“Catch-22” By Joseph - Khamkoo

“Catch-22” By Joseph Heller 229
before the second woman reached the curb. The nasty, small, gloating smile with which
she glanced back at the laboring old woman was both wicked and apprehensive.
Yossarian knew he could help the troubled old woman if she would only cry out, knew
he could spring forward and capture the sturdy first woman and hold her for the mob of
policemen nearby if the second woman would only give him license with a shriek of
distress. But the old woman passed by without even seeing him, mumbling in terrible,
tragic vexation, and soon the first woman had vanished into the deepening layers of
darkness and the old woman was left standing helplessly in the center of the
thoroughfare, dazed, uncertain which way to proceed, alone. Yossarian tore his eyes
from her and hurried away in shame because he had done nothing to assist her. He
darted furtive, guilty glances back as he fled in defeat, afraid the old woman might now
start following him, and he welcomed the concealing shelter of the drizzling, drifting,
lightless, nearly opaque gloom. Mobs… mobs of policemen—everything but England
was in the hands of mobs, mobs, mobs. Mobs with clubs were in control everywhere.
The surface of the collar and shoulders of Yossarian’s coat was soaked. His socks
were wet and cold. The light on the next lamppost was out, too, the glass globe broken.
Buildings and featureless shapes flowed by him noiselessly as though borne past
immutably on the surface of some rank and timeless tide. A tall monk passed, his face
buried entirely inside a coarse gray cowl, even the eyes hidden. Footsteps sloshed
toward him steadily through a puddle, and he feared it would be another barefoot child.
He brushed by a gaunt, cadaverous, tristful man in a black raincoat with a star-shaped
scar in his cheek and a glossy mutilated depression the size of an egg in one temple.
On squishing straw sandals, a young woman materialized with her whole face disfigured
by a God-awful pink and piebald burn that started on her neck and stretched in a raw,
corrugated mass up both cheeks past her eyes! Yossarian could not bear to look, and
shuddered. No one would ever love her. His spirit was sick; he longed to lie down with
some girl he could love who would soothe and excite him and put him to sleep. A mob
with a club was waiting for him in Pianosa. The girls were all gone. The countess and
her daughter-in-law were no longer good enough; he had grown too old for fun, he no
longer had the time. Luciana was gone, dead, probably; if not yet, then soon enough.
Aarfy’s buxom trollop had vanished with her smutty cameo ring, and Nurse Duckett was
ashamed of him because he had refused to fly more combat missions and would cause
a scandal. The only girl he knew nearby was the plain maid in the officers’ apartment,
whom none of the men had ever slept with. Her name was Michaela, but the men called
her filthy things in dulcet, ingratiating voices, and she giggled with childish joy because
she understood no English and thought they were flattering her and making harmless
jokes. Everything wild she watched them do filled her with enchanted delight. She was a
happy, simple-minded, hard-working girl who could not read and was barely able to
write her name. Her straight hair was the color of rotting straw. She had sallow skin and
myopic eyes, and none of the men had ever slept with her because none of the men
had ever wanted to, none but Aarfy, who had raped her once that same evening and
had then held her prisoner in a clothes closet for almost two hours with his hand over
her mouth until the civilian curfew sirens sounded and it was unlawful for her to be
outside.
Then he threw her out the window. Her dead body was still lying on the pavement
when Yossarian arrived and pushed his way politely through the circle of solemn
neighbors with dim lanterns, who glared with venom as they shrank away from him and
pointed up bitterly toward the second-floor windows in their private, grim, accusing
conversations. Yossarian’s heart pounded with fright and horror at the pitiful, ominous,
gory spectacle of the broken corpse. He ducked into the hallway and bolted up the stairs
into the apartment, where he found Aarfy pacing about uneasily with a pompous, slightly
uncomfortable smile. Aarfy seemed a bit unsettled as he fidgeted with his pipe and
assured Yossarian that everything was going to be all right. There was nothing to worry
about.
‘I only raped her once,’ he explained.