“Catch-22” By Joseph - Khamkoo

“Catch-22” By Joseph Heller 120
‘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.
‘Get word to the office right away to kill that directive I just issued ordering the men to
wear neckties on the combat missions,’ Colonel Cathcart whispered to Colonel Korn
urgently out of the corner of his mouth.
‘I told you not to do it,’ Colonel Korn snickered. ‘But you just wouldn’t listen to me.’
‘Shhhh!’ Colonel Cathcart cautioned. ‘Goddammit, Korn, what did you do to my back?’
Colonel Korn snickered again.
General Dreedle’s nurse always followed General Dreedle everywhere he went, even
into the briefing room just before the mission to Avignon, where she stood with her
asinine smile at the side of the platform and bloomed like a fertile oasis at General
Dreedle’s shoulder in her pink-and-green uniform. Yossarian looked at her and fell in
love, desperately. His spirits sank, leaving him empty inside and numb. He sat gazing in
clammy want at her full red lips and dimpled cheeks as he listened to Major Danby
describe in a monotonous, didactic male drone the heavy concentrations of flak awaiting
them at Avignon, and he moaned in deep despair suddenly at the thought that he might
never see again this lovely woman to whom he had never spoken a word and whom he
now loved so pathetically. He throbbed and ached with sorrow, fear and desire as he
stared at her; she was so beautiful. He worshiped the ground she stood on. He licked
his parched, thirsting lips with a sticky tongue and moaned in misery again, loudly
enough this time to attract the startled, searching glances of the men sitting around him
on the rows of crude wooden benches in their chocolate-colored coveralls and stitched
white parachute harnesses.
Nately turned to him quickly with alarm. ‘What is it?’ he whispered. ‘What’s the
matter?’ Yossarian did not hear him. He was sick with lust and mesmerized with regret.
General Dreedle’s nurse was only a little chubby, and his senses were stuffed to
congestion with the yellow radiance of her hair and the unfelt pressure of her soft short
fingers, with the rounded, untasted wealth of her nubile breasts in her Army-pink shirt
that was opened wide at the throat and with the rolling, ripened, triangular confluences
of her belly and thighs in her tight, slick forest-green gabardine officer’s pants. He drank
her in insatiably from head to painted toenail. He never wanted to lose her.
‘Oooooooooooooh,’ he moaned again, and this time the whole room rippled at his
quavering, drawn-out cry. A wave of startled uneasiness broke over the officers on the
dais, and even Major Danby, who had begun synchronizing the watches, was distracted
momentarily as he counted out the seconds and almost had to begin again. Nately
followed Yossarian’s transfixed gaze down the long frame auditorium until he came to
General Dreedle’s nurse. He blanched with trepidation when he guessed what was
troubling Yossarian.
‘Cut it out, will you?’ Nately warned in a fierce whisper.
‘Ooooooooooooooooooooh,’ Yossarian moaned a fourth time, this time loudly enough
for everyone to hear him distinctly.
‘Are you crazy?’ Nately hissed vehemently. ‘You’ll get into trouble.’
‘Ooooooooooooooooooooh,’ Dunbar answered Yossarian from the opposite end of the
room.
Nately recognized Dunbar’s voice. The situation was now out of control, and he turned
away with a small moan. ‘Ooh.’