Catch-22 - Heller, Joseph [225]
‘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 funny thing happened—maybe I dreamed it. I think a strange man came in here before and told me he’s got my pal. I wonder if I imagined it.’
‘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 manner I ever saw. I wonder who my pal is.’
‘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?’
‘Hungry Joe was killed.’
‘God, no! On a mission?’
‘He died in his sleep while having a dream. They found a cat on his face.’
‘Poor bastard,’ Yossarian said, and began to cry, hiding his tears in the crook of his shoulder. The chaplain left without saying goodbye. Yossarian ate something and went to sleep. A hand shook him awake in the middle of the night. He opened his eyes and saw a thin, mean man in a patient’s bathrobe and pajamas who looked at him with a nasty smirk and jeered.
‘We’ve got your pal, buddy. We’ve got your pal.’ Yossarian was unnerved. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ he pleaded in incipient panic.
‘You’ll find out, buddy. You’ll find out.’ Yossarian lunged for his tormentor’s throat with one hand, but the man glided out of reach effortlessly and vanished into the corridor with a malicious laugh. Yossarian lay there trembling with a pounding pulse. He was bathed in icy sweat. He wondered who his pal was. It was dark in the hospital and perfectly quiet. He had no watch to tell him the time. He was wide-awake, and he knew he was a prisoner in one of those sleepless, bedridden nights that would take an eternity to dissolve into dawn. A throbbing chill oozed up his legs. He was cold, and he thought of Snowden, who had never been his pal but was a vaguely familiar kid who was badly wounded and freezing to death in the puddle of harsh yellow sunlight splashing into his face through the side gunport when Yossarian crawled into the rear section of the plane over the bomb bay after Dobbs had beseeched him on the intercom to help the gunner, please help the gunner. Yossarian’s stomach turned over when his eyes first beheld the macabre scene; he was absolutely revolted, and he paused in fright a few moments before descending, crouched on his hands and knees in the narrow tunnel over the bomb bay beside the sealed corrugated carton containing the first-aid kit. Snowden was lying on his back on the floor with his legs stretched out, still burdened cumbersomely by his flak suit, his flak helmet, his parachute harness and his Mae West. Not far away on the floor lay the small tail-gunner in a dead faint. The wound Yossarian saw was in the outside of Snowden