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“Catch-22” <strong>By</strong> <strong>Joseph</strong> Heller 168<br />
troops are pushing into German soil. The Russians have captured back all of Romania.<br />
Only yesterday the Greeks in the Eighth Army captured Rimini. The Germans are on the<br />
defensive everywhere!’ Doc Daneeka paused again and fortified himself with a huge<br />
breath for a piercing ejaculation of grief. ‘There’s no more Luftwaffe left!’ he wailed. He<br />
seemed ready to burst into tears. ‘The whole Gothic line is in danger of collapsing!’<br />
‘So?’ asked Yossarian. ‘What’s wrong?’<br />
‘What’s wrong?’ Doc Daneeka cried. ‘If something doesn’t happen soon, Germany<br />
may surrender. And then we’ll all be sent to the Pacific!’ Yossarian gawked at Doc<br />
Daneeka in grotesque dismay. ‘Are you crazy? Do you know what you’re saying?’<br />
‘Yeah, it’s easy for you to laugh,’ Doc Daneeka sneered.<br />
‘Who the hell is laughing?’<br />
‘At least you’ve got a chance. You’re in combat and might get killed. But what about<br />
me? I’ve got nothing to hope for.’<br />
‘You’re out of your goddam head!’ Yossarian shouted at him emphatically, seizing him<br />
by the shirt front. ‘Do you know that? Now keep your stupid mouth shut and listen to<br />
me.’ Doc Daneeka wrenched himself away. ‘Don’t you dare talk to me like that. I’m a<br />
licensed physician.’<br />
‘Then keep your stupid licensed physician’s mouth shut and listen to what they told me<br />
up at the hospital. I’m crazy. Did you know that?’<br />
‘So?’<br />
‘Really crazy.’<br />
‘So?’<br />
‘I’m nuts. Cuckoo. Don’t you understand? I’m off my rocker. They sent someone else<br />
home in my place by mistake. They’ve got a licensed psychiatrist up at the hospital who<br />
examined me, and that was his verdict. I’m really insane.’<br />
‘So?’<br />
‘So?’ Yossarian was puzzled by Doc Daneeka’s inability to comprehend. ‘Don’t you<br />
see what that means? Now you can take me off combat duty and send me home.<br />
They’re not going to send a crazy man out to be killed, are they?’<br />
‘Who else will go?’<br />
Dobbs<br />
McWatt went, and McWatt was not crazy. And so did Yossarian, still walking with a<br />
limp, and when Yossarian had gone two more times and then found himself menaced by<br />
the rumor of another mission to Bologna, he limped determinedly into Dobbs’s tent early<br />
one warm afternoon, put a finger to his mouth and said, ‘Shush!’<br />
‘What are you shushing him for?’ asked Kid Sampson, peeling a tangerine with his<br />
front teeth as he perused the dog-eared pages of a comic book. ‘He isn’t even saying<br />
anything.’<br />
‘Screw,’ said Yossarian to Kid Sampson, jerking his thumb back over his shoulder<br />
toward the entrance of the tent.<br />
Kid Sampson cocked his blond eyebrows discerningly and rose to co-operate. He<br />
whistled upward four times into his drooping yellow mustache and spurted away into the<br />
hills on the dented old green motorcycle he had purchased secondhand months before.<br />
Yossarian waited until the last faint bark of the motor had died away in the distance.<br />
Things inside the tent did not seem quite normal. The place was too neat. Dobbs was<br />
watching him curiously, smoking a fat cigar. Now that Yossarian had made up his mind<br />
to be brave, he was deathly afraid.<br />
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s kill Colonel Cathcart. We’ll do it together.’ Dobbs sprang<br />
forward off his cot with a look of wildest terror. ‘Shush!’ he roared. ‘Kill Colonel Cathcart?<br />
What are you talking about?’<br />
‘Be quiet, damn it,’ Yossarian snarled. ‘The whole island will hear. Have you still got<br />
that gun?’<br />
‘Are you crazy or something?’ shouted Dobbs. ‘Why should I want to kill Colonel
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