Joseph Heller - Catch-22

“Aren’t you the one who ordered him to come here?”

“No, sir, that was Colonel Korn. I intend to punish him severely, too.”

“If he wasn’t a chaplain,” General Dreedle muttered, “I’d have him taken outside and shot.”

“He’s not a chaplain, sir.” Colonel Cathcart advised helpfully.

“Isn’t he? Then why the hell does he wear that cross on his collar if he’s not a chaplain?”

“He doesn’t wear a cross on his collar, sir. He wears a silver leaf. He’s a lieutenant colonel.”

“You’ve got a chaplain who’s a lieutenant colonel?” inquired General Dreedle with amazement.

“Oh, no, sir. My chaplain is only a captain.”

“Then why the hell does he wear a silver leaf on his collar if he’s only a captain?”

“He doesn’t wear a silver leaf on his collar, sir. He wears a cross.”

“Go away from me now, you son of a bitch,” said General Dreedle. “Or I’ll have you taken outside and shot!”

“Yes, sir.”

Colonel Cathcart went away from General Dreedle with a gulp and kicked the chaplain out of the officers’ club, and it was exactly the way it almost was two months later after the chaplain had tried to persuade Colonel Cathcart to rescind his order increasing the number of missions to sixty and had failed abysmally in that endeavor too, and the chaplain was ready now to capitulate to despair entirely but was restrained by the memory of his wife, whom he loved and missed so pathetically with such sensual and exalted ardor, and by the lifelong trust he had placed in the wisdom and justice of an immortal, omnipotent, omniscient, humane, universal, anthropomorphic, English-speaking, Anglo-Saxon, pro-American God, which had begun to waver. So many things were testing his faith. There was the Bible, of course, but the Bible was a book, and so were Bleak House, Treasure Island, Ethan Frome and The Last of the Mohicans. Did it then seem probable, as he had once overheard Dunbar ask, that the answers to the riddles of creation would be supplied by people too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall? Had Almighty God, in all His infinite wisdom, really been afraid that men six thousand years ago would succeed in building a tower to heaven? Where the devil was heaven? Was it up? Down? There was no up or down in a finite but expanding universe in which even the vast, burning, dazzling, majestic sun was in a state of progressive decay that would eventually destroy the earth too. There were no miracles; prayers went unanswered, and misfortune tramped with equal brutality on the virtuous and the corrupt; and the chaplain, who had conscience and character, would have yielded to reason and relinquished his belief in the God of his fathers-would truly have resigned both his calling and his commission and taken his chances as a private in the infantry or field artillery, or even, perhaps, as a corporal in the paratroopers-had it not been for such successive mystic phenomena as the naked man in the tree at that poor sergeant’s funeral weeks before and the cryptic, haunting, encouraging promise of the prophet Flume in the forest only that afternoon: “Tell them I’ll be back when winter comes.”

In a way it was all Yossarian’s fault, for if he had not moved the bomb line during the Big Siege of Bologna, Major -- de Coverley might still be around to save him, and if he had not stocked the enlisted men’s apartment with girls who had no other place to live, Nately might never have fallen in love with his whore as she sat naked from the waist down in the room full of grumpy blackjack players who ignored her. Nately stared at her covertly from his over-stuffed yellow armchair, marveling at the bored, phlegmatic strength with which she accepted the mass rejection. She yawned, and he was deeply moved. He had never witnessed such heroic poise before.

The girl had climbed five steep flights of stairs to sell herself to the group of satiated enlisted men, who had girls living there all around them; none wanted her at any price, not even after she had stripped without real enthusiasm to tempt them with a tall body that was firm and full and truly voluptuous. She seemed more fatigued than disappointed. Now she sat resting in vacuous indolence, watching the card game with dull curiosity as she gathered her recalcitrant energies for the tedious chore of donning the rest of her clothing and going back to work. In a little while she stirred. A little while later she rose with an unconscious sigh and stepped lethargically into her tight cotton panties and dark skirt, then buckled on her shoes and left. Nately slipped out behind her; and when Yossarian and Aarfy entered the officers’ apartment almost two hours later, there she was again, stepping into her panties and skirt, and it was almost like the chaplain’s recurring sensation of having been through a situation before, except for Nately, who was moping inconsolably with his hands in his pockets.

“She wants to go now,” he said in a faint, strange voice. “She doesn’t want to stay.”

“Why don’t you just pay her some money to let you spend the rest of the day with her?” Yossarian advised.

“She gave me my money back,” Nately admitted. “She’s tired of me now and wants to go looking for someone else.”

The girl paused when her shoes were on to glance in surly invitation at Yossarian and Aarfy. Her breasts were pointy and large in the thin white sleeveless sweater she wore that squeezed each contour and flowed outward smoothly with the tops of her enticing hips. Yossarian returned her gaze and was strongly attracted. He shook his head.

“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” was Aarfy’s unperturbed response.

“Don’t say that about her!” Nately protested with passion that was both a plea and a rebuke. “I want her to stay with me.”

“What’s so special about her?” Aarfy sneered with mock surprise. “She’s only a whore.”

“And don’t call her a whore!”

The girl shrugged impassively after a few more seconds and ambled toward the door. Nately bounded forward wretchedly to hold it open. He wandered back in a heartbroken daze, his sensitive face eloquent with grief.

“Don’t worry about it,” Yossarian counseled him as kindly as he could. “You’ll probably be able to find her again. We know where all the whores hang out.”

“Please don’t call her that,” Nately begged, looking as though he might cry.

“I’m sorry,” murmured Yossarian.

Aarfy thundered jovially, “There are hundreds of whores just as good crawling all over the streets. That one wasn’t even pretty.” He chuckled mellifluously with resonant disdain and authority. “Why, you rushed forward to open that door as though you were in love with her.”

“I think I am in love with her,” Nately confessed in a shamed, far-off voice.

Aarfy wrinkled his chubby round rosy forehead in comic disbelief. “Ho, ho, ho, ho!” he laughed, patting the expansive forest-green sides of his officer’s tunic prosperously. “That’s rich. You in love with her? That’s really rich.” Aarfy had a date that same afternoon with a Red Cross girl from Smith whose father owned an important milk-of-magnesia plant. “Now, that’s the kind of girl you ought to be associating with, and not with common sluts like that one. Why, she didn’t even look clean.”

“I don’t care!” Nately shouted desperately. “And I wish you’d shut up, I don’t even want to talk about it with you.”

“Aarfy, shut up,” said Yossarian.

“Ho, ho, ho, ho!” Aarfy continued. “I just can’t imagine what your father and mother would say if they knew you were running around with filthy trollops like that one. Your father is a very distinguished man, you know.”