“Catch-22” By Joseph - Khamkoo

“Catch-22” By Joseph Heller 148
It was obvious to the chaplain now that he was not particularly well suited to his work,
and he often speculated whether he might not be happier serving in some other branch
of the service, as a private in the infantry or field artillery, perhaps, or even as a
paratrooper. He had no real friends. Before meeting Yossarian, there was no one in the
group with whom he felt at ease, and he was hardly at ease with Yossarian, whose
frequent rash and insubordinate outbursts kept him almost constantly on edge and in an
ambiguous state of enjoyable trepidation. The chaplain felt safe when he was at the
officers’ club with Yossarian and Dunbar, and even with just Nately and McWatt. When
he sat with them he had no need to sit with anyone else; his problem of where to sit was
solved, and he was protected against the undesired company of all those fellow officers
who invariably welcomed him with excessive cordiality when he approached and waited
uncomfortably for him to go away. He made so many people uneasy. Everyone was
always very friendly toward him, and no one was ever very nice; everyone spoke to him,
and no one ever said anything. Yossarian and Dunbar were much more relaxed, and the
chaplain was hardly uncomfortable with them at all. They even defended him the night
Colonel Cathcart tried to throw him out of the officers’ club again, Yossarian rising
truculently to intervene and Nately shouting out, ‘Yossarian!’ to restrain him. Colonel
Cathcart turned white as a sheet at the sound of Yossarian’s name, and, to everyone’s
amazement, retreated in horrified disorder until he bumped into General Dreedle, who
elbowed him away with annoyance and ordered him right back to order the chaplain to
start coming into the officers’ club every night again.
The chaplain had almost as much trouble keeping track of his status at the officers’
club as he had remembering at which of the ten mess halls in the group he was
scheduled to eat his next meal. He would just as soon have remained kicked out of the
officers’ club, had it not been for the pleasure he was now finding there with his new
companions. If the chaplain did not go to the officers’ club at night, there was no place
else he could go. He would pass the time at Yossarian’s and Dunbar’s table with a shy,
reticent smile, seldom speaking unless addressed, a glass of thick sweet wine almost
untasted before him as he toyed unfamiliarly with the tiny corncob pipe that he affected
selfconsciously and occasionally stuffed with tobacco and smoked. He enjoyed listening
to Nately, whose maudlin, bittersweet lamentations mirrored much of his own romantic
desolation and never failed to evoke in him resurgent tides of longing for his wife and
children. The chaplain would encourage Nately with nods of comprehension or assent,
amused by his candor and immaturity. Nately did not glory too immodestly that his girl
was a prostitute, and the chaplain’s awareness stemmed mainly from Captain Black,
who never slouched past their table without a broad wink at the chaplain and some
tasteless, wounding gibe about her to Nately. The chaplain did not approve of Captain
Black and found it difficult not to wish him evil.
No one, not even Nately, seemed really to appreciate that he, Chaplain Robert Oliver
Shipman, was not just a chaplain but a human being, that he could have a charming,
passionate, pretty wife whom he loved almost insanely and three small blue-eyed
children with strange, forgotten faces who would grow up someday to regard him as a
freak and who might never forgive him for all the social embarrassment his vocation
would cause them. Why couldn’t anybody understand that he was not really a freak but
a normal, lonely adult trying to lead a normal, lonely adult life? If they pricked him, didn’t
he bleed? And if he was tickled, didn’t he laugh? It seemed never to have occurred to
them that he, just as they, had eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses and affections,
that he was wounded by the same kind of weapons they were, warmed and cooled by
the same breezes and fed by the same kind of food, although, he was forced to
concede, in a different mess hall for each successive meal. The only person who did
seem to realize he had feelings was Corporal Whitcomb, who had just managed to
bruise them all by going over his head to Colonel Cathcart with his proposal for sending
form letters of condolence home to the families of men killed or wounded in combat.
The chaplain’s wife was the one thing in the world he could be certain of, and it would
have been sufficient, if only he had been left to live his life out with just her and the