Catch-22(4)

“Please do that,” Yossarian said.

“I’ll come only if you want me to,” the chaplain said, lowering his head shyly. “I’ve noticed that I make many of the men uncomfortable.”

Yossarian glowed with affection. “I want you to,” he said. “You won’t make me uncomfortable.”

The chaplain beamed gratefully and then peered down at a slip of paper he had been concealing in his hand all the while. He counted along the beds in the ward, moving his lips, and then centered his attention dubiously on Dunbar.

“May I inquire,” he whispered softly, “if that is Lieutenant Dunbar?”

“Yes,” Yossarian answered loudly, “that is Lieutenant Dunbar.”

“Thank you,” the chaplain whispered. “Thank you very much. I must visit with him. I must visit with every member of the group who is in the hospital.”

“Even those in the other wards?” Yossarian asked.

“Even those in the other wards.”

“Be careful in those other wards, Father,” Yossarian warned. “That’s where they keep the mental cases. They’re filled with lunatics.”

“It isn’t necessary to call me Father,” the chaplain explained. “I’m an Anabaptist.”

“I’m dead serious about those other wards,” Yossarian continued grimly. “M.P.s won’t protect you, because they’re craziest of all. I’d go with you myself, but I’m scared stiff. Insanity is contagious. This is the only sane ward in the whole hospital. Everybody is crazy but us. This is probably the only sane ward in the whole world, for that matter.”

The chaplain rose quickly and edged away from Yossarian’s bed, and then nodded with a conciliating smile and promised to conduct himself with appropriate caution. “And now I must visit with Lieutenant Dunbar,” he said. Still he lingered, remorsefully. “How is Lieutenant Dunbar?” he asked at last.

“As good as they go,” Yossarian assured him. “A true prince. One of the finest, least dedicated men in the whole world.”

“I didn’t mean that,” the chaplain answered, whispering again. “Is he very sick?”

“No, he isn’t very sick. In fact, he isn’t sick at all.”

“That’s good.” The chaplain sighed with relief.

“Yes,” Yossarian said. “Yes, that is good.”

“A chaplain,” Dunbar said when the chaplain had visited him and gone. “Did you see that? A chaplain.”

“Wasn’t he sweet?” said Yossarian. “Maybe they should give him three votes.”

“Who’s they?” Dunbar demanded suspiciously.

In a bed in the small private section at the end of the ward, always working ceaselessly behind the green plyboard partition, was the solemn middleaged colonel who was visited every day by a gentle, sweet-faced woman with curly ash-blond hair who was not a nurse and not a Wac and not a Red Cross girl but who nevertheless appeared faithfully at the hospital in Pianosa each afternoon wearing pretty pastel summer dresses that were very smart and white leather pumps with heels half high at the base of nylon seams that were inevitably straight. The colonel was in Communications, and he was kept busy day and night transmitting glutinous messages from the interior into square pads of gauze which he sealed meticulously and delivered to a covered white pail that stood on the night table beside his bed. The colonel was gorgeous. He had a cavernous mouth, cavernous cheeks, cavernous, sad, mildewed eyes. His face was the color of clouded silver. He coughed quietly, gingerly, and dabbed the pads slowly at his lips with a distaste that had become automatic.

The colonel dwelt in a vortex of specialists who were still specializing in trying to determine what was troubling him. They hurled lights in his eyes to see if he could see, rammed needles into nerves to hear if he could feel. There was a urologist for his urine, a lymphologist for his lymph, an endocrinologist for his endocrines, a psychologist for his psyche, a dermatologist for his derma; there was a pathologist for his pathos, a cystologist for his cysts, and a bald and pedantic cetologist from the zoology department at Harvard who had been shanghaied ruthlessly into the Medical Corps by a faulty anode in an I.B.M. machine and spent his sessions with the dying colonel trying to discuss Moby Dick with him.

The colonel had really been investigated. There was not an organ of his body that had not been drugged and derogated, dusted and dredged, fingered and photographed, removed, plundered and replaced. Neat, slender and erect, the woman touched him often as she sat by his bedside and was the epitome of stately sorrow each time she smiled. The colonel was tall, thin and stooped. When he rose to walk, he bent forward even more, making a deep cavity of his body, and placed his feet down very carefully, moving ahead by inches from the knees down. There were violet pools under his eyes. The woman spoke softly, softer even than the colonel coughed, and none of the men in the ward ever heard her voice.