“Yossarian, they can prepare as many official reports as they want and choose whichever ones they need on any given occasion. Didn’t you know that?”
“Oh, dear,” Yossarian murmured in heavy dejection, the blood draining from his face. “Oh, dear.”
Major Danby pressed forward avidly with a look of vulturous well-meaning. “Yossarian, do what they want and let them send you home. It’s best for everyone that way.”
“It’s best for Cathcart, Korn and me, not for everyone.”
“For everyone,” Major Danby insisted. “It will solve the whole problem.”
“Is it best for the men in the group who will have to keep flying more missions?”
Major Danby flinched and turned his face away uncomfortably for a second. “Yossarian,” he replied, “it will help nobody if you force Colonel Cathcart to court-martial you and prove you guilty of all the crimes with which you’ll be charged. You will go to prison for a long time, and your whole life will be ruined.”
Yossarian listened to him with a growing feeling of concern. “What crimes will they charge me with?”
“Incompetence over Ferrara, insubordination, refusal to engage the enemy in combat when ordered to do so, and desertion.”
Yossarian sucked his cheeks in soberly. “They could charge me with all that, couldn’t they? They gave me a medal for Ferrara. How could they charge me with incompetence now?”
“Aarfy will swear that you and McWatt lied in your official report.”
“I’ll bet the bastard would!”
“They will also find you guilty,” Major Danby recited, “of rape, extensive black-market operations, acts of sabotage and the sale of military secrets to the enemy.”
“How will they prove any of that? I never did a single one of those things.”
“But they have witnesses who will swear you did. They can get all the witnesses they need simply by persuading them that destroying you is for the good of the country. And in a way, it would be for the good of the country.”
“In what way?” Yossarian demanded, rising up slowly on one elbow with bridling hostility.
Major Danby drew back a bit and began mopping his forehead again. “Well, Yossarian,” he began with an apologetic stammer, “it would not help the war effort to bring Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn into disrepute now. Let’s face it, Yossarian—in spite of everything, the group does have a very good record. If you were court-martialed and found innocent, other men would probably refuse to fly missions, too. Colonel Cathcart would be in disgrace, and the military efficiency of the unit might be destroyed. So in that way it would be for the good of the country to have you found guilty and put in prison, even though you are innocent.”
“What a sweet way you have of putting things!” Yossarian snapped with caustic resentment.
Major Danby turned red and squirmed and squinted uneasily. “Please don’t blame me,” he pleaded with a look of anxious integrity. “You know it’s not my fault. All I’m doing is trying to look at things objectively and arrive at a solution to a very difficult situation.”
“I didn’t create the situation.”
“But you can resolve it. And what else can you do? You don’t want to fly more missions.”
“I can run away.”
“Run away?”
“Desert. Take off. I can turn my back on the whole damned mess and start running.”
Major Danby was shocked. “Where to? Where could you go?”
“I could get to Rome easily enough. And I could hide myself there.”
“And live in danger every minute of your life that they would find you? No, no, no, no, Yossarian. That would be a disastrous and ignoble thing to do. Running away from problems never solved them. Please believe me. I am only trying to help you.”
“That’s what that kind detective said before he decided to jab his thumb into my wound,” Yossarian retorted sarcastically.
“I am not a detective,” Major Danby replied with indignation, his cheeks flushing again. “I’m a university professor with a highly developed sense of right and wrong, and I wouldn’t try to deceive you. I wouldn’t lie to anyone.”
“What would you do if one of the men in the group asked you about this conversation?”
“I would lie to him.”
Yossarian laughed mockingly, and Major Danby, despite his blushing discomfort, leaned back with relief, as though welcoming the respite Yossarian’s changing mood promised. Yossarian gazed at him with a mixture of reserved pity and contempt. He sat up in bed with his back resting against the headboard, lit a cigarette, smiled slightly with wry amusement, and stared with whimsical sympathy at the vivid, pop-eyed horror that had implanted itself permanently on Major Danby’s face the day of the mission to Avignon, when General Dreedle had ordered him taken outside and shot. The startled wrinkles would always remain, like deep black scars, and Yossarian felt sorry for the gentle, moral, middle-aged idealist, as he felt sorry for so many people whose shortcomings were not large and whose troubles were light.