Joseph Heller - Closing Time

Dennis Teemer could look at civilization, he liked to joke in pessimistic paradox, and see the world as just a microcosm of a cell.

"There are two more things about these cancer cells you might like to know. They live forever in the laboratory. And they lack self-control."

"Hmmmmm," said Yossarian. "Tell me, Teemer, does a cancer cell live as long as a healthy cell?"

"A cancer cell is a healthy cell," was the reply that came back and displeased us all, "if strength, growth, mobility, and expansion are the standards."

"Does it live as long as a normal cell?"

"A cancer cell is normal," was the frustrating answer, "for what it is. Biologically, why would you expect it to behave any differently? They can live forever-"

"Forever?"

"In the laboratory, unlike our others. They multiply irresistibly. Doesn't that sound healthy? They migrate and colonize and expand. Biologically, in the world of living things, why would you expect there would not be cells more aggressive than the rest?"

"Hmmmmm."

"And biology always does what it has to do. It doesn't know why and it doesn't care. It doesn't have choices. But unlike us, it doesn't seek reasons."

"Those are very large thoughts you are working with," I said to him, ambiguously.

"I wish he would stop," said his wife.

"It's my pleasure," said Teemer, with what passed for a smile. "Radiation, surgery, and chemotherapy are my work. But it's not the work that depresses me. It's the depression that depresses me."

"I wish he'd come home," said Mrs. Teemer.

He was honored to be taken seriously by his medical colleagues in psychiatry: they thought he was crazy but found that irrelevant.

Meeting Yossarian again brought back a flood of treasured war memories, even of gruesome events that were perilous and revolting, like those of wounded Snowden dying of cold and Yossarian throwing up numbly into his own lap. And of me blacking out dizzily each time I recovered and saw something else taking place I could not force myself to watch: Yossarian folding flesh back into a wound on the thigh, cutting bandages, retching, using the pearly cloth of Snowden's parachute as a blanket to warm him, and then as a shroud. There was that ditching with Orr, and the missing carbon dioxide cylinders for the ice cream sodas from Milo that the officers could have every day and we enlisted men got only on Sundays. At the investigation, it turned out logistically that there could be life vests or sodas, not both. They voted for sodas, because there were more of us to enjoy sodas than would ever need life jackets. I had that crash-landing with Hungry Joe. They gave him a medal for bringing the plane back and wrecking it needlessly. And there was a medal to Yossarian for going around over the bridge at Ferrara a second time, with McWatt at the controls caroling: "Oh, well, what the hell." Yossarian, seeing the crosshairs drifting and knowing he would miss, had not wasted his bombs. We were the only planes left with a chance at the target, and now all the antiaircraft fire would be aimed just at us.

"I guess we have to go back in again, don't we?" I heard McWatt on the intercom, when the bridge was undamaged.

"I guess we do," Yossarian answered.

"Do we?" said McWatt.

"Yeah."

"Oh, well," sang McWatt, "what the hell"

And back we went and hit the bridge, and saw Kraft, our copilot in the States, get killed in the plane alongside. And then Kid Sampson too, of course, cut apart at the beach by McWatt in a plane while capering on the raft anchored in the water. And "Oh, well, what the hell," McWatt had caroled to the control tower, before banking around lazily to fly himself into a mountain. And, of course, always Howie Snowden, cold and bleeding just a few feet away, crying out suddenly as he bled: "It's starting to hurt me!"

And then I saw he was in pain. Until then I didn't know there could be pain. And I saw death. And from that mission on, I prayed to God at the start of every one, although I did not believe in God and had no faith in prayer.

At home, there was never much interest in that war, my war, except by Michael, whose attention span was short. To the girls it was merely a tall tale and a travelogue. Michael would listen hard a minute or two before whirling off on tangents more personal. As a tail gunner, I faced backward and crouched on my knees or sat on a rest like a bike seat. And Michael could picture it perfectly, he contended swiftly, because he had a bike with a seat and would ride it to the beach to stare at the waves and the bathers and could I look straight ahead while facing backward? Michael, that wasn't funny, the girls scolded. He grinned as though joking. No, I answered, I could look only straight back, but a top turret gunner like Bill Knight could spin his guns around in all directions. "Well, I can also," said Michael, "still spin. I can still spin a top, I betcha. Do you know how come we all put away our bathing suits at the same time of year, and amp; begin spinning our tops?" The girls threw up their hands. Glenda too. Michael did not seem to me always to be trying to be funny, although he obligingly assumed that character when charged. We called him Sherlock Holmes because he paid attention to details and sounds the rest of us ignored, and he played that role too with the same exaggerated comic theatricality. He had difficulty with proverbs, such as I had not imagined could exist. He could understand that a stitch in time might save nine, but he could not see how that applied to anything but sewing. He appeared absolutely dumbfounded one time when Glenda, advising him about something else, remarked that it was always better to look before you leaped, for he had not been thinking about leaping. Like his mother when a child, he was obedient to everyone. He helped with dishes when asked to. And when classmates told him to take drugs, he took drugs. When we demanded he stop, he did. He started again when urged to. He had no close friends and seemed pathetically to want them. By the time he was fifteen, we knew he would not be able to go through college. We speculated privately about work for him that would not involve close relationships with others: forest ranger, night watchman, lighthouse keeper, those were among our darkest jokes and far-fetched outlooks. By the time he was nineteen, we were wondering what we could do with him. Michael made the decision for us. Glenda found him first when she stepped out the back with a basket of wash from the washing machine. In the backyard of the house we had rented on Fire Island there was just one small tree, a stubby Scotch pine, they told us, and he had hanged himself from that.

The photographs we had of Michael could break your heart. Glenda said nothing when I put them away in the cabinet in which she had stored the photographs of herself as a cheerleader and her father as a vendor of agricultural supplies. Into the same cabinet with my Air Medal and gunner's wings, my patch of sergeant's stripes, that old picture of me with Snowden and Bill Knight sitting on a row of bombs, with Yossarian looking on from the background, and that older picture of my father with a gas mask and a helmet in World War I.

Not long after, Glenda, who had always been healthy, began suffering often with symptoms of vague character that eluded verification: Reiter's syndrome, Epstein-Barr virus, fluctuations in blood chemistry, Lyme disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, numbness and tinglings in the extremities, and, finally, digestive upsets and the ailment that was all too specific.

I'd met Teemer through Lew, who suggested we at least consult with the oncologist who'd been managing his Hodgkin's disease. Teemer reviewed the data and did not disagree. The primary growth in the ovary was no longer the main problem. The ones in other areas could prove tougher.