Catch As Catch Can

by Joseph Heller

  He moved despondently to his own room and lay down on the bed, one arm cast heavily over his face. There was no pain yet, but the first signs were there. From the kitchen came the tap, tap, tap of a dripping faucet. The fear brought a pain of its own, and he began to groan aloud.

  His mother found him that way, stretched out flat on the bed, emitting weird, tortured noises and staring up at the ceiling with such rigid intensity that he seemed to be in a trance. Her startled cry surprised him, and when he spun around his gaze fell on her thick, shapeless legs with their elastic bandages that he could never bring himself to look at without grief and which always filled him with shame because other people could see them too. He met her eyes guiltily, nervously flicking his tongue, and then raised himself to one arm.

  “Ma,” he gasped quickly. “I need some money.”

  Mrs. Cooperman was watching him with a tearful, incredulous horror. For a few moments she was unable to speak. “Again, Nathan?” she cried finally, with sharp anger and despair. “Again? You said it was over. You told me. You told me it was over.”

  “It isn’t, Ma. I tried, but it isn’t.”

  She shook her head feebly and passed a hand red with cold across her face. “Go to Dr. Weiner, Nathan,” she urged earnestly, her voice shaking with emotion. “Please, Nathan. Go to him. He’ll know what to do.”

  “I’ve been to doctors!” he barked furiously, enraged by the time it was all taking. “God damn it, what the hell do you think they have there?”

  Her eyes widened with further shock, and her lips began to tremble. All at once she gave way. A low, wailing sound rose from her and she began rocking sideways, hugging the paper bag she carried to her bosom as though it were a dying child.

  “Ma!” he shouted fiercely, with impatience. “Ma!”

  “Where will I get?” she cried defensively. “Where will I get to give you?” She regarded him with wild indignation for a moment; then her mood changed again and she took a quick step toward him, her eyes flashing and her face turning red. “I have money,” she exclaimed, through tight, quivering lips. “Wait. I have money for you.” She plunged a hand inside her coat and emerged with a tiny leather purse which she flung scornfully to the bed. “There! There’s money for you!”

  He seized the purse greedily. There were only a few small coins inside, and he gazed up at her with imploring bewilderment, the purse slipping from his fingers to the floor.

  “Forty-three cents,” she announced with the same passionate sarcasm, after she had watched him count. “Forty-three cents. I have more for you if you need it. Wait! If that isn’t enough I have more. I can save you the trouble of looking. Here! Here’s more for you!” She took another step toward him and held out the bag. “Here! Sixty cents chopmeat. Take it. Go ahead. Take it. Go with it to the butcher. Here’s your money! Sixty cents chopmeat for supper tonight!”

  He whirled away from her, rolling himself over violently and smacking hard against the wall. His eyes filled with tears. He closed them and pressed them shut savagely with a punishing strength that made the blood roar in his ears. Mrs. Cooperman had stopped talking and there was a silence, but he was not aware of it until a gentle hand fell on his arm.

  “Where will I get, Nathan?” Mrs. Cooperman said again, but this time softly, with tender and pathetic regret. “Where will I get to give you?”

  Slowly he grew calm, comforted by her light touch and by the soothing, consoling misery in her voice. He turned and looked at her. She was standing above him, nodding her head slightly and gazing down at him with moist, loving eyes, smiling at him sadly in tragic and eternal apology.

  “Have I got to give you, Nathan? Go to Dr. Weiner, kindt. Go, Nathan, please. You’ll see, he’ll help you. Geh, kindt, geh. ”

  There was time now for nothing else. He could already feel the regions going numb inside him, dead, ashy areas of tissue that would hang like rocks for a while and then come alive sud denly with a ripping, stabbing pain that would tumble him screaming to the ground and lead him finally, mercifully, into unconsciousness.

  “Can I see him, Ma? Is he in now?”

  Mrs. Cooperman nodded and held his coat for him, hurrying him along with hasty phrases of encouragement and nervously reassuring pats, her eyes sparking brighter with a mounting anxiety.

  “Should I go with you, Nathan? Wait, I’ll go with you.”

  He shook his head vehemently and walked out.

  It was five blocks from his house to Dr. Weiner’s office, a very long one to the avenue and four others after that to the corner on which the gray house stood, and he felt from the beginning that he would not make it. In his jaw again was that throbbing, wicked, delicious itch, sharper now than before and even more tantalizing in its urgings, and he knew it was a matter of minutes. He was still two blocks away when the first pangs came. Immediately he began to run, but stopped instantly as a blazing agony tore through him. His gait grew lopsided as he struggled on, his hands in the pockets of his coat spread wide against his sides, his fingers digging in. A hard pounding rang against his temples, and he found it difficult to breathe. At last the building was before him. He tripped going up the steps and fell against the door, where he clung for a few moments, gasping hysterically for air and praying for strength to stand. The rush had left him exhausted, and his head was swimming as he reeled into the waiting room. There was the dancing tinkle of a bell in the distance and a very fat woman with a coarse, red face and a fiery sty in her left eye who gave him a hostile look when he entered and went round and round with the sombre walls of the room. A chair came sweeping by, and he crumpled toward it.

  He awoke inside the examining room. A biting odor lingered in his nostrils, and he began squinting with distress from the dim light that came through the tan curtains on the two windows.

  “What is it, Nat? Tell me quickly.”

  Dr. Weiner was watching him steadily with a penetrating expression of concern. Nat warmed with a peaceful flow of relief when he saw the fine strands of white hair before him and recognized the thin, sensitive face with its tired gray eyes and its delicate, pale skin that was still shining like a baby’s. He began to smile gratefully, but then came awake a bit more and felt the pain. It was all through him now, cutting inside like a knife, in his kidney, his liver, in the pit of his stomach, twisting, tearing, and plunging about in the naked, raw depths of his organs.

  “I need a fix!” he cried out sharply.

  “What kind of fix, Nat?”

  Nat started to reply. The imp jumped to his cheek before he could get a word out, and his jaw shot violently to the side, the sudden spasm distorting his face horribly, filling his ears with the noise of crunching cartilage and wrenching the muscles in his neck. Dr. Weiner recoiled in amazement, and his look darkened with understanding.

  “This is awful, Nat, awful!” he said, in a hushed voice.

  Nat waited, gritting his teeth and watching him beseechingly.

  Dr. Weiner shook his head with a dazed unhappiness as he moved around slowly to the other side of the desk. “I can’t believe it,” he went on glumly, spacing his words evenly with the meticulous care of habit. “I really can’t believe it.”

  “Dr. Weiner!” Nat pleaded.

  “You must get treatment,” Dr. Weiner continued perseveringly. “That’s all there is to it. You must get treatment. I’ll give you what money it takes.”

  Nat sprang forward in desperation and seized his arm. He tried to speak, to beg, but his mouth would not respond, and he began pulling at him roughly in a frenzied effort to make him understand. He started around to him and was knocked off bal ance when his hip struck the sharp corner of the desk. He just did reach a chair before the blackness hit him again.

  When he came awake this time, he was aware with the first glimmer of consciousness of a pleasant, healing sensation seeping all through him. There was something tiny and very cold in the bend of his elbow; he felt the spot keenly; the effect was titillating, and he smiled with hidden delight
. It was several minutes before he could recover completely, and even while still laboring in darkness he formed a plan. The ice was already broken, and once that happened, it no longer mattered. There was tomorrow to think about (Carl had hit it on the head, by God!), and the day after, and the day after that, but he had to act quickly, before the full force of the shot burst inside him and carried him up into the hazy unreality that would make him forget about everything.

  “Better, Nat?”

  Dr. Weiner was standing beside him, still holding the hypodermic syringe. Nat nodded. Dr. Weiner inspected the old puncture marks for infection and then moved listlessly toward a corner to deposit the syringe in a jar of antiseptic solution. Nat’s eyes grew busy the moment he turned. He had already noticed the small glass container on the desk, and he glanced quickly at each of the many cabinets in the room, trying to identify others like it inside them on the shelves. He felt fine now, really fine, but he kept a dejected look on his face, purposely acting.

  “There’s a federal hospital in Lexington, Kentucky,” Dr. Weiner said, seating himself wearily and working a neat crease with his thumbnail into the top page of a calendar pad. “I suppose you know about it.”

  “I’ve been there, Dr. Weiner.” Nat put a note of pathos into his voice and cautiously edged his chair forward a bit, watching him cagily and waiting. “It was no good.”

  “Go there again,” Dr. Weiner said. “And this time don’t come back. This is a bad neighborhood for it. I get someone like you in here at least once a week. Generally I put them to sleep and call the police.”

  “It’s no good, I tell you,” Nat protested, flaring up suddenly with a real and quarrelsome annoyance. “I tried and suffered and it’s no good. There are people there for the ninth and tenth time. There are people who spent most of their life there. I can’t kick it. Some can and some can’t. I tried and I can’t.”

  “You won’t go back, Nat?” Dr. Weiner asked softly.

  Nat shook his head bitterly.

  “But what else is there, Nat? What else can you do? You can’t let yourself go to hell like this.”

  “There’s this,” Nat said, touching the cotton swab on his arm and looking him fully in the face.

  “Is there, Nat?” Dr. Weiner smiled with a faintly mocking sympathy. He lowered his eyes and continued in a tone of irony. “Your mother hasn’t been in to see me for nearly two months now. Did you know that? She should be in to see me regularly. It’s dangerous for her to stay away that long and she knows it, but she won’t come. She won’t come because she hasn’t any money to bring me.”

  Nat listened to him restlessly. He decided to give him one more minute.

  “Where will you get it, Nat? Dope is expensive and you won’t be able to hold a job. Where are you going to get it?”

  “You get it, Dr. Weiner,” Nat said, and waited tensely.

  “No, Nat. Not a chance. You can get rid of that idea right now.”

  Nat hesitated a moment longer. There was one way left. He came forward like a shot and grabbed the bottle from the desk, then jumped back quickly, half expecting an attack of some sort, and when it did not come, he held his prize up triumphantly and laughed aloud. Dr. Weiner observed the whole action with a cold and curious surprise.

  “You’ve just insulted me,” he said quietly, with cool and un-hurried dislike. “I should have expected it, I suppose.”

  Nat laughed again, gloating. He kept rolling the container between the palms of his hands. He was feeling a bit woozy now, and he squeezed it to convince himself that he really did have it. He laughed once more.

  “You won’t laugh much longer if you fool with that,” Dr. Weiner said soberly. “It will only put you to sleep, and if you take too much it will kill you.”

  Nat stiffened immediately, and his body quivered with rage. “Is that what you gave me?”

  “I was going to,” Dr. Weiner said, with a sour expression, “but I changed my mind. I thought it might do some good to talk to you.”

  Nat stared at him a moment, breathing hard, and then came around the desk like an animal and bent over him with a ferocious glare. “Where is it?” he cried furiously. “God damn it, where is it?”

  “You’re crazy, Nat!” Dr. Weiner said, and his voice rose to a shout with an anger of his own. “Do you hear me? You’re crazy like all the rest of them!”

  Nat seized him by the lapels and lifted him from the chair, and all at once the whole scene hurtled over him and he was trapped like an innocent stranger inside the grotesque and demonic blur that flashed by him on every side and which he was now no longer able to control and powerless to understand. There was his own voice shouting from somewhere off in the corner and he had Dr. Weiner in his hands and was shaking him up and down, up and down, again and again, and there was the funny white head bouncing all around like the ping-pong ball in a popcorn machine. A hand beat weakly against his chest and opened to offer a small glass jar which he took and rammed into his pants pocket. Then he was shaking again and the white head was tossing all about once more, and there was his own voice hollering “More! More!” right into his ear, paining him with its bellowing force, and then, suddenly, he exploded inside with a golden, warm radiance that filled his chest and rolled with a wonderful, shivering ecstasy up the muscles of his sides and down the length of his legs, soaking through his bones and oozing into the very tips of his fingers like a sinuous, serpentine, naked creature, leaving him warm and numb and happy, without strength and without care.

  He turned slowly, smiling dreamily, and looked about the office. Everything seemed to doze beneath a shimmering blanket of tranquillity. He could see perfectly, but he stood staring at the door a few seconds before he realized it was what he was looking for. It was taking him so long to reach it. He could hear someone retching behind him and the choking voice trying to speak.

  “—call the police. If—you come again—I’ll call—the police.”

  He began giggling, sniggering to himself furtively over the prankish secret of the weight in his pocket.

  A woman spoke as he passed through the waiting room, and he turned politely and made (or thought he made—he couldn’t quite be sure) some gracious reply. He would go home now and lie in bed. He had the bottle from Dr. Weiner and he would show it to his mother and say it was medicine and that Dr. Weiner said he should lie in bed and not be disturbed. He could stay in bed then and she wouldn’t bother him.

  Outside, the same muffled peace prevailed, and it was like those pleasant June days when he was a child and his father used to take the family to the Palisades for a day in the country, or like those frosty, clear mornings after a snowfall when he awoke early and found everything in the street so clean and calm and white. The sun was warm on his face. It was more like a day in the country with the sun so warm, and he walked along the avenue with the satisfying knowledge that it was never going to set.

  FROM DAWN TO DUSK*

  They walked through the park leisurely and after a while the road turned and guided them down toward the lake.

  “I’m sorry I’m like this today,” she said finally, with a regretful smile.

  Andy smiled but didn’t speak. In a few minutes, they came to the lake, and they walked in silence, following the rippling edge of the water. The spell of a warm autumn afternoon covered the entire scene, muffling the noises and slowing all motion so that everything about them seemed distant and unreal. The sky was a clean blue and the sun was bare, but it was chilly, and Andy knew it would be cold in the evening. Esther stopped by the side of the path and snapped a long branch from a shrub. When they continued, she dragged it lazily against the trees and shrubs and benches that stood beside the road.

  Andy studied her small, round face as she stared out over the lake where scattered rowboats moved slowly in an aimless network. She was exactly the same. Carelessly dressed, she was appealing in her very casualness, a small, winsome girl, her face still a little pale from bad hours and poor food eaten in late cafeterias.
In a frail way she was pretty, with clean blonde hair and breasts surprisingly full for so thin a figure, and there was something eternally beautiful in her unstudied gait and spontaneous manner. It wasn’t even three months, and he wanted her back already.

  A group on bicycles came wheeling around the bend in the road. They stepped aside and waited until the noise of the tires passed behind them and faded into the rustle of leaves.

  “You look like a man with a purpose,” she had said, when they were across Columbus Circle and entering the park.

  He told her then, and she took the news without surprise. A long silence followed, and when she finally did speak, it was about Debussy’s music. He had been waiting so eagerly, he didn’t understand at first. When he did, he wanted to laugh out loud because she was still the same, and because he was confident that everything would be all right.

  “Are you back at the office?” she asked now.

  He nodded.

  “Same job?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Same job.”

  That was it, he knew, the damn job. You went along doing the best you could, and one day you realized that you were wasting time and not doing anything at all. There were so many things you had wanted to do, so many you still wanted, and you saw clearly that you weren’t doing any of them and never would, and you grew so frantic thinking about it, you could feel the panic forming inside you. You saw how immense the world was, and you realized that you were so limited it was all going to waste around you, and you felt that you had to do something quick before it was too late. There was the job and the girl. It was the job, of course, writing copy when you should be writing plays, but you couldn’t get rid of the job because the job was bread and alcohol, so you got rid of the girl instead. When you added it up later you saw that you had gained nothing but had lost a great deal instead.