Catch-22(190)

The surface of the collar and shoulders of Yossarian’s coat was soaked. His socks were wet and cold. The light on the next lamppost was out, too, the glass globe broken. Buildings and featureless shapes flowed by him noiselessly 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 steadily through a puddle, and he feared it would be another barefoot child. He brushed by a gaunt, cadaverous, tristful man in a black raincoat with a star-shaped scar in his cheek and a glossy mutilated depression the size of an egg in one temple. On squishing straw sandals, a young woman materialized with her whole face disfigured by a God-awful pink and piebald burn that started on her neck and stretched in a raw, corrugated mass up both cheeks past 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. A mob with a club was waiting for him in Pianosa. The girls were all gone. The countess and her daughter-in-law were 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, and Nurse Duckett was ashamed of him because he had refused to fly more combat missions and would cause a scandal. The only girl he knew nearby was the plain maid in the officers’ apartment, whom none of the men had ever slept with. Her name was Michaela, but the men called her filthy things in dulcet, ingratiating voices, and she giggled with childish joy because she understood no English and thought they were flattering her and making harmless 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 hair was the color of retting straw. She had sallow skin and myopic eyes, and none of the men had ever slept with her because none of the men had ever wanted to, none but Aarfy, who had raped her once that same evening and had then held her prisoner in a clothes closet for almost two hours with his hand over her mouth until the civilian curfew 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 and pushed his way politely through the circle of solemn neighbors with dim lanterns, who glared with venom as they 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 spectacle of the broken corpse. He ducked into the hallway and bolted up the stairs into the apartment, where he found Aarfy pacing about uneasily with a pompous, slightly uncomfortable smile. Aarfy seemed a bit unsettled as he fidgeted with his pipe and assured Yossarian that everything was going to be all right. There was nothing to worry 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 let her 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 get yourself 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 for killing her.”

“But you threw her out the window. She’s lying there 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-soft shoulders 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 nervousness increased. 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 to make too much of a fuss over one poor Italian servant girl when so many thousands of lives are being lost every day. Do you?”