Joseph Heller - Closing Time

"I heard that one last night, in my room in Kenosha."

"I know."

"And I learned something new that might help the chaplain. His wife thinks he's already had one miracle."

"That's already old, John," belittled Gaffney. "Everything in Kenosha is bugged. But here is something that might be good. To Milo, you might suggest a shoe."

"What kind of shoe?"

"A military shoe. Perhaps an official U. S. Government shoe. He was too late for cigarettes. But the military will always need shoes. For ladies too. And perhaps brassieres. Please give my best to your fiancée."

"What fiancée?" Yossarian shot back.

"Miss MacIntosh?" Gaffney arched his black eyebrows almost into marks of punctuation.

"Miss MacIntosh is not my fiancée," Yossarian remonstrated. "She's only my nurse."

Gaffney tossed his head in a gesture of laughter. "You have no nurse, Yo-Yo," he insisted almost prankishly. "You've told me that a dozen times. Should I check back and count?"

"Gaffney, go north with your Irish linen or south with your blazer and flannel pants. And take those shadows with you."

"In time. You like the German composers, don't you?"

"Who else is there?" answered Yossarian. "Unless you want to count Italian opera."

"Chopin?"

"You'll find him in Schubert," said Yossarian. "And both in Beethoven."

"Not entirely. And how about the Germans themselves?" asked Gaffney.

"They don't much like each other, do they?" replied Yossarian. "I can't think of another people with such vengeful animosities toward each other."

"Except our own?" suggested Gaffney.

"Gaffney, you know too much."

"I've always been interested in learning things." Gaffney confessed this with an air of restraint. "It's proved useful in my work. Tell me, John," he continued, and fixed his eyes on Yossarian significantly. "Have you ever heard of a German composer named Adrian Leverkühn?"

Yossarian looked back at Gatfney with tense consternation. "Yes, I have, Jerry," he answered, searching the bland, impenetrable dark countenance before him for some glimmer of clarification. "I've heard of Adrian Leverkühn. He did an oratorio called Apocalypse."

"I know him for a cantata, The Lamentations of Faust."

"I didn't think that one had ever been performed."

"Oh, yes. It has that very touching children's chorus, and that hellish section in glissandos of adult voices laughing ferociously. The laughter and sad chorus always remind me of photos of Nazi soldiers during the war, your war, herding to death those Jewish children in the ghettos."

"That's the Apocalypse, Jerry."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm positive."

"I'll have to check. And don't forget your shoe."

"What shoe?"

"A fucking shoe?" Wintergreen ridiculed Yossarian on the next leg of his Rhine Journey. "What's so great about a fucking shoe?"

"It's only a fucking thought," said Yossarian, in one of the hotel suites constituting the Washington offices of M amp; M E amp; A. For himself with Melissa he had favored a newer hotel of comparable prestige and livelier clientele that boasted, he recalled with a kind of blissful vanity as he lay in the hospital with his condition stable and the danger of brain damage and paralysis past, a more various choice of superior-grade XXX-rated films in all the languages of UN member nations. "You've been saying you wanted a consumer product."

"But a shoe? By now there must be fifty fucking shoe companies turning out shoes for fucking feet for fucks like us."

"But none with an exclusive franchise for an official U. S. Government shoe."

"Men's shoes or women's shoes?" pondered Milo.

"Both, now that women get killed in combat too." Yossarian was sorry he had started. "Forget it. There's much about business I don't understand. I still can't see how you guys bought eggs for seven cents apiece, sold them for five cents, and made a profit."

"We still do," bragged Wintergreen.

"Eggs spoil," Milo ruminated pitifully. "And break. I'd rather have a shoe. Eugene, look it up."

"I'd rather have the plane," Wintergreen grumbled.

"But after the plane? Suppose there's no more danger of war?"

"I'll look it up."

"I'm not happy with the plane," said Yossarian.

"Are you thinking of leaving us again?" Wintergreen jeered. "You've been objecting for years."

Yossarian was stung by the gibe but ignored it. "Your Shhhhh! could destroy the world, couldn't: it?"

"You've been peeking," answered Wintergreen.

"And it can't," said Milo, with heartache. "We conceded that much at the meeting."

"But maybe Strangelove's can?" Wintergreen needled.

"And that's why," said Milo, "we want the meeting with Noodles Cook."

Yossarian again was shaking his head. "And I'm not happy with the atom bomb. I don't like it anymore."

"Who would you like to see get the contract?" Wintergreen argued. "Fucking Strangelove?"

"And we don't have the bomb." conciliated Milo. "We only have plans for a plane that will deliver it."

"And our plane won't work."

"We'll guarantee that, Yossarian. Even in writing. Our planes won't fly, our missiles won't fire. If they take off, they'll crash; if they fire, they'll miss. We never fail. It's the company motto."

"You can find it on our fucking letterhead," Wintergreen added, and continued deliberately with a sneer. "But let me ask you this, Mr. Yo-Yo. What country would you rather see be strongest if not us? That's the fucking catch, isn't it?"

"That's the catch, all right," Yossarian had to agree.

"And if we don't sell our fucking war products to everyone who wants to buy, our friendly fucking allies and competitors will. There's nothing you can do about it. Time's run out for your fucking ideals. Tell me, if you're so smart, what the fuck would you do if you were running the country?"

"I wouldn't know what to do either," Yossarian admitted, and was enraged with himself for being bested in argument. It never used to happen that way. "But I know I'd want my conscience to be clear."

"Our conscience is clear," responded both.

"I don't want the guilt."

"That's horseshit, Yossarian."

"And I wouldn't: be responsible."

"And that's more horseshit," countered Wintergreen. "There's nothing you can do about it, and you will be responsible. If the world's going to blow up anyway, what the fuck difference does it make who does it?"

"At least my hands will be clean."

Wintergreen laughed coarsely. "They'll be blown off at the wrists, your fucking clean hands. No one will even know they're yours. You won't even be found."

"Go fuck yourself, Wintergreen!" Yossarian answered irately, with raised voice. "Go straight to hell, with your clear conscience!" He turned away, sulking. "I wish you were dead already, so I could finally in this lifetime get at least a little bit of pleasure out of you."

"Yossarian, Yossarian," chided Milo. "Be reasonable. One thing you do know about me-I never lie."

"Unless he has to," appended Wintergreen.

"I think he knows that, Eugene. I'm as moral as the next man. Right, Eugene?"

"Absolutely, Mr. Minderbinder."

" Milo, have you ever," asked Yossarian, "in your life done anything dishonest?"

"Oh, no," Milo responded like a shot. "That would be dishonest. And there's never been need to."

"And that's why," said Wintergreen, "we want this secret meeting with Noodles Cook, to get him to speak secretly to the President. We want everything out in the open."

"Yossarian," said Milo, "aren't you safer with us? Our planes can't work. We have the technology. Please call Noodles Cook."

"Set up the meeting and stop fucking around. And we want to be there."

"You don't trust me?"

"You say you don't fucking understand business."