Closing Time

by Joseph Heller

  "Still here?"

  "What happened to you?"

  "I'm back here too. What happened to you?"

  "I am Schweik."

  "I know. The good soldier?"

  "I don't know about good."

  "I thought I'd be the oldest now," said Yossarian.

  "I'm older."

  "I know. I'm Yossarian."

  "I know. You ran away once to Sweden, didn't you?"

  "I didn't get far. I couldn't even get to Rome."

  "You didn't escape there? In a little yellow raft?"

  "That happens only in the movies. What's your name?"

  "Joseph Kaye. I told you before. Why are you asking?"

  "I have trouble with names now. Why are you asking?"

  "Because somebody has been telling lies about me."

  "Maybe that's why we're still on line," said Schweik.

  "Why don't you go back to Czechoslovakia?"

  "Why should I," said Schweik, "when I can go to America? Why don't you go to Czechoslovakia?"

  "What will you do in America?"

  "Raise dogs. Anything easy. People live forever in America, don't they?"

  "Not really," said Yossarian.

  "Will I like it in America?"

  "If you make money and think you're well-off."

  "Are the people friendly?"

  "If you make money and they think you're well-off."

  "Where the fuck is that boat?" griped Kaye. "We can't wait here forever."

  "Yes, you can," said Schweik. "It's coming!" cried Kaye.

  They heard the rattling noise of outdated wheels on outdated iron rails, and then a chain of roller-coaster carriages painted red and pale gold rode into view at the decelerating end of the ride on the L. A. Thompson Scenic Railway. But instead of stopping as expected, these cars continued onward past them to start around all over again, and, while Kaye shook in frustration, Yossarian stared at the riders. Again he recognized Abraham Lincoln in front. He saw La Guardia and FDR, his mother and his father, his uncles and his aunts, and his brother too. And he saw each of them double, the Angel of Death double and the gunner Snowden too, and he was seeing them twice.

  He whirled around, staggering, and hastened back, escaping, and searched in baffled terror for help from the soldier Schroeder who now claimed to be a hundred and seven years old, but found only McBride, both of him, near Bob and Raul, who combined made four. McBride thought Yossarian looked funny and was walking with a falter and a list, a seesawing hand held out for stability.

  "Yeah, I do feel funny," Yossarian admitted. "Let me hold your arm."

  "How many fingers do you see?"

  "Two."

  "Now?"

  "Ten."

  "Now?"

  "Twenty."

  "You're seeing double."

  "I'm beginning to see everything twice again."

  "You want some help?"

  "Yes."

  "Hey, guys, give me a hand with him. From them too?"

  "Sure."

  28

  Hospital

  "Cut," said the brain surgeon, in this last stage of his Rhine Journey.

  "You cut," said his apprentice.

  "No cuts," said Yossarian.

  "Now look who's butting in."

  "Should we go ahead?"

  "Why not?"

  "I've never done this before."

  "That's what my girlfriend used to say. Where's the hammer?"

  "No hammers," said Yossarian.

  "Is he going to keep talking that way while we try to concentrate?"

  "Give me that hammer."

  "Put down that hammer," directed Patrick Beach.

  "How many fingers do you see?" demanded Leon Shumacher.

  "One."

  "How many now?" asked Dennis Teemer.

  "Still one. The same."

  "He's fooling around, gentlemen," said former stage actress Frances Rolphe, born Frances Rosenbaum, who'd grown up to become mellow Frances Beach, with a face that again looked its age. "Can't you see?"

  "We made him all better!"

  "Gimme eat," said Yossarian.

  "I would cut that dosage in half, Doctor," instructed Melissa MacIntosh. "Halcion wakes him up and Xanax makes him anxious. Prozac depresses him."

  "She knows you that well, does she?" clucked Leon Shumacher, after Yossarian had been given more eat.

  "We've seen each other."

  "Who's her busty blonde friend?"

  "Her name is Angela Moorecock."

  "Heh, heh. I was hoping for something like that. What time will she get here?"

  "After work and before dinner, and she may come again with a house-building boyfriend. My children may be here. Now that I'm out of danger, they may want to bid me farewell."

  "That son of yours," began Leon Shumacher.

  "The one on Wall Street?"

  "All he wanted to hear was the bottom line. Now he won't want to invest more time here if you're not going to die. I told him you wouldn't."

  "And I told him you would, naturally," said Dennis Teemer, in bathrobe and pajamas, livelier as a patient than as a doctor. His embarrassed wife told friends he was experimenting. "'For how much?' he wanted to bet me."

  "You still think it's natural?" objected Yossarian.

  "For us to die?"

  "For me to die."

  Teemer glanced aside. "I think it's natural."

  "For you?"

  "I think that's natural too. I believe in life."

  "You lost me."

  "Everything that's alive lives on things that are living, Yossarian. You and I take a lot. We have to give back."

  "I met a particle physicist on a plane to Kenosha who says that everything living is made up of things that are not."

  "I know that too."

  "It doesn't make you laugh? It doesn't make you cry? It doesn't make you wonder?"

  "In the beginning was the word," said Teemer. "And the word was gene. Now the word is quark. I'm a biologist, not a physicist, and I can't say 'quark.' That belongs to an invisible world of the lifeless. So I stick with the gene."

  "So where is the difference between a living gene and a dead quark?"

  "A gene isn't living and a quark isn't dead."

  "I can't say 'quark' either without wanting to laugh."

  "Quark."

  "Quark."

  "Quark, quark."

  "You win," said Yossarian. "But is there a difference between us and that?"

  "Nothing in a living cell is alive. Yet the heart pumps and the tongue talks. We both know that."

  "Does a microbe? A mushroom?"

  "They have no soul?" guessed the surgeon in training.

  "There is no soul'," said the surgeon training him. "That's all in the head."

  "Someone ought to tell the cardinal that."

  "The cardinal knows it."

  "Even a thought, even this thought, is just an electrical action between molecules."

  "But there are good thoughts and bad thoughts," snapped Leon Shumacher, "so let's go on working. Were you ever in the navy with a man named Richard Nixon? He thinks he knows you."

  "No, I wasn't."

  "He wants to come check you out."

  "I was not in the navy. Please keep him away."

  "Did you ever play alto saxophone in a jazz band?"

  "No."

  "Were you ever in the army with the Soldier in White?"

  "Twice. Why?"

  "He's on a floor downstairs. He wants you to drop by to say hello."

  "If he could tell you all that, he's not the same one."

  "Were you ever in the army with a guy named Rabinowitz?" asked Dennis Teemer. "Lewis Rabinowitz?"

  Yossarian shook his head. "Not that I remember."

  "Then I may have it wrong. How about a man named Sammy Singer, his friend? He says he was from Coney Island. He thinks you may remember him from the war."

  "Sam Singer?" Yossarian sat up. "Sure, the tail gunner. A short guy, small, skinny,
with wavy black hair."

  Teemer smiled. "He's almost seventy now."

  "Is he sick too?"

  "He's friends with this patient I'm looking at."

  "Tell him to drop by."

  "Hiya, Captain." Singer shook the hand Yossarian put out. Yossarian appraised a man delighted to see him, on the smallish side, with hazel eyes projecting slightly in a face that was kindly. Singer was chortling. "It's good to see you again. I've wondered about you. The doctor says you're okay."

  "You've grown portly, Sam," said Yossarian, with good humor, "and a little bit wrinkled, and maybe a little taller. You used to be skinny. And you've gotten very gray, with thinning hair. And so have I. Fill me in, Sam. What's been happening the last fifty years? Anything new?"

  "Call me Sammy."

  "Call me Yo-Yo."

  "I'm pretty good, I guess. I lost my wife. Ovarian cancer. I'm kind of floundering around."

  "I've been divorced, twice. I flounder too. I suppose I'll have to marry again. It's what I'm used to. Children?"

  "One daughter in Atlanta," said Sammy Singer, "and another in Houston. Grandchildren too, already in college. I don't like to throw myself on them. I have an extra bedroom for when they come to visit. I worked for Time magazine a long time--but not as a reporter," Singer added pointedly. "I did well enough, made a good living, and then they retired me to bring in young blood to keep the magazine alive."

  "And now it's practically dead," said Yossarian. "I work now in that old Time-Life Building in Rockefeller Center. Looking out on the skating rink. Were you ever in that one?"

  "I sure was," said Singer, with recalled affection. "I remember that skating rink. I had some good times there."

  "It's now the new M & M Building, with M & M Enterprises and Milo Minderbinder. Remember old Milo?"

  "I sure do." Sammy Singer laughed. "He gave us good food, that Milo Minderbinder."

  "He did do that. A better standard of living than I had before."

  "Me too. They were saying afterward that he was the one who bombed our squadron that time."

  "He did that too. That's another one of the contradictions of capitalism. It's funny, Singer. The last time I was in the hospital, the chaplain popped in out of nowhere to see me."

  "What chaplain?"

  "Our chaplain. Chaplain Tappman."

  "Sure. I know that chaplain. Very quiet, right? Almost went to pieces after those two planes collided over La Spezia, with Dobbs in one plane and Huple in the other and Nately and all the rest of them killed. Remember those names?"

  "I remember them all. Remember Orr? He was in my tent."

  "I remember Orr. They say he made it to Sweden in a raft after he ditched after Avignon, right before we went home."

  "I went down to Kentucky once and saw him there," said Yossarian. "He was a handyman in a supermarket, and we didn't have much to say to each other anymore."

  "I was in the plane when we ditched after the first mission to Avignon. He took care of everything. Remember that time? I was down in the raft with that top turret gunner Sergeant Knight."

  "I remember Bill Knight. He told me all about it."

  "That was the time none of our Mae Wests would inflate because Milo had taken out the carbon dioxide cylinders to make ice cream sodas for all you guys at the officers' club. He left a note instead. That was some Milo then." Singer chuckled.

  "You guys had sodas too every Sunday, didn't you?"

  "Yes, we did. And then he took the morphine from the first-aid kit on that second mission to Avignon, you said. Was that really true?"

  "He did that too. He left a note there also."

  "Was he dealing in drugs then?"

  "I had no way to know. But he sure was dealing in eggs, fresh eggs. Remember?"

  "I remember those eggs. I still can't believe eggs can taste so good. I eat them often."

  "I'm going to start," Yossarian resolved. "You just convinced me, Sammy Singer. It makes no sense to worry about cholesterol now, does it?"

  "You remember Snowden then, Howard Snowden? On that mission to Avignon?"

  "Sam, could I ever forget? I would have used up all the morphine in the first-aid kit when I saw him in such pain. That fucking Milo. I cursed him a lot. Now I work with him."

  "Did I really black out that much?"

  "It looked that way to me."

  "That seems funny now. You were covered with so much blood. And then all that other stuff. He just kept moaning. He was cold, wasn't he?"

  "Yes, he said he was cold. And dying. I was covered with everything, Sammy, and then with my own vomit too."

  "And then you took off your clothes and wouldn't put them on again for a while."

  "I was sick of uniforms."

  "I saw you sitting in a tree at the funeral, naked."

  "I had sneakers."

  "I saw Milo climb up to you too, with his chocolate-covered cotton. We all kind of always looked up to you then, Yossarian. I still do, you know."

  "Why is that, Sam?" asked Yossarian, and hesitated. "I'm only a pseudo Assyrian."

  Singer understood. "No, that's not why. Not since the army. I made good friends with Gentiles there. You were one, when that guy started beating me up in South Carolina. And not since those years at Time, where I had fun and hung around with Protestants and my first heavy drinkers."

  "We're assimilated. It's another nice thing about this country. If we behave like they do, they might let us in."

  "I met my wife there. You know something, Yossarian?"

  "Yo-Yo?"

  Sam Singer shook his head. "After I was married, I never once cheated on my wife, and never wanted to, and that seemed funny to people everywhere, to other girls too. It didn't to her. They might have thought I was gay. Her first husband was the other way. A ladies' man, the kind I always thought I wanted to be. She preferred me, by the time I met her."

  "You miss her."

  "I miss her."

  "I miss marriage. I'm not used to living alone."

  "I can't get used to it either. I can't cook much."

  "I don't cook either."

  Sam Singer reflected. "No, I think I looked up to you first because you were an officer, and back then I had the kid's idea that all officers had something more on the ball than the rest of us. Or we would be officers too. You always seemed to know what you were doing, except when you were getting lost and taking us out across the Atlantic Ocean. Even when you were going around doing crazy things, it seemed to make more sense than a lot of the rest. Standing in formation naked to get that medal. We all got a big kick out of seeing you do that."

  "I wasn't showing off, Sam. I was in panic most of the time. I'd wake up some mornings and try to guess where I was, and then try to figure out what the hell I was doing there. I sometimes wake up that way now."

  "Baloney," said Singer, and grinned. "And you always seemed to be getting laid a lot, when the rest of us weren't."

  "Not as much as you think," said Yossarian, laughing. "There was a lot more of just rubbing it around."

  "But, Yossarian, when you said you wouldn't fly anymore, we kept our fingers crossed. We'd finished our seventy missions and were in the same boat."

  "Why didn't you come out and walk with me?"

  "We weren't that brave. They sent us home right after they caught you, so it worked out fine for us. I said no too, but by then they gave me a choice. What happened to you?"

  "They sent me home too. They threatened to kill me, to put me in prison, they said they would ruin me. They promoted me to major and sent me home. They wanted no fuss."

  "Most of us admired you. And you seem to know what you're doing now."

  "Who says that? I'm not sure of anything anymore."

  "Come on, Yo-Yo. On our floor, they're saying you've even got a good thing going with one of the nurses."

  Yossarian came close to a blush of pride. "It's traveled that far?"

  "We even hear it from my friend's doctor," Singer went on, in a merry way. "Back
in Pianosa, I remember, you were pretty friendly with a nurse too, weren't you?"

  "For a little while. She dumped me as a poor risk. The problem with sweeping a girl off her feet, Sammy, is that you have to keep on sweeping. Love doesn't work that way."

  "I know that too," said Singer. "But you and a couple of others were with her up the beach with your suits on that day Kid Sampson was killed by an airplane. You remember Kid Sampson, don't you?"

  "Oh, shit, sure," said Yossarian. "Do you think I could ever forget Kid Sampson? Or McWatt, who was in the plane that smashed him apart. McWatt was my favorite pilot."

  "Mine too. He was the pilot on the mission to Ferrara when we had to go around on a second bomb run, and Kraft was killed, and a bombardier named Pinkard too."

  "Were you in the plane with me on that one too?"

  "I sure was. I was also in the plane with Hungry Joe when he forgot to use the emergency handle to put down his landing gear. And they gave him a medal."

  "They gave me my medal for that mission to Ferrara."

  "It's hard to believe it all really happened."

  "I know that feeling," said Yossarian. "It's hard to believe I let myself be put through so much."

  "I know that feeling. It's funny about Snowden." Singer hesitated. "I didn't know him that well."

  "I'd never noticed him."

  "But now I feel he was one of my closest friends."

  "I have that feeling too."

  "And I also feel," Sammy persevered, "he was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I almost hate to put it that way. It sounds immoral. But it gave me an episode, something dramatic to talk about, and something to make me remember that the war was really real. People won't believe much of it; my children and grandchildren aren't much interested in anything so old."

  "Bring your friend around and I'll tell him it's true. What's he in here for?"

  "Some kind of checkup."

  "By Teemer?" Yossarian was shaking his head.

  "They know each other," said Singer, "a long time."

  "Yeah," said Yossarian, with a sarcastic doubt that left Singer knowing he was unconvinced. "Well, Sammy, where do we go from here? I never could navigate, but I seem to have more direction. I know many women. I may want to marry again."

  "I know some too, but mostly old friends."

  "Don't get married unless you feel you have to. Unless you need to, you won't be good at it."

  "I may travel more," said Singer. "Friends tell me to take a trip around the world. I know people from my days in Time. I've got a good friend in Australia who was hit with a disease called Guillain-Barre a long time ago. He's not young either and doesn't get around too easily on his crutches anymore. I'd like to see him again. There's another in England, who's retired, and one in Hong Kong."