By the time of the mission to Bologna, Yossarian was brave enough not to go around over the target even once,and when he found himself aloft finally in the nose of Kid Sampson’s plane, he pressed in the button of his throatmike and asked,“Well? What’s wrong with the plane?”
Kid Sampson let out a shriek. “Is something wrong with the plane? What’s the matter?”
Kid Sampson’s cry turned Yossarian to ice. “Is something the matter?” he yelled in horror. “Are we bailing out?”
“I don’t know!” Kid Sampson shot back in anguish, wailing excitedly. “Someone said we’re bailing out! Who isthis, anyway? Who is this?”
“This is Yossarian in the nose! Yossarian in the nose. I heard you say there was something the matter. Didn’t yousay there was something the matter?”
“I thought you said there was something wrong. Everything seems okay. Everything is all right.”
Yossarian’s heart sank. Something was terribly wrong if everything was all right and they had no excuse for turning back. He hesitated gravely.
“I can’t hear you,” he said.
“I said everything is all right.”
The sun was blinding white on the porcelain-blue water below and on the flashing edges of the other airplanes.
Yossarian took hold of the colored wires leading into the jackbox of the intercom system and tore them loose.
“I still can’t hear you,” he said.
He heard nothing. Slowly he collected his map case and his three flak suits and crawled back to the maincompartment. Nately, sitting stiffly in the co-pilot’s seat, spied him through the corner of his eye as he steppedup on the flight deck behind Kid Sampson. He smiled at Yossarian wanly, looking frail and exceptionally youngand bashful in the bulky dungeon of his earphones, hat, throat mike, flak suit and parachute. Yossarian bent closeto Kid Sampson’s ear.
“I still can’t hear you,” he shouted above the even drone of the engines.
Kid Sampson glanced back at him with surprise. Kid Sampson had an angular, comical face with archedeyebrows and a scrawny blond mustache.
“What?” he called out over his shoulder.
“I still can’t hear you,” Yossarian repeated.
“You’ll have to talk louder,” Kid Sampson said. “I still can’t hear you.”
“I said I still can’t hear you!” Yossarian yelled.
“I can’t help it,” Kid Sampson yelled back at him. “I’m shouting as loud as I can.”
“I couldn’t hear you over my intercom,” Yossarian bellowed in mounting helplessness. “You’ll have to turnback.”
“For an intercom?” asked Kid Sampson incredulously.
“Turn back,” said Yossarian, “before I break your head.”
Kid Sampson looked for moral support toward Nately, who stared away from him pointedly. Yossarianoutranked them both. Kid Sampson resisted doubtfully for another moment and then capitulated eagerly with atriumphant whoop.
“That’s just fine with me,” he announced gladly, and blew out a shrill series of whistles up into his mustache.
“Yes sirree, that’s just fine with old Kid Sampson.” He whistled again and shouted over the intercom, “Now hearthis, my little chickadees. This is Admiral Kid Sampson talking. This is Admiral Kid Sampson squawking, thepride of the Queen’s marines. Yessiree. We’re turning back, boys, by crackee, we’re turning back!”
Nately ripped off his hat and earphones in one jubilant sweep and began rocking back and forth happily like ahandsome child in a high chair. Sergeant Knight came plummeting down from the top gun turret and beganpounding them all on the back with delirious enthusiasm. Kid Sampson turned the plane away from theformation in a wide, graceful arc and headed toward the airfield. When Yossarian plugged his headset into one ofthe auxiliary jackboxes, the two gunners in the rear section of the plane were both singing “La Cucaracha.”
Back at the field, the party fizzled out abruptly. An uneasy silence replaced it, and Yossarian was sober and self-conscious as he climbed down from the plane and took his place in the jeep that was already waiting for them.
None of the men spoke at all on the drive back through the heavy, mesmerizing quiet blanketing mountains, seaand forests. The feeling of desolation persisted when they turned off the road at the squadron. Yossarian got outof the car last. After a minute, Yossarian and a gentle warm wind were the only things stirring in the hauntingtranquillity that hung like a drug over the vacated tents. The squadron stood insensate, bereft of everythinghuman but Doc Daneeka, who roosted dolorously like a shivering turkey buzzard beside the closed door of themedical tent, his stuffed nose jabbing away in thirsting futility at the hazy sunlight streaming down around him.
Yossarian knew Doc Daneeka would not go swimming with him. Doc Daneeka would never go swimmingagain; a person could swoon or suffer a mild coronary occlusion in an inch or two of water and drown to death,be carried out to sea by an undertow, or made vulnerable to poliomyelitis or meningococcus infection throughchilling or over-exertion. The threat of Bologna to others had instilled in Doc Daneeka an even more poignantsolicitude for his own safety. At night now, he heard burglars.
Through the lavender gloom clouding the entrance of the operations tent, Yossarian glimpsed Chief WhiteHalfoat, diligently embezzling whiskey rations, forging the signatures of nondrinkers and pouring off the alcoholwith which he was poisoning himself into separate bottles rapidly in order to steal as much as he could beforeCaptain Black roused himself with recollection and came hurrying over indolently to steal the rest himself.
The jeep started up again softly. Kid Sampson, Nately and the others wandered apart in a noiseless eddy ofmotion and were sucked away into the cloying yellow stillness. The jeep vanished with a cough. Yossarian wasalone in a ponderous, primeval lull in which everything green looked black and everything else was imbued withthe color of pus. The breeze rustled leaves in a dry and diaphanous distance. He was restless, scared and sleepy.
The sockets of his eyes felt grimy with exhaustion. Wearily he moved inside the parachute tent with its longtable of smoothed wood, a nagging bitch of a doubt burrowing painlessly inside a conscience that felt perfectlyclear. He left his flak suit and parachute there and crossed back past the water wagon to the intelligence tent toreturn his map case to Captain Black, who sat drowsing in his chair with his skinny long legs up on his desk andinquired with indifferent curiosity why Yossarian’s plane had turned back. Yossarian ignored him. He set themap down on the counter and walked out.
Back in his own tent, he squirmed out of his parachute harness and then out of his clothes. Orr was in Rome, dueback that same afternoon from the rest leave he had won by ditching his plane in the waters off Genoa.
Nately would already be packing to replace him, entranced to find himself still alive and undoubtedly impatientto resume his wasted and heartbreaking courtship of his prostitute in Rome. When Yossarian was undressed, hesat down on his cot to rest. He felt much better as soon as he was naked. He never felt comfortable in clothes. Ina little while he put fresh undershorts back on and set out for the beach in his moccasins, a khaki-colored bathtowel draped over his shoulders.
The path from the squadron led him around a mysterious gun emplacement in the woods; two of the threeenlisted men stationed there lay sleeping on the circle of sand bags and the third sat eating a purple pomegranate,biting off large mouthfuls between his churning jaws and spewing the ground roughage out away from him intothe bushes. When he bit, red juice ran out of his mouth. Yossarian padded ahead into the forest again, caressinghis bare, tingling belly adoringly from time to time as though to reassure himself it was all still there. He rolled apiece of lint out of his navel. Along the ground suddenly, on both sides of the path, he saw dozens of newmushrooms the rain had spawned poking their nodular fingers up through the clammy earth like lifeless stalks offlesh, sprouting in such necrotic profusion everywhere he looked that they seemed to be proliferating right beforehis eyes. There were thousands of them swarming as far back into the underbrush as he could see, and theyappeared to swell in size and multiply in number as he spied them. He hurried away from them with a shiver ofeerie alarm and did not slacken his pace until the soil crumbled to dry sand beneath his feet and they had beenleft behind. He glanced back apprehensively, half expecting to find the limp white things crawling after him insightless pursuit or snaking up through the treetops in a writhing and ungovernable mutative mass.
The beach was deserted. The only sounds were hushed ones, the bloated gurgle of the stream, the respiratinghum of the tall grass and shrubs behind him, the apathetic moaning of the dumb, translucent waves. The surf wasalways small, the water clear and cool. Yossarian left his things on the sand and moved through the knee-highwaves until he was completely immersed. On the other side of the sea, a bumpy sliver of dark land lay wrappedin mist, almost invisible. He swam languorously out to the raft, held on a moment, and swam languorously backto where he could stand on the sand bar. He submerged himself head first into the green water several times untilhe felt clean and wide-awake and then stretched himself out face down in the sand and slept until the planesreturning from Bologna were almost overhead and the great, cumulative rumble of their many engines camecrashing in through his slumber in an earth-shattering roar.
He woke up blinking with a slight pain in his head and opened his eyes upon a world boiling in chaos in whicheverything was in proper order. He gasped in utter amazement at the fantastic sight of the twelve flights of planesorganized calmly into exact formation. The scene was too unexpected to be true. There were no planes spurtingahead with wounded, none lagging behind with damage. No distress flares smoked in the sky. No ship wasmissing but his own. For an instant he was paralyzed with a sensation of madness. Then he understood, andalmost wept at the irony. The explanation was simple: clouds had covered the target before the planes couldbomb it, and the mission to Bologna was still to be flown.
He was wrong. There had been no clouds. Bologna had been bombed. Bologna was a milk run. There had beenno flak there at all.