Yossarian was going absent without official leave with Milo, who, as the plane cruised toward Rome, shook hishead reproachfully and, with pious lips pulsed, informed Yossarian in ecclesiastical tones that he was ashamed ofhim. Yossarian nodded. Yossarian was making an uncouth spectacle of himself by walking around backwardwith his gun on his hip and refusing to fly more combat missions, Milo said. Yossarian nodded. It was disloyal tohis squadron and embarrassing to his superiors. He was placing Milo in a very uncomfortable position, too.
Yossarian nodded again. The men were starting to grumble. It was not fair for Yossarian to think only of his ownsafety while men like Milo, Colonel Cathcart, Colonel Korn and ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen were willing to doeverything they could to win the war. The men with seventy missions were starring to grumble because they hadto fly eighty, and there was a danger some of them might put on guns and begin walking around backward, too.
Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian’s fault. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing histraditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.
Yossarian kept nodding in the co-pilot’s seat and tried not to listen as Milo prattled on. Nately’s whore was onhis mind, as were Kraft and Orr and Nately and Dunbar, and Kid Sampson and McWatt, and all the poor andstupid and diseased people he had seen in Italy, Egypt and North Africa and knew about in other areas of theworld, and Snowden and Nately’s whore’s kid sister were on his conscience, too. Yossarian thought he knewwhy Nately’s whore held him responsible for Nately’s death and wanted to kill him. Why the hell shouldn’t she?
It was a man’s world, and she and everyone younger had every right to blame him and everyone older for everyunnatural tragedy that befell them; just as she, even in her grief, was to blame for every man-made misery thatlanded on her kid sister and on all other children behind her. Someone had to do something sometime. Everyvictim was a culprit, every culprit a victim, and somebody had to stand up sometime to try to break the lousychain of inherited habit that was imperiling them all. In parts of Africa little boys were still stolen away by adultslave traders and sold for money to men who disemboweled them and ate them. Yossarian marveled that childrencould suffer such barbaric sacrifice without evincing the slightest hint of fear or pain. He took it for granted thatthey did submit so stoically. If not, he reasoned, the custom would certainly have died, for no craving for wealthor immortality could be so great, he felt, as to subsist on the sorrow of children.
He was rocking the boat, Milo said, and Yossarian nodded once more. He was not a good member of the team,Milo said. Yossarian nodded and listened to Milo tell him that the decent thing to do if he did not like the wayColonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn were running the group was go to Russia, instead of stirring up trouble.
Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn had both been very good to Yossarian, Milo said; hadn’t they given him amedal after the last mission to Ferrara and promoted him to captain? Yossarian nodded. Didn’t they feed him andgive him his pay every month? Yossarian nodded again. Milo was sure they would be charitable if he went tothem to apologize and recant and promise to fly eighty missions. Yossarian said he would think it over, and heldhis breath and prayed for a safe landing as Milo dropped his wheels and glided in toward the runway. It wasfunny how he had really come to detest flying.
Rome was in ruins, he saw, when the plane was down. The airdrome had been bombed eight months before, andknobby slabs of white stone rubble had been bulldozed into flat-topped heaps on both sides of the entrancethrough the wire fence surrounding the field. The Colosseum was a dilapidated shell, and the Arch ofConstantine had fallen. Nately’s whore’s apartment was a shambles. The girls were gone, and the only one therewas the old woman. The windows in the apartment had been smashed. She was bundled up in sweaters and skirtsand wore a dark shawl about her head. She sat on a wooden chair near an electric hot plate, her arms folded,boiling water in a battered aluminum pot. She was talking aloud to herself when Yossarian entered and beganmoaning as soon as she saw him.
“Gone,” she moaned before he could even inquire. Holding her elbows, she rocked back and forth mournfully onher creaking chair. “Gone.”
“Who?”
“All. All the poor young girls.”
“Where?”
“Away. Chased away into the street. All of them gone. All the poor young girls.”
“Chased away by who? Who did it?”
“The mean tall soldiers with the hard white hats and clubs. And by our carabinieri. They came with their clubsand chased them away. They would not even let them take their coats. The poor things. They just chased themaway into the cold.”
“Did they arrest them?”
“They chased them away. They just chased them away.”
“Then why did they do it if they didn’t arrest them?”
“I don’t know,” sobbed the old woman. “I don’t know. Who will take care of me? Who will take care of me nowthat all the poor young girls are gone? Who will take care of me?”
“There must have been a reason,” Yossarian persisted, pounding his fist into his hand. “They couldn’t just bargein here and chase everyone out.”
“No reason,” wailed the old woman. “No reason.”
“What right did they have?”
“Catch-22.”
“What?” Yossarian froze in his tracks with fear and alarm and felt his whole body begin to tingle. “What did yousay?”
“Catch-22” the old woman repeated, rocking her head up and down. “Catch-22. Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can’t stop them from doing.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Yossarian shouted at her in bewildered, furious protest. “How did youknow it was Catch-22? Who the hell told you it was Catch-22?”
“The soldiers with the hard white hats and clubs. The girls were crying. ‘Did we do anything wrong?’ they said.
The men said no and pushed them away out the door with the ends of their clubs. ‘Then why are you chasing usout?’ the girls said. ‘Catch-22,’ the men said. ‘What right do you have?’ the girls said. ‘Catch-22,’ the men said.
All they kept saying was ‘Catch-22, Catch-22.’ What does it mean, Catch-22? What is Catch-22?”
“Didn’t they show it to you?” Yossarian demanded, stamping about in anger and distress. “Didn’t you even makethem read it?”
“They don’t have to show us Catch-22,” the old woman answered. “The law says they don’t have to.”
“What law says they don’t have to?”
“Catch-22.”
“Oh, God damn!” Yossarian exclaimed bitterly. “I bet it wasn’t even really there.” He stopped walking andglanced about the room disconsolately. “Where’s the old man?”
“Gone,” mourned the old woman.
“Gone?”
“Dead,” the old woman told him, nodding in emphatic lament, pointing to her head with the flat of her hand.
“Something broke in here. One minute he was living, one minute he was dead.”
“But he can’t be dead!” Yossarian cried, ready to argue insistently. But of course he knew it was true, knew itwas logical and true; once again the old man had marched along with the majority.
Yossarian turned away and trudged through the apartment with a gloomy scowl, peering with pessimisticcuriosity into all the rooms. Everything made of glass had been smashed by the men with the clubs. Torn drapesand bedding lay dumped on the floor. Chairs, tables and dressers had been overturned. Everything breakable hadbeen broken. The destruction was total. No wild vandals could have been more thorough. Every window wassmashed, and darkness poured like inky clouds into each room through the shattered panes. Yossarian couldimagine the heavy, crashing footfalls of the tall M.P.s in the hard white hats. He could picture the fiery andmalicious exhilaration with which they had made their wreckage, and their sanctimonious, ruthless sense of rightand dedication. All the poor young girls were gone. Everyone was gone but the weeping old woman in the bulkybrown and gray sweaters and black head shawl, and soon she too would be gone.
“Gone,” she grieved, when he walked back in, before he could even speak. “Who will take care of me now?”
Yossarian ignored the question. “Nately’s girl friend—did anyone hear from her?” he asked.
“Gone.”
“I know she’s gone. But did anyone hear from her? Does anyone know where she is?”
“Gone.”
“The little sister. What happened to her?”
“Gone.” The old woman’s tone had not changed.
“Do you know what I’m talking about?” Yossarian asked sharply, staring into her eyes to see if she were notspeaking to him from a coma. He raised his voice. “What happened to the kid sister, to the little girl?”
“Gone, gone,” the old woman replied with a crabby shrug, irritated by his persistence, her low wail growinglouder. “Chased away with the rest, chased away into the street. They would not even let her take her coat.”
“Where did she go?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“Who will take care of her?”
“Who will take care of me?”
“She doesn’t know anybody else, does she?”
“Who will take care of me?”
Yossarian left money in the old woman’s lap—it was odd how many wrongs leaving money seemed to right—and strode out of the apartment, cursing Catch-22 vehemently as he descended the stairs, even though he knewthere was no such thing. Catch-22 did not exist, he was positive of that, but it made no difference. What didmatter was that everyone thought it existed, and that was much worse, for there was no object or text to ridiculeor refute, to accuse, criticize, attack, amend, hate, revile, spit at, rip to shreds, trample upon or burn up.
It was cold outside, and dark, and a leaky, insipid mist lay swollen in the air and trickled down the large,unpolished stone blocks of the houses and the pedestals of monuments. Yossarian hurried back to Milo andrecanted. He said he was sorry and, knowing he was lying, promised to fly as many more missions as ColonelCathcart wanted if Milo would only use all his influence in Rome to help him locate Nately’s whore’s kid sister.
“She’s just a twelve-year-old virgin, Milo,” he explained anxiously, “and I want to find her before it’s too late.”
Milo responded to his request with a benign smile. “I’ve got just the twelve-year-old virgin you’re looking for,”
he announced jubilantly. “This twelve-year-old virgin is really only thirty-four, but she was brought up on a low-protein diet by very strict parents and didn’t start sleeping with men until—““Milo, I’m talking about a little girl!” Yossarian interrupted him with desperate impatience. “Don’t youunderstand? I don’t want to sleep with her. I want to help her. You’ve got daughters. She’s just a little kid, andshe’s all alone in this city with no one to take care of her. I want to protect her from harm. Don’t you know whatI’m talking about?”
Milo did understand and was deeply touched. “Yossarian, I’m proud of you,” he exclaimed with profoundemotion. “I really am. You don’t know how glad I am to see that everything isn’t always just sex with you.
You’ve got principles. Certainly I’ve got daughters, and I know exactly what you’re talking about. We’ll findthat girl if we have to turn this whole city upside down. Come along.”
Yossarian went along in Milo Minderbinder’s speeding M & M staff car to police headquarters to meet aswarthy, untidy police commissioner with a narrow black mustache and unbuttoned tunic who was fiddling witha stout woman with warts and two chins when they entered his office and who greeted Milo with warm surpriseand bowed and scraped in obscene servility as though Milo were some elegant marquis.
“Ah, Marchese Milo,” he declared with effusive pleasure, pushing the fat, disgruntled woman out the doorwithout even looking toward her. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? I would have a big party for you.
Come in, come in, Marchese. You almost never visit us any more.”
Milo knew that there was not one moment to waste. “Hello, Luigi,” he said, nodding so briskly that he almostseemed rude. “Luigi, I need your help. My friend here wants to find a girl.”
“A girl, Marchese?” said Luigi, scratching his face pensively. “There are lots of girls in Rome. For an Americanofficer, a girl should not be too difficult.”
“No, Luigi, you don’t understand. This is a twelve-year-old virgin that he has to find right away.”
“Ah, yes, now I understand,” Luigi said sagaciously. “A virgin might take a little time. But if he waits at the busterminal where the young farm girls looking for work arrive, I—““Luigi, you still don’t understand,” Milo snapped with such brusque impatience that the police commissioner’sface flushed and he jumped to attention and began buttoning his uniform in confusion. “This girl is a friend, anold friend of the family, and we want to help her. She’s only a child. She’s all alone in this city somewhere, andwe have to find her before somebody harms her. Now do you understand? Luigi, this is very important to me. Ihave a daughter the same age as that little girl, and nothing in the world means more to me right now than savingthat poor child before it’s too late. Will you help?”
“Si, Marchese, now I understand,” said Luigi. “And I will do everything in my power to find her. But tonight I have almost no men. Tonight all my men are busy trying to break up the traffic in illegal tobacco.”
“Illegal tobacco?” asked Milo.
“Milo,” Yossarian bleated faintly with a sinking heart, sensing at once that all was lost.
“Si, Marchese,” said Luigi. “The profit in illegal tobacco is so high that the smuggling is almost impossible tocontrol.”
“Is there really that much profit in illegal tobacco?” Milo inquired with keen interest, his rust-colored eyebrowsarching avidly and his nostrils sniffing.
“Milo,” Yossarian called to him. “Pay attention to me, will you?”
“Si, Marchese,” Luigi answered. “The profit in illegal tobacco is very high. The smuggling is a national scandal,Marchese, truly a national disgrace.”
“Is that a fact?” Milo observed with a preoccupied smile and started toward the door as though in a spell.
“Milo!” Yossarian yelled, and bounded forward impulsively to intercept him. “Milo, you’ve got to help me.”
“Illegal tobacco,” Milo explained to him with a look of epileptic lust, struggling doggedly to get by. “Let me go.
I’ve got to smuggle illegal tobacco.”
“Stay here and help me find her,” pleaded Yossarian. “You can smuggle illegal tobacco tomorrow.”
But Milo was deaf and kept pushing forward, nonviolently but irresistibly, sweating, his eyes, as though he werein the grip of a blind fixation, burning feverishly, and his twitching mouth slavering. He moaned calmly asthough in remote, instinctive distress and kept repeating, “Illegal tobacco, illegal tobacco.” Yossarian stepped outof the way with resignation finally when he saw it was hopeless to try to reason with him. Milo was gone like ashot. The commissioner of police unbuttoned his tunic again and looked at Yossarian with contempt.
“What do you want here?” he asked coldly. “Do you want me to arrest you?”
Yossarian walked out of the office and down the stairs into the dark, tomblike street, passing in the hall the stoutwoman with warts and two chins, who was already on her way back in. There was no sign of Milo outside. Therewere no lights in any of the windows. The deserted sidewalk rose steeply and continuously for several blocks. Hecould see the glare of a broad avenue at the top of the long cobblestone incline. The police station was almost atthe bottom; the yellow bulbs at the entrance sizzled in the dampness like wet torches. A frigid, fine rain wasfalling. He began walking slowly, pushing uphill. Soon he came to a quiet, cozy, inviting restaurant with redvelvet drapes in the windows and a blue neon sign near the door that said: TONY’s RESTAURANT FINEFOOD AND DRINK. KEEP OUT. The words on the blue neon sign surprised him mildly for only an instant.
Nothing warped seemed bizarre any more in his strange, distorted surroundings. The tops of the sheer buildings slanted in weird, surrealistic perspective, and the street seemed tilted. He raised the collar of his warm woolencoat and hugged it around him. The night was raw. A boy in a thin shirt and thin tattered trousers walked out ofthe darkness on bare feet. The boy had black hair and needed a haircut and shoes and socks. His sickly face waspale and sad. His feet made grisly, soft, sucking sounds in the rain puddles on the wet pavement as he passed,and Yossarian was moved by such intense pity for his poverty that he wanted to smash his pale, sad, sickly facewith his fist and knock him out of existence because he brought to mind all the pale, sad, sickly children in Italythat same night who needed haircuts and needed shoes and socks. He made Yossarian think of cripples and ofcold and hungry men and women, and of all the dumb, passive, devout mothers with catatonic eyes nursinginfants outdoors that same night with chilled animal udders bared insensibly to that same raw rain. Cows. Almoston cue, a nursing mother padded past holding an infant in black rags, and Yossarian wanted to smash her too,because she reminded him of the barefoot boy in the thin shirt and thin, tattered trousers and of all the shivering,stupefying misery in a world that never yet had provided enough heat and food and justice for all but aningenious and unscrupulous handful. What a lousy earth! He wondered how many people were destitute thatsame night even in his own prosperous country, how many homes were shanties, how many husbands weredrunk and wives socked, and how many children were bullied, abused or abandoned. How many familieshungered for food they could not afford to buy? How many hearts were broken? How many suicides would takeplace that same night, how many people would go insane? How many cockroaches and landlords wouldtriumph? How many winners were losers, successes failures, rich men poor men? How many wise guys werestupid? How many happy endings were unhappy endings? How many honest men were liars, brave mencowards, loyal men traitors, how many sainted men were corrupt, how many people in positions of trust had soldtheir souls to blackguards for petty cash, how many had never had souls? How many straight-and-narrow pathswere crooked paths? How many best families were worst families and how many good people were bad people?
When you added them all up and then subtracted, you might be left with only the children, and perhaps withAlbert Einstein and an old violinist or sculptor somewhere. Yossarian walked in lonely torture, feeling estranged,and could not wipe from his mind the excruciating image of the barefoot boy with sickly cheeks until he turnedthe corner into the avenue finally and came upon an Allied soldier having convulsions on the ground, a younglieutenant with a small, pale, boyish face. Six other soldiers from different countries wrestled with different partsof him, striving to help him and hold him still. He yelped and groaned unintelligibly through clenched teeth, hiseyes rolled up into his head. “Don’t let him bite his tongue off,” a short sergeant near Yossarian advisedshrewdly, and a seventh man threw himself into the fray to wrestle with the ill lieutenant’s face. All at once thewrestlers won and turned to each other undecidedly, for now that they held the young lieutenant rigid they didnot know what to do with him. A quiver of moronic panic spread from one straining brute face to another. “Whydon’t you lift him up and put him on the hood of that car?” a corporal standing in back of Yossarian drawled.
That seemed to make sense, so the seven men lifted the young lieutenant up and stretched him out carefully onthe hood of a parked car, still pinning each struggling part of him down. Once they had him stretched out on thehood of the parked car, they stared at each other uneasily again, for they had no idea what to do with him next.
“Why don’t you lift him up off the hood of that car and lay him down on the ground?” drawled the same corporalbehind Yossarian. That seemed like a good idea, too, and they began to move him back to the sidewalk, butbefore they could finish, a jeep raced up with a flashing red spotlight at the side and two military policemen inthe front seat.
“What’s going on?” the driver yelled.
“He’s having convulsions,” one of the men grappling with one of the young lieutenant’s limbs answered. “We’reholding him still.”
“That’s good. He’s under arrest.”
“What should we do with him?”
“Keep him under arrest!” the M.P. shouted, doubling over with raucous laughter at his jest, and sped away in hisjeep.
Yossarian recalled that he had no leave papers and moved prudently past the strange group toward the sound ofmuffled voices emanating from a distance inside the murky darkness ahead. The broad, rain-blotched boulevardwas illuminated every half-block by short, curling lampposts with eerie, shimmering glares surrounded by smokybrown mist. From a window overhead he heard an unhappy female voice pleading, “Please don’t. Please don’t.”
A despondent young woman in a black raincoat with much black hair on her face passed with her eyes lowered.
At the Ministry of Public Affairs on the next block, a drunken lady was backed up against one of the flutedCorinthian columns by a drunken young soldier, while three drunken comrades in arms sat watching nearby onthe steps with wine bottles standing between their legs. “Pleeshe don’t,” begged the drunken lady. “I want to gohome now. Pleeshe don’t.” One of the sitting men cursed pugnaciously and hurled a wine bottle at Yossarianwhen he turned to look up. The bottle shattered harmlessly far away with a brief and muted noise. Yossariancontinued walking away at the same listless, unhurried pace, hands buried in his pockets. “Come on, baby,” heheard the drunken soldier urge determinedly. “It’s my turn now.” “Pleeshe don’t,” begged the drunken lady.
“Pleeshe don’t.” At the very next corner, deep inside the dense, impenetrable shadows of a narrow, winding sidestreet, he heard the mysterious, unmistakable sound of someone shoveling snow. The measured, labored,evocative scrape of iron shovel against concrete made his flesh crawl with terror as he stepped from the curb tocross the ominous alley and hurried onward until the haunting, incongruous noise had been left behind. Now heknew where he was: soon, if he continued without turning, he would come to the dry fountain in the middle ofthe boulevard, then to the officers’ apartment seven blocks beyond. He heard snarling, inhuman voices cuttingthrough the ghostly blackness in front suddenly. The bulb on the corner lamp post had died, spilling gloom overhalf the street, throwing everything visible off balance. On the other side of the intersection, a man was beating adog with a stick like the man who was beating the horse with a whip in Raskolnikov’s dream. Yossarian strainedhelplessly not to see or hear. The dog whimpered and squealed in brute, dumbfounded hysteria at the end of anold Manila rope and groveled and crawled on its belly without resisting, but the man beat it and beat it anywaywith his heavy, flat stick. A small crowd watched. A squat woman stepped out and asked him please to stop.
“Mind your own business,” the man barked gruffly, lifting his stick as though he might beat her too, and thewoman retreated sheepishly with an abject and humiliated air. Yossarian quickened his pace to get away, almostran. The night was filled with horrors, and he thought he knew how Christ must have felt as he walked throughthe world, like a psychiatrist through a ward full of nuts, like a victim through a prison full of thieves. What awelcome sight a leper must have been! At the next corner a man was beating a small boy brutally in the midst ofan immobile crowd of adult spectators who made no effort to intervene. Yossarian recoiled with sickeningrecognition. He was certain he had witnessed that same horrible scene sometime before. Déjà vu? The sinistercoincidence shook him and filled him with doubt and dread. It was the same scene he had witnessed a blockbefore, although everything in it seemed quite different. What in the world was happening? Would a squat woman step out and ask the man to please stop? Would he raise his hand to strike her and would she retreat?
Nobody moved. The child cried steadily as though in drugged misery. The man kept knocking him down withhard, resounding open-palm blows to the head, then jerking him up to his feet in order to knock him down again.
No one in the sullen, cowering crowd seemed to care enough about the stunned and beaten boy to interfere. Thechild was no more than nine. One drab woman was weeping silently into a dirty dish towel. The boy wasemaciated and needed a haircut. Bright-red blood was streaming from both ears. Yossarian crossed quickly to theother side of the immense avenue to escape the nauseating sight and found himself walking on human teeth lyingon the drenched, glistening pavement near splotches of blood kept sticky by the pelting raindrops poking eachone like sharp fingernails. Molars and broken incisors lay scattered everywhere. He circled on tiptoe thegrotesque debris and came near a doorway containing a crying soldier holding a saturated handkerchief to hismouth, supported as he sagged by two other soldiers waiting in grave impatience for the military ambulance thatfinally came clanging up with amber fog lights on and passed them by for an altercation on the next blockbetween a civilian Italian with books and a slew of civilian policemen with armlocks and clubs. The screaming,struggling civilian was a dark man with a face white as flour from fear. His eyes were pulsating in hecticdesperation, flapping like bat’s wings, as the many tall policemen seized him by the arms and legs and lifted himup. His books were spilled on the ground. “Help!” he shrieked shrilly in a voice strangling in its own emotion, asthe policemen carried him to the open doors in the rear of the ambulance and threw him inside. “Police! Help!
Police!” The doors were shut and bolted, and the ambulance raced away. There was a humorless irony in theludicrous panic of the man screaming for help to the police while policemen were all around him. Yossariansmiled wryly at the futile and ridiculous cry for aid, then saw with a start that the words were ambiguous,realized with alarm that they were not, perhaps, intended as a call for police but as a heroic warning from thegrave by a doomed friend to everyone who was not a policeman with a club and a gun and a mob of otherpolicemen with clubs and guns to back him up. “Help! Police!” the man had cried, and he could have beenshouting of danger. Yossarian responded to the thought by slipping away stealthily from the police and almosttripped over the feet of a burly woman of forty hastening across the intersection guiltily, darting furtive,vindictive glances behind her toward a woman of eighty with thick, bandaged ankles doddering after her in alosing pursuit. The old woman was gasping for breath as she minced along and muttering to herself in distractedagitation. There was no mistaking the nature of the scene; it was a chase. The triumphant first woman washalfway across the wide avenue before the second woman reached the curb. The nasty, small, gloating smile withwhich she glanced back at the laboring old woman was both wicked and apprehensive. Yossarian knew he couldhelp the troubled old woman if she would only cry out, knew he could spring forward and capture the sturdy firstwoman and hold her for the mob of policemen nearby if the second woman would only give him license with ashriek of distress. But the old woman passed by without even seeing him, mumbling in terrible, tragic vexation,and soon the first woman had vanished into the deepening layers of darkness and the old woman was leftstanding helplessly in the center of the thoroughfare, dazed, uncertain which way to proceed, alone. Yossariantore his eyes from her and hurried away in shame because he had done nothing to assist her. He darted furtive,guilty glances back as he fled in defeat, afraid the old woman might now start following him, and he welcomedthe concealing shelter of the drizzling, drifting, lightless, nearly opaque gloom. Mobs... mobs of policemen—everything but England was in the hands of mobs, mobs, mobs. Mobs with clubs were in control everywhere.
The surface of the collar and shoulders of Yossarian’s coat was soaked. His socks were wet and cold. The lighton the next lamppost was out, too, the glass globe broken. Buildings and featureless shapes flowed by himnoiselessly as though borne past immutably on the surface of some rank and timeless tide. A tall monk passed, his face buried entirely inside a coarse gray cowl, even the eyes hidden. Footsteps sloshed toward him steadilythrough a puddle, and he feared it would be another barefoot child. He brushed by a gaunt, cadaverous, tristfulman in a black raincoat with a star-shaped scar in his cheek and a glossy mutilated depression the size of an eggin one temple. On squishing straw sandals, a young woman materialized with her whole face disfigured by aGod-awful pink and piebald burn that started on her neck and stretched in a raw, corrugated mass up both cheekspast her eyes! Yossarian could not bear to look, and shuddered. No one would ever love her. His spirit was sick;he longed to lie down with some girl he could love who would soothe and excite him and put him to sleep. Amob with a club was waiting for him in Pianosa. The girls were all gone. The countess and her daughter-in-lawwere no longer good enough; he had grown too old for fun, he no longer had the time. Luciana was gone, dead,probably; if not yet, then soon enough. Aarfy’s buxom trollop had vanished with her smutty cameo ring, andNurse Duckett was ashamed of him because he had refused to fly more combat missions and would cause ascandal. The only girl he knew nearby was the plain maid in the officers’ apartment, whom none of the men hadever slept with. Her name was Michaela, but the men called her filthy things in dulcet, ingratiating voices, andshe giggled with childish joy because she understood no English and thought they were flattering her and makingharmless jokes. Everything wild she watched them do filled her with enchanted delight. She was a happy,simple-minded, hard-working girl who could not read and was barely able to write her name. Her straight hairwas the color of rotting straw. She had sallow skin and myopic eyes, and none of the men had ever slept with herbecause none of the men had ever wanted to, none but Aarfy, who had raped her once that same evening and hadthen held her prisoner in a clothes closet for almost two hours with his hand over her mouth until the civiliancurfew sirens sounded and it was unlawful for her to be outside.
Then he threw her out the window. Her dead body was still lying on the pavement when Yossarian arrived andpushed his way politely through the circle of solemn neighbors with dim lanterns, who glared with venom asthey shrank away from him and pointed up bitterly toward the second-floor windows in their private, grim,accusing conversations. Yossarian’s heart pounded with fright and horror at the pitiful, ominous, gory spectacleof the broken corpse. He ducked into the hallway and bolted up the stairs into the apartment, where he foundAarfy pacing about uneasily with a pompous, slightly uncomfortable smile. Aarfy seemed a bit unsettled as hefidgeted with his pipe and assured Yossarian that everything was going to be all right. There was nothing toworry about.
“I only raped her once,” he explained.
Yossarian was aghast. “But you killed her, Aarfy! You killed her!”
“Oh, I had to do that after I raped her,” Aarfy replied in his most condescending manner. “I couldn’t very well lether go around saying bad things about us, could I?”
“But why did you have to touch her at all, you dumb bastard?” Yossarian shouted. “Why couldn’t you getyourself a girl off the street if you wanted one? The city is full of prostitutes.”
“Oh, no, not me,” Aarfy bragged. “I never paid for it in my life.”
“Aarfy, are you insane?” Yossarian was almost speechless. “You killed a girl. They’re going to put you in jail!”
“Oh, no,” Aarfy answered with a forced smile. “Not me. They aren’t going to put good old Aarfy in jail. Not forkilling her.”
“But you threw her out the window. She’s lying dead in the street.”
“She has no right to be there,” Aarfy answered. “It’s after curfew.”
“Stupid! Don’t you realize what you’ve done?” Yossarian wanted to grab Aarfy by his well-fed, caterpillar-softshoulders and shake some sense into him. “You’ve murdered a human being. They are going to put you in jail.
They might even hang you!”
“Oh, I hardly think they’ll do that,” Aarfy replied with a jovial chuckle, although his symptoms of nervousnessincreased. He spilled tobacco crumbs unconsciously as his short fingers fumbled with the bowl of his pipe. “No,sirree. Not to good old Aarfy.” He chortled again. “She was only a servant girl. I hardly think they’re going tomake too much of a fuss over one poor Italian servant girl when so many thousands of lives are being lost everyday. Do you?”
“Listen!” Yossarian cried, almost in joy. He pricked up his ears and watched the blood drain from Aarfy’s faceas sirens mourned far away, police sirens, and then ascended almost instantaneously to a howling, strident,onrushing cacophony of overwhelming sound that seemed to crash into the room around them from every side.
“Aarfy, they’re coming for you,” he said in a flood of compassion, shouting to be heard above the noise.
“They’re coming to arrest you. Aarfy, don’t you understand? You can’t take the life of another human being andget away with it, even if she is just a poor servant girl. Don’t you see? Can’t you understand?”
“Oh, no,” Aarfy insisted with a lame laugh and a weak smile. “They’re not coming to arrest me. Not good oldAarfy.”
All at once he looked sick. He sank down on a chair in a trembling stupor, his stumpy, lax hands quaking in hislap. Cars skidded to a stop outside. Spotlights hit the windows immediately. Car doors slammed and policewhistles screeched. Voices rose harshly. Aarfy was green. He kept shaking his head mechanically with a queer,numb smile and repeating in a weak, hollow monotone that they were not coming for him, not for good oldAarfy, no sirree, striving to convince himself that this was so even as heavy footsteps raced up the stairs andpounded across the landing, even as fists beat on the door four times with a deafening, inexorable force. Then thedoor to the apartment flew open, and two large, tough, brawny M.P.s with icy eyes and firm, sinewy, unsmilingjaws entered quickly, strode across the room, and arrested Yossarian.
They arrested Yossarian for being in Rome without a pass.
They apologized to Aarfy for intruding and led Yossarian away between them, gripping him under each arm withfingers as hard as steel manacles. They said nothing at all to him on the way down. Two more tall M.P.s withclubs and hard white helmets were waiting outside at a closed car. They marched Yossarian into the back seat,and the car roared away and weaved through the rain and muddy fog to a police station. The M.P.s locked him up for the night in a cell with four stone walls. At dawn they gave him a pail for a latrine and drove him to theairport, where two more giant M.P.s with clubs and white helmets were waiting at a transport plane whoseengines were already warming up when they arrived, the cylindrical green cowlings oozing quivering beads ofcondensation. None of the M.P.s said anything to each other either. They did not even nod. Yossarian had neverseen such granite faces. The plane flew to Pianosa. Two more silent M.P.s were waiting at the landing strip.
There were now eight, and they filed with precise, wordless discipline into two cars and sped on humming tirespast the four squadron areas to the Group Headquarters building, where still two more M.P.s were waiting at theparking area. All ten tall, strong, purposeful, silent men towered around him as they turned toward the entrance.
Their footsteps crunched in loud unison on the cindered ground. He had an impression of accelerating haste. Hewas terrified. Every one of the ten M.P.s seemed powerful enough to bash him to death with a single blow. Theyhad only to press their massive, toughened, boulderous shoulders against him to crush all life from his body.
There was nothing he could do to save himself. He could not even see which two were gripping him under thearms as they marched him rapidly between the two tight single-file columns they had formed. Their pacequickened, and he felt as though he were flying along with his feet off the ground as they trotted in resolutecadence up the wide marble staircase to the upper landing, where still two more inscrutable military policemenwith hard faces were waiting to lead them all at an even faster pace down the long, cantilevered balconyoverhanging the immense lobby. Their marching footsteps on the dull tile floor thundered like an awesome,quickening drum roll through the vacant center of the building as they moved with even greater speed andprecision toward Colonel Cathcart’s office, and violent winds of panic began blowing in Yossarian’s ears whenthey turned him toward his doom inside the office, where Colonel Korn, his rump spreading comfortably on acorner of Colonel Cathcart’s desk, sat waiting to greet him with a genial smile and said,“We’re sending you home.”