“Catch-22” By Joseph - Khamkoo

“Catch-22” By Joseph Heller 197
‘Si, è molto pazzo,’ echoed her kid sister.
‘Then make her keep her clothes on if you don’t want us to see her,’ argued Hungry
Joe. ‘What the hell do you want from us?’
‘She won’t listen to me,’ Nately confessed sheepishly. ‘So from now on you’ll all have
to shut your eyes or look in the other direction when she comes in that way. Okay?’
‘Madonn’!’ cried his girl in exasperation, and stamped out of the room.
‘Madonn’!’ cried her kid sister, and stamped out behind her.
‘Lui è pazzo,’ Yossarian observed good-naturedly. ‘I certainly have to admit it.’
‘Hey, you crazy or something?’ Hungry Joe demanded of Nately. ‘The next thing you
know you’ll be trying to make her give up hustling.’
‘From now on,’ Nately said to his girl, ‘I forbid you to go out hustling.’
‘Perchè?’ she inquired curiously.
‘Perchè?’ he screamed with amazement. ‘Because it’s not nice, that’s why!’
‘Perchè no?’
‘Because it just isn’t!’ Nately insisted. ‘It just isn’t right for a nice girl like you to go
looking for other men to sleep with. I’ll give you all the money you need, so you won’t
have to do it any more.’
‘And what will I do all day instead?’
‘Do?’ said Nately. ‘You’ll do what all your friends do.’
‘My friends go looking for men to sleep with.’
‘Then get new friends! I don’t even want you to associate with girls like that, anyway.
Prostitution is bad! Everybody knows that, even him.’ He turned with confidence to the
experienced old man. ‘Am I right?’
‘You’re wrong,’ answered the old man. ‘Prostitution gives her an opportunity to meet
people. It provides fresh air and wholesome exercise, and it keeps her out of trouble.’
‘From now on,’ Nately declared sternly to his girl friend, ‘I forbid you to have anything
to do with that wicked old man.’
‘Va fongul!’ his girl replied, rolling her harassed eyes up toward the ceiling. ‘What does
he want from me?’ she implored, shaking her fists. ‘Lasciami!’ she told him in menacing
entreaty. ‘Stupido! If you think my friends are so bad, go tell your friends not to ficky-fick
all the time with my friends!’
‘From now on,’ Nately told his friends, ‘I think you fellows ought to stop running around
with her friends and settle down.’
‘Madonn’!’ cried his friends, rolling their harassed eyes up toward the ceiling.
Nately had gone clear out of his mind. He wanted them all to fall in love right away and
get married. Dunbar could marry Orr’s whore, and Yossarian could fall in love with
Nurse Duckett or anyone else he liked. After the war they could all work for Nately’s
father and bring up their children in the same suburb. Nately saw it all very clearly. Love
had transmogrified him into a romantic idiot, and they drove him away back into the
bedroom to wrangle with his girl over Captain Black. She agreed not to go to bed with
Captain Black again or give him any more of Nately’s money, but she would not budge
an inch on her friendship with the ugly, ill-kempt, dissipated, filthy-minded old man, who
witnessed Nately’s flowering love affair with insulting derision and would not admit that
Congress was the greatest deliberative body in the whole world.
‘From now on,’ Nately ordered his girl firmly, ‘I absolutely forbid you even to speak to
that disgusting old man.’
‘Again the old man?’ cried the girl in wailing confusion. ‘Perchè no?’
‘He doesn’t like the House of Representatives.’
‘Mamma mia! What’s the matter with you?’
‘È pazzo,’ observed her kid sister philosophically. ‘That’s what’s the matter
with him.’
‘Si,’ the older girl agreed readily, tearing at her long brown hair with both hands. ‘Lui
è pazzo.’ But she missed Nately when he was away and was furious with
Yossarian when he punched Nately in the face with all his might and knocked him into
the hospital with a broken nose.