“Does Milo know you’re selling cigarette lighters?”
“What’s it his business? Milo’s not carrying cigarette lighters too now, is he?”
“He sure is,” Yossarian told him. “And his aren’t stolen.”
“That’s what you think,” ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen answered with a laconic snort. “I’m selling mine for a buck apiece. What’s he getting for his?”
“A dollar and a penny.”
Ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen snickered triumphantly. “I beat him every time,” he gloated. “Say, what about all that Egyptian cotton he’s stuck with? How much did he buy?”
“All.”
“In the whole world? Well, I’ll be damned!” ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen crowed with malicious glee. “What a dope! You were in Cairo with him. Why’d you let him do it?”
“Me?” Yossarian answered with a shrug. “I have no influence on him. It was those Teletype machines they have in all the good restaurants there. Milo had never seen a stock ticker before, and the quotation for Egyptian cotton happened to be going in just as he asked the headwaiter to explain it to him. ‘Egyptian cotton?’ Milo said with that look of his. ‘How much is Egyptian cotton selling for?’ The next thing I knew he had bought the whole goddam harvest. And now he can’t unload any of it.”
“He has no imagination. I can unload plenty of it in the black market if he’ll make a deal.”
“Milo knows the black market. There’s no demand for cotton.”
“But there is a demand for medical supplies. I can roll the cotton up on wooden toothpicks and peddle them as sterile swabs. Will he sell to me at a good price?”
“He won’t sell to you at any price,” Yossarian answered. “He’s pretty sore at you for going into competition with him. In fact, he’s pretty sore at everybody for getting diarrhea last weekend and giving his mess hall a bad name. Say, you can help us.” Yossarian suddenly seized his arm. “Couldn’t you forge some official orders on that mimeograph machine of yours and get us out of flying to Bologna?”
Ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen pulled away slowly with a look of scorn. “Sure I could,” he explained with pride. “But I would never dream of doing anything like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s your job. We all have our jobs to do. My job is to unload these Zippo lighters at a profit if I can and pick up some cotton from Milo. Your job is to bomb the ammunition dumps at Bologna.”
“But I’m going to be killed at Bologna,” Yossarian pleaded. “We’re all going to be killed.”
“Then you’ll just have to be killed,” replied ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen. “Why can’t you be a fatalist about it the way I am? If I’m destined to unload these lighters at a profit and pick up some Egyptian cotton cheap from Milo, then that’s what I’m going to do. And if you’re destined to be killed over Bologna, then you’re going to be killed, so you might just as well go out and die like a man. I hate to say this, Yossarian, but you’re turning into a chronic complainer.”
Clevinger agreed with ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen that it was Yossarian’s job to get killed over Bologna and was livid with condemnation when Yossarian confessed that it was he who had moved the bomb line and caused the mission to be canceled.
“Why the hell not?” Yossarian snarled, arguing all the more vehemently because he suspected he was wrong. “Am I supposed to get my ass shot off just because the colonel wants to be a general?”
“What about the men on the mainland?” Clevinger demanded with just as much emotion. “Are they supposed to get their asses shot off just because you don’t want to go? Those men are entitled to air support!”
“But not necessarily by me. Look, they don’t care who knocks out those ammunition dumps. The only reason we’re going is because that bastard Cathcart volunteered us.”
“Oh, I know all that,” Clevinger assured him, his gaunt face pale and his agitated brown eyes swimming in sincerity. “But the fact remains that those ammunition dumps are still standing. You know very well that I don’t approve of Colonel Cathcart any more than you do.” Clevinger paused for emphasis, his mouth quivering, and then beat his fist down softly against his sleeping bag. “But it’s not for us to determine what targets must be destroyed or who’s to destroy them or—”
“Or who gets killed doing it? And why?”
“Yes, even that. We have no right to question—”
“You’re insane!”