Catch-22 - Heller, Joseph [74]
‘Get back in the ship!’ he cried frantically. ‘Get back in the ship!’ Aarfy shrugged amiably. ‘I can’t hear you,’ he explained.
Yossarian seized him by the straps of his parachute harness and pushed him backward toward the crawlway just as the plane was hit with a jarring concussion that rattled his bones and made his heart stop. He knew at once they were all dead.
‘Climb!’ he screamed into the intercom at McWatt when he saw he was still alive. ‘Climb, you bastard! Climb, climb, climb, climb!’ The plane zoomed upward again in a climb that was swift and straining, until he leveled it out with another harsh shout at McWatt and wrenched it around once more in a roaring, merciless forty-five-degree turn that sucked his insides out in one enervating sniff and left him floating fleshless in mid-air until he leveled McWatt out again just long enough to hurl him back around toward the right and then down into a screeching dive. Through endless blobs of ghostly black smoke he sped, the hanging smut wafting against the smooth plexiglass nose of the ship like an evil, damp, sooty vapor against his cheeks. His heart was hammering again in aching terror as he hurtled upward and downward through the blind gangs of flak charging murderously into the sky at him, then sagging inertly. Sweat gushed from his neck in torrents and poured down over his chest and waist with the feeling of warm slime. He was vaguely aware for an instant that the planes in his formation were no longer there, and then he was aware of only himself. His throat hurt like a raw slash from the strangling intensity with which he shrieked each command to McWatt. The engines rose to a deafening, agonized, ululating bellow each time McWatt changed direction. And far out in front the bursts of flak were still swarming into the sky from new batteries of guns poking around for accurate altitude as they waited sadistically for him to fly into range.
The plane was slammed again suddenly with another loud, jarring explosion that almost rocked it over on its back, and the nose filled immediately with sweet clouds of blue smoke. Something was on fire! Yossarian whirled to escape and smacked into Aarfy, who had struck a match and was placidly lighting his pipe. Yossarian gaped at his grinning, moon-faced navigator in utter shock and confusion. It occurred to him that one of them was mad.
‘Jesus Christ!’ he screamed at Aarfy in tortured amazement. ‘Get the hell out of the nose! Are you crazy? Get out!’
‘What?’ said Aarfy.
‘Get out!’ Yossarian yelled hysterically, and began clubbing Aarfy backhanded with both fists to drive him away. ‘Get out!’
‘I still can’t hear you,’ Aarfy called back innocently with an expression of mild and reproving perplexity. ‘You’ll have to talk a little louder.’
‘Get out of the nose!’ Yossarian shrieked in frustration. ‘They’re trying to kill us! Don’t you understand? They’re trying to kill us!’
‘Which way should I go, goddam it?’ McWatt shouted furiously over the intercom in a suffering, high-pitched voice. ‘Which way should I go?’
‘Turn left! Left, you goddam dirty son of a bitch! Turn left hard!’ Aarfy crept up close behind Yossarian and jabbed him sharply in the ribs with the stem of his pipe. Yossarian flew up toward the ceiling with a whinnying cry, then jumped completely around on his knees, white as a sheet and quivering with rage. Aarfy winked encouragingly and jerked his thumb back toward McWatt with a humorous moue.
‘What’s eating him?’ he asked with a laugh.
Yossarian was struck with a weird sense of distortion. ‘Will you get out of here?’ he yelped beseechingly, and shoved Aarfy over with all his strength.