Catch-22 - Heller, Joseph [134]
‘How long are you going to keep giving me those pills and shots?’ Yossarian asked him.
‘Until you feel better.’
‘I feel all right now.’ Doc Daneeka’s frail suntanned forehead furrowed with surprise. ‘Then why don’t you put some clothes on? Why are you walking around naked?’
‘I don’t want to wear a uniform any more.’ Doc Daneeka accepted the explanation and put away his hypodermic syringe. ‘Are you sure you feel all right?’
‘I feel fine. I’m just a little logy from all those pills and shots you’ve been giving me.’ Yossarian went about his business with no clothes on all the rest of that day and was still naked late the next morning when Milo, after hunting everywhere else, finally found him sitting up a tree a small distance in back of the quaint little military cemetery at which Snowden was being buried. Milo was dressed in his customary business attire—olive-drab trousers, a fresh olive-drab shirt and tie, with one silver first lieutenant’s bar gleaming on the collar, and a regulation dress cap with a stiff leather bill.
‘I’ve been looking all over for you,’ Milo called up to Yossarian from the ground reproachfully.
‘You should have looked for me in this tree,’ Yossarian answered. ‘I’ve been up here all morning.’
‘Come on down and taste this and tell me if it’s good. It’s very important.’ Yossarian shook his head. He sat nude on the lowest limb of the tree and balanced himself with both hands grasping the bough directly above. He refused to budge, and Milo had no choice but to stretch both arms about the trunk in a distasteful hug and start climbing. He struggled upward clumsily with loud grunts and wheezes, and his clothes were squashed and crooked by the time he pulled himself up high enough to hook a leg over the limb and pause for breath. His dress cap was askew and in danger of falling. Milo caught it just in time when it began slipping. Globules of perspiration glistened like transparent pearls around his mustache and swelled like opaque blisters under his eyes. Yossarian watched him impassively. Cautiously Milo worked himself around in a half circle so that he could face Yossarian. He unwrapped tissue paper from something soft, round and brown and handed it to Yossarian.
‘Please taste this and let me know what you think. I’d like to serve it to the men.’
‘What is it?’ asked Yossarian, and took a big bite.
‘Chocolate-covered cotton.’ Yossarian gagged convulsively and sprayed his big mouthful of chocolate-covered cotton right into Milo’s face. ‘Here, take it back!’ he spouted angrily. ‘Jesus Christ! Have you gone crazy? You didn’t even take the goddam seeds out.’
‘Give it a chance, will you?’ Milo begged. ‘It can’t be that bad. Is it really that bad?’
‘It’s even worse.’
‘But I’ve got to make the mess halls feed it to the men.’
‘They’ll never be able to swallow it.’
‘They’ve got to swallow it,’ Milo ordained with dictatorial grandeur, and almost broke his neck when he let go with one arm to wave a righteous finger in the air.
‘Come on out here,’ Yossarian invited him. ‘You’ll be much safer, and you can see everything.’ Gripping the bough above with both hands, Milo began inching his way out on the limb sideways with utmost care and apprehension. His face was rigid with tension, and he sighed with relief when he found himself seated securely beside Yossarian. He stroked the tree affectionately. ‘This is a pretty good tree,’ he observed admiringly with proprietary gratitude.
‘It’s the tree of life,’ Yossarian answered, waggling his toes, ‘and of knowledge of good and evil, too.’ Milo squinted closely at the bark and branches. ‘No it isn’t,’ he replied. ‘It’s a chestnut tree. I ought to know. I sell chestnuts.’
‘Have it your way.’ They sat in the tree without talking for several seconds, their legs dangling and their hands almost straight up on the bough above, the one completely nude but for a pair of crepe-soled sandals, the other completely dressed in a coarse olive-drab woolen uniform with his tie knotted tight. Milo studied Yossarian diffidently through the corner of his eye, hesitating tactfully.