Catch-22

by Joseph Heller

  'Don't start,' he begged in a threatening voice, both hands tightening around his beer bottle. 'Don't start working on your stove.' Orr cackled quietly. 'I'm almost finished.'

  'No, you're not. You're about to begin.'

  'Here's the valve. See? It's almost all together.'

  'And you're about to take it apart. I know what you're doing, you bastard. I've seen you do it three hundred times.' Orr shivered with glee. 'I want to get the leak in this gasoline line out,' he explained. 'I've got it down now to where it's only an ooze.'

  'I can't watch you,' Yossarian confessed tonelessly. 'If you want to work with something big, that's okay. But that valve is filled with tiny parts, and I just haven't got the patience right now to watch you working so hard over things that are so goddam small and unimportant.'

  'Just because they're small doesn't mean they're unimportant.'

  'I don't care.'

  'Once more?'

  'When I'm not around. You're a happy imbecile and you don't know what it means to feel the way I do. Things happen to me when you work over small things that I can't even begin to explain. I find out that I can't stand you. I start to hate you, and I'm soon thinking seriously about busting this bottle down on your head or stabbing you in the neck with that hunting knife there. Do you understand?' Orr nodded very intelligently. 'I won't take the valve apart now,' he said, and began taking it apart, working with slow, tireless, interminable precision, his rustic, ungainly face bent very close to the floor, picking painstakingly at the minute mechanism in his fingers with such limitless, plodding concentration that he seemed scarcely to be thinking of it at all.

  Yossarian cursed him silently and made up his mind to ignore him. 'What the hell's your hurry with that stove, anyway?' he barked out a moment later in spite of himself. 'It's still hot out. We're probably going swimming later. What are you worried about the cold for.'

  'The days are getting shorter,' Orr observed philosophically. 'I'd like to get this all finished for you while there's still time. You'll have the best stove in the squadron when I'm through. It will burn all night with this feed control I'm fixing, and these metal plates will radiate the heat all over the tent. If you leave a helmet full of water on this thing when you go to sleep, you'll have warm water to wash with all ready for you when you wake up. Won't that be nice? If you want to cook eggs or soup, all you'll have to do is set the pot down here and turn the fire up.'

  'What do you mean, me?' Yossarian wanted to know. 'Where are you going to be?' Orr's stunted torso shook suddenly with a muffled spasm of amusement. 'I don't know,' he exclaimed, and a weird, wavering giggle gushed out suddenly through his chattering buck teeth like an exploding jet of emotion. He was still laughing when he continued, and his voice was clogged with saliva. 'If they keep on shooting me down this way, I don't know where I'm going to be.' Yossarian was moved. 'Why don't you try to stop flying, Orr? You've got an excuse.'

  'I've only got eighteen missions.'

  'But you've been shot down on almost every one. You're either ditching or crash-landing every time you go up.'

  'Oh, I don't mind flying missions. I guess they're lots of fun. You ought to try flying a few with me when you're not flying lead. Just for laughs. Tee-hee.' Orr gazed up at Yossarian through the corners of his eyes with a look of pointed mirth.

  Yossarian avoided his stare. 'They've got me flying lead again.'

  'When you're not flying lead. If you had any brains, do you know what you'd do? You'd go right to Piltchard and Wren and tell them you want to fly with me.'

  'And get shot down with you every time you go up? What's the fun in that?'

  'That's just why you ought to do it,' Orr insisted. 'I guess I'm just about the best pilot around now when it comes to ditching or making crash landings. It would be good practice for you.'

  'Good practice for what?'

  'Good practice in case you ever have to ditch or make a crash landing. Tee-hee-hee.'

  'Have you got another bottle of beer for me?' Yossarian asked morosely.

  'Do you want to bust it down on my head?' This time Yossarian did laugh. 'Like that whore in that apartment in Rome?' Orr sniggered lewdly, his bulging crab apple cheeks blowing outward with pleasure. 'Do you really want to know why she was hitting me over the head with her shoe?' he teased.

  'I do know,' Yossarian teased back. 'Nately's whore told me.' Orr grinned like a gargoyle. 'No she didn't.' Yossarian felt sorry for Orr. Orr was so small and ugly. Who would protect him if he lived? Who would protect a warm-hearted, simple-minded gnome like Orr from rowdies and cliques and from expert athletes like Appleby who had flies in their eyes and would walk right over him with swaggering conceit and self-assurance every chance they got? Yossarian worried frequently about Orr. Who would shield him against animosity and deceit, against people with ambition and the embittered snobbery of the big shot's wife, against the squalid, corrupting indignities of the profit motive and the friendly neighborhood butcher with inferior meat? Orr was a happy and unsuspecting simpleton with a thick mass of wavy polychromatic hair parted down the center. He would be mere child's play for them. They would take his money, screw his wife and show no kindness to his children. Yossarian felt a flood of compassion sweep over him.

  Orr was an eccentric midget, a freakish, likable dwarf with a smutty mind and a thousand valuable skills that would keep him in a low income group all his life. He could use a soldering iron and hammer two boards together so that the wood did not split and the nails did not bend. He could drill holes. He had built a good deal more in the tent while Yossarian was away in the hospital. He had filed or chiseled a perfect channel in the cement so that the slender gasoline line was flush with the floor as it ran to the stove from the tank he had built outside on an elevated platform. He had constructed andirons for the fireplace out of excess bomb parts and had filled them with stout silver logs, and he had framed with stained wood the photographs of girls with big breasts he had torn out of cheesecake magazines and hung over the mantelpiece. Orr could open a can of paint. He could mix paint, thin paint, remove paint. He could chop wood and measure things with a ruler. He knew how to build fires. He could dig holes, and he had a real gift for bringing water for them both in cans and canteens from the tanks near the mess hall. He could engross himself in an inconsequential task for hours without growing restless or bored, as oblivious to fatigue as the stump of a tree, and almost as taciturn. He had an uncanny knowledge of wildlife and was not afraid of dogs or cats or beetles or moths, or of foods like scrod or tripe.

  Yossarian sighed drearily and began brooding about the rumored mission to Bologna. The valve Orr was dismantling was about the size of a thumb and contained thirty-seven separate parts, excluding the casing, many of them so minute that Orr was required to pinch them tightly between the tips of his fingernails as he placed them carefully on the floor in orderly, catalogued rows, never quickening his movements or slowing them down, never tiring, never pausing in his relentless, methodical, monotonous procedure unless it was to leer at Yossarian with maniacal mischief. Yossarian tried not to watch him. He counted the parts and thought he would go clear out of his mind. He turned away, shutting his eyes, but that was even worse, for now he had only the sounds, the tiny maddening, indefatigable, distinct clicks and rustles of hands and weightless parts. Orr was breathing rhythmically with a noise that was stertorous and repulsive. Yossarian clenched his fists and looked at the long bone-handled hunting knife hanging in a holster over the cot of the dead man in the tent. As soon as he thought of stabbing Orr, his tension eased. The idea of murdering Orr was so ridiculous that he began to consider it seriously with queer whimsy and fascination. He searched the nape of Orr's neck for the probable site of the medulla oblongata. Just the daintiest stick there would kill him and solve so many serious, agonizing problems for them both.

  'Does it hurt?' Orr asked at precisely that moment, as though by protective instinct.

  Yossarian eyed him closely. 'Does what hurt?'


  'Your leg,' said Orr with a strange, mysterious laugh. 'You still limp a little.'

  'It's just a habit, I guess,' said Yossarian, breathing again with relief. 'I'll probably get over it soon.' Orr rolled over sideways to the floor and came up on one knee, facing toward Yossarian. 'Do you remember,' he drawled reflectively, with an air of labored recollection, 'that girl who was hitting me on the head that day in Rome?' He chuckled at Yossarian's involuntary exclamation of tricked annoyance. 'I'll make a deal with you about that girl. I'll tell you why that girl was hitting me on the head with her shoe that day if you answer one question.'

  'What's the question?'

  'Did you ever screw Nately's girl?' Yossarian laughed with surprise. 'Me? No. Now tell me why that girl hit you with her shoe.'

  'That wasn't the question,' Orr informed him with victorious delight. 'That was just conversation. She acts like you screwed her.'

  'Well, I didn't. How does she act?'

  'She acts like she don't like you.'

  'She doesn't like anyone.'

  'She likes Captain Black,' Orr reminded.

  'That's because he treats her like dirt. Anyone can get a girl that way.'

  'She wears a slave bracelet on her leg with his name on it.'

  'He makes her wear it to needle Nately.'

  'She even gives him some of the money she gets from Nately.'

  'Listen, what do you want from me?'

  'Did you ever screw my girl?'

  'Your girl? Who the hell is your girl?'

  'The one who hit me over the head with her shoe.'

  'I've been with her a couple of times,' Yossarian admitted. 'Since when is she your girl? What are you getting at?'

  'She don't like you, either.'

  'What the hell do I care if she likes me or not? She likes me as much as she likes you.'

  'Did she ever hit you over the head with her shoe?'

  'Orr, I'm tired. Why don't you leave me alone?'

  'Tee-hee-hee. How about that skinny countess in Rome and her skinny daughter-in-law?' Orr persisted impishly with increasing zest. 'Did you ever screw them?'

  'Oh, how I wish I could,' sighed Yossarian honestly, imagining, at the mere question, the prurient, used, decaying feel in his petting hands of their teeny, pulpy buttocks and breasts.

  'They don't like you either,' commented Orr. 'They like Aarfy, and they like Nately, but they don't like you. Women just don't seem to like you. I think they think you're a bad influence.'

  'Women are crazy,' Yossarian answered, and waited grimly for what he knew was coming next.

  'How about that other girl of yours?' Orr asked with a pretense of pensive curiosity. 'The fat one? The bald one? You know, that fat bald one in Sicily with the turban who kept sweating all over us all night long? Is she crazy too?'

  'Didn't she like me either?'

  'How could you do it to a girl with no hair?'

  'How was I supposed to know she had no hair?'

  'I knew it,' Orr bragged. 'I knew it all the time.'

  'You knew she was bald?' Yossarian exclaimed in wonder.

  'No, I knew this valve wouldn't work if I left a part out,' Orr answered, glowing with cranberry-red elation because he had just duped Yossarian again. 'Will you please hand me that small composition gasket that rolled over there? It's right near your foot.'

  'No it isn't.'

  'Right here,' said Orr, and took hold of something invisible with the tips of his fingernails and held it up for Yossarian to see. 'Now I'll have to start all over again.'

  'I'll kill you if you do. I'll murder you right on the spot.'

  'Why don't you ever fly with me?' Orr asked suddenly, and looked straight into Yossarian's face for the first time. 'There, that's the question I want you to answer. Why don't you ever fly with me?' Yossarian turned away with intense shame and embarrassment. 'I told you why. They've got me flying lead bombardier most of the time.'

  'That's not why,' Orr said, shaking his head. 'You went to Piltchard and Wren after the first Avignon mission and told them you didn't ever want to fly with me. That's why, isn't it?' Yossarian felt his skin turn hot. 'No I didn't,' he lied.

  'Yes you did,' Orr insisted equably. 'You asked them not to assign you to any plane piloted by me, Dobbs or Huple because you didn't have confidence in us at the controls. And Piltchard and Wren said they couldn't make an exception of you because it wouldn't be fair to the men who did have to fly with us.'

  'So?' said Yossarian. 'It didn't make any difference then, did it?'

  'But they've never made you fly with me.' Orr, working on both knees again, was addressing Yossarian without bitterness or reproach, but with injured humility, which was infinitely more painful to observe, although he was still grinning and snickering, as though the situation were comic. 'You really ought to fly with me, you know. I'm a pretty good pilot, and I'd take care of you. I may get knocked down a lot, but that's not my fault, and nobody's ever been hurt in my plane. Yes, sir--if you had any brains, you know what you'd do? You'd go right to Piltchard and Wren and tell them you want to fly all your missions with me.' Yossarian leaned forward and peered closely into Orr's inscrutable mask of contradictory emotions. 'Are you trying to tell me something?'

  'Tee-hee-hee-hee,' Orr responded. 'I'm trying to tell you why that big girl with the shoe was hitting me on the head that day. But you just won't let me.'

  'Tell me.'

  'Will you fly with me?' Yossarian laughed and shook his head. 'You'll only get knocked down into the water again.' Orr did get knocked down into the water again when the rumored mission to Bologna was flown, and he landed his single-engine plane with a smashing jar on the choppy, windswept waves tossing and falling below the warlike black thunderclouds mobilizing overhead. He was late getting out of the plane and ended up alone in a raft that began drifting away from the men in the other raft and was out of sight by the time the Air-Sea Rescue launch came plowing up through the wind and splattering raindrops to take them aboard. Night was already falling by the time they were returned to the squadron. There was no word of Orr.

  'Don't worry,' reassured Kid Sampson, still wrapped in the heavy blankets and raincoat in which he had been swaddled on the boat by his rescuers. 'He's probably been picked up already if he didn't drown in that storm. It didn't last long. I bet he'll show up any minute.' Yossarian walked back to his tent to wait for Orr to show up any minute and lit a fire to make things warm for him. The stove worked perfectly, with a strong, robust blaze that could be raised or lowered by turning the tap Orr had finally finished repairing. A light rain was falling, drumming softly on the tent, the trees, the ground. Yossarian cooked a can of hot soup to have ready for Orr and ate it all himself as the time passed. He hard-boiled some eggs for Orr and ate those too. Then he ate a whole tin of Cheddar cheese from a package of K rations.

  Each time he caught himself worrying he made himself remember that Orr could do everything and broke into silent laughter at the picture of Orr in the raft as Sergeant Knight had described him, bent forward with a busy, preoccupied smile over the map and compass in his lap, stuffing one soaking-wet chocolate bar after another into his grinning, tittering mouth as he paddled away dutifully through the lightning, thunder and rain with the bright-blue useless toy oar, the fishing line with dried bait trailing out behind him. Yossarian really had no doubt about Orr's ability to survive. If fish could be caught with that silly fishing line, Orr would catch them, and if it was codfish he was after, then Orr would catch a codfish, even though no codfish had ever been caught in those waters before. Yossarian put another can of soup up to cook and ate that too when it was hot. Every time a car door slammed, he broke into a hopeful smile and turned expectantly toward the entrance, listening for footsteps. He knew that any moment Orr would come walking into the tent with big, glistening, rain-soaked eyes, cheeks and buck teeth, looking ludicrously like a jolly New England oysterman in a yellow oilskin rain hat and slicker numerous sizes too large for him and holding up proudly
for Yossarian's amusement a great dead codfish he had caught. But he didn't.

  Catch-22

  Peckem

  There was no word about Orr the next day, and Sergeant Whitcomb, with commendable dispatch and considerable hope, dropped a reminder in his tickler file to send a form letter over Colonel Cathcart's signature to Orr's next of kin when nine more days had elapsed. There was word from General Peckem's headquarters, though, and Yossarian was drawn to the crowd of officers and enlisted men in shorts and bathing trunks buzzing in grumpy confusion around the bulletin board just outside the orderly room.

  'What's so different about this Sunday, I want to know?' Hungry Joe was demanding vociferously of Chief White Halfoat. 'Why won't we have a parade this Sunday when we don't have a parade every Sunday? Huh?' Yossarian worked his way through to the front and let out a long, agonized groan when he read the terse announcement there: Due to circumstances beyond my control, there will be no big parade this Sunday afternoon.

  Colonel Scheisskopf Dobbs was right. They were indeed sending everyone overseas, even Lieutenant Scheisskopf, who had resisted the move with all the vigor and wisdom at his command and who reported for duty at General Peckem's office in a mood of grave discontent.

  General Peckem welcomed Colonel Scheisskopf with effusive charm and said he was delighted to have him. An additional colonel on his staff meant that he could now begin agitating for two additional majors, four additional captains, sixteen additional lieutenants and untold quantities of additional enlisted men, typewriters, desks, filing cabinets, automobiles and other substantial equipment and supplies that would contribute to the prestige of his position and increase his striking power in the war he had declared against General Dreedle. He now had two full colonels; General Dreedle had only five, and four of those were combat commanders. With almost no intriguing at all, General Peckem had executed a maneuver that would eventually double his strength. And General Dreedle was getting drunk more often. The future looked wonderful, and General Peckem contemplated his bright new colonel enchantedly with an effulgent smile.