Catch-22

They gave Yossarian total anesthesia and knocked him out. He woke up thirsty in a private room, drowning in ether fumes. Colonel Korn was there at his bedside, waiting calmly in a chair in his baggy, wool, olive-drab shirt and trousers. A bland, phlegmatic smile hung on his brown face with its heavy-bearded cheeks, and he was buffing the facets of his bald head gently with the palms of both hands. He bent forward chuckling when Yossarian awoke, and assured him in the friendliest tones that the deal they had made was still on if Yossarian didn’t die. Yossarian vomited, and Colonel Korn shot to his feet at the first cough and fled in disgust, so it seemed indeed that there was a silver lining to every cloud, Yossarian reflected, as he drifted back into a suffocating daze. A hand with sharp fingers shook him awake roughly. He turned and opened his eyes and saw a strange man with a mean face who curled his lip at him in a spiteful scowl and bragged,

“We’ve got your pal, buddy. We’ve got your pal.”

Yossarian turned cold and faint and broke into a sweat.

“Who’s my pal?” he asked when he saw the chaplain sitting where Colonel Korn had been sitting.

“Maybe I’m your pal,” the chaplain answered.

But Yossarian couldn’t hear him and closed his eyes. Someone gave him water to sip and tiptoed away. He slept and woke up feeling great until he turned his head to smile at the chaplain and saw Aarfy there instead. Yossarian moaned instinctively and screwed his face up with excruciating irritability when Aarfy chortled and asked how he was feeling. Aarfy looked puzzled when Yossarian inquired why he was not in jail. Yossarian shut his eyes to make him go away. When he opened them, Aarfy was gone and the chaplain was there. Yossarian broke into laughter when he spied the chaplain’s cheerful grin and asked him what in the hell he was so happy about.

“I’m happy about you,” the chaplain replied with excited candor and joy. “I heard at Group that you were very seriously injured and that you would have to be sent home if you lived. Colonel Korn said your condition was critical. But I’ve just learned from one of the doctors that your wound is really a very slight one and that you’ll probably be able to leave in a day or two. You’re in no danger. It isn’t bad at all.”

Yossarian listened to the chaplain’s news with enormous relief. “That’s good.”

“Yes,” said the chaplain, a pink flush of impish pleasure creeping into his cheeks. “Yes, that is good.”

Yossarian laughed, recalling his first conversation with the chaplain. “You know, the first time I met you was in the hospital. And now I’m in the hospital again. Just about the only time I see you lately is in the hospital. Where’ve you been keeping yourself?”

The chaplain shrugged. “I’ve been praying a lot,” he confessed. “I try to stay in my tent as much as I can, and I pray every time Sergeant Whitcomb leaves the area, so that he won’t catch me.”

“Does it do any good?”

“It takes my mind off my troubles,” the chaplain answered with another shrug. “And it gives me something to do.”

“Well that’s good, then, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” agreed the chaplain enthusiastically, as though the idea had not occurred to him before. “Yes, I guess that is good.” He bent forward impulsively with awkward solicitude. “Yossarian, is there anything I can do for you while you’re here, anything I can get you?”

Yossarian teased him jovially. “Like toys, or candy, or chewing gum?”

The chaplain blushed again, gri

“Proud?”

“Yes, of course. For risking your life to stop that Nazi assassin. It was a very noble thing to do.”

“What Nazi assassin?”

“The one that came here to murder Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn. And you saved them. He might have stabbed you to death as you grappled with him on the balcony. It’s a lucky thing you’re alive!”

Yossarian snickered sardonically when he understood. “That was no Nazi assassin.”

“Certainly it was. Colonel Korn said it was.”

“That was Nately’s girl friend. And she was after me, not Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn. She’s been trying to kill me ever since I broke the news to her that Nately was dead.”

“But how could that be?” the chaplain protested in livid and resentful confusion. “Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn both saw him as he ran away. The official report says you stopped a Nazi assassin from killing them.”

“Don’t believe the official report,” Yossarian advised dryly. “It’s part of the deal.”

“What deal?”

“The deal I made with Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn. They’ll let me go home a big hero if I say nice things about them to everybody and never criticize them to anyone for making the rest of the men fly more missions.”

The chaplain was appalled and rose halfway out of his chair. He bristled with bellicose dismay. “But that’s terrible! That’s a shameful, scandalous deal, isn’t it?”

“Odious,” Yossarian answered, staring up woodenly at the ceiling with just the back of his head resting on the pillow. “I think ‘odious’ is the word we decided on.”

“Then how could you agree to it?”

“It’s that or a court-martial, Chaplain.”

“Oh,” the chaplain exclaimed with a look of stark remorse, the back of his hand covering his mouth. He lowered himself into his chair uneasily. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“They’d lock me in prison with a bunch of criminals.”

“Of course. You must do whatever you think is right, then.” The chaplain nodded to himself as though deciding the argument and lapsed into embarrassed silence.

“Don’t worry,” Yossarian said with a sorrowful laugh after several moments had passed. “I’m not going to do it.”

“But you must do it,” the chaplain insisted, bending forward with concern. “Really, you must. I had no right to influence you. I really had no right to say anything.”

“You didn’t influence me.” Yossarian hauled himself over onto his side and shook his head in solemn mockery. “Christ, Chaplain! Can you imagine that for a sin? Saving Colonel Cathcart’s life! That’s one crime I don’t want on my record.”

The chaplain returned to the subject with caution. “What will you do instead? You can’t let them put you in prison.”

“I’ll fly more missions. Or maybe I really will desert and let them catch me. They probably would.”

“And they’d put you in prison. You don’t want to go to prison.”

“Then I’ll just keep flying missions until the war ends, I guess. Some of us have to survive.”

“But you might get killed.”

“Then I guess I won’t fly any more missions.”

“What will you do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Will you let them send you home?”

“I don’t know. Is it hot out? It’s very warm in here.”

“It’s very cold out,” the chaplain said.

“You know,” Yossarian remembered, “a very fu

“I don’t think you did,” the chaplain informed him. “You started to tell me about him when I dropped in earlier.”

“Then he really did say it. ‘We’ve got your pal, buddy,’ he said. ‘We’ve got your pal.’ He had the most malignant ma

“I like to think that I’m your pal, Yossarian,” the chaplain said with humble sincerity. “And they certainly have got me. They’ve got my number and they’ve got me under surveillance, and they’ve got me right where they want me. That’s what they told me at my interrogation.”

“No, I don’t think it’s you he meant,” Yossarian decided. “I think it must be someone like Nately or Dunbar. You know, someone who was killed in the war, like Clevinger, Orr, Dobbs, Kid Sampson or McWatt.” Yossarian emitted a startled gasp and shook his head. “I just realized it,” he exclaimed. “They’ve got all my pals, haven’t they? The only ones left are me and Hungry Joe.” He tingled with dread as he saw the chaplain’s face go pale. “Chaplain, what is it?”