Catch-22 - Heller, Joseph [111]
‘Where are his other uniforms?’
‘They’re in the laundry, too.’
‘What about his underwear?’ General Dreedle demanded.
‘All his underwear’s in the laundry, too,’ answered Colonel Korn.
‘That sounds like a lot of crap to me,’ General Dreedle declared.
‘It is a lot of crap, sir,’ Yossarian said.
‘Don’t you worry, sir,’ Colonel Cathcart promised General Dreedle with a threatening look at Yossarian. ‘You have my personal word for it that this man will be severely punished.’
‘What the hell do I care if he’s punished or not?’ General Dreedle replied with surprise and irritation. ‘He’s just won a medal. If he wants to receive it without any clothes on, what the hell business is it of yours?’
‘Those are my sentiments exactly, sir!’ Colonel Cathcart echoed with resounding enthusiasm and mopped his brow with a damp white handkerchief. ‘But would you say that, sir, even in the light of General Peckem’s recent memorandum on the subject of appropriate military attire in combat areas?’
‘Peckem?’ General Dreedle’s face clouded.
‘Yes, sir, sir,’ said Colonel Cathcart obsequiously. ‘General Peckem even recommends that we send our men into combat in full-dress uniform so they’ll make a good impression on the enemy when they’re shot down.’
‘Peckem?’ repeated General Dreedle, still squinting with bewilderment. ‘Just what the hell does Peckem have to do with it?’ Colonel Korn jabbed Colonel Cathcart sharply again in the back with his elbow.
‘Absolutely nothing, sir!’ Colonel Cathcart responded sprucely, wincing in extreme pain and gingerly rubbing the spot where Colonel Korn had just jabbed him again. ‘And that’s exactly why I decided to take absolutely no action at all until I first had an opportunity to discuss it with you. Shall we ignore it completely, sir?’ General Dreedle ignored him completely, turning away from him in baleful scorn to hand Yossarian his medal in its case.
‘Get my girl back from the car,’ he commanded Colonel Moodus crabbily, and waited in one spot with his scowling face down until his nurse had rejoined him.
‘Get word to the office right away to kill that directive I just issued ordering the men to wear neckties on the combat missions,’ Colonel Cathcart whispered to Colonel Korn urgently out of the corner of his mouth.
‘I told you not to do it,’ Colonel Korn snickered. ‘But you just wouldn’t listen to me.’
‘Shhhh!’ Colonel Cathcart cautioned. ‘Goddammit, Korn, what did you do to my back?’ Colonel Korn snickered again.
General Dreedle’s nurse always followed General Dreedle everywhere he went, even into the briefing room just before the mission to Avignon, where she stood with her asinine smile at the side of the platform and bloomed like a fertile oasis at General Dreedle’s shoulder in her pink-and-green uniform. Yossarian looked at her and fell in love, desperately. His spirits sank, leaving him empty inside and numb. He sat gazing in clammy want at her full red lips and dimpled cheeks as he listened to Major Danby describe in a monotonous, didactic male drone the heavy concentrations of flak awaiting them at Avignon, and he moaned in deep despair suddenly at the thought that he might never see again this lovely woman to whom he had never spoken a word and whom he now loved so pathetically. He throbbed and ached with sorrow, fear and desire as he stared at her; she was so beautiful. He worshiped the ground she stood on. He licked his parched, thirsting lips with a sticky tongue and moaned in misery again, loudly enough this time to attract the startled, searching glances of the men sitting around him on the rows of crude wooden benches in their chocolate-colored coveralls and stitched white parachute harnesses.
Nately turned to him quickly with alarm. ‘What is it?’ he whispered. ‘What’s the matter?’ Yossarian did not hear him. He was sick with lust and mesmerized with regret. General Dreedle’s nurse was only a little chubby, and his senses were stuffed to congestion with the yellow radiance of her hair and the unfelt pressure of her soft short fingers, with the rounded, untasted wealth of her nubile breasts in her Army-pink shirt that was opened wide at the throat and with the rolling, ripened, triangular confluences of her belly and thighs in her tight, slick forest-green gabardine officer