tent as often as he could, just to see how much he could frighten
him, and loved to go buzzing with a wild, close roar over the wooden raft floating on empty oil drums out past
the sand bar at the immaculate white beach where the men went swimming naked. Sharing a tent with a man
who was crazy wasn't easy, but Nately didn't care. He was crazy, too, and had gone every free day to work on
the officers' club that Yossarian had not helped build.
Actually, there were many officers' clubs that Yossarian had not helped build, but he was proudest of the
one on Pianosa. It was a sturdy and complex monument to his powers of determination. Yossarian never went
there to help until it was finished; then he went there often, so pleased was he with the large, fine, rambling,
shingled building. It was truly a splendid structure, and Yossarian throbbed with a mighty sense of
accomplishment each time he gazed at it and reflected that none of the work that had gone into it was his.
There were four of them seated together at a table in the officers' club the last time he and Clevinger had
called each other crazy. They were seated in back near the crap table on which Appleby always managed to
win. Appleby was as good at shooting crap as he was at playing ping-pong, and he was as good at playing
ping-pong as he was at everything else. Everything Appleby did, he did well. Appleby was a fair-haired boy
from Iowa who believed in God, Motherhood and the American Way of Life, without ever thinking about any
of them, and everybody who knew him liked him.
"I hate that son of a bitch," Yossarian growled.
The argument with Clevinger had begun a few minutes earlier when Yossarian had been unable to find a
machine gun. It was a busy night. The bar was busy, the crap table was busy, the ping-gong table was busy.
The people Yossarian wanted to machine-gun were busy at the bar singing sentimental old favorites that
nobody else ever tired of. Instead of machine-gunning them, he brought his heel down hard on the ping-pong
ball that came rolling toward him off the paddle of one of the two officers playing.
"That Yossarian," the two officers laughed, shaking their heads, and got another ball from the box on the
shelf.
"That Yossarian," Yossarian answered them.
"Yossarian," Nately whispered cautioningly.
"You see what I mean?" asked Clevinger.
The officers laughed again when they heard Yossarian mimicking them. "That Yossarian," they said more
loudly.
"That Yossarian," Yossarian echoed.
"Yossarian, please," Nately pleaded.
"You see what I mean?" asked Clevinger. "He has antisocial aggressions."
"Oh, shut up," Dunbar told Clevinger. Dunbar liked Clevinger because Clevinger annoyed him and made
the time go slow.
Page 7
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
"Appleby isn't even here," Clevinger pointed out triumphantly to Yossarian.
"Who said anything about Appleby?" Yossarian wanted to know.
"Colonel Cathcart isn't here, either."
"Who said anything about Colonel Cathcart?"
"What son of a bitch do you hate, then?"
"What son of a bitch is here?"
"I'm not going to argue with you," Clevinger decided. "You don't know who you hate."
"Whoever's trying to poison me," Yossarian told him.
"Nobody's trying to poison you."
"They poisoned my food twice, didn't they? Didn't they put poison in my food during Ferrara and during
the Great Big Siege of Bologna?"
"They put poison in everybody's food," Clevinger explained.
"And what difference does that make?"
"And it wasn't even poison!" Clevinger cried heatedly, growing more emphatic as he grew more confused.
As far back as Yossarian could recall, he explained to Clevinger with a patient smile, somebody was
always hatching a plot to kill him. There were people who cared for him and people who didn't, and those who
didn't hated him and were out to get him. They hated him because he was Assyrian. But they couldn't touch
him, he told Clevinger, because he had a sound mind in a pure body and was as strong as an ox. They couldn't
touch him because he was Tarzan, Mandrake, Flash Gordon. He was Bill Shakespeare. He was Cain, Ulysses,
the Flying Dutchman; he was Lot in Sodom, Deirdre of the Sorrows, Sweeney in the nightingales among trees.
He was miracle ingredient Z-247. He was-
"Crazy!" Clevinger interrupted, shrieking. "That's what you are! Crazy!"
"-immense. I'm a real, slam-bang, honest-to-goodness, three-fisted humdinger. I'm a bona fide supraman."
"Superman?" Clevinger cried. "Superman?"
"Supraman," Yossarian corrected.
"Hey, fellas, cut it out," Nately begged with embarrassment. "Everybody's looking at us."
"You're crazy," Clevinger shouted vehemently, his eyes filling with tears. "You've got a Jehovah complex."
"I think everyone is Nathaniel."
Clevinger arrested himself in mid-declamation, suspiciously. "Who's Nathaniel?"
"Nathaniel who?" inquired Yossarian innocently.
Clevinger skirted the trap neatly. "You think everybody is Jehovah. You're no better than Raskolnkov-"
"Who?"
"-yes, Raskolnikov, who-"
"Raskolnikov!"
"-who-I mean it-who felt he could justify killing an old woman-"
"No better than?"
"-yes, justify, that's right-with an ax! And I can prove it to you!" Gasping furiously for air, Clevinger
enumerated Yossarian's symptoms: an unreasonable belief that everybody around him was crazy, a homicidal
impulse to machine-gun strangers, retrospective falsification, an unfounded suspicion that people hated him
and were conspiring to kill him.
But Yossarian knew he was right, because, as he explained to Clevinger, to the best of his knowledge he
had never been wrong. Everywhere he looked was a nut, and it was all a sensible young gentleman like
himself could do to maintain his perspective amid so much madness. And it was urgent that he did, for he
knew his life was in peril.
Yossarian eyed everyone he saw warily when he returned to the squadron from the hospital. Milo was
away, too, in Smyrna for the fig harvest. The mess hall ran smoothly in Milo's absence. Yossarian had
responded ravenously to the pungent aroma of spicy lamb while he was still in the cab of the ambulance
bouncing down along the knotted road that lay like a broken suspender between the hospital and the squadron.
There was shish-kabob for lunch, huge, savory hunks of spitted meat sizzling like the devil over charcoal after
marinating seventy-two hours in a secret mixture Milo had stolen from a crooked trader in the Levant, served
with Iranian rice and asparagus tips Parmesan, followed by cherries jubilee for dessert and then steaming cups
Page 8
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
of fresh coffee with Benedictine and brandy. The meal was served in enormous helpings on damask
tablecloths by the skilled Italian waiters Major --- de Coverley had kidnaped from the mainland and given to
Milo.
Yossarian gorged himself in the mess hall until he thought he would explode and then sagged back in a
contented stupor, his mouth filmy with a succulent residue. None of the officers in the squadron had ever eaten
so well as they ate regularly in Milo's mess hall, and Yossarian wondered awhile if it wasn't perhaps all worth
it. But then he burped and remembered that they were trying to kill him, and he sprinted out of the mess hall
wildly and ran looking for Doc Daneeka to have himself taken off combat duty and sent home. He found Doc
Daneeka in sunlight, sitting on a high stool outside his tent.
"Fifty missions," Doc Daneeka told him, shaking his head. "The colonel wants fifty missions."
"But I've only got forty-four!"
Doc Daneeka was unmoved. He was a sad, birdlike man with the spatulate face and scrubbed, tapering
features of a well-groomed rat.
"Fifty missions," he repeated, still shaking his head. "The colonel wants fifty missions."
3 HAVERMEYER
Actually, no one was around when Yossarian returned from the hospital but Orr and the dead man in
Yossarian's tent. The dead man in Yossarian's tent was a pest, and Yossarian didn't like him, even though he
had never seen him. Having him lying around all day annoyed Yossarian so much that he had gone to the
orderly room several times to complain to Sergeant Towser, who refused to admit that the dead man even
existed, which, of course, he no longer did. It was still more frustrating to try to appeal directly to Major
Major, the long and bony squadron commander, who looked a little bit like Henry Fonda in distress and went
jumping out the window of his office each time Yossarian bullied his way past Sergeant Towser to speak to
him about it. The dead man in Yossarian's tent was simply not easy to live with. He even disturbed Orr, who
was not easy to live with, either, and who, on the day Yossarian came back, was tinkering with the faucet that
fed gasoline into the stove he had started building while Yossarian was in the hospital.
"What are you doing?" Yossarian asked guardedly when he entered the tent, although he saw at once.
"There's a leak here," Orr said. "I'm trying to fix it."
"Please stop it," said Yossarian. "You're making me nervous."
"When I was a kid," Orr replied, "I used to walk around all day with crab apples in my cheeks. One in each
cheek."
Yossarian put aside the musette bag from which he had begun removing his toilet articles and braced
himself suspiciously. A minute passed. "Why?" he found himself forced to ask finally.
Orr tittered triumphantly. "Because they're better than horse chestnuts," he answered.
Orr was kneeling on the floor of the tent. He worked without pause, taking the faucet apart, spreading all
the tiny pieces out carefully, counting and then studying each one interminably as though he had never seen
anything remotely similar before, and then reassembling the whole apparatus, over and over and over and over
again, with no loss of patience or interest, no sign of fatigue, no indication of ever concluding. Yossarian
watched him tinkering and felt certain he would be compelled to murder him in cold blood if he did not stop.
His eyes moved toward the hunting knife that had been slung over the mosquito-net bar by the dead man the
day he arrived. The knife hung beside the dead man's empty leather gun holster, from which Havermeyer had
stolen the gun.
"When I couldn't get crab apples," Orr continued, "I used horse chestnuts. Horse chestnuts are about the
same size as crab apples and actually have a better shape, although the shape doesn't matter a bit."
"Why did you walk around with crab apples in your cheeks?" Yossarian asked again. "That's what I asked."
"Because they've got a better shape than horse chestnuts," Orr answered. "I just told you that."
"Why," swore Yossarian at him approvingly, "you evil-eyed, mechanically-aptituded, disaffiliated son of a
bitch, did you walk around with anything in your cheeks?"
"I didn't," Orr said, "walk around with anything in my cheeks. I walked around with crab apples in my
cheeks. When I couldn't get crab apples I walked around with horse chestnuts. In my cheeks."
Orr giggled. Yossarian made up his mind to keep his mouth shut and did. Orr waited. Yossarian waited
Page 9
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
longer.
"One in each cheek," Orr said.
"Why?"
Orr pounced. "Why what?"
Yossarian shook his head, smiling, and refused to say.
"It's a funny thing about this valve," Orr mused aloud.
"What is?" Yossarian asked.
"Because I wanted-"
Yossarian knew. "Jesus Christ! Why did you want-"
"-apple cheeks."
"-apple cheeks?" Yossarian demanded.
"I wanted apple cheeks," Orr repeated. "Even when I was a kid I wanted apple cheeks someday, and I
decided to work at it until I got them, and by God, I did work at it until I got them, and that's how I did it, with
crab apples in my cheeks all day long." He giggled again. "One in each cheek."
"Why did you want apple cheeks?"
"I didn't want apple cheeks," Orr said. "I wanted big cheeks. I didn't care about the color so much, but I
wanted them big. I worked at it just like one of those crazy guys you read about who go around squeezing
rubber balls all day long just to strengthen their hands. In fact, I was one of those crazy guys. I used to walk
around all day with rubber balls in my hands, too."
"Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why did you walk around all day with rubber balls in your hands?"
"Because rubber balls-" said Orr.
"-are better than crab apples?"
Orr sniggered as he shook his head. "I did it to protect my good reputation in case anyone ever caught me
walking around with crab apples in my cheeks. With rubber balls in my hands I could deny there were crab
apples in my cheeks. Every time someone asked me why I was walking around with crab apples in my cheeks,
I'd just open my hands and show them it was rubber balls I was walking around with, not crab apples, and that
they were in my hands, not my cheeks. It was a good story. But I never knew if it got across or not, since it's
pretty tough to make people understand you when you're talking to them with two crab apples in your cheeks."
Yossarian found it pretty tough to understand him then, and he wondered once again if Orr wasn't talking to
him with the tip of his tongue in one of his apple cheeks.
Yossarian decided not to utter another word. It would be futile. He knew Orr, and he knew there was not a
chance in hell of finding out from him then why he had wanted big cheeks. It would do no more good to ask
than it had done to ask him why that whore had kept beating him over the head with her shoe that morning in
Rome in the cramped vestibule outside the open door of Nately's whore's kid sister's room. She was a tall,
strapping girl with long hair and incandescent blue veins converging populously beneath her cocoa-colored
skin where the flesh was most tender, and she kept cursing and shrieking and jumping high up into the air on
her bare feet to keep right on hitting him on the top of his head with the spiked heel of her shoe. They were
both naked, and raising a rumpus that brought everyone in the apartment into the hall to watch, each couple in
a bedroom doorway, all of them naked except the aproned and sweatered old woman, who clucked
reprovingly, and the lecherous, dissipated old man, who cackled aloud hilariously through the whole episode
with a kind of avid and superior glee. The girl shrieked and Orr giggled. Each time she landed with the heel of
her shoe, Orr giggled louder, infuriating her still further so that she flew up still higher into the air for another
shot at his noodle, her wondrously full breasts soaring all over the place like billowing pennants in a strong
wind and her buttocks and strong thighs shim-sham-shimmying this way and that way like some horrifying
bonanza. She shrieked and Orr giggled right up to the time she shrieked and knocked him cold with a good
solid crack on the temple that made him stop giggling and sent him off to the hospital in a stretcher with a hole
in his head that wasn't very deep and a very mild concussion that kept him out of combat only twelve days.
Nobody could find out what had happened, not even the cackling old man and clucking old woman, who
were in a position to find out everything that happened in that vast and endless brothel with its multitudinous
Page 10
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
bedrooms on facing sides of the narrow hallways going off in opposite directions from the spacious sitting
room with its shaded windows and single lamp. Every time she met Orr after that, she'd hoist her skirts up
over her tight white elastic panties and, jeering coarsely, bulge her firm, round belly out at him, cursing him
contemptuously and then roaring with husky laughter as she saw him giggle fearfully and take refuge behind
Yossarian. Whatever he had done or tried to do or failed to do behind the closed door of Nately's whore's kid
sister's room was still a secret. The girl wouldn't tell Nately's whore or any of the other whores or Nately or
Yossarian. Orr might tell, but Yossarian had decided not to utter another word.
"Do you want to know why I wanted big cheeks?" Orr asked.
Yossarian kept his mouth shut.
"Do you remember," Orr said, "that time in Rome when that girl who can't stand you kept hitting me over
the head with the heel of her shoe? Do you want to know why she was hitting me?"
It was still impossible to imagine what he could have done to make her angry enough to hammer him over
the head for fifteen or twenty minutes, yet not angry enough to pick him up by the ankles and dash his brains
out. She was certainly tall enough, and Orr was certainly short enough. Orr had buck teeth and bulging eyes to
go with his big cheeks and was even smaller than young Huple, who lived on the wrong side of the railroad
tracks in the tent in the administration area in which Hungry Joe lay screaming in his sleep every night.
The administration area in which Hungry Joe had pitched his tent by mistake lay in the center of the
squadron between the ditch, with its rusted railroad tracks, and the tilted black bituminous road. The men
could pick up girls along that road if they promised to take them where they wanted to go, buxom, young,
homely, grinning girls with missing teeth whom they could drive off the road and lie down in the wild grass
with, and Yossarian did whenever he could, which was not nearly as often as Hungry Joe, who could get a
jeep but couldn't drive, begged him to try. The tents of the enlisted men in the squadron stood on the other side
of the road alongside the open-air movie theater in which, for the daily amusement of the dying, ignorant
armies clashed by night on a collapsible screen, and to which another U.S.O. troupe came that same afternoon.
The U.S.O. troupes were sent by General P. P. Peckem, who had moved his headquarters up to Rome and
had nothing better to do while he schemed against General Dreedle. General Peckem was a general with
whom neatness definitely counted. He was a spry, suave and very precise general who knew the circumference
of the equator and always wrote "enhanced" when he meant "increased". He was a prick, and no one knew this
better than General Dreedle, who was incensed by General Peckem's recent directive requiring all tents in the
Mediterranean theater of operations to be pitched along parallel lines with entrances facing back proudly
toward the Washington Monument. To General Dreedle, who ran a fighting outfit, it seemed a lot of crap.
Furthermore, it was none of General Peckem's goddam business how the tents in General Dreedle's wing were
pitched. There then followed a hectic jurisdictional dispute between these overlords that was decided in
General Dreedle's favor by ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen, mail clerk at Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters.
Wintergreen determined the outcome by throwing all communications from General Peckem into the
wastebasket. He found them too prolix. General Dreedle's views, expressed in less pretentious literary style,
pleased ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen and were sped along by him in zealous observance of regulations. General
Dreedle was victorious by default.
To regain whatever status he had lost, General Peckem began sending out more U.S.O. troupes than he had
ever sent out before and assigned to Colonel Cargill himself the responsibility of generating enough
enthusiasm for them.
But there was no enthusiasm in Yossarian's group. In Yossarian's group there was only a mounting number
of enlisted men and officers who found their way solemnly to Sergeant Towser several times a day to ask if
the orders sending them home had come in. They were men who had finished their fifty missions. There were
more of them now than when Yossarian had gone into the hospital, and they were still waiting. They worried
and bit their nails. They were grotesque, like useless young men in a depression. They moved sideways, like
crabs. They were waiting for the orders sending them home to safety to return from Twenty-seventh Air Force
Headquarters in Italy, and while they waited they had nothing to do but worry and bite their nails and find
their way solemnly to Sergeant Towser several times a day to ask if the order sending them home to safety had
come.
They were in a race and knew it, because they knew from bitter experience that Colonel Cathcart might
Page 11
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
raise the number of missions again at any time. They had nothing better to do than wait. Only Hungry Joe had
something better to do each time he finished his missions. He had screaming nightmares and won fist fights
with Huple's cat. He took his camera to the front row of every U.S.O. show and tried to shoot pictures up the
skirt of the yellow-headed singer with two big ones in a sequined dress that always seemed ready to burst. The
pictures never came out.
Colonel Cargill, General Peckem's troubleshooter, was a forceful, ruddy man. Before the war he had been
an alert, hardhitting, aggressive marketing executive. He was a very bad marketing executive. Colonel Cargill
was so awful a marketing executive that his services were much sought after by firms eager to establish losses
for tax purposes. Throughout the civilized world, from Battery Park to Fulton Street, he was known as a
dependable man for a fast tax write-off. His prices were high, for failure often did not come easily. He had to
start at the top and work his way down, and with sympathetic friends in Washington, losing money was no
simple matter. It took months of hard work and careful misplanning. A person misplaced, disorganized,
miscalculated, overlooked everything and opened every loophole, and just when he thought he had it made,
the government gave him a lake or a forest or an oilfield and spoiled everything. Even with such handicaps,
Colonel Cargill could be relied on to run the most prosperous enterprise into the ground. He was a self-made
man who owed his lack of success to nobody.
"Men," Colonel Cargill began in Yossarian's squadron, measuring his pauses carefully. "You're American
officers. The officers of no other army in the world can make that statement. Think about it."
Sergeant Knight thought about it and then politely informed Colonel Cargill that he was addressing the
enlisted men and that the officers were to be found waiting for him on the other side of the squadron. Colonel
Cargill thanked him crisply and glowed with self-satisfaction as he strode across the area. It made him proud
to observe that twenty-nine months in the service had not blunted his genius for ineptitude.
"Men," he began his address to the officers, measuring his pauses carefully. "You're American officers. The
officers of no other army in the world can make that statement. Think about it." He waited a moment to permit
them to think about it. "These people are your guests!" he shouted suddenly. "They've traveled over three
thousand miles to entertain you. How are they going to feel if nobody wants to go out and watch them? What's
going to happen to their morale? Now, men, it's no skin off my behind. But that girl that wants to play the
accordion for you today is old enough to be a mother. How would you feel if your own mother traveled over
three thousand miles to play the accordion for some troops that didn't want to watch her? How is that kid
whose mother that accordion player is old enough to be going to feel when he grows up and learns about it?
We all know the answer to that one. Now, men, don't misunderstand me. This is all voluntary, of course. I'd be
the last colonel in the world to order you to go to that U.S.O. show and have a good time, but I want every one
of you who isn't sick enough to be in a hospital to go to that U.S.O. show right now and have a good time, and
that's an order!"
Yossarian did feel almost sick enough to go back into the hospital, and he felt even sicker three combat
missions later when Doc Daneeka still shook his melancholy head and refused to ground him.
"You think you've got troubles?" Doc Daneeka rebuked him grievingly. "What about me? I lived on
peanuts for eight years while I learned how to be a doctor. After the peanuts, I lived on chicken feed in my
own office until I could build up a practice decent enough to even pay expenses. Then, just as the shop was
finally starting to show a profit, they drafted me. I don't know what you're complaining about."
Doc Daneeka was Yossarian's friend and would do just about nothing in his power to help him. Yossarian
listened very carefully as Doc Daneeka told him about Colonel Cathcart at Group, who wanted to be a general,
about General Dreedle at Wing and General Dreedle's nurse, and about all the other generals at
Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters, who insisted on only forty missions as a completed tour of duty.
"Why don't you just smile and make the best of it?" he advised Yossarian glumly. "Be like Havermeyer."
Yossarian shuddered at the suggestion. Havermeyer was a lead bombardier who never took evasive action
going in to the target and thereby increased the danger of all the men who flew in the same formation with
him.
"Havermeyer, why the hell don't you ever take evasive action?" they would demand in a rage after the
mission.
"Hey, you men leave Captain Havermeyer alone," Colonel Cathcart would order. "He's the best damned
Page 12
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
bombardier we've got."
Havermeyer grinned and nodded and tried to explain how he dumdummed the bullets with a hunting knife
before he fired them at the field mice in his tent every night. Havermeyer was the best damned bombardier
they had, but he flew straight and level all the way from the I.P. to the target, and even far beyond the target
until he saw the falling bombs strike ground and explode in a darting spurt of abrupt orange that flashed
beneath the swirling pall of smoke and pulverized debris geysering up wildly in huge, rolling waves of gray
and black. Havermeyer held mortal men rigid in six planes as steady and still as sitting ducks while he
followed the bombs all the way down through the plexiglass nose with deep interest and gave the German
gunners below all the time they needed to set their sights and take their aim and pull their triggers or lanyards
or switches or whatever the hell they did pull when they wanted to kill people they didn't know.
Havermeyer was a lead bombardier who never missed. Yossarian was a lead bombardier who had been
demoted because he no longer gave a damn whether he missed or not. He had decided to live forever or die in
the attempt, and his only mission each time he went up was to come down alive.
The men had loved flying behind Yossarian, who used to come barreling in over the target from all
directions and every height, climbing and diving and twisting and turning so steeply and sharply that it was all
the pilots of the other five planes could do to stay in formation with him, leveling out only for the two or three
seconds it took for the bombs to drop and then zooming off again with an aching howl of engines, and
wrenching his flight through the air so violently as he wove his way through the filthy barrages of flak that the
six planes were soon flung out all over the sky like prayers, each one a pushover for the German fighters,
which was just fine with Yossarian, for there were no German fighters any more and he did not want any
exploding planes near his when they exploded. Only when all the Sturm und Drang had been left far behind
would he tip his flak helmet back wearily on his sweating head and stop barking directions to McWatt at the
controls, who had nothing better to wonder about at a time like that than where the bombs had fallen.
"Bomb bay clear," Sergeant Knight in the back would announce.
"Did we hit the bridge?" McWatt would ask.
"I couldn't see, sir, I kept getting bounced around back here pretty hard and I couldn't see. Everything's
covered with smoke now and I can't see."
"Hey, Aarfy, did the bombs hit the target?"
"What target?" Captain Aardvaark, Yossarian's plump, pipe-smoking navigator, would say from the
confusion of maps he had created at Yossarian's side in the nose of the ship. "I don't think we're at the target
yet. Are we?"
"Yossarian, did the bombs hit the target?"
"What bombs?" answered Yossarian, whose only concern had been the flak.
"Oh, well," McWatt would sing, "what the hell."
Yossarian did not give a damn whether he hit the target or not, just as long as Havermeyer or one of the
other lead bombardiers did and they never had to go back. Every now and then someone grew angry enough at
Havermeyer to throw a punch at him.
"I said you men leave Captain Havermeyer alone," Colonel Cathcart warned them all angrily. "I said he's
the best damned bombardier we've got, didn't I?"
Havermeyer grinned at the colonel's intervention and shoved another piece of peanut brittle inside his face.
Havermeyer had grown very proficient at shooting field mice at night with the gun he had stolen from the
dead man in Yossarian's tent. His bait was a bar of candy and he would presight in the darkness as he sat
waiting for the nibble with a finger of his other hand inside a loop of the line he had run from the frame of his
mosquito net to the chain of the unfrosted light bulb overhead. The line was taut as a banjo string, and the
merest tug would snap it on and blind the shivering quarry in a blaze of light. Havermeyer would chortle
exultantly as he watched the tiny mammal freeze and roll its terrified eyes about in frantic search of the
intruder. Havermeyer would wait until the eyes fell upon his own and then he laughed aloud and pulled the
trigger at the same time, showering the rank, furry body all over the tent with a reverberating crash and
dispatching its timid soul back to his or her Creator.
Late one night, Havermeyer fired a shot at a mouse that brought Hungry Joe bolting out at him barefoot,
ranting at the top of his screechy voice and emptying his own .45 into Havermeyer's tent as he came charging
Page 13
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
down one side of the ditch and up the other and vanished all at once inside one of the slit trenches that had
appeared like magic beside every tent the morning after Milo Minderbinder had bombed the squadron. It was
just before dawn during the Great Big Siege of Bologna, when tongueless dead men peopled the night hours
like living ghosts and Hungry Joe was half out of his mind because he had finished his missions again and was
not scheduled to fly. Hungry Joe was babbling incoherently when they fished him out from the dank bottom of
the slit trench, babbling of snakes, rats and spiders. The others flashed their searchlights down just to make
sure. There was nothing inside but a few inches of stagnant rain water.
"You see?" cried Havermeyer. "I told you. I told you he was crazy, didn't I?"
4 DOC DANEEKA
Hungry Joe was crazy, and no one knew it better than Yossarian, who did everything he could to help him.
Hungry Joe just wouldn't listen to Yossarian. Hungry Joe just wouldn't listen because he thought Yossarian
was crazy.
"Why should he listen to you?" Doc Daneeka inquired of Yossarian without looking up.
"Because he's got troubles."
Doc Daneeka snorted scornfully. "He thinks he's got troubles? What about me?" Doc Daneeka continued
slowly with a gloomy sneer. "Oh, I'm not complaining. I know there's a war on. I know a lot of people are
going to have to suffer for us to win it. But why must I be one of them? Why don't they draft some of these old
doctors who keep shooting their kissers off in public about what big sacrifices the medical game stands ready
to make? I don't want to make sacrifices. I want to make dough."
Doc Daneeka was a very neat, clean man whose idea of a good time was to sulk. He had a dark complexion
and a small, wise, saturnine face with mournful pouches under both eyes. He brooded over his health
continually and went almost daily to the medical tent to have his temperature taken by one of the two enlisted
men there who ran things for him practically on their own, and ran it so efficiently that he was left with little
else to do but sit in the sunlight with his stuffed nose and wonder what other people were so worried about.
Their names were Gus and Wes and they had succeeded in elevating medicine to an exact science. All men
reporting on sick call with temperatures above 102 were rushed to the hospital. All those except Yossarian
reporting on sick call with temperatures below 102 had their gums and toes painted with gentian violet
solution and were given a laxative to throw away into the bushes. All those reporting on a sick call with
temperatures of exactly 102 were asked to return in an hour to have their temperatures taken again. Yossarian,
with his temperature of 101, could go to the hospital whenever he wanted to because he was not afraid of
them.
The system worked just fine for everybody, especially for Doc Daneeka, who found himself with all the
time he needed to watch old Major --- de Coverley pitching horseshoes in his private horseshoe-pitching pit,
still wearing the transparent eye patch Doc Daneeka had fashioned for him from the strip of celluloid stolen
from Major Major's orderly room window months before when Major --- de Coverley had returned from
Rome with an injured cornea after renting two apartments there for the officers and enlisted men to use on
their rest leaves. The only time Doc Daneeka ever went to the medical tent was the time he began to feel he
was a very sick man each day and stopped in just to have Gus and Wes look him over. They could never find
anything wrong with him. His temperature was always 96.8, which was perfectly all right with them, as long
as he didn't mind. Doc Daneeka did mind. He was beginning to lose confidence in Gus and Wes and was
thinking of having them both transferred back to the motor pool and replaced by someone who could find
something wrong.
Doc Daneeka was personally familiar with a number of things that were drastically wrong. In addition to
his health, he worried about the Pacific Ocean and flight time. Health was something no one ever could be
sure of for a long enough time. The Pacific Ocean was a body of water surrounded on all sides by
elephantiasis and other dread diseases to which, if he ever displeased Colonel Cathcart by grounding
Yossarian, he might suddenly find himself transferred. And flight time was the time he had to spend in
airplane flight each month in order to get his flight pay. Doc Daneeka hated to fly. He felt imprisoned in an
airplane. In an airplane there was absolutely no place in the world to go except to another part of the airplane.
Doc Daneeka had been told that people who enjoyed climbing into an airplane were really giving vent to a
Page 14
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
subconscious desire to climb back into the womb. He had been told this by Yossarian, who made it possible
for Dan Daneeka to collect his flight pay each month without ever climbing back into the womb. Yossarian
would persuade McWatt to enter Doc Daneeka's name on his flight log for training missions or trips to Rome.
"You know how it is," Doc Daneeka had wheedled, with a sly, conspiratorial wink. "Why take chances
when I don't have to?"
"Sure," Yossarian agreed.
"What difference does it make to anyone if I'm in the plane or not?"
"No difference."
"Sure, that's what I mean," Doc Daneeka said. "A little grease is what makes this world go round. One hand
washes the other. Know what I mean? You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours."
Yossarian knew what he meant.
"That's not what I meant," Doc Daneeka said, as Yossarian began scratching his back. "I'm talking about
co-operation. Favors. You do a favor for me, I'll do one for you. Get it?"
"Do one for me," Yossarian requested.
"Not a chance," Doc Daneeka answered.
There was something fearful and minute about Doc Daneeka as he sat despondently outside his tent in the
sunlight as often as he could, dressed in khaki summer trousers and a short-sleeved summer shirt that was
bleached almost to an antiseptic gray by the daily laundering to which he had it subjected. He was like a man
who had grown frozen with horror once and had never come completely unthawed. He sat all tucked up into
himself, his slender shoulders huddled halfway around his head, his suntanned hands with their luminous
silver fingernails massaging the backs of his bare, folded arms gently as though he were cold. Actually, he was
a very warm, compassionate man who never stopped feeling sorry for himself.
"Why me?" was his constant lament, and the question was a good one.
Yossarian knew it was a good one because Yossarian was a collector of good questions and had used them
to disrupt the educational sessions Clevinger had once conducted two nights a week in Captain Black's
intelligence tent with the corporal in eyeglasses who everybody knew was probably a subversive. Captain
Black knew he was a subversive because he wore eyeglasses and used words like panacea and utopia, and
because he disapproved of Adolf Hitler, who had done such a great job of combating un-American activities in
Germany. Yossarian attended the educational sessions because he wanted to find out why so many people
were working so hard to kill him. A handful of other men were also interested, and the questions were many
and good when Clevinger and the subversive corporal finished and made the mistake of asking if there were
any.
"Who is Spain?"
"Why is Hitler?"
"When is right?"
"Where was that stooped and mealy-colored old man I used to call Poppa when the merry-go-round broke
down?"
"How was trump at Munich?"
"Ho-ho beriberi."
and
"Balls!"
all rang out in rapid succession, and then there was Yossarian with the question that had no answer:
"Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?"
The question upset them, because Snowden had been killed over Avignon when Dobbs went crazy in
mid-air and seized the controls away from Huple.
The corporal played it dumb. "What?" he asked.
"Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?"
"I'm afraid I don't understand."
"Où sont les Neigedens d'antan?" Yossarian said to make it easier for him.
"Parlez en anglais, for Christ's sake," said the corporal. "Je ne parle pas français."
"Neither do I," answered Yossarian, who was ready to pursue him through all the words in the world to
Page 15
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
wring the knowledge from him if he could, but Clevinger intervened, pale, thin, and laboring for breath, a
humid coating of tears already glistening in his undernourished eyes.
Group Headquarters was alarmed, for there was no telling what people might find out once they felt free to
ask whatever questions they wanted to. Colonel Cathcart sent Colonel Korn to stop it, and Colonel Korn
succeeded with a rule governing the asking of questions. Colonel Korn's rule was a stroke of genius, Colonel
Korn explained in his report to Colonel Cathcart. Under Colonel Korn's rule, the only people permitted to ask
questions were those who never did. Soon the only people attending were those who never asked questions,
and the sessions were discontinued altogether, since Clevinger, the corporal and Colonel Korn agreed that it
was neither possible nor necessary to educate people who never questioned anything.
Colonel Cathcart and Lieutenant Colonel Korn lived and worked in the Group Headquarters building, as
did all the members of the headquarters staff, with the exception of the chaplain. The Group Headquarters
building was an enormous, windy, antiquated structure built of powdery red stone and banging plumbing.
Behind the building was the modern skeet-shooting range that had been constructed by Colonel Cathcart for
the exclusive recreation of the officers at Group and at which every officer and enlisted man on combat status
now, thanks to General Dreedle, had to spend a minimum of eight hours a month.
Yossarian shot skeet, but never hit any. Appleby shot skeet and never missed. Yossarian was as bad at
shooting skeet as he was at gambling. He could never win money gambling either. Even when he cheated he
couldn't win, because the people he cheated against were always better at cheating too. These were two
disappointments to which he had resigned himself: he would never be a skeet shooter, and he would never
make money.
"It takes brains not to make money," Colonel Cargill wrote in one of the homiletic memoranda he regularly
prepared for circulation over General Peckem's signature. "Any fool can make money these days and most of
them do. But what about people with talent and brains? Name, for example, one poet who makes money."
"T. S. Eliot," ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen said in his mail-sorting cubicle at Twenty-seventh Air Force
Headquarters, and slammed down the telephone without identifying himself.
Colonel Cargill, in Rome, was perplexed.
"Who was it?" asked General Peckem.
"I don't know," Colonel Cargill replied.
"What did he want?"
"I don't know."
"Well, what did he say?"
"'T. S. Eliot,'" Colonel Cargill informed him.
"What's that?"
"'T. S. Eliot,'" Colonel Cargill repeated.
"Just 'T. S.'-"
"Yes, sir. That's all he said. Just 'T. S. Eliot.'"
"I wonder what it means," General Peckem reflected. Colonel Cargill wondered, too.
"T. S. Eliot," General Peckem mused.
"T. S. Eliot," Colonel Cargill echoed with the same funereal puzzlement.
General Peckem roused himself after a moment with an unctuous and benignant smile. His expression was
shrewd and sophisticated. His eyes gleamed maliciously. "Have someone get me General Dreedle," he
requested Colonel Cargill. "Don't let him know who's calling."
Colonel Cargill handed him the phone.
"T. S. Eliot," General Peckem said, and hung up.
"Who was it?" asked Colonel Moodus.
General Dreedle, in Corsica, did not reply. Colonel Moodus was General Dreedle's son-in-law, and General
Dreedle, at the insistence of his wife and against his own better judgment, had taken him into the military
business. General Dreedle gazed at Colonel Moodus with level hatred. He detested the very sight of his
son-in-law, who was his aide and therefore in constant attendance upon him. He had opposed his daughter's
marriage to Colonel Moodus because he disliked attending weddings. Wearing a menacing and preoccupied
scowl, General Dreedle moved to the full-length mirror in his office and stared at his stocky reflection. He had
Page 16
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
a grizzled, broad-browed head with iron-gray tufts over his eyes and a blunt and belligerent jaw. He brooded
in ponderous speculation over the cryptic message he had just received. Slowly his face softened with an idea,
and he curled his lips with wicked pleasure.
"Get Peckem," he told Colonel Moodus. "Don't let the bastard know who's calling."
"Who was it?" asked Colonel Cargill, back in Rome.
"That same person," General Peckem replied with a definite trace of alarm. "Now he's after me."
"What did he want?"
"I don't know."
"What did he say?"
"The same thing."
"'T. S. Eliot'?"
"Yes, 'T. S. Eliot.' That's all he said." General Peckem had a hopeful thought. "Perhaps it's a new code or
something, like the colors of the day. Why don't you have someone check with Communications and see if it's
a new code or something or the colors of the day?"
Communications answered that T. S. Eliot was not a new code or the colors of the day.
Colonel Cargill had the next idea. "Maybe I ought to phone Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters and
see if they know anything about it. They have a clerk up there named Wintergreen I'm pretty close to. He's the
one who tipped me off that our prose was too prolix."
Ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen told Cargill that there was no record at Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters of a
T. S. Eliot.
"How's our prose these days?" Colonel Cargill decided to inquire while he had ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen on
the phone. "It's much better now, isn't it?"
"It's still too prolix," ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen replied.
"It wouldn't surprise me if General Dreedle were behind the whole thing," General Peckem confessed at
last. "Remember what he did to that skeet-shooting range?"
General Dreedle had thrown open Colonel Cathcart's private skeet-shooting range to every officer and
enlisted man in the group on combat duty. General Dreedle wanted his men to spend as much time out on the
skeet-shooting range as the facilities and their flight schedule would allow. Shooting skeet eight hours a month
was excellent training for them. It trained them to shoot skeet.
Dunbar loved shooting skeet because he hated every minute of it and the time passed so slowly. He had
figured out that a single hour on the skeet-shooting range with people like Havermeyer and Appleby could be
worth as much as eleven-times-seventeen years.
"I think you're crazy," was the way Clevinger had responded to Dunbar's discovery.
"Who wants to know?" Dunbar answered.
"I mean it," Clevinger insisted.
"Who cares?" Dunbar answered.
"I really do. I'll even go so far as to concede that life seems longer I-"
"-is longer I-"
"-is longer-Is longer? All right, is longer if it's filled with periods of boredom and discomfort, b-"
"Guess how fast?" Dunbar said suddenly.
"Huh?"
"They go," Dunbar explained.
"Years."
"Years."
"Years," said Dunbar. "Years, years, years."
"Clevinger, why don't you let Dunbar alone?" Yossarian broke in. "Don't you realize the toll this is taking?"
"It's all right," said Dunbar magnanimously. "I have some decades to spare. Do you know how long a year
takes when it's going away?"
"And you shut up also," Yossarian told Orr, who had begun to snigger.
"I was just thinking about that girl," Orr said. "That girl in Sicily. That girl in Sicily with the bald head."
"You'd better shut up also," Yossarian warned him.
Page 17
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
"It's your fault," Dunbar said to Yossarian. "Why don't you let him snigger if he wants to? It's better than
having him talking."
"All right. Go ahead and snigger if you want to."
"Do you know how long a year takes when it's going away?" Dunbar repeated to Clevinger. "This long."
He snapped his fingers. "A second ago you were stepping into college with your lungs full of fresh air. Today
you're an old man."
"Old?" asked Clevinger with surprise. "What are you talking about?"
"Old."
"I'm not old."
"You're inches away from death every time you go on a mission. How much older can you be at your age?
A half minute before that you were stepping into high school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you
ever hoped to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a second before that you were a small kid with a ten-week
summer vacation that lasted a hundred thousand years and still ended too soon. Zip! They go rocketing by so
fast. How the hell else are you ever going to slow time down?" Dunbar was almost angry when he finished.
"Well, maybe it is true," Clevinger conceded unwillingly in a subdued tone. "Maybe a long life does have
to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it's to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?"
"I do," Dunbar told him.
"Why?" Clevinger asked.
"What else is there?"
5 CHIEF WHITE HALFOAT
Doc Daneeka lived in a splotched gray tent with Chief White Halfoat, whom he feared and despised.
"I can just picture his liver," Doc Daneeka grumbled.
"Picture my liver," Yossarian advised him.
"There's nothing wrong with your liver."
"That shows how much you don't know," Yossarian bluffed, and told Doc Daneeka about the troublesome
pain in his liver that had troubled Nurse Duckett and Nurse Cramer and all the doctors in the hospital because
it wouldn't become jaundice and wouldn't go away.
Doc Daneeka wasn't interested. "You think you've got troubles?" he wanted to know. "What about me?
You should've been in my office the day those newlyweds walked in."
"What newlyweds?"
"Those newlyweds that walked into my office one day. Didn't I ever tell you about them? She was lovely."
So was Doc Daneeka's office. He had decorated his waiting room with goldfish and one of the finest suites
of cheap furniture. Whatever he could he bought on credit, even the goldfish. For the rest, he obtained money
from greedy relatives in exchange for shares of the profits. His office was in Staten Island in a two-family
firetrap just four blocks away from the ferry stop and only one block south of a supermarket, three beauty
parlors, and two corrupt druggists. It was a corner location, but nothing helped. Population turnover was small,
and people clung through habit to the same physicians they had been doing business with for years. Bills piled
up rapidly, and he was soon faced with the loss of his most precious medical instruments: his adding machine
was repossessed, and then his typewriter. The goldfish died. Fortunately, just when things were blackest, the
war broke out.
"It was a godsend," Doc Daneeka confessed solemnly. "Most of the other doctors were soon in the service,
and things picked up overnight. The corner location really started paying off, and I soon found myself
handling more patients than I could handle competently. I upped my kickback fee with those two drugstores.
The beauty parlors were good for two, three abortions a week. Things couldn't have been better, and then look
what happened. They had to send a guy from the draft board around to look me over. I was Four-F. I had
examined myself pretty thoroughly and discovered that I was unfit for military service. You'd think my word
would be enough, wouldn't you, since I was a doctor in good standing with my county medical society and
with my local Better Business Bureau. But no, it wasn't, and they sent this guy around just to make sure I
really did have one leg amputated at the hip and was helplessly bedridden with incurable rheumatoid arthritis.
Page 18
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
Yossarian, we live in an age of distrust and deteriorating spiritual values. It's a terrible thing," Doc Daneeka
protested in a voice quavering with strong emotion. "It's a terrible thing when even the word of a licensed
physician is suspected by the country he loves."
Doc Daneeka had been drafted and shipped to Pianosa as a flight surgeon, even though he was terrified of
flying.
"I don't have to go looking for trouble in an airplane," he noted, blinking his beady, brown, offended eyes
myopically. "It comes looking for me. Like that virgin I'm telling you about that couldn't have a baby."
"What virgin?" Yossarian asked. "I thought you were telling me about some newlyweds."
"That's the virgin I'm telling you about. They were just a couple of young kids, and they'd been married, oh,
a little over a year when they came walking into my office without an appointment. You should have seen her.
She was so sweet and young and pretty. She even blushed when I asked about her periods. I don't think I'll
ever stop loving that girl. She was built like a dream and wore a chain around her neck with a medal of Saint
Anthony hanging down inside the most beautiful bosom I never saw. 'It must be a terrible temptation for Saint
Anthony,' I joked-just to put her at ease, you know. 'Saint Anthony?' her husband said. 'Who's Saint Anthony?'
'Ask your wife,' I told him. 'She can tell you who Saint Anthony is.' 'Who is Saint Anthony?' he asked her.
'Who?' she wanted to know. 'Saint Anthony,' he told her. 'Saint Anthony?' she said. 'Who's Saint Anthony?'
When I got a good look at her inside my examination room I found she was still a virgin. I spoke to her
husband alone while she was pulling her girdle back on and hooking it onto her stockings. 'Every night,' he
boasted. A real wise guy, you know. 'I never miss a night,' he boasted. He meant it, too. 'I even been puttin' it
to her mornings before the breakfasts she makes me before we go to work,' he boasted. There was only one
explanation. When I had them both together again I gave them a demonstration of intercourse with the rubber
models I've got in my office. I've got these rubber models in my office with all the reproductive organs of both
sexes that I keep locked up in separate cabinets to avoid a scandal. I mean I used to have them. I don't have
anything any more, not even a practice. The only thing I have now is this low temperature that I'm really
starting to worry about. Those two kids I've got working for me in the medical tent aren't worth a damn as
diagnosticians. All they know how to do is complain. They think they've got troubles? What about me? They
should have been in my office that day with those two newlyweds looking at me as though I were telling them
something nobody'd ever heard of before. You never saw anybody so interested. 'You mean like this?' he
asked me, and worked the models for himself awhile. You know, I can see where a certain type of person
might get a big kick out of doing just that. 'That's it,' I told him. 'Now, you go home and try it my way for a
few months and see what happens. Okay?' 'Okay,' they said, and paid me in cash without any argument. 'Have
a good time,' I told them, and they thanked me and walked out together. He had his arm around her waist as
though he couldn't wait to get her home and put it to her again. A few days later he came back all by himself
and told my nurse he had to see me right away. As soon as we were alone, he punched me in the nose."
"He did what?"
"He called me a wise guy and punched me in the nose. 'What are you, a wise guy?' he said, and knocked
me flat on my ass. Pow! Just like that. I'm not kidding."
"I know you're not kidding," Yossarian said. "But why did he do it?"
"How should I know why he did it?" Doc Daneeka retorted with annoyance.
"Maybe it had something to do with Saint Anthony?"
Doc Daneeka looked at Yossarian blankly. "Saint Anthony?" he asked with astonishment. "Who's Saint
Anthony?"
"How should I know?" answered Chief White Halfoat, staggering inside the tent just then with a bottle of
whiskey cradled in his arm and sitting himself down pugnaciously between the two of them.
Doc Daneeka rose without a word and moved his chair outside the tent, his back bowed by the compact kit
of injustices that was his perpetual burden. He could not bear the company of his roommate.
Chief White Halfoat thought he was crazy. "I don't know what's the matter with that guy," he observed
reproachfully. "He's got no brains, that's what's the matter with him. If he had any brains he'd grab a shovel
and start digging. Right here in the tent, he'd start digging, right under my cot. He'd strike oil in no time. Don't
he know how that enlisted man struck oil with a shovel back in the States? Didn't he ever hear what happened
to that kid-what was the name of that rotten rat bastard pimp of a snotnose back in Colorado?"
Page 19
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
"Wintergreen."
"Wintergreen."
"He's afraid," Yossarian explained.
"Oh, no. Not Wintergreen." Chief White Halfoat shook his head with undisguised admiration. "That
stinking little punk wise-guy son of a bitch ain't afraid of nobody."
"Doc Daneeka's afraid. That's what's the matter with him."
"What's he afraid of?"
"He's afraid of you," Yossarian said. "He's afraid you're going to die of pneumonia."
"He'd better be afraid," Chief White Halfoat said. A deep, low laugh rumbled through his massive chest. "I
will, too, the first chance I get. You just wait and see."
Chief White Halfoat was a handsome, swarthy Indian from Oklahoma with a heavy, hard-boned face and
tousled black hair, a half-blooded Creek from Enid who, for occult reasons of his own, had made up his mind
to die of pneumonia. He was a glowering, vengeful, disillusioned Indian who hated foreigners with names like
Cathcart, Korn, Black and Havermeyer and wished they'd all go back to where their lousy ancestors had come
from.
"You wouldn't believe it, Yossarian," he ruminated, raising his voice deliberately to bait Doc Daneeka, "but
this used to be a pretty good country to live in before they loused it up with their goddam piety."
Chief White Halfoat was out to revenge himself upon the white man. He could barely read or write and had
been assigned to Captain Black as assistant intelligence officer.
"How could I learn to read or write?" Chief White Halfoat demanded with simulated belligerence, raising
his voice again so that Doc Daneeka would hear. "Every place we pitched our tent, they sank an oil well.
Every time they sank a well, they hit oil. And every time they hit oil, they made us pack up our tent and go
someplace else. We were human divining rods. Our whole family had a natural affinity for petroleum deposits,
and soon every oil company in the world had technicians chasing us around. We were always on the move. It
was one hell of a way to bring a child up, I can tell you. I don't think I ever spent more than a week in one
place."
His earliest memory was of a geologist.
"Every time another White Halfoat was born," he continued, "the stock market turned bullish. Soon whole
drilling crews were following us around with all their equipment just to get the jump on each other.
Companies began to merge just so they could cut down on the number of people they had to assign to us. But
the crowd in back of us kept growing. We never got a good night's sleep. When we stopped, they stopped.
When we moved, they moved, chuckwagons, bulldozers, derricks, generators. We were a walking business
boom, and we began to receive invitations from some of the best hotels just for the amount of business we
would drag into town with us. Some of those invitations were mighty generous, but we couldn't accept any
because we were Indians and all the best hotels that were inviting us wouldn't accept Indians as guests. Racial
prejudice is a terrible thing, Yossarian. It really is. It's a terrible thing to treat a decent, loyal Indian like a
nigger, kike, wop or spic." Chief White Halfoat nodded slowly with conviction.
"Then, Yossarian, it finally happened-the beginning of the end. They began to follow us around from in
front. They would try to guess where we were going to stop next and would begin drilling before we even got
there, so we couldn't stop. As soon as we'd begin to unroll our blankets, they would kick us off. They had
confidence in us. They wouldn't even wait to strike oil before they kicked us off. We were so tired we almost
didn't care the day our time ran out. One morning we found ourselves completely surrounded by oilmen
waiting for us to come their way so they could kick us off. Everywhere you looked there was an oilman on a
ridge, waiting there like Indians getting ready to attack. It was the end. We couldn't stay where we were
because we had just been kicked off. And there was no place left for us to go. Only the Army saved me.
Luckily, the war broke out just in the nick of time, and a draft board picked me right up out of the middle and
put me down safely in Lowery Field, Colorado. I was the only survivor."
Yossarian knew he was lying, but did not interrupt as Chief White Halfoat went on to claim that he had
never heard from his parents again. That didn't bother him too much, though, for he had only their word for it
that they were his parents, and since they had lied to him about so many other things, they could just as well
have been lying to him about that too. He was much better acquainted with the fate of a tribe of first cousins
Page 20
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
who had wandered away north in a diversionary movement and pushed inadvertently into Canada. When they
tried to return, they were stopped at the border by American immigration authorities who would not let them
back into the country. They could not come back in because they were red.
It was a horrible joke, but Doc Daneeka didn't laugh until Yossarian came to him one mission later and
pleaded again, without any real expectation of success, to be grounded. Doc Daneeka snickered once and was
soon immersed in problems of his own, which included Chief White Halfoat, who had been challenging him
all that morning to Indian wrestle, and Yossarian, who decided right then and there to go crazy.
"You're wasting your time," Doc Daneeka was forced to tell him.
"Can't you ground someone who's crazy?"
"Oh, sure. I have to. There's a rule saying I have to ground anyone who's crazy."
"Then why don't you ground me? I'm crazy. Ask Clevinger."
"Clevinger? Where is Clevinger? You find Clevinger and I'll ask him."
"Then ask any of the others. They'll tell you how crazy I am."
"They're crazy."
"Then why don't you ground them?"
"Why don't they ask me to ground them?"
"Because they're crazy, that's why."
"Of course they're crazy," Doc Daneeka replied. "I just told you they're crazy, didn't I? And you can't let
crazy people decide whether you're crazy or not, can you?"
Yossarian looked at him soberly and tried another approach. "Is Orr crazy?"
"He sure is," Doc Daneeka said.
"Can you ground him?"
"I sure can. But first he has to ask me to. That's part of the rule."
"Then why doesn't he ask you to?"
"Because he's crazy," Doc Daneeka said. "He has to be crazy to keep flying combat missions after all the
close calls he's had. Sure, I can ground Orr. But first he has to ask me to."
"That's all he has to do to be grounded?"
"That's all. Let him ask me."
"And then you can ground him?" Yossarian asked.
"No. Then I can't ground him."
"You mean there's a catch?"
"Sure there's a catch," Doc Daneeka replied. "Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't
really crazy."
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the
face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be
grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly
more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly
them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to.
Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful
whistle.
"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.
"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.
Yossarian saw it clearly in all its spinning reasonableness. There was an elliptical precision about its
perfect pairs of parts that was graceful and shocking, like good modern art, and at times Yossarian wasn't quite
sure that he saw it at all, just the way he was never quite sure about good modern art or about the flies Orr saw
in Appleby's eyes. He had Orr's word to take for the flies in Appleby's eyes.
"Oh, they're there, all right," Orr had assured him about the flies in Appleby's eyes after Yossarian's fist
fight with Appleby in the officers' club, "although he probably doesn't even know it. That's why he can't see
things as they really are."
"How come he doesn't know it?" inquired Yossarian.
"Because he's got flies in his eyes," Orr explained with exaggerated patience. "How can he see he's got flies
Page 21
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
in his eyes if he's got flies in his eyes?"
It made as much sense as anything else, and Yossarian was willing to give Orr the benefit of the doubt
because Orr was from the wilderness outside New York City and knew so much more about wildlife than
Yossarian did, and because Orr, unlike Yossarian's mother, father, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, in-law, teacher,
spiritual leader, legislator, neighbor and newspaper, had never lied to him about anything crucial before.
Yossarian had mulled his newfound knowledge about Appleby over in private for a day or two and then
decided, as a good deed, to pass the word along to Appleby himself.
"Appleby, you've got flies in your eyes," he whispered helpfully as they passed by each other in the
doorway of the parachute tent on the day of the weekly milk run to Parma.
"What?" Appleby responded sharply, thrown into confusion by the fact that Yossarian had spoken to him at
all.
"You've got flies in your eyes," Yossarian repeated. "That's probably why you can't see them."
Appleby retreated from Yossarian with a look of loathing bewilderment and sulked in silence until he was
in the jeep with Havermeyer riding down the long, straight road to the briefing room, where Major Danby, the
fidgeting group operations officer, was waiting to conduct the preliminary briefing with all the lead pilots,
bombardiers and navigators. Appleby spoke in a soft voice so that he would not be heard by the driver or by
Captain Black, who was stretched out with his eyes closed in the front seat of the jeep.
"Havermeyer," he asked hesitantly. "Have I got flies in my eyes?"
Havermeyer blinked quizzically. "Sties?" he asked.
"No, flies," he was told.
Havermeyer blinked again. "Flies?"
"In my eyes."
"You must be crazy," Havermeyer said.
"No, I'm not crazy. Yossarian's crazy. Just tell me if I've got flies in my eyes or not. Go ahead. I can take
it."
Havermeyer popped another piece of peanut brittle into his mouth and peered very closely into Appleby's
eyes.
"I don't see any," he announced.
Appleby heaved an immense sigh of relief. Havermeyer had tiny bits of peanut brittle adhering to his lips,
chin and cheeks.
"You've got peanut brittle crumbs on your face," Appleby remarked to him.
"I'd rather have peanut brittle crumbs on my face than flies in my eyes," Havermeyer retorted.
The officers of the other five planes in each flight arrived in trucks for the general briefing that took place
thirty minutes later. The three enlisted men in each crew were not briefed at all, but were carried directly out
on the airfield to the separate planes in which they were scheduled to fly that day, where they waited around
with the ground crew until the officers with whom they had been scheduled to fly swung off the rattling
tailgates of the trucks delivering them and it was time to climb aboard and start up. Engines rolled over
disgruntedly on lollipop-shaped hardstands, resisting first, then idling smoothly awhile, and then the planes
lumbered around and nosed forward lamely over the pebbled ground like sightless, stupid, crippled things
until they taxied into the line at the foot of the landing strip and took off swiftly, one behind the other, in a
zooming, rising roar, banking slowly into formation over mottled treetops, and circling the field at even speed
until all the flights of six had been formed and then setting course over cerulean water on the first leg of the
journey to the target in northern Italy or France. The planes gained altitude steadily and were above nine
thousand feet by the time they crossed into enemy territory. One of the surprising things always was the sense
of calm and utter silence, broken only by the test rounds fired from the machine guns, by an occasional
toneless, terse remark over the intercom, and, at last, by the sobering pronouncement of the bombardier in
each plane that they were at the I.P. and about to turn toward the target. There was always sunshine, always a
tiny sticking in the throat from the rarefied air.
The B-25s they flew in were stable, dependable, dull-green ships with twin rudders and engines and wide
wings. Their single fault, from where Yossarian sat as a bombardier, was the tight crawlway separating the
bombardier's compartment in the plexiglass nose from the nearest escape hatch. The crawlway was a narrow,
Page 22
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
square, cold tunnel hollowed out beneath the flight controls, and a large man like Yossarian could squeeze
through only with difficulty. A chubby, moon-faced navigator with little reptilian eyes and a pipe like Aarfy's
had trouble, too, and Yossarian used to chase him back from the nose as they turned toward the target, now
minutes away. There was a time of tension then, a time of waiting with nothing to hear and nothing to see and
nothing to do but wait as the antiaircraft guns below took aim and made ready to knock them all sprawling
into infinite sleep if they could.
The crawlway was Yossarian's lifeline to outside from a plane about to fall, but Yossarian swore at it with
seething antagonism, reviled it as an obstacle put there by providence as part of the plot that would destroy
him. There was room for an additional escape hatch right there in the nose of a B-25, but there was no escape
hatch. Instead there was the crawlway, and since the mess on the mission over Avignon he had learned to
detest every mammoth inch of it, for it slung him seconds and seconds away from his parachute, which was
too bulky to be taken up front with him, and seconds and seconds more after that away from the escape hatch
on the floor between the rear of the elevated flight deck and the feet of the faceless top turret gunner mounted
high above. Yossarian longed to be where Aarfy could be once Yossarian had chased him back from the nose;
Yossarian longed to sit on the floor in a huddled ball right on top of the escape hatch inside a sheltering igloo
of extra flak suits that he would have been happy to carry along with him, his parachute already hooked to his
harness where it belonged, one fist clenching the red-handled rip cord, one fist gripping the emergency hatch
release that would spill him earthward into the air at the first dreadful squeal of destruction. That was where he
wanted to be if he had to be there at all, instead of hung out there in front like some goddam cantilevered
goldfish in some goddam cantilevered goldfish bowl while the goddam foul black tiers of flak were bursting
and booming and billowing all around and above and below him in a climbing, cracking, staggered, banging,
phantasmagorical, cosmological wickedness that jarred and tossed and shivered, clattered and pierced, and
threatened to annihilate them all in one splinter of a second in one vast flash of fire.
Aarfy had been no use to Yossarian as a navigator or as anything else, and Yossarian drove him back from
the nose vehemently each time so that they would not clutter up each other's way if they had to scramble
suddenly for safety. Once Yossarian had driven him back from the nose, Aarfy was free to cower on the floor
where Yossarian longed to cower, but he stood bolt upright instead with his stumpy arms resting comfortably
on the backs of the pilot's and co-pilot's seats, pipe in hand, making affable small talk to McWatt and whoever
happened to be co-pilot and pointing out amusing trivia in the sky to the two men, who were too busy to be
interested. McWatt was too busy responding at the controls to Yossarian's strident instructions as Yossarian
slipped the plane in on the bomb run and then whipped them all away violently around the ravenous pillars of
exploding shells with curt, shrill, obscene commands to McWatt that were much like the anguished, entreating
nightmare yelpings of Hungry Joe in the dark. Aarfy would puff reflectively on his pipe throughout the whole
chaotic clash, gazing with unruffled curiosity at the war through McWatt's window as though it were a remote
disturbance that could not affect him. Aarfy was a dedicated fraternity man who loved cheerleading and class
reunions and did not have brains enough to be afraid. Yossarian did have brains enough and was, and the only
thing that stopped him from abandoning his post under fire and scurrying back through the crawlway like a
yellow-bellied rat was his unwillingness to entrust the evasive action out of the target area to anybody else.
There was nobody else in the world he would honor with so great a responsibility. There was nobody else he
knew who was as big a coward. Yossarian was the best man in the group at evasive action, but had no idea
why.
There was no established procedure for evasive action. All you needed was fear, and Yossarian had plenty
of that, more fear than Orr or Hungry Joe, more fear than Dunbar, who had resigned himself submissively to
the idea that he must die someday. Yossarian had not resigned himself to that idea, and he bolted for his life
wildly on each mission the instant his bombs were away, hollering, "Hard, hard, hard, hard, you bastard,
hard!" at McWatt and hating McWatt viciously all the time as though McWatt were to blame for their being
up there at all to be rubbed out by strangers, and everybody else in the plane kept off the intercom, except for
the pitiful time of the mess on the mission to Avignon when Dobbs went crazy in mid-air and began weeping
pathetically for help.
"Help him, help him," Dobbs sobbed. "Help him, help him."
"Help who? Help who?" called back Yossarian, once he had plugged his headset back into the intercom
Page 23
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
system, after it had been jerked out when Dobbs wrested the controls away from Huple and hurled them all
down suddenly into the deafening, paralyzing, horrifying dive which had plastered Yossarian helplessly to the
ceiling of the plane by the top of his head and from which Huple had rescued them just in time by seizing the
controls back from Dobbs and leveling the ship out almost as suddenly right back in the middle of the
buffeting layer of cacophonous flak from which they had escaped successfully only a moment before. Oh,
God! Oh, God, oh, God, Yossarian had been pleading wordlessly as he dangled from the ceiling of the nose of
the ship by the top of his head, unable to move.
"The bombardier, the bombardier," Dobbs answered in a cry when Yossarian spoke. "He doesn't answer, he
doesn't answer. Help the bombardier, help the bombardier."
"I'm the bombardier," Yossarian cried back at him. "I'm the bombardier. I'm all right. I'm all right."
"Then help him, help him," Dobbs begged. "Help him, help him."
And Snowden lay dying in back.
6 HUNGRY JOE
Hungry Joe did have fifty missions, but they were no help. He had his bags packed and was waiting again
to go home. At night he had eerie, ear-splitting nightmares that kept everyone in the squadron awake but
Huple, the fifteen-year-old pilot who had lied about his age to get into the Army and lived with his pet cat in
the same tent with Hungry Joe. Huple was a light sleeper, but claimed he never heard Hungry Joe scream.
Hungry Joe was sick.
"So what?" Doc Daneeka snarled resentfully. "I had it made, I tell you. Fifty grand a year I was knocking
down, and almost all of it tax-free, since I made my customers pay me in cash. I had the strongest trade
association in the world backing me up. And look what happened. Just when I was all set to really start
stashing it away, they had to manufacture fascism and start a war horrible enough to affect even me. I gotta
laugh when I hear someone like Hungry Joe screaming his brains out every night. I really gotta laugh. He's
sick? How does he think I feel?"
Hungry Joe was too firmly embedded in calamities of his own to care how Doc Daneeka felt. There were
the noises, for instance. Small ones enraged him and he hollered himself hoarse at Aarfy for the wet, sucking
sounds he made puffing on his pipe, at Orr for tinkering, at McWatt for the explosive snap he gave each card
he turned over when he dealt at blackjack or poker, at Dobbs for letting his teeth chatter as he went blundering
clumsily about bumping into things. Hungry Joe was a throbbing, ragged mass of motile irritability. The
steady ticking of a watch in a quiet room crashed like torture against his unshielded brain.
"Listen, kid," he explained harshly to Huple very late one evening, "if you want to live in this tent, you've
got to do like I do. You've got to roll your wrist watch up in a pair of wool socks every night and keep it on the
bottom of your foot locker on the other side of the room."
Huple thrust his jaw out defiantly to let Hungry Joe know he couldn't be pushed around and then did
exactly as he had been told.
Hungry Joe was a jumpy, emaciated wretch with a fleshless face of dingy skin and bone and twitching
veins squirming subcutaneously in the blackened hollows behind his eyes like severed sections of snake. It
was a desolate, cratered face, sooty with care like an abandoned mining town. Hungry Joe ate voraciously,
gnawed incessantly at the tips of his fingers, stammered, choked, itched, sweated, salivated, and sprang from
spot to spot fanatically with an intricate black camera with which he was always trying to take pictures of
naked girls. They never came out. He was always forgetting to put film in the camera or turn on lights or
remove the cover from the lens opening. It wasn't easy persuading naked girls to pose, but Hungry Joe had the
knack.
"Me big man," he would shout. "Me big photographer from Life magazine. Big picture on heap big cover.
Si, si, si! Hollywood star. Multi dinero. Multi divorces. Multi ficky-fick all day long."
Few women anywhere could resist such wily cajolery, and prostitutes would spring to their feet eagerly and
hurl themselves into whatever fantastic poses he requested for them. Women killed Hungry Joe. His response
to them as sexual beings was one of frenzied worship and idolatry. They were lovely, satisfying, maddening
manifestations of the miraculous, instruments of pleasure too powerful to be measured, too keen to be
endured, and too exquisite to be intended for employment by base, unworthy man. He could interpret their
Page 24
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
naked presence in his hands only as a cosmic oversight destined to be rectified speedily, and he was driven
always to make what carnal use of them he could in the fleeting moment or two he felt he had before Someone
caught wise and whisked them away. He could never decide whether to furgle them or photograph them, for
he had found it impossible to do both simultaneously. In fact, he was finding it almost impossible to do either,
so scrambled were his powers of performance by the compulsive need for haste that invariably possessed him.
The pictures never came out, and Hungry Joe never got in. The odd thing was that in civilian life Hungry Joe
really had been a photographer for Life magazine.
He was a hero now, the biggest hero the Air Force had, Yossarian felt, for he had flown more combat tours
of duty than any other hero the Air Force had. He had flown six combat tours of duty. Hungry Joe had finished
flying his first combat tour of duty when twenty-five missions were all that were necessary for him to pack his
bags, write happy letters home and begin hounding Sergeant Towser humorously for the arrival of the orders
rotating him back to the States. While he waited, he spent each day shuffling rhythmically around the entrance
of the operations tent, making boisterous wisecracks to everybody who came by and jocosely calling Sergeant
Towser a lousy son of a bitch every time Sergeant Towser popped out of the orderly room.
Hungry Joe had finished flying his first twenty-five missions during the week of the Salerno beachhead,
when Yossarian was laid up in the hospital with a burst of clap he had caught on a low-level mission over a
Wac in bushes on a supply flight to Marrakech. Yossarian did his best to catch up with Hungry Joe and almost
did, flying six missions in six days, but his twenty-third mission was to Arezzo, where Colonel Nevers was
killed, and that was as close as he had ever been able to come to going home. The next day Colonel Cathcart
was there, brimming with tough pride in his new outfit and celebrating his assumption of command by raising
the number of missions required from twenty-five to thirty. Hungry Joe unpacked his bags and rewrote the
happy letters home. He stopped hounding Sergeant Towser humorously. He began hating Sergeant Towser,
focusing all blame upon him venomously, even though he knew Sergeant Towser had nothing to do with the
arrival of Colonel Cathcart or the delay in the processing of shipping orders that might have rescued him seven
days earlier and five times since.
Hungry Joe could no longer stand the strain of waiting for shipping orders and crumbled promptly into ruin
every time he finished another tour of duty. Each time he was taken off combat status, he gave a big party for
the little circle of friends he had. He broke out the bottles of bourbon he had managed to buy on his four-day
weekly circuits with the courier plane and laughed, sang, shuffled and shouted in a festival of inebriated
ecstasy until he could no longer keep awake and receded peacefully into slumber. As soon as Yossarian,
Nately and Dunbar put him to bed he began screaming in his sleep. In the morning he stepped from his tent
looking haggard, fearful and guilt-ridden, an eaten shell of a human building rocking perilously on the brink of
collapse.
The nightmares appeared to Hungry Joe with celestial punctuality every single night he spent in the
squadron throughout the whole harrowing ordeal when he was not flying combat missions and was waiting
once again for the orders sending him home that never came. Impressionable men in the squadron like Dobbs
and Captain Flume were so deeply disturbed by Hungry Joe's shrieking nightmares that they would begin to
have shrieking nightmares of their own, and the piercing obscenities they flung into the air every night from
their separate places in the squadron rang against each other in the darkness romantically like the mating calls
of songbirds with filthy minds. Colonel Korn acted decisively to arrest what seemed to him to be the
beginning of an unwholesome trend in Major Major's squadron. The solution he provided was to have Hungry
Joe fly the courier ship once a week, removing him from the squadron for four nights, and the remedy, like all
Colonel Korn's remedies, was successful.
Every time Colonel Cathcart increased the number of missions and returned Hungry Joe to combat duty,
the nightmares stopped and Hungry Joe settled down into a normal state of terror with a smile of relief.
Yossarian read Hungry Joe's shrunken face like a headline. It was good when Hungry Joe looked bad and
terrible when Hungry Joe looked good. Hungry Joe's inverted set of responses was a curious phenomenon to
everyone but Hungry Joe, who denied the whole thing stubbornly.
"Who dreams?" he answered, when Yossarian asked him what he dreamed about.
"Joe, why don't you go see Doc Daneeka?" Yossarian advised.
"Why should I go see Doc Daneeka? I'm not sick."
Page 25
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
"What about your nightmares?"
"I don't have nightmares," Hungry Joe lied.
"Maybe he can do something about them."
"There's nothing wrong with nightmares," Hungry Joe answered. "Everybody has nightmares."
Yossarian thought he had him. "Every night?" he asked.
"Why not every night?" Hungry Joe demanded.
And suddenly it all made sense. Why not every night, indeed? It made sense to cry out in pain every night.
It made more sense than Appleby, who was a stickler for regulations and had ordered Kraft to order Yossarian
to take his Atabrine tablets on the flight overseas after Yossarian and Appleby had stopped talking to each
other. Hungry Joe made more sense than Kraft, too, who was dead, dumped unceremoniously into doom over
Ferrara by an exploding engine after Yossarian took his flight of six planes in over the target a second time.
The group had missed the bridge at Ferrara again for the seventh straight day with the bombsight that could
put bombs into a pickle barrel at forty thousand feet, and one whole week had already passed since Colonel
Cathcart had volunteered to have his men destroy the bridge in twenty-four hours. Kraft was a skinny,
harmless kid from Pennsylvania who wanted only to be liked, and was destined to be disappointed in even so
humble and degrading an ambition. Instead of being liked, he was dead, a bleeding cinder on the barbarous
pile whom nobody had heard in those last precious moments while the plane with one wing plummeted. He
had lived innocuously for a little while and then had gone down in flame over Ferrara on the seventh day,
while God was resting, when McWatt turned and Yossarian guided him in over the target on a second bomb
run because Aarfy was confused and Yossarian had been unable to drop his bombs the first time.
"I guess we do have to go back again, don't we?" McWatt had said somberly over the intercom.
"I guess we do," said Yossarian.
"Do we?" said McWatt.
"Yeah."
"Oh, well," sang McWatt, "what the hell."
And back they had gone while the planes in the other flights circled safely off in the distance and every
crashing cannon in the Hermann Goering Division below was busy crashing shells this time only at them.
Colonel Cathcart had courage and never hesitated to volunteer his men for any target available. No target
was too dangerous for his group to attack, just as no shot was too difficult for Appleby to handle on the
ping-pong table. Appleby was a good pilot and a superhuman ping-pong player with flies in his eyes who
never lost a point. Twenty-one serves were all it ever took for Appleby to disgrace another opponent. His
prowess on the ping-pong table was legendary, and Appleby won every game he started until the night Orr got
tipsy on gin and juice and smashed open Appleby's forehead with his paddle after Appleby had smashed back
each of Orr's first five serves. Orr leaped on top of the table after hurling his paddle and came sailing off the
other end in a running broad jump with both feet planted squarely in Appleby's face. Pandemonium broke
loose. It took almost a full minute for Appleby to disentangle himself from Orr's flailing arms and legs and
grope his way to his feet, with Orr held off the ground before him by the shirt front in one hand and his other
arm drawn back in a fist to smite him dead, and at that moment Yossarian stepped forward and took Orr away
from him. It was a night of surprises for Appleby, who was as large as Yossarian and as strong and who swung
at Yossarian as hard as he could with a punch that flooded Chief White Halfoat with such joyous excitement
that he turned and busted Colonel Moodus in the nose with a punch that filled General Dreedle with such
mellow gratification that he had Colonel Cathcart throw the chaplain out of the officers' club and ordered
Chief White Halfoat moved into Doc Daneeka's tent, where he could be under a doctor's care twenty-four
hours a day and be kept in good enough physical condition to bust Colonel Moodus in the nose again
whenever General Dreedle wanted him to. Sometimes General Dreedle made special trips down from Wing
Headquarters with Colonel Moodus and his nurse just to have Chief White Halfoat bust his son-in-law in the
nose.
Chief White Halfoat would much rather have remained in the trailer he shared with Captain Flume, the
silent, haunted squadron public-relations officer who spent most of each evening developing the pictures he
took during the day to be sent out with his publicity releases. Captain Flume spent as much of each evening as
he could working in his darkroom and then lay down on his cot with his fingers crossed and a rabbit's foot
Page 26
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
around his neck and tried with all his might to stay awake. He lived in mortal fear of Chief White Halfoat.
Captain Flume was obsessed with the idea that Chief White Halfoat would tiptoe up to his cot one night when
he was sound asleep and slit his throat open for him from ear to ear. Captain Flume had obtained this idea
from Chief White Halfoat himself, who did tiptoe up to his cot one night as he was dozing off, to hiss
portentously that one night when he, Captain Flume, was sound asleep he, Chief White Halfoat, was going to
slit his throat open for him from ear to ear. Captain Flume turned to ice, his eyes, flung open wide, staring
directly up into Chief White Halfoat's, glinting drunkenly only inches away.
"Why?" Captain Flume managed to croak finally.
"Why not?" was Chief White Halfoat's answer.
Each night after that, Captain Flume forced himself to keep awake as long as possible. He was aided
immeasurably by Hungry Joe's nightmares. Listening so intently to Hungry Joe's maniacal howling night after
night, Captain Flume grew to hate him and began wishing that Chief White Halfoat would tiptoe up to his cot
one night and slit his throat open for him from ear to ear. Actually, Captain Flume slept like a log most nights
and merely dreamed he was awake. So convincing were these dreams of lying awake that he woke from them
each morning in complete exhaustion and fell right back to sleep.
Chief White Halfoat had grown almost fond of Captain Flume since his amazing metamorphosis. Captain
Flume had entered his bed that night a buoyant extrovert and left it the next morning a brooding introvert, and
Chief White Halfoat proudly regarded the new Captain Flume as his own creation. He had never intended to
slit Captain Flume's throat open for him from ear to ear. Threatening to do so was merely his idea of a joke,
like dying of pneumonia, busting Colonel Moodus in the nose or challenging Doc Daneeka to Indian wrestle.
All Chief White Halfoat wanted to do when he staggered in drunk each night was go right to sleep, and
Hungry Joe often made that impossible. Hungry Joe's nightmares gave Chief White Halfoat the heebie-jeebies,
and he often wished that someone would tiptoe into Hungry Joe's tent, lift Huple's cat off his face and slit his
throat open for him from ear to ear, so that everybody in the squadron but Captain Flume could get a good
night's sleep.
Even though Chief White Halfoat kept busting Colonel Moodus in the nose for General Dreedle's benefit,
he was still outside the pale. Also outside the pale was Major Major, the squadron commander, who had found
that out the same time he found out that he was squadron commander from Colonel Cathcart, who came
blasting into the squadron in his hopped-up jeep the day after Major Duluth was killed over Perugia. Colonel
Cathcart slammed to a screeching stop inches short of the railroad ditch separating the nose of his jeep from
the lopsided basketball court on the other side, from which Major Major was eventually driven by the kicks
and shoves and stones and punches of the men who had almost become his friends.
"You're the new squadron commander," Colonel Cathcart had bellowed across the ditch at him. "But don't
think it means anything, because it doesn't. All it means is that you're the new squadron commander."
And Colonel Cathcart had roared away as abruptly as he'd come, whipping the jeep around with a vicious
spinning of wheels that sent a spray of fine grit blowing into Major Major's face. Major Major was
immobilized by the news. He stood speechless, lanky and gawking, with a scuffed basketball in his long hands
as the seeds of rancor sown so swiftly by Colonel Cathcart took root in the soldiers around him who had been
playing basketball with him and who had let him come as close to making friends with them as anyone had
ever let him come before. The whites of his moony eyes grew large and misty as his mouth struggled
yearningly and lost against the familiar, impregnable loneliness drifting in around him again like suffocating
fog.
Like all the other officers at Group Headquarters except Major Danby, Colonel Cathcart was infused with
the democratic spirit: he believed that all men were created equal, and he therefore spurned all men outside
Group Headquarters with equal fervor. Nevertheless, he believed in his men. As he told them frequently in the
briefing room, he believed they were at least ten missions better than any other outfit and felt that any who did
not share this confidence he had placed in them could get the hell out. The only way they could get the hell
out, though, as Yossarian learned when he flew to visit ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen, was by flying the extra ten
missions.
"I still don't get it," Yossarian protested. "Is Doc Daneeka right or isn't he?"
"How many did he say?"
Page 27
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
"Forty."
"Daneeka was telling the truth," ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen admitted. "Forty missions is all you have to fly as
far as Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters is concerned."
Yossarian was jubilant. "Then I can go home, right? I've got forty-eight."
"No, you can't go home," ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen corrected him. "Are you crazy or something?"
"Why not?"
"Catch-22."
"Catch-22?" Yossarian was stunned. "What the hell has Catch-22 got to do with it?"
"Catch-22," Doc Daneeka answered patiently, when Hungry Joe had flown Yossarian back to Pianosa,
"says you've always got to do what your commanding officer tells you to."
"But Twenty-seventh Air Force says I can go home with forty missions."
"But they don't say you have to go home. And regulations do say you have to obey every order. That's the
catch. Even if the colonel were disobeying a Twenty-seventh Air Force order by making you fly more
missions, you'd still have to fly them, or you'd be guilty of disobeying an order of his. And then
Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters would really jump on you."
Yossarian slumped with disappointment. "Then I really have to fly the fifty missions, don't I?" he grieved.
"The fifty-five," Doc Daneeka corrected him.
"What fifty-five?"
"The fifty-five missions the colonel now wants all of you to fly."
Hungry Joe heaved a huge sigh of relief when he heard Doc Daneeka and broke into a grin. Yossarian
grabbed Hungry Joe by the neck and made him fly them both right back to ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen.
"What would they do to me," he asked in confidential tones, "if I refused to fly them?"
"We'd probably shoot you," ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen replied.
"We?" Yossarian cried in surprise. "What do you mean, we? Since when are you on their side?"
"If you're going to be shot, whose side do you expect me to be on?" ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen retorted.
Yossarian winced. Colonel Cathcart had raised him again.
7 McWATT
Ordinarily, Yossarian's pilot was McWatt, who, shaving in loud red, clean pajamas outside his tent each
morning, was one of the odd, ironic, incomprehensible things surrounding Yossarian. McWatt was the craziest
combat man of them all probably, because he was perfectly sane and still did not mind the war. He was a
short-legged, wide-shouldered, smiling young soul who whistled bouncy show tunes continuously and turned
over cards with sharp snaps when he dealt at blackjack or poker until Hungry Joe disintegrated into quaking
despair finally beneath their cumulative impact and began ranting at him to stop snapping the cards.
"You son of a bitch, you only do it because it hurts me," Hungry Joe would yell furiously, as Yossarian
held him back soothingly with one hand. "That's the only reason he does it, because he likes to hear me
scream-you goddam son of a bitch!"
McWatt crinkled his fine, freckled nose apologetically and vowed not to snap the cards any more, but
always forgot. McWatt wore fleecy bedroom slippers with his red pajamas and slept between freshly pressed
colored bedsheets like the one Milo had retrieved half of for him from the grinning thief with the sweet tooth
in exchange for none of the pitted dates Milo had borrowed from Yossarian. McWatt was deeply impressed
with Milo, who, to the amusement of Corporal Snark, his mess sergeant, was already buying eggs for seven
cents apiece and selling them for five cents. But McWatt was never as impressed with Milo as Milo had been
with the letter Yossarian had obtained for his liver from Doc Daneeka.
"What's this?" Milo had cried out in alarm, when he came upon the enormous corrugated carton filled with
packages of dried fruit and cans of fruit juices and desserts that two of the Italian laborers Major --- de
Coverley had kidnaped for his kitchen were about to carry off to Yossarian's tent.
"This is Captain Yossarian, sir," said Corporal Snark with a superior smirk. Corporal Snark was an
intellectual snob who felt he was twenty years ahead of his time and did not enjoy cooking down to the
masses. "He has a letter from Doc Daneeka entitling him to all the fruit and fruit juices he wants."
"What's this?" cried out Yossarian, as Milo went white and began to sway.
Page 28
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
"This is Lieutenant Milo Minderbinder, sir," said Corporal Snark with a derisive wink. "One of our new
pilots. He became mess officer while you were in the hospital this last time."
"What's this?" cried out McWatt, late in the afternoon, as Milo handed him half his bedsheet.
"It's half of the bedsheet that was stolen from your tent this morning," Milo explained with nervous
self-satisfaction, his rusty mustache twitching rapidly. "I'll bet you didn't even know it was stolen."
"Why should anyone want to steal half a bedsheet?" Yossarian asked.
Milo grew flustered. "You don't understand," he protested.
And Yossarian also did not understand why Milo needed so desperately to invest in the letter from Doc
Daneeka, which came right to the point. "Give Yossarian all the dried fruit and fruit juices he wants," Doc
Daneeka had written. "He says he has a liver condition."
"A letter like this," Milo mumbled despondently, "could ruin any mess officer in the world." Milo had
come to Yossarian's tent just to read the letter again, following his carton of lost provisions across the
squadron like a mourner. "I have to give you as much as you ask for. Why, the letter doesn't even say you have
to eat all of it yourself."
"And it's a good thing it doesn't," Yossarian told him, "because I never eat any of it. I have a liver
condition."
"Oh, yes, I forgot," said Milo, in a voice lowered deferentially. "Is it bad?"
"Just bad enough," Yossarian answered cheerfully.
"I see," said Milo. "What does that mean?"
"It means that it couldn't be better..."
"I don't think I understand."
"...without being worse. Now do you see?"
"Yes, now I see. But I still don't think I understand."
"Well, don't let it trouble you. Let it trouble me. You see, I don't really have a liver condition. I've just got
the symptoms. I have a Garnett-Fleischaker syndrome."
"I see," said Milo. "And what is a Garnett-Fleischaker syndrome?"
"A liver condition."
"I see," said Milo, and began massaging his black eyebrows together wearily with an expression of interior
pain, as though waiting for some stinging discomfort he was experiencing to go away. "In that case," he
continued finally, "I suppose you do have to be very careful about what you eat, don't you?.
"Very careful indeed," Yossarian told him. "A good Garnett-Fleischaker syndrome isn't easy to come by,
and I don't want to ruin mine. That's why I never eat any fruit."
"Now I do see," said Milo. "Fruit is bad for your liver?"
"No, fruit is good for my liver. That's why I never eat any."
"Then what do you do with it?" demanded Milo, plodding along doggedly through his mounting confusion
to fling out the question burning on his lips. "Do you sell it?"
"I give it away."
"To who?" cried Milo, in a voice cracking with dismay.
"To anyone who wants it," Yossarian shouted back.
Milo let out a long, melancholy wail and staggered back, beads of perspiration popping out suddenly all
over his ashen face. He tugged on his unfortunate mustache absently, his whole body trembling.
"I give a great deal of it to Dunbar," Yossarian went on.
"Dunbar?" Milo echoed numbly.
"Yes. Dunbar can eat all the fruit he wants and it won't do him a damned bit of good. I just leave the carton
right out there in the open for anyone who wants any to come and help himself. Aarfy comes here to get
prunes because he says he never gets enough prunes in the mess hall. You might look into that when you've
got some time because it's no fun having Aarfy hanging around here. Whenever the supply runs low I just
have Corporal Snark fill me up again. Nately always takes a whole load of fruit along with him whenever he
goes to Rome. He's in love with a whore there who hates me and isn't at all interested in him. She's got a kid
sister who never leaves them alone in bed together, and they live in an apartment with an old man and woman
and a bunch of other girls with nice fat thighs who are always kidding around also. Nately brings them a
Page 29
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
whole cartonful every time he goes."
"Does he sell it to them?"
"No, he gives it to them."
Milo frowned. "Well, I suppose that's very generous of him," he remarked with no enthusiasm.
"Yes, very generous," Yossarian agreed.
"And I'm sure it's perfectly legal," said Milo, "since the food is yours once you get it from me. I suppose
that with conditions as hard as they are, these people are very glad to get it."
"Yes, very glad," Yossarian assured him. "The two girls sell it all on the black market and use the money to
buy flashy costume jewelry and cheap perfume."
Milo perked up. "Costume jewelry!" he exclaimed. "I didn't know that. How much are they paying for
cheap perfume?"
"The old man uses his share to buy raw whiskey and dirty pictures. He's a lecher."
"A lecher?"
"You'd be surprised."
"Is there much of a market in Rome for dirty pictures?" Milo asked.
"You'd be surprised. Take Aarfy, for instance. Knowing him, you'd never suspect, would you?"
"That he's a lecher?"
"No, that he's a navigator. You know Captain Aardvaark, don't you? He's that nice guy who came up to you
your first day in the squadron and said, 'Aardvaark's my name, and navigation is my game.' He wore a pipe in
his face and probably asked you what college you went to. Do you know him?"
Milo was paying no attention. "Let me be your partner," he blurted out imploringly.
Yossarian turned him down, even though he had no doubt that the truckloads of fruit would be theirs to
dispose of any way they saw fit once Yossarian had requisitioned them from the mess hall with Doc Daneeka's
letter. Milo was crestfallen, but from that moment on he trusted Yossarian with every secret but one, reasoning
shrewdly that anyone who would not steal from the country he loved would not steal from anybody. Milo
trusted Yossarian with every secret but the location of the holes in the hills in which he began burying his
money once he returned from Smyrna with his planeload of figs and learned from Yossarian that a C.I.D. man
had come to the hospital. To Milo, who had been gullible enough to volunteer for it, the position of mess
officer was a sacred trust.
"I didn't even realize we weren't serving enough prunes," he had admitted that first day. "I suppose it's
because I'm still so new. I'll raise the question with my first chef."
Yossarian eyed him sharply. "What first chef?" he demanded. "You don't have a first chef."
"Corporal Snark," Milo explained, looking away a little guiltily. "He's the only chef I have, so he really is
my first chef, although I hope to move him over to the administrative side. Corporal Snark tends to be a little
too creative, I feel. He thinks being a mess sergeant is some sort of art form and is always complaining about
having to prostitute his talents. Nobody is asking him to do any such thing! Incidentally, do you happen to
know why he was busted to private and is only a corporal now?"
"Yes," said Yossarian. "He poisoned the squadron."
Milo went pale again. "He did what?"
"He mashed hundreds of cakes of GI soap into the sweet potatoes just to show that people have the taste of
Philistines and don't know the difference between good and bad. Every man in the squadron was sick.
Missions were canceled."
"Well!" Milo exclaimed, with thin-upped disapproval. "He certainly found out how wrong he was, didn't
he?"
"On the contrary," Yossarian corrected. "He found out how right he was. We packed it away by the plateful
and clamored for more. We all knew we were sick, but we had no idea we'd been poisoned."
Milo sniffed in consternation twice, like a shaggy brown hare. "In that case, I certainly do want to get him
over to the administrative side. I don't want anything like that happening while I'm in charge. You see," he
confided earnestly, "what I hope to do is give the men in this squadron the best meals in the whole world.
That's really something to shoot at, isn't it? If a mess officer aims at anything less, it seems to me, he has no
right being mess officer. Don't you agree?"
Page 30
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
Yossarian turned slowly to gaze at Milo with probing distrust. He saw a simple, sincere face that was
incapable of subtlety or guile, an honest, frank face with disunited large eyes, rusty hair, black eyebrows and
an unfortunate reddish-brown mustache. Milo had a long, thin nose with sniffing, damp nostrils heading
sharply off to the right, always pointing away from where the rest of him was looking. It was the face of a man
of hardened integrity who could no more consciously violate the moral principles on which his virtue rested
than he could transform himself into a despicable toad. One of these moral principles was that it was never a
sin to charge as much as the traffic would bear. He was capable of mighty paroxysms of righteous indignation,
and he was indignant as could be when he learned that a C.I.D. man was in the area looking for him.
"He's not looking for you," Yossarian said, trying to placate him. "He's looking for someone up in the
hospital who's been signing Washington Irving's name to the letters he's been censoring."
"I never signed Washington Irving's name to any letters," Milo declared.
"Of course not."
"But that's just a trick to get me to confess I've been making money in the black market." Milo hauled
violently at a disheveled hunk of his off-colored mustache. "I don't like guys like that. Always snooping
around people like us. Why doesn't the government get after ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen, if it wants to do some
good? He's got no respect for rules and regulations and keeps cutting prices on me."
Milo's mustache was unfortunate because the separated halves never matched. They were like Milo's
disunited eyes, which never looked at the same thing at the same time. Milo could see more things than most
people, but he could see none of them too distinctly. In contrast to his reaction to news of the C.I.D. man, he
learned with calm courage from Yossarian that Colonel Cathcart had raised the number of missions to
fifty-five.
"We're at war," he said. "And there's no use complaining about the number of missions we have to fly. If
the colonel says we have to fly fifty-five missions, we have to fly them."
"Well, I don't have to fly them," Yossarian vowed. "I'll go see Major Major."
"How can you? Major Major never sees anybody."
"Then I'll go back into the hospital."
"You just came out of the hospital ten days ago," Milo reminded him reprovingly. "You can't keep running
into the hospital every time something happens you don't like. No, the best thing to do is fly the missions. It's
our duty."
Milo had rigid scruples that would not even allow him to borrow a package of pitted dates from the mess
hall that day of McWatt's stolen bedsheet, for the food at the mess hall was all still the property of the
government.
"But I can borrow it from you," he explained to Yossarian, "since all this fruit is yours once you get it from
me with Doctor Daneeka's letter. You can do whatever you want to with it, even sell it at a high profit instead
of giving it away free. Wouldn't you want to do that together?"
"No."
Milo gave up. "Then lend me one package of pitted dates," he requested. "I'll give it back to you. I swear I
will, and there'll be a little something extra for you."
Milo proved good as his word and handed Yossarian a quarter of McWatt's yellow bedsheet when he
returned with the unopened package of dates and with the grinning thief with the sweet tooth who had stolen
the bedsheet from McWatt's tent. The piece of bedsheet now belonged to Yossarian. He had earned it while
napping, although he did not understand how. Neither did McWatt.
"What's this?" cried McWatt, staring in mystification at the ripped half of his bedsheet.
"It's half of the bedsheet that was stolen from your tent this morning," Milo explained. "I'll bet you didn't
even know it was stolen."
"Why should anyone want to steal half a bedsheet?" Yossarian asked.
Milo grew flustered. "You don't understand," he protested. "He stole the whole bedsheet, and I got it back
with the package of pitted dates you invested. That's why the quarter of the bedsheet is yours. You made a
very handsome return on your investment, particularly since you've gotten back every pitted date you gave
me." Milo next addressed himself to McWatt. "Half the bedsheet is yours because it was all yours to begin
with, and I really don't understand what you're complaining about, since you wouldn't have any part of it if
Page 31
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
Captain Yossarian and I hadn't intervened in your behalf."
"Who's complaining?" McWatt exclaimed. "I'm just trying to figure out what I can do with half a
bedsheet."
"There are lots of things you can do with half a bedsheet," Milo assured him. "The remaining quarter of the
bedsheet I've set aside for myself as a reward for my enterprise, work and initiative. It's not for myself, you
understand, but for the syndicate. That's something you might do with half the bedsheet. You can leave it in
the syndicate and watch it grow."
"What syndicate?"
"The syndicate I'd like to form someday so that I can give you men the good food you deserve."
"You want to form a syndicate?"
"Yes, I do. No, a mart. Do you know what a mart is?"
"It's a place where you buy things, isn't it?"
"And sell things," corrected Milo.
"And sell things."
"All my life I've wanted a mart. You can do lots of things if you've got a mart. But you've got to have a
mart."
"You want a mart?"
"And every man will have a share."
Yossarian was still puzzled, for it was a business matter, and there was much about business matters that
always puzzled him.
"Let me try to explain it again," Milo offered with growing weariness and exasperation, jerking his thumb
toward the thief with the sweet tooth, still grinning beside him. "I knew he wanted the dates more than the
bedsheet. Since he doesn't understand a word of English, I made it a point to conduct the whole transaction in
English."
"Why didn't you just hit him over the head and take the bedsheet away from him?" Yossarian asked.
Pressing his lips together with dignity, Milo shook his head. "That would have been most unjust," he
scolded firmly. "Force is wrong, and two wrongs never make a right. It was much better my way. When I held
the dates out to him and reached for the bedsheet, he probably thought I was offering to trade."
"What were you doing?"
"Actually, I was offering to trade, but since he doesn't understand English, I can always deny it."
"Suppose he gets angry and wants the dates?"
"Why, we'll just hit him over the head and take them away from him," Milo answered without hesitation.
He looked from Yossarian to McWatt and back again. "I really can't see what everyone is complaining about.
We're all much better off than before. Everybody is happy but this thief, and there's no sense worrying about
him, since he doesn't even speak our language and deserves whatever he gets. Don't you understand?"
But Yossarian still didn't understand either how Milo could buy eggs in Malta for seven cents apiece and
sell them at a profit in Pianosa for five cents.
8 LIEUTENANT SCHEISSKOPF
Not even Clevinger understood how Milo could do that, and Clevinger knew everything. Clevinger knew
everything about the war except why Yossarian had to die while Corporal Snark was allowed to live, or why
Corporal Snark had to die while Yossarian was allowed to live. It was a vile and muddy war, and Yossarian
could have lived without it-lived forever, perhaps. Only a fraction of his countrymen would give up their lives
to win it, and it was not his ambition to be among them. To die or not to die, that was the question, and
Clevinger grew limp trying to answer it. History did not demand Yossarian's premature demise, justice could
be satisfied without it, progress did not hinge upon it, victory did not depend on it. That men would die was a
matter of necessity; which men would die, though, was a matter of circumstance, and Yossarian was willing to
be the victim of anything but circumstance. But that was war. Just about all he could find in its favor was that
it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence of their parents.
Clevinger knew so much because Clevinger was a genius with a pounding heart and blanching face. He
was a gangling, gawky, feverish, famish-eyed brain. As a Harvard undergraduate he had won prizes in
Page 32
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
scholarship for just about everything, and the only reason he had not won prizes in scholarship for everything
else was that he was too busy signing petitions, circulating petitions and challenging petitions, joining
discussion groups and resigning from discussion groups, attending youth congresses, picketing other youth
congresses and organizing student committees in defense of dismissed faculty members. Everyone agreed that
Clevinger was certain to go far in the academic world. In short, Clevinger was one of those people with lots of
intelligence and no brains, and everyone knew it except those who soon found it out.
In short, he was a dope. He often looked to Yossarian like one of those people hanging around modern
museums with both eyes together on one side of a face. It was an illusion, of course, generated by Clevinger's
predilection for staring fixedly at one side of a question and never seeing the other side at all. Politically, he
was a humanitarian who did know right from left and was trapped uncomfortably between the two. He was
constantly defending his Communist friends to his right-wing enemies and his right-wing friends to his
Communist enemies, and he was thoroughly detested by both groups, who never defended him to anyone
because they thought he was a dope.
He was a very serious, very earnest and very conscientious dope. It was impossible to go to a movie with
him without getting involved afterwards in a discussion on empathy, Aristotle, universals, messages and the
obligations of the cinema as an art form in a materialistic society. Girls he took to the theater had to wait until
the first intermission to find out from him whether or not they were seeing a good or a bad play, and then
found out at once. He was a militant idealist who crusaded against racial bigotry by growing faint in its
presence. He knew everything about literature except how to enjoy it.
Yossarian tried to help him. "Don't be a dope," he had counseled Clevinger when they were both at cadet
school in Santa Ana, California.
"I'm going to tell him," Clevinger insisted, as the two of them sat high in the reviewing stands looking
down on the auxiliary paradeground at Lieutenant Scheisskopf raging back and forth like a beardless Lear.
"Why me?" Lieutenant Scheisskopf wailed.
"Keep still, idiot," Yossarian advised Clevinger avuncularly.
"You don't know what you're talking about," Clevinger objected.
"I know enough to keep still, idiot."
Lieutenant Scheisskopf tore his hair and gnashed his teeth. His rubbery cheeks shook with gusts of anguish.
His problem was a squadron of aviation cadets with low morale who marched atrociously in the parade
competition that took place every Sunday afternoon. Their morale was low because they did not want to march
in parades every Sunday afternoon and because Lieutenant Scheisskopf had appointed cadet officers from
their ranks instead of permitting them to elect their own.
"I want someone to tell me," Lieutenant Scheisskopf beseeched them all prayerfully. "If any of it is my
fault, I want to be told."
"He wants someone to tell him," Clevinger said.
"He wants everyone to keep still, idiot," Yossarian answered.
"Didn't you hear him?" Clevinger argued.
"I heard him," Yossarian replied. "I heard him say very loudly and very distinctly that he wants every one
of us to keep our mouths shut if we know what's good for us."
"I won't punish you," Lieutenant Scheisskopf swore.
"He says he won't punish me," said Clevinger.
"He'll castrate you," said Yossarian.
"I swear I won't punish you," said Lieutenant Scheisskopf. "I'll be grateful to the man who tells me the
truth."
"He'll hate you," said Yossarian. "To his dying day he'll hate you."
Lieutenant Scheisskopf was an R.O.T.C. graduate who was rather glad that war had broken out, since it
gave him an opportunity to wear an officer's uniform every day and say "Men" in a clipped, military voice to
the bunches of kids who fell into his clutches every eight weeks on their way to the butcher's block. He was an
ambitious and humorless Lieutenant Scheisskopf, who confronted his responsibilities soberly and smiled only
when some rival officer at the Santa Ana Army Air Force Base came down with a lingering disease. He had
poor eyesight and chronic sinus trouble, which made war especially exciting for him, since he was in no
Page 33
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
danger of going overseas. The best thing about him was his wife and the best thing about his wife was a girl
friend named Dori Duz who did whenever she could and had a Wac uniform that Lieutenant Scheisskopf's
wife put on every weekend and took off every weekend for every cadet in her husband's squadron who wanted
to creep into her.
Dori Duz was a lively little tart of copper-green and gold who loved doing it best in toolsheds, phone
booths, field houses and bus kiosks. There was little she hadn't tried and less she wouldn't. She was shameless,
slim, nineteen and aggressive. She destroyed egos by the score and made men hate themselves in the morning
for the way she found them, used them and tossed them aside. Yossarian loved her. She was a marvelous piece
of ass who found him only fair. He loved the feel of springy muscle beneath her skin everywhere he touched
her the only time she'd let him. Yossarian loved Dori Duz so much that he couldn't help flinging himself down
passionately on top of Lieutenant Scheisskopf's wife every week to revenge himself upon Lieutenant
Scheisskopf for the way Lieutenant Scheisskopf was revenging himself upon Clevinger.
Lieutenant Scheisskopf's wife was revenging herself upon Lieutenant Scheisskopf for some unforgettable
crime of his she couldn't recall. She was a plump, pink, sluggish girl who read good books and kept urging
Yossarian not to be so bourgeois without the r. She was never without a good book close by, not even when
she was lying in bed with nothing on her but Yossarian and Dori Duz's dog tags. She bored Yossarian, but he
was in love with her, too. She was a crazy mathematics major from the Wharton School of Business who
could not count to twenty-eight each month without getting into trouble.
"Darling, we're going to have a baby again," she would say to Yossarian every month.
"You're out of your goddam head," he would reply.
"I mean it, baby," she insisted.
"So do I."
"Darling, we're going to have a baby again," she would say to her husband.
"I haven't the time," Lieutenant Scheisskopf would grumble petulantly. "Don't you know there's a parade
going on?"
Lieutenant Scheisskopf cared very deeply about winning parades and about bringing Clevinger up on
charges before the Action Board for conspiring to advocate the overthrow of the cadet officers Lieutenant
Scheisskopf had appointed. Clevinger was a troublemaker and a wise guy. Lieutenant Scheisskopf knew that
Clevinger might cause even more trouble if he wasn't watched. Yesterday it was the cadet officers; tomorrow
it might be the world. Clevinger had a mind, and Lieutenant Scheisskopf had noticed that people with minds
tended to get pretty smart at times. Such men were dangerous, and even the new cadet officers whom
Clevinger had helped into office were eager to give damning testimony against him. The case against
Clevinger was open and shut. The only thing missing was something to charge him with.
It could not be anything to do with parades, for Clevinger took the parades almost as seriously as
Lieutenant Scheisskopf himself. The men fell out for the parades early each Sunday afternoon and groped their
way into ranks of twelve outside the barracks. Groaning with hangovers, they limped in step to their station on
the main paradeground, where they stood motionless in the heat for an hour or two with the men from the
sixty or seventy other cadet squadrons until enough of them had collapsed to call it a day. On the edge of the
field stood a row of ambulances and teams of trained stretcher bearers with walkie-talkies. On the roofs of the
ambulances were spotters with binoculars. A tally clerk kept score. Supervising this entire phase of the
operation was a medical officer with a flair for accounting who okayed pulses and checked the figures of the
tally clerk. As soon as enough unconscious men had been collected in the ambulances, the medical officer
signaled the bandmaster to strike up the band and end the parade. One behind the other, the squadrons
marched up the field, executed a cumbersome turn around the reviewing stand and marched down the field
and back to their barracks.
Each of the parading squadrons was graded as it marched past the reviewing stand, where a bloated colonel
with a big fat mustache sat with the other officers. The best squadron in each wing won a yellow pennant on a
pole that was utterly worthless. The best squadron on the base won a red pennant on a longer pole that was
worth even less, since the pole was heavier and was that much more of a nuisance to lug around all week until
some other squadron won it the following Sunday. To Yossarian, the idea of pennants as prizes was absurd.
No money went with them, no class privileges. Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies, all they signified
Page 34
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
was that the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else.
The parades themselves seemed equally absurd. Yossarian hated a parade. Parades were so martial. He
hated hearing them, hated seeing them, hated being tied up in traffic by them. He hated being made to take
part in them. It was bad enough being an aviation cadet without having to act like a soldier in the blistering
heat every Sunday afternoon. It was bad enough being an aviation cadet because it was obvious now that the
war would not be over before he had finished his training. That was the only reason he had volunteered for
cadet training in the first place. As a soldier who had qualified for aviation cadet training, he had weeks and
weeks of waiting for assignment to a class, weeks and weeks more to become a bombardier-navigator, weeks
and weeks more of operational training after that to prepare him for overseas duty. It seemed inconceivable
then that the war could last that long, for God was on his side, he had been told, and God, he had also been
told, could do whatever He wanted to. But the war was not nearly over, and his training was almost complete.
Lieutenant Scheisskopf longed desperately to win parades and sat up half the night working on it while his
wife waited amorously for him in bed thumbing through Krafft-Ebing to her favorite passages. He read books
on marching. He manipulated boxes of chocolate soldiers until they melted in his hands and then maneuvered
in ranks of twelve a set of plastic cowboys he had bought from a mail-order house under an assumed name and
kept locked away from everyone's eyes during the day. Leonardo's exercises in anatomy proved indispensable.
One evening he felt the need for a live model and directed his wife to march around the room.
"Naked?" she asked hopefully.
Lieutenant Scheisskopf smacked his hands over his eyes in exasperation. It was the despair of Lieutenant
Scheisskopf's life to be chained to a woman who was incapable of looking beyond her own dirty, sexual
desires to the titanic struggles for the unattainable in which noble man could become heroically engaged.
"Why don't you ever whip me?" she pouted one night.
"Because I haven't the time," he snapped at her impatiently. "I haven't the time. Don't you know there's a
parade going on?"
And he really did not have the time. There it was Sunday already, with only seven days left in the week to
get ready for the next parade. He had no idea where the hours went. Finishing last in three successive parades
had given Lieutenant Scheisskopf an unsavory reputation, and he considered every means of improvement,
even nailing the twelve men in each rank to a long two-by-four beam of seasoned oak to keep them in line.
The plan was not feasible, for making a ninety-degree turn would have been impossible without nickel-alloy
swivels inserted in the small of every man's back, and Lieutenant Scheisskopf was not sanguine at all about
obtaining that many nickel-alloy swivels from Quartermaster or enlisting the cooperation of the surgeons at
the hospital.
The week after Lieutenant Scheisskopf followed Clevinger's recommendation and let the men elect their
own cadet officers, the squadron won the yellow pennant. Lieutenant Scheisskopf was so elated by his
unexpected achievement that he gave his wife a sharp crack over the head with the pole when she tried to drag
him into bed to celebrate by showing their contempt for the sexual mores of the lower middle classes in
Western civilization. The next week the squadron won the red flag, and Lieutenant Scheisskopf was beside
himself with rapture. And the week after that his squadron made history by winning the red pennant two
weeks in a row! Now Lieutenant Scheisskopf had confidence enough in his powers to spring his big surprise.
Lieutenant Scheisskopf had discovered in his extensive research that the hands of marchers, instead of
swinging freely, as was then the popular fashion, ought never to be moved more than three inches from the
center of the thigh, which meant, in effect, that they were scarcely to be swung at all.
Lieutenant Scheisskopf's preparations were elaborate and clandestine. All the cadets in his squadron were
sworn to secrecy and rehearsed in the dead of night on the auxiliary parade-ground. They marched in darkness
that was pitch and bumped into each other blindly, but they did not panic, and they were learning to march
without swinging their hands. Lieutenant Scheisskopf's first thought had been to have a friend of his in the
sheet metal shop sink pegs of nickel alloy into each man's thighbones and link them to the wrists by strands of
copper wire with exactly three inches of play, but there wasn't time-there was never enough time-and good
copper wire was hard to come by in wartime. He remembered also that the men, so hampered, would be
unable to fall properly during the impressive fainting ceremony preceding the marching and that an inability to
faint properly might affect the unit's rating as a whole.
Page 35
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
And all week long he chortled with repressed delight at the officers' club. Speculation grew rampant among
his closest friends.
"I wonder what that Shithead is up to," Lieutenant Engle said.
Lieutenant Scheisskopf responded with a knowing smile to the queries of his colleagues. "You'll find out
Sunday," he promised. "You'll find out."
Lieutenant Scheisskopf unveiled his epochal surprise that Sunday with all the aplomb of an experienced
impresario. He said nothing while the other squadrons ambled past the reviewing stand crookedly in their
customary manner. He gave no sign even when the first ranks of his own squadron hove into sight with their
swingless marching and the first stricken gasps of alarm were hissing from his startled fellow officers. He held
back even then until the bloated colonel with the big fat mustache whirled upon him savagely with a purpling
face, and then he offered the explanation that made him immortal.
"Look, Colonel," he announced. "No hands."
And to an audience stilled with awe, he distributed certified photostatic copies of the obscure regulation on
which he had built his unforgettable triumph. This was Lieutenant Scheisskopf's finest hour. He won the
parade, of course, hands down, obtaining permanent possession of the red pennant and ending the Sunday
parades altogether, since good red pennants were as hard to come by in wartime as good copper wire.
Lieutenant Scheisskopf was made First Lieutenant Scheisskopf on the spot and began his rapid rise through
the ranks. There were few who did not hail him as a true military genius for his important discovery.
"That Lieutenant Scheisskopf," Lieutenant Travels remarked. "He's a military genius."
"Yes, he really is," Lieutenant Engle agreed. "It's a pity the schmuck won't whip his wife."
"I don't see what that has to do with it," Lieutenant Travers answered coolly. "Lieutenant Bemis whips Mrs.
Bemis beautifully every time they have sexual intercourse, and he isn't worth a farthing at parades."
"I'm talking about flagellation," Lieutenant Engle retorted. "Who gives a damn about parades?"
Actually, no one but Lieutenant Scheisskopf really gave a damn about the parades, least of all the bloated
colonel with the big fat mustache, who was chairman of the Action Board and began bellowing at Clevinger
the moment Clevinger stepped gingerly into the room to plead innocent to the charges Lieutenant Scheisskopf
had lodged against him. The colonel beat his fist down upon the table and hurt his hand and became so further
enraged with Clevinger that he beat his fist down upon the table even harder and hurt his hand some more.
Lieutenant Scheisskopf glared at Clevinger with tight lips, mortified by the poor impression Clevinger was
making.
"In sixty days you'll be fighting Billy Petrolle," the colonel with the big fat mustache roared. "And you
think it's a big fat joke."
"I don't think it's a joke, sir," Clevinger replied.
"Don't interrupt."
"Yes, sir."
"And say 'sir' when you do," ordered Major Metcalf.
"Yes, sir."
"Weren't you just ordered not to interrupt?" Major Metcalf inquired coldly.
"But I didn't interrupt, sir," Clevinger protested.
"No. And you didn't say 'sir,' either. Add that to the charges against him," Major Metcalf directed the
corporal who could take shorthand. "Failure to say 'sir' to superior officers when not interrupting them."
"Metcalf," said the colonel, "you're a goddam fool. Do you know that?"
Major Metcalf swallowed with difficulty. "Yes, Sir."
"Then keep your goddam mouth shut. You don't make sense."
There were three members of the Action Board, the bloated colonel with the big fat mustache, Lieutenant
Scheisskopf and Major Metcalf, who was trying to develop a steely gaze. As a member of the Action Board,
Lieutenant Scheisskopf was one of the judges who would weigh the merits of the case against Clevinger as
presented by the prosecutor. Lieutenant Scheisskopf was also the prosecutor. Clevinger had an officer
defending him. The officer defending him was Lieutenant Scheisskopf.
It was all very confusing to Clevinger, who began vibrating in terror as the colonel surged to his feet like a
gigantic belch and threatened to rip his stinking, cowardly body apart limb from limb. One day he had
Page 36
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
stumbled while marching to class; the next day he was formally charged with "breaking ranks while in
formation, felonious assault, indiscriminate behavior, mopery, high treason, provoking, being a smart guy,
listening to classical music and so on". In short, they threw the book at him, and there he was, standing in
dread before the bloated colonel, who roared once more that in sixty days he would be fighting Billy Petrolle
and demanded to know how the hell he would like being washed out and shipped to the Solomon Islands to
bury bodies. Clevinger replied with courtesy that he would not like it; he was a dope who would rather be a
corpse than bury one. The colonel sat down and settled back, calm and cagey suddenly, and ingratiatingly
polite.
"What did you mean," he inquired slowly, "when you said we couldn't punish you?"
"When, sir?"
"I'm asking the questions. You're answering them."
"Yes, sir. I-"
"Did you think we brought you here to ask questions and for me to answer them?"
"No, sir. I-"
"What did we bring you here for?"
"To answer questions."
"You're goddam right," roared the colonel. "Now suppose you start answering some before I break your
goddam head. Just what the hell did you mean, you bastard, when you said we couldn't punish you?"
"I don't think I ever made that statement, sir."
"Will you speak up, please? I couldn't hear you."
"Yes, sir. I-"
"Will you speak up, please? He couldn't hear you."
"Yes, sir. I-"
"Metcalf."
"Sir?"
"Didn't I tell you to keep your stupid mouth shut?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then keep your stupid mouth shut when I tell you to keep your stupid mouth shut. Do you understand?
Will you speak up, please? I couldn't hear you."
"Yes, sir. I-"
"Metcalf, is that your foot I'm stepping on?"
"No, sir. It must be Lieutenant Scheisskopf's foot."
"It isn't my foot," said Lieutenant Scheisskopf.
"Then maybe it is my foot after all," said Major Metcalf.
"Move it."
"Yes, sir. You'll have to move your foot first, colonel. It's on top of mine."
"Are you telling me to move my foot?"
"No, sir. Oh, no, sir."
"Then move your foot and keep your stupid mouth shut. Will you speak up, please? I still couldn't hear
you."
"Yes, sir. I said that I didn't say that you couldn't punish me."
"Just what the hell are you talking about?"
"I'm answering your question, sir."
"What question?"
"'Just what the hell did you mean, you bastard, when you said we couldn't punish you?'" said the corporal
who could take shorthand, reading from his steno pad.
"All right," said the colonel. "Just what the hell did you mean?"
"I didn't say you couldn't punish me, sir."
"When?" asked the colonel.
"When what, sir?"
"Now you're asking me questions again."
Page 37
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
"I'm sorry, sir. I'm afraid I don't understand your question."
"When didn't you say we couldn't punish you? Don't you understand my question?"
"No, sir. I don't understand."
"You've just told us that. Now suppose you answer my question."
"But how can I answer it?"
"That's another question you're asking me."
"I'm sorry, sir. But I don't know how to answer it. I never said you couldn't punish me."
"Now you're telling us when you did say it. I'm asking you to tell us when you didn't say it."
Clevinger took a deep breath. "I always didn't say you couldn't punish me, sir."
"That's much better, Mr. Clevinger, even though it is a barefaced lie. Last night in the latrine. Didn't you
whisper that we couldn't punish you to that other dirty son of a bitch we don't like? What's his name?"
"Yossarian, sir," Lieutenant Scheisskopf said.
"Yes, Yossarian. That's right. Yossarian. Yossarian? Is that his name? Yossarian? What the hell kind of a
name is Yossarian?"
Lieutenant Scheisskopf had the facts at his fingertips. "It's Yossarian's name, sir," he explained.
"Yes, I suppose it is. Didn't you whisper to Yossarian that we couldn't punish you?"
"Oh, no, sir. I whispered to him that you couldn't find me guilty-"
"I may be stupid," interrupted the colonel, "but the distinction escapes me. I guess I am pretty stupid,
because the distinction escapes me."
"W-"
"You're a windy son of a bitch, aren't you? Nobody asked you for clarification and you're giving me
clarification. I was making a statement, not asking for clarification. You are a windy son of a bitch, aren't
you?"
"No, Sir."
"No, sir? Are you calling me a goddam liar?"
"Oh, no, sir."
"Then you're a windy son of a bitch, aren't you?"
"No, sir."
"Are you a windy son of a bitch?"
"No, sir."
"Goddammit, you are trying to pick a fight with me. For two stinking cents I'd jump over this big fat table
and rip your stinking, cowardly body apart limb from limb."
"Do it! Do it!" cried Major Metcalf
"Metcalf, you stinking son of a bitch. Didn't I tell you to keep your stinking, cowardly, stupid mouth shut?"
"Yes, sir. I'm sorry, sir."
"Then suppose you do it."
"I was only trying to learn, sir. The only way a person can learn is by trying."
"Who says so?"
"Everybody says so, sir. Even Lieutenant Scheisskopf says so."
"Do you say so?"
"Yes, sir," said Lieutenant Scheisskopf. "But everybody says so."
"Well, Metcalf, suppose you try keeping that stupid mouth of yours shut, and maybe that's the way you'll
learn how. Now, where were we? Read me back the last line."
"'Read me back the last line,'" read back the corporal who could take shorthand.
"Not my last line, stupid!" the colonel shouted. "Somebody else's."
"'Read me back the last line,'" read back the corporal.
"That's my last line again!" shrieked the colonel, turning purple with anger.
"Oh, no, sir," corrected the corporal. "That's my last line. I read it to you just a moment ago. Don't you
remember, sir? It was only a moment ago."
"Oh, my God! Read me back his last line, stupid. Say, what the hell's your name, anyway?"
"Popinjay, sir."
Page 38
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
"Well, you're next, Popinjay. As soon as his trial ends, your trial begins. Get it?"
"Yes, sir. What will I be charged with?"
"What the hell difference does that make? Did you hear what he asked me? You're going to learn,
Popinjay-the minute we finish with Clevinger you're going to learn. Cadet Clevinger, what did-You are Cadet
Clevinger, aren't you, and not Popinjay?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good. What did-"
"I'm Popinjay, sir."
"Popinjay, is your father a millionaire, or a member of the Senate?"
"No, sir."
"Then you're up shit creek, Popinjay, without a paddle. He's not a general or a high-ranking member of the
Administration, is he?"
"No, sir."
"That's good. What does your father do?"
"He's dead, sir."
"That's very good. You really are up the creek, Popinjay. Is Popinjay really your name? Just what the hell
kind of a name is Popinjay anyway? I don't like it."
"It's Popinjay's name, sir," Lieutenant Scheisskopf explained.
"Well, I don't like it, Popinjay, and I just can't wait to rip your stinking, cowardly body apart limb from
limb. Cadet Clevinger, will you please repeat what the hell it was you did or didn't whisper to Yossarian late
last night in the latrine?"
"Yes, sir. I said that you couldn't find me guilty-"
"We'll take it from there. Precisely what did you mean, Cadet Clevinger, when you said we couldn't find
you guilty?"
"I didn't say you couldn't find me guilty, sir."
"When?"
"When what, sir?"
"Goddammit, are you going to start pumping me again?"
"No, sir. I'm sorry, sir."
"Then answer the question. When didn't you say we couldn't find you guilty?"
"Late last night in the latrine, sir."
"Is that the only time you didn't say it?"
"No, sir. I always didn't say you couldn't find me guilty, sir. What I did say to Yossarian was-"
"Nobody asked you what you did say to Yossarian. We asked you what you didn't say to him. We're not at
all interested in what you did say to Yossarian. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then we'll go on. What did you say to Yossarian?"
"I said to him, sir, that you couldn't find me guilty of the offense with which I am charged and still be
faithful to the cause of..."
"Of what? You're mumbling."
"Stop mumbling."
"Yes, sir."
"And mumble 'sir' when you do."
"Metcalf, you bastard!"
"Yes, sir," mumbled Clevinger. "Of justice, sir. That you couldn't find-"
"Justice?" The colonel was astounded. "What is justice?"
"Justice, sir-"
"That's not what justice is," the colonel jeered, and began pounding the table again with his big fat hand.
"That's what Karl Marx is. I'll tell you what justice is. Justice is a knee in the gut from the floor on the chin at
night sneaky with a knife brought up down on the magazine of a battleship sandbagged underhanded in the
dark without a word of warning. Garroting. That's what justice is when we've all got to be tough enough and
Page 39
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
rough enough to fight Billy Petrolle. From the hip. Get it?"
"No, sir."
"Don't sir me!"
"Yes, sir."
"And say 'sir' when you don't," ordered Major Metcalf.
Clevinger was guilty, of course, or he would not have been accused, and since the only way to prove it was
to find him guilty, it was their patriotic duty to do so. He was sentenced to walk fifty-seven punishment tours.
Popinjay was locked up to be taught a lesson, and Major Metcalf was shipped to the Solomon Islands to bury
bodies. A punishment tour for Clevinger was fifty minutes of a weekend hour spent pacing back and forth
before the provost marshal's building with a ton of an unloaded rifle on his shoulder.
It was all very confusing to Clevinger. There were many strange things taking place, but the strangest of
all, to Clevinger, was the hatred, the brutal, uncloaked, inexorable hatred of the members of the Action Board,
glazing their unforgiving expressions with a hard, vindictive surface, glowing in their narrowed eyes
malignantly like inextinguishable coals. Clevinger was stunned to discover it. They would have lynched him if
they could. They were three grown men and he was a boy, and they hated him and wished him dead. They had
hated him before he came, hated him while he was there, hated him after he left, carried their hatred for him
away malignantly like some pampered treasure after they separated from each other and went to their solitude.
Yossarian had done his best to warn him the night before. "You haven't got a chance, kid," he told him
glumly. "They hate Jews."
"But I'm not Jewish," answered Clevinger.
"It will make no difference," Yossarian promised, and Yossarian was right. "They're after everybody."
Clevinger recoiled from their hatred as though from a blinding light. These three men who hated him spoke
his language and wore his uniform, but he saw their loveless faces set immutably into cramped, mean lines of
hostility and understood instantly that nowhere in the world, not in all the fascist tanks or planes or
submarines, not in the bunkers behind the machine guns or mortars or behind the blowing flame throwers, not
even among all the expert gunners of the crack Hermann Goering Antiaircraft Division or among the grisly
connivers in all the beer halls in Munich and everywhere else, were there men who hated him more.
9 MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR
Major Major Major Major had had a difficult time from the start.
Like Minniver Cheevy, he had been born too late-exactly thirty-six hours too late for the physical
well-being of his mother, a gentle, ailing woman who, after a full day and a half's agony in the rigors of
childbirth, was depleted of all resolve to pursue further the argument over the new child's name. In the hospital
corridor, her husband moved ahead with the unsmiling determination of someone who knew what he was
about. Major Major's father was a towering, gaunt man in heavy shoes and a black woolen suit. He filled out
the birth certificate without faltering, betraying no emotion at all as he handed the completed form to the floor
nurse. The nurse took it from him without comment and padded out of sight. He watched her go, wondering
what she had on underneath.
Back in the ward, he found his wife lying vanquished beneath the blankets like a desiccated old vegetable,
wrinkled, dry and white, her enfeebled tissues absolutely still. Her bed was at the very end of the ward, near a
cracked window thickened with grime. Rain splashed from a moiling sky and the day was dreary and cold. In
other parts of the hospital chalky people with aged, blue lips were dying on time. The man stood erect beside
the bed and gazed down at the woman a long time.
"I have named the boy Caleb," he announced to her finally in a soft voice. "In accordance with your
wishes." The woman made no answer, and slowly the man smiled. He had planned it all perfectly, for his wife
was asleep and would never know that he had lied to her as she lay on her sickbed in the poor ward of the
county hospital.
From this meager beginning had sprung the ineffectual squadron commander who was now spending the
better part of each working day in Pianosa forging Washington Irving's name to official documents. Major
Major forged diligently with his left hand to elude identification, insulated against intrusion by his own
undesired authority and camouflaged in his false mustache and dark glasses as an additional safeguard against
Page 40
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
detection by anyone chancing to peer in through the dowdy celluloid window from which some thief had
carved out a slice. In between these two low points of his birth and his success lay thirty-one dismal years of
loneliness and frustration.
Major Major had been born too late and too mediocre. Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve
mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three. Even
among men lacking all distinction he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest,
and people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was.
Major Major had three strikes on him from the beginning-his mother, his father and Henry Fonda, to whom
he bore a sickly resemblance almost from the moment of his birth. Long before he even suspected who Henry
Fonda was, he found himself the subject of unflattering comparisons everywhere he went. Total strangers saw
fit to deprecate him, with the result that he was stricken early with a guilty fear of people and an obsequious
impulse to apologize to society for the fact that he was not Henry Fonda. It was not an easy task for him to go
through life looking something like Henry Fonda, but he never once thought of quitting, having inherited his
perseverance from his father, a lanky man with a good sense of humor.
Major Major's father was a sober God-fearing man whose idea of a good joke was to lie about his age. He
was a long-limbed farmer, a God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged individualist who held that
federal aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism. He advocated thrift and hard work and disapproved
of loose women who turned him down. His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing
any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not
grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn't earn on new land to
increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major's father worked without rest at not growing
alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at
the crack of noon every day just to make certain that the chores would not be done. He invested in land wisely
and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the county. Neighbors sought him out for advice
on all subjects, for he had made much money and was therefore wise. "As ye sow, so shall ye reap," he
counseled one and all, and everyone said, "Amen."
Major Major's father was an outspoken champion of economy in government, provided it did not interfere
with the sacred duty of government to pay farmers as much as they could get for all the alfalfa they produced
that no one else wanted or for not producing any alfalfa at all. He was a proud and independent man who was
opposed to unemployment insurance and never hesitated to whine, whimper, wheedle, and extort for as much
as he could get from whomever he could. He was a devout man whose pulpit was everywhere.
"The Lord gave us good farmers two strong hands so that we could take as much as we could grab with
both of them," he preached with ardor on the courthouse steps or in front of the A&P as he waited for the
bad-tempered gum-chewing young cashier he was after to step outside and give him a nasty look. "If the Lord
didn't want us to take as much as we could get," he preached, "He wouldn't have given us two good hands to
take it with." And the others murmured, "Amen."
Major Major's father had a Calvinist's faith in predestination and could perceive distinctly how everyone's
misfortunes but his own were expressions of God's will. He smoked cigarettes and drank whiskey, and he
thrived on good wit and stimulating intellectual conversation, particularly his own when he was lying about
his age or telling that good one about God and his wife's difficulties in delivering Major Major. The good one
about God and his wife's difficulties had to do with the fact that it had taken God only six days to produce the
whole world, whereas his wife had spent a full day and a half in labor just to produce Major Major. A lesser
man might have wavered that day in the hospital corridor, a weaker man might have compromised on such
excellent substitutes as Drum Major, Minor Major, Sergeant Major, or C. Sharp Major, but Major Major's
father had waited fourteen years for just such an opportunity, and he was not a person to waste it. Major
Major's father had a good joke about opportunity. "Opportunity only knocks once in this world," he would say.
Major Major's father repeated this good joke at every opportunity.
Being born with a sickly resemblance to Henry Fonda was the first of along series of practical jokes of
which destiny was to make Major Major the unhappy victim throughout his joyless life. Being born Major
Major Major was the second. The fact that he had been born Major Major Major was a secret known only to
his father. Not until Major Major was enrolling in kindergarten was the discovery of his real name made, and
Page 41
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
then the effects were disastrous. The news killed his mother, who just lost her will to live and wasted away
and died, which was just fine with his father, who had decided to marry the bad-tempered girl at the A&P if he
had to and who had not been optimistic about his chances of getting his wife off the land without paying her
some money or flogging her.
On Major Major himself the consequences were only slightly less severe. It was a harsh and stunning
realization that was forced upon him at so tender an age, the realization that he was not, as he had always been
led to believe, Caleb Major, but instead was some total stranger named Major Major Major about whom he
knew absolutely nothing and about whom nobody else had ever heard before. What playmates he had
withdrew from him and never returned, disposed, as they were, to distrust all strangers, especially one who
had already deceived them by pretending to be someone they had known for years. Nobody would have
anything to do with him. He began to drop things and to trip. He had a shy and hopeful manner in each new
contact, and he was always disappointed. Because he needed a friend so desperately, he never found one. He
grew awkwardly into a tall, strange, dreamy boy with fragile eyes and a very delicate mouth whose tentative,
groping smile collapsed instantly into hurt disorder at every fresh rebuff.
He was polite to his elders, who disliked him. Whatever his elders told him to do, he did. They told him to
look before he leaped, and he always looked before he leaped. They told him never to put off until the next
day what he could do the day before, and he never did. He was told to honor his father and his mother, and he
honored his father and his mother. He was told that he should not kill, and he did not kill, until he got into the
Army. Then he was told to kill, and he killed. He turned the other cheek on every occasion and always did
unto others exactly as he would have had others do unto him. When he gave to charity, his left hand never
knew what his right hand was doing. He never once took the name of the Lord his God in vain, committed
adultery or coveted his neighbor's ass. In fact, he loved his neighbor and never even bore false witness against
him. Major Major's elders disliked him because he was such a flagrant nonconformist.
Since he had nothing better to do well in, he did well in school. At the state university he took his studies
so seriously that he was suspected by the homosexuals of being a Communist and suspected by the
Communists of being a homosexual. He majored in English history, which was a mistake.
"English history!" roared the silver-maned senior Senator from his state indignantly. "What's the matter
with American history? American history is as good as any history in the world!"
Major Major switched immediately to American literature, but not before the F.B.I. had opened a file on
him. There were six people and a Scotch terrier inhabiting the remote farmhouse Major Major called home,
and five of them and the Scotch terrier turned out to be agents for the F.B.I. Soon they had enough derogatory
information on Major Major to do whatever they wanted to with him. The only thing they could find to do
with him, however, was take him into the Army as a private and make him a major four days later so that
Congressmen with nothing else on their minds could go trotting back and forth through the streets of
Washington, D.C., chanting, "Who promoted Major Major? Who promoted Major Major?"
Actually, Major Major had been promoted by an I.B.M. machine with a sense of humor almost as keen as
his father's. When war broke out, he was still docile and compliant. They told him to enlist, and he enlisted.
They told him to apply for aviation cadet training, and he applied for aviation cadet training, and the very next
night found himself standing barefoot in icy mud at three o'clock in the morning before a tough and belligerent
sergeant from the Southwest who told them he could beat hell out of any man in his outfit and was ready to
prove it. The recruits in his squadron had all been shaken roughly awake only minutes before by the sergeant's
corporals and told to assemble in front of the administration tent. It was still raining on Major Major. They fell
into ranks in the civilian clothes they had brought into the Army with them three days before. Those who had
lingered to put shoes and socks on were sent back to their cold, wet, dark tents to remove them, and they were
all barefoot in the mud as the sergeant ran his stony eyes over their faces and told them he could beat hell out
of any man in his outfit. No one was inclined to dispute him.
Major Major's unexpected promotion to major the next day plunged the belligerent sergeant into a
bottomless gloom, for he was no longer able to boast that he could beat hell out of any man in his outfit. He
brooded for hours in his tent like Saul, receiving no visitors, while his elite guard of corporals stood
discouraged watch outside. At three o'clock in the morning he found his solution, and Major Major and the
other recruits were again shaken roughly awake and ordered to assemble barefoot in the drizzly glare at the
Page 42
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
administration tent, where the sergeant was already waiting, his fists clenched on his hips cockily, so eager to
speak that he could hardly wait for them to arrive.
"Me and Major Major," he boasted, in the same tough, clipped tones of the night before, "can beat hell out
of any man in my outfit."
The officers on the base took action on the Major Major problem later that same day. How could they cope
with a major like Major Major? To demean him personally would be to demean all other officers of equal or
lesser rank. To treat him with courtesy, on the other hand, was unthinkable. Fortunately, Major Major had
applied for aviation cadet training. Orders transferring him away were sent to the mimeograph room late in the
afternoon, and at three o'clock in the morning Major Major was again shaken roughly awake, bidden
Godspeed by the sergeant and placed aboard a plane heading west.
Lieutenant Scheisskopf turned white as a sheet when Major Major reported to him in California with bare
feet and mudcaked toes. Major Major had taken it for granted that he was being shaken roughly awake again
to stand barefoot in the mud and had left his shoes and socks in the tent. The civilian clothing in which he
reported for duty to Lieutenant Scheisskopf was rumpled and dirty. Lieutenant Scheisskopf, who had not yet
made his reputation as a parader, shuddered violently at the picture Major Major would make marching
barefoot in his squadron that coming Sunday.
"Go to the hospital quickly," he mumbled, when he had recovered sufficiently to speak, "and tell them
you're sick. Stay there until your allowance for uniforms catches up with you and you have some money to
buy some clothes. And some shoes. Buy some shoes."
"Yes, sir."
"I don't think you have to call me 'sir,' sir," Lieutenant Scheisskopf pointed out. "You outrank me."
"Yes, sir. I may outrank you, sir, but you're still my commanding officer."
"Yes, sir, that's right," Lieutenant Scheisskopf agreed. "You may outrank me, sir, but I'm still your
commanding officer. So you better do what I tell you, sir, or you'll get into trouble. Go to the hospital and tell
them you're sick, sir. Stay there until your uniform allowance catches up with you and you have some money
to buy some uniforms."
"Yes, sir."
"And some shoes, sir. Buy some shoes the first chance you get, sir."
"Yes, sir. I will, sir."
"Thank you, sir."
Life in cadet school for Major Major was no different than life had been for him all along. Whoever he was
with always wanted him to be with someone else. His instructors gave him preferred treatment at every stage
in order to push him along quickly and be rid of him. In almost no time he had his pilot's wings and found
himself overseas, where things began suddenly to improve. All his life, Major Major had longed for but one
thing, to be absorbed, and in Pianosa, for a while, he finally was. Rank meant little to the men on combat duty,
and relations between officers and enlisted men were relaxed and informal. Men whose names he didn't even
know said "Hi" and invited him to go swimming or play basketball. His ripest hours were spent in the
day-long basketball games no one gave a damn about winning. Score was never kept, and the number of
players might vary from one to thirty-five. Major Major had never played basketball or any other game before,
but his great, bobbing height and rapturous enthusiasm helped make up for his innate clumsiness and lack of
experience. Major Major found true happiness there on the lopsided basketball court with the officers and
enlisted men who were almost his friends. If there were no winners, there were no losers, and Major Major
enjoyed every gamboling moment right up till the day Colonel Cathcart roared up in his jeep after Major
Duluth was killed and made it impossible for him ever to enjoy playing basketball there again.
"You're the new squadron commander," Colonel Cathcart had shouted rudely across the railroad ditch to
him. "But don't think it means anything, because it doesn't. All it means is that you're the new squadron
commander."
Colonel Cathcart had nursed an implacable grudge against Major Major for a long time. A superfluous
major on his rolls meant an untidy table of organization and gave ammunition to the men at Twenty-seventh
Air Force Headquarters who Colonel Cathcart was positive were his enemies and rivals. Colonel Cathcart had
been praying for just some stroke of good luck like Major Duluth's death. He had been plagued by one extra
Page 43
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
major; he now had an opening for one major. He appointed Major Major squadron commander and roared
away in his jeep as abruptly as he had come.
For Major Major, it meant the end of the game. His face flushed with discomfort, and he was rooted to the
spot in disbelief as the rain clouds gathered above him again. When he turned to his teammates, he
encountered a reef of curious, reflective faces all gazing at him woodenly with morose and inscrutable
animosity. He shivered with shame. When the game resumed, it was not good any longer. When he dribbled,
no one tried to stop him; when he called for a pass, whoever had the ball passed it; and when he missed a
basket, no one raced him for the rebound. The only voice was his own. The next day was the same, and the
day after that he did not come back.
Almost on cue, everyone in the squadron stopped talking to him and started staring at him. He walked
through life selfconsciously with downcast eyes and burning cheeks, the object of contempt, envy, suspicion,
resentment and malicious innuendo everywhere he went. People who had hardly noticed his resemblance to
Henry Fonda before now never ceased discussing it, and there were even those who hinted sinisterly that
Major Major had been elevated to squadron commander because he resembled Henry Fonda. Captain Black,
who had aspired to the position himself, maintained that Major Major really was Henry Fonda but was too
chickenshit to admit it.
Major Major floundered bewilderedly from one embarrassing catastrophe to another. Without consulting
him, Sergeant Towser had his belongings moved into the roomy trailer Major Duluth had occupied alone, and
when Major Major came rushing breathlessly into the orderly room to report the theft of his things, the young
corporal there scared him half out of his wits by leaping to his feet and shouting "Attention!" the moment he
appeared. Major Major snapped to attention with all the rest in the orderly room, wondering what important
personage had entered behind him. Minutes passed in rigid silence, and the whole lot of them might have
stood there at attention till doomsday if Major Danby had not dropped by from Group to congratulate Major
Major twenty minutes later and put them all at ease.
Major Major fared even more lamentably at the mess hall, where Milo, his face fluttery with smiles, was
waiting to usher him proudly to a small table he had set up in front and decorated with an embroidered
tablecloth and a nosegay of posies in a pink cut-glass vase. Major Major hung back with horror, but he was not
bold enough to resist with all the others watching. Even Havermeyer had lifted his head from his plate to gape
at him with his heavy, pendulous jaw. Major Major submitted meekly to Milo's tugging and cowered in
disgrace at his private table throughout the whole meal. The food was ashes in his mouth, but he swallowed
every mouthful rather than risk offending any of the men connected with its preparation. Alone with Milo
later, Major Major felt protest stir for the first time and said he would prefer to continue eating with the other
officers. Milo told him it wouldn't work.
"I don't see what there is to work," Major Major argued. "Nothing ever happened before."
"You were never the squadron commander before."
"Major Duluth was the squadron commander and he always ate at the same table with the rest of the men."
"It was different with Major Duluth, Sir."
"In what way was it different with Major Duluth?"
"I wish you wouldn't ask me that, sir," said Milo.
"Is it because I look like Henry Fonda?" Major Major mustered the courage to demand.
"Some people say you are Henry Fonda," Milo answered.
"Well, I'm not Henry Fonda," Major Major exclaimed, in a voice quavering with exasperation. "And I don't
look the least bit like him. And even if I do look like Henry Fonda, what difference does that make?"
"It doesn't make any difference. That's what I'm trying to tell you, sir. It's just not the same with you as it
was with Major Duluth."
And it just wasn't the same, for when Major Major, at the next meal, stepped from the food counter to sit
with the others at the regular tables, he was frozen in his tracks by the impenetrable wall of antagonism thrown
up by their faces and stood petrified with his tray quivering in his hands until Milo glided forward wordlessly
to rescue him, by leading him tamely to his private table. Major Major gave up after that and always ate at his
table alone with his back to the others. He was certain they resented him because he seemed too good to eat
with them now that he was squadron commander. There was never any conversation in the mess tent when
Page 44
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
Major Major was present. He was conscious that other officers tried to avoid eating at the same time, and
everyone was greatly relieved when he stopped coming there altogether and began taking his meals in his
trailer.
Major Major began forging Washington Irving's name to official documents the day after the first C.I.D.
man showed up to interrogate him about somebody at the hospital who had been doing it and gave him the
idea. He had been bored and dissatisfied in his new position. He had been made squadron commander but had
no idea what he was supposed to do as squadron commander, unless all he was supposed to do was forge
Washington Irving's name to official documents and listen to the isolated clinks and thumps of Major --- de
Coverley's horseshoes falling to the ground outside the window of his small office in the rear of the
orderly-room tent. He was hounded incessantly by an impression of vital duties left unfulfilled and waited in
vain for his responsibilities to overtake him. He seldom went out unless it was absolutely necessary, for he
could not get used to being stared at. Occasionally, the monotony was broken by some officer or enlisted man
Sergeant Towser referred to him on some matter that Major Major was unable to cope with and referred right
back to Sergeant Towser for sensible disposition. Whatever he was supposed to get done as squadron
commander apparently was getting done without any assistance from him. He grew moody and depressed. At
times he thought seriously of going with all his sorrows to see the chaplain, but the chaplain seemed so
overburdened with miseries of his own that Major Major shrank from adding to his troubles. Besides, he was
not quite sure if chaplains were for squadron commanders.
He had never been quite sure about Major --- de Coverley, either, who, when he was not away renting
apartments or kidnaping foreign laborers, had nothing more pressing to do than pitch horseshoes. Major Major
often paid strict attention to the horseshoes falling softly against the earth or riding down around the small
steel pegs in the ground. He peeked out at Major --- de Coverley for hours and marveled that someone so
august had nothing more important to do. He was often tempted to join Major --- de Coverley, but pitching
horseshoes all day long seemed almost as dull as signing "Major Major Major" to official documents, and
Major --- de Coverley's countenance was so forbidding that Major Major was in awe of approaching him.
Major Major wondered about his relationship to Major --- de Coverley and about Major --- de Coverley's
relationship to him. He knew that Major --- de Coverley was his executive officer, but he did not know what
that meant, and he could not decide whether in Major --- de Coverley he was blessed with a lenient superior or
cursed with a delinquent subordinate. He did not want to ask Sergeant Towser, of whom he was secretly
afraid, and there was no one else he could ask, least of all Major --- de Coverley. Few people ever dared
approach Major --- de Coverley about anything and the only officer foolish enough to pitch one of his
horseshoes was stricken the very next day with the worst case of Pianosan crud that Gus or Wes or even Doc
Daneeka had ever seen or even heard about. Everyone was positive the disease had been inflicted upon the
poor officer in retribution by Major --- de Coverley, although no one was sure how.
Most of the official documents that came to Major Major's desk did not concern him at all. The vast
majority consisted of allusions to prior communications which Major Major had never seen or heard of. There
was never any need to look them up, for the instructions were invariably to disregard. In the space of a single
productive minute, therefore, he might endorse twenty separate documents each advising him to pay
absolutely no attention to any of the others. From General Peckem's office on the mainland came prolix
bulletins each day headed by such cheery homilies as "Procrastination is the Thief of Time" and "Cleanliness
is Next to Godliness."
General Peckem's communications about cleanliness and procrastination made Major Major feel like a
filthy procrastinator, and he always got those out of the way as quickly as he could. The only official
documents that interested him were those occasional ones pertaining to the unfortunate second lieutenant who
had been killed on the mission over Orvieto less than two hours after he arrived on Pianosa and whose partly
unpacked belongings were still in Yossarian's tent. Since the unfortunate lieutenant had reported to the
operations tent instead of to the orderly room, Sergeant Towser had decided that it would be safest to report
him as never having reported to the squadron at all, and the occasional documents relating to him dealt with
the fact that he seemed to have vanished into thin air, which, in one way, was exactly what did happen to him.
In the long run, Major Major was grateful for the official documents that came to his desk, for sitting in his
office signing them all day long was a lot better than sitting in his office all day long not signing them. They
Page 45
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
gave him something to do.
Inevitably, every document he signed came back with a fresh page added for a new signature by him after
intervals of from two to ten days. They were always much thicker than formerly, for in between the sheet
bearing his last endorsement and the sheet added for his new endorsement were the sheets bearing the most
recent endorsements of all the other officers in scattered locations who were also occupied in signing their
names to that same official document. Major Major grew despondent as he watched simple communications
swell prodigiously into huge manuscripts. No matter how many times he signed one, it always came back for
still another signature, and he began to despair of ever being free of any of them. One day-it was the day after
the C.I.D. man's first visit-Major Major signed Washington Irving's name to one of the documents instead of
his own, just to see how it would feel. He liked it. He liked it so much that for the rest of that afternoon he did
the same with all the official documents. It was an act of impulsive frivolity and rebellion for which he knew
afterward he would be punished severely. The next morning he entered his office in trepidation and waited to
see what would happen. Nothing happened.
He had sinned, and it was good, for none of the documents to which he had signed Washington Irving's
name ever came back! Here, at last, was progress, and Major Major threw himself into his new career with
uninhibited gusto. Signing Washington Irving's name to official documents was not much of a career, perhaps,
but it was less monotonous than signing "Major Major Major." When Washington Irving did grow
monotonous, he could reverse the order and sign Irving Washington until that grew monotonous. And he was
getting something done, for none of the documents signed with either of these names ever came back to the
squadron.
What did come back, eventually, was a second C.I.D. man, masquerading as a pilot. The men knew he was
a C.I.D. man because he confided to them he was and urged each of them not to reveal his true identity to any
of the other men to whom he had already confided that he was a C.I.D. man.
"You're the only one in the squadron who knows I'm a C.I.D. man," he confided to Major Major, "and it's
absolutely essential that it remain a secret so that my efficiency won't be impaired. Do you understand?"
"Sergeant Towser knows."
"Yes, I know. I had to tell him in order to get in to see you. But I know he won't tell a soul under any
circumstances."
"He told me," said Major Major. "He told me there was a C.I.D. man outside to see me."
"That bastard. I'll have to throw a security check on him. I wouldn't leave any top-secret documents lying
around here if I were you. At least not until I make my report."
"I don't get any top-secret documents," said Major Major.
"That's the kind I mean. Lock them in your cabinet where Sergeant Towser can't get his hands on them."
"Sergeant Towser has the only key to the cabinet."
"I'm afraid we're wasting time," said the second C.I.D. man rather stiffly. He was a brisk, pudgy,
high-strung person whose movements were swift and certain. He took a number of photostats out of a large
red expansion envelope he had been hiding conspicuously beneath a leather flight jacket painted garishly with
pictures of airplanes flying through orange bursts of flak and with orderly rows of little bombs signifying
fifty-five combat missions flown. "Have you ever seen any of these?"
Major Major looked with a blank expression at copies of personal correspondence from the hospital on
which the censoring officer had written "Washington Irving" or "Irving Washington."
No.
"How about these?"
Major Major gazed next at copies of official documents addressed to him to which he had been signing the
same signatures.
"No."
"Is the man who signed these names in your squadron?"
"Which one? There are two names here."
"Either one. We figure that Washington Irving and Irving Washington are one man and that he's using two
names just to throw us off the track. That's done very often you know."
"I don't think there's a man with either of those names in my squadron."
Page 46
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
A look of disappointment crossed the second C.I.D. man's face. "He's a lot cleverer than we thought," he
observed. "He's using a third name and posing as someone else. And I think... yes, I think I know what that
third name is." With excitement and inspiration, he held another photostat out for Major Major to study. "How
about this?"
Major Major bent forward slightly and saw a copy of the piece of V mail from which Yossarian had
blacked out everything but the name Mary and on which he had written, "I yearn for you tragically. R. O.
Shipman, Chaplain, U.S. Army." Major Major shook his head.
"I've never seen it before."
"Do you know who R. O. Shipman is?"
"He's the group chaplain."
"That locks it up," said the second C.I.D. man. "Washington Irving is the group chaplain."
Major Major felt a twinge of alarm. "R. O. Shipman is the group chaplain," he corrected.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"Why should the group chaplain write this on a letter?"
"Perhaps somebody else wrote it and forged his name."
"Why should somebody want to forge the group chaplain's name?"
"To escape detection."
"You may be right," the second C.I.D. man decided after an instant's hesitation, and smacked his lips
crisply. "Maybe we're confronted with a gang, with two men working together who just happen to have
opposite names. Yes, I'm sure that's it. One of them here in the squadron, one of them up at the hospital and
one of them with the chaplain. That makes three men, doesn't it? Are you absolutely sure you never saw any of
these official documents before?"
"I would have signed them if I had."
"With whose name?" asked the second C.I.D. man cunningly. "Yours or Washington Irving's?"
"With my own name," Major Major told him. "I don't even know Washington Irving's name."
The second C.I.D. man broke into a smile.
"Major, I'm glad you're in the clear. It means we'll be able to work together, and I'm going to need every
man I can get. Somewhere in the European theater of operations is a man who's getting his hands on
communications addressed to you. Have you any idea who it can be?"
"No."
"Well, I have a pretty good idea," said the second C.I.D. man, and leaned forward to whisper
confidentially. "That bastard Towser. Why else would he go around shooting his mouth off about me? Now,
you keep your eyes open and let me know the minute you hear anyone even talking about Washington Irving.
I'll throw a security check on the chaplain and everyone else around here."
The moment he was gone, the first C.I.D. man jumped into Major Major's office through the window and
wanted to know who the second C.I.D. man was. Major Major barely recognized him.
"He was a C.I.D. man," Major Major told him.
"Like hell he was," said the first C.I.D. man. "I'm the C.I.D. man around here."
Major Major barely recognized him because he was wearing a faded maroon corduroy bathrobe with open
seams under both arms, linty flannel pajamas, and worn house slippers with one flapping sole. This was
regulation hospital dress, Major Major recalled. The man had added about twenty pounds and seemed bursting
with good health.
"I'm really a very sick man," he whined. "I caught cold in the hospital from a fighter pilot and came down
with a very serious case of pneumonia."
"I'm very sorry," Major Major said.
"A lot of good that does me," the C.I.D. man sniveled. "I don't want your sympathy. I just want you to
know what I'm going through. I came down to warn you that Washington Irving seems to have shifted his base
of operations from the hospital to your squadron. You haven't heard anyone around here talking about
Washington Irving, have you?"
"As a matter of fact, I have," Major Major answered.
Page 47
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
"That man who was just in here. He was talking about Washington Irving."
"Was he really?" the first C.I.D. man cried with delight. "This might be just what we needed to crack the
case wide open! You keep him under surveillance twenty-four hours a day while I rush back to the hospital
and write my superiors for further instructions." The C.I.D. man jumped out of Major Major's office through
the window and was gone.
A minute later, the flap separating Major Major's office from the orderly room flew open and the second
C.I.D. man was back, puffing frantically in haste. Gasping for breath, he shouted, "I just saw a man in red
pajamas jumping out of your window and go running up the road! Didn't you see him?"
"He was here talking to me," Major Major answered.
"I thought that looked mighty suspicious, a man jumping out the window in red pajamas." The man paced
about the small office in vigorous circles. "At first I thought it was you, hightailing it for Mexico. But now I
see it wasn't you. He didn't say anything about Washington Irving, did he?"
"As a matter of fact," said Major Major, "he did."
"He did?" cried the second C.I.D. man. "That's fine! This might be just the break we needed to crack the
case wide open. Do you know where we can find him?"
"At the hospital. He's really a very sick man."
"That's great!" exclaimed the second C.I.D. man. "I'll go right up there after him. It would be best if I went
incognito. I'll go explain the situation at the medical tent and have them send me there as a patient."
"They won't send me to the hospital as a patient unless I'm sick," he reported back to Major Major.
"Actually, I am pretty sick. I've been meaning to turn myself in for a checkup, and this will be a good
opportunity. I'll go back to the medical tent and tell them I'm sick, and I'll get sent to the hospital that way."
"Look what they did to me," he reported back to Major Major with purple gums. His distress was
inconsolable. He carried his shoes and socks in his hands, and his toes had been painted with gentian-violet
solution, too. "Who ever heard of a C.I.D. man with purple gums?" he moaned.
He walked away from the orderly room with his head down and tumbled into a slit trench and broke his
nose. His temperature was still normal, but Gus and Wes made an exception of him and sent him to the
hospital in an ambulance.
Major Major had lied, and it was good. He was not really surprised that it was good, for he had observed
that people who did lie were, on the whole, more resourceful and ambitious and successful than people who
did not lie. Had he told the truth to the second C.I.D. man, he would have found himself in trouble. Instead he
had lied and he was free to continue his work.
He became more circumspect in his work as a result of the visit from the second C.I.D. man. He did all his
signing with his left hand and only while wearing the dark glasses and false mustache he had used
unsuccessfully to help him begin playing basketball again. As an additional precaution, he made a happy
switch from Washington Irving to John Milton. John Milton was supple and concise. Like Washington Irving,
he could be reversed with good effect whenever he grew monotonous. Furthermore, he enabled Major Major
to double his output, for John Milton was so much shorter than either his own name or Washington Irving's
and took so much less time to write. John Milton proved fruitful in still one more respect. He was versatile,
and Major Major soon found himself incorporating the signature in fragments of imaginary dialogues. Thus,
typical endorsements on the official documents might read, "John Milton is a sadist" or "Have you seen
Milton, John?" One signature of which he was especially proud read, "Is anybody in the John, Milton?" John
Milton threw open whole new vistas filled with charming, inexhaustible possibilities that promised to ward off
monotony forever. Major Major went back to Washington Irving when John Milton grew monotonous.
Major Major had bought the dark glasses and false mustache in Rome in a final, futile attempt to save
himself from the swampy degradation into which he was steadily sinking. First there had been the awful
humiliation of the Great Loyalty Oath Crusade, when not one of the thirty or forty people circulating
competitive loyalty oaths would even allow him to sign. Then, just when that was blowing over, there was the
matter of Clevinger's plane disappearing so mysteriously in thin air with every member of the crew, and blame
for the strange mishap centering balefully on him because he had never signed any of the loyalty oaths.
The dark glasses had large magenta rims. The false black mustache was a flamboyant organ-grinder's, and
he wore them both to the basketball game one day when he felt he could endure his loneliness no longer. He
Page 48
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
affected an air of jaunty familiarity as he sauntered to the court and prayed silently that he would not be
recognized. The others pretended not to recognize him, and he began to have fun. Just as he finished
congratulating himself on his innocent ruse he was bumped hard by one of his opponents and knocked to his
knees. Soon he was bumped hard again, and it dawned on him that they did recognize him and that they were
using his disguise as a license to elbow, trip and maul him. They did not want him at all. And just as he did
realize this, the players on his team fused instinctively with the players on the other team into a single,
howling, bloodthirsty mob that descended upon him from all sides with foul curses and swinging fists. They
knocked him to the ground, kicked him while he was on the ground, attacked him again after he had struggled
blindly to his feet. He covered his face with his hands and could not see. They swarmed all over each other in
their frenzied compulsion to bludgeon him, kick him, gouge him, trample him. He was pummeled spinning to
the edge of the ditch and sent slithering down on his head and shoulders. At the bottom he found his footing,
clambered up the other wall and staggered away beneath the hail of hoots and stones with which they pelted
him until he lurched into shelter around a corner of the orderly room tent. His paramount concern throughout
the entire assault was to keep his dark glasses and false mustache in place so that he might continue pretending
he was somebody else and be spared the dreaded necessity of having to confront them with his authority.
Back in his office, he wept; and when he finished weeping he washed the blood from his mouth and nose,
scrubbed the dirt from the abrasions on his cheek and forehead, and summoned Sergeant Towser.
"From now on," he said, "I don't want anyone to come in to see me while I'm here. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir," said Sergeant Towser. "Does that include me?"
"Yes."
"I see. Will that be all?"
"Yes."
"What shall I say to the people who do come to see you while you're here?"
"Tell them I'm in and ask them to wait."
"Yes, sir. For how long?"
"Until I've left."
"And then what shall I do with them?"
"I don't care."
"May I send them in to see you after you've left?"
"Yes."
"But you won't be here then, will you?"
"No."
"Yes, sir. Will that be all?"
"Yes."
"Yes, sir."
"From now on," Major Major said to the middle-aged enlisted man who took care of his trailer, "I don't
want you to come here while I'm here to ask me if there's anything you can do for me. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir," said the orderly. "When should I come here to find out if there's anything you want me to do for
you?"
"When I'm not here."
"Yes, sir. And what should I do?"
"Whatever I tell you to."
"But you won't be here to tell me. Will you?"
"No."
"Then what should I do?"
"Whatever has to be done."
"Yes, sir."
"That will be all," said Major Major.
"Yes, sir," said the orderly. "Will that be all?"
"No," said Major Major. "Don't come in to clean, either. Don't come in for anything unless you're sure I'm
not here."
Page 49
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
"Yes, sir. But how can I always be sure?"
"If you're not sure, just assume that I am here and go away until you are sure. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir."
"I'm sorry to have to talk to you in this way, but I have to. Goodbye."
"Goodbye, sir."
"And thank you. For everything."
"Yes, sir."
"From now on," Major Major said to Milo Minderbinder, "I'm not going to come to the mess hall any more.
I'll have all my meals brought to me in my trailer."
"I think that's a good idea, sir," Milo answered. "Now I'll be able to serve you special dishes that the others
will never know about. I'm sure you'll enjoy them. Colonel Cathcart always does."
"I don't want any special dishes. I want exactly what you serve all the other officers. Just have whoever
brings it knock once on my door and leave the tray on the step. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir," said Milo. "That's very clear. I've got some live Maine lobsters hidden away that I can serve you
tonight with an excellent Roquefort salad and two frozen éclairs that were smuggled out of Paris only
yesterday together with an important member of the French underground. Will that do for a start?"
"No."
"Yes, sir. I understand."
For dinner that night Milo served him broiled Maine lobster with excellent Roquefort salad and two frozen
éclairs. Major Major was annoyed. If he sent it back, though, it would only go to waste or to somebody else,
and Major Major had a weakness for broiled lobster. He ate with a guilty conscience. The next day for lunch
there was terrapin Maryland with a whole quart of Dom Pérignon 1937, and Major Major gulped it down
without a thought.
After Milo, there remained only the men in the orderly room, and Major Major avoided them by entering
and leaving every time through the dingy celluloid window of his office. The window unbuttoned and was low
and large and easy to jump through from either side. He managed the distance between the orderly room and
his trailer by darting around the corner of the tent when the coast was clear, leaping down into the railroad
ditch and dashing along with head bowed until he attained the sanctuary of the forest. Abreast of his trailer, he
left the ditch and wove his way speedily toward home through the dense underbrush, in which the only person
he ever encountered was Captain Flume, who, drawn and ghostly, frightened him half to death one twilight by
materializing without warning out of a patch of dewberry bushes to complain that Chief White Halfoat had
threatened to slit his throat open from ear to ear.
"If you ever frighten me like that again," Major Major told him, "I'll slit your throat open from ear to ear."
Captain Flume gasped and dissolved right back into the patch of dewberry bushes, and Major Major never
set eyes on him again.
When Major Major looked back on what he had accomplished, he was pleased. In the midst of a few
foreign acres teeming with more than two hundred people, he had succeeded in becoming a recluse. With a
little ingenuity and vision, he had made it all but impossible for anyone in the squadron to talk to him, which
was just fine with everyone, he noticed, since no one wanted to talk to him anyway. No one, it turned out, but
that madman Yossarian, who brought him down with a flying tackle one day as he was scooting along the
bottom of the ditch to his trailer for lunch.
The last person in the squadron Major Major wanted to be brought down with a flying tackle by was
Yossarian. There was something inherently disreputable about Yossarian, always carrying on so disgracefully
about that dead man in his tent who wasn't even there and then taking off all his clothes after the Avignon
mission and going around without them right up to the day General Dreedle stepped up to pin a medal on him
for his heroism over Ferrara and found him standing in formation stark naked. No one in the world had the
power to remove the dead man's disorganized effects from Yossarian's tent. Major Major had forfeited the
authority when he permitted Sergeant Towser to report the lieutenant who had been killed over Orvieto less
than two hours after he arrived in the squadron as never having arrived in the squadron at all. The only one
with any right to remove his belongings from Yossarian's tent, it seemed to Major Major, was Yossarian
himself, and Yossarian, it seemed to Major Major, had no right.
Page 50
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
Major Major groaned after Yossarian brought him down with a flying tackle, and tried to wiggle to his feet.
Yossarian wouldn't let him.
"Captain Yossarian," Yossarian said, "requests permission to speak to the major at once about a matter of
life or death."
"Let me up, please," Major Major bid him in cranky discomfort. "I can't return your salute while I'm lying
on my arm."
Yossarian released him. They stood up slowly. Yossarian saluted again and repeated his request.
"Let's go to my office," Major Major said. "I don't think this is the best place to talk."
"Yes, sir," answered Yossarian.
They smacked the gravel from their clothing and walked in constrained silence to the entrance of the
orderly room.
"Give me a minute or two to put some mercurochrome on these cuts. Then have Sergeant Towser send you
in."
"Yes, sir."
Major Major strode with dignity to the rear of the orderly room without glancing at any of the clerks and
typists working at the desks and filing cabinets. He let the flap leading to his office fall closed behind him. As
soon as he was alone in his office, he raced across the room to the window and jumped outside to dash away.
He found Yossarian blocking his path. Yossarian was waiting at attention and saluted again.
"Captain Yossarian requests permission to speak to the major at once about a matter of life or death," he
repeated determinedly.
"Permission denied," Major Major snapped.
"That won't do it."
Major Major gave in. "All right," he conceded wearily. "I'll talk to you. Please jump inside my office."
"After you."
They jumped inside the office. Major Major sat down, and Yossarian moved around in front of his desk
and told him that he did not want to fly any more combat missions. What could he do? Major Major asked
himself. All he could do was what he had been instructed to do by Colonel Korn and hope for the best.
"Why not?" he asked.
"I'm afraid."
"That's nothing to be ashamed of," Major Major counseled him kindly. "We're all afraid."
"I'm not ashamed," Yossarian said. "I'm just afraid."
"You wouldn't be normal if you were never afraid. Even the bravest men experience fear. One of the
biggest jobs we all face in combat is to overcome our fear."
"Oh, come on, Major. Can't we do without that horseshit?"
Major Major lowered his gaze sheepishly and fiddled with his fingers. "What do you want me to tell you?"
"That I've flown enough missions and can go home."
"How many have you flown?"
"Fifty-one."
"You've only got four more to fly."
"He'll raise them. Every time I get close he raises them."
"Perhaps he won't this time."
"He never sends anyone home, anyway. He just keeps them around waiting for rotation orders until he
doesn't have enough men left for the crews, and then raises the number of missions and throws them all back
on combat status. He's been doing that ever since he got here."
"You mustn't blame Colonel Cathcart for any delay with the orders," Major Major advised. "It's
Twenty-seventh Air Force's responsibility to process the orders promptly once they get them from us."
"He could still ask for replacements and send us home when the orders did come back. Anyway, I've been
told that Twenty-seventh Air Force wants only forty missions and that it's only his own idea to get us to fly
fifty-five."
"I wouldn't know anything about that," Major Major answered. "Colonel Cathcart is our commanding
officer and we must obey him. Why don't you fly the four more missions and see what happens?"
Page 51
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
"I don't want to."
What could you do? Major Major asked himself again. What could you do with a man who looked you
squarely in the eye and said he would rather die than be killed in combat, a man who was at least as mature
and intelligent as you were and who you had to pretend was not? What could you say to him?
"Suppose we let you pick your missions and fly milk runs," Major Major said. "That way you can fly the
four missions and not run any risks."
"I don't want to fly milk runs. I don't want to be in the war any more."
"Would you like to see our country lose?" Major Major asked.
"We won't lose. We've got more men, more money and more material. There are ten million men in
uniform who could replace me. Some people are getting killed and a lot more are making money and having
fun. Let somebody else get killed."
"But suppose everybody on our side felt that way."
"Then I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way. Wouldn't I?"
What could you possibly say to him? Major Major wondered forlornly. One thing he could not say was that
there was nothing he could do. To say there was nothing he could do would suggest he would do something if
he could and imply the existence of an error of injustice in Colonel Korn's policy. Colonel Korn had been most
explicit about that. He must never say there was nothing he could do.
"I'm sorry," he said. "But there's nothing I can do."
10 WINTERGREEN
Clevinger was dead. That was the basic flaw in his philosophy. Eighteen planes had let down through a
beaming white cloud off the coast of Elba one afternoon on the way back from the weekly milk run to Parma;
seventeen came out. No trace was ever found of the other, not in the air or on the smooth surface of the jade
waters below. There was no debris. Helicopters circled the white cloud till sunset. During the night the cloud
blew away, and in the morning there was no more Clevinger.
The disappearance was astounding, as astounding, certainly, as the Grand Conspiracy of Lowery Field,
when all sixty-four men in a single barrack vanished one payday and were never heard of again. Until
Clevinger was snatched from existence so adroitly, Yossarian had assumed that the men had simply decided
unanimously to go AWOL the same day. In fact, he had been so encouraged by what appeared to be a mass
desertion from sacred responsibility that he had gone running outside in elation to carry the exciting news to
ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen.
"What's so exciting about it?" ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen sneered obnoxiously, resting his filthy GI shoe on his
spade and lounging back in a surly slouch against the wall of one of the deep, square holes it was his military
specialty to dig.
Ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen was a snide little punk who enjoyed working at cross-purposes. Each time he went
AWOL, he was caught and sentenced to dig and fill up holes six feet deep, wide and long for a specified
length of time. Each time he finished his sentence, he went AWOL again. Ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen accepted his
role of digging and filling up holes with all the uncomplaining dedication of a true patriot.
"It's not a bad life," he would observe philosophically. "And I guess somebody has to do it."
He had wisdom enough to understand that digging holes in Colorado was not such a bad assignment in
wartime. Since the holes were in no great demand, he could dig them and fill them up at a leisurely pace, and
he was seldom overworked. On the other hand, he was busted down to buck private each time he was
court-martialed. He regretted this loss of rank keenly.
"It was kind of nice being a P.F.C.," he reminisced yearningly. "I had status-you know what I mean? -- and
I used to travel in the best circles." His face darkened with resignation. "But that's all behind me now," he
guessed. "The next time I go over the hill it will be as a buck private, and I just know it won't be the same."
There was no future in digging holes. "The job isn't even steady. I lose it each time I finish serving my
sentence. Then I have to go over the hill again if I want it back. And I can't even keep doing that. There's a
catch. Catch-22. The next time I go over the hill, it will mean the stockade. I don't know what's going to
become of me. I might even wind up overseas if I'm not careful." He did not want to keep digging holes for
the rest of his life, although he had no objection to doing it as long as there was a war going on and it was part
Page 52
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
of the war effort. "It's a matter of duty," he observed, "and we each have our own to perform. My duty is to
keep digging these holes, and I've been doing such a good job of it that I've just been recommended for the
Good Conduct Medal. Your duty is to screw around in cadet school and hope the war ends before you get out.
The duty of the men in combat is to win the war, and I just wish they were doing their duty as well as I've been
doing mine. It wouldn't be fair if I had to go overseas and do their job too, would it?"
One day ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen struck open a water pipe while digging in one of his holes and almost
drowned to death before he was fished out nearly unconscious. Word spread that it was oil, and Chief White
Halfoat was kicked off the base. Soon every man who could find a shovel was outside digging frenziedly for
oil. Dirt flew everywhere; the scene was almost like the morning in Pianosa seven months later after the night
Milo bombed the squadron with every plane he had accumulated in his M & M syndicate, and the airfield,
bomb dump and repair hangars as well, and all the survivors were outside hacking cavernous shelters into the
solid ground and roofing them over with sheets of armor plate stolen from the repair sheds at the field and
with tattered squares of waterproof canvas stolen from the side flaps of each other's tents. Chief White Halfoat
was transferred out of Colorado at the first rumor of oil and came to rest finally in Pianosa as a replacement
for Lieutenant Coombs, who had gone out on a mission as a guest one day just to see what combat was like
and had died over Ferrara in the plane with Kraft. Yossarian felt guilty each time he remembered Kraft, guilty
because Kraft had been killed on Yossarian's second bomb run, and guilty because Kraft had got mixed up
innocently also in the Splendid Atabrine Insurrection that had begun in Puerto Rico on the first leg of their
flight overseas and ended in Pianosa ten days later with Appleby striding dutifully into the orderly room the
moment he arrived to report Yossarian for refusing to take his Atabrine tablets. The sergeant there invited him
to be seated.
"Thank you, Sergeant, I think I will," said Appleby. "About how long will I have to wait? I've still got a lot
to get done today so that I can be fully prepared bright and early tomorrow morning to go into combat the
minute they want me to."
"Sir?"
"What's that, Sergeant?"
"What was your question?"
"About how long will I have to wait before I can go in to see the major?"
"Just until he goes out to lunch," Sergeant Towser replied. "Then you can go right in."
"But he won't be there then. Will he?"
"No, sir. Major Major won't be back in his office until after lunch."
"I see," Appleby decided uncertainly. "I think I'd better come back after lunch, then."
Appleby turned from the orderly room in secret confusion. The moment he stepped outside, he thought he
saw a tall, dark officer who looked a little like Henry Fonda come jumping out of the window of the
orderly-room tent and go scooting out of sight around the corner. Appleby halted and squeezed his eyes
closed. An anxious doubt assailed him. He wondered if he were suffering from malaria, or, worse, from an
overdose of Atabrine tablets. Appleby had been taking four times as many Atabrine tablets as the amount
prescribed because he wanted to be four times as good a pilot as everyone else. His eyes were still shut when
Sergeant Towser tapped him lightly on the shoulder and told him he could go in now if he wanted to, since
Major Major had just gone out. Appleby's confidence returned.
"Thank you, Sergeant. Will he be back soon?"
"He'll be back right after lunch. Then you'll have to go right out and wait for him in front till he leaves for
dinner. Major Major never sees anyone in his office while he's in his office."
"Sergeant, what did you just say?"
"I said that Major Major never sees anyone in his office while he's in his office."
Appleby stared at Sergeant Towser intently and attempted a firm tone. "Sergeant, are you trying to make a
fool out of me just because I'm new in the squadron and you've been overseas a long time?"
"Oh, no, sir," answered the sergeant deferentially. "Those are my orders. You can ask Major Major when
you see him."
"That's just what I intend to do, Sergeant. When can I see him?"
"Never."
Page 53
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
Crimson with humiliation, Appleby wrote down his report about Yossarian and the Atabrine tablets on a
pad the sergeant offered him and left quickly, wondering if perhaps Yossarian were not the only man
privileged to wear an officer's uniform who was crazy.
By the time Colonel Cathcart had raised the number of missions to fifty-five, Sergeant Towser had begun
to suspect that perhaps every man who wore a uniform was crazy. Sergeant Towser was lean and angular and
had fine blond hair so light it was almost without color, sunken cheeks, and teeth like large white
marshmallows. He ran the squadron and was not happy doing it. Men like Hungry Joe glowered at him with
blameful hatred, and Appleby subjected him to vindictive discourtesy now that he had established himself as a
hot pilot and a ping-pong player who never lost a point. Sergeant Towser ran the squadron because there was
no one else in the squadron to run it. He had no interest in war or advancement. He was interested in shards
and Hepplewhite furniture.
Almost without realizing it, Sergeant Towser had fallen into the habit of thinking of the dead man in
Yossarian's tent in Yossarian's own terms-as a dead man in Yossarian's tent. In reality, he was no such thing.
He was simply a replacement pilot who had been killed in combat before he had officially reported for duty.
He had stopped at the operations tent to inquire the way to the orderly-room tent and had been sent right into
action because so many men had completed the thirty-five missions required then that Captain Piltchard and
Captain Wren were finding it difficult to assemble the number of crews specified by Group. Because he had
never officially gotten into the squadron, he could never officially be gotten out, and Sergeant Towser sensed
that the multiplying communications relating to the poor man would continue reverberating forever.
His name was Mudd. To Sergeant Towser, who deplored violence and waste with equal aversion, it seemed
like such an abhorrent extravagance to fly Mudd all the way across the ocean just to have him blown into bits
over Orvieto less than two hours after he arrived. No one could recall who he was or what he had looked like,
least of all Captain Piltchard and Captain Wren, who remembered only that a new officer had shown up at the
operations tent just in time to be killed and who colored uneasily every time the matter of the dead man in
Yossarian's tent was mentioned. The only one who might have seen Mudd, the men in the same plane, had all
been blown to bits with him.
Yossarian, on the other hand, knew exactly who Mudd was. Mudd was the unknown soldier who had never
had a chance, for that was the only thing anyone ever did know about all the unknown soldiers-they never had
a chance. They had to be dead. And this dead one was really unknown, even though his belongings still lay in
a tumble on the cot in Yossarian's tent almost exactly as he had left them three months earlier the day he never
arrived-all contaminated with death less than two hours later, in the same way that all was contaminated with
death in the very next week during the Great Big Siege of Bologna when the moldy odor of mortality hung
wet in the air with the sulphurous fog and every man scheduled to fly was already tainted.
There was no escaping the mission to Bologna once Colonel Cathcart had volunteered his group for the
ammunition dumps there that the heavy bombers on the Italian mainland had been unable to destroy from their
higher altitudes. Each day's delay deepened the awareness and deepened the gloom. The clinging,
overpowering conviction of death spread steadily with the continuing rainfall, soaking mordantly into each
man's ailing countenance like the corrosive blot of some crawling disease. Everyone smelled of formaldehyde.
There was nowhere to turn for help, not even to the medical tent, which had been ordered closed by Colonel
Korn so that no one could report for sick call, as the men had done on the one clear day with a mysterious
epidemic of diarrhea that had forced still another postponement. With sick call suspended and the door to the
medical tent nailed shut, Doc Daneeka spent the intervals between rain perched on a high stool, wordlessly
absorbing the bleak outbreak of fear with a sorrowing neutrality, roosting like a melancholy buzzard below the
ominous, hand-lettered sign tacked up on the closed door of the medical tent by Captain Black as a joke and
left hanging there by Doc Daneeka because it was no joke. The sign was bordered in dark crayon and read:
"CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. DEATH IN THE FAMILY."
The fear flowed everywhere, into Dunbar's squadron, where Dunbar poked his head inquiringly through the
entrance of the medical tent there one twilight and spoke respectfully to the blurred outline of Dr. Stubbs, who
was sitting in the dense shadows inside before a bottle of whiskey and a bell jar filled with purified drinking
water.
"Are you all right?" he asked solicitously.
Page 54
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
"Terrible," Dr. Stubbs answered.
"What are you doing here?"
"Sitting."
"I thought there was no more sick call."
"There ain't."
"Then why are you sitting here?"
"Where else should I sit? At the goddam officers' club with Colonel Cathcart and Korn? Do you know what
I'm doing here?"
"Sitting."
"In the squadron, I mean. Not in the tent. Don't be such a goddam wise guy. Can you figure out what a
doctor is doing here in the squadron?"
"They've got the doors to the medical tents nailed shut in the other squadrons," Dunbar remarked.
"If anyone sick walks through my door I'm going to ground him," Dr. Stubbs vowed. "I don't give a damn
what they say."
"You can't ground anyone," Dunbar reminded. "Don't you know the orders?"
"I'll knock him flat on his ass with an injection and really ground him." Dr. Stubbs laughed with sardonic
amusement at the prospect. "They think they can order sick call out of existence. The bastards. Ooops, there it
goes again." The rain began falling again, first in the trees, then in the mud puddles, then, faintly, like a
soothing murmur, on the tent top. "Everything's wet," Dr. Stubbs observed with revulsion. "Even the latrines
and urinals are backing up in protest. The whole goddam world smells like a charnel house."
The silence seemed bottomless when he stopped talking. Night fell. There was a sense of vast isolation.
"Turn on the light," Dunbar suggested.
"There is no light. I don't feel like starting my generator. I used to get a big kick out of saving people's
lives. Now I wonder what the hell's the point, since they all have to die anyway.
"Oh, there's a point, all right," Dunbar assured him.
"Is there? What is the point?"
"The point is to keep them from dying for as long as you can."
"Yeah, but what's the point, since they all have to die anyway?"
"The trick is not to think about that."
"Never mind the trick. What the hell's the point?"
Dunbar pondered in silence for a few moments. "Who the hell knows?"
Dunbar didn't know. Bologna should have exulted Dunbar, because the minutes dawdled and the hours
dragged like centuries. Instead it tortured him, because he knew he was going to be killed.
"Do you really want some more codeine?" Dr. Stubbs asked.
"It's for my friend Yossarian. He's sure he's going to be killed."
"Yossarian? Who the hell is Yossarian? What the hell kind of a name is Yossarian, anyway? Isn't he the
one who got drunk and started that fight with Colonel Korn at the officers' club the other night?"
"That's right. He's Assyrian."
"That crazy bastard."
"He's not so crazy," Dunbar said. "He swears he's not going to fly to Bologna."
"That's just what I mean," Dr. Stubbs answered. "That crazy bastard may be the only sane one left."
11 CAPTAIN BLACK
Corporal Kolodny learned about it first in a phone call from Group and was so shaken by the news that he
crossed the intelligence tent on tiptoe to Captain Black, who was resting drowsily with his bladed shins up on
the desk, and relayed the information to him in a shocked whisper.
Captain Black brightened immediately. "Bologna?" he exclaimed with delight. "Well, I'll be damned." He
broke into loud laughter. "Bologna, huh?" He laughed again and shook his head in pleasant amazement. "Oh,
boy! I can't wait to see those bastards' faces when they find out they're going to Bologna. Ha, ha, ha!"
It was the first really good laugh Captain Black had enjoyed since the day Major Major outsmarted him and
was appointed squadron commander, and he rose with torpid enthusiasm and stationed himself behind the
Page 55
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
front counter in order to wring the most enjoyment from the occasion when the bombardiers arrived for their
map kits.
"That's right, you bastards, Bologna," he kept repeating to all the bombardiers who inquired incredulously
if they were really going to Bologna. "Ha! Ha! Ha! Eat your livers, you bastards. This time you're really in for
it."
Captain Black followed the last of them outside to observe with relish the effect of the knowledge upon all
of the other officers and enlisted men who were assembling with their helmets, parachutes and flak suits
around the four trucks idling in the center of the squadron area. He was a tall, narrow, disconsolate man who
moved with a crabby listlessness. He shaved his pinched, pale face every third or fourth day, and most of the
time he appeared to be growing a reddish-gold mustache over his skinny upper lip. He was not disappointed in
the scene outside. There was consternation darkening every expression, and Captain Black yawned
deliciously, rubbed the last lethargy from his eyes and laughed gloatingly each time he told someone else to
eat his liver.
Bologna turned out to be the most rewarding event in Captain Black's life since the day Major Duluth was
killed over Perugia and he was almost selected to replace him. When word of Major Duluth's death was
radioed back to the field, Captain Black responded with a surge of joy. Although he had never really
contemplated the possibility before, Captain Black understood at once that he was the logical man to succeed
Major Duluth as squadron commander. To begin with, he was the squadron intelligence officer, which meant
he was more intelligent than everyone else in the squadron. True, he was not on combat status, as Major
Duluth had been and as all squadron commanders customarily were; but this was really another powerful
argument in his favor, since his life was in no danger and he would be able to fill the post for as long as his
country needed him. The more Captain Black thought about it, the more inevitable it seemed. It was merely a
matter of dropping the right word in the right place quickly. He hurried back to his office to determine a
course of action. Settling back in his swivel chair, his feet up on the desk and his eyes closed, he began
imagining how beautiful everything would be once he was squadron commander.
While Captain Black was imagining, Colonel Cathcart was acting, and Captain Black was flabbergasted by
the speed with which, he concluded, Major Major had outsmarted him. His great dismay at the announcement
of Major Major's appointment as squadron commander was tinged with an embittered resentment he made no
effort to conceal. When fellow administrative officers expressed astonishment at Colonel Cathcart's choice of
Major Major, Captain Black muttered that there was something funny going on; when they speculated on the
political value of Major Major's resemblance to Henry Fonda, Captain Black asserted that Major Major really
was Henry Fonda; and when they remarked that Major Major was somewhat odd, Captain Black announced
that he was a Communist.
"They're taking over everything," he declared rebelliously. "Well, you fellows can stand around and let
them if you want to, but I'm not going to. I'm going to do something about it. From now on I'm going to make
every son of a bitch who comes to my intelligence tent sign a loyalty oath. And I'm not going to let that
bastard Major Major sign one even if he wants to."
Almost overnight the Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade was in full flower, and Captain Black was enraptured
to discover himself spearheading it. He had really hit on something. All the enlisted men and officers on
combat duty had to sign a loyalty oath to get their map cases from the intelligence tent, a second loyalty oath
to receive their flak suits and parachutes from the parachute tent, a third loyalty oath for Lieutenant
Balkington, the motor vehicle officer, to be allowed to ride from the squadron to the airfield in one of the
trucks. Every time they turned around there was another loyalty oath to be signed. They signed a loyalty oath
to get their pay from the finance officer, to obtain their PX supplies, to have their hair cut by the Italian
barbers. To Captain Black, every officer who supported his Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade was a competitor,
and he planned and plotted twenty-four hours a day to keep one step ahead. He would stand second to none in
his devotion to country. When other officers had followed his urging and introduced loyalty oaths of their
own, he went them one better by making every son of a bitch who came to his intelligence tent sign two
loyalty oaths, then three, then four; then he introduced the pledge of allegiance, and after that "The
Star-Spangled Banner," one chorus, two choruses, three choruses, four choruses. Each time Captain Black
forged ahead of his competitors, he swung upon them scornfully for their failure to follow his example. Each
Page 56
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
time they followed his example, he retreated with concern and racked his brain for some new stratagem that
would enable him to turn upon them scornfully again.
Without realizing how it had come about, the combat men in the squadron discovered themselves
dominated by the administrators appointed to serve them. They were bullied, insulted, harassed and shoved
about all day long by one after the other. When they voiced objection, Captain Black replied that people who
were loyal would not mind signing all the loyalty oaths they had to. To anyone who questioned the
effectiveness of the loyalty oaths, he replied that people who really did owe allegiance to their country would
be proud to pledge it as often as he forced them to. And to anyone who questioned the morality, he replied that
"The Star-Spangled Banner" was the greatest piece of music ever composed. The more loyalty oaths a person
signed, the more loyal he was; to Captain Black it was as simple as that, and he had Corporal Kolodny sign
hundreds with his name each day so that he could always prove he was more loyal than anyone else.
"The important thing is to keep them pledging," he explained to his cohorts. "It doesn't matter whether they
mean it or not. That's why they make little kids pledge allegiance even before they know what 'pledge' and
'allegiance' mean."
To Captain Piltchard and Captain Wren, the Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade was a glorious pain in the ass,
since it complicated their task of organizing the crews for each combat mission. Men were tied up all over the
squadron signing, pledging and singing, and the missions took hours longer to get under way. Effective
emergency action became impossible, but Captain Piltchard and Captain Wren were both too timid to raise
any outcry against Captain Black, who scrupulously enforced each day the doctrine of "Continual
Reaffirmation" that he had originated, a doctrine designed to trap all those men who had become disloyal since
the last time they had signed a loyalty oath the day before. It was Captain Black who came with advice to
Captain Piltchard and Captain Wren as they pitched about in their bewildering predicament. He came with a
delegation and advised them bluntly to make each man sign a loyalty oath before allowing him to fly on a
combat mission.
"Of course, it's up to you," Captain Black pointed out. "Nobody's trying to pressure you. But everyone else
is making them sign loyalty oaths, and it's going to look mighty funny to the F.B.I. if you two are the only
ones who don't care enough about your country to make them sign loyalty oaths, too. If you want to get a bad
reputation, that's nobody's business but your own. All we're trying to do is help."
Milo was not convinced and absolutely refused to deprive Major Major of food, even if Major Major was a
Communist, which Milo secretly doubted. Milo was by nature opposed to any innovation that threatened to
disrupt the normal course of affairs. Milo took a firm moral stand and absolutely refused to participate in the
Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade until Captain Black called upon him with his delegation and requested him to.
"National defense is everybody's job," Captain Black replied to Milo's objection. "And this whole program
is voluntary, Milo-don't forget that. The men don't have to sign Piltchard and Wren's loyalty oath if they don't
want to. But we need you to starve them to death if they don't. It's just like Catch-22. Don't you get it? You're
not against Catch-22, are you?"
Doc Daneeka was adamant.
"What makes you so sure Major Major is a Communist?"
"You never heard him denying it until we began accusing him, did you? And you don't see him signing any
of our loyalty oaths."
"You aren't letting him sign any."
"Of course not," Captain Black explained. "That would defeat the whole purpose of our crusade. Look, you
don't have to play ball with us if you don't want to. But what's the point of the rest of us working so hard if
you're going to give Major Major medical attention the minute Milo begins starving him to death? I just
wonder what they're going to think up at Group about the man who's undermining our whole security
program. They'll probably transfer you to the Pacific."
Doc Daneeka surrendered swiftly. "I'll go tell Gus and Wes to do whatever you want them to."
Up at Group, Colonel Cathcart had already begun wondering what was going on.
"It's that idiot Black off on a patriotism binge," Colonel Korn reported with a smile. "I think you'd better
play ball with him for a while, since you're the one who promoted Major Major to squadron commander."
"That was your idea," Colonel Cathcart accused him Petulantly. "I never should have let you talk me into
Page 57
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
it."
"And a very good idea it was, too," retorted Colonel Korn, "since it eliminated that superfluous major that's
been giving you such an awful black eye as an administrator. Don't worry, this will probably run its course
soon. The best thing to do now is send Captain Black a letter of total support and hope he drops dead before he
does too much damage." Colonel Korn was struck with a whimsical thought. "I wonder! You don't suppose
that imbecile will try to turn Major Major out of his trailer, do you?"
"The next thing we've got to do is turn that bastard Major Major out of his trailer," Captain Black decided.
"I'd like to turn his wife and kids out into the woods, too. But we can't. He has no wife and kids. So we'll just
have to make do with what we have and turn him out. Who's in charge of the tents?"
"He is."
"You see?" cried Captain Black. "They're taking over everything! Well, I'm not going to stand for it. I'll
take this matter right to Major --- de Coverley himself if I have to. I'll have Milo speak to him about it the
minute he gets back from Rome."
Captain Black had boundless faith in the wisdom, power and justice of Major --- de Coverley, even though
he had never spoken to him before and still found himself without the courage to do so. He deputized Milo to
speak to Major --- de Coverley for him and stormed about impatiently as he waited for the tall executive
officer to return. Along with everyone else in the squadron, he lived in profound awe and reverence of the
majestic, white-haired major with craggy face and Jehovean bearing, who came back from Rome finally with
an injured eye inside a new celluloid eye patch and smashed his whole Glorious Crusade to bits with a single
stroke.
Milo carefully said nothing when Major --- de Coverley stepped into the mess hall with his fierce and
austere dignity the day he returned and found his way blocked by a wall of officers waiting in line to sign
loyalty oaths. At the far end of the food counter, a group of men who had arrived earlier were pledging
allegiance to the flag, with trays of food balanced in one hand, in order to be allowed to take seats at the table.
Already at the tables, a group that had arrived still earlier was singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" in order
that they might use the salt and pepper and ketchup there. The hubbub began to subside slowly as Major --- de
Coverley paused in the doorway with a frown of puzzled disapproval, as though viewing something bizarre.
He started forward in a straight line, and the wall of officers before him parted like the Red Sea. Glancing
neither left nor right, he strode indomitably up to the steam counter and, in a clear, full-bodied voice that was
gruff with age and resonant with ancient eminence and authority, said:
"Gimme eat."
Instead of eat, Corporal Snark gave Major --- de Coverley a loyalty oath to sign. Major --- de Coverley
swept it away with mighty displeasure the moment he recognized what it was, his good eye flaring up
blindingly with fiery disdain and his enormous old corrugated face darkening in mountainous wrath.
"Gimme eat, I said," he ordered loudly in harsh tones that rumbled ominously through the silent tent like
claps of distant thunder.
Corporal Snark turned pale and began to tremble. He glanced toward Milo pleadingly for guidance. For
several terrible seconds there was not a sound. Then Milo nodded.
"Give him eat," he said.
Corporal Snark began giving Major --- de Coverley eat. Major --- de Coverley turned from the counter with
his tray full and came to a stop. His eyes fell on the groups of other officers gazing at him in mute appeal, and,
with righteous belligerence, he roared:
"Give everybody eat!"
"Give everybody eat!" Milo echoed with joyful relief, and the Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade came to an
end.
Captain Black was deeply disillusioned by this treacherous stab in the back from someone in high place
upon whom he had relied so confidently for support. Major --- de Coverley had let him down.
"Oh, it doesn't bother me a bit," he responded cheerfully to everyone who came to him with sympathy. "We
completed our task. Our purpose was to make everyone we don't like afraid and to alert people to the danger
of Major Major, and we certainly succeeded at that. Since we weren't going to let him sign loyalty oaths
anyway, it doesn't really matter whether we have them or not."
Page 58
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
Seeing everyone in the squadron he didn't like afraid once again throughout the appalling, interminable
Great Big Siege of Bologna reminded Captain Black nostalgically of the good old days of his Glorious
Loyalty Oath Crusade when he had been a man of real consequence, and when even big shots like Milo
Minderbinder, Doc Daneeka and Piltchard and Wren had trembled at his approach and groveled at his feet. To
prove to newcomers that he really had been a man of consequence once, he still had the letter of
commendation he had received from Colonel Cathcart.
12 BOLOGNA
Actually, it was not Captain Black but Sergeant Knight who triggered the solemn panic of Bologna,
slipping silently off the truck for two extra flak suits as soon as he learned the target and signaling the start of
the grim procession back into the parachute tent that degenerated into a frantic stampede finally before all the
extra flak suits were gone.
"Hey, what's going on?" Kid Sampson asked nervously. "Bologna can't be that rough, can it?"
Nately, sitting trancelike on the floor of the truck, held his grave young face in both hands and did not
answer him.
It was Sergeant Knight and the cruel series of postponements, for just as they were climbing up into their
planes that first morning, along came a jeep with the news that it was raining in Bologna and that the mission
would be delayed. It was raining in Pianosa too by the time they returned to the squadron, and they had the
rest of that day to stare woodenly at the bomb line on the map under the awning of the intelligence tent and
ruminate hypnotically on the fact that there was no escape. The evidence was there vividly in the narrow red
ribbon tacked across the mainland: the ground forces in Italy were pinned down forty-two insurmountable
miles south of the target and could not possibly capture the city in time. Nothing could save the men in
Pianosa from the mission to Bologna. They were trapped.
Their only hope was that it would never stop raining, and they had no hope because they all knew it would.
When it did stop raining in Pianosa, it rained in Bologna. When it stopped raining in Bologna, it began again
in Pianosa. If there was no rain at all, there were freakish, inexplicable phenomena like the epidemic of
diarrhea or the bomb line that moved. Four times during the first six days they were assembled and briefed and
then sent back. Once, they took off and were flying in formation when the control tower summoned them
down. The more it rained, the worse they suffered. The worse they suffered, the more they prayed that it
would continue raining. All through the night, men looked at the sky and were saddened by the stars. All
through the day, they looked at the bomb line on the big, wobbling easel map of Italy that blew over in the
wind and was dragged in under the awning of the intelligence tent every time the rain began. The bomb line
was a scarlet band of narrow satin ribbon that delineated the forwardmost position of the Allied ground forces
in every sector of the Italian mainland.
The morning after Hungry Joe's fist fight with Huple's cat, the rain stopped falling in both places. The
landing strip began to dry. It would take a full twenty-four hours to harden; but the sky remained cloudless.
The resentments incubating in each man hatched into hatred. First they hated the infantrymen on the mainland
because they had failed to capture Bologna. Then they began to hate the bomb line itself. For hours they stared
relentlessly at the scarlet ribbon on the map and hated it because it would not move up high enough to
encompass the city. When night fell, they congregated in the darkness with flashlights, continuing their
macabre vigil at the bomb line in brooding entreaty as though hoping to move the ribbon up by the collective
weight of their sullen prayers.
"I really can't believe it," Clevinger exclaimed to Yossarian in a voice rising and falling in protest and
wonder. "It's a complete reversion to primitive superstition. They're confusing cause and effect. It makes as
much sense as knocking on wood or crossing your fingers. They really believe that we wouldn't have to fly
that mission tomorrow if someone would only tiptoe up to the map in the middle of the night and move the
bomb line over Bologna. Can you imagine? You and I must be the only rational ones left."
In the middle of the night Yossarian knocked on wood, crossed his fingers, and tiptoed out of his tent to
move the bomb line up over Bologna.
Corporal Kolodny tiptoed stealthily into Captain Black's tent early the next morning, reached inside the
mosquito net and gently shook the moist shoulder-blade he found there until Captain Black opened his eyes.
Page 59
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
"What are you waking me up for?" whimpered Captain Black.
"They captured Bologna, sir," said Corporal Kolodny. "I thought you'd want to know. Is the mission
canceled?"
Captain Black tugged himself erect and began scratching his scrawny long thighs methodically. In a little
while he dressed and emerged from his tent, squinting, cross and unshaven. The sky was clear and warm. He
peered without emotion at the map. Sure enough, they had captured Bologna. Inside the intelligence tent,
Corporal Kolodny was already removing the maps of Bologna from the navigation kits. Captain Black seated
himself with a loud yawn, lifted his feet to the top of his desk and phoned Colonel Korn.
"What are you waking me up for?" whimpered Colonel Korn.
"They captured Bologna during the night, sir. Is the mission canceled?"
"What are you talking about, Black?" Colonel Korn growled. "Why should the mission be canceled?"
"Because they captured Bologna, sir. Isn't the mission canceled?"
"Of course the mission is canceled. Do you think we're bombing our own troops now?"
"What are you waking me up for?" Colonel Cathcart whimpered to Colonel Korn.
"They captured Bologna," Colonel Korn told him. "I thought you'd want to know."
"Who captured Bologna?"
"We did."
Colonel Cathcart was overjoyed, for he was relieved of the embarrassing commitment to bomb Bologna
without blemish to the reputation for valor he had earned by volunteering his men to do it. General Dreedle
was pleased with the capture of Bologna, too, although he was angry with Colonel Moodus for waking him up
to tell him about it. Headquarters was also pleased and decided to award a medal to the officer who captured
the city. There was no officer who had captured the city, so they gave the medal to General Peckem instead,
because General Peckem was the only officer with sufficient initiative to ask for it.
As soon as General Peckem had received his medal, he began asking for increased responsibility. It was
General Peckem's opinion that all combat units in the theater should be placed under the jurisdiction of the
Special Service Corps, of which General Peckem himself was the commanding officer. If dropping bombs on
the enemy was not a special service, he reflected aloud frequently with the martyred smile of sweet
reasonableness that was his loyal confederate in every dispute, then he could not help wondering what in the
world was. With amiable regret, he declined the offer of a combat post under General Dreedle.
"Flying combat missions for General Dreedle is not exactly what I had in mind," he explained indulgently
with a smooth laugh. "I was thinking more in terms of replacing General Dreedle, or perhaps of something
above General Dreedle where I could exercise supervision over a great many other generals too. You see, my
most precious abilities are mainly administrative ones. I have a happy facility for getting different people to
agree."
"He has a happy facility for getting different people to agree what a prick he is," Colonel Cargill confided
invidiously to ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen in the hope that ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen would spread the unfavorable
report along through Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters. "If anyone deserves that combat post, I do. It
was even my idea that we ask for the medal."
"You really want to go into combat?" ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen inquired.
"Combat?" Colonel Cargill was aghast. "Oh, no-you misunderstand me. Of course, I wouldn't actually
mind going into combat, but my best abilities are mainly administrative ones. I too have a happy facility for
getting different people to agree."
"He too has a happy facility for getting different people to agree what a prick he is," ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen
confided with a laugh to Yossarian, after he had come to Pianosa to learn if it was really true about Milo and
the Egyptian cotton. "If anyone deserves a promotion, I do." Actually, he had risen already to ex-corporal,
having shot through the ranks shortly after his transfer to Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters as a mail
clerk and been busted right down to private for making odious audible comparisons about the commissioned
officers for whom he worked. The heady taste of success had infused him further with morality and fired him
with ambition for loftier attainments. "Do you want to buy some Zippo lighters?" he asked Yossarian. "They
were stolen right from quartermaster."
"Does Milo know you're selling cigarette lighters?"
Page 60
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
"What's it his business? Milo's not carrying cigarette lighters too now, is he?"
"He sure is," Yossarian told him. "And his aren't stolen."
"That's what you think," ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen answered with a laconic snort. "I'm selling mine for a buck
apiece. What's he getting for his?"
"A dollar and a penny."
Ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen snickered triumphantly. "I beat him every time," he gloated. "Say, what about all
that Egyptian cotton he's stuck with? How much did he buy?"
"All."
"In the whole world? Well, I'll be damned!" ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen crowed with malicious glee. "What a
dope! You were in Cairo with him. Why'd you let him do it?"
"Me?" Yossarian answered with a shrug. "I have no influence on him. It was those teletype machines they
have in all the good restaurants there. Milo had never seen a stock ticker before, and the quotation for
Egyptian cotton happened to be coming in just as he asked the headwaiter to explain it to him. 'Egyptian
cotton?' Milo said with that look of his. 'How much is Egyptian cotton selling for?' The next thing I knew he
had bought the whole goddam harvest. And now he can't unload any of it."
"He has no imagination. I can unload plenty of it in the black market if he'll make a deal."
"Milo knows the black market. There's no demand for cotton."
"But there is a demand for medical supplies. I can roll the cotton up on wooden toothpicks and peddle them
as sterile swabs. Will he sell to me at a good price?"
"He won't sell to you at any price," Yossarian answered. "He's pretty sore at you for going into competition
with him. In fact, he's pretty sore at everybody for getting diarrhea last weekend and giving his mess hall a bad
name. Say, you can help us." Yossarian suddenly seized his arm. "Couldn't you forge some official orders on
that mimeograph machine of yours and get us out of flying to Bologna?"
Ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen pulled away slowly with a look of scorn. "Sure I could," he explained with pride.
"But I would never dream of doing anything like that."
"Why not?"
"Because it's your job. We all have our jobs to do. My job is to unload these Zippo lighters at a profit if I
can and pick up some cotton from Milo. Your job is to bomb the ammunition dumps at Bologna."
"But I'm going to be killed at Bologna," Yossarian pleaded. "We're all going to be killed."
"Then you'll just have to be killed," replied ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen. "Why can't you be a fatalist about it the
way I am? If I'm destined to unload these lighters at a profit and pick up some Egyptian cotton cheap from
Milo, then that's what I'm going to do. And if you're destined to be killed over Bologna, then you're going to
be killed, so you might just as well go out and die like a man. I hate to say this, Yossarian, but you're turning
into a chronic complainer."
Clevinger agreed with ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen that it was Yossarian's job to get killed over Bologna and was
livid with condemnation when Yossarian confessed that it was he who had moved the bomb line and caused
the mission to be canceled.
"Why the hell not?" Yossarian snarled, arguing all the more vehemently because he suspected he was
wrong. "Am I supposed to get my ass shot off just because the colonel wants to be a general?"
"What about the men on the mainland?" Clevinger demanded with just as much emotion. "Are they
supposed to get their asses shot off just because you don't want to go? Those men are entitled to air support!"
"But not necessarily by me. Look, they don't care who knocks out those ammunition dumps. The only
reason we're going is because that bastard Cathcart volunteered us."
"Oh, I know all that," Clevinger assured him, his gaunt face pale and his agitated brown eyes swimming in
sincerity. "But the fact remains that those ammunition dumps are still standing. You know very well that I
don't approve of Colonel Cathcart any more than you do." Clevinger paused for emphasis, his mouth
quivering, and then beat his fist down softly against his sleeping-bag. "But it's not for us to determine what
targets must be destroyed or who's to destroy them or-"
"Or who gets killed doing it? And why?"
"Yes, even that. We have no right to question-"
"You're insane!"
Page 61
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
"-no right to question-"
"Do you really mean that it's not my business how or why I get killed and that it is Colonel Cathcart's? Do
you really mean that?"
"Yes, I do," Clevinger insisted, seeming unsure. "There are men entrusted with winning the war who are in
a much better position than we are to decide what targets have to be bombed."
"We are talking about two different things," Yossarian answered with exaggerated weariness. "You are
talking about the relationship of the Air Corps to the infantry, and I am talking about the relationship of me to
Colonel Cathcart. You are talking about winning the war, and I am talking about winning the war and keeping
alive."
"Exactly," Clevinger snapped smugly. "And which do you think is more important?"
"To whom?" Yossarian shot back. "Open your eyes, Clevinger. It doesn't make a damned bit of difference
who wins the war to someone who's dead."
Clevinger sat for a moment as though he'd been slapped. "Congratulations!" he exclaimed bitterly, the
thinnest milk-white line enclosing his lips tightly in a bloodless, squeezing ring. "I can't think of another
attitude that could be depended upon to give greater comfort to the enemy."
"The enemy," retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, "is anybody who's going to get you killed, no
matter which side he's on, and that includes Colonel Cathcart. And don't you forget that, because the longer
you remember it, the longer you might live."
But Clevinger did forget it, and now he was dead. At the time, Clevinger was so upset by the incident that
Yossarian did not dare tell him he had also been responsible for the epidemic of diarrhea that had caused the
other unnecessary postponement. Milo was even more upset by the possibility that someone had poisoned his
squadron again, and he came bustling fretfully to Yossarian for assistance.
"Please find out from Corporal Snark if he put laundry soap in the sweet potatoes again," he requested
furtively. "Corporal Snark trusts you and will tell you the truth if you give him your word you won't tell
anyone else. As soon as he tells you, come and tell me."
"Of course I put laundry soap in the sweet potatoes," Corporal Snark admitted to Yossarian. "That's what
you asked me to do, isn't it? Laundry soap is the best way."
"He swears to God he didn't have a thing to do with it," Yossarian reported back to Milo.
Milo pouted dubiously. "Dunbar says there is no God."
There was no hope left. By the middle of the second week, everyone in the squadron began to look like
Hungry Joe, who was not scheduled to fly and screamed horribly in his sleep. He was the only one who could
sleep. All night long, men moved through the darkness outside their tents like tongueless wraiths with
cigarettes. In the daytime they stared at the bomb line in futile, drooping clusters or at the still figure of Doc
Daneeka sitting in front of the closed door of the medical tent beneath the morbid hand-lettered sign. They
began to invent humorless, glum jokes of their own and disastrous rumors about the destruction awaiting them
at Bologna.
Yossarian sidled up drunkenly to Colonel Korn at the officers' club one night to kid with him about the new
Lepage gun that the Germans had moved in.
"What Lepage gun?" Colonel Korn inquired with curiosity.
"The new three-hundred-and-forty-four-millimeter Lepage glue gun," Yossarian answered. "It glues a
whole formation of planes together in mid-air."
Colonel Korn jerked his elbow free from Yossarian's clutching fingers in startled affront. "Let go of me,
you idiot!" he cried out furiously, glaring with vindictive approval as Nately leaped upon Yossarian's back and
pulled him away. "Who is that lunatic, anyway?"
Colonel Cathcart chortled merrily. "That's the man you made me give a medal to after Ferrara. You had me
promote him to captain, too, remember? It serves you right."
Nately was lighter than Yossarian and had great difficulty maneuvering Yossarian's lurching bulk across
the room to an unoccupied table. "Are you crazy?" Nately kept hissing with trepidation. "That was Colonel
Korn. Are you crazy?"
Yossarian wanted another drink and promised to leave quietly if Nately brought him one. Then he made
Nately bring him two more. When Nately finally coaxed him to the door, Captain Black came stomping in
Page 62
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
from outside, banging his sloshing shoes down hard on the wood floor and spilling water from his eaves like a
high roof.
"Boy, are you bastards in for it!" he announced exuberantly, splashing away from the puddle forming at his
feet. "I just got a call from Colonel Korn. Do you know what they've got waiting for you at Bologna? Ha! Ha!
They've got the new Lepage glue gun. It glues a whole formation of planes together in mid-air."
"My God, it's true!" Yossarian shrieked, and collapsed against Nately in terror.
"There is no God," answered Dunbar calmly, coming up with a slight stagger.
"Hey, give me a hand with him, will you? I've got to get him back in his tent."
"Says who?"
"Says me. Gee, look at the rain."
"We've got to get a car."
"Steal Captain Black's car," said Yossarian. "That's what I always do."
"We can't steal anybody's car. Since you began stealing the nearest car every time you wanted one, nobody
leaves the ignition on."
"Hop in," said Chief White Halfoat, driving up drunk in a covered jeep. He waited until they had crowded
inside and then spurted ahead with a suddenness that rolled them all over backward. He roared with laughter at
their curses. He drove straight ahead when he left the parking lot and rammed the car into the embankment on
the other side of the road. The others piled forward in a helpless heap and began cursing him again. "I forgot
to turn," he explained.
"Be careful, will you?" Nately cautioned. "You'd better put your headlights on."
Chief White Halfoat pulled back in reverse, made his turn and shot away up the road at top speed. The
wheels were sibilant on the whizzing blacktop surface.
"Not so fast," urged Nately.
"You'd better take me to your squadron first so I can help you put him to bed. Then you can drive me back
to my squadron."
"Who the hell are you?"
"Dunbar."
"Hey, put your headlights on," Nately shouted. "And watch the road!"
"They are on. Isn't Yossarian in this car? That's the only reason I let the rest of you bastards in." Chief
White Halfoat turned completely around to stare into the back seat.
"Watch the road!"
"Yossarian? Is Yossarian in here?"
"I'm here, Chief. Let's go home. What makes you so sure? You never answered my question."
"You see? I told you he was here."
"What question?"
"Whatever it was we were talking about."
"Was it important?"
"I don't remember if it was important or not. I wish to God I knew what it was."
"There is no God."
"That's what we were talking about," Yossarian cried. "What makes you so sure?"
"Hey, are you sure your headlights are on?" Nately called out.
"They're on, they're on. What does he want from me? It's all this rain on the windshield that makes it look
dark from back there."
"Beautiful, beautiful rain."
"I hope it never stops raining. Rain, rain, go a-"
"-way. Come a-"
"-again some oth-"
"-er day. Little Yo-Yo wants-"
"-to play. In-"
"-the meadow, in-"
Chief White Halfoat missed the next turn in the road and ran the jeep all the way up to the crest of a steep
Page 63
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
embankment. Rolling back down, the jeep turned over on its side and settled softly in the mud. There was a
frightened silence.
"Is everyone all right?" Chief White Halfoat inquired in a hushed voice. No one was injured, and he heaved
a long sigh of relief. "You know, that's my trouble," he groaned. "I never listen to anybody. Somebody kept
telling me to put my headlights on, but I just wouldn't listen."
"I kept telling you to put your headlights on."
"I know, I know. And I just wouldn't listen, would I? I wish I had a drink. I do have a drink. Look. It's not
broken."
"It's raining in," Nately noticed. "I'm getting wet."
Chief White Halfoat got the bottle of rye open, drank and handed it off. Lying tangled up on top of each
other, they all drank but Nately, who kept groping ineffectually for the door handle. The bottle fell against his
head with a clunk, and whiskey poured down his neck. He began writhing convulsively.
"Hey, we've got to get out of here!" he cried. "We'll all drown."
"Is anybody in there?" asked Clevinger with concern, shining a flashlight down from the top.
"It's Clevinger!" they shouted, and tried to pull him in through the window as he reached down to aid them.
"Look at them!" Clevinger exclaimed indignantly to McWatt, who sat grinning at the wheel of the staff car.
"Lying there like a bunch of drunken animals. You too, Nately? You ought to be ashamed! Come on-help me
get them out of here before they all die of pneumonia."
"You know, that don't sound like such a bad idea," Chief White Halfoat reflected. "I think I will die of
pneumonia."
"Why?"
"Why not?" answered Chief White Halfoat, and lay back in the mud contentedly with the bottle of rye
cuddled in his arms.
"Oh, now look what he's doing!" Clevinger exclaimed with irritation. "Will you get up and get into the car
so we can all go back to the squadron?"
"We can't all go back. Someone has to stay here to help the Chief with this car he signed out of the motor
pool."
Chief White Halfoat settled back in the staff car with an ebullient, prideful chuckle. "That's Captain Black's
car," he informed them jubilantly. "I stole it from him at the officers' club just now with an extra set of keys he
thought he lost this morning."
"Well, I'll be damned! That calls for a drink."
"Haven't you had enough to drink?" Clevinger began scolding as soon as McWatt started the car. "Look at
you. You don't care if you drink yourselves to death or drown yourselves to death, do you?"
"Just as long as we don't fly ourselves to death."
"Hey, open it up, open it up," Chief White Halfoat urged McWatt. "And turn off the headlights. That's the
only way to do it."
"Doc Daneeka is right," Clevinger went on. "People don't know enough to take care of themselves. I really
am disgusted with all of you."
"Okay, fatmouth, out of the car," Chief White Halfoat ordered. "Everybody get out of the car but
Yossarian. Where's Yossarian?"
"Get the hell off me." Yossarian laughed, pushing him away. "You're all covered with mud."
Clevinger focused on Nately. "You're the one who really surprises me. Do you know what you smell like?
Instead of trying to keep him out of trouble, you get just as drunk as he is. Suppose he got in another fight with
Appleby?" Clevinger's eyes opened wide with alarm when he heard Yossarian chuckle. "He didn't get in
another fight with Appleby, did he?"
"Not this time," said Dunbar.
"No, not this time. This time I did even better."
"This time he got in a fight with Colonel Korn."
"He didn't!" gasped Clevinger.
"He did?" exclaimed Chief White Halfoat with delight. "That calls for a drink."
"But that's terrible!" Clevinger declared with deep apprehension. "Why in the world did you have to pick
Page 64
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
on Colonel Korn? Say, what happened to the lights? Why is everything so dark?"
"I turned them off," answered McWatt. "You know, Chief White Halfoat is right. It's much better with the
headlights off."
"Are you crazy?" Clevinger screamed, and lunged forward to snap the headlights on. He whirled around
upon Yossarian in near hysteria. "You see what you're doing? You've got them all acting like you! Suppose it
stops raining and we have to fly to Bologna tomorrow. You'll be in fine physical condition."
"It won't ever gonna stop raining. No, sir, a rain like this really might go on forever."
"It has stopped raining!" someone said, and the whole car fell silent.
"You poor bastards," Chief White Halfoat murmured compassionately after a few moments had passed.
"Did it really stop raining?" Yossarian asked meekly.
McWatt switched off the windshield wipers to make certain. The rain had stopped. The sky was starting to
clear. The moon was sharp behind a gauzy brown mist.
"Oh, well," sang McWatt soberly. "What the hell."
"Don't worry, fellas," Chief White Halfoat said. "The landing strip is too soft to use tomorrow. Maybe it'll
start raining again before the field dries out."
"You goddam stinking lousy son of a bitch," Hungry Joe screamed from his tent as they sped into the
squadron.
"Jesus, is he back here tonight? I thought he was still in Rome with the courier ship."
"Oh! Ooooh! Oooooooh!" Hungry Joe screamed.
Chief White Halfoat shuddered. "That guy gives me the willies," he confessed in a grouchy whisper. "Hey,
whatever happened to Captain Flume?"
"There's a guy that gives me the willies. I saw him in the woods last week eating wild berries. He never
sleeps in his trailer any more. He looked like hell."
"Hungry Joe's afraid he'll have to replace somebody who goes on sick call, even though there is no sick
call. Did you see him the other night when he tried to kill Havermeyer and fell into Yossarian's slit trench?"
"Ooooh!" screamed Hungry Joe. "Oh! Ooooh! Ooooooh!"
"It sure is a pleasure not having Flume around in the mess hall any more. No more of that 'Pass the salt,
Walt.'"
"Or 'Pass the bread, Fred.'"
"Or 'Shoot me a beet, Pete.'"
"Keep away, keep away," Hungry Joe screamed. "I said keep away, keep away, you goddam stinking lousy
son of a bitch."
"At least we found out what he dreams about," Dunbar observed wryly. "He dreams about goddam stinking
lousy sons of bitches."
Late that night Hungry Joe dreamed that Huple's cat was sleeping on his face, suffocating him, and when
he woke up, Huple's cat was sleeping on his face. His agony was terrifying, the piercing, unearthly howl with
which he split the moonlit dark vibrating in its own impact for seconds afterward like a devastating shock. A
numbing silence followed, and then a riotous din rose from inside his tent.
Yossarian was among the first ones there. When he burst through the entrance, Hungry Joe had his gun out
and was struggling to wrench his arm free from Huple to shoot the cat, who kept spitting and feinting at him
ferociously to distract him from shooting Huple. Both humans were in their GI underwear. The unfrosted light
bulb overhead was swinging crazily on its loose wire, and the jumbled black shadows kept swirling and
bobbing chaotically, so that the entire tent seemed to be reeling. Yossarian reached out instinctively for
balance and then launched himself forward in a prodigious dive that crushed the three combatants to the
ground beneath him. He emerged from the melee with the scruff of a neck in each hand-Hungry Joe's neck and
the cat's. Hungry Joe and the cat glared at each other savagely. The cat spat viciously at Hungry Joe, and
Hungry Joe tried to hit it with a haymaker.
"A fair fight," Yossarian decreed, and all the others who had come running to the uproar in horror began
cheering ecstatically in a tremendous overflow of relief. "We'll have a fair fight," he explained officially to
Hungry Joe and the cat after he had carried them both outside, still holding them apart by the scruffs of their
necks. "Fists, fangs and claws. But no guns," he warned Hungry Joe. "And no spitting," he warned the cat
Page 65
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
sternly. "When I turn you both loose, go. Break clean in the clinches and come back fighting. Go!"
There was a huge, giddy crowd of men who were avid for any diversion, but the cat turned chicken the
moment Yossarian released him and fled from Hungry Joe ignominiously like a yellow dog. Hungry Joe was
declared the winner. He swaggered away happily with the proud smile of a champion, his shriveled head high
and his emaciated chest out. He went back to bed victorious and dreamed again that Huple's cat was sleeping
on his face, suffocating him.
13 MAJOR --- DE COVERLEY
Moving the bomb line did not fool the Germans, but it did fool Major --- de Coverley, who packed his
musette bag, commandeered an airplane and, under the impression that Florence too had been captured by the
Allies, had himself flown to that city to rent two apartments for the officers and the enlisted men in the
squadron to use on rest leaves. He had still not returned by the time Yossarian jumped back outside Major
Major's office and wondered whom to appeal to next for help.
Major --- de Coverley was a splendid, awe-inspiring, grave old man with a massive leonine head and an
angry shock of wild white hair that raged like a blizzard around his stern, patriarchal face. His duties as
squadron executive officer did consist entirely, as both Doc Daneeka and Major Major had conjectured, of
pitching horseshoes, kidnaping Italian laborers, and renting apartments for the enlisted men and officers to use
on rest leaves, and he excelled at all three.
Each time the fall of a city like Naples, Rome or Florence seemed imminent, Major --- de Coverley would
pack his musette bag, commandeer an airplane and a pilot, and have himself flown away, accomplishing all
this without uttering a word, by the sheer force of his solemn, domineering visage and the peremptory gestures
of his wrinkled finger. A day or two after the city fell, he would be back with leases on two large and
luxurious apartments there, one for the officers and one for the enlisted men, both already staffed with
competent, jolly cooks and maids. A few days after that, newspapers would appear throughout the world with
photographs of the first American soldiers bludgeoning their way into the shattered city through rubble and
smoke. Inevitably, Major --- de Coverley was among them, seated straight as a ramrod in a jeep he had
obtained from somewhere, glancing neither right nor left as the artillery fire burst about his invincible head
and lithe young infantrymen with carbines went loping up along the sidewalks in the shelter of burning
buildings or fell dead in doorways. He seemed eternally indestructible as he sat there surrounded by danger,
his features molded firmly into that same fierce, regal, just and forbidding countenance which was recognized
and revered by every man in the squadron.
To German intelligence, Major --- de Coverley was a vexatious enigma; not one of the hundreds of
American prisoners would ever supply any concrete information about the elderly white-haired officer with
the gnarled and menacing brow and blazing, powerful eyes who seemed to spearhead every important advance
so fearlessly and successfully. To American authorities his identity was equally perplexing; a whole regiment
of crack C.I.D. men had been thrown into the front lines to find out who he was, while a battalion of
combat-hardened public-relations officers stood on red alert twenty-four hours a day with orders to begin
publicizing him the moment he was located.
In Rome, Major --- de Coverley had outdone himself with the apartments. For the officers, who arrived in
groups of four or five, there was an immense double room for each in a new white stone building, with three
spacious bathrooms with walls of shimmering aquamarine tile and one skinny maid named Michaela who
tittered at everything and kept the apartment in spotless order. On the landing below lived the obsequious
owners. On the landing above lived the beautiful rich black-haired Countess and her beautiful, rich
black-haired daughter-in-law, both of whom would put out only for Nately, who was too shy to want them,
and for Aarfy, who was too stuffy to take them and tried to dissuade them from ever putting out for anyone but
their husbands, who had chosen to remain in the north with the family's business interests.
"They're really a couple of good kids," Aarfy confided earnestly to Yossarian, whose recurring dream it
was to have the nude milk-white female bodies of both these beautiful rich black-haired good kids lying
stretched out in bed erotically with him at the same time.
The enlisted men descended upon Rome in gangs of twelve or more with Gargantuan appetites and heavy
crates filled with canned food for the women to cook and serve to them in the dining room of their own
Page 66
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
apartment on the sixth floor of a red brick building with a clinking elevator. There was always more activity at
the enlisted men's place. There were always more enlisted men, to begin with, and more women to cook and
serve and sweep and scrub, and then there were always the gay and silly sensual young girls that Yossarian
had found and brought there and those that the sleepy enlisted men returning to Pianosa after their exhausting
seven-day debauch had brought there on their own and were leaving behind for whoever wanted them next.
The girls had shelter and food for as long as they wanted to stay. All they had to do in return was hump any of
the men who asked them to, which seemed to make everything just about perfect for them.
Every fourth day or so Hungry Joe came crashing in like a man in torment, hoarse, wild, and frenetic, if he
had been unlucky enough to finish his missions again and was flying the courier ship. Most times he slept at
the enlisted men's apartment. Nobody was certain how many rooms Major --- de Coverley had rented, not
even the stout black-bodiced woman in corsets on the first floor from whom he had rented them. They covered
the whole top floor, and Yossarian knew they extended down to the fifth floor as well, for it was in Snowden's
room on the fifth floor that he had finally found the maid in the lime-colored panties with a dust mop the day
after Bologna, after Hungry Joe had discovered him in bed with Luciana at the officers' apartment that same
morning and had gone running like a fiend for his camera.
The maid in the lime-colored panties was a cheerful, fat, obliging woman in her mid-thirties with squashy
thighs and swaying hams in lime-colored panties that she was always rolling off for any man who wanted her.
She had a plain broad face and was the most virtuous woman alive: she laid for everybody, regardless of race,
creed, color or place of national origin, donating herself sociably as an act of hospitality, procrastinating not
even for the moment it might take to discard the cloth or broom or dust mop she was clutching at the time she
was grabbed. Her allure stemmed from her accessibility; like Mt. Everest, she was there, and the men climbed
on top of her each time they felt the urge. Yossarian was in love with the maid in the lime-colored panties
because she seemed to be the only woman left he could make love to without falling in love with. Even the
bald-headed girl in Sicily still evoked in him strong sensations of pity, tenderness and regret.
Despite the multiple perils to which Major --- de Coverley exposed himself each time he rented apartments,
his only injury had occurred, ironically enough, while he was leading the triumphal procession into the open
city of Rome, where he was wounded in the eye by a flower fired at him from close range by a seedy,
cackling, intoxicated old man, who, like Satan himself, had then bounded up on Major --- de Coverley's car
with malicious glee, seized him roughly and contemptuously by his venerable white head and kissed him
mockingly on each cheek with a mouth reeking with sour fumes of wine, cheese and garlic, before dropping
back into the joyous celebrating throngs with a hollow, dry, excoriating laugh. Major --- de Coverley, a
Spartan in adversity, did not flinch once throughout the whole hideous ordeal. And not until he had returned to
Pianosa, his business in Rome completed, did he seek medical attention for his wound.
He resolved to remain binocular and specified to Doc Daneeka that his eye patch be transparent so that he
could continue pitching horseshoes, kidnaping Italian laborers and renting apartments with unimpaired vision.
To the men in the squadron, Major --- de Coverley was a colossus, although they never dared tell him so. The
only one who ever did dare address him was Milo Minderbinder, who approached the horseshoe-pitching pit
with a hard-boiled egg his second week in the squadron and held it aloft for Major --- de Coverley to see.
Major --- de Coverley straightened with astonishment at Milo's effrontery and concentrated upon him the full
fury of his storming countenance with its rugged overhang of gullied forehead and huge crag of a humpbacked
nose that came charging out of his face wrathfully like a Big Ten fullback. Milo stood his ground, taking
shelter behind the hard-boiled egg raised protectively before his face like a magic charm. In time the gale
began to subside, and the danger passed.
"What is that?" Major --- de Coverley demanded at last.
"An egg," Milo answered
"What kind of an egg?" Major --- de Coverley demanded.
"A hard-boiled egg," Milo answered.
"What kind of a hard-boiled egg?" Major --- de Coverley demanded.
"A fresh hard-boiled egg," Milo answered.
"Where did the fresh egg come from?" Major --- de Coverley demanded.
"From a chicken," Milo answered.
Page 67
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
"Where is the chicken?" Major --- de Coverley demanded.
"The chicken is in Malta," Milo answered.
"How many chickens are there in Malta?"
"Enough chickens to lay fresh eggs for every officer in the squadron at five cents apiece from the mess
fund," Milo answered.
"I have a weakness for fresh eggs," Major --- de Coverley confessed.
"If someone put a plane at my disposal, I could fly down there once a week in a squadron plane and bring
back all the fresh eggs we need," Milo answered. "After all, Malta's not so far away."
"Malta's not so far away," Major --- de Coverley observed. "You could probably fly down there once a
week in a squadron plane and bring back all the fresh eggs we need."
"Yes," Milo agreed. "I suppose I could do that, if someone wanted me to and put a plane at my disposal."
"I like my fresh eggs fried," Major --- de Coverley remembered. "In fresh butter."
"I can find all the fresh butter we need in Sicily for twenty-five cents a pound," Milo answered.
"Twenty-five cents a pound for fresh butter is a good buy. There's enough money in the mess fund for butter
too, and we could probably sell some to the other squadrons at a profit and get back most of what we pay for
our own."
"What's your name, son?" asked Major --- de Coverley.
"My name is Milo Minderbinder, sir. I am twenty-seven years old."
"You're a good mess officer, Milo."
"I'm not the mess officer, sir."
"You're a good mess officer, Milo."
"Thank you, sir. I'll do everything in my power to be a good mess officer."
"Bless you, my boy. Have a horseshoe."
"Thank you, sir. What should I do with it?"
"Throw it."
"Away?"
"At the peg there. Then pick it up and throw it at this peg. It's a game, see? You get the horseshoe back."
"Yes, sir. I see. How much are horseshoes selling for?"
The smell of a fresh egg snapping exotically in a pool of fresh butter carried a long way on the
Mediterranean trade winds and brought General Dreedle racing back with a voracious appetite, accompanied
by his nurse, who accompanied him everywhere, and his son-in-law, Colonel Moodus. In the beginning
General Dreedle devoured all his meals in Milo's mess hall. Then the other three squadrons in Colonel
Cathcart's group turned their mess halls over to Milo and gave him an airplane and a pilot each so that he
could buy fresh eggs and fresh butter for them too. Milo's planes shuttled back and forth seven days a week as
every officer in the four squadrons began devouring fresh eggs in an insatiable orgy of fresh-egg eating.
General Dreedle devoured fresh eggs for breakfast, lunch and dinner-between meals he devoured more fresh
eggs-until Milo located abundant sources of fresh veal, beef, duck, baby lamb chops, mushroom caps,
broccoli, South African rock lobster tails, shrimp, hams, puddings, grapes, ice cream, strawberries and
artichokes. There were three other bomb groups in General Dreedle's combat wing, and they each jealously
dispatched their own planes to Malta for fresh eggs, but discovered that fresh eggs were selling there for seven
cents apiece. Since they could buy them from Milo for five cents apiece, it made more sense to turn over their
mess halls to his syndicate, too, and give him the planes and pilots needed to ferry in all the other good food
he promised to supply as well.
Everyone was elated with this turn of events, most of all Colonel Cathcart, who was convinced he had won
a feather in his cap. He greeted Milo jovially each time they met and, in an excess of contrite generosity,
impulsively recommended Major Major for promotion. The recommendation was rejected at once at
Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters by ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen, who scribbled a brusque, unsigned
reminder that the Army had only one Major Major Major Major and did not intend to lose him by promotion
just to please Colonel Cathcart. Colonel Cathcart was stung by the blunt rebuke and skulked guiltily about his
room in smarting repudiation. He blamed Major Major for this black eye and decided to bust him down to
lieutenant that very same day.
Page 68
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
"They probably won't let you," Colonel Korn remarked with a condescending smile, savoring the situation.
"For precisely the same reasons that they wouldn't let you promote him. Besides, you'd certainly look foolish
trying to bust him down to lieutenant right after you tried to promote him to my rank."
Colonel Cathcart felt hemmed in on every side. He had been much more successful in obtaining a medal
for Yossarian after the debacle of Ferrara, when the bridge spanning the Po was still standing undamaged
seven days after Colonel Cathcart had volunteered to destroy it. Nine missions his men had flown there in six
days, and the bridge was not demolished until the tenth mission on the seventh day, when Yossarian killed
Kraft and his crew by taking his flight of six planes in over the target a second time. Yossarian came in
carefully on his second bomb run because he was brave then. He buried his head in his bombsight until his
bombs were away; when he looked up, everything inside the ship was suffused in a weird orange glow. At first
he thought that his own plane was on fire. Then he spied the plane with the burning engine directly above him
and screamed to McWatt through the intercom to turn left hard. A second later, the wing of Kraft's plane blew
off. The flaming wreck dropped, first the fuselage, then the spinning wing, while a shower of tiny metal
fragments began tap dancing on the roof of Yossarian's own plane and the incessant cachung! cachung!
cachung! of the flak was still thumping all around him.
Back on the ground, every eye watched grimly as he walked in dull dejection up to Captain Black outside
the green clapboard briefing room to make his intelligence report and learned that Colonel Cathcart and
Colonel Korn were waiting to speak to him inside. Major Danby stood barring the door, waving everyone else
away in ashen silence. Yossarian was leaden with fatigue and longed to remove his sticky clothing. He stepped
into the briefing room with mixed emotions, uncertain how he was supposed to feel about Kraft and the others,
for they had all died in the distance of a mute and secluded agony at a moment when he was up to his own ass
in the same vile, excruciating dilemma of duty and damnation.
Colonel Cathcart, on the other hand, was all broken up by the event. "Twice?" he asked.
"I would have missed it the first time," Yossarian replied softly, his face lowered.
Their voices echoed slightly in the long, narrow bungalow.
"But twice?" Colonel Cathcart repeated, in vivid disbelief.
"I would have missed it the first time," Yossarian repeated.
"But Kraft would be alive."
"And the bridge would still be up."
"A trained bombardier is supposed to drop his bombs the first time," Colonel Cathcart reminded him. "The
other five bombardiers dropped their bombs the first time."
"And missed the target," Yossarian said. "We'd have had to go back there again."
"And maybe you would have gotten it the first time then."
"And maybe I wouldn't have gotten it at all."
"But maybe there wouldn't have been any losses."
"And maybe there would have been more losses, with the bridge still left standing. I thought you wanted
the bridge destroyed."
"Don't contradict me," Colonel Cathcart said. "We're all in enough trouble."
"I'm not contradicting you, sir."
"Yes you are. Even that's a contradiction."
"Yes, sir. I'm sorry."
Colonel Cathcart cracked his knuckles violently. Colonel Korn, a stocky, dark, flaccid man with a
shapeless paunch, sat completely relaxed on one of the benches in the front row, his hands clasped
comfortably over the top of his bald and swarthy head. His eyes were amused behind his glinting rimless
spectacles.
"We're trying to be perfectly objective about this," he prompted Colonel Cathcart.
"We're trying to be perfectly objective about this," Colonel Cathcart said to Yossarian with the zeal of
sudden inspiration. "It's not that I'm being sentimental or anything. I don't give a damn about the men or the
airplane. It's just that it looks so lousy on the report. How am I going to cover up something like this in the
report?"
"Why don't you give me a medal?" Yossarian suggested timidly.
Page 69
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
"For going around twice?"
"You gave one to Hungry Joe when he cracked up that airplane by mistake."
Colonel Cathcart snickered ruefully. "You'll be lucky if we don't give you a court-martial."
"But I got the bridge the second time around," Yossarian protested. "I thought you wanted the bridge
destroyed."
"Oh, I don't know what I wanted," Colonel Cathcart cried out in exasperation. "Look, of course I wanted
the bridge destroyed. That bridge has been a source of trouble to me ever since I decided to send you men out
to get it. But why couldn't you do it the first time?"
"I didn't have enough time. My navigator wasn't sure we had the right city."
"The right city?" Colonel Cathcart was baffled. "Are you trying to blame it all on Aarfy now?"
"No, sir. It was my mistake for letting him distract me. All I'm trying to say is that I'm not infallible."
"Nobody is infallible," Colonel Cathcart said sharply, and then continued vaguely, with an afterthought:
"Nobody is indispensable, either."
There was no rebuttal. Colonel Korn stretched sluggishly. "We've got to reach a decision," he observed
casually to Colonel Cathcart.
"We've got to reach a decision," Colonel Cathcart said to Yossarian. "And it's all your fault. Why did you
have to go around twice? Why couldn't you drop your bombs the first time like all the others?"
"I would have missed the first time."
"It seems to me that we're going around twice," Colonel Korn interrupted with a chuckle.
"But what are we going to do?" Colonel Cathcart exclaimed with distress. "The others are all waiting
outside."
"Why don't we give him a medal?" Colonel Korn proposed.
"For going around twice? What can we give him a medal for?"
"For going around twice," Colonel Korn answered with a reflective, self-satisfied smile. "After all, I
suppose it did take a lot of courage to go over that target a second time with no other planes around to divert
the antiaircraft fire. And he did hit the bridge. You know, that might be the answer-to act boastfully about
something we ought to be ashamed of. That's a trick that never seems to fail."
"Do you think it will work?"
"I'm sure it will. And let's promote him to captain, too, just to make certain."
"Don't you think that's going a bit farther than we have to?"
"No, I don't think so. It's best to play safe. And a captain's not much difference."
"All right," Colonel Cathcart decided. "We'll give him a medal for being brave enough to go around over
the target twice. And we'll make him a captain, too."
Colonel Korn reached for his hat.
"Exit smiling," he joked, and put his arm around Yossarian's shoulders as they stepped outside the door.
14 KID SAMPSON
By the time of the mission to Bologna, Yossarian was brave enough not to go around over the target even
once, and when he found himself aloft finally in the nose of Kid Sampson's plane, he pressed in the button of
his throat mike and asked,
"Well? What's wrong with the plane?"
Kid Sampson let out a shriek. "Is something wrong with the plane? What's the matter?"
Kid Sampson's cry turned Yossarian to ice. "Is something the matter?" he yelled in horror. "Are we bailing
out?"
"I don't know!" Kid Sampson shot back in anguish, wailing excitedly. "Someone said we're bailing out!
Who is this, anyway? Who is this?"
"This is Yossarian in the nose! Yossarian in the nose. I heard you say there was something the matter.
Didn't you say there was something the matter?"
"I thought you said there was something wrong. Everything seems okay. Everything is all right."
Yossarian's heart sank. Something was terribly wrong if everything was all right and they had no excuse for
turning back. He hesitated gravely.
Page 70
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
"I can't hear you," he said.
"I said everything is all right."
The sun was blinding white on the porcelain-blue water below and on the flashing edges of the other
airplanes. Yossarian took hold of the colored wires leading into the jackbox of the intercom system and tore
them loose.
"I still can't hear you," he said.
He heard nothing. Slowly he collected his map case and his three flak suits and crawled back to the main
compartment. Nately, sitting stiffly in the co-pilot's seat, spied him through the corner of his eye as he stepped
up on the flight deck behind Kid Sampson. He smiled at Yossarian wanly, looking frail and exceptionally
young and bashful in the bulky dungeon of his earphones, hat, throat mike, flak suit and parachute. Yossarian
bent close to Kid Sampson's ear.
"I still can't hear you," he shouted above the even drone of the engines.
Kid Sampson glanced back at him with surprise. Kid Sampson had an angular, comical face with arched
eyebrows and a scrawny blond mustache.
"What?" he called out over his shoulder.
"I still can't hear you," Yossarian repeated.
"You'll have to talk louder," Kid Sampson said. "I still can't hear you."
"I said I still can't hear you!" Yossarian yelled.
"I can't help it," Kid Sampson yelled back at him. "I'm shouting as loud as I can."
"I couldn't hear you over my intercom," Yossarian bellowed in mounting helplessness. "You'll have to turn
back."
"For an intercom?" asked Kid Sampson incredulously.
"Turn back," said Yossarian, "before I break your head."
Kid Sampson looked for moral support toward Nately, who stared away from him pointedly. Yossarian
outranked them both. Kid Sampson resisted doubtfully for another moment and then capitulated eagerly with a
triumphant whoop.
"That's just fine with me," he announced gladly, and blew out a shrill series of whistles up into his
mustache. "Yes sirree, that's just fine with old Kid Sampson." He whistled again and shouted over the
intercom, "Now hear this, my little chickadees. This is Admiral Kid Sampson talking. This is Admiral Kid
Sampson squawking, the pride of the Queen's marines. Yessiree. We're turning back, boys, by crackee, we're
turning back!"
Nately ripped off his hat and earphones in one jubilant sweep and began rocking back and forth happily
like a handsome child in a high chair. Sergeant Knight came plummeting down from the top gun turret and
began pounding them all on the back with delirious enthusiasm. Kid Sampson turned the plane away from the
formation in a wide, graceful arc and headed toward the airfield. When Yossarian plugged his headset into one
of the auxiliary jackboxes, the two gunners in the rear section of the plane were both singing "La Cucaracha."
Back at the field, the party fizzled out abruptly. An uneasy silence replaced it, and Yossarian was sober and
self-conscious as he climbed down from the plane and took his place in the jeep that was already waiting for
them. None of the men spoke at all on the drive back through the heavy, mesmerizing quiet blanketing
mountains, sea and forests. The feeling of desolation persisted when they turned off the road at the squadron.
Yossarian got out of the car last. After a minute, Yossarian and a gentle warm wind were the only things
stirring in the haunting tranquillity that hung like a drug over the vacated tents. The squadron stood insensate,
bereft of everything human but Doc Daneeka, who roosted dolorously like a shivering turkey buzzard beside
the closed door of the medical tent, his stuffed nose jabbing away in thirsting futility at the hazy sunlight
streaming down around him. Yossarian knew Doc Daneeka would not go swimming with him. Doc Daneeka
would never go swimming again; a person could swoon or suffer a mild coronary occlusion in an inch or two
of water and drown to death, be carried out to sea by an undertow, or made vulnerable to poliomyelitis or
meningococcus infection through chilling or over-exertion. The threat of Bologna to others had instilled in
Doc Daneeka an even more poignant solicitude for his own safety. At night now, he heard burglars.
Through the lavender gloom clouding the entrance of the operations tent, Yossarian glimpsed Chief White
Halfoat, diligently embezzling whiskey rations, forging the signatures of nondrinkers and pouring off the
Page 71
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
alcohol with which he was poisoning himself into separate bottles rapidly in order to steal as much as he could
before Captain Black roused himself with recollection and came hurrying over indolently to steal the rest
himself.
The jeep started up again softly. Kid Sampson, Nately and the others wandered apart in a noiseless eddy of
motion and were sucked away into the cloying yellow stillness. The jeep vanished with a cough. Yossarian
was alone in a ponderous, primeval lull in which everything green looked black and everything else was
imbued with the color of pus. The breeze rustled leaves in a dry and diaphanous distance. He was restless,
scared and sleepy. The sockets of his eyes felt grimy with exhaustion. Wearily he moved inside the parachute
tent with its long table of smoothed wood, a nagging bitch of a doubt burrowing painlessly inside a conscience
that felt perfectly clear. He left his flak suit and parachute there and crossed back past the water wagon to the
intelligence tent to return his map case to Captain Black, who sat drowsing in his chair with his skinny long
legs up on his desk and inquired with indifferent curiosity why Yossarian's plane had turned back. Yossarian
ignored him. He set the map down on the counter and walked out.
Back in his own tent, he squirmed out of his parachute harness and then out of his clothes. Orr was in
Rome, due back that same afternoon from the rest leave he had won by ditching his plane in the waters off
Genoa.
Nately would already be packing to replace him, entranced to find himself still alive and undoubtedly
impatient to resume his wasted and heartbreaking courtship of his prostitute in Rome. When Yossarian was
undressed, he sat down on his cot to rest. He felt much better as soon as he was naked. He never felt
comfortable in clothes. In a little while he put fresh undershorts back on and set out for the beach in his
moccasins, a khaki-colored bath towel draped over his shoulders.
The path from the squadron led him around a mysterious gun emplacement in the woods; two of the three
enlisted men stationed there lay sleeping on the circle of sand bags and the third sat eating a purple
pomegranate, biting off large mouthfuls between his churning jaws and spewing the ground roughage out
away from him into the bushes. When he bit, red juice ran out of his mouth. Yossarian padded ahead into the
forest again, caressing his bare, tingling belly adoringly from time to time as though to reassure himself it was
all still there. He rolled a piece of lint out of his navel. Along the ground suddenly, on both sides of the path,
he saw dozens of new mushrooms the rain had spawned poking their nodular fingers up through the clammy
earth like lifeless stalks of flesh, sprouting in such necrotic profusion everywhere he looked that they seemed
to be proliferating right before his eyes. There were thousands of them swarming as far back into the
underbrush as he could see, and they appeared to swell in size and multiply in number as he spied them. He
hurried away from them with a shiver of eerie alarm and did not slacken his pace until the soil crumbled to dry
sand beneath his feet and they had been left behind. He glanced back apprehensively, half expecting to find
the limp white things crawling after him in sightless pursuit or snaking up through the treetops in a writhing
and ungovernable mutative mass.
The beach was deserted. The only sounds were hushed ones, the bloated gurgle of the stream, the
respirating hum of the tall grass and shrubs behind him, the apathetic moaning of the dumb, translucent waves.
The surf was always small, the water clear and cool. Yossarian left his things on the sand and moved through
the knee-high waves until he was completely immersed. On the other side of the sea, a bumpy sliver of dark
land lay wrapped in mist, almost invisible. He swam languorously out to the raft, held on a moment, and swam
languorously back to where he could stand on the sand bar. He submerged himself head first into the green
water several times until he felt clean and wide-awake and then stretched himself out face down in the sand
and slept until the planes returning from Bologna were almost overhead and the great, cumulative rumble of
their many engines came crashing in through his slumber in an earth-shattering roar.
He woke up blinking with a slight pain in his head and opened his eyes upon a world boiling in chaos in
which everything was in proper order. He gasped in utter amazement at the fantastic sight of the twelve flights
of planes organized calmly into exact formation. The scene was too unexpected to be true. There were no
planes spurting ahead with wounded, none lagging behind with damage. No distress flares smoked in the sky.
No ship was missing but his own. For an instant he was paralyzed with a sensation of madness. Then he
understood, and almost wept at the irony. The explanation was simple: clouds had covered the target before
the planes could bomb it, and the mission to Bologna was still to be flown.
Page 72
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
He was wrong. There had been no clouds. Bologna had been bombed. Bologna was a milk run. There had
been no flak there at all.
15 PILTCHARD & WREN
Captain Piltchard and Captain Wren, the inoffensive joint squadron operations officers, were both mild,
soft-spoken men of less than middle height who enjoyed flying combat missions and begged nothing more of
life and Colonel Cathcart than the opportunity to continue flying them. They had flown hundreds of combat
missions and wanted to fly hundreds more. They assigned themselves to every one. Nothing so wonderful as
war had ever happened to them before; and they were afraid it might never happen to them again. They
conducted their duties humbly and reticently, with a minimum of fuss, and went to great lengths not to
antagonize anyone. They smiled quickly at everyone they passed. When they spoke, they mumbled. They were
shifty, cheerful, subservient men who were comfortable only with each other and never met anyone else's eye,
not even Yossarian's eye at the open-air meeting they called to reprimand him publicly for making Kid
Sampson turn back from the mission to Bologna.
"Fellas," said Captain Piltchard, who had thinning dark hair and smiled awkwardly. "When you turn back
from a mission, try to make sure it's for something important, will you? Not for something unimportant... like
a defective intercom... or something like that. Okay? Captain Wren has more he wants to say to you on that
subject."
"Captain Piltchard's right, fellas," said Captain Wren. "And that's all I'm going to say to you on that subject.
Well, we finally got to Bologna today, and we found out it's a milk run. We were all a little nervous, I guess,
and didn't do too much damage. Well, listen to this. Colonel Cathcart got permission for us to go back. And
tomorrow we're really going to paste those ammunition dumps. Now, what do you think about that?"
And to prove to Yossarian that they bore him no animosity, they even assigned him to fly lead bombardier
with McWatt in the first formation when they went back to Bologna the next day. He came in on the target
like a Havermeyer, confidently taking no evasive action at all, and suddenly they were shooting the living shit
out of him!
Heavy flak was everywhere! He had been lulled, lured and trapped, and there was nothing he could do but
sit there like an idiot and watch the ugly black puffs smashing up to kill him. There was nothing he could do
until his bombs dropped but look back into the bombsight, where the fine cross-hairs in the lens were glued
magnetically over the target exactly where he had placed them, intersecting perfectly deep inside the yard of
his block of camouflaged warehouses before the base of the first building. He was trembling steadily as the
plane crept ahead. He could hear the hollow boom-boom-boom-boom of the flak pounding all around him in
overlapping measures of four, the sharp, piercing crack! of a single shell exploding suddenly very close by.
His head was bursting with a thousand dissonant impulses as he prayed for the bombs to drop. He wanted to
sob. The engines droned on monotonously like a fat, lazy fly. At last the indices on the bombsight crossed,
tripping away the eight 500-pounders one after the other. The plane lurched upward buoyantly with the
lightened load. Yossarian bent away from the bombsight crookedly to watch the indicator on his left. When
the pointer touched zero, he closed the bomb bay doors and, over the intercom, at the very top of his voice,
shrieked:
"Turn right hard!"
McWatt responded instantly. With a grinding howl of engines, he flipped the plane over on one wing and
wrung it around remorselessly in a screaming turn away from the twin spires of flak Yossarian had spied
stabbing toward them. Then Yossarian had McWatt climb and keep climbing higher and higher until they tore
free finally into a calm, diamond-blue sky that was sunny and pure everywhere and laced in the distance with
long white veils of tenuous fluff. The wind strummed soothingly against the cylindrical panes of his windows,
and he relaxed exultantly only until they picked up speed again and then turned McWatt left and plunged him
right back down, noticing with a transitory spasm of elation the mushrooming clusters of flak leaping open
high above him and back over his shoulder to the right, exactly where he could have been if he had not turned
left and dived. He leveled McWatt out with another harsh cry and whipped him upward and around again into
a ragged blue patch of unpolluted air just as the bombs he had dropped began to strike. The first one fell in the
yard, exactly where he had aimed, and then the rest of the bombs from his own plane and from the other
Page 73
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
planes in his flight burst open on the ground in a charge of rapid orange flashes across the tops of the
buildings, which collapsed instantly in a vast, churning wave of pink and gray and coal-black smoke that went
rolling out turbulently in all directions and quaked convulsively in its bowels as though from great blasts of
red and white and golden sheet lightning.
"Well, will you look at that," Aarfy marveled sonorously right beside Yossarian, his plump, orbicular face
sparkling with a look of bright enchantment. "There must have been an ammunition dump down there."
Yossarian had forgotten about Aarfy. "Get out!" he shouted at him. "Get out of the nose!"
Aarfy smiled politely and pointed down toward the target in a generous invitation for Yossarian to look.
Yossarian began slapping at him insistently and signaled wildly toward the entrance of the crawlway.
"Get back in the ship!" he cried frantically. "Get back in the ship!"
Aarfy shrugged amiably. "I can't hear you," he explained.
Yossarian seized him by the straps of his parachute harness and pushed him backward toward the crawlway
just as the plane was hit with a jarring concussion that rattled his bones and made his heart stop. He knew at
once they were all dead.
"Climb!" he screamed into the intercom at McWatt when he saw he was still alive. "Climb, you bastard!
Climb, climb, climb, climb!"
The plane zoomed upward again in a climb that was swift and straining, until he leveled it out with another
harsh shout at McWatt and wrenched it around once more in a roaring, merciless forty-five-degree turn that
sucked his insides out in one enervating sniff and left him floating fleshless in mid-air until he leveled McWatt
out again just long enough to hurl him back around toward the right and then down into a screeching dive.
Through endless blobs of ghostly black smoke he sped, the hanging smut wafting against the smooth
plexiglass nose of the ship like an evil, damp, sooty vapor against his cheeks. His heart was hammering again
in aching terror as he hurtled upward and downward through the blind gangs of flak charging murderously into
the sky at him, then sagging inertly. Sweat gushed from his neck in torrents and poured down over his chest
and waist with the feeling of warm slime. He was vaguely aware for an instant that the planes in his formation
were no longer there, and then he was aware of only himself. His throat hurt like a raw slash from the
strangling intensity with which he shrieked each command to McWatt. The engines rose to a deafening,
agonized, ululating bellow each time McWatt changed direction. And far out in front the bursts of flak were
still swarming into the sky from new batteries of guns poking around for accurate altitude as they waited
sadistically for him to fly into range.
The plane was slammed again suddenly with another loud, jarring explosion that almost rocked it over on
its back, and the nose filled immediately with sweet clouds of blue smoke. Something was on fire! Yossarian
whirled to escape and smacked into Aarfy, who had struck a match and was placidly lighting his pipe.
Yossarian gaped at his grinning, moon-faced navigator in utter shock and confusion. It occurred to him that
one of them was mad.
"Jesus Christ!" he screamed at Aarfy in tortured amazement. "Get the hell out of the nose! Are you crazy?
Get out!"
"What?" said Aarfy.
"Get out!" Yossarian yelled hysterically, and began clubbing Aarfy backhanded with both fists to drive him
away. "Get out!"
"I still can't hear you," Aarfy called back innocently with an expression of mild and reproving perplexity.
"You'll have to talk a little louder."
"Get out of the nose!" Yossarian shrieked in frustration. "They're trying to kill us! Don't you understand?
They're trying to kill us!"
"Which way should I go, goddam it?" McWatt shouted furiously over the intercom in a suffering,
high-pitched voice. "Which way should I go?"
"Turn left! Left, you goddam dirty son of a bitch! Turn left hard!"
Aarfy crept up close behind Yossarian and jabbed him sharply in the ribs with the stem of his pipe.
Yossarian flew up toward the ceiling with a whinnying cry, then jumped completely around on his knees,
white as a sheet and quivering with rage. Aarfy winked encouragingly and jerked his thumb back toward
McWatt with a humorous moue.
Page 74
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
"What's eating him?" he asked with a laugh.
Yossarian was struck with a weird sense of distortion. "Will you get out of here?" he yelped beseechingly,
and shoved Aarfy over with all his strength. "Are you deaf or something? Get back in the plane!" And to
McWatt he screamed, "Dive! Dive!"
Down they sank once more into the crunching, thudding, voluminous barrage of bursting antiaircraft shells
as Aarfy came creeping back behind Yossarian and jabbed him sharply in the ribs again. Yossarian shied
upward with another whinnying gasp.
"I still couldn't hear you," Aarfy said.
"I said get out of here!" Yossarian shouted, and broke into tears. He began punching Aarfy in the body with
both hands as hard as he could. "Get away from me! Get away!"
Punching Aarfy was like sinking his fists into a limp sack of inflated rubber. There was no resistance, no
response at all from the soft, insensitive mass, and after a while Yossarian's spirit died and his arms dropped
helplessly with exhaustion. He was overcome with a humiliating feeling of impotence and was ready to weep
in self-pity.
"What did you say?" Aarfy asked.
"Get away from me," Yossarian answered, pleading with him now. "Go back in the plane."
"I still can't hear you."
"Never mind," wailed Yossarian, "never mind. Just leave me alone."
"Never mind what?"
Yossarian began hitting himself in the forehead. He seized Aarfy by the shirt front and, struggling to his
feet for traction, dragged him to the rear of the nose compartment and flung him down like a bloated and
unwieldy bag in the entrance of the crawlway. A shell banged open with a stupendous clout right beside his
ear as he was scrambling back toward the front, and some undestroyed recess of his intelligence wondered that
it did not kill them all. They were climbing again. The engines were howling again as though in pain, and the
air inside the plane was acrid with the smell of machinery and fetid with the stench of gasoline. The next thing
he knew, it was snowing!
Thousands of tiny bits of white paper were falling like snowflakes inside the plane, milling around his head
so thickly that they clung to his eyelashes when he blinked in astonishment and fluttered against his nostrils
and lips each time he inhaled. When he spun around in his bewilderment, Aarfy was grinning proudly from ear
to ear like something inhuman as he held up a shattered paper map for Yossarian to see. A large chunk of flak
had ripped up from the floor through Aarfy's colossal jumble of maps and had ripped out through the ceiling
inches away from their heads. Aarfy's joy was sublime.
"Will you look at this?" he murmured, waggling two of his stubby fingers playfully into Yossarian's face
through the hole in one of his maps. "Will you look at this?"
Yossarian was dumbfounded by his state of rapturous contentment. Aarfy was like an eerie ogre in a
dream, incapable of being bruised or evaded, and Yossarian dreaded him for a complex of reasons he was too
petrified to untangle. Wind whistling up through the jagged gash in the floor kept the myriad bits of paper
circulating like alabaster particles in a paperweight and contributed to a sensation of lacquered, waterlogged
unreality. Everything seemed strange, so tawdry and grotesque. His head was throbbing from a shrill clamor
that drilled relentlessly into both ears. It was McWatt, begging for directions in an incoherent frenzy.
Yossarian continued staring in tormented fascination at Aarfy's spherical countenance beaming at him so
serenely and vacantly through the drifting whorls of white paper bits and concluded that he was a raving
lunatic just as eight bursts of flak broke open successively at eye level off to the right, then eight more, and
then eight more, the last group pulled over toward the left so that they were almost directly in front.
"Turn left hard!" he hollered to McWatt, as Aarfy kept grinning, and McWatt did turn left hard, but the flak
turned left hard with them, catching up fast, and Yossarian hollered, "I said hard, hard, hard, hard, you bastard,
hard!"
And McWatt bent the plane around even harder still, and suddenly, miraculously, they were out of range.
The flak ended. The guns stopped booming at them. And they were alive.
Behind him, men were dying. Strung out for miles in a stricken, tortuous, squirming line, the other flights
of planes were making the same hazardous journey over the target, threading their swift way through the
Page 75
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
swollen masses of new and old bursts of flak like rats racing in a pack through their own droppings. One was
on fire, and flapped lamely off by itself, billowing gigantically like a monstrous blood-red star. As Yossarian
watched, the burning plane floated over on its side and began spiraling down slowly in wide, tremulous,
narrowing circles, its huge flaming burden blazing orange and flaring out in back like a long, swirling cape of
fire and smoke. There were parachutes, one, two, three... four, and then the plane gyrated into a spin and fell
the rest of the way to the ground, fluttering insensibly inside its vivid pyre like a shred of colored tissue paper.
One whole flight of planes from another squadron had been blasted apart.
Yossarian sighed barrenly, his day's work done. He was listless and sticky. The engines crooned
mellifluously as McWatt throttled back to loiter and allow the rest of the planes in his flight to catch up. The
abrupt stillness seemed alien and artificial, a little insidious. Yossarian unsnapped his flak suit and took off his
helmet. He sighed again, restlessly, and closed his eyes and tried to relax.
"Where's Orr?" someone asked suddenly over his intercom.
Yossarian bounded up with a one-syllable cry that crackled with anxiety and provided the only rational
explanation for the whole mysterious phenomenon of the flak at Bologna: Orr! He lunged forward over the
bombsight to search downward through the plexiglass for some reassuring sign of Orr, who drew flak like a
magnet and who had undoubtedly attracted the crack batteries of the whole Hermann Goering Division to
Bologna overnight from wherever the hell they had been stationed the day before when Orr was still in Rome.
Aarfy launched himself forward an instant later and cracked Yossarian on the bridge of the nose with the sharp
rim of his flak helmet. Yossarian cursed him as his eyes flooded with tears.
"There he is," Aarfy orated funereally, pointing down dramatically at a hay wagon and two horses standing
before the barn of a gray stone farmhouse. "Smashed to bits. I guess their numbers were all up."
Yossarian swore at Aarfy again and continued searching intently, cold with a compassionate kind of fear
now for the little bouncy and bizarre buck-toothed tentmate who had smashed Appleby's forehead open with a
ping-pong racket and who was scaring the daylights out of Yossarian once again. At last Yossarian spotted the
two-engined, twin-ruddered plane as it flew out of the green background of the forests over a field of yellow
farmland. One of the propellers was feathered and perfectly still, but the plane was maintaining altitude and
holding a proper course. Yossarian muttered an unconscious prayer of thankfulness and then flared up at Orr
savagely in a ranting fusion of resentment and relief.
"That bastard!" he began. "That goddam stunted, red-faced, big-cheeked, curly-headed, buck-toothed rat
bastard son of a bitch!"
"What?" said Aarfy.
"That dirty goddam midget-assed, apple-cheeked, goggle-eyed, undersized, buck-toothed, grinning, crazy
sonofabitchin-bastard!" Yossarian sputtered.
"What?"
"Never mind!"
"I still can't hear you," Aarfy answered.
Yossarian swung himself around methodically to face Aarfy. "You prick," he began.
"Me?"
"You pompous, rotund, neighborly, vacuous, complacent..."
Aarfy was unperturbed. Calmly he struck a wooden match and sucked noisily at his pipe with an eloquent
air of benign and magnanimous forgiveness. He smiled sociably and opened his mouth to speak. Yossarian put
his hand over Aarfy's mouth and pushed him away wearily. He shut his eyes and pretended to sleep all the
way back to the field so that he would not have to listen to Aarfy or see him.
At the briefing room Yossarian made his intelligence report to Captain Black and then waited in muttering
suspense with all the others until Orr chugged into sight overhead finally with his one good engine still
keeping him aloft gamely. Nobody breathed. Orr's landing gear would not come down. Yossarian hung around
only until Orr had crash-landed safely, and then stole the first jeep he could find with a key in the ignition and
raced back to his tent to begin packing feverishly for the emergency rest leave he had decided to take in Rome,
where he found Luciana and her invisible scar that same night.
16 LUCIANA
Page 76
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
He found Luciana sitting alone at a table in the Allied officers' night club, where the drunken Anzac major
who had brought her there had been stupid enough to desert her for the ribald company of some singing
comrades at the bar.
"All right, I'll dance with you," she said, before Yossarian could even speak. "But I won't let you sleep with
me."
"Who asked you?" Yossarian asked her.
"You don't want to sleep with me?" she exclaimed with surprise.
"I don't want to dance with you."
She seized Yossarian's hand and pulled him out on the dance floor. She was a worse dancer than even he
was, but she threw herself about to the synthetic jitterbug music with more uninhibited pleasure than he had
ever observed until he felt his legs falling asleep with boredom and yanked her off the dance floor toward the
table at which the girl he should have been screwing was still sitting tipsily with one hand around Aarfy's
neck, her orange satin blouse still hanging open slovenly below her full white lacy brassière as she made
dirty sex talk ostentatiously with Huple, Orr, Kid Sampson and Hungry Joe. Just as he reached them, Luciana
gave him a forceful, unexpected shove that carried them both well beyond the table, so that they were still
alone. She was a tall, earthy, exuberant girl with long hair and a pretty face, a buxom, delightful, flirtatious
girl.
"All right," she said, "I will let you buy me dinner. But I won't let you sleep with me."
"Who asked you?" Yossarian asked with surprise.
"You don't want to sleep with me?"
"I don't want to buy you dinner."
She pulled him out of the night club into the street and down a flight of steps into a black-market restaurant
filled with lively, chirping, attractive girls who all seemed to know each other and with the self-conscious
military officers from different countries who had come there with them. The food was elegant and expensive,
and the aisles were overflowing with great streams of flushed and merry proprietors, all stout and balding. The
bustling interior radiated with enormous, engulfing waves of fun and warmth.
Yossarian got a tremendous kick out of the rude gusto with which Luciana ignored him completely while
she shoveled away her whole meal with both hands. She ate like a horse until the last plate was clean, and then
she placed her silverware down with an air of conclusion and settled back lazily in her chair with a dreamy
and congested look of sated gluttony. She drew a deep, smiling, contented breath and regarded him amorously
with a melting gaze.
"Okay, Joe," she purred, her glowing dark eyes drowsy and grateful. "Now I will let you sleep with me."
"My name is Yossarian."
"Okay, Yossarian," she answered with a soft repentant laugh. "Now I will let you sleep with me."
"Who asked you?" said Yossarian.
Luciana was stunned. "You don't want to sleep with me?"
Yossarian nodded emphatically, laughing, and shot his hand up under her dress. The girl came to life with a
horrified start. She jerked her legs away from him instantly, whipping her bottom around. Blushing with alarm
and embarrassment, she pushed her skirt back down with a number of prim, sidelong glances about the
restaurant.
"Now I will let you sleep with me," she explained cautiously in a manner of apprehensive indulgence. "But
not now."
"I know. When we get back to my room."
The girl shook her head, eyeing him mistrustfully and keeping her knees pressed together. "No, now I must
go home to my mamma, because my mamma does not like me to dance with soldiers or let them take me to
dinner, and she will be very angry with me if I do not come home now. But I will let you write down for me
where you live. And tomorrow morning I will come to your room for ficky-fick before I go to my work at the
French office. Capisci?"
"Bullshit!" Yossarian exclaimed with angry disappointment.
"Cosa vuol dire bullshit?" Luciana inquired with a blank look.
Yossarian broke into loud laughter. He answered her finally in a tone of sympathetic good humor. "It
Page 77
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
means that I want to escort you now to wherever the hell I have to take you next so that I can rush back to that
night club before Aarfy leaves with that wonderful tomato he's got without giving me a chance to ask about an
aunt or friend she must have who's just like her."
"Come?"
"Subito, subito," he taunted her tenderly. "Mamma is waiting. Remember?"
"Si, si. Mamma."
Yossarian let the girl drag him through the lovely Roman spring night for almost a mile until they reached a
chaotic bus depot honking with horns, blazing with red and yellow lights and echoing with the snarling
vituperations of unshaven bus drivers pouring loathsome, hair-raising curses out at each other, at their
passengers and at the strolling, unconcerned knots of pedestrians clogging their paths, who ignored them until
they were bumped by the buses and began shouting curses back. Luciana vanished aboard one of the
diminutive green vehicles, and Yossarian hurried as fast as he could all the way back to the cabaret and the
bleary-eyed bleached blonde in the open orange satin blouse. She seemed infatuated with Aarfy, but he prayed
intensely for her luscious aunt as he ran, or for a luscious girl friend, sister, cousin, or mother who was just as
libidinous and depraved. She would have been perfect for Yossarian, a debauched, coarse, vulgar, amoral,
appetizing slattern whom he had longed for and idolized for months. She was a real find. She paid for her own
drinks, and she had an automobile, an apartment and a salmon-colored cameo ring that drove Hungry Joe
clean out of his senses with its exquisitely carved figures of a naked boy and girl on a rock. Hungry Joe
snorted and pranced and pawed at the floor in salivating lust and groveling need, but the girl would not sell
him the ring, even though he offered her all the money in all their pockets and his complicated black camera
thrown in. She was not interested in money or cameras. She was interested in fornication.
She was gone when Yossarian got there. They were all gone, and he walked right out and moved in wistful
dejection through the dark, emptying streets. Yossarian was not often lonely when he was by himself, but he
was lonely now in his keen envy of Aarfy, who he knew was in bed that very moment with the girl who was
just right for Yossarian, and who could also make out any time he wanted to, if he ever wanted to, with either
or both of the two slender, stunning, aristocratic women who lived in the apartment upstairs and fructified
Yossarian's sex fantasies whenever he had sex fantasies, the beautiful rich black-haired countess with the red,
wet, nervous lips and her beautiful rich black-haired daughter-in-law. Yossarian was madly in love with all of
them as he made his way back to the officers' apartment, in love with Luciana, with the prurient intoxicated
girl in the unbuttoned satin blouse, and with the beautiful rich countess and her beautiful rich daughter-in-law,
both of whom would never let him touch them or even flirt with them. They doted kittenishly on Nately and
deferred passively to Aarfy, but they thought Yossarian was crazy and recoiled from him with distasteful
contempt each time he made an indecent proposal or tried to fondle them when they passed on the stairs. They
were both superb creatures with pulpy, bright, pointed tongues and mouths like round warm plums, a little
sweet and sticky, a little rotten. They had class; Yossarian was not sure what class was, but he knew that they
had it and he did not, and that they knew it, too. He could picture, as he walked, the kind of underclothing they
wore against their svelte feminine parts, filmy, smooth, clinging garments of deepest black or of opalescent
pastel radiance with flowering lace borders fragrant with the tantalizing fumes of pampered flesh and scented
bath salts rising in a germinating cloud from their blue-white breasts. He wished again that he was where
Aarfy was, making obscene, brutal, cheerful love with a juicy drunken tart who didn't give a tinker's dam
about him and would never think of him again.
But Aarfy was already back in the apartment when Yossarian arrived, and Yossarian gaped at him with that
same sense of persecuted astonishment he had suffered that same morning over Bologna at his malign and
cabalistic and irremovable presence in the nose of the plane.
"What are you doing here?" he asked.
"That's right, ask him!" Hungry Joe exclaimed in a rage. "Make him tell you what he's doing here!"
With a long, theatrical moan, Kid Sampson made a pistol of his thumb and forefinger and blew his own
brains out. Huple, chewing away on a bulging wad of bubble gum, drank everything in with a callow, vacant
expression on his fifteen-year old face. Aarfy was tapping the bowl of his pipe against his palm leisurely as he
paced back and forth in corpulent self-approval, obviously delighted by the stir he was causing.
"Didn't you go home with that girl?" Yossarian demanded.
Page 78
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
"Oh, sure, I went home with her," Aarfy replied. "You didn't think I was going to let her try to find her way
home alone, did you?"
"Wouldn't she let you stay with her?"
"Oh, she wanted me to stay with her, all right." Aarfy chuckled. "Don't you worry about good old Aarfy.
But I wasn't going to take advantage of a sweet kid like that just because she'd had a little too much to drink.
What kind of a guy do you think I am?"
"Who said anything about taking advantage of her?" Yossarian railed at him in amazement. "All she
wanted to do was get into bed with someone. That's the only thing she kept talking about all night long."
"That's because she was a little mixed up," Aarfy explained. "But I gave her a little talking to and really put
some sense into her."
"You bastard!" Yossarian exclaimed, and sank down tiredly on the divan beside Kid Sampson. "Why the
hell didn't you give her to one of us if you didn't want her?"
"You see?" Hungry Joe asked. "There's something wrong with him."
Yossarian nodded and looked at Aarfy curiously. "Aarfy, tell me something. Don't you ever screw any of
them?"
Aarfy chuckled again with conceited amusement. "Oh sure, I prod them. Don't you worry about me. But
never any nice girls. I know what kind of girls to prod and what kind of girls not to prod, and I never prod any
nice girls. This one was a sweet kid. You could see her family had money. Why, I even got her to throw that
ring of hers away right out the car window."
Hungry Joe flew into the air with a screech of intolerable pain. "You did what?" he screamed. "You did
what?" He began whaling away at Aarfy's shoulders and arms with both fists, almost in tears. "I ought to kill
you for what you did, you lousy bastard. He's sinful, that's what he is. He's got a dirty mind, ain't he? Ain't he
got a dirty mind?"
"The dirtiest," Yossarian agreed.
"What are you fellows talking about?" Aarfy asked with genuine puzzlement, tucking his face away
protectively inside the cushioning insulation of his oval shoulders. "Aw, come on, Joe," he pleaded with a
smile of mild discomfort. "Quit punching me, will you?"
But Hungry Joe would not quit punching until Yossarian picked him up and pushed him away toward his
bedroom. Yossarian moved listlessly into his own room, undressed and went to sleep. A second later it was
morning, and someone was shaking him.
"What are you waking me up for?" he whimpered.
It was Michaela, the skinny maid with the merry disposition and homely sallow face, and she was waking
him up because he had a visitor waiting just outside the door. Luciana! He could hardly believe it. And she
was alone in the room with him after Michaela had departed, lovely, hale and statuesque, steaming and
rippling with an irrepressible affectionate vitality even as she remained in one place and frowned at him
irately. She stood like a youthful female colossus with her magnificent columnar legs apart on high white
shoes with wedged heels, wearing a pretty green dress and swinging a large, flat white leather pocketbook,
with which she cracked him hard across the face when he leaped out of bed to grab her. Yossarian staggered
backward out of range in a daze, clutching his stinging cheek with bewilderment.
"Pig!" She spat out at him viciously, her nostrils flaring in a look of savage disdain. "Vive com' un
animale!"
With a fierce, guttural, scornful, disgusted oath, she strode across the room and threw open the three tall
casement windows, letting inside an effulgent flood of sunlight and crisp fresh air that washed through the
stuffy room like an invigorating tonic. She placed her pocketbook on a chair and began tidying the room,
picking his things up from the floor and off the tops of the furniture, throwing his socks, handkerchief and
underwear into an empty drawer of the dresser and hanging his shirt and trousers up in the closet.
Yossarian ran out of the bedroom into the bathroom and brushed his teeth. He washed his hands and face
and combed his hair. When he ran back, the room was in order and Luciana was almost undressed. Her
expression was relaxed. She left her earrings on the dresser and padded barefoot to the bed wearing just a pink
rayon chemise that came down to her hips. She glanced about the room prudently to make certain there was
nothing she had overlooked in the way of neatness and then drew back the coverlet and stretched herself out
Page 79
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
luxuriously with an expression of feline expectation. She beckoned to him longingly, with a husky laugh.
"Now," she announced in a whisper, holding both arms out to him eagerly. "Now I will let you sleep with
me."
She told him some lies about a single weekend in bed with a slaughtered fiancé in the Italian Army, and
they all turned out to be true, for she cried, "finito!" almost as soon as he started and wondered why he didn't
stop, until he had finitoed too and explained to her.
He lit cigarettes for both of them. She was enchanted by the deep suntan covering his whole body. He
wondered about the pink chemise that she would not remove. It was cut like a man's undershirt, with narrow
shoulder straps, and concealed the invisible scar on her back that she refused to let him see after he had made
her tell him it was there. She grew tense as fine steel when he traced the mutilated contours with his fingertip
from a pit in her shoulder blade almost to the base of her spine. He winced at the many tortured nights she had
spent in the hospital, drugged or in pain, with the ubiquitous, ineradicable odors of ether, fecal matter and
disinfectant, of human flesh mortified and decaying amid the white uniforms, the rubbersoled shoes, and the
eerie night lights glowing dimly until dawn in the corridors. She had been wounded in an air raid.
"Dove?" he asked, and he held his breath in suspense.
"Napoli."
"Germans?"
"Americani."
His heart cracked, and he fell in love. He wondered if she would marry him.
"Tu sei pazzo," she told him with a pleasant laugh.
"Why am I crazy?" he asked.
"Perchè non posso sposare."
"Why can't you get married?"
"Because I am not a virgin," she answered.
"What has that got to do with it?"
"Who will marry me? No one wants a girl who is not a virgin."
"I will. I'll marry you."
"Ma non posso sposarti."
"Why can't you marry me?"
"Perchè sei pazzo."
"Why am I crazy?"
"Perchè vuoi sposarmi."
Yossarian wrinkled his forehead with quizzical amusement. "You won't marry me because I'm crazy, and
you say I'm crazy because I want to marry you? Is that right?"
"Si."
"Tu sei pazz'!" he told her loudly.
"Perchè?" she shouted back at him indignantly, her unavoidable round breasts rising and falling in a saucy
huff beneath the pink chemise as she sat up in bed indignantly. "Why am I crazy?"
"Because you won't marry me."
"Stupido!" she shouted back at him, and smacked him loudly and flamboyantly on the chest with the back
of her hand. "Non posso sposarti! Non capisci? Non posso sposarti."
"Oh, sure, I understand. And why can't you marry me?"
"Perchè sei pazzo!"
"And why am I crazy?"
"Perchè vuoi sposarmi."
"Because I want to marry you. Carina, ti amo," he explained, and he drew her gently back down to the
pillow. "Ti amo molto."
"Tu sei pazzo," she murmured in reply, flattered.
"Perchè?"
"Because you say you love me. How can you love a girl who is not a virgin?"
"Because I can't marry you."
Page 80
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
She bolted right up again in a threatening rage. "Why can't you marry me?" she demanded, ready to clout
him again if he gave an uncomplimentary reply. "Just because I am not a virgin?"
"No, no, darling. Because you're crazy."
She stared at him in blank resentment for a moment and then tossed her head back and roared
appreciatively with hearty laughter. She gazed at him with new approval when she stopped, the lush,
responsive tissues of her dark face turning darker still and blooming somnolently with a swelling and
beautifying infusion of blood. Her eyes grew dim. He crushed out both their cigarettes, and they turned into
each other wordlessly in an engrossing kiss just as Hungry Joe came meandering into the room without
knocking to ask if Yossarian wanted to go out with him to look for girls. Hungry Joe stopped on a dime when
he saw them and shot out of the room. Yossarian shot out of bed even faster and began shouting at Luciana to
get dressed. The girl was dumbfounded. He pulled her roughly out of bed by her arm and flung her away
toward her clothing, then raced for the door in time to slam it shut as Hungry Joe was running back in with his
camera. Hungry Joe had his leg wedged in the door and would not pull it out.
"Let me in!" he begged urgently, wriggling and squirming maniacally. "Let me in!" He stopped struggling
for a moment to gaze up into Yossarian's face through the crack in the door with what he must have supposed
was a beguiling smile. "Me no Hungry Joe," he explained earnestly. "Me heap big photographer from Life
magazine. Heap big picture on heap big cover. I make you big Hollywood star, Yossarian. Multi dinero. Multi
divorces. Multi ficky-fic all day long. Si, si, si!"
Yossarian slammed the door shut when Hungry Joe stepped back a bit to try to shoot a picture of Luciana
dressing. Hungry Joe attacked the stout wooden barrier fanatically, fell back to reorganize his energies and
hurled himself forward fanatically again. Yossarian slithered into his own clothes between assaults. Luciana
had her green-and-white summer dress on and was holding the skirt bunched up above her waist. A wave of
misery broke over him as he saw her about to vanish inside her panties forever. He reached out to grasp her
and drew her to him by the raised calf of her leg. She hopped forward and molded herself against him.
Yossarian kissed her ears and her closed eyes romantically and rubbed the backs of her thighs. She began to
hum sensually a moment before Hungry Joe hurled his frail body against the door in still one more desperate
attack and almost knocked them both down. Yossarian pushed her away.
"Vite! Vite!" he scolded her. "Get your things on!"
"What the hell are you talking about?" she wanted to know.
"Fast! Fast! Can't you understand English? Get your clothes on fast!"
"Stupido!" she snarled back at him. "Vite is French, not Italian. Subito, subito! That's what you mean.
Subito!"
"Si, si. That's what I mean. Subito, subito!"
"Si, si," she responded co-operatively, and ran for her shoes and earrings.
Hungry Joe had paused in his attack to shoot pictures through the closed door. Yossarian could hear the
camera shutter clicking. When both he and Luciana were ready, Yossarian waited for Hungry Joe's next
charge and yanked the door open on him unexpectedly. Hungry Joe spilled forward into the room like a
floundering frog. Yossarian skipped nimbly around him, guiding Luciana along behind him through the
apartment and out into the hallway. They bounced down the stairs with a great roistering clatter, laughing out
loud breathlessly and knocking their hilarious heads together each time they paused to rest. Near the bottom
they met Nately coming up and stopped laughing. Nately was drawn, dirty and unhappy. His tie was twisted
and his shirt was rumpled, and he walked with his hands in his pockets. He wore a hangdog, hopeless look.
"What's the matter, kid?" Yossarian inquired compassionately.
"I'm flat broke again," Nately replied with a lame and distracted smile. "What am I going to do?"
Yossarian didn't know. Nately had spent the last thirty-two hours at twenty dollars an hour with the
apathetic whore he adored, and he had nothing left of his pay or of the lucrative allowance he received every
month from his wealthy and generous father. That meant he could not spend time with her any more. She
would not allow him to walk beside her as she strolled the pavements soliciting other servicemen, and she was
infuriated when she spied him trailing her from a distance. He was free to hang around her apartment if he
cared to, but there was no certainty that she would be there. And she would give him nothing unless he could
pay. She found sex uninteresting. Nately wanted the assurance that she was not going to bed with anyone
Page 81
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
unsavory or with someone he knew. Captain Black always made it a point to buy her each time he came to
Rome, just so he could torment Nately with the news that he had thrown his sweetheart another hump and
watch Nately eat his liver as he related the atrocious indignities to which he had forced her to submit.
Luciana was touched by Nately's forlorn air, but broke loudly into robust laughter again the moment she
stepped outside into the sunny street with Yossarian and heard Hungry Joe beseeching them from the window
to come back and take their clothes off, because he really was a photographer from Life magazine. Luciana
fled mirthfully along the sidewalk in her high white wedgies, pulling Yossarian along in tow with the same
lusty and ingenuous zeal she had displayed in the dance hall the night before and at every moment since.
Yossarian caught up and walked with his arm around her waist until they came to the corner and she stepped
away from him. She straightened her hair in a mirror from her pocketbook and put lipstick on.
"Why don't you ask me to let you write my name and address on a piece of paper so that you will be able to
find me again when you come to Rome?" she suggested.
"Why don't you let me write your name and address down on a piece of paper?" he agreed.
"Why?" she demanded belligerently, her mouth curling suddenly into a vehement sneer and her eyes
flashing with anger. "So you can tear it up into little pieces as soon as I leave?"
"Who's going to tear it up?" Yossarian protested in confusion. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"You will," she insisted. "You'll tear it up into little pieces the minute I'm gone and go walking away like a
big shot because a tall, young, beautiful girl like me, Luciana, let you sleep with her and did not ask you for
money."
"How much money are you asking me for?" he asked her.
"Stupido!" she shouted with emotion. "I am not asking you for any money!" She stamped her foot and
raised her arm in a turbulent gesture that made Yossarian fear she was going to crack him in the face again
with her great pocketbook. Instead, she scribbled her name and address on a slip of paper and thrust it at him.
"Here," she taunted him sardonically, biting on her lip to still a delicate tremor. "Don't forget. Don't forget to
tear it into tiny pieces as soon as I am gone."
Then she smiled at him serenely, squeezed his hand and, with a whispered regretful "Addio," pressed
herself against him for a moment and then straightened and walked away with unconscious dignity and grace.
The minute she was gone, Yossarian tore the slip of paper up and walked away in the other direction,
feeling very much like a big shot because a beautiful young girl like Luciana had slept with him and did not
ask for money. He was pretty pleased with himself until he looked up in the dining room of the Red Cross
building and found himself eating breakfast with dozens and dozens of other servicemen in all kinds of
fantastic uniforms, and then all at once he was surrounded by images of Luciana getting out of her clothes and
into her clothes and caressing and haranguing him tempestuously in the pink rayon chemise she wore in bed
with him and would not take off. Yossarian choked on his toast and eggs at the enormity of his error in tearing
her long, lithe, nude, young vibrant limbs into any pieces of paper so impudently and dumping her down so
smugly into the gutter from the curb. He missed her terribly already. There were so many strident faceless
people in uniform in the dining room with him. He felt an urgent desire to be alone with her again soon and
sprang up impetuously from his table and went running outside and back down the street toward the apartment
in search of the tiny bits of paper in the gutter, but they had all been flushed away by a street cleaner's hose.
He couldn't find her again in the Allied officers' night club that evening or in the sweltering, burnished,
hedonistic bedlam of the black-market restaurant with its vast bobbing wooden trays of elegant food and its
chirping flock of bright and lovely girls. He couldn't even find the restaurant. When he went to bed alone, he
dodged flak over Bologna again in a dream, with Aarfy hanging over his shoulder abominably in the plane
with a bloated sordid leer. In the morning he ran looking for Luciana in all the French offices he could find,
but nobody knew what he was talking about, and then he ran in terror, so jumpy, distraught and disorganized
that he just had to keep running in terror somewhere, to the enlisted men's apartment for the squat maid in the
lime-colored panties, whom he found dusting in Snowden's room on the fifth floor in her drab brown sweater
and heavy dark skirt. Snowden was still alive then, and Yossarian could tell it was Snowden's room from the
name stenciled in white on the blue duffel bag he tripped over as he plunged through the doorway at her in a
frenzy of creative desperation. The woman caught him by the wrists before he could fall as he came stumbling
toward her in need and pulled him along down on top of her as she flopped over backward onto the bed and
Page 82
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
enveloped him hospitably in her flaccid and consoling embrace, her dust mop aloft in her hand like a banner as
her broad, brutish congenial face gazed up at him fondly with a smile of unperjured friendship. There was a
sharp elastic snap as she rolled the lime-colored panties off beneath them both without disturbing him.
He stuffed money into her hand when they were finished. She hugged him in gratitude. He hugged her. She
hugged him back and then pulled him down on top of her on the bed again. He stuffed more money into her
hand when they were finished this time and ran out of the room before she could begin hugging him in
gratitude again. Back at his own apartment, he threw his things together as fast as he could, left for Nately
what money he had, and ran back to Pianosa on a supply plane to apologize to Hungry Joe for shutting him out
of the bedroom. The apology was unnecessary, for Hungry Joe was in high spirits when Yossarian found him.
Hungry Joe was grinning from ear to ear, and Yossarian turned sick at the sight of him, for he understood
instantly what the high spirits meant.
"Forty missions," Hungry Joe announced readily in a voice lyrical with relief and elation. "The colonel
raised them again."
Yossarian was stunned. "But I've got thirty-two, goddammit! Three more and I would have been through."
Hungry Joe shrugged indifferently. "The colonel wants forty missions," he repeated.
Yossarian shoved him out of the way and ran right into the hospital.
17 THE SOLDIER IN WHITE
Yossarian ran right into the hospital, determined to remain there forever rather than fly one mission more
than the thirty-two missions he had. Ten days after he changed his mind and came out, the colonel raised the
missions to forty-five and Yossarian ran right back in, determined to remain in the hospital forever rather than
fly one mission more than the six missions more he had just flown.
Yossarian could run into the hospital whenever he wanted to because of his liver and because of his eyes;
the doctors couldn't fix his liver condition and couldn't meet his eyes each time he told them he had a liver
condition. He could enjoy himself in the hospital, just as long as there was no one really very sick in the same
ward. His system was sturdy enough to survive a case of someone else's malaria or influenza with scarcely any
discomfort at all. He could come through other people's tonsillectomies without suffering any postoperative
distress, and even endure their hernias and hemorrhoids with only mild nausea and revulsion. But that was just
about as much as he could go through without getting sick. After that he was ready to bolt. He could relax in
the hospital, since no one there expected him to do anything. All he was expected to do in the hospital was die
or get better, and since he was perfectly all right to begin with, getting better was easy.
Being in the hospital was better than being over Bologna or flying over Avignon with Huple and Dobbs at
the controls and Snowden dying in back.
There were usually not nearly as many sick people inside the hospital as Yossarian saw outside the
hospital, and there were generally fewer people inside the hospital who were seriously sick. There was a much
lower death rate inside the hospital than outside the hospital, and a much healthier death rate. Few people died
unnecessarily. People knew a lot more about dying inside the hospital and made a much neater, more orderly
job of it. They couldn't dominate Death inside the hospital, but they certainly made her behave. They had
taught her manners. They couldn't keep Death out, but while she was in she had to act like a lady. People gave
up the ghost with delicacy and taste inside the hospital. There was none of that crude, ugly ostentation about
dying that was so common outside the hospital. They did not blow up in mid-air like Kraft or the dead man in
Yossarian's tent, or freeze to death in the blazing summertime the way Snowden had frozen to death after
spilling his secret to Yossarian in the back of the plane.
"I'm cold," Snowden had whimpered. "I'm cold."
"There, there," Yossarian had tried to comfort him. "There, there."
They didn't take it on the lam weirdly inside a cloud the way Clevinger had done. They didn't explode into
blood and clotted matter. They didn't drown or get struck by lightning, mangled by machinery or crushed in
landslides. They didn't get shot to death in hold-ups, strangled to death in rapes, stabbed to death in saloons,
bludgeoned to death with axes by parents or children or die summarily by some other act of God. Nobody
choked to death. People bled to death like gentlemen in an operating room or expired without comment in an
oxygen tent. There was none of that tricky now-you-see-me-now-you-don't business so much in vogue outside
Page 83
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
the hospital, none of that now-I-am-and-now-I-ain't. There were no famines or floods. Children didn't
suffocate in cradles or iceboxes or fall under trucks. No one was beaten to death. People didn't stick their
heads into ovens with the gas on, jump in front of subway trains or come plummeting like dead weights out of
hotel windows with a whoosh!, accelerating at the rate of sixteen feet per second to land with a hideous plop!
on the sidewalk and die disgustingly there in public like an alpaca sack full of hairy strawberry ice cream,
bleeding, pink toes awry.
All things considered, Yossarian often preferred the hospital, even though it had its faults. The help tended
to be officious, the rules, if heeded, restrictive, and the management meddlesome. Since sick people were apt
to be present, he could not always depend on a lively young crowd in the same ward with him, and the
entertainment was not always good. He was forced to admit that the hospitals had altered steadily for the
worse as the war continued and one moved closer to the battlefront, the deterioration in the quality of the
guests becoming most marked within the combat zone itself where the effects of booming wartime conditions
were apt to make themselves conspicuous immediately. The people got sicker and sicker the deeper he moved
into combat, until finally in the hospital that last time there had been the soldier in white, who could not have
been any sicker without being dead, and he soon was.
The soldier in white was constructed entirely of gauze, plaster and a thermometer, and the thermometer was
merely an adornment left balanced in the empty dark hole in the bandages over his mouth early each morning
and late each afternoon by Nurse Cramer and Nurse Duckett right up to the afternoon Nurse Cramer read the
thermometer and discovered he was dead. Now that Yossarian looked back, it seemed that Nurse Cramer,
rather than the talkative Texan, had murdered the soldier in white; if she had not read the thermometer and
reported what she had found, the soldier in white might still be lying there alive exactly as he had been lying
there all along, encased from head to toe in plaster and gauze with both strange, rigid legs elevated from the
hips and both strange arms strung up perpendicularly, all four bulky limbs in casts, all four strange, useless
limbs hoisted up in the air by taut wire cables and fantastically long lead weights suspended darkly above him.
Lying there that way might not have been much of a life, but it was all the life he had, and the decision to
terminate it, Yossarian felt, should hardly have been Nurse Cramer's.
The soldier in white was like an unrolled bandage with a hole in it or like a broken block of stone in a
harbor with a crooked zinc pipe jutting out. The other patients in the ward, all but the Texan, shrank from him
with a tenderhearted aversion from the moment they set eyes on him the morning after the night he had been
sneaked in. They gathered soberly in the farthest recess of the ward and gossiped about him in malicious,
offended undertones, rebelling against his presence as a ghastly imposition and resenting him malevolently for
the nauseating truth of which he was bright reminder. They shared a common dread that he would begin
moaning.
"I don't know what I'll do if he does begin moaning," the dashing young fighter pilot with the golden
mustache had grieved forlornly. "It means he'll moan during the night, too, because he won't be able to tell
time."
No sound at all came from the soldier in white all the time he was there. The ragged round hole over his
mouth was deep and jet black and showed no sign of lip, teeth, palate or tongue. The only one who ever came
close enough to look was the affable Texan, who came close enough several times a day to chat with him
about more votes for the decent folk, opening each conversation with the same unvarying greeting: "What do
you say, fella? How you coming along?" The rest of the men avoided them both in their regulation maroon
corduroy bathrobes and unraveling flannel pajamas, wondering gloomily who the soldier in white was, why he
was there and what he was really like inside.
"He's all right, I tell you," the Texan would report back to them encouragingly after each of his social visits.
"Deep down inside he's really a regular guy. He's feeling a little shy and insecure now because he doesn't
know anybody here and can't talk. Why don't you all just step right up to him and introduce yourselves? He
won't hurt you."
"What the goddam hell are you talking about?" Dunbar demanded. "Does he even know what you're talking
about?"
"Sure he knows what I'm talking about. He's not stupid. There ain't nothing wrong with him."
"Can he hear you?"
Page 84
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
"Well, I don't know if he can hear me or not, but I'm sure he knows what I'm talking about."
"Does that hole over his mouth ever move?"
"Now, what kind of a crazy question is that?" the Texan asked uneasily.
"How can you tell if he's breathing if it never moves?"
"How can you tell it's a he?"
"Does he have pads over his eyes underneath that bandage over his face?"
"Does he ever wiggle his toes or move the tips of his fingers?"
The Texan backed away in mounting confusion. "Now, what kind of a crazy question is that? You fellas
must all be crazy or something. Why don't you just walk right up to him and get acquainted? He's a real nice
guy, I tell you."
The soldier in white was more like a stuffed and sterilized mummy than a real nice guy. Nurse Duckett and
Nurse Cramer kept him spick-and-span. They brushed his bandages often with a whiskbroom and scrubbed the
plaster casts on his arms, legs, shoulders, chest and pelvis with soapy water. Working with a round tin of metal
polish, they waxed a dim gloss on the dull zinc pipe rising from the cement on his groin. With damp dish
towels they wiped the dust several times a day from the slim black rubber tubes leading in and out of him to
the two large stoppered jars, one of them, hanging on a post beside his bed, dripping fluid into his arm
constantly through a slit in the bandages while the other, almost out of sight on the floor, drained the fluid
away through the zinc pipe rising from his groin. Both young nurses polished the glass jars unceasingly. They
were proud of their housework. The more solicitous of the two was Nurse Cramer, a shapely, pretty, sexless
girl with a wholesome unattractive face. Nurse Cramer had a cute nose and a radiant, blooming complexion
dotted with fetching sprays of adorable freckles that Yossarian detested. She was touched very deeply by the
soldier in white. Her virtuous, pale-blue, saucerlike eyes flooded with leviathan tears on unexpected occasions
and made Yossarian mad.
"How the hell do you know he's even in there?" he asked her.
"Don't you dare talk to me that way!" she replied indignantly.
"Well, how do you? You don't even know if it's really him."
"Who?"
"Whoever's supposed to be in all those bandages. You might really be weeping for somebody else. How do
you know he's even alive?"
"What a terrible thing to say!" Nurse Cramer exclaimed. "Now, you get right into bed and stop making
jokes about him."
"I'm not making jokes. Anybody might be in there. For all we know, it might even be Mudd."
"What are you talking about?" Nurse Cramer pleaded with him in a quavering voice.
"Maybe that's where the dead man is."
"What dead man?"
"I've got a dead man in my tent that nobody can throw out. His name is Mudd."
Nurse Cramer's face blanched and she turned to Dunbar desperately for aid. "Make him stop saying things
like that," she begged.
"Maybe there's no one inside," Dunbar suggested helpfully. "Maybe they just sent the bandages here for a
joke."
She stepped away from Dunbar in alarm. "You're crazy," she cried, glancing about imploringly. "You're
both crazy."
Nurse Duckett showed up then and chased them all back to their own beds while Nurse Cramer changed
the stoppered jars for the soldier in white. Changing the jars for the soldier in white was no trouble at all, since
the same clear fluid was dripped back inside him over and over again with no apparent loss. When the jar
feeding the inside of his elbow was just about empty, the jar on the floor was just about full, and the two were
simply uncoupled from their respective hoses and reversed quickly so that the liquid could be dripped right
back into him. Changing the jars was no trouble to anyone but the men who watched them changed every hour
or so and were baffled by the procedure.
"Why can't they hook the two jars up to each other and eliminate the middleman?" the artillery captain with
whom Yossarian had stopped playing chess inquired. "What the hell do they need him for?"
Page 85
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
"I wonder what he did to deserve it," the warrant officer with malaria and a mosquito bite on his ass
lamented after Nurse Cramer had read her thermometer and discovered that the soldier in white was dead.
"He went to war," the fighter pilot with the golden mustache surmised.
"We all went to war," Dunbar countered.
"That's what I mean," the warrant officer with malaria continued. "Why him? There just doesn't seem to be
any logic to this system of rewards and punishment. Look what happened to me. If I had gotten syphilis or a
dose of clap for my five minutes of passion on the beach instead of this damned mosquito bite, I could see
justice. But malaria? Malaria? Who can explain malaria as a consequence of fornication?" The warrant officer
shook his head in numb astonishment.
"What about me?" Yossarian said. "I stepped out of my tent in Marrakech one night to get a bar of candy
and caught your dose of clap when that Wac I never even saw before hissed me into the bushes. All I really
wanted was a bar of candy, but who could turn it down?"
"That sounds like my dose of clap, all right," the warrant officer agreed. "But I've still got somebody else's
malaria. Just for once I'd like to see all these things sort of straightened out, with each person getting exactly
what he deserves. It might give me some confidence in this universe."
"I've got somebody else's three hundred thousand dollars," the dashing young fighter captain with the
golden mustache admitted. "I've been goofing off since the day I was born. I cheated my way through prep
school and college, and just about all I've been doing ever since is shacking up with pretty girls who think I'd
make a good husband. I've got no ambition at all. The only thing I want to do after the war is marry some girl
who's got more money than I have and shack up with lots more pretty girls. The three hundred thousand bucks
was left to me before I was born by a grandfather who made a fortune selling on an international scale. I know
I don't deserve it, but I'll be damned if I give it back. I wonder who it really belongs to."
"Maybe it belongs to my father," Dunbar conjectured. "He spent a lifetime at hard work and never could
make enough money to even send my sister and me through college. He's dead now, so you might as well keep
it."
"Now, if we can just find out who my malaria belongs to we'd be all set. It's not that I've got anything
against malaria. I'd just as soon goldbrick with malaria as with anything else. It's only that I feel an injustice
has been committed. Why should I have somebody else's malaria and you have my dose of clap?"
"I've got more than your dose of clap," Yossarian told him. "I've got to keep flying combat missions
because of that dose of yours until they kill me."
"That makes it even worse. What's the justice in that?"
"I had a friend named Clevinger two and a half weeks ago who used to see plenty of justice in it."
"It's the highest kind of justice of all," Clevinger had gloated, clapping his hands with a merry laugh. "I
can't help thinking of the Hippolytus of Euripides, where the early licentiousness of Theseus is probably
responsible for the asceticism of the son that helps bring about the tragedy that ruins them all. If nothing else,
that episode with the Wac should teach you the evil of sexual immorality."
"It teaches me the evil of candy."
"Can't you see that you're not exactly without blame for the predicament you're in?" Clevinger had
continued with undisguised relish. "If you hadn't been laid up in the hospital with venereal disease for ten days
back there in Africa, you might have finished your twenty-five missions in time to be sent home before
Colonel Nevers was killed and Colonel Cathcart came to replace him."
"And what about you?" Yossarian had replied. "You never got clap in Marrakech and you're in the same
predicament."
"I don't know," confessed Clevinger, with a trace of mock concern. "I guess I must have done something
very bad in my time."
"Do you really believe that?"
Clevinger laughed. "No, of course not. I just like to kid you along a little."
There were too many dangers for Yossarian to keep track of. There was Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo, for
example, and they were all out to kill him. There was Lieutenant Scheisskopf with his fanaticism for parades
and there was the bloated colonel with his big fat mustache and his fanaticism for retribution, and they wanted
to kill him, too. There was Appleby, Havermeyer, Black and Korn. There was Nurse Cramer and Nurse
Page 86
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
Duckett, who he was almost certain wanted him dead, and there was the Texan and the C.I.D. man, about
whom he had no doubt. There were bartenders, bricklayers and bus conductors all over the world who wanted
him dead, landlords and tenants, traitors and patriots, lynchers, leeches and lackeys, and they were all out to
bump him off. That was the secret Snowden had spilled to him on the mission to Avignon-they were out to get
him; and Snowden had spilled it all over the back of the plane.
There were lymph glands that might do him in. There were kidneys, nerve sheaths and corpuscles. There
were tumors of the brain. There was Hodgkin's disease, leukemia, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. There were
fertile red meadows of epithelial tissue to catch and coddle a cancer cell. There were diseases of the skin,
diseases of the bone, diseases of the lung, diseases of the stomach, diseases of the heart, blood and arteries.
There were diseases of the head, diseases of the neck, diseases of the chest, diseases of the intestines, diseases
of the crotch. There even were diseases of the feet. There were billions of conscientious body cells oxidating
away day and night like dumb animals at their complicated job of keeping him alive and healthy, and every
one was a potential traitor and foe. There were so many diseases that it took a truly diseased mind to even
think about them as often as he and Hungry Joe did.
Hungry Joe collected lists of fatal diseases and arranged them in alphabetical order so that he could put his
finger without delay on any one he wanted to worry about. He grew very upset whenever he misplaced some
or when he could not add to his list, and he would go rushing in a cold sweat to Doc Daneeka for help.
"Give him Ewing's tumor," Yossarian advised Doc Daneeka, who would come to Yossarian for help in
handling Hungry Joe, "and follow it up with melanoma. Hungry Joe likes lingering diseases, but he likes the
fulminating ones even more."
Doc Daneeka had never heard of either. "How do you manage to keep up on so many diseases like that?"
he inquired with high professional esteem.
"I learn about them at the hospital when I study the Reader's Digest."
Yossarian had so many ailments to be afraid of that he was sometimes tempted to turn himself in to the
hospital for good and spend the rest of his life stretched out there inside an oxygen tent with a battery of
specialists and nurses seated at one side of his bed twenty-four hours a day waiting for something to go wrong
and at least one surgeon with a knife poised at the other, ready to jump forward and begin cutting away the
moment it became necessary. Aneurisms, for instance; how else could they ever defend him in time against an
aneurism of the aorta? Yossarian felt much safer inside the hospital than outside the hospital, even though he
loathed the surgeon and his knife as much as he had ever loathed anyone. He could start screaming inside a
hospital and people would at least come running to try to help; outside the hospital they would throw him in
prison if he ever started screaming about all the things he felt everyone ought to start screaming about, or they
would put him in the hospital. One of the things he wanted to start screaming about was the surgeon's knife
that was almost certain to be waiting for him and everyone else who lived long enough to die. He wondered
often how he would ever recognize the first chill, flush, twinge, ache, belch, sneeze, stain, lethargy, vocal slip,
loss of balance or lapse of memory that would signal the inevitable beginning of the inevitable end.
He was afraid also that Doc Daneeka would still refuse to help him when he went to him again after
jumping out of Major Major's office, and he was right.
"You think you've got something to be afraid about?" Doc Daneeka demanded, lifting his delicate
immaculate dark head up from his chest to gaze at Yossarian irascibly for a moment with lachrymose eyes.
"What about me? My precious medical skills are rusting away here on this lousy island while other doctors are
cleaning up. Do you think I enjoy sitting here day after day refusing to help you? I wouldn't mind it so much if
I could refuse to help you back in the States or in some place like Rome. But saying no to you here isn't easy
for me, either."
"Then stop saying no. Ground me."
"I can't ground you," Doc Daneeka mumbled. "How many times do you have to be told?"
"Yes you can. Major Major told me you're the only one in the squadron who can ground me."
Doc Daneeka was stunned. "Major Major told you that? When?"
"When I tackled him in the ditch."
"Major Major told you that? In a ditch?"
"He told me in his office after we left the ditch and jumped inside. He told me not to tell anyone he told me,
Page 87
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
so don't start shooting your mouth off."
"Why that dirty, scheming liar!" Doc Daneeka cried. "He wasn't supposed to tell anyone. Did he tell you
how I could ground you?"
"Just by filling out a little slip of paper saying I'm on the verge of a nervous collapse and sending it to
Group. Dr. Stubbs grounds men in his squadron all the time, so why can't you?"
"And what happens to the men after Stubbs does ground them?" Doc Daneeka retorted with a sneer. "They
go right back on combat status, don't they? And he finds himself right up the creek. Sure, I can ground you by
filling out a slip saying you're unfit to fly. But there's a catch."
"Catch-22?"
"Sure. If I take you off combat duty, Group has to approve my action, and Group isn't going to. They'll put
you right back on combat status, and then where will I be? On my way to the Pacific Ocean, probably. No,
thank you. I'm not going to take any chances for you."
"Isn't it worth a try?" Yossarian argued. "What's so hot about Pianosa?"
"Pianosa is terrible. But it's better than the Pacific Ocean. I wouldn't mind being shipped someplace
civilized where I might pick up a buck or two in abortion money every now and then. But all they've got in the
Pacific is jungles and monsoons, I'd rot there."
"You're rotting here."
Doc Daneeka flared up angrily. "Yeah? Well, at least I'm going to come out of this war alive, which is a lot
more than you're going to do."
"That's just what I'm trying to tell you, goddammit. I'm asking you to save my life."
"It's not my business to save lives," Doc Daneeka retorted sullenly.
"What is your business?"
"I don't know what my business is. All they ever told me was to uphold the ethics of my profession and
never give testimony against another physician. Listen. You think you're the only one whose life is in danger?
What about me? Those two quacks I've got working for me in the medical tent still can't find out what's wrong
with me."
"Maybe it's Ewing's tumor," Yossarian muttered sarcastically.
"Do you really think so?" Doc Daneeka exclaimed with fright.
"Oh, I don't know," Yossarian answered impatiently. "I just know I'm not going to fly any more missions.
They wouldn't really shoot me, would they? I've got fifty-one."
"Why don't you at least finish the fifty-five before you take a stand?" Doc Daneeka advised. "With all your
bitching, you've never finished a tour of duty even once."
"How the hell can I? The colonel keeps raising them every time I get close."
"You never finish your missions because you keep running into the hospital or going off to Rome. You'd be
in a much, stronger position if you had your fifty-five finished and then refused to fly. Then maybe I'd see
what I could do."
"Do you promise?"
"I promise."
"What do you promise?"
"I promise that maybe I'll think about doing something to help if you finish your fifty-five missions and if
you get McWatt to put my name on his flight log again so that I can draw my flight pay without going up in a
plane. I'm afraid of airplanes. Did you read about that airplane crash in Idaho three weeks ago? Six people
killed. It was terrible. I don't know why they want me to put in four hours' flight time every month in order to
get my flight pay. Don't I have enough to worry about without worrying about being killed in an airplane crash
too?"
"I worry about the airplane crashes also," Yossarian told him. "You're not the only one."
"Yeah, but I'm also pretty worried about that Ewing's tumor," Doc Daneeka boasted. "Do you think that's
why my nose is stuffed all the time and why I always feel so chilly? Take my pulse."
Yossarian also worried about Ewing's tumor and melanoma. Catastrophes were lurking everywhere, too
numerous to count. When he contemplated the many diseases and potential accidents threatening him, he was
positively astounded that he had managed to survive in good health for as long as he had. It was miraculous.
Page 88
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
Each day he faced was another dangerous mission against mortality. And he had been surviving them for
twenty-eight years.
18 THE SOLDIER WHO SAW EVERYTHING TWICE
Yossarian owed his good health to exercise, fresh air, teamwork and good sportsmanship; it was to get
away from them all that he had first discovered the hospital. When the physical-education officer at Lowery
Field ordered everyone to fall out for calisthenics one afternoon, Yossarian, the private, reported instead at the
dispensary with what he said was a pain in his right side.
"Beat it," said the doctor on duty there, who was doing a crossword puzzle.
"We can't tell him to beat it," said a corporal. "There's a new directive out about abdominal complaints. We
have to keep them under observation five days because so many of them have been dying after we make them
beat it."
"All right," grumbled the doctor. "Keep him under observation five days and then make him beat it."
They took Yossarian's clothes away and put him in a ward, where he was very happy when no one was
snoring nearby. In the morning a helpful young English intern popped in to ask him about his liver.
"I think it's my appendix that's bothering me," Yossarian told him.
"Your appendix is no good," the Englishman declared with jaunty authority. "If your appendix goes wrong,
we can take it out and have you back on active duty in almost no time at all. But come to us with a liver
complaint and you can fool us for weeks. The liver, you see, is a large, ugly mystery to us. If you've ever eaten
liver you know what I mean. We're pretty sure today that the liver exists and we have a fairly good idea of
what it does whenever it's doing what it's supposed to be doing. Beyond that, we're really in the dark. After all,
what is a liver? My father, for example, died of cancer of the liver and was never sick a day of his life right up
till the moment it killed him. Never felt a twinge of pain. In a way, that was too bad, since I hated my father.
Lust for my mother, you know."
"What's an English medical officer doing on duty here?" Yossarian wanted to know.
The officer laughed. "I'll tell you all about that when I see you tomorrow morning. And throw that silly ice
bag away before you die of pneumonia."
Yossarian never saw him again. That was one of the nice things about all the doctors at the hospital; he
never saw any of them a second time. They came and went and simply disappeared. In place of the English
intern the next day, there arrived a group of doctors he had never seen before to ask him about his appendix.
"There's nothing wrong with my appendix," Yossarian informed them. "The doctor yesterday said it was
my liver."
"Maybe it is his liver," replied the white-haired officer in charge. "What does his blood count show?"
"He hasn't had a blood count."
"Have one taken right away. We can't afford to take chances with a patient in his condition. We've got to
keep ourselves covered in case he dies." He made a notation on his clipboard and spoke to Yossarian. "In the
meantime, keep that ice bag on. It's very important."
"I don't have an ice bag on."
"Well, get one. There must be an ice bag around here somewhere. And let someone know if the pain
becomes unendurable."
At the end of ten days, a new group of doctors came to Yossarian with bad news; he was in perfect health
and had to get out. He was rescued in the nick of time by a patient across the aisle who began to see
everything twice. Without warning, the patient sat up in bed and shouted.
"I see everything twice!"
A nurse screamed and an orderly fainted. Doctors came running up from every direction with needles,
lights, tubes, rubber mallets and oscillating metal tines. They rolled up complicated instruments on wheels.
There was not enough of the patient to go around, and specialists pushed forward in line with raw tempers and
snapped at their colleagues in front to hurry up and give somebody else a chance. A colonel with a large
forehead and horn-rimmed glasses soon arrived at a diagnosis.
"It's meningitis," he called out emphatically, waving the others back. "Although Lord knows there's not the
slightest reason for thinking so."
Page 89
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
"Then why pick meningitis?" inquired a major with a suave chuckle. "Why not, let's say, acute nephritis?"
"Because I'm a meningitis man, that's why, and not an acute-nephritis man," retorted the colonel. "And I'm
not going to give him up to any of you kidney birds without a struggle. I was here first."
In the end, the doctors were all in accord. They agreed they had no idea what was wrong with the soldier
who saw everything twice, and they rolled him away into a room in the corridor and quarantined everyone else
in the ward for fourteen days.
Thanksgiving Day came and went without any fuss while Yossarian was still in the hospital. The only bad
thing about it was the turkey for dinner, and even that was pretty good. It was the most rational Thanksgiving
he had ever spent, and he took a sacred oath to spend every future Thanksgiving Day in the cloistered shelter
of a hospital. He broke his sacred oath the very next year, when he spent the holiday in a hotel room instead in
intellectual conversation with Lieutenant Scheisskopf's wife, who had Dori Duz's dog tags on for the occasion
and who henpecked Yossarian sententiously for being cynical and callous about Thanksgiving, even though
she didn't believe in God just as much as he didn't.
"I'm probably just as good an atheist as you are," she speculated boastfully. "But even I feel that we all
have a great deal to be thankful for and that we shouldn't be ashamed to show it."
"Name one thing I've got to be thankful for," Yossarian challenged her without interest.
"Well..." Lieutenant Scheisskopf's wife mused and paused a moment to ponder dubiously. "Me."
"Oh, come on," he scoffed.
She arched her eyebrows in surprise. "Aren't you thankful for me?" she asked. She frowned peevishly, her
pride wounded. "I don't have to shack up with you, you know," she told him with cold dignity. "My husband
has a whole squadron full of aviation cadets who would be only too happy to shack up with their commanding
officer's wife just for the added fillip it would give them."
Yossarian decided to change the subject. "Now you're changing the subject," he pointed out diplomatically.
"I'll bet I can name two things to be miserable about for every one you can name to be thankful for."
"Be thankful you've got me," she insisted.
"I am, honey. But I'm also goddam good and miserable that I can't have Dori Duz again, too. Or the
hundreds of other girls and women I'll see and want in my short lifetime and won't be able to go to bed with
even once."
"Be thankful you're healthy."
"Be bitter you're not going to stay that way."
"Be glad you're even alive."
"Be furious you're going to die."
"Things could be much worse," she cried.
"They could be one hell of a lot better," he answered heatedly.
"You're naming only one thing," she protested. "You said you could name two."
"And don't tell me God works in mysterious ways," Yossarian continued, hurtling on over her objection.
"There's nothing so mysterious about it. He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about
us. That's the kind of God you people talk about-a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited,
uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary
to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of creation? What in the world
was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to
control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?"
"Pain?" Lieutenant Scheisskopf's wife pounced upon the word victoriously. "Pain is a useful symptom.
Pain is a warning to us of bodily dangers."
"And who created the dangers?" Yossarian demanded. He laughed caustically. "Oh, He was really being
charitable to us when He gave us pain! Why couldn't He have used a doorbell instead to notify us, or one of
His celestial choirs? Or a system of blue-and-red neon tubes right in the middle of each person's forehead. Any
jukebox manufacturer worth his salt could have done that. Why couldn't He?"
"People would certainly look silly walking around with red neon tubes in the middle of their foreheads."
"They certainly look beautiful now writhing in agony or stupefied with morphine, don't they? What a
colossal, immortal blunderer! When you consider the opportunity and power He had to really do a job, and
Page 90
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
then look at the stupid, ugly little mess He made of it instead, His sheer incompetence is almost staggering. It's
obvious He never met a payroll. Why, no self-respecting businessman would hire a bungler like Him as even a
shipping clerk!"
Lieutenant Scheisskopf's wife had turned ashen in disbelief and was ogling him with alarm. "You'd better
not talk that way about Him, honey," she warned him reprovingly in a low and hostile voice. "He might punish
you."
"Isn't He punishing me enough?" Yossarian snorted resentfully. "You know, we mustn't let Him get away
with it. Oh, no, we certainly mustn't let Him get away scot free for all the sorrow He's caused us. Someday I'm
going to make Him pay. I know when. On the Judgment Day. Yes, That's the day I'll be close enough to reach
out and grab that little yokel by His neck and-"
"Stop it! Stop it!" Lieutenant Scheisskopf's wife screamed suddenly, and began beating him ineffectually
about the head with both fists. "Stop it!"
Yossarian ducked behind his arm for protection while she slammed away at him in feminine fury for a few
seconds, and then he caught her determinedly by the wrists and forced her gently back down on the bed.
"What the hell are you getting so upset about?" he asked her bewilderedly in a tone of contrite amusement. "I
thought you didn't believe in God."
"I don't," she sobbed, bursting violently into tears. "But the God I don't believe in is a good God, a just
God, a merciful God. He's not the mean and stupid God you make Him out to be."
Yossarian laughed and turned her arms loose. "Let's have a little more religious freedom between us," he
proposed obligingly. "You don't believe in the God you want to, and I won't believe in the God I want to. Is
that a deal?"
That was the most illogical Thanksgiving he could ever remember spending, and his thoughts returned
wishfully to his halcyon fourteen-day quarantine in the hospital the year before; but even that idyll had ended
on a tragic note; he was still in good health when the quarantine period was over, and they told him again that
he had to get out and go to war. Yossarian sat up in bed when he heard the bad news and shouted.
"I see everything twice!"
Pandemonium broke loose in the ward again. The specialists came running up from all directions and
ringed him in a circle of scrutiny so confining that he could feel the humid breath from their various noses
blowing uncomfortably upon the different sectors of his body. They went snooping into his eyes and ears with
tiny beams of light, assaulted his legs and feet with rubber hammers and vibrating forks, drew blood from his
veins, held anything handy up for him to see on the periphery of his vision.
The leader of this team of doctors was a dignified, solicitous gentleman who held one finger up directly in
front of Yossarian and demanded, "How many fingers do you see?"
"Two," said Yossarian.
"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.
Page 91
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
"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 find 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
Page 92
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
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?"
Page 93
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
"We didn't want you to die by yourself."
"What difference 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
Page 94
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
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