“Catch-22” By Joseph - Khamkoo

“Catch-22” By Joseph Heller 131
of a deep sleep just after twelve and shoved a partly peeled banana toward him.
Yossarian choked back a sob.
‘Taste it,’ Milo urged, following Yossarian’s writhing face around with the banana
insistently.
‘ Milo, you bastard,’ moaned Yossarian, ‘I’ve got to get some sleep.’
‘Eat it and tell me if it’s good,’ Milo persevered. ‘Don’t tell Orr I gave it to you. I charged
him two piasters for his.’ Yossarian ate the banana submissively and closed his eyes
after telling Milo it was good, but Milo shook him awake again and instructed him to get
dressed as quickly as he could, because they were leaving at once for Pianosa.
‘You and Orr have to load the bananas into the plane right away,’ he explained. ‘The
man said to watch out for spiders while you’re handling the bunches.’
‘ Milo, can’t we wait until morning?’ Yossarian pleaded. ‘I’ve got to get some sleep.’
‘They’re ripening very quickly,’ answered Milo, ‘and we don’t have a minute to lose.
Just think how happy the men back at the squadron will be when they get these
bananas.’ But the men back at the squadron never even saw any of the bananas, for it
was a seller’s market for bananas in Istanbul and a buyer’s market in Beirut for the
caraway seeds Milo rushed with to Bengasi after selling the bananas, and when they
raced back into Pianosa breathlessly six days later at the conclusion of Orr’s rest leave,
it was with a load of best white eggs from Sicily that Milo said were from Egypt and sold
to his mess halls for only four cents apiece so that all the commanding officers in his
syndicate would implore him to speed right back to Cairo for more bunches of green red
bananas to sell in Turkey for the caraway seeds in demand in Bengasi. And everybody
had a share.
Nately’s Old Man
The only one back in the squadron who did see any of Milo’s red bananas was Aarfy,
who picked up two from an influential fraternity brother of his in the Quartermaster Corps
when the bananas ripened and began streaming into Italy through normal black-market
channels and who was in the officer’s apartment with Yossarian the evening Nately
finally found his whore again after so many fruitless weeks of mournful searching and
lured her back to the apartment with two girl friends by promising them thirty dollars
each.
‘Thirty dollars each?’ remarked Aarfy slowly, poking and patting each of the three
strapping girls skeptically with the air of a grudging connoisseur. ‘Thirty dollars is a lot of
money for pieces like these. Besides, I never paid for it in my life.’
‘I’m not asking you to pay for it,’ Nately assured him quickly. ‘I’ll pay for them all. I just
want you guys to take the other two. Won’t you help me out?’ Aarfy smirked
complacently and shook his soft round head. ‘Nobody has to pay for it for good old
Aarfy. I can get all I want any time I want it. I’m just not in the mood right now.’
‘Why don’t you just pay all three and send the other two away?’ Yossarian suggested.
‘Because then mine will be angry with me for making her work for her money,’ Nately
replied with an anxious look at his girl, who was glowering at him restlessly and starting
to mutter. ‘She says that if I really like her I’d send her away and go to bed with one of
the others.’
‘I have a better idea,’ boasted Aarfy. ‘Why don’t we keep the three of them here until
after the curfew and then threaten to push them out into the street to be arrested unless
they give us all their money? We can even threaten to push them out the window.’
‘Aarfy!’ Nately was aghast.
‘I was only trying to help,’ said Aarfy sheepishly. Aarfy was always trying to help
Nately because Nately’s father was rich and prominent and in an excellent position to
help Aarfy after the war. ‘Gee whiz,’ he defended himself querulously. ‘Back in school
we were always doing things like that. I remember one day we tricked these two dumb
high-school girls from town into the fraternity house and made them put out for all the
fellows there who wanted them by threatening to call up their parents and say they were