Joseph Heller - Catch-22

“Then why do you do it?”

“To assuage my fears of sexual impotence.”

“Why don’t you get yourself a good hobby instead?” Major Sanderson inquired with friendly interest. “Like fishing. Do you really find Nurse Duckett so attractive? I should think she was rather bony. Rather bland and bony, you know. Like a fish.”

“I hardly know Nurse Duckett.”

“Then why did you grab her by the bosom? Merely because she has one?”

“Dunbar did that.”

“Oh, don’t start that again,” Major Sanderson exclaimed with vitriolic scorn, and hurled down his pencil disgustedly. “Do you really think that you can absolve yourself of guilt by pretending to be someone else? I don’t like you, Fortiori. Do you know that? I don’t like you at all.”

Yossarian felt a cold, damp wind of apprehension blow over him. “I’m not Fortiori, sir,” he said timidly. “I’m Yossarian.”

“You’re who?”

“My name is Yossarian, sir. And I’m in the hospital with a wounded leg.”

“Your name is Fortiori,” Major Sanderson contradicted him belligerently. “And you’re in the hospital for a stone in your salivary gland.”

“Oh, come on, Major!” Yossarian exploded. “I ought to know who I am.”

“And I’ve got an official Army record here to prove it,” Major Sanderson retorted. “You’d better get a grip on yourself before it’s too late. First you’re Dunbar. Now you’re Yossarian. The next thing you know you’ll be claiming you’re Washington Irving. Do you know what’s wrong with you? You’ve got a split personality, that’s what’s wrong with you.”

“Perhaps you’re right, sir.” Yossarian agreed diplomatically.

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

“People are trying to harm me.”

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

“Are you serious?”

“You’re an enemy of the people!”

“Are you nuts?” Yossarian shouted.

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

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

“I can get killed flying them, too,” Dobbs answered pugnaciously in his rough, quavering, overwrought voice. “We can kill him the first thing tomorrow morning when he drives back from his farm. I’ve got the gun right here.”

Yossarian goggled with amazement as Dobbs pulled a gun out of his pocket and displayed it high in the air. “Are you crazy?” he hissed frantically. “Put it away. And keep your idiot voice down.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I am whispering. I-“

“You’re still shouting.”

“No, I’m not. I-“

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

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

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

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

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

“He always raises the missions. You know that better than I do.” Dobbs swallowed and bent his intense face very close to Yossarian’s, the muscles in his bronze, rocklike jaw bunching up into quivering knots. “Just say it’s okay and I’ll do the whole thing tomorrow morning. Do you understand what I’m telling you? I’m whispering now, ain’t I?”

Yossarian tore his eyes away from the gaze of burning entreaty Dobbs had fastened on him. “Why the goddam hell don’t you just go out and do it?” he protested. “Why don’t you stop talking to me about it and do it alone?”

“I’m afraid to do it alone. I’m afraid to do anything alone.”

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

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

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

“Then let’s do it tomorrow while we’ve still got the chance,” Dobbs pleaded. “The chaplain says he’s volunteered the group for Avignon again. I may be killed before you get out. Look how these hands of mine shake. I can’t fly a plane. I’m not good enough.”

Yossarian was afraid to say yes. “I want to wait and see what happens first.”

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

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

“Yes, I can see.” Yossarian suppressed a smile. “What happened?”

“They painted my gums purple,” the chaplain replied sheepishly.

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

“But I went back again this morning to see him.”

“And they painted his gums purple again,” said Nately.

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