Joseph Heller - Closing Time

"I think," said Michael, "you might be trying to make it sound better than it really is."

"Maybe," said Yossarian, who felt qualms it might be so, "but that's where I stand. Here's what Mann wrote then: that a menace had hung over Europe for months."

"World War II?" Michael guessed, indulging him.

"World War I!" Yossarian corrected emphatically. "Even back then, Mann could see where this ungovernable machine we call our civilization was heading. And here's what's been my fate in this latter half of my life. I make money from Milo, whom I don't care for and condemn. And I find myself identifying in self-pity with a fictional German with no humor or any other likable trait. Soon I'll be going down deeper into PABT with McBride to fine out what's there. Is that my Venice? I met a man in Paris once, cultured book publisher, who could not bring himself ever to go to Venice, because of that story. I met another man who could not vacation for as long as a week at any resort in the mountain because of The Magic Mountain. He'd have the hideous dream that he was dying there and would never get away alive if he stayed, and he'd get the hell out the next day."

"Is a Minderbinder going to marry a Maxon?"

"They both have brides to offer. I've suggested M2."

"When are you going back there with McBride?"

"Soon as the President says he might come and we get permission to examine the place. When are you going with M2?"

"As soon as he's hot to look at dirty pictures again. I draw my pay from M amp; M too."

"If you want to live under water, Michael, you must learn to breathe like a fish."

"How do you feel about that?"

"That we never had a choice. I don't feel good about it, but I won't feel bad. It's our natural destiny, as Teemer might say. Biologically, we are a new species and haven't learned to fit into nature yet. He thinks we're cancers."

"Cancers?"

"But he likes us anyway, and he doesn't like cancer."

"I think he's crazy," Michael protested.

"He thinks so too," Yossarian replied, "and has moved into the psychiatric ward of the hospital for treatment while he continues work as an oncologist. Does that seem crazy?"

"It doesn't seem sane."

"That doesn't mean he's mistaken. We can see the social pathology. What else worries you, Michael?"

"I'm pretty much alone, I told you," said Michael. "And I'm starting to get scared. About money too. You've managed to get me worried about that."

"I'm glad I've been useful."

"I wouldn't know where to get it if I didn't have any. I couldn't even mug anybody. I don't know how."

"And would probably get mugged trying to learn."

"I can't even learn how to drive a car."

"You would do what I would do if I had no money."

"What's that, Dad?"

"Kill myself, son."

"You're a barrel of laughs, Dad."

"It's what I would do. It's no worse than dying. I couldn't learn to be poor either, and I'd sooner give up."

"What will happen to those drawings I did?"

"They'll be printed in brochures and taken to Washington for the next meeting on the plane. I may have to go there too. You made money on that one, that flying wing."

"Finishing something I never even wanted to start."

"If you want to live like a fish amp; Michael, there are things you and I won't do for money, but there are some things we have to, or we won't have any. You've got those few more years to find out how to take care of yourself. For Christ sakes, learn how to drive! You can't live anywhere else if you can't do that."

"Where would I go?"

"To whoever you want to see."

"There's no one I want to see."

"To drive away from people you don't want to be with."

"I just know I'll kill somebody."

"Let's take that chance."

"You said that before. Is there really going to be a wedding at the bus terminal? I'd like to go."

"I'll get you an invitation."

"Make it two?" Michael moved his eyes away sheepishly. "Marlene is back in the city and needed a place for a while. She'll probably like that."

"Arlene?"

"Marlene, the one who just left. Maybe this time she'll stay. She says she doesn't think she'd mind if I have to work as a lawyer. My God, a wedding in that bus terminal. What kind of people would hold a wedding in a place like that just to get their name in the newspapers?"

"Their kind."

"And what kind of asshole came up with a crazy notion like that one?"

"My kind," said Yossarian, roaring. "It was your dad's idea."

"And what does a flying wing look like?"

"Other flying wings," Wintergreen interposed adroitly, with Milo struck dumb by a query he had not anticipated.

"And what do other flying wings look like?"

"Our flying wing," answered Milo, his composure restored.

"Will it look," asked a major, "like the old Stealth?"

"No. Only in appearance."

"Absolutely, Colonel Pickering?"

"Positively, Major Bowes."

Since the first session on the M amp; M defensive second-strike offensive attack bomber, Colonel Pickering had elected early retirement with full pension benefits to capitalize on the opportunity for a more remunerative, if less showy, position with the Airborne Division of M amp; M Enterprises amp; Associates, where his opening yearly income was precisely half a hundred times richer than his earnings in federal employ. General Bernard Bingam, at Milo 's request, was delaying a similar move in hopes of promotion and eventual elevation to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and after that, given half a break with a good war, perhaps the White House itself.

It was fortunate Pickering was there to help, for this newest session on the Minderbinder bomber was proving more prickly than the others. A hint of difficulties in store had come with the unexpected attendance of the fat man from the State Department and the skinny one from the National Security Council. It was now no secret they were partisans of the competitive Strangelove entry, and they had placed themselves on opposite ends of the curved table to project the impression they were speaking separately with independent voices.

Both were career diplomats who regularly spent time away as Strangelove Associates, replenishing with newly acquired supplies the secondhand influence and fine contacts that, with bombast, were the stock-in-trade of the Strangelove empire. Another cause of consternation for Milo was the absence of an ally he'd counted on, C. Porter Lovejoy, who was otherwise occupied, perhaps, Milo feared, at a similar meeting in MASSPOB on the Strangelove B-Ware, as an ally of that one.

General Bingam was obviously delighted to be parading his aptitudes before officers from other branches who outranked him and masters in atomic matters and related abstruse scientific areas. Bingam knew a feather in his cap when he had one. There were thirty-two others in this elite enclave, and all were eager to speak, even though there were no television cameras.

"Tell them about the technology, Milo," General Bingam suggested, to move things along advantageously.

"Let me distribute these pictures first," answered Milo, as rehearsed, "so we can see what our planes look like."

"These are lovely," said a bespectacled lieutenant colonel with experience in design. "Who drew them?"

"An artist named Yossarian."

"Yossarian?"

"Michael Yossarian, He is a specialist in military art and works exclusively for us."

Coming down as instructed from the MASSPOB basement through the door to Sub-Basement A, Milo and Wintergreen had been met by three armed MASSPOB guards in uniforms they had not seen before: red battle jackets, green pants, and black leather combat boots, with name tags in cerise letters against a lustrous fabric of silken mother-of-pearl. They were checked against a roster and replied correctly when asked the password: Bingam's Baby. They were handed round pasteboard passes with numbers in a border of blue, to be worn around the neck on a skimpy whit string, and instructed to proceed directly to the Bingam's Baby conference room in Sub-Basement A, the circular chamber in which Michael's pictures were now making so auspicious an impression.