Closing Time

by Joseph Heller

  "What happened?" screamed General Bingam, with a horror-stricken countenance inflamed with confusion.

  "It works," said the President, with a grin. "You see? Just like the game here."

  "Who's attacking us?"

  "When did it begin?"

  "Is someone attacking us?" asked the President.

  "You launched all our missiles!"

  "You sent out our planes!"

  "I did? Where?"

  "Everywhere! With that red button you kept pressing."

  "This one? I didn't know that."

  "Don't touch it again!"

  "How was I supposed to know? Call them all back. Say I'm sorry. I didn't do it on purpose."

  "We can't call back the missiles."

  "We can call back the bombers."

  "We can't call back the bombers! Suppose someone retaliates? We have to take them out first."

  "I didn't know that."

  "And we'll have to send out our second-strike bombers too, in case they want to hit back after our first."

  "Come on, sir. We have to hurry."

  "Where to?"

  "Underground. To the shelters. Triage--don't you remember?"

  "Sure. I was playing that one before I switched to this one."

  "Damn it, sir! What the hell are you smiling about?"

  "There's nothing fucking funny about this!"

  "How was I supposed to know?"

  "Let's move! We are the ones who have to survive."

  "Can I get my wife? My children?"

  "You stay here too!"

  They charged out like a mob and piled into the cylindrical escape elevator awaiting them. Fat was tripped by C. Porter Lovejoy, arriving desperately to get into the elevator too, and fell down inside, with Lovejoy clinging to his back like a crazed monkey in a clawing fury.

  Removing from her dark hair hot rollers of fair blue that closely matched the color of her eyes and applying lipstick and other cosmetics as though for an evening out--she had reason to wish to look her best--nurse Melissa MacIntosh made up her mind again to try to make up her own mind at lunch with John Yossarian in the disagreement over whether to keep her appointment with the obstetrician to preserve her pregnancy or the one with her gynecologist to take steps to terminate it. She had no clue of anything dire happening elsewhere.

  She understood his unwillingness to marry again so soon. She helped herself to another chocolate from the one-pound box so close at hand. The candy had come as a gift from the Belgian patient and his wife the day he left the hospital, alive, after nearly two years. She was relieved the Belgians were flying back to Europe, for she had a propensity for empathetic attachments and wanted her mind free to cope with this predicament of her own.

  Yossarian could give very sound reasons against fatherhood again for him now.

  They made no impression. He was better and quicker in argument, and therefore, to her mind, trickier. She could admit to herself, and to her apartment mate, Angela, that she did not always think things through clearly and was not unfailingly much good at looking ahead.

  However, she would not see that as a weakness.

  She had something Yossarian did not: confidence, a belief that everything must turn out all right in the end for people like herself, who were good. Even Angela now, since Peter's stroke, wearying of pornography and work, putting on fat and concerned about AIDS, was talking with longing of returning to Australia, where she still had friends and family, and a favorite aunt in a nursing home, whom she hoped to start visiting. If Angela had to start thinking about condoms now, she would just as soon give up sex and get married.

  Yossarian made much of that matter of years and had almost neatly tricked her again--she congratulated herself on having thwarted him--just two evenings before.

  "I'm just not afraid of anything like that," she let him know defiantly, with her backbone stiffened. "We would get along without you, if we had to."

  "No, no," he corrected, almost maliciously. "Suppose you are the one who dies soon!"

  She refused to consider talking further about that. That picture of her infant daughter with only a father past seventy was too complex a tangle for her to seek to unravel.

  She knew she was right.

  She had no doubt Yossarian would be adequate with financial help, even if she persisted despite him and they no longer continued as a couple. She knew in her gut she could trust him for that much. It was true he was less frequently fervidly amorous with her than he had been in the earliest stages. He no longer teased about shopping together for lingerie, and he had not yet taken her to Paris or Florence or Munich to buy any. He sent roses now only on birthdays. But she was less amorous too, she reflected now with some contrite misgivings, and occasionally had to remind herself, cerebrally, to strive more lasciviously to achieve the feats of gratifying sensuality that had sprung more normally between them in the beginning. She acknowledged, when Angela asked, that he never seemed jealous anymore and no longer showed interest in her sexual past. He rarely even wanted to take her to the movies. He had already mentioned with no anger and small discontent that, even into the present, he had never found himself with a woman who over a continuous liaison desired to make love as often as he did. She searched back to discern if this had been true with other men who had been her friends. For that matter, he was not working as hard as before to please her either and was not much concerned when he saw he'd failed to.

  She did not feel any of that mattered.

  Melissa MacIntosh knew she was right and could not see that there was anything wrong in what she wanted. She was a woman who spoke of "gut feelings," as she chose to describe her dogmatic intuitions, and her gut feeling now was that if she was patient, if she simply stuck to her guns and remained tolerantly inflexible, he would, as usual, ultimately consent to whatever she wanted. On this matter of her child, he had powerful arguments. She had one weak one, and that was enough: She wanted the baby.

  The thought that he might not even appear at the restaurant to argue further did not cross her mind until she was checking the small flat before leaving. She shook it right off in an impulse of terror rather than even begin to contemplate what that defection might signify.

  She'd put on high heels to look all the better and walked out rapidly with footsteps clicking seductively.

  Outside the apartment, near the corner toward which she proceeded for a taxicab, she saw, as expected, maintenance trucks from the Consolidated Edison Company, with men tearing downward through the asphalt making improvements or repairs. They were always there, these men from the lighting company, almost since the beginning of time, it seemed to her, as she hurried past with her high heels clicking. She was engrossed in the specifics of the looming confrontation, and she scarcely noticed that the heavens were darker than natural for that time of day.

  Out of the hospital finally after so long a time, the Belgian patient was flying back to Brussels and his executive position with the European Economic Community. He talked of himself humorously as "the sick man of Europe." He was in decent health, ebullient in nature but lesser in weight, and very much a weaker man, minus one vocal cord, a lung, and one kidney. Advised to give up spirits, he had been limiting his drinking to wine and beer during the two weeks of outpatient care since his discharge. Through the dotlike circular opening in his neck, left permanent by a plastic implant for suctioning or intubation, and through which, when he wished to clown, he was able to speak, he inhaled cigarette smoke and wheezed contentedly. He was forbidden to smoke, but concluded that way didn't count. His playful, frolicsome wife, joyous to have him back alive, smoked for him also. With practiced skill and puckered mouth, she would inhale from a cigarette of her own and, kittenish, feed, in slim direct jets, cigarette smoke into him accurately through the surgical aperture with its plastic cylinder and removable cap. Then, if at home, they would cuddle, kiss, tickle, and try to make love. To their delight and their amazement, they succeeded more regularly than either of them would have t
hought likely not long before. He now was normally concealing the prosthetic fixture from outsiders with a high shirt collar and large knot in his necktie or with an ascot, scarf, or colorful neckerchief. He discovered in himself a weakness for polka dots. With his wife only, this sick man of Europe shared an additional secret, his absolute belief that nothing he, his colleagues, or any organization of experts could do would have any enduring corrective effect on the economic destiny of his continent or the Western world. Humans had little command over human events. History would follow its autonomous course independent of the people who made it.

  On his leaving the hospital, the two had hosted a small celebration in his room and given to each of the nurses and other staff members a bottle of champagne, a one-pound box of Fanny Farmer chocolates, and a carton of cigarettes. They would have given cash too, a one-hundred-dollar bill to each, but the hospital frowned on gifts of money.

  In planes, the Belgian patient and his wife ordinarily booked first class but enjoyed spending part of the time each trip in coach seats for the closer proximity of their persons and the intimacy that permitted them to press their thighs and arms against each other with risque naughtiness while they smoked and, beneath the cover of blankets, to fondle and masturbate to climax each other's genitals.

  Flying back over the Atlantic this time, they were complacently in their first-class seats watching the movie, a comedy, at that moment when the alarm they did not know about went off. Both thought hardly anything of the numerous spools of steamed white vapor they began to spot unwinding behind unseen flying bodies traveling faster than they were, higher and lower, which began to appear in the sky after the screen went black, the lights brightened back on with a ferocious glare, and the panels at the windows had been raised. Going east into nightfall, they were not disturbed to find the heavens darkening. Behind them the sun had turned as gray as lead. With the failure of the motion picture apparatus, the internal system of communications seemed affected too. There was no music or other entertainment in the headsets. When a stewardess stood up with a microphone at the front of the cabin to explain the inconveniences, her words were not transmitted. When passengers, in convivial mock annoyance, gestured to other cabin personnel to make their inquiries and the stewards and hostesses leaned downward to respond, their voices made no sound.

  Dennis Teemer didn't hear it, and the cardinal, who'd previously had intimations of some designs for disaster, was not told about it. Many were called, but this man of science and this keeper of souls were not among them. Because it no longer was possible to shelter the public from attack, no public shelters were provided, and it was not thought politic to generate terror and despair with a warning that might prove unwarranted in the event the feared nuclear counterassault did not materialize.

  When the alarm went off, only those happy, privileged few already chosen were summoned, rounded up, and allowed down. These were men of rare abilities deemed indispensable to the perpetuation of our way of life below earth. They were found and conducted speedily to the disguised entrances of heat-resistant elevators by special teams of dedicated MASSPOB policemen and policewomen, who had not stopped to consider, until the moment of truth arrived, that they themselves would be excluded as expendable too.

  "This is Harold Strangelove, and you will be happy to hear that I and my key associates have made it down here safely and will be available to continue to provide you with our fine contacts and advice, and with our best-quality bombast too," said the voice over the public-address system, distinctly. "The President has been left behind, and I am the one who is now in charge, because I know more than everybody else. Our missiles have been launched and I guarantee we will achieve our objective successfully, once we are able to figure out what our objective in launching them was. We do not know yet if any of the territories we are attacking will retaliate. To reduce their capability, we now have all our first-strike bombers in the air. Soon we will break radio silence to let you listen. Meanwhile, I assure you that nothing has been overlooked. We have a viable community already functioning up to, or should I say down to, forty-two miles underground, and we will continue to operate smoothly and democratically as long as everyone here does exactly what I say. We are secure militarily. We have the personnel here needed to survive a nuclear counterattack outside, should any eventuate. We have political leaders, career bureaucrats, medical men, intellectuals, engineers, and other technicians. What more could we want? The entrances to all our hiding places are now sealed off by our MASSPOB special forces. Anyone fortunate enough to be here now who grows dissatisfied and wants to leave will be permitted to do so. This is a free country. But no one new will be allowed in without authorization, and none who survive will be admitted until I decide to let them in. We are well supplied with all the goods a reasonable man acting in good faith would require, and there is almost no foreseeable limit to the amount of time we can spend here comfortably as long as you all do what I say. We have recreational facilities of wide variety. We have thought of everything. Now, to fill you in, here is the new chairman of my Joint Chiefs of Staff with a report of our military situation as it exists right now."

  "My fellow Americans," said General Bernard Bingam. "Frankly, I don't know any more than you do about the reasons this war had to take place, but we do know that our reasons were good ones, our cause is just, and our military operation will be as completely successful as all those we have conducted in the past. Our antimissile-missile units are all on watch and probably are achieving unbelievable success against any enemy missiles that might be raining in on us in retaliation. Our strongest hand at this stage is our heavy bombers. We have hundreds of these for our first strike, and we are going to give them the go-ahead now, purely as a precautionary measure. You will be permitted to hear me communicate now with the commander of our aeronautical operations. Here we go. Hello, hello. This is Bingam, Bingam, Bigman Bernie Bingam, calling from underground headquarters in the Ben & Jerry's supply depot in Washington. Come in, come in, Commander, please come in."

  "Haagen-Dazs."

  "Thank you, Commander Whitehead. Where are you?"

  "At fifty-two thousand feet, in our floating strategic command post over the geographic center of the country."

  "Perfect. Instruct your units to proceed. Time is now of the essence. Then change your location."

  "We have already changed our location, even as I was reporting it."

  "So it's no longer accurate?"

  "It was not accurate then."

  "Perfect. Report all sightings of enemy missiles or aircraft. We will fill you in when you all come back."

  "Good, sir. Where should we come back to?"

  "Hmmmmm. There might not be a place. I don't think we thought of that. You might as well land in the territories you've destroyed. Proceed as planned."

  "Absolutely, General Bingam?"

  "Positively, Commander Whitehead."

  "Haagen-Dazs."

  "Ben & Jerry's. Dr. Strangelove?"

  "That was splendid."

  "Absolutely, Dr. Strangelove?"

  "Positively, General Bingam. We have overlooked nothing. Now I must apologize to the rest of you, for there was one little thing we did forget." He continued with an intentional slurring of words in what was obviously a self-effacing and jocund apology. "We neglected to bring down any women. Oh, yes--I can picture all of you macho men clutching your heads and moaning with pretended unhappiness. But think of the dissension they would be causing here right now. It is not for me to recommend officially, but I am reminded by our chief of medicine here that abstinence has always proved a perfect replacement for the fairer sex. Other adequate substitutes for women are masturbation, fellatio, and sodomy. We recommend condoms, and you will find huge supplies at your drugstores and supermarkets. To maintain population, we may eventually have to let some women in, if there are any left. As to clergymen, we believe we have some of all our major faiths. Until we locate them, we have a man of no faith who is ready to minis
ter to the spiritual needs of people of all faiths. As to the outcome, I beg you not to worry. We have overlooked nothing. After our first strike, we have secret defensive-offensive planes ready for a second-strike aerial attack to destroy any weapons withstanding our first strike that might come back at us. The only thing you have to fear is fear itself. We are almost absolutely sure we may have nearly not much to worry about, thanks to our new old versions of the old new Stealth bomber, my own Strangelove B-Ware and the Minderbinder Shhhhh! There will be no newspapers. Since all reports will come from official sources, there'll be no reason to believe them, and they will be kept to a minimum. Haagen-Dazs."

  "The Shhhhh!?" Yossarian was dumbfounded.

  "I told you they'd work."

  "Gaffney, what's going to happen?"

  "I'm cut off from my sources."

  Speeding downward in the elevator to the seven-mile level at a hundred miles an hour had taken close to five minutes. The rest of the way to the forty-two-mile bottom would take some twenty minutes more, and the two had agreed to continue awhile on the escalators.

  "Can't you guess? Where will it all end?"

  Gaffney had an answer. "Where it began, say the physicists. That's what I have in mind for the novel I might want to write. It begins after both those stories of the creation of Adam and Eve. There are two, you know."

  "I know," said Yossarian.

  "You would be surprised how many people don't. My story begins at the end of the sixth day of creation."

  "And then where does it go?"

  "Backward," crowed Gaffney, unveiling that idea for his novel as though it were already a triumph. "It goes backward, to the fifth day, like a movie running in reverse. At the beginning of mine, God turns Eve back into a rib and puts the rib back into Adam, as we find in the second version. He simply uncreates Adam and Eve from his own image, as we find in the first, as though they'd never been made. He simply disappears them, along with the cattle and other beasts and creeping things brought forth on that sixth day. On my second day, his fifth, the birds and fish are taken back. Next, the sun and moon are gone, along with the other lights in the firmament. Then the fruit trees and vegetation from the third day are taken away and the waters come back together and the dry land called earth disappears. That was the third day, and on the one after that, he takes back the firmament called heaven that was put in the midst of the waters. And then on the first day, my sixth day, the light goes too and nothing remains to separate the day from the darkness, and the earth is again without form and void. We are back to the beginning, before there was anything. Then I steal from the New Testament for a very clever touch. In the beginning was the word and the word was God, remember? Now, of course, we take away the word, and without the word, there is no God. What do you think of it?"