“Catch-22” By Joseph - Khamkoo

“Catch-22” By Joseph Heller 53
trench and broke his nose. His temperature was still normal, but Gus and Wes made an
exception of him and sent him to the hospital in an ambulance.
Major Major had lied, and it was good. He was not really surprised that it was good, for
he had observed that people who did lie were, on the whole, more resourceful and
ambitious and successful than people who did not lie. Had he told the truth to the
second C.I.D. man, he would have found himself in trouble. Instead he had lied and he
was free to continue his work.
He became more circumspect in his work as a result of the visit from the second C.I.D.
man. He did all his signing with his left hand and only while wearing the dark glasses
and false mustache he had used unsuccessfully to help him begin playing basketball
again. As an additional precaution, he made a happy switch from Washington Irving to
John Milton. John Milton was supple and concise. Like Washington Irving, he could be
reversed with good effect whenever he grew monotonous. Furthermore, he enabled
Major Major to double his output, for John Milton was so much shorter than either his
own name or Washington Irving’s and took so much less time to write. John Milton
proved fruitful in still one more respect. He was versatile, and Major Major soon found
himself incorporating the signature in fragments of imaginary dialogues. Thus, typical
endorsements on the official documents might read, ‘John Milton is a sadist’ or ‘Have
you seen Milton, John?’ One signature of which he was especially proud read, ‘Is
anybody in the John, Milton?’ John Milton threw open whole new vistas filled with
charming, inexhaustible possibilities that promised to ward off monotony forever. Major
Major went back to Washington Irving when John Milton grew monotonous.
Major Major had bought the dark glasses and false mustache in Rome in a final, futile
attempt to save himself from the swampy degradation into which he was steadily
sinking. First there had been the awful humiliation of the Great Loyalty Oath Crusade,
when not one of the thirty or forty people circulating competitive loyalty oaths would
even allow him to sign. Then, just when that was blowing over, there was the matter of
Clevinger’s plane disappearing so mysteriously in thin air with every member of the
crew, and blame for the strange mishap centering balefully on him because he had
never signed any of the loyalty oaths.
The dark glasses had large magenta rims. The false black mustache was a
flamboyant organ-grinder’s, and he wore them both to the basketball game one day
when he felt he could endure his loneliness no longer. He affected an air of jaunty
familiarity as he sauntered to the court and prayed silently that he would not be
recognized. The others pretended not to recognize him, and he began to have fun. Just
as he finished congratulating himself on his innocent ruse he was bumped hard by one
of his opponents and knocked to his knees. Soon he was bumped hard again, and it
dawned on him that they did recognize him and that they were using his disguise as a
license to elbow, trip and maul him. They did not want him at all. And just as he did
realize this, the players on his team fused instinctively with the players on the other
team into a single, howling, bloodthirsty mob that descended upon him from all sides
with foul curses and swinging fists. They knocked him to the ground, kicked him while
he was on the ground, attacked him again after he had struggled blindly to his feet. He
covered his face with his hands and could not see. They swarmed all over each other in
their frenzied compulsion to bludgeon him, kick him, gouge him, trample him. He was
pummeled spinning to the edge of the ditch and sent slithering down on his head and
shoulders. At the bottom he found his footing, clambered up the other wall and
staggered away beneath the hail of hoots and stones with which they pelted him until he
lurched into shelter around a corner of the orderly room tent. His paramount concern
throughout the entire assault was to keep his dark glasses and false mustache in place
so that he might continue pretending he was somebody else and be spared the dreaded
necessity of having to confront them with his authority.
Back in his office, he wept; and when he finished weeping he washed the blood from
his mouth and nose, scrubbed the dirt from the abrasions on his cheek and forehead,
and summoned Sergeant Towser.