'Yes.'
'But you won't be here then, will you?'
'No.'
'Yes, sir. Will that be all?'
'Yes.'
'Yes, sir.'
'From now on,' Major Major said to the middle-aged enlisted man who took care of his trailer, 'I don't want you to come here while I'm here to ask me if there's anything you can do for me. Is that clear?'
'Yes, sir,' said the orderly. 'When should I come here to find out if there's anything you want me to do for you?'
'When I'm not here.'
'Yes, sir. And what should I do?'
'Whatever I tell you to.'
'But you won't be here to tell me. Will you?'
'No.'
'Then what should I do?'
'Whatever has to be done.'
'Yes, sir.'
'That will be all,' said Major Major.
'Yes, sir,' said the orderly. 'Will that be all?'
'No,' said Major Major. 'Don't come in to clean, either. Don't come in for anything unless you're sure I'm not here.'
'Yes, sir. But how can I always be sure?'
'If you're not sure, just assume that I am here and go away until you are sure. Is that clear?'
'Yes, sir.'
'I'm sorry to have to talk to you in this way, but I have to. Goodbye.'
'Goodbye, sir.'
'And thank you. For everything.'
'Yes, sir.'
'From now on,' Major Major said to Milo Minderbinder, 'I'm not going to come to the mess hall any more. I'll have all my meals brought to me in my trailer.'
'I think that's a good idea, sir,' Milo answered. 'Now I'll be able to serve you special dishes that the others will never know about. I'm sure you'll enjoy them. Colonel Cathcart always does.'
'I don't want any special dishes. I want exactly what you serve all the other officers. Just have whoever brings it knock once on my door and leave the tray on the step. Is that clear?'
'Yes, sir,' said Milo. 'That's very clear. I've got some live Maine lobsters hidden away that I can serve you tonight with an excellent Roquefort salad and two frozen éclairs that were smuggled out of Paris only yesterday together with an important member of the French underground. Will that do for a start?'
'No.'
'Yes, sir. I understand.' For dinner that night Milo served him broiled Maine lobster with excellent Roquefort salad and two frozen éclairs. Major Major was annoyed. If he sent it back, though, it would only go to waste or to somebody else, and Major Major had a weakness for broiled lobster. He ate with a guilty conscience. The next day for lunch there was terrapin Maryland with a whole quart of Dom Pérignon 1937, and Major Major gulped it down without a thought.
After Milo, there remained only the men in the orderly room, and Major Major avoided them by entering and leaving every time through the dingy celluloid window of his office. The window unbuttoned and was low and large and easy to jump through from either side. He managed the distance between the orderly room and his trailer by darting around the corner of the tent when the coast was clear, leaping down into the railroad ditch and dashing along with head bowed until he attained the sanctuary of the forest. Abreast of his trailer, he left the ditch and wove his way speedily toward home through the dense underbrush, in which the only person he ever encountered was Captain Flume, who, drawn and ghostly, frightened him half to death one twilight by materializing without warning out of a patch of dewberry bushes to complain that Chief White Halfoat had threatened to slit his throat open from ear to ear.
'If you ever frighten me like that again,' Major Major told him, 'I'll slit your throat open from ear to ear.' Captain Flume gasped and dissolved right back into the patch of dewberry bushes, and Major Major never set eyes on him again.
When Major Major looked back on what he had accomplished, he was pleased. In the midst of a few foreign acres teeming with more than two hundred people, he had succeeded in becoming a recluse. With a little ingenuity and vision, he had made it all but impossible for anyone in the squadron to talk to him, which was just fine with everyone, he noticed, since no one wanted to talk to him anyway. No one, it turned out, but that madman Yossarian, who brought him down with a flying tackle one day as he was scooting along the bottom of the ditch to his trailer for lunch.
The last person in the squadron Major Major wanted to be brought down with a flying tackle by was Yossarian. There was something inherently disreputable about Yossarian, always carrying on so disgracefully about that dead man in his tent who wasn't even there and then taking off all his clothes after the Avignon mission and going around without them right up to the day General Dreedle stepped up to pin a medal on him for his heroism over Ferrara and found him standing in formation stark naked. No one in the world had the power to remove the dead man's disorganized effects from Yossarian's tent. Major Major had forfeited the authority when he permitted Sergeant Towser to report the lieutenant who had been killed over Orvieto less than two hours after he arrived in the squadron as never having arrived in the squadron at all. The only one with any right to remove his belongings from Yossarian's tent, it seemed to Major Major, was Yossarian himself, and Yossarian, it seemed to Major Major, had no right.
Major Major groaned after Yossarian brought him down with a flying tackle, and tried to wiggle to his feet. Yossarian wouldn't let him.
'Captain Yossarian,' Yossarian said, 'requests permission to speak to the major at once about a matter of life or death.'
'Let me up, please,' Major Major bid him in cranky discomfort. 'I can't return your salute while I'm lying on my arm.' Yossarian released him. They stood up slowly. Yossarian saluted again and repeated his request.
'Let's go to my office,' Major Major said. 'I don't think this is the best place to talk.'
'Yes, sir,' answered Yossarian.
They smacked the gravel from their clothing and walked in constrained silence to the entrance of the orderly room.
'Give me a minute or two to put some mercurochrome on these cuts. Then have Sergeant Towser send you in.'
'Yes, sir.' Major Major strode with dignity to the rear of the orderly room without glancing at any of the clerks and typists working at the desks and filing cabinets. He let the flap leading to his office fall closed behind him. As soon as he was alone in his office, he raced across the room to the window and jumped outside to dash away. He found Yossarian blocking his path. Yossarian was waiting at attention and saluted again.
'Captain Yossarian requests permission to speak to the major at once about a matter of life or death,' he repeated determinedly.
'Permission denied,' Major Major snapped.
'That won't do it.' Major Major gave in. 'All right,' he conceded wearily. 'I'll talk to you. Please jump inside my office.'
'After you.' They jumped inside the office. Major Major sat down, and Yossarian moved around in front of his desk and told him that he did not want to fly any more combat missions. What could he do? Major Major asked himself. All he could do was what he had been instructed to do by Colonel Korn and hope for the best.
'Why not?' he asked.
'I'm afraid.'
'That's nothing to be ashamed of,' Major Major counseled him kindly. 'We're all afraid.'
'I'm not ashamed,' Yossarian said. 'I'm just afraid.'
'You wouldn't be normal if you were never afraid. Even the bravest men experience fear. One of the biggest jobs we all face in combat is to overcome our fear.'
'Oh, come on, Major. Can't we do without that horseshit?' Major Major lowered his gaze sheepishly and fiddled with his fingers. 'What do you want me to tell you?'
'That I've flown enough missions and can go home.'
'How many have you flown?'
'Fifty-one.'
'You've only got four more to fly.'
'He'll raise them. Every time I get close he raises them.'
'Perhaps he won't this time.'
'He never sends anyone home, anyway. He just keeps them around waiting fo
r rotation orders until he doesn't have enough men left for the crews, and then raises the number of missions and throws them all back on combat status. He's been doing that ever since he got here.'
'You mustn't blame Colonel Cathcart for any delay with the orders,' Major Major advised. 'It's Twenty-seventh Air Force's responsibility to process the orders promptly once they get them from us.'
'He could still ask for replacements and send us home when the orders did come back. Anyway, I've been told that Twenty-seventh Air Force wants only forty missions and that it's only his own idea to get us to fly fifty-five.'
'I wouldn't know anything about that,' Major Major answered. 'Colonel Cathcart is our commanding officer and we must obey him. Why don't you fly the four more missions and see what happens?'
'I don't want to.' What could you do? Major Major asked himself again. What could you do with a man who looked you squarely in the eye and said he would rather die than be killed in combat, a man who was at least as mature and intelligent as you were and who you had to pretend was not? What could you say to him?
'Suppose we let you pick your missions and fly milk runs,' Major Major said. 'That way you can fly the four missions and not run any risks.'
'I don't want to fly milk runs. I don't want to be in the war any more.'
'Would you like to see our country lose?' Major Major asked.
'We won't lose. We've got more men, more money and more material. There are ten million men in uniform who could replace me. Some people are getting killed and a lot more are making money and having fun. Let somebody else get killed.'
'But suppose everybody on our side felt that way.'
'Then I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way. Wouldn't I?' What could you possibly say to him? Major Major wondered forlornly. One thing he could not say was that there was nothing he could do. To say there was nothing he could do would suggest he would do something if he could and imply the existence of an error of injustice in Colonel Korn's policy. Colonel Korn had been most explicit about that. He must never say there was nothing he could do.
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'But there's nothing I can do.'
Catch-22
Wintergreen
Clevinger was dead. That was the basic flaw in his philosophy. Eighteen planes had let down through a beaming white cloud off the coast of Elba one afternoon on the way back from the weekly milk run to Parma; seventeen came out. No trace was ever found of the other, not in the air or on the smooth surface of the jade waters below. There was no debris. Helicopters circled the white cloud till sunset. During the night the cloud blew away, and in the morning there was no more Clevinger.
The disappearance was astounding, as astounding, certainly, as the Grand Conspiracy of Lowery Field, when all sixty-four men in a single barrack vanished one payday and were never heard of again. Until Clevinger was snatched from existence so adroitly, Yossarian had assumed that the men had simply decided unanimously to go AWOL the same day. In fact, he had been so encouraged by what appeared to be a mass desertion from sacred responsibility that he had gone running outside in elation to carry the exciting news to ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen.
'What's so exciting about it?' ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen sneered obnoxiously, resting his filthy GI shoe on his spade and lounging back in a surly slouch against the wall of one of the deep, square holes it was his military specialty to dig.
Ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen was a snide little punk who enjoyed working at cross-purposes. Each time he went AWOL, he was caught and sentenced to dig and fill up holes six feet deep, wide and long for a specified length of time. Each time he finished his sentence, he went AWOL again. Ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen accepted his role of digging and filling up holes with all the uncomplaining dedication of a true patriot.
'It's not a bad life,' he would observe philosophically. 'And I guess somebody has to do it.' He had wisdom enough to understand that digging holes in Colorado was not such a bad assignment in wartime. Since the holes were in no great demand, he could dig them and fill them up at a leisurely pace, and he was seldom overworked. On the other hand, he was busted down to buck private each time he was court-martialed. He regretted this loss of rank keenly.
'It was kind of nice being a P.F.C.,' he reminisced yearningly. 'I had status--you know what I mean?--and I used to travel in the best circles.' His face darkened with resignation. 'But that's all behind me now,' he guessed. 'The next time I go over the hill it will be as a buck private, and I just know it won't be the same.' There was no future in digging holes. 'The job isn't even steady. I lose it each time I finish serving my sentence. Then I have to go over the hill again if I want it back. And I can't even keep doing that. There's a catch. Catch-22. The next time I go over the hill, it will mean the stockade. I don't know what's going to become of me. I might even wind up overseas if I'm not careful.' He did not want to keep digging holes for the rest of his life, although he had no objection to doing it as long as there was a war going on and it was part of the war effort. 'It's a matter of duty,' he observed, 'and we each have our own to perform. My duty is to keep digging these holes, and I've been doing such a good job of it that I've just been recommended for the Good Conduct Medal. Your duty is to screw around in cadet school and hope the war ends before you get out. The duty of the men in combat is to win the war, and I just wish they were doing their duty as well as I've been doing mine. It wouldn't be fair if I had to go overseas and do their job too, would it?' One day ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen struck open a water pipe while digging in one of his holes and almost drowned to death before he was fished out nearly unconscious. Word spread that it was oil, and Chief White Halfoat was kicked off the base. Soon every man who could find a shovel was outside digging frenziedly for oil. Dirt flew everywhere; the scene was almost like the morning in Pianosa seven months later after the night Milo bombed the squadron with every plane he had accumulated in his M & M syndicate, and the airfield, bomb dump and repair hangars as well, and all the survivors were outside hacking cavernous shelters into the solid ground and roofing them over with sheets of armor plate stolen from the repair sheds at the field and with tattered squares of waterproof canvas stolen from the side flaps of each other's tents. Chief White Halfoat was transferred out of Colorado at the first rumor of oil and came to rest finally in Pianosa as a replacement for Lieutenant Coombs, who had gone out on a mission as a guest one day just to see what combat was like and had died over Ferrara in the plane with Kraft. Yossarian felt guilty each time he remembered Kraft, guilty because Kraft had been killed on Yossarian's second bomb run, and guilty because Kraft had got mixed up innocently also in the Splendid Atabrine Insurrection that had begun in Puerto Rico on the first leg of their flight overseas and ended in Pianosa ten days later with Appleby striding dutifully into the orderly room the moment he arrived to report Yossarian for refusing to take his Atabrine tablets. The sergeant there invited him to be seated.
'Thank you, Sergeant, I think I will,' said Appleby. 'About how long will I have to wait? I've still got a lot to get done today so that I can be fully prepared bright and early tomorrow morning to go into combat the minute they want me to.'
'Sir?'
'What's that, Sergeant?'
'What was your question?'
'About how long will I have to wait before I can go in to see the major?'
'Just until he goes out to lunch,' Sergeant Towser replied. 'Then you can go right in.'
'But he won't be there then. Will he?'
'No, sir. Major Major won't be back in his office until after lunch.'
'I see,' Appleby decided uncertainly. 'I think I'd better come back after lunch, then.' Appleby turned from the orderly room in secret confusion. The moment he stepped outside, he thought he saw a tall, dark officer who looked a little like Henry Fonda come jumping out of the window of the orderly-room tent and go scooting out of sight around the corner. Appleby halted and squeezed his eyes closed. An anxious doubt assailed him. He wondered if he were suffering from malaria, or, worse, from an o
verdose of Atabrine tablets. Appleby had been taking four times as many Atabrine tablets as the amount prescribed because he wanted to be four times as good a pilot as everyone else. His eyes were still shut when Sergeant Towser tapped him lightly on the shoulder and told him he could go in now if he wanted to, since Major Major had just gone out. Appleby's confidence returned.
'Thank you, Sergeant. Will he be back soon?'
'He'll be back right after lunch. Then you'll have to go right out and wait for him in front till he leaves for dinner. Major Major never sees anyone in his office while he's in his office.'
'Sergeant, what did you just say?'
'I said that Major Major never sees anyone in his office while he's in his office.' Appleby stared at Sergeant Towser intently and attempted a firm tone. 'Sergeant, are you trying to make a fool out of me just because I'm new in the squadron and you've been overseas a long time?'
'Oh, no, sir,' answered the sergeant deferentially. 'Those are my orders. You can ask Major Major when you see him.'
'That's just what I intend to do, Sergeant. When can I see him?'
'Never.' Crimson with humiliation, Appleby wrote down his report about Yossarian and the Atabrine tablets on a pad the sergeant offered him and left quickly, wondering if perhaps Yossarian were not the only man privileged to wear an officer's uniform who was crazy.
By the time Colonel Cathcart had raised the number of missions to fifty-five, Sergeant Towser had begun to suspect that perhaps every man who wore a uniform was crazy. Sergeant Towser was lean and angular and had fine blond hair so light it was almost without color, sunken cheeks, and teeth like large white marshmallows. He ran the squadron and was not happy doing it. Men like Hungry Joe glowered at him with blameful hatred, and Appleby subjected him to vindictive discourtesy now that he had established himself as a hot pilot and a ping-pong player who never lost a point. Sergeant Towser ran the squadron because there was no one else in the squadron to run it. He had no interest in war or advancement. He was interested in shards and Hepplewhite furniture.
Almost without realizing it, Sergeant Towser had fallen into the habit of thinking of the dead man in Yossarian's tent in Yossarian's own terms &mash; as a dead man in Yossarian's tent. In reality, he was no such thing. He was simply a replacement pilot who had been killed in combat before he had officially reported for duty. He had stopped at the operations tent to inquire the way to the orderly-room tent and had been sent right into action because so many men had completed the thirty-five missions required then that Captain Piltchard and Captain Wren were finding it difficult to assemble the number of crews specified by Group. Because he had never officially gotten into the squadron, he could never officially be gotten out, and Sergeant Towser sensed that the multiplying communications relating to the poor man would continue reverberating forever.