Catch-22

by Joseph Heller

  'Help!' he shrieked shrilly in a voice strangling in its own emotion, as the policemen carried him to the open doors in the rear of the ambulance and threw him inside. 'Police! Help! Police!' The doors were shut and bolted, and the ambulance raced away. There was a humorless irony in the ludicrous panic of the man screaming for help to the police while policemen were all around him. Yossarian smiled wryly at the futile and ridiculous cry for aid, then saw with a start that the words were ambiguous, realized with alarm that they were not, perhaps, intended as a call for police but as a heroic warning from the grave by a doomed friend to everyone who was not a policeman with a club and a gun and a mob of other policemen with clubs and guns to back him up. 'Help! Police!' the man had cried, and he could have been shouting of danger. Yossarian responded to the thought by slipping away stealthily from the police and almost tripped over the feet of a burly woman of forty hastening across the intersection guiltily, darting furtive, vindictive glances behind her toward a woman of eighty with thick, bandaged ankles doddering after her in a losing pursuit. The old woman was gasping for breath as she minced along and muttering to herself in distracted agitation. There was no mistaking the nature of the scene; it was a chase. The triumphant first woman was halfway across the wide avenue before the second woman reached the curb. The nasty, small, gloating smile with which she glanced back at the laboring old woman was both wicked and apprehensive. Yossarian knew he could help the troubled old woman if she would only cry out, knew he could spring forward and capture the sturdy first woman and hold her for the mob of policemen nearby if the second woman would only give him license with a shriek of distress. But the old woman passed by without even seeing him, mumbling in terrible, tragic vexation, and soon the first woman had vanished into the deepening layers of darkness and the old woman was left standing helplessly in the center of the thoroughfare, dazed, uncertain which way to proceed, alone. Yossarian tore his eyes from her and hurried away in shame because he had done nothing to assist her. He darted furtive, guilty glances back as he fled in defeat, afraid the old woman might now start following him, and he welcomed the concealing shelter of the drizzling, drifting, lightless, nearly opaque gloom. Mobs... mobs of policemen--everything but England was in the hands of mobs, mobs, mobs. Mobs with clubs were in control everywhere.

  The surface of the collar and shoulders of Yossarian's coat was soaked. His socks were wet and cold. The light on the next lamppost was out, too, the glass globe broken. Buildings and featureless shapes flowed by him noiselessly as though borne past immutably on the surface of some rank and timeless tide. A tall monk passed, his face buried entirely inside a coarse gray cowl, even the eyes hidden. Footsteps sloshed toward him steadily through a puddle, and he feared it would be another barefoot child. He brushed by a gaunt, cadaverous, tristful man in a black raincoat with a star-shaped scar in his cheek and a glossy mutilated depression the size of an egg in one temple. On squishing straw sandals, a young woman materialized with her whole face disfigured by a God-awful pink and piebald burn that started on her neck and stretched in a raw, corrugated mass up both cheeks past her eyes! Yossarian could not bear to look, and shuddered. No one would ever love her. His spirit was sick; he longed to lie down with some girl he could love who would soothe and excite him and put him to sleep. A mob with a club was waiting for him in Pianosa. The girls were all gone. The countess and her daughter-in-law were no longer good enough; he had grown too old for fun, he no longer had the time. Luciana was gone, dead, probably; if not yet, then soon enough. Aarfy's buxom trollop had vanished with her smutty cameo ring, and Nurse Duckett was ashamed of him because he had refused to fly more combat missions and would cause a scandal. The only girl he knew nearby was the plain maid in the officers' apartment, whom none of the men had ever slept with. Her name was Michaela, but the men called her filthy things in dulcet, ingratiating voices, and she giggled with childish joy because she understood no English and thought they were flattering her and making harmless jokes. Everything wild she watched them do filled her with enchanted delight. She was a happy, simple-minded, hard-working girl who could not read and was barely able to write her name. Her straight hair was the color of rotting straw. She had sallow skin and myopic eyes, and none of the men had ever slept with her because none of the men had ever wanted to, none but Aarfy, who had raped her once that same evening and had then held her prisoner in a clothes closet for almost two hours with his hand over her mouth until the civilian curfew sirens sounded and it was unlawful for her to be outside.

  Then he threw her out the window. Her dead body was still lying on the pavement when Yossarian arrived and pushed his way politely through the circle of solemn neighbors with dim lanterns, who glared with venom as they shrank away from him and pointed up bitterly toward the second-floor windows in their private, grim, accusing conversations. Yossarian's heart pounded with fright and horror at the pitiful, ominous, gory spectacle of the broken corpse. He ducked into the hallway and bolted up the stairs into the apartment, where he found Aarfy pacing about uneasily with a pompous, slightly uncomfortable smile. Aarfy seemed a bit unsettled as he fidgeted with his pipe and assured Yossarian that everything was going to be all right. There was nothing to worry about.

  'I only raped her once,' he explained.

  Yossarian was aghast. 'But you killed her, Aarfy! You killed her!'

  'Oh, I had to do that after I raped her,' Aarfy replied in his most condescending manner. 'I couldn't very well let her go around saying bad things about us, could I?'

  'But why did you have to touch her at all, you dumb bastard?' Yossarian shouted. 'Why couldn't you get yourself a girl off the street if you wanted one? The city is full of prostitutes.'

  'Oh, no, not me,' Aarfy bragged. 'I never paid for it in my life.'

  'Aarfy, are you insane?' Yossarian was almost speechless. 'You killed a girl. They're going to put you in jail!'

  'Oh, no,' Aarfy answered with a forced smile. 'Not me. They aren't going to put good old Aarfy in jail. Not for killing her.'

  'But you threw her out the window. She's lying dead in the street.'

  'She has no right to be there,' Aarfy answered. 'It's after curfew.'

  'Stupid! Don't you realize what you've done?' Yossarian wanted to grab Aarfy by his well-fed, caterpillar-soft shoulders and shake some sense into him. 'You've murdered a human being. They are going to put you in jail. They might even hang you!'

  'Oh, I hardly think they'll do that,' Aarfy replied with a jovial chuckle, although his symptoms of nervousness increased. He spilled tobacco crumbs unconsciously as his short fingers fumbled with the bowl of his pipe. 'No, sirree. Not to good old Aarfy.' He chortled again. 'She was only a servant girl. I hardly think they're going to make too much of a fuss over one poor Italian servant girl when so many thousands of lives are being lost every day. Do you?'

  'Listen!' Yossarian cried, almost in joy. He pricked up his ears and watched the blood drain from Aarfy's face as sirens mourned far away, police sirens, and then ascended almost instantaneously to a howling, strident, onrushing cacophony of overwhelming sound that seemed to crash into the room around them from every side. 'Aarfy, they're coming for you,' he said in a flood of compassion, shouting to be heard above the noise. 'They're coming to arrest you. Aarfy, don't you understand? You can't take the life of another human being and get away with it, even if she is just a poor servant girl. Don't you see? Can't you understand?'

  'Oh, no,' Aarfy insisted with a lame laugh and a weak smile. 'They're not coming to arrest me. Not good old Aarfy.' All at once he looked sick. He sank down on a chair in a trembling stupor, his stumpy, lax hands quaking in his lap. Cars skidded to a stop outside. Spotlights hit the windows immediately. Car doors slammed and police whistles screeched. Voices rose harshly. Aarfy was green. He kept shaking his head mechanically with a queer, numb smile and repeating in a weak, hollow monotone that they were not coming for him, not for good old Aarfy, no sirree, striving to convince himself that this was so even as heavy f
ootsteps raced up the stairs and pounded across the landing, even as fists beat on the door four times with a deafening, inexorable force. Then the door to the apartment flew open, and two large, tough, brawny M.P.s with icy eyes and firm, sinewy, unsmiling jaws entered quickly, strode across the room, and arrested Yossarian.

  They arrested Yossarian for being in Rome without a pass.

  They apologized to Aarfy for intruding and led Yossarian away between them, gripping him under each arm with fingers as hard as steel manacles. They said nothing at all to him on the way down. Two more tall M.P.s with clubs and hard white helmets were waiting outside at a closed car. They marched Yossarian into the back seat, and the car roared away and weaved through the rain and muddy fog to a police station. The M.P.s locked him up for the night in a cell with four stone walls. At dawn they gave him a pail for a latrine and drove him to the airport, where two more giant M.P.s with clubs and white helmets were waiting at a transport plane whose engines were already warming up when they arrived, the cylindrical green cowlings oozing quivering beads of condensation. None of the M.P.s said anything to each other either. They did not even nod. Yossarian had never seen such granite faces. The plane flew to Pianosa. Two more silent M.P.s were waiting at the landing strip. There were now eight, and they filed with precise, wordless discipline into two cars and sped on humming tires past the four squadron areas to the Group Headquarters building, where still two more M.P.s were waiting at the parking area. All ten tall, strong, purposeful, silent men towered around him as they turned toward the entrance. Their footsteps crunched in loud unison on the cindered ground. He had an impression of accelerating haste. He was terrified. Every one of the ten M.P.s seemed powerful enough to bash him to death with a single blow. They had only to press their massive, toughened, boulderous shoulders against him to crush all life from his body. There was nothing he could do to save himself. He could not even see which two were gripping him under the arms as they marched him rapidly between the two tight single-file columns they had formed. Their pace quickened, and he felt as though he were flying along with his feet off the ground as they trotted in resolute cadence up the wide marble staircase to the upper landing, where still two more inscrutable military policemen with hard faces were waiting to lead them all at an even faster pace down the long, cantilevered balcony overhanging the immense lobby. Their marching footsteps on the dull tile floor thundered like an awesome, quickening drum roll through the vacant center of the building as they moved with even greater speed and precision toward Colonel Cathcart's office, and violent winds of panic began blowing in Yossarian's ears when they turned him toward his doom inside the office, where Colonel Korn, his rump spreading comfortably on a corner of Colonel Cathcart's desk, sat waiting to greet him with a genial smile and said, 'We're sending you home.'

  Catch-22

  CATCH-22

  There was, of course, a catch.

  'Catch-22?' inquired Yossarian.

  'Of course,' Colonel Korn answered pleasantly, after he had chased the mighty guard of massive M.P.s out with an insouciant flick of his hand and a slightly contemptuous nod--most relaxed, as always, when he could be most cynical. His rimless square eyeglasses glinted with sly amusement as he gazed at Yossarian. 'After all, we can't simply send you home for refusing to fly more missions and keep the rest of the men here, can we? That would hardly be fair to them.'

  'You're goddam right!' Colonel Cathcart blurted out, lumbering back and forth gracelessly like a winded bull, puffing and pouting angrily. 'I'd like to tie him up hand and foot and throw him aboard a plane on every mission. That's what I'd like to do.' Colonel Korn motioned Colonel Cathcart to be silent and smiled at Yossarian. 'You know, you really have been making things terribly difficult for Colonel Cathcart,' he observed with flip good humor, as though the fact did not displease him at all. 'The men are unhappy and morale is beginning to deteriorate. And it's all your fault.'

  'It's your fault,' Yossarian argued, 'for raising the number of missions.'

  'No, it's your fault for refusing to fly them,' Colonel Korn retorted. 'The men were perfectly content to fly as many missions as we asked as long as they thought they had no alternative. Now you've given them hope, and they're unhappy. So the blame is all yours.'

  'Doesn't he know there's a war going on?' Colonel Cathcart, still stamping back and forth, demanded morosely without looking at Yossarian.

  'I'm quite sure he does,' Colonel Korn answered. 'That's probably why he refuses to fly them.'

  'Doesn't it make any difference to him?'

  'Will the knowledge that there's a war going on weaken your decision to refuse to participate in it?' Colonel Korn inquired with sarcastic seriousness, mocking Colonel Cathcart.

  'No, sir,' Yossarian replied, almost returning Colonel Korn's smile.

  'I was afraid of that,' Colonel Korn remarked with an elaborate sigh, locking his fingers together comfortably on top of his smooth, bald, broad, shiny brown head. 'You know, in all fairness, we really haven't treated you too badly, have we? We've fed you and paid you on time. We gave you a medal and even made you a captain.'

  'I never should have made him a captain,' Colonel Cathcart exclaimed bitterly. 'I should have given him a court-martial after he loused up that Ferrara mission and went around twice.'

  'I told you not to promote him,' said Colonel Korn, 'but you wouldn't listen to me.'

  'No you didn't. You told me to promote him, didn't you?'

  'I told you not to promote him. But you just wouldn't listen.'

  'I should have listened.'

  'You never listen to me,' Colonel Korn persisted with relish. 'That's the reason we're in this spot.'

  'All right, gee whiz. Stop rubbing it in, will you?' Colonel Cathcart burrowed his fists down deep inside his pockets and turned away in a slouch. 'Instead of picking on me, why don't you figure out what we're going to do about him?'

  'We're going to send him home, I'm afraid.' Colonel Korn was chuckling triumphantly when he turned away from Colonel Cathcart to face Yossarian. 'Yossarian, the war is over for you. We're going to send you home. You really don't deserve it, you know, which is one of the reasons I don't mind doing it. Since there's nothing else we can risk doing to you at this time, we've decided to return you to the States. We've worked out this little deal to--'

  'What kind of deal?' Yossarian demanded with defiant mistrust.

  Colonel Korn tossed his head back and laughed. 'Oh, a thoroughly despicable deal, make no mistake about that. It's absolutely revolting. But you'll accept it quickly enough.'

  'Don't be too sure.'

  'I haven't the slightest doubt you will, even though it stinks to high heaven. Oh, by the way. You haven't told any of the men you've refused to fly more missions, have you?'

  'No, sir,' Yossarian answered promptly.

  Colonel Korn nodded approvingly. 'That's good. I like the way you lie. You'll go far in this world if you ever acquire some decent ambition.'