Catch-22(93)
“Isn’t that forgery?”
“Oh, don’t worry about that either. The only one who might complain in a case of forgery is the person whose name you forged, and I looked out for your interests by picking a dead man. I used Washington Irving’s name.” Corporal Whitcomb scrutinized the chaplain’s face closely for some sign of rebellion and then breezed ahead confidently with concealed irony. “That was pretty quick thinking on my part, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” the chaplain wailed softly in a quavering voice, squinting with grotesque contortions of anguish and incomprehension. “I don’t think I understand all you’ve been telling me. How will it make a good impression for me if you signed Washington Irving’s name instead of my own?”
“Because they’re convinced that you are Washington Irving. Don’t you see? They’ll know it was you.”
“But isn’t that the very belief we want to dispel? Won’t this help them prove it?”
“If I thought you were going to be so stuffy about it, I wouldn’t even have tried to help,” Corporal Whitcomb declared indignantly, and walked out. A second later he walked back in. “I just did you the biggest favor anybody ever did you in your whole life and you don’t even know it. You don’t know how to show your appreciation. That’s another one of the things that’s wrong with you.”
“I’m sorry,” the chaplain apologized contritely. “I really am sorry. It’s just that I’m so completely stunned by all you’re telling me that I don’t even realize what I’m saying. I’m really very grateful to you.”
“Then how about letting me send out those form letters?” Corporal Whitcomb demanded immediately. “Can I begin working on the first drafts?”
The chaplain’s jaw dropped in astonishment. “No, no,” he groaned. “Not now.”
Corporal Whitcomb was incensed. “I’m the best friend you’ve got and you don’t even know it,” he asserted belligerently, and walked out of the chaplain’s tent. He walked back in. “I’m on your side and you don’t even realize it. Don’t you know what serious trouble you’re in? That C.I.D. man has gone rushing back to the hospital to write a brand-new report on you about that tomato.”
“What tomato?” the chaplain asked, blinking.
“The plum tomato you were hiding in your hand when you first showed up here. There it is. The tomato you’re still holding in your hand right this very minute!”
The chaplain unclenched his fingers with surprise and saw that he was still holding the plum tomato he had obtained in Colonel Cathcart’s office. He set it down quickly on the bridge table. “I got this tomato from Colonel Cathcart,” he said, and was struck by how ludicrous his explanation sounded. “He insisted I take it.”
“You don’t have to lie to me,” Corporal Whitcomb answered. “I don’t care whether you stole it from him or not.”
“Stole it?” the chaplain exclaimed with amazement. “Why should I want to steal a plum tomato?”
“That’s exactly what had us both stumped,” said Corporal Whitcomb. “And then the C.I.D. man figured out you might have some important secret papers hidden away inside it.”
The chaplain sagged limply beneath the mountainous weight of his despair. “I don’t have any important secret papers hidden away inside it,” he stated simply. “I didn’t even want it to begin with. Here, you can have it. Take it and see for yourself.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Please take it away,” the chaplain pleaded in a voice that was barely audible. “I want to be rid of it.”
“I don’t want it,” Corporal Whitcomb snapped again, and stalked out with an angry face, suppressing a smile of great jubilation at having forged a powerful new alliance with the C.I.D. man and at having succeeded again in convincing the chaplain that he was really displeased.
Poor Whitcomb, sighed the chaplain, and blamed himself for his assistant’s malaise. He sat mutely in a ponderous, stultifying melancholy, waiting expectantly for Corporal Whitcomb to walk back in. He was disappointed as he heard the peremptory crunch of Corporal Whitcomb’s footsteps recede into silence. There was nothing he wanted to do next. He decided to pass up lunch for a Milky Way and a Baby Ruth from his foot locker and a few swallows of lukewarm water from his canteen. He felt himself surrounded by dense, overwhelming fogs of possibilities in which he could perceive no glimmer of light. He dreaded what Colonel Cathcart would think when the news that he was suspected of being Washington Irving was brought to him, then fell to fretting over what Colonel Cathcart was already thinking about him for even having broached the subject of the sixty missions. There was so much unhappiness in the world, he reflected, bowing his head dismally beneath the tragic thought, and there was nothing he could do about anybody’s, least of all his own.