“Catch-22” By Joseph - Khamkoo

“Catch-22” By Joseph Heller 215
‘They put Scheisskopf in charge of everything!’ Wintergreen was shrieking with rage
and panic. ‘You and your goddam memorandums! They’ve gone and transferred combat
operations to Special Services!’
‘Oh, no,’ moaned General Peckem. ‘Is that what did it? My memoranda? Is that what
made them put Scheisskopf in charge? Why didn’t they put me in charge?’
‘Because you weren’t in Special Services any more. You transferred out and left him
in charge. And do you know what he wants? Do you know what the bastard wants us all
to do?’
‘Sir, I think you’d better talk to General Scheisskopf,’ pleaded the sergeant nervously.
‘He insists on speaking to someone.’
‘Cargill, talk to Scheisskopf for me. I can’t do it. Find out what he wants.’ Colonel
Cargill listened to General Scheisskopf for a moment and went white as a sheet. ‘Oh,
my God!’ he cried, as the phone fell from his fingers. ‘Do you know what he wants? He
wants us to march. He wants everybody to march!’
Kid Sister
Yossarian marched backward with his gun on his hip and refused to fly any more
missions. He marched backward because he was continously spinning around as he
walked to make certain no one was sneaking up on him from behind. Every sound to his
rear was a warning, every person he passed a potential assassin. He kept his hand on
his gun butt constantly and smiled at no one but Hungry Joe. He told Captain Piltchard
and Captain Wren that he was through flying. Captain Piltchard and Captain Wren left
his name off the flight schedule for the next mission and reported the matter to Group
Headquarters.
Colonel Korn laughed cahnly. ‘What the devil do you mean, he won’t fly more
missions?’ he asked with a smile, as Colonel Cathcart crept away into a corner to brood
about the sinister import of the name Yossarian popping up to plague him once again.
‘Why won’t he?’
‘His friend Nately was killed in the crash over Spezia. Maybe that’s why.’
‘Who does he think he is—Achilles?’ Colonel Korn was pleased with the simile and
filed a mental reminder to repeat it the next time he found himself in General Peckem’s
presence. ‘He has to fly more missions. He has no choice. Go back and tell him you’ll
report the matter to us if he doesn’t change his mind.’
‘We already did tell him that, sir. It made no difference.’
‘What does Major Major say?’
‘We never see Major Major. He seems to have disappeared.’
‘I wish we could disappear him!’ Colonel Cathcart blurted out from the corner
peevishly. ‘The way they did that fellow Dunbar.’
‘Oh, there are plenty of other ways we can handle this one,’ Colonel Korn assured him
confidently, and continued to Piltchard and Wren, ‘Let’s begin with the kindest. Send him
to Rome for a rest for a few days. Maybe this fellow’s death really did hurt him a bit.’
Nately’s death, in fact, almost killed Yossarian too, for when he broke the news to
Nately’s whore in Rome she uttered a piercing, heartbroken shriek and tried to stab him
to death with a potato peeler.
‘Bruto!’ she howled at him in hysterical fury as he bent her arm up around behind her
back and twisted gradually until the potato peeler dropped from her grasp. ‘Bruto! Bruto!’
She lashed at him swiftly with the long-nailed fingers of her free hand and raked open
his cheek. She spat in his face viciously.
‘What’s the matter?’ he screamed in stinging pain and bewilderment, flinging her away
from him all the way across the room to the wall. ‘What do you want from me?’ She flew
back at him with both fists flailing and bloodied his mouth with a solid punch before he
was able to grab her wrists and hold her still. Her hair tossed wildly. Tears were
streaming in single torrents from her flashing, hate-filled eyes as she struggled against
him fiercely in an irrational frenzy of maddened might, snarling and cursing savagely