“Catch-22” By Joseph - Khamkoo

“Catch-22” By Joseph Heller 72
leaves. He had still not returned by the time Yossarian jumped back outside Major
Major’s office and wondered whom to appeal to next for help.
Major—de Coverley was a splendid, awe-inspiring, grave old man with a massive
leonine head and an angry shock of wild white hair that raged like a blizzard around his
stern, patriarchal face. His duties as squadron executive officer did consist entirely, as
both Doc Daneeka and Major Major had conjectured, of pitching horseshoes, kidnaping
Italian laborers, and renting apartments for the enlisted men and officers to use on rest
leaves, and he excelled at all three.
Each time the fall of a city like Naples, Rome or Florence seemed imminent, Major—
de Coverley would pack his musette bag, commandeer an airplane and a pilot, and
have himself flown away, accomplishing all this without uttering a word, by the sheer
force of his solemn, domineering visage and the peremptory gestures of his wrinkled
finger. A day or two after the city fell, he would be back with leases on two large and
luxurious apartments there, one for the officers and one for the enlisted men, both
already staffed with competent, jolly cooks and maids. A few days after that,
newspapers would appear throughout the world with photographs of the first American
soldiers bludgeoning their way into the shattered city through rubble and smoke.
Inevitably, Major—de Coverley was among them, seated straight as a ramrod in a jeep
he had obtained from somewhere, glancing neither right nor left as the artillery fire burst
about his invincible head and lithe young infantrymen with carbines went loping up along
the sidewalks in the shelter of burning buildings or fell dead in doorways. He seemed
eternally indestructible as he sat there surrounded by danger, his features molded firmly
into that same fierce, regal, just and forbidding countenance which was recognized and
revered by every man in the squadron.
To German intelligence, Major—de Coverley was a vexatious enigma; not one of the
hundreds of American prisoners would ever supply any concrete information about the
elderly white-haired officer with the gnarled and menacing brow and blazing, powerful
eyes who seemed to spearhead every important advance so fearlessly and
successfully. To American authorities his identity was equally perplexing; a whole
regiment of crack C.I.D. men had been thrown into the front lines to find out who he
was, while a battalion of combat-hardened public-relations officers stood on red alert
twenty-four hours a day with orders to begin publicizing him the moment he was located.
In Rome, Major—de Coverley had outdone himself with the apartments. For the
officers, who arrived in groups of four or five, there was an immense double room for
each in a new white stone building, with three spacious bathrooms with walls of
shimmering aquamarine tile and one skinny maid named Michaela who tittered at
everything and kept the apartment in spotless order. On the landing below lived the
obsequious owners. On the landing above lived the beautiful rich black-haired Countess
and her beautiful, rich black-haired daughter-in-law, both of whom would put out only for
Nately, who was too shy to want them, and for Aarfy, who was too stuffy to take them
and tried to dissuade them from ever putting out for anyone but their husbands, who had
chosen to remain in the north with the family’s business interests.
‘They’re really a couple of good kids,’ Aarfy confided earnestly to Yossarian, whose
recurring dream it was to have the nude milk-white female bodies of both these beautiful
rich black-haired good kids lying stretched out in bed erotically with him at the same
time.
The enlisted men descended upon Rome in gangs of twelve or more with Gargantuan
appetites and heavy crates filled with canned food for the women to cook and serve to
them in the dining room of their own apartment on the sixth floor of a red brick building
with a clinking elevator. There was always more activity at the enlisted men’s place.
There were always more enlisted men, to begin with, and more women to cook and
serve and sweep and scrub, and then there were always the gay and silly sensual
young girls that Yossarian had found and brought there and those that the sleepy
enlisted men returning to Pianosa after their exhausting seven-day debauch had
brought there on their own and were leaving behind for whoever wanted them next. The