Catch-22(78)

“Catch-22?”

“Sure. If I take you off combat duty, Group has to approve my action, and Group isn’t going to. They’ll put you right back on combat status, and then where will I be? On my way to the Pacific Ocean, probably. No, thank you. I’m not going to take any chances for you.”

“Isn’t it worth a try?” Yossarian argued. “What’s so hot about Pianosa?”

“Pianosa is terrible. But it’s better than the Pacific Ocean. I wouldn’t mind being shipped someplace civilized where I might pick up a buck or two in abortion money every now and then. But all they’ve got in the Pacific is jungles and monsoons. I’d rot there.”

“You’re rotting here.”

Doc Daneeka flared up angrily. “Yeah? Well, at least I’m going to come out of this war alive, which is a lot more than you’re going to do.”

“That’s just what I’m trying to tell you, goddammit. I’m asking you to save my life.”

“It’s not my business to save lives,” Doc Daneeka retorted sullenly.

“What is your business?”

“I don’t know what my business is. All they ever told me was to uphold the ethics of my profession and never give testimony against another physician. Listen. You think you’re the only one whose life is in danger? What about me? Those two quacks I’ve got working for me in the medical tent still can’t find out what’s wrong with me.”

“Maybe it’s Ewing’s tumor,” Yossarian muttered sarcastically.

“Do you really think so?” Doc Daneeka exclaimed with fright.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Yossarian answered impatiently. “I just know I’m not going to fly any more missions. They wouldn’t really shoot me, would they? I’ve got fifty-one.”

“Why don’t you at least finish the fifty-five before you take a stand?” Doc Daneeka advised. “With all your bitching, you’ve never finished a tour of duty even once.”

“How the hell can I? The colonel keeps raising them every time I get close.”

“You never finish your missions because you keep running into the hospital or going off to Rome. You’d be in a much stronger position if you had your fifty-five finished and then refused to fly. Then maybe I’d see what I could do.”

“Do you promise?”

“I promise.”

“What do you promise?”

“I promise that maybe I’ll think about doing something to help if you finish your fifty-five missions and if you get McWatt to put my name on his flight log again so that I can draw my flight pay without going up in a plane. I’m afraid of airplanes. Did you read about that airplane crash in Idaho three weeks ago? Six people killed. It was terrible. I don’t know why they want me to put in four hours’ flight time every month in order to get my flight pay. Don’t I have enough to worry about without worrying about being killed in an airplane crash too?”

“I worry about airplane crashes also,” Yossarian told him. “You’re not the only one.”

“Yeah, but I’m also pretty worried about that Ewing’s tumor,” Doc Daneeka boasted. “Do you think that’s why my nose is stuffed all the time and why I always feel so chilly? Take my pulse.”

Yossarian also worried about Ewing’s tumor and melanoma. Catastrophes were lurking everywhere, too numerous to count. When he contemplated the many diseases and potential accidents threatening him, he was positively astounded that he had managed to survive in good health for as long as he had. It was miraculous. Each day he faced was another dangerous mission against mortality. And he had been surviving them for twenty-eight years.





• • 18 • •



The Soldier who saw everything Twice


Yossarian owed his good health to exercise, fresh air, teamwork and good sportsmanship; it was to get away from them all that he had first discovered the hospital. When the physical-education officer at Lowery Field ordered everyone to fall out for calisthenics one afternoon, Yossarian, the private, reported instead at the dispensary with what he said was a pain in his right side.

“Beat it,” said the doctor on duty there, who was doing a crossword puzzle.

“We can’t tell him to beat it,” said a corporal. “There’s a new directive out about abdominal complaints. We have to keep them under observation five days because so many of them have been dying after we make them beat it.”

“All right,” grumbled the doctor. “Keep him under observation five days and then make him beat it.”

They took Yossarian’s clothes away and put him in a ward, where he was very happy when no one was snoring nearby. In the morning a helpful young English intern popped in to ask him about his liver.