Moving the bomb line did not fool the Germans, but it did fool Major ---de Coverley, who packed his musettebag, commandeered an airplane and, under the impression that Florence too had been captured by the Allies, hadhimself flown to that city to rent two apartments for the officers and the enlisted men in the squadron to use onrest leaves. He had still not returned by the time Yossarian jumped back outside Major Major’s office andwondered 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 angryshock of wild white hair that raged like a blizzard around his stern, patriarchal face. His duties as squadronexecutive officer did consist entirely, as both Doc Daneeka and Major Major had conjectured, of pitchinghorseshoes, kidnaping Italian laborers, and renting apartments for the enlisted men and officers to use on restleaves, and he excelled at all three.
Each time the fall of a city like Naples, Rome or Florence seemed imminent, Major ---de Coverley would packhis musette bag, commandeer an airplane and a pilot, and have himself flown away, accomplishing all thiswithout uttering a word, by the sheer force of his solemn, domineering visage and the peremptory gestures of hiswrinkled finger. A day or two after the city fell, he would be back with leases on two large and luxuriousapartments there, one for the officers and one for the enlisted men, both already staffed with competent, jollycooks and maids. A few days after that, newspapers would appear throughout the world with photographs of thefirst 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 infantrymenwith carbines went loping up along the sidewalks in the shelter of burning buildings or fell dead in doorways. Heseemed eternally indestructible as he sat there surrounded by danger, his features molded firmly into that samefierce, 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 Americanprisoners would ever supply any concrete information about the elderly white-haired officer with the gnarled andmenacing brow and blazing, powerful eyes who seemed to spearhead every important advance so fearlessly andsuccessfully. To American authorities his identity was equally perplexing; a whole regiment of crack C.I.D. menhad 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 hewas located.
In Rome, Major --- de Coverley had outdone himself with the apartments. For the officers, who arrived in groupsof four or five, there was an immense double room for each in a new white stone building, with three spaciousbathrooms with walls of shimmering aquamarine tile and one skinny maid named Michaela who tittered ateverything and kept the apartment in spotless order. On the landing below lived the obsequious owners. On thelanding 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 toremain 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 tohave the nude milk-white female bodies of both these beautiful rich black-haired good kids lying stretched out inbed erotically with him at the same time.
The enlisted men descended upon Rome in gangs of twelve or more with Gargantuan appetites and heavy cratesfilled with canned food for the women to cook and serve to them in the dining room of their own apartment onthe sixth floor of a red brick building with a clinking elevator. There was always more activity at the enlistedmen’s place. There were always more enlisted men, to begin with, and more women to cook and serve and sweepand scrub, and then there were always the gay and silly sensual young girls that Yossarian had found and broughtthere and those that the sleepy enlisted men returning to Pianosa after their exhausting seven-day debauch hadbrought there on their own and were leaving behind for whoever wanted them next. The girls had shelter andfood for as long as they wanted to stay. All they had to do in return was hump any of the men who asked them to,which seemed to make everything just about perfect for them.
Every fourth day or so Hungry Joe came crashing in like a man in torment, hoarse, wild, and frenetic, if he hadbeen unlucky enough to finish his missions again and was flying the courier ship. Most times he slept at theenlisted men’s apartment. Nobody was certain how many rooms Major ---de Coverley had rented, not even thestout black-bodiced woman in corsets on the first floor from whom he had rented them. They covered the wholetop floor, and Yossarian knew they extended down to the fifth floor as well, for it was in Snowden’s room on thefifth floor that he had finally found the maid in the lime-colored panties with a dust mop the day after Bologna,after Hungry Joe had discovered him in bed with Luciana at the officers’ apartment that same morning and hadgone running like a fiend for his camera.
The maid in the lime-colored panties was a cheerful, fat, obliging woman in her mid-thirties with squashy thighsand swaying hams in lime-colored panties that she was always rolling off for any man who wanted her. She hada plain broad face and was the most virtuous woman alive: she laid for everybody, regardless of race, creed,color or place of national origin, donating herself sociably as an act of hospitality, procrastinating not even forthe moment it might take to discard the cloth or broom or dust mop she was clutching at the time she wasgrabbed. Her allure stemmed from her accessibility; like Mt. Everest, she was there, and the men climbed on topof her each time they felt the urge. Yossarian was in love with the maid in the lime-colored panties because sheseemed to be the only woman left he could make love to without falling in love with. Even the bald-headed girlin Sicily still evoked in him strong sensations of pity, tenderness and regret.
Despite the multiple perils to which Major ---de Coverley exposed himself each time he rented apartments, hisonly injury had occurred, ironically enough, while he was leading the triumphal procession into the open city ofRome, where he was wounded in the eye by a flower fired at him from close range by a seedy, cackling,intoxicated old man, who, like Satan himself, had then bounded up on Major --- de Coverley’s car with maliciousglee, seized him roughly and contemptuously by his venerable white head and kissed him mockingly on eachcheek with a mouth reeking with sour fumes of wine, cheese and garlic, before dropping back into the joyouscelebrating throngs with a hollow, dry, excoriating laugh. Major ---de Coverley, a Spartan in adversity, did not flinch once throughout the whole hideous ordeal. And not until he had returned to Pianosa, his business in Romecompleted, did he seek medical attention for his wound.
He resolved to remain binocular and specified to Doc Daneeka that his eye patch be transparent so that he couldcontinue pitching horseshoes, kidnaping Italian laborers and renting apartments with unimpaired vision. To themen in the squadron, Major ---de Coverley was a colossus, although they never dared tell him so. The only onewho ever did dare address him was Milo Minderbinder, who approached the horseshoe-pitching pit with a hardboiledegg his second week in the squadron and held it aloft for Major ---de Coverley to see. Major ---deCoverley straightened with astonishment at Milo’s effrontery and concentrated upon him the full fury of hisstorming countenance with its rugged overhang of gullied forehead and huge crag of a humpbacked nose thatcame charging out of his face wrathfully like a Big Ten fullback. Milo stood his ground, taking shelter behind thehard-boiled egg raised protectively before his face like a magic charm. In time the gale began to subside, and thedanger passed.
“What is that?” Major --- de Coverley demanded at last.
“An egg,” Milo answered“What kind of an egg?” Major --- de Coverley demanded.
“A hard-boiled egg,” Milo answered.
“What kind of a hard-boiled egg?” Major --- de Coverley demanded.
“A fresh hard-boiled egg,” Milo answered.
“Where did the fresh egg come from?” Major --- de Coverley demanded.
“From a chicken,” Milo answered.
“Where is the chicken?” Major --- de Coverley demanded.
“The chicken is in Malta,” Milo answered.
“How many chickens are there in Malta?”
“Enough chickens to lay fresh eggs for every officer in the squadron at five cents apiece from the mess fund,”
Milo answered.
“I have a weakness for fresh eggs,” Major --- de Coverley confessed.
“If someone put a plane at my disposal, I could fly down there once a week in a squadron plane and bring backall the fresh eggs we need,” Milo answered. “After all, Malta’s not so far away.”
“Malta’s not so far away,” Major ---de Coverley observed. “You could probably fly down there once a week ina squadron plane and bring back all the fresh eggs we need.”
“Yes,” Milo agreed. “I suppose I could do that, if someone wanted me to and put a plane at my disposal.”
“I like my fresh eggs fried,” Major --- de Coverley remembered. “In fresh butter.”
“I can find all the fresh butter we need in Sicily for twenty-five cents a pound,” Milo answered. “Twenty-fivecents a pound for fresh butter is a good buy. There’s enough money in the mess fund for butter too, and we couldprobably sell some to the other squadrons at a profit and get back most of what we pay for our own.”
“What’s your name, son?” asked Major --- de Coverley.
“My name is Milo Minderbinder, sir. I am twenty-seven years old.”
“You’re a good mess officer, Milo.”
“I’m not the mess officer, sir.”
“You’re a good mess officer, Milo.”
“Thank you, sir. I’ll do everything in my power to be a good mess officer.”
“Bless you, my boy. Have a horseshoe.”
“Thank you, sir. What should I do with it?”
“Throw it.”
“Away?”
“At the peg there. Then pick it up and throw it at this peg. It’s a game, see? You get the horseshoe back.”
“Yes, sir. I see. How much are horseshoes selling for?”
The smell of a fresh egg snapping exotically in a pool of fresh butter carried a long way on the Mediterraneantrade winds and brought General Dreedle racing back with a voracious appetite, accompanied by his nurse, whoaccompanied him everywhere, and his son-in-law, Colonel Moodus. In the beginning General Dreedle devouredall his meals in Milo’s mess hall. Then the other three squadrons in Colonel Cathcart’s group turned their messhalls over to Milo and gave him an airplane and a pilot each so that he could buy fresh eggs and fresh butter forthem too. Milo’s planes shuttled back and forth seven days a week as every officer in the four squadrons begandevouring fresh eggs in an insatiable orgy of fresh-egg eating. General Dreedle devoured fresh eggs for breakfast, lunch and dinner—between meals he devoured more fresh eggs—until Milo located abundant sourcesof fresh veal, beef, duck, baby lamb chops, mushroom caps, broccoli, South African rock lobster tails, shrimp,hams, puddings, grapes, ice cream, strawberries and artichokes. There were three other bomb groups in GeneralDreedle’s combat wing, and they each jealously dispatched their own planes to Malta for fresh eggs, butdiscovered that fresh eggs were selling there for seven cents apiece. Since they could buy them from Milo forfive cents apiece, it made more sense to turn over their mess halls to his syndicate, too, and give him the planesand pilots needed to ferry in all the other good food he promised to supply as well.
Everyone was elated with this turn of events, most of all Colonel Cathcart, who was convinced he had won afeather in his cap. He greeted Milo jovially each time they met and, in an excess of contrite generosity,impulsively recommended Major Major for promotion. The recommendation was rejected at once at Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters by ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen, who scribbled a brusque, unsigned reminder that theArmy had only one Major Major Major Major and did not intend to lose him by promotion just to please ColonelCathcart. Colonel Cathcart was stung by the blunt rebuke and skulked guiltily about his room in smartingrepudiation. He blamed Major Major for this black eye and decided to bust him down to lieutenant that verysame day.
“They probably won’t let you,” Colonel Korn remarked with a condescending smile, savoring the situation. “Forprecisely the same reasons that they wouldn’t let you promote him. Besides, you’d certainly look foolish tryingto bust him down to lieutenant right after you tried to promote him to my rank.”
Colonel Cathcart felt hemmed in on every side. He had been much more successful in obtaining a medal forYossarian after the debacle of Ferrara, when the bridge spanning the Po was still standing undamaged seven daysafter Colonel Cathcart had volunteered to destroy it. Nine missions his men had flown there in six days, and thebridge was not demolished until the tenth mission on the seventh day, when Yossarian killed Kraft and his crewby taking his flight of six planes in over the target a second time. Yossarian came in carefully on his secondbomb run because he was brave then. He buried his head in his bombsight until his bombs were away; when helooked up, everything inside the ship was suffused in a weird orange glow. At first he thought that his own planewas on fire. Then he spied the plane with the burning engine directly above him and screamed to McWattthrough the intercom to turn left hard. A second later, the wing of Kraft’s plane blew off. The flaming wreckdropped, first the fuselage, then the spinning wing, while a shower of tiny metal fragments began tap dancing onthe roof of Yossarian’s own plane and the incessant cachung! cachung! cachung! of the flak was still thumpingall around him.
Back on the ground, every eye watched grimly as he walked in dull dejection up to Captain Black outside thegreen clapboard briefing room to make his intelligence report and learned that Colonel Cathcart and ColonelKorn were waiting to speak to him inside. Major Danby stood barring the door, waving everyone else away inashen silence. Yossarian was leaden with fatigue and longed to remove his sticky clothing. He stepped into thebriefing room with mixed emotions, uncertain how he was supposed to feel about Kraft and the others, for theyhad all died in the distance of a mute and secluded agony at a moment when he was up to his own ass in the samevile, excruciating dilemma of duty and damnation.
Colonel Cathcart, on the other hand, was all broken up by the event. “Twice?” he asked.
“I would have missed it the first time,” Yossarian replied softly, his face lowered.
Their voices echoed slightly in the long, narrow bungalow.
“But twice?” Colonel Cathcart repeated, in vivid disbelief.
“I would have missed it the first time,” Yossarian repeated.
“But Kraft would be alive.”
“And the bridge would still be up.”
“A trained bombardier is supposed to drop his bombs the first time,” Colonel Cathcart reminded him. “The otherfive bombardiers dropped their bombs the first time.”
“And missed the target,” Yossarian said. “We’d have had to go back there again.”
“And maybe you would have gotten it the first time then.”
“And maybe I wouldn’t have gotten it at all.”
“But maybe there wouldn’t have been any losses.”
“And maybe there would have been more losses, with the bridge still left standing. I thought you wanted thebridge destroyed.”
“Don’t contradict me,” Colonel Cathcart said. “We’re all in enough trouble.”
“I’m not contradicting you, sir.”
“Yes you are. Even that’s a contradiction.”
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry.”
Colonel Cathcart cracked his knuckles violently. Colonel Korn, a stocky, dark, flaccid man with a shapelesspaunch, sat completely relaxed on one of the benches in the front row, his hands clasped comfortably over thetop of his bald and swarthy head. His eyes were amused behind his glinting rimless spectacles.
“We’re trying to be perfectly objective about this,” he prompted Colonel Cathcart.
“We’re trying to be perfectly objective about this,” Colonel Cathcart said to Yossarian with the zeal of suddeninspiration. “It’s not that I’m being sentimental or anything. I don’t give a damn about the men or the airplane.
It’s just that it looks so lousy on the report. How am I going to cover up something like this in the report?”
“Why don’t you give me a medal?” Yossarian suggested timidly.
“For going around twice?”
“You gave one to Hungry Joe when he cracked up that airplane by mistake.”
Colonel Cathcart snickered ruefully. “You’ll be lucky if we don’t give you a court-martial.”
“But I got the bridge the second time around,” Yossarian protested. “I thought you wanted the bridge destroyed.”
“Oh, I don’t know what I wanted,” Colonel Cathcart cried out in exasperation. “Look, of course I wanted thebridge destroyed. That bridge has been a source of trouble to me ever since I decided to send you men out to getit. But why couldn’t you do it the first time?”
“I didn’t have enough time. My navigator wasn’t sure we had the right city.”
“The right city?” Colonel Cathcart was baffled. “Are you trying to blame it all on Aarfy now?”
“No, sir. It was my mistake for letting him distract me. All I’m trying to say is that I’m not infallible.”
“Nobody is infallible,” Colonel Cathcart said sharply, and then continued vaguely, with an afterthought:
“Nobody is indispensable, either.”
There was no rebuttal. Colonel Korn stretched sluggishly. “We’ve got to reach a decision,” he observed casuallyto Colonel Cathcart.
“We’ve got to reach a decision,” Colonel Cathcart said to Yossarian. “And it’s all your fault. Why did you haveto go around twice? Why couldn’t you drop your bombs the first time like all the others?”
“I would have missed the first time.”
“It seems to me that we’re going around twice,” Colonel Korn interrupted with a chuckle.
“But what are we going to do?” Colonel Cathcart exclaimed with distress. “The others are all waiting outside.”
“Why don’t we give him a medal?” Colonel Korn proposed.
“For going around twice? What can we give him a medal for?”
“For going around twice,” Colonel Korn answered with a reflective, self-satisfied smile. “After all, I suppose itdid take a lot of courage to go over that target a second time with no other planes around to divert the antiaircraft fire. And he did hit the bridge. You know, that might be the answer—to act boastfully about something we oughtto be ashamed of. That’s a trick that never seems to fail.”
“Do you think it will work?”
“I’m sure it will. And let’s promote him to captain, too, just to make certain.”
“Don’t you think that’s going a bit farther than we have to?”
“No, I don’t think so. It’s best to play safe. And a captain’s not much difference.”
“All right,” Colonel Cathcart decided. “We’ll give him a medal for being brave enough to go around over thetarget twice. And we’ll make him a captain, too.”
Colonel Korn reached for his hat.
“Exit smiling,” he joked, and put his arm around Yossarian’s shoulders as they stepped outside the door.