Catch-22

by Joseph Heller

  When the chaplain drove back into the clearing after leaving Colonel Korn, Corporal Whitcomb was outside in the muggy haze talking in conspiratorial tones to a strange chubby man in a maroon corduroy bathrobe and gray flannel pajamas. The chaplain recognized the bathrobe and pajamas as official hospital attire. Neither of the two men gave him any sign of recognition. The stranger's gums had been painted purple; his corduroy bathrobe was decorated in back with a picture of a B-25 nosing through orange bursts of flak and in front with six neat rows of tiny bombs signifying sixty combat missions flown. The chaplain was so struck by the sight that he stopped to stare. Both men broke off their conversation and waited in stony silence for him to go. The chaplain hurried inside his tent. He heard, or imagined he heard, them tittering.

  Corporal Whitcomb walked in a moment later and demanded, 'What's doing?'

  'There isn't anything new,' the chaplain replied with averted eyes. 'Was anyone here to see me?'

  'Just that crackpot Yossarian again. He's a real troublemaker, isn't he?'

  'I'm not so sure he's a crackpot,' the chaplain observed.

  'That's right, take his part,' said Corporal Whitcomb in an injured tone, and stamped out.

  The chaplain could not believe that Corporal Whitcomb was offended again and had really walked out. As soon as he did realize it, Corporal Whitcomb walked back in.

  'You always side with other people,' Corporal Whitcomb accused. 'You don't back up your men. That's one of the things that's wrong with you.'

  'I didn't intend to side with him,' the chaplain apologized. 'I was just making a statement.'

  'What did Colonel Cathcart want?'

  'It wasn't anything important. He just wanted to discuss the possibility of saying prayers in the briefing room before each mission.'

  'All right, don't tell me,' Corporal Whitcomb snapped and walked out again.

  The chaplain felt terrible. No matter how considerate he tried to be, it seemed he always managed to hurt Corporal Whitcomb's feelings. He gazed down remorsefully and saw that the orderly forced upon him by Colonel Korn to keep his tent clean and attend to his belongings had neglected to shine his shoes again.

  Corporal Whitcomb came back in. 'You never trust me with information,' he whined truculently. 'You don't have confidence in your men. That's another one of the things that's wrong with you.'

  'Yes, I do,' the chaplain assured him guiltily. 'I have lots of confidence in you.'

  'Then how about those letters?'

  'No, not now,' the chaplain pleaded, cringing. 'Not the letters. Please don't bring that up again. I'll let you know if I have a change of mind.' Corporal Whitcomb looked furious. 'Is that so? Well, it's all right for you to just sit there and shake your head while I do all the work. Didn't you see the guy outside with all those pictures painted on his bathrobe?'

  'Is he here to see me?'

  'No,' Corporal Whitcomb said, and walked out.

  It was hot and humid inside the tent, and the chaplain felt himself turning damp. He listened like an unwilling eavesdropper to the muffled, indistinguishable drone of the lowered voices outside. As he sat inertly at the rickety bridge table that served as a desk, his lips were closed, his eyes were blank, and his face, with its pale ochre hue and ancient, confined clusters of minute acne pits, had the color and texture of an uncracked almond shell. He racked his memory for some clue to the origin of Corporal Whitcomb's bitterness toward him. In some way he was unable to fathom, he was convinced he had done him some unforgivable wrong. It seemed incredible that such lasting ire as Corporal Whitcomb's could have stemmed from his rejection of Bingo or the form letters home to the families of the men killed in combat. The chaplain was despondent with an acceptance of his own ineptitude. He had intended for some weeks to have a heart-to-heart talk with Corporal Whitcomb in order to find out what was bothering him, but was already ashamed of what he might find out.

  Outside the tent, Corporal Whitcomb snickered. The other man chuckled. For a few precarious seconds, the chaplain tingled with a weird, occult sensation of having experienced the identical situation before in some prior time or existence. He endeavored to trap and nourish the impression in order to predict, and perhaps even control, what incident would occur next, but the afatus melted away unproductively, as he had known beforehand it would. Déjà vu. The subtle, recurring confusion between illusion and reality that was characteristic of paramnesia fascinated the chaplain, and he knew a number of things about it. He knew, for example, that it was called paramnesia, and he was interested as well in such corollary optical phenomena as jamais vu, never seen, and presque vu, almost seen. There were terrifying, sudden moments when objects, concepts and even people that the chaplain had lived with almost all his life inexplicably took on an unfamiliar and irregular aspect that he had never seen before and which made them totally strange: jamais vu. And there were other moments when he almost saw absolute truth in brilliant flashes of clarity that almost came to him: presque vu. The episode of the naked man in the tree at Snowden's funeral mystified him thoroughly. It was not déjà vu, for at the time he had experienced no sensation of ever having seen a naked man in a tree at Snowden's funeral before. It was not jamais vu, since the apparition was not of someone, or something, familiar appearing to him in an unfamiliar guise. And it was certainly not presque vu, for the chaplain did see him.

  A jeep started up with a backfire directly outside and roared away. Had the naked man in the tree at Snowden's funeral been merely a hallucination? Or had it been a true revelation? The chaplain trembled at the mere idea. He wanted desperately to confide in Yossarian, but each time he thought about the occurrence he decided not to think about it any further, although now that he did think about it he could not be sure that he ever really had thought about it.

  Corporal Whitcomb sauntered back in wearing a shiny new smirk and leaned his elbow impertinently against the center pole of the chaplain's tent.

  'Do you know who that guy in the red bathrobe was?' he asked boastfully. 'That was a C.I.D. man with a fractured nose. He came down here from the hospital on official business. He's conducting an investigation.' The chaplain raised his eyes quickly in obsequious commiseration. 'I hope you're not in any trouble. Is there anything I can do?'

  'No, I'm not in any trouble,' Corporal Whitcomb replied with a grin. 'You are. They're going to crack down on you for signing Washington Irving's name to all those letters you've been signing Washington Irving's name to. How do you like that?'

  'I haven't been signing Washington Irving's name to any letters,' said the chaplain.

  'You don't have to lie to me,' Corporal Whitcomb answered. 'I'm not the one you have to convince.'

  'But I'm not lying.'

  'I don't care whether you're lying or not. They're going to get you for intercepting Major Major's correspondence, too. A lot of that stuff is classified information.'

  'What correspondence?' asked the chaplain plaintively in rising exasperation. 'I've never even seen any of Major Major's correspondence.'

  'You don't have to lie to me,' Corporal Whitcomb replied. 'I'm not the one you have to convince.'

  'But I'm not lying!' protested the chaplain.

  'I don't see why you have to shout at me,' Corporal Whitcomb retorted with an injured look. He came away from the center pole and shook his finger at the chaplain for emphasis. 'I just did you the biggest favor anybody ever did you in your whole life, and you don't even realize it. Every time he tries to report you to his superiors, somebody up at the hospital censors out the details. He's been going batty for weeks trying to turn you in. I just put a censor's okay on his letter without even reading it. That will make a very good impression for you up at C.I.D. headquarters. It will let them know that we're not the least bit afraid to have the whole truth about you come out.' The chaplain was reeling with confusion. 'But you aren't authorized to censor letters, are you?'

  'Of course not,' Corporal Whitcomb answered. 'Only officers are ever auth
orized to do that. I censored it in your name.'

  'But I'm not authorized to censor letters either. Am I?'

  'I took care of that for you, too,' Corporal Whitcomb assured him. 'I signed somebody else's name for you.'

  'Isn't that forgery?'

  'Oh, don't worry about that either. The only one who might complain in a case of forgery is the person whose name you forged, and I looked out for your interests by picking a dead man. I used Washington Irving's name.' Corporal Whitcomb scrutinized the chaplain's face closely for some sign of rebellion and then breezed ahead confidently with concealed irony. 'That was pretty quick thinking on my part, wasn't it?'

  'I don't know,' the chaplain wailed softly in a quavering voice, squinting with grotesque contortions of anguish and incomprehension. 'I don't think I understand all you've been telling me. How will it make a good impression for me if you signed Washington Irving's name instead of my own?'

  'Because they're convinced that you are Washington Irving. Don't you see? They'll know it was you.'

  'But isn't that the very belief we want to dispel? Won't this help them prove it?'

  'If I thought you were going to be so stuffy about it, I wouldn't even have tried to help,' Corporal Whitcomb declared indignantly, and walked out. A second later he walked back in. 'I just did you the biggest favor anybody ever did you in your whole life and you don't even know it. You don't know how to show your appreciation. That's another one of the things that's wrong with you.'

  'I'm sorry,' the chaplain apologized contritely. 'I really am sorry. It's just that I'm so completely stunned by all you're telling me that I don't even realize what I'm saying. I'm really very grateful to you.'

  'Then how about letting me send out those form letters?' Corporal Whitcomb demanded immediately. 'Can I begin working on the first drafts?' The chaplain's jaw dropped in astonishment. 'No, no,' he groaned. 'Not now.' Corporal Whitcomb was incensed. 'I'm the best friend you've got and you don't even know it,' he asserted belligerently, and walked out of the chaplain's tent. He walked back in. 'I'm on your side and you don't even realize it. Don't you know what serious trouble you're in? That C.I.D. man has gone rushing back to the hospital to write a brand-new report on you about that tomato.'

  'What tomato?' the chaplain asked, blinking.

  'The plum tomato you were hiding in your hand when you first showed up here. There it is. The tomato you're still holding in your hand right this very minute!' The captain unclenched his fingers with surprise and saw that he was still holding the plum tomato he had obtained in Colonel Cathcart's office. He set it down quickly on the bridge table. 'I got this tomato from Colonel Cathcart,' he said, and was struck by how ludicrous his explanation sounded. 'He insisted I take it.'

  'You don't have to lie to me,' Corporal Whitcomb answered. 'I don't care whether you stole it from him or not.'

  'Stole it?' the chaplain exclaimed with amazement. 'Why should I want to steal a plum tomato?'

  'That's exactly what had us both stumped,' said Corporal Whitcomb. 'And then the C.I.D. man figured out you might have some important secret papers hidden away inside it.' The chaplain sagged limply beneath the mountainous weight of his despair. 'I don't have any important secret papers hidden away inside it,' he stated simply. 'I didn't even want it to begin with. Here, you can have it and see for yourself.'

  'I don't want it.'

  'Please take it away,' the chaplain pleaded in a voice that was barely audible. 'I want to be rid of it.'

  'I don't want it,' Corporal Whitcomb snapped again, and stalked out with an angry face, suppressing a smile of great jubilation at having forged a powerful new alliance with the C.I.D. man and at having succeeded again in convincing the chaplain that he was really displeased.

  Poor Whitcomb, sighed the chaplain, and blamed himself for his assistant's malaise. He sat mutely in a ponderous, stultifying melancholy, waiting expectantly for Corporal Whitcomb to walk back in. He was disappointed as he heard the peremptory crunch of Corporal Whitcomb's footsteps recede into silence. There was nothing he wanted to do next. He decided to pass up lunch for a Milky Way and a Baby Ruth from his foot locker and a few swallows of luke-warm water from his canteen. He felt himself surrounded by dense, overwhelming fogs of possibilities in which he could perceive no glimmer of light. He dreaded what Colonel Cathcart would think when the news that he was suspected of being Washington Irving was brought to him, then fell to fretting over what Colonel Cathcart was already thinking about him for even having broached the subject of sixty missions. There was so much unhappiness in the world, he reflected, bowing his head dismally beneath the tragic thought, and there was nothing he could do about anybody's, least of all his own.

  Catch-22

  General Dreedle

  Colonel Cathcart was not thinking anything at all about the chaplain, but was tangled up in a brand-new, menacing problem of his own: Yossarian!

  Yossarian! The mere sound of that execrable, ugly name made his blood run cold and his breath come in labored gasps. The chaplain's first mention of the name Yossarian! had tolled deep in his memory like a portentous gong. As soon as the latch of the door had clicked shut, the whole humiliating recollection of the naked man in formation came cascading down upon him in a mortifying, choking flood of stinging details. He began to perspire and tremble. There was a sinister and unlikely coincidence exposed that was too diabolical in implication to be anything less than the most hideous of omens. The name of the man who had stood naked in ranks that day to receive his Distinguished Flying Cross from General Dreedle had also been--Yossarian! And now it was a man named Yossarian who was threatening to make trouble over the sixty missions he had just ordered the men in his group to fly. Colonel Cathcart wondered gloomily if it was the same Yossarian.

  He climbed to his feet with an air of intolerable woe and began moving about his office. He felt himself in the presence of the mysterious. The naked man in formation, he conceded cheerlessly, had been a real black eye for him. So had the tampering with the bomb line before the mission to Bologna and the seven-day delay in destroying the bridge at Ferrara, even though destroying the bridge at Ferrara finally, he remembered with glee, had been a real feather in his cap, although losing a plane there the second time around, he recalled in dejection, had been another black eye, even though he had won another real feather in his cap by getting a medal approved for the bombardier who had gotten him the real black eye in the first place by going around over the target twice. That bombardier's name, he remembered suddenly with another stupefying shock, had also been Yossarian! Now there were three! His viscous eyes bulged with astonishment and he whipped himself around in alarm to see what was taking place behind him. A moment ago there had been no Yossarians in his life; now they were multiplying like hobgoblins. He tried to make himself grow calm. Yossarian was not a common name; perhaps there were not really three Yossarians but only two Yossarians, or maybe even only one Yossarian--but that really made no difference! The colonel was still in grave peril. Intuition warned him that he was drawing close to some immense and inscrutable cosmic climax, and his broad, meaty, towering frame tingled from head to toe at the thought that Yossarian, whoever he would eventually turn out to be, was destined to serve as his nemesis.

  Colonel Cathcart was not superstitious, but he did believe in omens, and he sat right back down behind his desk and made a cryptic notation on his memorandum pad to look into the whole suspicious business of the Yossarians right away. He wrote his reminder to himself in a heavy and decisive hand, amplifying it sharply with a series of coded punctuation marks and underlining the whole message twice, so that it read: Yossarian!!! (?)!

  The colonel sat back when he had finished and was extremely pleased with himself for the prompt action he had just taken to meet this sinister crisis. Yossarian--the very sight of the name made him shudder. There were so many esses in it. It just had to be subversive. It was like the word subversive itself. It was like seditious and insidious too, and like socialist, susp
icious, fascist and Communist. It was an odious, alien, distasteful name, that just did not inspire confidence. It was not at all like such clean, crisp, honest, American names as Cathcart, Peckem and Dreedle.

  Colonel Cathcart rose slowly and began drifting about his office again. Almost unconsciously, he picked up a plum tomato from the top of one of the bushels and took a voracious bite. He made a wry face at once and threw the rest of the plum tomato into his waste-basket. The colonel did not like plum tomatoes, not even when they were his own, and these were not even his own. These had been purchased in different market places all over Pianosa by Colonel Korn under various identities, moved up to the colonel's farmhouse in the hills in the dead of night, and transported down to Group Headquarters the next morning for sale to Milo, who paid Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn premium prices for them. Colonel Cathcart often wondered if what they were doing with the plum tomatoes was legal, but Colonel Korn said it was, and he tried not to brood about it too often. He had no way of knowing whether or not the house in the hills was legal, either, since Colonel Korn had made all the arrangements. Colonel Cathcart did not know if he owned the house or rented it, from whom he had acquired it or how much, if anything, it was costing. Colonel Korn was the lawyer, and if Colonel Korn assured him that fraud, extortion, currency manipulation, embezzlement, income tax evasion and black-market speculations were legal, Colonel Cathcart was in no position to disagree with him.