“Catch-22” By Joseph - Khamkoo

“Catch-22” By Joseph Heller 218
directly overhead. Glancing backward up the stair well, he spied Nately’s whore sitting in
a heap on one of the steps, weeping with her face in both hands, while her pagan,
irrepressible kid sister hung dangerously over the banister shouting ‘Bruto! Bruto!’ down
at him happily and brandished her bread knife at him as though it were an exciting new
toy she was eager to use.
Yossarian escaped, but kept looking back over his shoulder anxiously as he retreated
through the street. People stared at him strangely, making him more apprehensive. He
walked in nervous haste, wondering what there was in his appearance that caught
everyone’s attention. When he touched his hand to a sore spot on his forehead, his
fingers turned gooey with blood, and he understood. He dabbed his face and neck with
a handkerchief. Wherever it pressed, he picked up new red smudges. He was bleeding
everywhere. He hurried into the Red Cross building and down the two steep flights of
white marble stairs to the men’s washroom, where he cleansed and nursed his
innumerable visible wounds with cold water and soap and straightened his shirt collar
and combed his hair. He had never seen a face so badly bruised and scratched as the
one still blinking back at him in the mirror with a dazed and startled uneasiness. What on
earth had she wanted from him?
When he left the men’s room, Nately’s whore was waiting outside in ambush. She was
crouched against the wall near the bottom of the staircase and came pouncing down
upon him like a hawk with a glittering silver steak knife in her fist. He broke the brunt of
her assault with his upraised elbow and punched her neatly on the jaw. Her eyes rolled.
He caught her before she dropped and sat her down gently. Then he ran up the steps
and out of the building and spent the next three hours hunting through the city for
Hungry Joe so that he could get away from Rome before she could find him again. He
did not feel really safe until the plane had taken off. When they landed in Pianosa,
Nately’s whore, disguised in a mechanic’s green overalls, was waiting with her steak
knife exactly where the plane stopped, and all that saved him as she stabbed at his
chest in her leather-soled high-heeled shoes was the gravel underfoot that made her
feet roll out from under her. Yossarian, astounded, hauled her up into the plane and held
her motionless on the floor in a double armlock while Hungry Joe radioed the control
tower for permission to return to Rome. At the airport in Rome, Yossarian dumped her
out of the plane on the taxi strip, and Hungry Joe took right off for Pianosa again without
even cutting his engines. Scarcely breathing, Yossarian scrutinized every figure warily
as he and Hungry Joe walked back through the squadron toward their tents. Hungry Joe
eyed him steadily with a funny expression.
‘Are you sure you didn’t imagine the whole thing?’ Hungry Joe inquired hesitantly after
a while.
‘Imagine it? You were right there with me, weren’t you? You just flew her back to
Rome.’
‘Maybe I imagined the whole thing, too. Why does she want to kill you for?’
‘She never did like me. Maybe it’s because I broke his nose, or maybe it’s because I
was the only one in sight she could hate when she got the news. Do you think she’ll
come back?’ Yossarian went to the officers’ club that night and stayed very late. He kept
a leery eye out for Nately’s whore as he approached his tent. He stopped when he saw
her hiding in the bushes around the side, gripping a huge carving knife and all dressed
up to look like a Pianosan farmer. Yossarian tiptoed around the back noiselessly and
seized her from behind.
‘Caramba!’ she exclaimed in a rage, and resisted like a wildcat as he dragged her
inside the tent and hurled her down on the floor.
‘Hey, what’s going on?’ queried one of his roommates drowsily.
‘Hold her till I get back,’ Yossarian ordered, yanking him out of bed on top of her and
running out. ‘Hold her!’
‘Let me kill him and I’ll ficky-fick you all,’ she offered.
The other roommates leaped out of their cots when they saw it was a girl and tried to
make her ficky-fick them all first as Yossarian ran to get Hungry Joe, who was sleeping