Joseph Heller - Closing Time

Having passed his lips, they spurred him on with a spirit of liberation he himself thought fanatic. Eventually, he stormed from the last of the elevators and found himself facing a thoroughfare cluttered with transport and rushing pedestrians, with a steep staircase of wrought iron across the way that rose in short flights to spiraling landings and had a platform at the top at an exit with a large metal door. Mounting these, he paid no attention to an outburst of barking wild dogs he heard behind him. At the top was a guard. On the door were the words: EMERGENCY ENTRANCE NO ADMITTANCE THIS DOOR MUST BE LOCKED AND BOLTED WHEN IN USE The guard made no move to stop him. Instead, obligingly, he turned the lock, shifted the bolt, and slid open the door. Two more guards were on duty at the other side. These did not interfere with him either. He found himself walking through a metal closet into a small service room of some kind and then outside into a corridor underneath a staircase slanting upward over his head and then, out in front of him, he saw an exit door leading to the street. His heart leaped. He was beginning to see the light, he told himself, and pushed outside into a dark day, passing a smal mound of shit in a corner, at which he glanced but briefly.

He was at the bus terminal, in a side street on a lower level from which buses set out. One, with engine warming, was about to leave for Kenosha, Wisconsin. He was one of three passengers Once relaxed in his seat, he blew his nose, coughed to clear his throat, sighed heavily in relief. Each time they stopped for food he would try a phone call until he reached her. The boarding platform was beneath a sheltering overhang, and he was not surprisec to see the light so dull. But when they were through the tunnel and out on the highway, the sky was no brighter. With hardly any curiosity, he looked upward out his window and saw that the sun itself was an ashy gray and darkened around its rim in a circle oi black. In Wisconsin on drab days he had seen such feeble suns often behind masses of clouds. He didn't see that there were no clouds. nbsp; In the editorial meeting at the New York Times conducted daily to determine the makeup of the front page of the ensuing edition, they decided to predict, and the television newscasters would therefore decide to report, an unpredictable solar eclipse.

Frances Beach, devoting herself with priority to the care and comfort of an invalid husband, had long since passed the point where she cared what the New York Times or any other newspaper decided about anything but fashion. In her final years, she was not surprised to find herself deeply in love with Yossarian again. What had been lacking in their affection, she concluded benevolently with a remorseful smile, looking up from her book and lifting her reading glasses, was strife and drama. Neither had ever had real need for the other. What was wrong between them was that nothing between them had ever gone wrong.

Claire Rabinowitz felt herself in pugnacious opposition to all her fellow passengers on the El Al flight transporting her to Israel to see for herself the seaside summer house outside Tel Aviv on which she had made a down payment in the form of an option to buy. There had been not much eye contact with anyone in the first-class lounge or in the waiting area at the gate, to which, out of aggressive curiosity, she had also wandered to kill time. There was not a man aboard of any age, traveling with family or without, who came even close to what she considered with pride her standards. There wasn't one who could hold a candle to her Lew. Sammy Singer, in California or on his way to Hawaii or Australia, had predicted that might happen, and she had taken his warning as a compliment. When she spoke of Lew to anyone, to her children or Sammy, she never spoke of him as hers. When she thought of him, he was still her Lew. She was conquering slowly her reluctance to concede that it would forever be impossible for her to recreate what had been. She took for granted that all of the others on the flight were Jewish too, even those, like herself, who looked American and agnostic.

Crossing the Mediterranean while the day was breaking, there was no signal of any new disaster portending. There was a sketchy news report that an oil tanker had collided with a cruise ship somewhere below. Her mood was surly, and she did not care that her expression might show it. Another dimension to her latent disappointments was that she did not feel yet as she had hoped she might, that in going to Israel, she was going home.

Shortly after the alarm went off, Mr. George C. Tilyou felt his world shudder. In his Steeplechase Park, he saw the power fail on his El Dorado carousel and the elegant rotating platforms coast to a standstill with the emperor on board. He saw, strangely, that his two World War II airplane pilots were gone, as though called away. His Coney Island acquaintance Mr. Rabinowitz was staring at the mechanism from a distance, as though analyzing a malfunction he might have it in his means to correct. Frowning, Mr Tilyou walked back into his office. He dusted his derby with his sleeve while restoring it to its peg on the coatrack. He felt his anger melt away. His depression returned.

His appointment with the higher authorities, with Lucifer and perhaps Satan himself, to demand an explanation for the peculiar behavior of his house, would be postponed again. There was no longer doubt it was sinking gradually, without his blessing and beyond his control. Careful measurements betrayed subversive disappearance. As he glanced at it now from his rolltop desk it went down suddenly before his eyes. Almost before he could understand what was happening, the entire bottom floor was gone. His house of three stories was now one of two stories. From overhead, while he was still staring, widening showers of dirt came spilling down, and then great rough clumps of earth, stones, and other debris began to fall in too. Something new he had no planned on was coming through from outside with a crunching roar. He saw torn electrical connections dangling. He saw duct of bolted sheet metal. He saw tubes. He recognized a bulky under side with a dense configuration of ponderous dripping refrigeration pipes encased in a crystalline jacket of melting frost.

His mood of depression lifted.

He saw in a red jacket a Japanese man with ice skates holding onto a corner of the floor for dear life.

It was the skating rink from Rockefeller Center!

He had to smile. He saw Mr. Rockefeller turn pale, quiver, and flee in panic. Mr. Morgan slumped naked to the ground with bowed head, weeping, and began to pray. The emperor had no clothes either.

Mr. Tilyou had to laugh. There was nothing new under the sun. He was seeing something new, learning a lesson he had never dreamed possible. Even hell was not forever.

Yossarian could not believe his ears. Where in the world had the chaplain learned to say "Fuck you!" so well? By the time Yossarian reached bottom, the chaplain was over the top and gone from view. Gaffney had started to tell him they had better return to the elevators to get down to McBride and the others when the Strangelove voice returned to announce that they had nothing to fear but a shortage of tailors.

"That is something else we forgot, and some of us at headquarters look sloppy. We have irons but nobody who knows how to use them. We have cloth and thread and sewing machines. But we need someone who sews. Does anyone hear me? Come in if you sew."

"Häagen-Dazs. I can do laundry and iron. My weapons officer is the son of a tailor."

"Turn back immediately and join us here."

"Right, sir. How can we get there?"

"We forgot that too!"

"Gaffney," said Yossarian, when they had ten miles more to go. "How long will we be here?"

"My future may lie here," replied Gaffney. "When we're down and have time, there's something I want to show you. It's on an acre and a half on a lake under Vermont, near an underground golf course and good skiing in Ben amp; Jerry territory, in case you're planning to buy."