Joseph Heller - Catch-22

“Catch-22.”

“ What? ” Yossarian froze in his tracks with fear and alarm and felt his whole body begin to tingle. “ What did you say?”

“Catch-22” the old woman repeated, rocking her head up and down. “Catch-22. Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can’t stop them from doing.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Yossarian shouted at her in bewildered, furious protest. “How did you know it was Catch-22? Who the hell told you it was Catch-22?”

“The soldiers with the hard white hats and clubs. The girls were crying. ‘Did we do anything wrong?’ they said. The men said no and pushed them away out the door with the ends of their clubs. ‘Then why are you chasing us out?’ the girls said. ‘Catch-22,’ the men said. ‘What right do you have?’ the girls said. ‘Catch-22,’ the men said. All they kept saying was ‘Catch-22, Catch-22.’ What does it mean, Catch-22? What is Catch-22?”

“Didn’t they show it to you?” Yossarian demanded, stamping about in anger and distress. “Didn’t you even make them read it?”

“They don’t have to show us Catch-22,” the old woman answered. “The law says they don’t have to.”

“What law says they don’t have to?”

“Catch-22.”

“Oh, God damn!” Yossarian exclaimed bitterly. “I bet it wasn’t even really there.” He stopped walking and glanced about the room disconsolately. “Where’s the old man?”

“Gone,” mourned the old woman.

“Gone?”

“Dead,” the old woman told him, nodding in emphatic lament, pointing to her head with the flat of her hand. “Something broke in here. One minute he was living, one minute he was dead.”

“But he can’t be dead!” Yossarian cried, ready to argue insistently. But of course he knew it was true, knew it was logical and true; once again the old man had marched along with the majority.

Yossarian turned away and trudged through the apartment with a gloomy scowl, peering with pessimistic curiosity into all the rooms. Everything made of glass had been smashed by the men with the clubs. Torn drapes and bedding lay dumped on the floor. Chairs, tables and dressers had been overturned. Everything breakable had been broken. The destruction was total. No wild vandals could have been more thorough. Every window was smashed, and darkness poured like inky clouds into each room through the shattered panes. Yossarian could imagine the heavy, crashing footfalls of the tall M.P.s in the hard white hats. He could picture the fiery and malicious exhilaration with which they had made their wreckage, and their sanctimonious, ruthless sense of right and dedication. All the poor young girls were gone. Everyone was gone but the weeping old woman in the bulky brown and gray sweaters and black head shawl, and soon she too would be gone.

“Gone,” she grieved, when he walked back in, before he could even speak. “Who will take care of me now?”

Yossarian ignored the question. “Nately’s girl friend-did anyone hear from her?” he asked.

“Gone.”

“I know she’s gone. But did anyone hear from her? Does anyone know where she is?”

“Gone.”

“The little sister. What happened to her?”

“Gone.” The old woman’s tone had not changed.

“Do you know what I’m talking about?” Yossarian asked sharply, staring into her eyes to see if she were not speaking to him from a coma. He raised his voice. “What happened to the kid sister, to the little girl?”

“Gone, gone,” the old woman replied with a crabby shrug, irritated by his persistence, her low wail growing louder. “Chased away with the rest, chased away into the street. They would not even let her take her coat.”

“Where did she go?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“Who will take care of her?”

“Who will take care of me?”

“She doesn’t know anybody else, does she?”

“Who will take care of me?”

Yossarian left money in the old woman’s lap-it was odd how many wrongs leaving money seemed to right-and strode out of the apartment, cursing Catch-22 vehemently as he descended the stairs, even though he knew there was no such thing. Catch-22 did not exist, he was positive of that, but it made no difference. What did matter was that everyone thought it existed, and that was much worse, for there was no object or text to ridicule or refute, to accuse, criticize, attack, amend, hate, revile, spit at, rip to shreds, trample upon or burn up.

It was cold outside, and dark, and a leaky, insipid mist lay swollen in the air and trickled down the large, unpolished stone blocks of the houses and the pedestals of monuments. Yossarian hurried back to Milo and recanted. He said he was sorry and, knowing he was lying, promised to fly as many more missions as Colonel Cathcart wanted if Milo would only use all his influence in Rome to help him locate Nately’s whore’s kid sister.

“She’s just a twelve-year-old virgin, Milo,” he explained anxiously, “and I want to find her before it’s too late.”

Milo responded to his request with a benign smile. “I’ve got just the twelve-year-old virgin you’re looking for,” he announced jubilantly. “This twelve-year-old virgin is really only thirty-four, but she was brought up on a low-protein diet by very strict parents and didn’t start sleeping with men until-“

“Milo, I’m talking about a little girl!” Yossarian interrupted him with desperate impatience. “Don’t you understand? I don’t want to sleep with her. I want to help her. You’ve got daughters. She’s just a little kid, and she’s all alone in this city with no one to take care of her. I want to protect her from harm. Don’t you know what I’m talking about?”

Milo did understand and was deeply touched. “Yossarian, I’m proud of you,” he exclaimed with profound emotion. “I really am. You don’t know how glad I am to see that everything isn’t always just sex with you. You’ve got principles. Certainly I’ve got daughters, and I know exactly what you’re talking about. We’ll find that girl if we have to turn this whole city upside down. Come along.”

Yossarian went along in Milo Minderbinder’s speeding M amp; M staff car to police headquarters to meet a swarthy, untidy police commissioner with a narrow black mustache and unbuttoned tunic who was fiddling with a stout woman with warts and two chins when they entered his office and who greeted Milo with warm surprise and bowed and scraped in obscene servility as though Milo were some elegant marquis.

“Ah, Marchese Milo,” he declared with effusive pleasure, pushing the fat, disgruntled woman out the door without even looking toward her. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? I would have a big party for you. Come in, come in, Marchese. You almost never visit us any more.”

Milo knew that there was not one moment to waste. “Hello, Luigi,” he said, nodding so briskly that he almost seemed rude. “Luigi, I need your help. My friend here wants to find a girl.”

“A girl, Marchese?” said Luigi, scratching his face pensively. “There are lots of girls in Rome. For an American officer, a girl should not be too difficult.”

“No, Luigi, you don’t understand. This is a twelve-year-old virgin that he has to find right away.”

“Ah, yes, now I understand,” Luigi said sagaciously. “A virgin might take a little time. But if he waits at the bus terminal where the young farm girls looking for work arrive, I-“

“Luigi, you still don’t understand,” Milo snapped with such brusque impatience that the police commissioner’s face flushed and he jumped to attention and began buttoning his uniform in confusion. “This girl is a friend, an old friend of the family, and we want to help her. She’s only a child. She’s all alone in this city somewhere, and we have to find her before somebody harms her. Now do you understand? Luigi, this is very important to me. I have a daughter the same age as that little girl, and nothing in the world means more to me right now than saving that poor child before it’s too late. Will you help?”