âCatch-22â By Joseph - Khamkoo

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“Catch-22” By Joseph Heller 86 kind of girls not to prod, and I never prod any nice girls. This one was a sweet kid. You could see her family had money. Why, I even got her to throw that ring of hers away right out the car window.’ Hungry Joe flew into the air with a screech of intolerable pain. ‘You did what?’ he screamed. ‘You did what?’ He began whaling away at Aarfy’s shoulders and arms with both fists, almost in tears. ‘I ought to kill you for what you did, you lousy bastard. He’s sinful, that’s what he is. He’s got a dirty mind, ain’t he? Ain’t he got a dirty mind?’ ‘The dirtiest,’ Yossarian agreed. ‘What are you fellows talking about?’ Aarfy asked with genuine puzzlement, tucking his face away protectively inside the cushioning insulation of his oval shoulders. ‘Aw, come on, Joe,’ he pleaded with a smile of mild discomfort. ‘Quit punching me, will you?’ But Hungry Joe would not quit punching until Yossarian picked him up and pushed him away toward his bedroom. Yossarian moved listlessly into his own room, undressed and went to sleep. A second later it was morning, and someone was shaking him. ‘What are you waking me up for?’ he whimpered. It was Michaela, the skinny maid with the merry disposition and homely sallow face, and she was waking him up because he had a visitor waiting just outside the door. Luciana! He could hardly believe it. And she was alone in the room with him after Michaela had departed, lovely, hale and statuesque, steaming and rippling with an irrepressible affectionate vitality even as she remained in one place and frowned at him irately. She stood like a youthful female colossus with her magnificent columnar legs apart on high white shoes with wedged heels, wearing a pretty green dress and swinging a large, flat white leather pocketbook, with which she cracked him hard across the face when he leaped out of bed to grab her. Yossarian staggered backward out of range in a daze, clutching his stinging cheek with bewilderment. ‘Pig!’ She spat out at him viciously, her nostrils flaring in a look of savage disdain. ‘Vive com’ un animale!’ With a fierce, guttural, scornful, disgusted oath, she strode across the room and threw open the three tall casement windows, letting inside an effulgent flood of sunlight and crisp fresh air that washed through the stuffy room like an invigorating tonic. She placed her pocketbook on a chair and began tidying the room, picking his things up from the floor and off the tops of the furniture, throwing his socks, handkerchief and underwear into an empty drawer of the dresser and hanging his shirt and trousers up in the closet. Yossarian ran out of the bedroom into the bathroom and brushed his teeth. He washed his hands and face and combed his hair. When he ran back, the room was in order and Luciana was almost undressed. Her expression was relaxed. She left her earrings on the dresser and padded barefoot to the bed wearing just a pink rayon chemise that came down to her hips. She glanced about the room prudently to make certain there was nothing she had overlooked in the way of neatness and then drew back the coverlet and stretched herself out luxuriously with an expression of feline expectation. She beckoned to him longingly, with a husky laugh. ‘Now,’ she announced in a whisper, holding both arms out to him eagerly. ‘Now I will let you sleep with me.’ She told him some lies about a single weekend in bed with a slaughtered fiancé in the Italian Army, and they all turned out to be true, for she cried, ‘finito!’ almost as soon as he started and wondered why he didn’t stop, until he had finitoed too and explained to her. He lit cigarettes for both of them. She was enchanted by the deep suntan covering his whole body. He wondered about the pink chemise that she would not remove. It was cut like a man’s undershirt, with narrow shoulder straps, and concealed the invisible scar on her back that she refused to let him see after he had made her tell him it was there. She grew tense as fine steel when he traced the mutilated contours with his fingertip from a pit in her shoulder blade almost to the base of her spine. He winced at the many tortured nights she had spent in the hospital, drugged or in pain, with the ubiquitous, ineradicable odors of ether, fecal matter and disinfectant, of human flesh mortified and decaying amid the white uniforms, the rubbersoled shoes, and the eerie night lights glowing dimly
“Catch-22” By Joseph Heller 87 until dawn in the corridors. She had been wounded in an air raid. ‘Dove?’ he asked, and he held his breath in suspense. ‘ Napoli.’ ‘Germans?’ ‘Americani.’ His heart cracked, and he fell in love. He wondered if she would marry him. ‘Tu sei pazzo,’ she told him with a pleasant laugh. ‘Why am I crazy?’ he asked. ‘Perchè non posso sposare.’ ‘Why can’t you get married?’ ‘Because I am not a virgin,’ she answered. ‘What has that got to do with it?’ ‘Who will marry me? No one wants a girl who is not a virgin.’ ‘I will. I’ll marry you.’ ‘Ma non posso sposarti.’ ‘Why can’t you marry me?’ ‘Perchè sei pazzo.’ ‘Why am I crazy?’ ‘Perchè vuoi sposarmi.’ Yossarian wrinkled his forehead with quizzical amusement. ‘You won’t marry me because I’m crazy, and you say I’m crazy because I want to marry you? Is that right?’ ‘Si.’ ‘Tu sei pazz’!’ he told her loudly. ‘Perchè?’ she shouted back at him indignantly, her unavoidable round breasts rising and falling in a saucy huff beneath the pink chemise as she sat up in bed indignantly. ‘Why am I crazy?’ ‘Because you won’t marry me.’ ‘Stupido!’ she shouted back at him, and smacked him loudly and flamboyantly on the chest with the back of her hand. ‘Non posso sposarti! Non capisci? Non posso sposarti.’ ‘Oh, sure, I understand. And why can’t you marry me?’ ‘Perchè sei pazzo!’ ‘And why am I crazy?’ ‘Perchè vuoi sposarmi.’ ‘Because I want to marry you. Carina, ti amo,’ he explained, and he drew her gently back down to the pillow. ‘Ti amo molto.’ ‘Tu sei pazzo,’ she murmured in reply, flattered. ‘Perchè?’ ‘Because you say you love me. How can you love a girl who is not a virgin?’ ‘Because I can’t marry you.’ She bolted right up again in a threatening rage. ‘Why can’t you marry me?’ she demanded, ready to clout him again if he gave an uncomplimentary reply. ‘Just because I am not a virgin?’ ‘No, no, darling. Because you’re crazy.’ She stared at him in blank resentment for a moment and then tossed her head back and roared appreciatively with hearty laughter. She gazed at him with new approval when she stopped, the lush, responsive tissues of her dark face turning darker still and blooming somnolently with a swelling and beautifying infusion of blood. Her eyes grew dim. He crushed out both their cigarettes, and they turned into each other wordlessly in an engrossing kiss just as Hungry Joe came meandering into the room without knocking to ask if Yossarian wanted to go out with him to look for girls. Hungry Joe stopped on a dime when he saw them and shot out of the room. Yossarian shot out of bed even faster and began shouting at Luciana to get dressed. The girl was dumbfounded. He pulled her roughly out of bed by her arm and flung her away toward her clothing, then raced for the door in time to slam it shut as Hungry Joe was running back in with his camera. Hungry Joe had his leg wedged in the door and would not pull it out. ‘Let me in!’ he begged urgently, wriggling and squirming maniacally. ‘Let me in!’ He
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