“Catch-22” By Joseph - Khamkoo

“Catch-22” By Joseph Heller 84
expensive, and the aisles were overflowing with great streams of flushed and merry
proprietors, all stout and balding. The bustling interior radiated with enormous, engulfing
waves of fun and warmth.
Yossarian got a tremendous kick out of the rude gusto with which Luciana ignored him
completely while she shoveled away her whole meal with both hands. She ate like a
horse until the last plate was clean, and then she placed her silverware down with an air
of conclusion and settled back lazily in her chair with a dreamy and congested look of
sated gluttony. She drew a deep, smiling, contented breath and regarded him amorously
with a melting gaze.
‘Okay, Joe,’ she purred, her glowing dark eyes drowsy and grateful. ‘Now I will let you
sleep with me.’
‘My name is Yossarian.’
‘Okay, Yossarian,’ she answered with a soft repentant laugh. ‘Now I will let you sleep
with me.’
‘Who asked you?’ said Yossarian.
Luciana was stunned. ‘You don’t want to sleep with me?’ Yossarian nodded
emphatically, laughing, and shot his hand up under her dress. The girl came to life with
a horrified start. She jerked her legs away from him instantly, whipping her bottom
around. Blushing with alarm and embarrassment, she pushed her skirt back down with a
number of prim, sidelong glances about the restaurant.
‘Now I will let you sleep with me,’ she explained cautiously in a manner of
apprehensive indulgence. ‘But not now.’
‘I know. When we get back to my room.’ The girl shook her head, eyeing him
mistrustfully and keeping her knees pressed together. ‘No, now I must go home to my
mamma, because my mamma does not like me to dance with soldiers or let them take
me to dinner, and she will be very angry with me if I do not come home now. But I will let
you write down for me where you live. And tomorrow morning I will come to your room
for ficky-fick before I go to my work at the French office. Capisci?’
‘Bullshit!’ Yossarian exclaimed with angry disappointment.
‘Cosa vuol dire bullshit?’ Luciana inquired with a blank look.
Yossarian broke into loud laughter. He answered her finally in a tone of sympathetic
good humor. ‘It means that I want to escort you now to wherever the hell I have to take
you next so that I can rush back to that night club before Aarfy leaves with that
wonderful tomato he’s got without giving me a chance to ask about an aunt or friend she
must have who’s just like her.’
‘Come?’
‘Subito, subito,’ he taunted her tenderly. ‘Mamma is waiting. Remember?’
‘Si, si. Mamma.’ Yossarian let the girl drag him through the lovely Roman spring night
for almost a mile until they reached a chaotic bus depot honking with horns, blazing with
red and yellow lights and echoing with the snarling vituperations of unshaven bus
drivers pouring loathsome, hair-raising curses out at each other, at their passengers and
at the strolling, unconcerned knots of pedestrians clogging their paths, who ignored
them until they were bumped by the buses and began shouting curses back. Luciana
vanished aboard one of the diminutive green vehicles, and Yossarian hurried as fast as
he could all the way back to the cabaret and the bleary-eyed bleached blonde in the
open orange satin blouse. She seemed infatuated with Aarfy, but he prayed intensely for
her luscious aunt as he ran, or for a luscious girl friend, sister, cousin, or mother who
was just as libidinous and depraved. She would have been perfect for Yossarian, a
debauched, coarse, vulgar, amoral, appetizing slattern whom he had longed for and
idolized for months. She was a real find. She paid for her own drinks, and she had an
automobile, an apartment and a salmon-colored cameo ring that drove Hungry Joe
clean out of his senses with its exquisitely carved figures of a naked boy and girl on a
rock. Hungry Joe snorted and pranced and pawed at the floor in salivating lust and
groveling need, but the girl would not sell him the ring, even though he offered her all
the money in all their pockets and his complicated black camera thrown in. She was not