Catch-22

by Joseph Heller

  All Colonel Cathcart knew about his house in the hills was that he had such a house and hated it. He was never so bored as when spending there the two or three days every other week necessary to sustain the illusion that his damp and drafty stone farmhouse in the hills was a golden palace of carnal delights. Officers' clubs everywhere pulsated with blurred but knowing accounts of lavish, hushed-up drinking and sex orgies there and of secret, intimate nights of ecstasy with the most beautiful, the most tantalizing, the most readily aroused and most easily satisfied Italian courtesans, film actresses, models and countesses. No such private nights of ecstasy or hushed-up drinking and sex orgies ever occurred. They might have occurred if either General Dreedle or General Peckem had once evinced an interest in taking part in orgies with him, but neither ever did, and the colonel was certainly not going to waste his time and energy making love to beautiful women unless there was something in it for him.

  The colonel dreaded his dank lonely nights at his farmhouse and the dull, uneventful days. He had much more fun back at Group, browbeating everyone he wasn't afraid of. However, as Colonel Korn kept reminding him, there was not much glamour in having a farmhouse in the hills if he never used it. He drove off to his farmhouse each time in a mood of self-pity. He carried a shotgun in his jeep and spent the monotonous hours there shooting it at birds and at the plum tomatoes that did grow there in untended rows and were too much trouble to harvest.

  Among those officers of inferior rank toward whom Colonel Cathcart still deemed it prudent to show respect, he included Major--de Coverley, even though he did not want to and was not sure he even had to. Major--de Coverley was as great a mystery to him as he was to Major Major and to everyone else who ever took notice of him. Colonel Cathcart had no idea whether to look up or look down in his attitude toward Major--de Coverley. Major--de Coverley was only a major, even though he was ages older than Colonel Cathcart; at the same time, so many other people treated Major--de Coverley with such profound and fearful veneration that Colonel Cathcart had a hunch they might know something. Major-de Coverley was an ominous, incomprehensible presence who kept him constantly on edge and of whom even Colonel Korn tended to be wary. Everyone was afraid of him, and no one knew why. No one even knew Major--de Coverley's first name, because no one had ever had the temerity to ask him. Colonel Cathcart knew that Major--de Coverley was away and he rejoiced in his absence until it occurred to him that Major--de Coverley might be away somewhere conspiring against him, and then he wished that Major--de Coverley were back in his squadron where he belonged so that he could be watched.

  In a little while Colonel Cathcart's arches began to ache from pacing back and forth so much. He sat down behind his desk again and resolved to embark upon a mature and systematic evaluation of the entire military situation. With the businesslike air of a man who knows how to get things done, he found a large white pad, drew a straight line down the middle and crossed it near the top, dividing the page into two blank columns of equal width. He rested a moment in critical rumination. Then he huddled over his desk, and at the head of the left column, in a cramped and finicky hand, he wrote, 'Black Eyes!!!' At the top of the right column he wrote, 'Feathers in My Cap!!!!!' He leaned back once more to inspect his chart admiringly from an objective perspective. After a few seconds of solemn deliberation, he licked the tip of his pencil carefully and wrote under 'Black Eyes!!!,' after intent intervals: Ferrara Bologna (bomb line moved on map during) Skeet range Naked man information (after Avignon) Then he added: Food poisoning (during Bologna) and Moaning (epidemic of during Avignon briefing) Then he added: Chaplain (hanging around officers' club every night) He decided to be charitable about the chaplain, even though he did not like him, and under 'Feathers in My Cap!!!!!' he wrote: Chaplain (hanging around officers' club every night) The two chaplain entries, therefore, neutralized each other. Alongside 'Ferrara' and 'Naked man in formation (after Avignon)' he then wrote: Yossarian! Alongside ' Bologna (bomb line moved on map during)', 'Food poisoning (during Bologna)' and 'Moaning (epidemic of during Avignon briefing)' he wrote in a bold, decisive hand:? Those entries labeled '?' were the ones he wanted to investigate immediately to determine if Yossarian had played any part in them.

  Suddenly his arm began to shake, and he was unable to write any more. He rose to his feet in terror, feeling sticky and fat, and rushed to the open window to gulp in fresh air. His gaze fell on the skeet-range, and he reeled away with a sharp cry of distress, his wild and feverish eyes scanning the walls of his office frantically as though they were swarming with Yossarians.

  Nobody loved him. General Dreedle hated him, although General Peckem liked him, although he couldn't be sure, since Colonel Cargill, General Peckem's aide, undoubtedly had ambitions of his own and was probably sabotaging him with General Peckem at every opportunity. The only good colonel, he decided, was a dead colonel, except for himself. The only colonel he trusted was Colonel Moodus, and even he had an in with his father-in-law. Milo, of course, had been the big feather in his cap, although having his group bombed by Milo's planes had probably been a terrible black eye for him, even though Milo had ultimately stilled all protest by disclosing the huge net profit the syndicate had realized on the deal with the enemy and convincing everyone that bombing his own men and planes had therefore really been a commendable and very lucrative blow on the side of private enterprise. The colonel was insecure about Milo because other colonels were trying to lure him away, and Colonel Cathcart still had that lousy Big Chief White Halfoat in his group who that lousy, lazy Captain Black claimed was the one really responsible for the bomb line's being moved during the Big Siege of Bologna. Colonel Cathcart liked Big Chief White Halfoat because Big Chief White Halfoat kept punching that lousy Colonel Moodus in the nose every time he got drunk and Colonel Moodus was around. He wished that Big Chief White Halfoat would begin punching Colonel Korn in his fat face, too. Colonel Korn was a lousy smart aleck. Someone at Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters had it in for him and sent back every report he wrote with a blistering rebuke, and Colonel Korn had bribed a clever mail clerk there named Wintergreen to try to find out who it was. Losing the plane over Ferrara the second time around had not done him any good, he had to admit, and neither had having that other plane disappear inside that cloud--that was one he hadn't even written down! He tried to recall, longingly, if Yossarian had been lost in that plane in the cloud and realized that Yossarian could not possibly have been lost in that plane in the cloud if he was still around now raising such a big stink about having to fly a lousy five missions more.

  Maybe sixty missions were too many for the men to fly, Colonel Cathcart reasoned, if Yossarian objected to flying them, but he then remembered that forcing his men to fly more missions than everyone else was the most tangible achievement he had going for him. As Colonel Korn often remarked, the war was crawling with group commanders who were merely doing their duty, and it required just some sort of dramatic gesture like making his group fly more combat missions than any other bomber group to spotlight his unique qualities of leadership. Certainly none of the generals seemed to object to what he was doing, although as far as he could detect they weren't particularly impressed either, which made him suspect that perhaps sixty combat missions were not nearly enough and that he ought to increase the number at once to seventy, eighty, a hundred, or even two hundred, three hundred, or six thousand!

  Certainly he would be much better off under somebody suave like General Peckem than he was under somebody boorish and insensitive like General Dreedle, because General Peckem had the discernment, the intelligence and the Ivy League background to appreciate and enjoy him at his full value, although General Peckem had never given the slightest indication that he appreciated or enjoyed him at all. Colonel Cathcart felt perceptive enough to realize that visible signals of recognition were never necessary between sophisticated, self-assured people like himself and General Peckem who could warm to each other from a distance with innate mutual understanding. It was enough
that they were of like kind, and he knew it was only a matter of waiting discreetly for preferment until the right time, although it rotted Colonel Cathcart's self-esteem to observe that General Peckem never deliberately sought him out and that he labored no harder to impress Colonel Cathcart with his epigrams and erudition than he did to impress anyone else in earshot, even enlisted men. Either Colonel Cathcart wasn't getting through to General Peckem or General Peckem was not the scintillating, discriminating, intellectual, forward-looking personality he pretended to be and it was really General Dreedle who was sensitive, charming, brilliant and sophisticated and under whom he would certainly be much better off, and suddenly Colonel Cathcart had absolutely no conception of how strongly he stood with anyone and began banging on his buzzer with his fist for Colonel Korn to come running into his office and assure him that everybody loved him, that Yossarian was a figment of his imagination, and that he was making wonderful progress in the splendid and valiant campaign he was waging to become a general.

  Actually, Colonel Cathcart did not have a chance in hell of becoming a general. For one thing, there was ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen, who also wanted to be a general and who always distorted, destroyed, rejected or misdirected any correspondence by, for or about Colonel Cathcart that might do him credit. For another, there already was a general, General Dreedle who knew that General Peckem was after his job but did not know how to stop him.

  General Dreedle, the wing commander, was a blunt, chunky, barrel-chested man in his early fifties. His nose was squat and red, and he had lumpy white, bunched-up eyelids circling his small gray eyes like haloes of bacon fat. He had a nurse and a son-in-law, and he was prone to long, ponderous silences when he had not been drinking too much. General Dreedle had wasted too much of his time in the Army doing his job well, and now it was too late. New power alignments had coalesced without him and he was at a loss to cope with them. At unguarded moments his hard and sullen face slipped into a somber, preoccupied look of defeat and frustration. General Dreedle drank a great deal. His moods were arbitrary and unpredictable. 'War is hell,' he declared frequently, drunk or sober, and he really meant it, although that did not prevent him from making a good living out of it or from taking his son-in-law into the business with him, even though the two bickered constantly.

  'That bastard,' General Dreedle would complain about his son-in-law with a contemptuous grunt to anyone who happened to be standing beside him at the curve of the bar of the officers' club. 'Everything he's got he owes to me. I made him, that lousy son of a bitch! He hasn't got brains enough to get ahead on his own.'

  'He thinks he knows everything,' Colonel Moodus would retort in a sulking tone to his own audience at the other end of the bar. 'He can't take criticism and he won't listen to advice.'

  'All he can do is give advice,' General Dreedle would observe with a rasping snort. 'If it wasn't for me, he'd still be a corporal.' General Dreedle was always accompanied by both Colonel Moodus and his nurse, who was as delectable a piece of ass as anyone who saw her had ever laid eyes on. General Dreedle's nurse was chubby, short and blonde. She had plump dimpled cheeks, happy blue eyes, and neat curly turned-up hair. She smiled at everyone and never spoke at all unless she was spoken to. Her bosom was lush and her complexion clear. She was irresistible, and men edged away from her carefully. She was succulent, sweet, docile and dumb, and she drove everyone crazy but General Dreedle.

  'You should see her naked,' General Dreedle chortled with croupy relish, while his nurse stood smiling proudly right at his shoulder. 'Back at Wing she's got a uniform in my room made of purple silk that's so tight her nipples stand out like bing cherries. Milo got me the fabric. There isn't even room enough for panties or a brassière underneath. I make her wear it some nights when Moodus is around just to drive him crazy.' General Dreedle laughed hoarsely. 'You should see what goes on inside that blouse of hers every time she shifts her weight. She drives him out of his mind. The first time I catch him putting a hand on her or any other woman I'll bust the horny bastard right down to private and put him on K.P. for a year.'

  'He keeps her around just to drive me crazy,' Colonel Moodus accused aggrievedly at the other end of the bar. 'Back at Wing she's got a uniform made out of purple silk that's so tight her nipples stand out like bing cherries. There isn't even room for panties or a brassière underneath. You should hear that rustle every time she shifts her weight. The first time I make a pass at her or any other girl he'll bust me right down to private and put me on K.P. for a year. She drives me out of my mind.'

  'He hasn't gotten laid since we shipped overseas,' confided General Dreedle, and his square grizzled head bobbed with sadistic laughter at the fiendish idea. 'That's one of the reasons I never let him out of my sight, just so he can't get to a woman. Can you imagine what that poor son of a bitch is going through?'

  'I haven't been to bed with a woman since we shipped overseas,' Colonel Moodus whimpered tearfully. 'Can you imagine what I'm going through?' General Dreedle could be as intransigent with anyone else when displeased as he was with Colonel Moodus. He had no taste for sham, tact or pretension, and his credo as a professional soldier was unified and concise: he believed that the young men who took orders from him should be willing to give up their lives for the ideals, aspirations and idiosyncrasies of the old men he took orders from. The officers and enlisted men in his command had identity for him only as military quantities. All he asked was that they do their work; beyond that, they were free to do whatever they pleased. They were free, as Colonel Cathcart was free, to force their men to fly sixty missions if they chose, and they were free, as Yossarian had been free, to stand in formation naked if they wanted to, although General Dreedle's granite jaw swung open at the sight and he went striding dictatorially right down the line to make certain that there really was a man wearing nothing but moccasins waiting at attention in ranks to receive a medal from him. General Dreedle was speechless. Colonel Cathcart began to faint when he spied Yossarian, and Colonel Korn stepped up behind him and squeezed his arm in a strong grip. The silence was grotesque. A steady warm wind flowed in from the beach, and an old cart filled with dirty straw rumbled into view on the main road, drawn by a black donkey and driven by a farmer in a flopping hat and faded brown work clothes who paid no attention to the formal military ceremony taking place in the small field on his right.

  At last General Dreedle spoke. 'Get back in the car,' he snapped over his shoulder to his nurse, who had followed him down the line. The nurse toddled away with a smile toward his brown staff car, parked about twenty yards away at the edge of the rectangular clearing. General Dreedle waited in austere silence until the car door slammed and then demanded, 'Which one is this?' Colonel Moodus checked his roster. 'This one is Yossarian, Dad. He gets a Distinguished Flying Cross.'

  'Well, I'll be damned,' mumbled General Dreedle, and his ruddy monolithic face softened with amusement. 'Why aren't you wearing clothes, Yossarian?'

  'I don't want to.'

  'What do you mean you don't want to? Why the hell don't you want to?'

  'I just don't want to, sir.'

  'Why isn't he wearing clothes?' General Dreedle demanded over his shoulder of Colonel Cathcart.

  'He's talking to you,' Colonel Korn whispered over Colonel Cathcart's shoulder from behind, jabbing his elbow sharply into Colonel Cathcart's back.

  'Why isn't he wearing clothes?' Colonel Cathcart demanded of Colonel Korn with a look of acute pain, tenderly nursing the spot where Colonel Korn had just jabbed him.

  'Why isn't he wearing clothes?' Colonel Korn demanded of Captain Piltchard and Captain Wren.

  'A man was killed in his plane over Avignon last week and bled all over him,' Captain Wren replied. 'He swears he's never going to wear a uniform again.'

  'A man was killed in his plane over Avignon last week and bled all over him,' Colonel Korn reported directly to General Dreedle. 'His uniform hasn't come back from the laundry yet.'

  'Where are his other unif
orms?'

  'They're in the laundry, too.'

  'What about his underwear?' General Dreedle demanded.

  'All his underwear's in the laundry, too,' answered Colonel Korn.

  'That sounds like a lot of crap to me,' General Dreedle declared.

  'It is a lot of crap, sir,' Yossarian said.

  'Don't you worry, sir,' Colonel Cathcart promised General Dreedle with a threatening look at Yossarian. 'You have my personal word for it that this man will be severely punished.'

  'What the hell do I care if he's punished or not?' General Dreedle replied with surprise and irritation. 'He's just won a medal. If he wants to receive it without any clothes on, what the hell business is it of yours?'

  'Those are my sentiments exactly, sir!' Colonel Cathcart echoed with resounding enthusiasm and mopped his brow with a damp white handkerchief. 'But would you say that, sir, even in the light of General Peckem's recent memorandum on the subject of appropriate military attire in combat areas?'

  'Peckem?' General Dreedle's face clouded.

  'Yes, sir, sir,' said Colonel Cathcart obsequiously. 'General Peckem even recommends that we send our men into combat in full-dress uniform so they'll make a good impression on the enemy when they're shot down.'

  'Peckem?' repeated General Dreedle, still squinting with bewilderment. 'Just what the hell does Peckem have to do with it?' Colonel Korn jabbed Colonel Cathcart sharply again in the back with his elbow.

  'Absolutely nothing, sir!' Colonel Cathcart responded sprucely, wincing in extreme pain and gingerly rubbing the spot where Colonel Korn had just jabbed him again. 'And that's exactly why I decided to take absolutely no action at all until I first had an opportunity to discuss it with you. Shall we ignore it completely, sir?' General Dreedle ignored him completely, turning away from him in baleful scorn to hand Yossarian his medal in its case.

  'Get my girl back from the car,' he commanded Colonel Moodus crabbily, and waited in one spot with his scowling face down until his nurse had rejoined him.