“Catch-22” By Joseph - Khamkoo

“Catch-22” By Joseph Heller 92
chat with him about more votes for the decent folk, opening each conversation with the
same unvarying greeting: ‘What do you say, fella? How you coming along?’ The rest of
the men avoided them both in their regulation maroon corduroy bathrobes and
unraveling flannel pajamas, wondering gloomily who the soldier in white was, why he
was there and what he was really like inside.
‘He’s all right, I tell you,’ the Texan would report back to them encouragingly after each
of his social visits.
‘Deep down inside he’s really a regular guy. He’s feeling a little shy and insecure now
because he doesn’t know anybody here and can’t talk. Why don’t you all just step right
up to him and introduce yourselves? He won’t hurt you.’
‘What the goddam hell are you talking about?’ Dunbar demanded. ‘Does he even
know what you’re talking about?’
‘Sure he knows what I’m talking about. He’s not stupid. There ain’t nothing wrong with
him.’
‘Can he hear you?’
‘Well, I don’t know if he can hear me or not, but I’m sure he knows what I’m talking
about.’
‘Does that hole over his mouth ever move?’
‘Now, what kind of a crazy question is that?’ the Texan asked uneasily.
‘How can you tell if he’s breathing if it never moves?’
‘How can you tell it’s a he?’
‘Does he have pads over his eyes underneath that bandage over his face?’
‘Does he ever wiggle his toes or move the tips of his fingers?’ The Texan backed
away in mounting confusion. ‘Now, what kind of a crazy question is that? You fellas
must all be crazy or something. Why don’t you just walk right up to him and get
acquainted? He’s a real nice guy, I tell you.’ The soldier in white was more like a stuffed
and sterilized mummy than a real nice guy. Nurse Duckett and Nurse Cramer kept him
spick-and-span. They brushed his bandages often with a whiskbroom and scrubbed the
plaster casts on his arms, legs, shoulders, chest and pelvis with soapy water. Working
with a round tin of metal polish, they waxed a dim gloss on the dull zinc pipe rising from
the cement on his groin. With damp dish towels they wiped the dust several times a day
from the slim black rubber tubes leading in and out of him to the two large stoppered
jars, one of them, hanging on a post beside his bed, dripping fluid into his arm
constantly through a slit in the bandages while the other, almost out of sight on the floor,
drained the fluid away through the zinc pipe rising from his groin. Both young nurses
polished the glass jars unceasingly. They were proud of their housework. The more
solicitous of the two was Nurse Cramer, a shapely, pretty, sexless girl with a wholesome
unattractive face. Nurse Cramer had a cute nose and a radiant, blooming complexion
dotted with fetching sprays of adorable freckles that Yossarian detested. She was
touched very deeply by the soldier in white. Her virtuous, pale-blue, saucerlike eyes
flooded with leviathan tears on unexpected occasions and made Yossarian mad.
‘How the hell do you know he’s even in there?’ he asked her.
‘Don’t you dare talk to me that way!’ she replied indignantly.
‘Well, how do you? You don’t even know if it’s really him.’
‘Who?’
‘Whoever’s supposed to be in all those bandages. You might really be weeping for
somebody else. How do you know he’s even alive?’
‘What a terrible thing to say!’ Nurse Cramer exclaimed. ‘Now, you get right into bed
and stop making jokes about him.’
‘I’m not making jokes. Anybody might be in there. For all we know, it might even be
Mudd.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Nurse Cramer pleaded with him in a quavering voice.
‘Maybe that’s where the dead man is.’
‘What dead man?’
‘I’ve got a dead man in my tent that nobody can throw out. His name is Mudd.’ Nurse