Catch-22 - Heller, Joseph [156]
‘That’s too bad. You’d make a great leader of men without it.’
‘Colonel Cathcart’s the murderer,’ Dobbs complained hoarsely when he had shoved away a soiled, crumpled khaki handkerchief. ‘Colonel Cathcart’s the one who’s going to murder us all if we don’t do something to stop him.’
‘Maybe he won’t raise the missions any more. Maybe sixty is as high as he’ll go.’
‘He always raises the missions. You know that better than I do.’ Dobbs swallowed and bent his intense face very close to Yossarian’s, the muscles in his bronze, rocklike jaw bunching up into quivering knots. ‘Just say it’s okay and I’ll do the whole thing tomorrow morning. Do you understand what I’m telling you? I’m whispering now, ain’t I?’ Yossarian tore his eyes away from the gaze of burning entreaty Dobbs had fastened on him. ‘Why the goddam hell don’t you just go out and do it?’ he protested. ‘Why don’t you stop talking to me about it and do it alone?’
‘I’m afraid to do it alone. I’m afraid to do anything alone.’
‘Then leave me out of it. I’d have to be crazy to get mixed up in something like this now. I’ve got a million-dollar leg wound here. They’re going to send me home.’
‘Are you crazy?’ Dobbs exclaimed in disbelief. ‘All you’ve got there is a scratch. He’ll have you back flying combat missions the day you come out, Purple Heart and all.’
‘Then I really will kill him,’ Yossarian vowed. ‘I’ll come looking for you and we’ll do it together.’
‘Then let’s do it tomorrow while we’ve still got the chance,’ Dobbs pleaded. ‘The chaplain says he’s volunteered the group for Avignon again. I may be killed before you get out. Look how these hands of mine shake. I can’t fly a plane. I’m not good enough.’ Yossarian was afraid to say yes. ‘I want to wait and see what happens first.’
‘The trouble with you is that you just won’t do anything,’ Dobbs complained in a thick infuriated voice.
‘I’m doing everything I possibly can,’ the chaplain explained softly to Yossarian after Dobbs had departed. ‘I even went to the medical tent to speak to Doc Daneeka about helping you.’
‘Yes, I can see.’ Yossarian suppressed a smile. ‘What happened?’
‘They painted my gums purple,’ the chaplain replied sheepishly.
‘They painted his toes purple, too,’ Nately added in outrage. ‘And then they gave him a laxative.’
‘But I went back again this morning to see him.’
‘And they painted his gums purple again,’ said Nately.
‘But I did get to speak to him,’ the chaplain argued in a plaintive tone of self-justification. ‘Doctor Daneeka seems like such an unhappy man. He suspects that someone is plotting to transfer him to the Pacific Ocean. All this time he’s been thinking of coming to me for help. When I told him I needed his help, he wondered if there wasn’t a chaplain I couldn’t go see.’ The chaplain waited in patient dejection when Yossarian and Dunbar both broke into laughter. ‘I used to think it was immoral to be unhappy,’ he continued, as though keening aloud in solitude. ‘Now I don’t know what to think any more. I’d like to make the subject of immorality the basis of my sermon this Sunday, but I’m not sure I ought to give any sermon at all with these purple gums. Colonel Korn was very displeased with them.’
‘Chaplain, why don’t you come into the hospital with us for a while and take it easy?’ Yossarian invited. ‘You could be very comfortable here.’ The brash iniquity of the proposal tempted and amused the chaplain for a second or two. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ he decided reluctantly. ‘I want to arrange for a trip to the mainland to see a mail clerk named Wintergreen. Doctor Daneeka told me he could help.’
‘Wintergreen is probably the most influential man in the whole theater of operations. He’s not only a mail clerk, but he has access to a mimeograph machine. But he won’t help anybody. That’s one of the reasons he’ll go far.’
‘I’d like to speak to him anyway. There must be somebody who will help you.’
‘Do it for Dunbar, Chaplain,’ Yossarian corrected with a superior air.