Catch-22(95)

All Colonel Cathcart knew about his house in the hills was that he had such a house and hated it. He was never so bored as when spending there the two or three days every other week necessary to sustain the illusion that his damp and drafty stone farmhouse in the hills was a golden palace of carnal delights. Officers’ clubs everywhere pulsated with blurred but knowing accounts of lavish, hushed-up drinking and sex orgies there and of secret, intimate nights of ecstasy with the most beautiful, the most tantalizing, the most readily aroused and most easily satisfied Italian courtesans, film actresses, models and countesses. No such private nights of ecstasy or hushed-up drinking and sex orgies ever occurred. They might have occurred if either General Dreedle or General Peckem had once evinced an interest in taking part in orgies with him, but neither ever did, and the colonel was certainly not going to waste his time and energy making love to beautiful women unless there was something in it for him.

The colonel dreaded his dank lonely nights at his farmhouse and the dull, uneventful days. He had much more fun back at Group, browbeating everyone he wasn’t afraid of. However, as Colonel Korn kept reminding him, there was not much glamour in having a farmhouse in the hills if he never used it. He drove off to his farmhouse each time in a mood of self-pity. He carried a shotgun in his jeep and spent the monotonous hours there shooting it at birds and at the plum tomatoes that did grow there in untended rows and were too much trouble to harvest.

Among those officers of inferior rank toward whom Colonel Cathcart still deemed it prudent to show respect, he included Major —— de Coverley, even though he did not want to and was not sure he even had to. Major —— de Coverley was as great a mystery to him as he was to Major Major and to everyone else who ever took notice of him. Colonel Cathcart had no idea whether to look up or look down in his attitude toward Major —— de Coverley. Major —— de Coverley was only a major, even though he was ages older than Colonel Cathcart; at the same time, so many other people treated Major —— de Coverley with such profound and fearful veneration that Colonel Cathcart had a hunch they might all know something. Major —— de Coverley was an ominous, incomprehensible presence who kept him constantly on edge and of whom even Colonel Korn tended to be wary. Everyone was afraid of him, and no one knew why. No one even knew Major —— de Coverley’s first name, because no one had ever had the temerity to ask him. Colonel Cathcart knew that Major —— de Coverley was away and he rejoiced in his absence until it occurred to him that Major —— de Coverley might be away somewhere conspiring against him, and then he wished that Major —— de Coverley were back in his squadron where he belonged so that he could be watched.

In a little while Colonel Cathcart’s arches began to ache from pacing back and forth so much. He sat down behind his desk again and resolved to embark upon a mature and systematic evaluation of the entire military situation. With the businesslike air of a man who knows how to get things done, he found a large white pad, drew a straight line down the middle and crossed it near the top, dividing the page into two blank columns of equal width. He rested a moment in critical rumination. Then he huddled over his desk, and at the head of the left column, in a cramped and finicky hand, he wrote, “Black Eyes!!!” At the top of the right column he wrote, “Feathers in My Cap!!! !!” He leaned back once more to inspect his chart admiringly from an objective perspective. After a few seconds of solemn deliberation, he licked the tip of his pencil carefully and wrote under “Black Eyes!!!,” after intent intervals:



Ferrara

Bologna (bomb line moved on map during)

Skeet range

Naked man information (after Avignon)



Then he added:



Food poisoning (during Bologna)



and



Moaning (epidemic of during Avignon briefing)



Then he added:



Chaplain (hanging around officers’ club every night)



He decided to be charitable about the chaplain, even though he did not like him, and under “Feathers in My Cap!!! !!” he wrote:



Chaplain (hanging around officers’ club every night)

The two chaplain entries, therefore, neutralized each other. Alongside “Ferrara” and “Naked man information (after Avignon)” he then wrote:



Yossarian!



Alongside “Bologna (bomb line moved on map during)” “Food poisoning (during Bologna)” and “Moaning (epidemic of during Avignon briefing)” he wrote in a bold, decisive hand:

?

Those entries labeled “?” were the ones he wanted to investigate immediately to determine if Yossarian had played any part in them.