“Catch-22” By Joseph - Khamkoo

“Catch-22” By Joseph Heller 18
report to Colonel Cathcart. Under Colonel Korn’s rule, the only people permitted to ask
questions were those who never did. Soon the only people attending were those who
never asked questions, and the sessions were discontinued altogether, since Clevinger,
the corporal and Colonel Korn agreed that it was neither possible nor necessary to
educate people who never questioned anything.
Colonel Cathcart and Lieutenant Colonel Korn lived and worked in the Group
Headquarters building, as did all the members of the headquarters staff, with the
exception of the chaplain. The Group Headquarters building was an enormous, windy,
antiquated structure built of powdery red stone and banging plumbing. Behind the
building was the modern skeet-shooting range that had been constructed by Colonel
Cathcart for the exclusive recreation of the officers at Group and at which every officer
and enlisted man on combat status now, thanks to General Dreedle, had to spend a
minimum of eight hours a month.
Yossarian shot skeet, but never hit any. Appleby shot skeet and never missed.
Yossarian was as bad at shooting skeet as he was at gambling. He could never win
money gambling either. Even when he cheated he couldn’t win, because the people he
cheated against were always better at cheating too. These were two disappointments to
which he had resigned himself: he would never be a skeet shooter, and he would never
make money.
‘It takes brains not to make money,’ Colonel Cargill wrote in one of the homiletic
memoranda he regularly prepared for circulation over General Peckem’s signature. ‘Any
fool can make money these days and most of them do. But what about people with
talent and brains? Name, for example, one poet who makes money.’
‘T. S. Eliot,’ ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen said in his mail-sorting cubicle at Twenty-seventh
Air Force Headquarters, and slammed down the telephone without identifying himself.
Colonel Cargill, in Rome, was perplexed.
‘Who was it?’ asked General Peckem.
‘I don’t know,’ Colonel Cargill replied.
‘What did he want?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, what did he say?’
‘"T. S. Eliot",’ Colonel Cargill informed him.
‘What’s that?’
‘"T. S. Eliot",’ Colonel Cargill repeated.
‘Just "T. S. —"‘
‘Yes, sir. That’s all he said. Just "T. S. Eliot."‘
‘I wonder what it means,’ General Peckem reflected. Colonel Cargill wondered, too.
‘T. S. Eliot,’ General Peckem mused.
‘T. S. Eliot,’ Colonel Cargill echoed with the same funereal puzzlement.
General Peckem roused himself after a moment with an unctuous and benignant
smile. His expression was shrewd and sophisticated. His eyes gleamed maliciously.
‘Have someone get me General Dreedle,’ he requested Colonel Cargill. ‘Don’t let him
know who’s calling.’ Colonel Cargill handed him the phone.
‘T. S. Eliot,’ General Peckem said, and hung up.
‘Who was it?’ asked Colonel Moodus.
General Dreedle, in Corsica, did not reply. Colonel Moodus was General Dreedle’s
son-in-law, and General Dreedle, at the insistence of his wife and against his own better
judgment, had taken him into the military business. General Dreedle gazed at Colonel
Moodus with level hatred. He detested the very sight of his son-in-law, who was his aide
and therefore in constant attendance upon him. He had opposed his daughter’s
marriage to Colonel Moodus because he disliked attending weddings. Wearing a
menacing and preoccupied scowl, General Dreedle moved to the full-length mirror in his
office and stared at his stocky reflection. He had a grizzled, broad-browed head with
iron-gray tufts over his eyes and a blunt and belligerent jaw. He brooded in ponderous
speculation over the cryptic message he had just received. Slowly his face softened with